I forgot to mention that yesterday's trip to the antique shoppes netted us a couple of treasures at good bargain prices. MeeMaw got this door-bell. She still hasn't decided if she actually wants it mounted outside, where weather might ravage it. It's very pleasing to both eye and ear:
It got me to thinking about bells, and how I rarely hear them anymore. My life in the Marine Corps was dominated by bells, bells that marked the hours of the day, the watches of the night, the changing of the guards, etc. But real bells are scarce nowadays. Phones don't ring with the clear bells of yesterday. They "boodleboodleboop" or chirp or emit some technologically mellow crap. And cellphones have "ringtones," though they do anything but ring. I consider most ringtones to be the telephonic equivalent of vanity license plates: they seem like a real cute idea to the owner at the time of purchase, but they pretty much make every other human being in the world mock and scorn the owner. Very few exceptions.The tolling of a churchbell can put a pause in almost anyone's step on a city street, because the bells are rapidly going extinct. (And I like the word "toll"...it's a sublime onomatopoeia.) I won't quote E.A. Poe's lengthy poem The Bells here, but I would encourage you to find it and read it. Read it aloud. And as you do, try to make your voice into a great swinging bell, the kind so massive that the peals make your chest ache. Read it slowly, and lay into the words like the clapper hammers the rim of London’s Big Ben. That's a proper bell.
And there's also the lyric to Pink Floyd's Time, which contains the stanza
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells
Besides MeeMaw's bell, we also found two fine old hymnals (we collect old hymnals, in case none of you knew this). Here's a stack of them under the candlestick on the antique desk in the family room:
And here are the two we found yesterday. They are an old Army-Navy Hymnal from 1920, and a songbook called "Temple Bells" (nice dovetail with the above topic, yes?) from the same era.
Speaking of bells and hymns, here's the gorgeous Welsh national anthem, complete with English subtitles. The lyrics express concepts that were once common and strong, concepts that now makes people uncomfortable, concepts that causes people to change conversational topics to either the inane or the self-important.
We still have quite a few ladybugs boarding with us. MeeMaw recently acquired a cute little ladybug-themed wall hanger, and a few hours ago, she posed with it and a real ladybug who wanted a bit of publicity. We have tired of admonishing the critters to "fly away home," because they obviously believe they are at home.
I have a pair of black shoes which I've owned for fifteen years. This means that when I bought this particular pair of shoes, Moo-Moo was enjoying the classroom politics of the fifth grade, and Karen was not yet enjoying a full mouthful of adult teeth. Anyway, the sole occasionally tries to come off from the right shoe, and I doggedly repair it each time.
As Augustus MacRae said to Captain Call in Lonesome Dove, "He ain't one to quit on a garment jist 'cause it's got a little age on it." He could have been talking about me...
Talk of shoe soles also put me in mind of the great Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote about his experiences in the Soviet gulags, "People who have never starved…who have never boiled the soles of shoes for food…”. This mighty writer reminds me of how quickly a once-great nation can fall into tyranny and insanity. Certainly, Solzhenitsyn lived in such an age, an age in which truth couldn't be written down or spoken aloud without risking arrest, jail, and almost certain death (either in the interrogation or later in the gulags). I hear many people in many callings these days who talk about proclaiming or preaching or teaching "truth," but I've noticed that these people can proclaim all they want and they never get arrested, they never truly get persecuted (unless one counts a sneer or rudeness as "persecution"). It's very easy to identify the people who are telling the truth. The real truth-tellers are the ones who are hounded and shunned and silenced when they speak. And this is a matter of souls, not soles.
I've been thinking some more about the Diane Sawyer documentary on Appalachian poverty I wrote about recently. My mother's family were all mountain people, and my intimate familiarity with their speech and mannerisms is probably why I fit into this local area so easily. One of the best photographers of the Appalachian people is a man named Shelby Lee Adams. MeeMaw and I watched a powerful DVD profile of him a few years back, and we've read most of his books.
Mr. Adams sporadically maintains a blog of his work. Take a look here, and be sure to scroll all the way down to the bottom, to the two photos of Louverna, and read the essay "Louverna's Funeral, '08."
On a related note....the summer Sunday School semester at our church is traditionally an offering of two or three "practical theology" classes. For example, last summer, I taught on the biblical view of eldercare, while John taught on marriage. I've been thinking of perhaps teaching a class this coming summer on preparing for death. Not in the sense of "how to emotionally prepare," but rather, "Are your funeral arrangements made? If so, what are they? What does the bible have to say about funerals, if anything? Is cremation an option?" If I teach such a class, I will certainly put forward my firm belief that funeral arrangements and caring for the bereaved is a definite diaconal ministry. I am angered at the way congregations let professional, profit-oriented strangers walk grieving people through the decisions about coffins, services, burials, etc.
Here's MeeMaw this morning before church, munching on breakfast.
I made her some cinnamon toast, and I made skillet toast for myself. While I was eating a piece of skillet toast with marmalade on it, I realized that the reason I like marmalade is that it reminds me of the orange Hi-C that I drank as a boy, and how I would dunk my skillet toast into it. This memory led me to recall a short story I wrote over ten years ago. If you'll indulge me, I'll include it below.
Rest well, loved ones.
GOING TO ROXIE’S
I'm going to Roxie's this morning, and I'm already dressed. I'm going because Mama can't leave me alone anymore. Roxie says she'll watch me for free. But I know Mama will offer her something.
Right now, Mama offers me some breakfast: orange Hi-C and skillet toast. She slathers Wonder Bread with margarine and drops it into the black skillet, mashing it down with a spatula until it's spotty brown and heavy and about as thick as a poker chip. Then she cuts each piece into four long strips and puts it on a scratched blue melmac plate. The Hi-C comes open with a nice metallic hiss, two holes in the top (so it won't glug all over the glass when you pour it). Mama laughs when I dunk my toast into the drink and lift it, dripping and limp, into my mouth. Mama doesn't eat anything. She just smokes and watches me, the killing cigarette a white baton in her rough fingers.
She hurries me along, fastening me into my thin jacket and then submitting her own shoulders to her even thinner coat. We go together from room to room, making sure all the heating stoves are out and that the gas jets are turned off tight. We check all the windows and then it's time to go to Roxie's. While Mama searches for her paisley headscarf, I move in quick silence to my little bedroom.
My treasures are displayed on a rough table by the window. I pass by the soldiers and fire engines and select a small jet airliner, slipping it into my jeans pocket. The toy is a good size for carrying, but it isn’t my favorite toy. I don’t have my favorite toy anymore. I do, however, need something of my own when I go to Roxie’s, so this jet airliner will have to do. While I’m thinking about this, Mama’s voice summons me, so I return to the living room.
Mama has her headscarf on and it’s time to leave. Mama locks the front door with an old-fashioned key the size of a salad fork. We ease onto the frigid sidewalk, sighing in the Southern harmony of poverty and its dark blood.
As we walk, I lag behind and watch Mama's sad back; her purse's strap nestled into the permanent groove in her right shoulder. The sight makes me want to bawl, so I skitter up in front of her, slapping the big corner mailbox with the flat of my hand, smiling at the satisfying boom, forgetting to bawl after all. I leap high and stomp down on a fallen tree limb with both feet, and Mama calls me to her. As I run back past her, she pats at my head with her furrowed red hand. I am behind her again, watching her measured steps in her dingy canvas shoes. Mama's tired. She's not happy about taking me to Roxie's, but I think she's relieved that I won't have to be alone. Like I said before, she can't leave me alone anymore.
I used to stay home by myself every day so that Mama could save some money. It never seemed like a wrong idea. I was always good and quiet. Mama made it clear that I had to be quiet, stay away from the window, never go outside, and never touch the stove or anything else except the television and the sink. I've always minded Mama when she's told me not to do things. But a few days ago, I got inspired.
Roxie lives in a shotgun house three blocks from us. Her brother Hamp lives with her, too, along with three daughters and a dog. I never see Hamp very much, so I don't have much of an opinion of him, but I do know that he is as ugly as homemade sin. The three girls are all in junior high school, and I almost never see any of them except Frieda, the oldest. Her name reminds me of Fritos, and I like Fritos, so I like Frieda.
Their dog is a vile yipping mutt named Snowfoot. Snowfoot is one of those treacherous little dogs that are reasonably patient and unobtrusive while you are in his home. Then, when you make for the door, he tries to chew your heels off and makes you feel like an escaping thief instead of a departing guest. Everyone loves Snowfoot except me, so the dog has yet another way to make me feel unwelcome and out of place.
I was alone in the morning, playing with my favorite plastic jet fighter plane, zooming it around the kitchen in patriotic arcs, careening it off the flight deck of the table. As I was landing the jet, I noticed the matchbox. We have a big box of kitchen matches in a metal box that's screwed to the wall. The metal box works like one of those automatic dog feeder bowls: the matches spill down into the holder and out into a wide scooped lip. As you use the matches, more fall from the box above into the lip. There's a cutout on the side that exposes the sandpaper so that you can strike the match on the box instead of on the wall or on your shoe. We use a lot of matches because we have to light the burners and the oven and all the heating stoves in the house with them. Mama’s cigarettes, too. So there are always plenty on hand. When I saw those matches, like I said, I got inspired.
The sidewalk outside Roxie's house is buckled up into a hill, the patient work of an oak's ever-growing root. I run up the miniature hill and jump into the freezing air, my Woolworth tennis shoes clapping the cement when I land. The front door to Roxie's house swings open, and there she is. Roxie looks precisely like a female version of the actor Walter Brennan, except that she has a bun on the top of her gray head. A faded blue apron buttresses her considerable housedressed bosom, and varicosey legs carry her entire kindly frame around her small rooms. She calls to Mama, smiling. We mount the porch steps together, side by side, Mama's hand on the back of my neck as if she's afraid I will bolt for home. But I won't do that. I like Roxie fine. I'd rather be home, but I like Roxie fine.
I decided to make a real engine for my jet.
Neither Hamp nor any of the girls are at home, which pleases me. Roxie crushes me to her big chest, kissing the top of my head and raising a lot of dust over what a nice looking child I am. I can smell bread flour and sachet on her. Usually she smells regular, but today she smells distant to me. Mama and Roxie chat for a while, Mama stumbling around yet more thanks for the big favor, and how beholden she is to Roxie, and how she'll pay her on Friday. Roxie shushes her and asks about my grandma, who's been sick lately.
As they talk, Roxie, safe in her quilted maternal presence, pours me a glass of Donald Duck orange juice. Roxie says it's better than Hi C because it's real orange juice. All I know is that it's real bad. It comes in an evil little can that's hard to open and it tastes worse than an earache feels. If you've ever had a bug fly into your mouth on a summer evening and you accidentally bit down on it and sampled that bitter intestinal taste, you've got a really good idea of how Donald Duck orange juice tastes.
So, I took 10 matches in my fist, wrapped them into a cylinder with their heads together using a piece of tape from the junk drawer, and inserted the bundle into the dime-sized exhaust hole in the toy's tail. Then I struck a separate match and whispered, "Go!" as I touched the match to the ones in the jet's tail. The bundle of red-tipped sticks bloomed into a lovely, licking flower. The jet lifted off and roared quickly into the kitchen atmosphere, aided by my hand. And then everything went wrong.
I pretend to drink my juice as Roxie turns on the television for me. Her set is much bigger than ours is, but it's still just a bee-and-doubleyew. Hers doesn't have rabbit ears, though. Hamp lashed up a big antenna outside, taller than the house, and Roxie can get all three Little Rock stations and the one Watson Chapel station. We can usually get just two on ours, three on a clear winter night. I begin to watch Romper Room and I smile as Miss Peggy looks into the Magic Mirror at me and the other Do-Bees. Mama is getting ready to leave. This is what I've been dreading.
Mama kisses my forehead and my cheek, the smell of cigarette smoke in her hair comforting me. She tells me to be a good boy and to mind Roxie, and that she’ll be by to pick me up before I know it. I can feel my mouth trembling, and my own weakness disgusts me. I smile as if my face was a sore muscle, and the smile doesn’t fool Mama. She straightens up and reties her headscarf. Roxie, standing behind me now, puts her hand on my shoulder. It seems that she’s trying to reassure me, but I can’t help but feel that she’s restraining me, trapping me. My darting shrug doesn’t dislodge her hand.
Mama walks to the door, turns back to me. Her eyes are bright and too wide. She shoulders through the door as if she’s trying to get outside before the room explodes. Roxie calls something to her, and Mama raises her hand in desultory reply as the door seals me into a different kind of day.
While I helped the jet into a steep climb, the seeking flames from the match-stuffed exhaust hole found the plastic tail of the plane to their liking, and the rear of the toy was engulfed. Predictably, I flung the melting mass away from me. And, even more predictably, the wreckage landed beneath the shower curtains that served as a door to the back porch. The flames rocketed up the plastic sheeting, and I screamed for Mama. I noticed that flecks of vaporized plastic were floating in the air, streaming from the now-liquefying jet. These flecks were landing on every flat surface in the kitchen. I swiped my hand across the counter top and succeeded in smearing the residue into the finish. And I kept screaming.
I head back to the floor in front of the television and grimace my way through my orange juice. The children’s program is ending and the Hal Moax Show is starting. Hal Moax is the weatherman for one of the Little Rock newscasts, and every morning he hosts a live farm report-slash-bluegrass showcase. Lots of the local men and boys take a daily turn on his show, standing statue-still and confiding in the microphone, faces like old paths as they keen about Jesus and dying and home. I love the show, the raw ache of the lyrics in crashing conflict with the emotionless singers.
Roxie goes off to another part of the house and I can hear her humming as she works her housecraft. At one point, I stand up and walk to the kitchen to put my glass and its hard-won emptiness in the sink. Roxie is instantly behind me, asking if I’m all right, smiling broadly, her cobalt-veined hands strangling her apron. I think she may be afraid of me. I go back to the television and watch it for a long time without moving. Every once in a while, Roxies’s broom or dishrag or sink or brush will fall silent, and within a minute she’s in the room with me, asking if I’m ok.
I ran out of the house, my entire body slicked with nervous sweat and smudged with plastic slag. Old lady Frye, the busybody from next door, came running and plunged back through the back door, yanking me behind her. A quick tug brought down the disintegrating curtain and old lady Frye dragged the whole smoldering mess into the back yard. Her bright eyes held me, even as I whimpered and twitched. She towed me behind her big bottom all the way to her house, where she took a fair amount of delight in calling Mama at work (which got Mama into some trouble and cost her half a day's pay and eventually got her shunted to part-time status) and telling her what I'd done and that Mama would have to come get me. And that’s what Mama did.
At some point, my middle parts are skewered by the need to go to the bathroom, so I ask Roxie if it’s ok. She laughs and tells me of course it’s ok. I head down the dim hallway to the bathroom, my feet feeling little lumps under the runner. A smudged transom squats atop the bathroom door, oozing muted light. I swing the door shut behind me – it feels heavy and the knob is greasy - and then twist the lock into place. I always lock the bathroom door, especially when I’m not at home. After undoing my jeans, I ascend the throne and sit, legs dangling. As I perch there, the room opens up to my eyes. The toilet tank is mounted high up on the wall by the window, not down behind the bowl like I’m used to. There is a long chain attached to the tank with a porcelain ball at the end. The stained tub looks ready to migrate on its clawed feet. Under the sink there are no cabinet doors, only a curtain on a string serving as a rod, hiding all the family bathroom secrets.
When I finish, I hop down and take care of the necessaries and do up my jeans, reaching for the chain and then pulling it. The rush of water is explosive, fearsome. The crashing flush gives me an idea. I rootch around in my pockets until my fingers close on my jet airliner. The water is still running, although it is quieter. The sound becomes the roar of my jet’s engines as the plane soars and spirals and banks and yaws. When the toilet tank is full, the bathroom air is silent. I take up the aural slack by making my own engine noises, throwing in the odd machine-gun burst (my plane’s passengers are apparently very warlike). I close the toilet seat and clamber up onto it, positioning my plane on the ledge of the window by the tank. One more flush will give me the afterburners I need for takeoff from this high runway.
I pull the chain and the rolling noise signals the plane’s departure. Just as we are nearing complete liftoff, Roxie knocks on the door, asking if I have diarrhea or something, since I flushed twice. Her knock scares me, the adrenaline piping into my chest. My hand jerks and knocks the airplane from the ledge into the open window, somewhere along the bottom. Roxie calls to me again and I answer her, telling her that I am fine and that I am coming out. I’m reaching up, trying to feel for my toy, but my fingers get nothing. I am sweating a little and whimpering just a little behind my lips, but no plane. Roxie rattles the knob, wants to know why the door is locked.
I decide to come back in later and look for my toy. Climbing down with all the stealth I can summon, I go to the sink and wash my hands. I can hear Roxie leave the door and continue on down the hall to continue whatever she was doing before my second flush. After drying my hands, I unlock the door like a boy burglar and peer out. No one there. I step into the hallway.
Snowfoot ambles out from a back room and approaches me, an imperious rat. His eyes are like crude oil, full of suspicion, and his whole face jerks as if he wants to sneeze me out of his house. After a moment or two, he yips once and clacks his ugly, compact self out of the room. At his bark, Roxie’s kitchen noises stop. Just for a moment. But she doesn’t come in to ask me if I’m ok. I return to the coddling television.
Snowfoot ambles out from a back room and approaches me, an imperious rat. His eyes are like crude oil, full of suspicion, and his whole face jerks as if he wants to sneeze me out of his house. After a moment or two, he yips once and clacks his ugly, compact self out of the room. At his bark, Roxie’s kitchen noises stop. Just for a moment. But she doesn’t come in to ask me if I’m ok. I return to the coddling television.
As the morning erodes, Roxie asks if I want to help her cook, and I eagerly agree. Now into the big, good-smelling kitchen where she hands me a potato and a peeler. I look at them, then at Roxie. She laughs and shows me how to grip the potato and how to shave the dirt-colored skin away. After I swipe at the vegetable a time or two, she nods in approval and turns to some onions. I work hard on the potato and get it all peeled, but even I can see that it should probably be at least a little bigger than a golf ball when I’m done. Roxie tells me not to bear down so hard with the peeler. Another potato in my hand, back at it.
Roxie is crying. She takes off her glasses and I note how odd she looks with her scooped-out eyes, worn and sad. I’m a little alarmed until she explains that it’s the onions making her cry. She bids me lean close over the white pile of chunks and take a breath. Now I understand the crying. The kitchen fills with heat and more smells. I am relieved of my peeling duties and am reassigned to stir the cornbread mix. I love to eat raw cornbread batter, but I don’t sample Roxie’s. I don’t want her to think I’m rude.
In a sweaty while, Roxie and I sit down to steaming bowls of lumpy mashed potatoes, red kidney beans, cornbread, and very sweet iced tea. Roxie asks the blessing and she looks so earnest with her eyes squinched tight and her fingers laced under her onionskin chin.
After her prayer, she tells me about the first time she ever made cornbread and how her daddy had praised her cooking skills. I ask if her daddy is still alive, and she smiles and tells me, no, he’s in Glory now. I wonder what part of Arkansas Glory is in, but I don’t ask because I’m too hungry to start a new conversation. Roxie serves the food up on very heavy plates and we fall to eating.
I burn the roof of my mouth on the beans and have to drink a lot of the sweet tea to settle the pain. Roxie talks as we eat. I’m indifferent to what she says, but I love to watch her. She has a way of making food look good just by the way she holds it, spears it, cuts it, waves it as she’s making a point of conversation. She crunches bits of raw onions as she yammers on about something Snowfoot did or something one of her girls said. I just keep forking good food into my mouth and nodding, trying to remember to keep my mouth closed and to smile around the mashed potatoes.
Just as we start to arise from the table to clear it, Hamp comes home early, his engineer boots rude on the floorboards. When he looms into the kitchen, I look up at his stringy, overall-wrapped frame and offer a smile, as I’ve been taught to do around grownups. Hamp pushes his grimy cap back from his forehead with a thumb that looks as hard as cypress. I can see the graffiti of veins scrawled on his forearm. Then he unsheathes his teeth at me and I wish to heaven I’d never smiled at him. His teeth look like an undersized rotten wood fence, sneaky and unstable. There is a smudge of tobacco juice in the corner of his mouth, and he needs a shave. He smacks me between the shoulder blades with the heel of his hand as he walks past his sister into another room, the blow making my teeth clack together. I want to go back into the bathroom and look for my airplane, but Hamp has gone in there, smelling like old onions, so I wait my turn.
When Hamp comes out of the bathroom, I wait a few seconds and then amble down the hallway. Holding my breath, I clutch the side of the tank and scramble up onto the rickety seat and stand, reaching up into the high, tiny window, my hand walking like a pianist’s, trying to find the comfort of a small piece of plastic. The plane is not there. My breath leaves my body in a gush as I realize that the screen on the window is loose; the hook & eye is undone and the screen is slightly ajar at the bottom of the sill. Maybe my airplane fell out of the window and into the yard beneath. I descend from the toilet seat and pad back to the living room, where Hamp and Roxie are sitting and watching something on the television and talking about me.
I know they are talking about me because I hear my name, and because Hamp uncovers his ghastly smile at me again when I enter the room. He is eating a raw wiener with some crackers and milk, eating with sloppy violence. The wiener is one of those that come in links at the butchers, the casing so pigmented and thick that it seems a balloon of blood. Hamp is gnawing right through the casing, chewing up the red membrane with the greyish-pink meat inside, then tucking a saltine into his mouth with each bite and pulverizing it. Before each swallow, he upends his glass of milk and adds white liquid to the mess. Then he pops his neck forward like a pigeon does when it’s strutting around. The Hampish lump goes down rapidly, an enormous Adam’s apple undulating atop it.
I ask Roxie if I can go outside and play. She tells me that I can if I put my jacket on first. I am so happy to be leaving Hamp’s presence and going in search of my airplane, I smile at her and thank-you-ma’am her. When I walk past Hamp to get my jacket, one of his legs comes snaking out and hooks me at the hip. His leg pulls me between both knees and he locks his ankles in a crisscross behind the small of my back. I try to twist myself free, but he tightens his grip on me, squeezing my guts. The smell of wiener and milk and meanness coats my face. I thrash around, and Hamp is laughing out loud, spraying pieces of his snack on me.
In frustration and rage, I begin to cry, just as Roxie tells Hamp to let me be. He keeps holding me, laughing harder and harder, so I ball up my fists and punch him with both hands squarely in the vee of his slack old groin. Well, Hamp stops laughing at that point. He’s almost choking on his last bite of wiener and cracker, and his face is a lot redder than usual, which is saying quite a bit. Roxie calls out to us both, and Hamp releases me from his hold. As I start to flee, Hamp draws his legs up and kicks me with his boots in my ribs, lifting me clear off my feet and driving me into the wall next to the television set. He’s choking and cussing, calling me all kinds of names. Roxie is shouting at him and trying to get out of her chair to get to me. Tears are boiling out of my eyes and I am watching Hamp through the water-haze as he sits, his elbows jammed into his crotch, his head in his hands, moaning. Roxie finally makes it to me and folds me into her arms, rubbing my hair and pulling my shirt out of my jeans to look at my ribs. She kisses me, asks me if I am ok. For once, her familiar question is called for.
I ask if I can go outside now, and Roxie gets my jacket and wraps me in it. I go outside, walking with care, still sobbing. Inside, Roxie is doing a great impression of the fabled wet hen. I jump off the porch - my ribs really hurt, and it’s hard to breathe deeply - and go around the side of the house where the bathroom window is. Beneath the window, the yard is fairly spotty and bare, so it should be easy to see if my plane is there. I can’t see it anywhere. I rake my hands over the area, swiping up next to the bricks of the foundation, patting the sparse winter grass. Nothing there. There is a slight furrow like a tiny ditch that runs the length of the house. This is where the rain falls off the eaves onto the soil. The furrow is full of granules from the shingles on the roof; they look like magic sand. I sift through all the granules in the area of the bathroom window, but no plane. I hear Mama’s voice behind me.
Mama is here to pick me up, and she tells me to get out of the dirt and come on in the house so she can visit with Roxie. I come around to the front porch, but I don’t go inside. I don’t want to see Hamp anymore today. I sit on the porch steps while Mama talks to Roxie. I can’t hear their words, but no one sounds upset, so I have to wonder if Roxie is telling Mama what happened between me and ugly old Hamp. When Mama comes to the door to tell me to come kiss Roxie bye, I can hear Roxie telling Mama again that she is not going to take any money for watching me. Mama is trying to argue, but not very forcefully. It’s very hard on Mama’s pride, this type of thing. But she knows realities, too.
So Roxie kisses me again, and I kiss her back, liking her afresh. Mama puts her hand on my neck and we step off the porch and leave the yard. We both wave to Roxie, and I can see Hamp’s figure lurking behind her, scowling at me. Mama looks at me but doesn’t say anything.
I walk around the buckled section of sidewalk out front, avoiding its slight lift. Our shoes pace us closer to where we live, and I am running in circles around Mama, calling out to her, scything piles of leaves with my foot as I romp houseward. My ribs are hurting and I remember that I lost my airplane, so I stop running and walk back to Mama. She looks straight ahead and continues her measured tread away from generous relatives. I wonder if she ever loses things. I hear Roxie calling us, a block behind us. Mama doesn’t turn around, doesn’t seem to hear. I look back at Roxie, look up at Mama.
Mama continues to walk, not looking back, not looking down at me, not doing anything but returning to our house.
~ copyright 1999 by S.K. Orr
