From
Geography III, by Elizabeth Bishop, 1976
In
the Waiting Room
In
Worcester, Massachusetts,
I
went with Aunt Consuelo
to
keep her dentist’s appointment
and
sat and waited for her
in
the dentist’s waiting room.
It
was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was
full of grown up people,
arctics
and overcoats,
lamps
and magazines.
My
Aunt was inside
what
seemed like a long time
and
while I waited I read
the
National Geographic
(I
could read) and carefully
studied
the photographs:
the
inside of a volcano,
black,
and full of ashes;
then
it was spilling over
in
rivulets of fire.
Osa
and Martin Johnson
dressed
in riding breeches,
laced
boots, and pith helmets.
A
dead man slung on a pole
—“Long
Pig,” the caption said.
Babies
with pointed heads
wound
round and round with string;
black,
naked women with necks
wound
round and round with wire
like
the necks of light bulbs.
They’re
breasts were horrifying.
I
read it straight through.
I
was too shy to stop.
And
then I looked at the cover:
the
yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly,
from inside,
came
an oh! of pain
—Aunt
Conseulo’s voice—
not
very loud or long.
I
wasn’t at all surprised;
even
then I knew she was
a
foolish, timid woman.
I
might have been embarrassed,
but
wasn’t. What took me
completely
by surprise
was
that it was me:
my
voice, in my mouth.
Without
thinking at all
I
was my foolish aunt,
I—we—were
falling, falling,
our
eyes glued to the cover
of
the National Geographic,
February,
1918.
I
said to myself: three days
and
you’ll be seven years old.
I
was saying it to stop
the
sensation of falling off
the
round, turning world
into
cold, blue-black space.
But
I felt: you are an I,
you
are an Elizabeth,
you
are one of them.
Why should you be
one, too?
I
scarcely dared to look
to
see what I was.
I
gave a sidelong glance
—I
couldn’t look any higher—
at
shadowy gray knees,
trousers
and skirts and boots
and
different pairs of hands
lying
under the lamps.
I
knew that nothing stranger
had
ever happened, that nothing
stranger
could ever happen.
Why
should I be my aunt,
or
me, or anyone?
What
similarities—
boots,
hands, the family voice
I
felt in my throat, or even
the
National Geographic
and
those awful hanging breasts—
held
us all together
or
made us all just one?
How—I
didn’t know any
word
for it—how “unlikely”…
How
had I come to be here,
like
them, and overhear
a
cry of pain that could have
got
loud and worse but hadn’t?
The
waiting room was bright
and
too hot. It was sliding
beneath
a big black wave,
another,
and another.
Then
I was back in it.
The
War was on. Outside,
in
Worcester, Massachusetts,
were
night and slush and cold,
and
it was still the fifth
of
February, 1918.
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