Chicago

Writing the body

These are the people who live in my cupboard. They fight all the time. He punches the wall she screams. They are here to watch over me while I figure out what to write next. They represent Henry Darger and my dead sister and my dead mother and my dead father and my brother and I. The people in the cupboard are avenging angels. They’re not as friendly as they look. They burn and burn.

What happened to our bodies? What happened with Henry Darger in Chicago? Early memories bathtub horrors molestation and torture are more than historical rhetoric. For a long time after studying his books at the Intuit Gallery I couldn’t bear to look at my Violet Vivian tattoo. I started wearing long sleeves even in summer.

The body as water

Salt water bloods collapsing guts houses cars sky river extreme heat extreme cold how water affects the body death by suffocation the body twitches and fights even after the heart stops death by old age the body simply stops. Remove the Vivian girls’ back stories they begin and end in dirt everyone dies including the sisters. Including my sister. Including Elsie Paroubek.

Begin and end in water move back to the asylum.

Everyone goes insane the canal swarms over our heads our hair turns to weeds we float swiftly down the sharp V slopes of the Dishman Irrigation Ditch prehensile arms outstretched clothes then shoes then underclothes become loose a strange fear and release in the parking garage early in the morning before work the sodium lights sizzling no guards or cameras. I hit the concrete barrier with my car got out lay on the ground and faced a dead mouse oil stains and a fairy circle of cigarette butts. I lay there for minutes listening then sat up and pried my fender off my tire and drove home. I told no one not even my son.

The body as a city

When I was nine years old I started stealing from department stores one year I gave my entire family stolen gifts for Christmas and it didn't bother me a whit I stole cosmetics which I exchanged for friendship in middle school I stole records and books and clothes and money and gave most of it away.

Do our bodies erase or leave ghost images a body begins and ends a body erases itself and the body of work stays leaving ghost images and hauntings baby sharks don’t sleep nor do I without drugging myself I haven’t slept without medication in years this is a form of erasure a form of shame paranoia keeps me awake my spinning brain keeps me awake compulsive thinking more shame.

Of what was Henry Darger ashamed

Henry's mother died when he was four years old after giving birth to Henry’s sister. Henry never knew his sister my grandmother died after giving birth to my mother I never knew my sister. Henry’s incarceration in the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children in Lincoln was for excessive masturbation maybe he just got caught maybe he masturbated as much as any thirteen year old boy or perhaps he was preying on children even then and the asylum gave him a green light to continue he was certainly molested in the asylum imagine his shame imagine what he felt knowing of his diagnoses then being sent to such a horrible place worse than prison this was 1905 asylums were the stuff of nightmares there was no compassion no privacy no hope how did this affect him in later life hearing that as a child then being sent to an insane asylum when he was clearly intelligent and how was his sin dealt with there imagine what must have happened to him six years what can happen in six years that terrible frightening place carrying that guilt around in his head for his entire life.

I too carried guilt for getting caught masturbating but it only bothered me until I escaped my house. Clearly with the Bible verses Henry carefully noted he was still obsessed with the sin of Onan which is heartbreaking. When I was caught I was forced to take baths with my foster sister (imagine my psychotic mother being allowed to foster a daughter three years older than I how was this allowed to happen?) from then on I was never allowed to be naked alone in that house again. History is a Great Liar but our bodies carry the truth.

A kernel of shame and joy informs my work but where are the bodies in my work and whose bodies? Lark’s Henry's Elsie Paroubek's my brother’s mine?

All those children oh god.

I’m on the far left wearing my brilliant crown and my brother is on the far right wanting to escape.

My sister Lark was born in May Elsie Paroubek died in May brutal spring. Through which nightly ritual activities did Henry suffer?

This summer I disappeared into the buttermilk I am not beloved I wonder about dough in the bottoms and golden brown on the corners of my head which have moved into four pair of black eyes I'm all over and hide in flames a sacrificial sheep stood there weeping this summer I disappeared into the buttermilk there is a taser in my head.

AT JENNIE RICHEE THE VIVIAN GIRLS ESCAPE WITH BEAUTY AND CROSSING THE RIVER NAKED ARE CAPTURED BY CALVERINIAN BOY SCOUTS

Text inside a Henry Darger painting

I am here to witness to pluck children like almonds put them in my box no myth no muse milk swarmed insects in the wounds like a FATHER so many nights when breath pinched my throat I picked at the seams of my coat pulled my whiskers to the side tried to talk not bash my head into the wall it's the girls faking it like tearing holes in fishnets the way when I blurt it out do I need a club a sorority put it on the table gold dishes gold flatware fat burning candles fat hair head on fire real light more real here than there in my fat fat girls we all know it that hate filled spoon it gets harder to tell bird from flicker fat from punch the sacrificial bruise darling darling in the hen house where my tender leash is swallowed up yum yum butter sugar a fairytale in my stomach my hips no matter how well I do it you still worry and I am afraid of being caught in this story the fat girl is a woman and she is bad in this story the poet is fat and we can hate her because that's the real story we know who looks the best even the kind thin girls hate with such bright luxury do anything write anything say anything poor fish poor fishyfish frying in the pan hey sweetheart it's the biz look good doing it even if you suck a talentless hag with bony knees and crooked spine but thin thin thin look good and I’ve got it kicked oh the thin girls the beauty girls the fashion girls the gaga girls snicker up their palms lick their perfect teeth getting ready to eat you up the Vivian girls are dying in the bulrushes.

Lark

The body as an unwell brain

Now is the time to concentrate on the dead girls now and now is the time but I am not finished with Henry’s voice in my head it is time to listen to the dead girls beginning of course with my sister Lark because she is the catalyst she is the beginning she is the end and Elsie.

In the Social Security office my pink brain’s seventh harbinger of red tape molded plastic chairs rocking in the chair holding a large green grocery store bag with a zip lock bag inside and inside that bag all my medicines all the pills to contain my mental illness the chair feels broken and I can’t stop rocking Lark beside me each time I rise she feels me rock if the answer to question three is NO skip the question and turn to page nine A if the answer to the question on nine A is YES continue filling out the form then return to page five beginning with question two B if you answer NO to any question on page five then return to page three C and recalculate your interior self it was always about the dead girls from the start my sister Lark the Vivian Princesses Candy Clark a girl who was beheaded in my home town when she was out selling cookies when I was six whose name was whispered in hallways and bedrooms as a warning and as a threat Nellie Bly and of course Elsie Paroubek who stares from my wall I have thrown a sheet over her visage the past month in this heat she was beginning to stop sleep it’s about my death at so young an age my drowning my suffocating in that black house Henry says please continue page ten of the form if you don't remember write I DON'T REMEMBER plastic chair biting my back my bag of pills rattling it's a serious bounty as I had everything refilled in a last ditch attempt to heal I rock waiting for the legs on the chair to snap Lark touches my back also afraid I'll snap the chair in two and the armed guard will jump up at the noise and shoot us there were guns in the birth house alcohol and screams all the time screaming constantly and so much anger if there is anything you might not have room for on page three please finish all unanswered questions in section D on page 11 yes yes okay okay okay yes thank you the answer looks wrong I have neglected the dead girls I am afraid of them more afraid than I ever was of Henry I lose my place and have to start over let me do it okay okay okay I read the numbers the report spit out of the lunking computer system that ties our lives our souls our ancient and new beings with string that roasts us in onions carrots and port give me the piece of paper containing WAIT THERE'S A LAPSE alarms go off buzzers and the double doors in front of the office automatically lock CLACK CAGHUNNNNG CAGHUNNNNNNG.

I am missing pieces of my life I point to my son there is the lapse I say I had a child I was not allowed to give birth at work okay okay okay only one more question trusting that my son is who he says he is and my son appearing normal as he does Henry says you are listed as having gone by three names here no I say only the two and he says maybe they misspelled your maiden name I then remembered that I was married at seventeen for six weeks an attempt to escape homelessness I forget this all the time Henrysays that part's done now the medical part when were you diagnosed and thus begins the long list of physicians their addresses and phone numbers and the listings and painful spellings of medications and what is that one for and never once does he look at the forty page form I so carefully filled out at home in my neat penmanship nor does he peek into the mighty bag of drugs I am carrying nor does he take a look at the $28 in my checking account after sharing all the medical information and trying to spell everything I was getting tired at that point what is that one for diarrhea that I get when I'm having an anxiety attack oh and this one is zombie Seroquel and knocks the manic out of me and that one is for bipolar 1 disorder and that one is for anxiety and panic and that one allows me to leave the house and that one is for bipolar 1 disorder and that one is for bipolar 1 disorder and that one is for bipolar 1 disorder well into our third hour I am rocking flat out a weather bell storm warning we wade through that mess Henryjumps up and says let me get this into the system he leaves the dead girls and me for a few minutes then comes back with a brand new fresh stack of forms that he says I can either take home or fill out there and I begin with if the answer to question three is NO skip the question and go to page nine A Henry says all my information is now in the system it will be sent immediately to the Main Office and I should wait for some more forms to come in the mail and I'll have to fill them out then make an appointment or an appointment will be made for me or they might call but if I miss the appointment or don’t answer the phone or don’t fill out the forms he’ll drop me like a small pox baby blanket.

In Jessica Yu’s documentary In the Realms of the Unreal one of Henry Darger's neighbors said He was more like a child than an adult looking at children do you buy it at first contact the paintings entice and draw us powerfully but after a longer engagement the childlike Henry dissolves into a different animal less endearing less fanciful how much time could you spend with his work I first met Henry at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle in August 2006 I wandered around with the adults who were cooing and oohing and ahhhing and I shuddered there in my cheap flipflops and summer dress horrified and I did not understand the adults I did not understand the joy that infused their faces there was nothing cute here nothing adorable nothing pink and tender these were children murdered and murdering an army of each child with male and female genitalia exposed this was raw terror

He stored a vast number of pictures of girls and children throughout the apartment.

Henry Darger’s Room 851 Webster by Kiyoko Lerner

Henry and his friend William Shloder regularly visited an amusement park Riverview Park on evenings and on Sundays they went to the movies and sat in the balcony to watch children the two men formed a club called The Children's Protective Society why would two adult men form a club of just themselves what kind of club

Clubs are for people with common interests and secrets the formation of the club keeps the secrets intact Henry's interests were painting and children I wonder what Shloder was interested in what do you suppose Henry and William did at the amusement park every day what do you think they did who after all goes to amusement parks for whom are they built

Children

Henry had a newspaper clipping of the murdered child Elsie Paroubek in a barn he and William had turned into their clubhouse the picture disappeared sending Henry into a rage and sparked his writing of the novel so the story goes

Elsie Paroubek was not the muse or the thing that pushed Henry into art she was his great sacrifice

If I had known what was going to be done with me I surely would have ran away.

Henry Darger

Violet Vivian is tattooed on the underside of my left wrist I take her with me everywhere I go I cannot save the dead girls but I can try Henry is pushing me from behind telling me GET UP he says I've been sick one way or another long enough it's time to finish his damned book it's time to get to work.