She is Still Burning

Harriet Ellenberger

She was not playing in this scene; it was a real one. And if I never speak of her sexual desire, she is still burning. In fact, if I would have to play it myself, I would have been completely naked and receiving a rain of sand.
-letter from the friend in question

I am having to play this scene myself. It is a real one.

The old women in the nursing home like stuffed animals. That gives me an idea. I try sleeping with a teddy bear. But the bear in my arms only makes me ache. I like better to fall asleep curled up to myself, one leg resting on the other, one arm lying across my breasts, my alive skin on my alive skin.

I am open to her. When she looks at me for a long time, I feel her inside me. How is this possible? Her right hand is on my shoulder. Her left hand is in her coat pocket. I have on blue jeans, a shirt, a jacket, a parka. We are walking at night on a public street.

I wake in a panic, demanding of the friend in my dream, "Where is she?" The friend says, "She is working."

I am working too. I am remembering.

The first time I saw her, I did not know who she was. She arrived along with the others. They said her name, but I could not understand it. She looked lost from want of sleep. She lay down in the bed I had just gotten up from. She fell into sleep on my pillow. I looked at her. I wanted to lie alongside her, hold her. I thought, what is wrong with me? But I liked wanting to hold her. It was a surprise.

The next thing I remember: they are all awake, speaking a language I cannot follow. I am cooking for them. She looks at me as if I were real. She eats as if she needed food. She says the soup is good. It is full of cream and butter. I tell myself I am liking this too much, feeding the stranger. Soup means nothing. It will not pay the bills. It will not change the world. It is only tenderness. It will get me in trouble. I touch her shoulder. A sudden gush of feeling: I want to give her everything she needs. I don't know what she needs. I have little to give. I don't know how to spell her name and my tongue can't say it.

If I remember more, I will lose myself in what is gone. She writes, saying over and over, Think of what is the best for you. It is very important.

I am afraid of being neither here nor there but in the middle of an ocean, going under.

When she doubts that I am real, I want to bruise my own skin.

Think of what is the best for me. This summer I am reading Mary Daly's Pure Lust. She remembers the medieval way of naming passions. A passion has an object. There's a reason for passion. Passion is intelligent. I am passionate. I am intelligent. I am not drowning.

I copy passages from Pure Lust into my notebook. I reword them, like this:
When I desire her, I move toward her. The reason in my movement is two-fold: one, I perceive her to be good for me; two, I judge that it is difficult but not impossible to reach her.
Desire hopes. I move toward her, hoping.
I move away from her, despairing. I perceive her as good for me but impossible to reach. I cannot bear to see what eludes my touch. I try to forget.

She must be honest with me, she writes. It is maybe the best that I forget. We left each other here. If I go there, we will have to leave each other again. It could be terrible. She wishes she could tell me this, holding my hands.

I have to eat, sleep, work, think clearly, act with decision. I have to be tough. I write her, laying out my cards on the table:
A. Most of all, I want to work with her, make something good with her.
B. I want to be her friend. I want her to be my friend.
C. I want to spend at least one night with her, unclothed, not on a street corner. I do not know why I want this so much. I do not know what my body is trying to tell me. I will not speak of it again.
D. I do not know what I mean by the word love. I would bet fifty dollars she does not know what she means by the word love. I am going to stop saying I love her.
Is this tough enough?

Friends give me a photograph of her. I memorize it. No good, no good, no good will come of this. But over time the image becomes three-dimensional. I begin to see the flesh, the movement in her, the breath. First, I keep it in my purse. Then, when I am done carrying it with me, I keep her likeness hidden in my writing desk.

When I was seventeen, I wrote a sudden poem. It began, "The fingers of the mind move in darkness ..." The poem won me a scholarship from the Women's Club. I crossed to the rich side of the river for the ceremony. I was too shy to talk. A woman in fur put her hand on my shoulder. "My dear," she said and hesitated and then laughed, "you have a flair ... "

I grow thinner, my hair still longer. Many more strands turn white.

I wired her flowers, blue iris, lavender freesia. For success on the road and a memorable birthday. She wrote, enclosing a petal.

I am searching caverns for the wellspring, liquid from rock, honey from granite. Strike me, I will bring forth living waters. She can bathe herself in me. She can leap in my shallows, splash herself all over, all over, look down and see her face floating, glide slowly over my surface, dive.

When I saw her again, in a city, I was startled. She was shy; she had on funny tennis shoes. She was separate. I could not think how to talk to her. Finally, I said, Can I see you for five minutes? Alone? I waited for her in the courtyard while she found her coat. We walked, close together, as before. There must be a magnet in her legs. I move away, out of the field of attraction. She follows me. I ask her a rude question. She says I am embarrassing her. We each light a cigarette, saying at least they are good for something.

We walk like this for hours. Once we stop in a restaurant. I drink beer, she drinks milk. She wants me to understand why she will not spend the night with me. I say, Why? You think I'll cry all night? She shakes her head, pleads with me with her eyes. I persist that this is my problem, all my doing, I am the humble clown. But she will not let it go. She will not take her eyes from mine, she will not speak aloud. Finally, I give in. I whisper, Because then it will not be so easy. She nods, released.

In five minutes I will not be able to stop crying. I tell her, Five more minutes. We walk the streets together until dawn.

Two friends gave me a pottery cup. It reads, "Woman, you are the spirit healer. The tides in me that reach toward her, recede, return -- they are full of salt and small living creatures.

I want to ask her questions. What did she do then? What will she do now? What does she remember? What good has she found? How does she learn loneliness?

What is the good I see in her? It is the all-one-ness in her, the courage. How she signs her spirit in her acts. How her languages are in her hands, her mind in her eyes. How she is entirely visible and enigmatic still. Neither "masculine" nor "feminine." Unmistakably female. Moving across boundaries. Endangered. Beautiful.

With her, I wish to perform elemental acts. To breathe. To hold. To flow. To enflame. She hesitates; I stumble over my own feet.

When she works, her voice is low and cool and easy. She has natural authority. When she speaks of herself, her voice catches in her throat. Long silence. She covers her throat with scarves.

I am too old to call out to her again in a child's fever, Come here, come back, oh come play. I am too young to warm myself with memory and a small animal. This time, with these words, I trace a circle in the sand. I stand alone inside – upright, bare to the winds in my native fur. I call out to myself. I see who is inside this circle. She is inside this circle. I cannot tell how she came. Her voice catches in my throat.

afterword, February 2006

In August 1984, I wrote "She Is Still Burning" as a love letter, and when it was finished, I put it in an envelope, took it to the post office, and mailed it to Paris. This set off a chain of events that turned my world upside-down and transformed my perceptions of everything.

One thing I like about re-reading this piece now is that it brings everything back. The "she" of "She Is Still Burning" was lovely, an extraordinary presence, and I am hoping that the words I wrote to her and about her convey at least partly the quality of her being.

about the author

Harriet Ellenberger was co-founding editor of the print journal Sinister Wisdom from 1976 to 1981, and from 2000 to 2003 edited a small web publication called She Is Still Burning. She lives in rural New Brunswick, where she and her partner are renovating an old farmhouse.