Dr. Elnora Haggerty was her name. Born Kimberly,
she took the name of a
gentle and erudite stepfather who grinned fearlessly
upon life; was educated in Vienna and Edinburgh,
practiced in Copenhagen, then
in Ithaca, New York. The
cold fields were not sufficient for her, did
not startle her, did not impede her,
did not stifle her nor bend her; cold
can do many things she said and made a movement
with her lips, 1 thought she was about to smile, it
can even heat.
She
went west, practicing, standing
on footstools set to her tables where,
they said, she should
have stuffed birds and left manipulations of
human flesh and tissues to wiser hands
of men.
She
persisted, standing on her stools, under bright unshaded lights
whose illumination fell like weight upon her narrow
sloping shoulders and she wore her spectacles
and she never rouged and
she rarely smiled but if she did, ah,
if she did, then 1 knew
1 had been blessed. It was as if she had invited
1 to walk beneath the cool palm trees
sprouting from green lawns which spread to
sunny sea on air which sweet peas breathed. Shards
of shadow beneath the palms were like seabirds,
and their calls.
The
broken wing beat behind her.
The
heart rhythm of that brokenness was always
behind her.