Saving Grace

Would Dubya appreciate beauty if he saw it?

by Trish Boppert

We come into this world in a soul-thrumming state of absolute grace, but as any kid past the age of 4 or 5 can tell you, it cannot endure. I should know, since I once presumed that humans could grow up to be animals. My brother put a permanent harsh on that particular mellow by laughing (like the hyena he would never be) when I described my future as a cunning baby whale. Cold, hard facts almost always trump belief, and I never again viewed animals as a seamless extension of myself. Once born, we lose our knack for speaking in the queer, archaic tongue of the dead, but we hear its echoes everywhere. Like pornography, we may not be able to define grace, but we absolutely know it when we see it.

Grace lights the faces of eighth-grade girls who teeter, like stiff-legged storks, across an echoing gym, their journey set in motion by the tinny strains of pomp and circumstance. Resplendent in lovely, grown-up dresses, they giggle and blush, smoothing their skirts with unexpected elegance as they settle in their seats.

Grace is a frail, elderly woman reading her Bible with fierce determination on a bus bursting with rudely raucous high school kids. Standing in the aisle, they shout at top volume, every other word a curse or sexual reference, until a boy notices the woman's lips moving silently as she reads. Suddenly embarrassed, ashamed, he hushes the kids around him.

Grace is in the curve of a homeless woman's face as she sleeps, utterly defenseless, her too-thin body curled around a sidewalk grate. Her eyelids flutter as she dreams of other places, other times.

Grace is in a dingy bar frequented by hardcore drinkers, bikers and off-duty cops with time on their hands, where a dancer twists around a tarnished pole. She's angular, the opposite of sensual: all corners, no curves. Her shift over, she sits at the bar in street clothes talking to the bartender. Her hand jumps toward her mouth to hide her braces. She tells him she's this close to earning her GED and after that, who knows: college, maybe out of town, out of state, someplace where she can start over, get it right this time. She smiles, forgetting to hide her braces, unspooling her future like a shining ribbon.

We also know what grace is not.

Grace is not a mother slapping her exhausted toddler at a bus stop, nor is it a bellicose shopper lambasting her husband for "breaking a mother*%#*ing mum plant" by throwing it in the "$%#damn cart." (Like everyone else stuck in line behind this harpy, I expected her to overpower her less fearsome mate in the parking lot and force him to eat mum, or worse.)

You can't experience grace by watching the Miss America pageant, unless you can channel Burt Parks while doing so. Young lovers crackle with grace, as long as they refrain from sucking face in public. If they're chewing gum while doing so or their throats are abloom with hickeys, chances are they'll be doing time in the big house for attempted murder-by-mum before they hit middle age.

Some of us wouldn't recognize grace if it bit us on the ass. Bitten on the butt by an enraged goose within a year of accepting the whale-free facts about human development, I speak from experience. No thinking, feeling human—unless equipped with blinders and prosthetic, ironclad buttocks—could unknowingly suffer such a savage nip.

It's hard to imagine George W. Bush, for example, struck dumb by a fleeting revelation of simple joy and beauty. It's easy to imagine him rendered speechless and goggle-eyed by any number of things, including the concept of tribal sovereignty.

But who am I to cast aspersions on his or anyone's ability to feel stuff deeply and think big thoughts while doing so? After all, one man's grace is another man's forbidden, soul-altering glimpse of Dick Cheney's face as he sloughs his human skin and transforms into Orca Man, able to decimate entire Middle Eastern countries with a single blast from his powerful blowhole.

Kerry may be on more familiar terms with grace, having experienced firsthand the horror and compassion of war. But since he generally presents the sad effect of an aging bloodhound mourning the richly scented spoor of tracking expeditions gone by, we can only speculate. In the meantime, I'll take grace when and where I can find it.

Trish Boppert is a contributing writer for City Paper. If you would like to respond to this Slant or have one of your own (800 words), contact Brian Hickey, City Paper interim editor, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., Pa. 19106 or e-mail hickey@citypaper.net.