Stunt

by Claudia Dey

  Until you. You shake their hands. You pat their backs. You pull their blankets up around them. You cut their hair. You call them Captain and Colonel and Corner Office. You tell them stories and your stories become the only flicker in their world, bright as a flare, bright as a son. By the time you leave, without a word, they would have called you their own.

  Immaculata is playing her autoharp; she has plugged it into the living room speaker system with extension cords. There is a jumble of cables in the grass, the head of Medusa. I hope that it does not rain. Immaculata hopes that it does.

  The sky is wet newspapers. Beneath it, brimming, the women of the neighbourhood appear. Whenever you rode by them, a centaur on your bicycle, they shouted, ‘You’re so skinny, Sheb! Come to my house! I’ll feed you proper!’ while waving a handful of mail, their wrists all bracelets, a clatter to the air, Cleopatras with heating bills. Because you interpret everything as an invitation, you would go to her house and she would fuss over you like you had been returned from war, her mouth painted coral, eyes batting like grasshoppers. You would sit in her kitchen and you would tell her stories of heroics. Always your own.

  It never seemed like gloating, only that every second with you would give her good luck. And she would tremble on cue and shake her head incredulous. You would abbreviate her name and then you would tell her it was the best meal you had ever had and then you would kiss her cheeks three times, never more, and come home full. She would fall asleep feeling like a child, all of her lumps and aches vanished, her husband’s hairy back a sleeping ogre beside her.

  I know the women by their laps and arms. They put me on their knees and lean over me, bodies like hair domes, burning and breathy. They want to win my affections. They know that I am the password to you. They never say my name, they sing it, EuGEniA. On this day, they are all turned out. Beside Mink, they are the beauty contestants who lost.

  Skinny Selene Valadan and her hound-dog eyes. She smells of laundry soap. She never sleeps, just climbs a mountain of dirty clothes, her children scrambling for cover within it. And here is Clotilda from next door, a chess piece with her long grey braid, its brittle end. She talks about deadbeats while her roommate, Yufeng, in matching printed smock, says, ‘Oh brother.’ They carry grocery bags filled with stale bread for the pigeons and peanuts for the squirrels. Clotilda has a son who never speaks. Mink calls him Zee Mute. He fixes cars outside their house, spray-paints them silver, glues naked-lady stickers on them and never meets my eyes. Once, I hear him sing through the wall. In tune. With a drum machine. Here is Tuberculosis Flo in her sneakers, white hair pulled back with a hair band, track suit bulky like there is a tutu stuffed under it. Lungs full of slugs and marbles, she is always coughing into the crook of her arm. She says, emphatic, ‘Don’t you worry, it’s not contagious.’ She has to repaint her walls once a year, the corners of her ceilings twice, so yellow are they with smoke.

  Elsie isn’t here. She is war-bride old, eleven-children old, one-room-schoolhouse old. When she sees an airplane overhead, she says, ‘Who knew.’ She has a silver pin from the government that she wears on her quilted housecoat for being one hundred. Her age makes me think of centipedes – their slim bodies, so vulnerable, darting underfoot. She credits her longevity to eating herring from the can. Immaculata visits her once a week and reads to her. Recipes from back issues of women’s magazines. This is what Elsie enjoys more than anything, knowing how to braise a pot roast and score a ham, even though her house emptied itself a long time ago. I think Immaculata goes there in the hopes that she might find her dead. That would make three. The heart attack at the Roti Lady Restaurant. And the hobo who would not answer, ‘Would you like some it’s juice it’s grape it’s good you look thirsty are you thirsty?’

  Leopold of the Onions is also missing. He lives up the street. He is allergic to the sun, part of a marching band on weekends and wears a medical bracelet. He is eighteen, though he is small and hairless and still prone to the fits of a child. He would have begged his mother to let him attend your funeral. He would have gotten the hiccups and given himself a nosebleed, and he would have been forbidden.

  Marta opens the gate to the backyard. When I look at her, I am looking through a smoky glass. Her hair is dyed Tiger Tail Orange. She wears a black pantsuit with a thick patent-leather belt. She gives me a jar of meatballs. She does not pat my head the way she usually does, her arms and hands are so weighted with lead. She is full of anchors.

  Upon Marta’s entrance, Mink holds both of our hands so hard that I will have welts. Skin: bleach and sunburn. Immaculata will not. She does not mark the way I do. Her scars require more resolve. She belongs to pain. Pain is her pedigree, her club. Her measuring stick for being alive. ‘Painfully alive,’ she will say to me in a rasp-whisper when she tells me about women skinned slowly by oyster shells and horses made to run deserts with toenails too long. I never forget anything. The women’s skin in ribbons. The horses’ weepy lurch. To fall asleep, Immaculata reads the recipes of the medievalists. I don’t read this stuff myself, but I can hear her through the wall. She acts it out in her room, a fencer skittering, all exclamation points.

  Just as we are about to begin, one-hundred-year-old Elsie arrives. She smells of mildew and lilacs. She wears a silk turban accented with a glittering brooch. She hands Mink a stack of cardboard perfume samples torn from magazines, a can of herring for me, and for Immaculata her silver pin from the government.

  Immaculata puts down the harp. The rain starts.

  My eyes are round wet blisters, drowned featherless birds. The smell of your kippers fried, and then burning, spikes the air lime-green, tarnished silver. It lingers, your attempt at breakfast, two days later. The weather patterns: nausea. My boot heels dig down into the grass, leaving sinkholes for the rain.

  The twins next door practice a dance routine. They are the colour of pinch. They cartwheel in matching leopard-skin leotards and headbands. Land. Bound up in unison, all nipples. Land. Nostrils flared, square-shaped contestant smiles across their faces imagining a panel of judges. They sing under their ragged breath, the call-and-answer of bad mating:

  ‘Well, you’re a real tough cookie with the long history.’

  ‘Of breaking little hearts, like the one in me.’

  ‘That’s okay, let’s see how you do it.’

  ‘Put up your dukes, let’s get down to it!’

  One contorts her hips. One doesn’t.

  ‘Hit me with your best shot!’

  The one who doesn’t slaps the one who does.

  Finally, Mink clears her throat and says, ‘He left the toilet seat up. Took the change off our dresser. A pack of matches. The apples. His bicycle.’ She pauses. ‘And Eugenia’s baby hair.’

  A faint crack across Immaculata’s face. The apple tree, denuded, its branches moving, hands desperately trying to cover up.

  And then, ‘I loved him.’

  Before we were born, Mink played every great part. Black-and-white photographs of her line the hallway between our bedrooms. She is the drowning virgin, the duplicitous queen, the misunderstood saint, her face tilted up, a conductor for the light. Like Immaculata, bereavement suits her. Mascara spills down her face. Otherwise a study in placidity, it is powdered a stark white. Thick drops of black Jackson-Pollock her skin. Museum face. Her tragedy is neat. Her tragedy is art.

  Again, she says, ‘I loved him.’ This time to herself. She sounds surprised.

  I knew this. I knew she loved you because it was impossible not to. But still, these are the words that tip me over. I swallow hard and there it is, that sprain in my jaw.

  Mink lifts her head, a woman with a sword in her side who refuses to die. Her morbid cry. Pale and victorious. Liberty leading the people. ‘His lips were like two steaks in the desert.’

  There is no snot. No quiver. Mink is a widow with the posture of an electric chair.

  I lean, crumpled, into her waistline, hoping that composure is contagious. Against the fine combed wool of her dre
ss, her perfectly placed curves and bends, love shoots through me like the bombed fish flying. My heart presses up against my ribs, begging for release. I open my mouth, take in a hot slice of breath. I short-circuit. I faint.

  I am unconscious for seven seconds. Immaculata times it. It is a rehearsal for death. Death is a blank. And then,

  Snap. Snap. Snap.

  I wake up to Immaculata’s oval face, an antique dish, her hand fanning the air. I stand. Pain. She belongs here. I don’t.

  Mink concludes, her final breath, ‘He is dead. Drowned. In the lake. Fishing.’

  A tear falls from her purple eyes. It is plump, exquisite.

  There should be a sandstorm. The sky should rain blood. We should be trampled by bulls.

  The twins press their heaving bodies against the chain-link fence. Despite their interest in us, they cannot help but finish their song, as if it is a prayer they don’t believe in but are too superstitious to leave hanging.

  ‘Hit me with your best shot!’

  ‘Why don’t you hit me with your best shot!’

  ‘Hit me with your best shot!’

  ‘Fire away!’

  It’s over. The twins fall still, save for slow-motion gum-chewing. Then, cattle sensing a storm, even this stops. Their legs are goose-pimpled now – maroon sausages shot from their leotards. They stand thick, bellies rounded, necks buried under chins, faces painted Easter eggs. They shake and stare – horny puppies. Their teeth chatter a high-speed symphony. They send each other telepathic messages. I turn my eyes on them. Green, translucent, yours – they are the surface of a dead lake, life coiled and lost beneath.

  Frightened, the twins spring away from the fence. They shriek through their plastic patio furniture, around their empty pool, the croquet set, the swings and the horseshoes. They stub and scrape themselves on every sharp edge. One will have stitches on her face, her pink cheek sliced open – War Paint Barbie. They slam their screen door shut behind them. Chimes echo in their cavities.

  Peace at last.

  Mink strokes my hair. It hurts. Then she looks at me, a chase scene. She is signalling that it is my turn to sing. I look up to the sky. It clears for a moment. A white bird flies by. And then there is a rainbow. Everyone thinks it is for us. That the earth has turned poetic because of death. But really, it is just shifting unknowingly, a great lazy beast crushing everything in its midst.

  Immaculata picks up her autoharp. She gets small shocks as she accompanies me. I sing. I sing our song. It is an anthem. Remember our country. Come back to it. Come home.

  Just call me angel of the morning, angel,

  Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby.

  Just call me angel of the morning, angel,

  Then slowly turn away from me.

  Meatball Marta mouths the words.

  I finish the song. Elsie dies for a second. Her eyes close, a horse sleeping at noon. Tuberculosis Flo applauds and then lights a cigarette inside her track jacket. Elsie’s eyes open. The others join in the applause. The sound of confused animals running into walls. We are the grief brigade. Mink looks out to say that there has been enough clapping. The clapping stops. She lifts the lid off the Crock-Pot. She cues Immaculata and me. We reach into it in scoops. It is the ashes from our fireplace. We throw our hands out, fists blooming, our father and bits of junk mail, leaning, riding, floating up and eventually eaten by the wind. No one notices the adverts for drill bits.

  Clotilda and Yufeng pray and then the formation of the neighbourhood women breaks. Talking to me in consolatory tones, they look to the ground and wring their hands as if they have all lost their wedding rings. They leave behind baked goods. Flo’s smell of smoke. That night, we eat pound cake and spicy meatballs. Our clothes should be torn. Faces smattered in dirt. Our mouths should be open and empty like we have just seen our first public hanging. Instead, we gorge ourselves. Especially Mink. She has just come home from hunting.

  While dragging her fork across the table, she says to me, ‘You are the man of the house now, Genie.’

  I sock myself in the other eye. The good eye. A thing ashamed, it swells shut. Mink and Immaculata don’t even look up from their plates.

  {POSTCARD FROM OUTER SPACE}

  e,

  i sleep with my chin in the air. you would call me

  an aristocrat, offer me a bonbon, hiccup, slur

  and then laugh your little laughs.

  ha. ha. ha. back.

  s

  I grab your French cigarettes from the freezer.

  Mink piques, ‘And what are you doing, hm?’

  ‘I’m the man of the house now.’

  I run the bath, peel off your suit and leave your mud-thick boots standing inside the hem of your pants, like a firefighter, like you would do. I slide into the tub, skid, and I hear the voice of God. He is telling me to smoke. It is the first time I hear his voice. It is threatening. Smoke! He does make the thunder. Smoke! So I do. I light up.

  Immaculata follows, her frond fingers unbuttoning her white dress. It drops to the floor, a flirtatious handkerchief. She lights a cigarette and sits across from me – bending her body, a pale fan folding. ‘A preacher with a microphone in one hand and a baby in the other while sprinkling holy water on the baby’s head he electrocuted himself whoa.’ She smiles wanly. I don’t. I cannot find the muscles in my face.

  Immaculata should never go outside because her beauty makes her unsafe. It is a high note breaking the glass in your hand. Men spend their days wondering if she will draw her curtain aside. They memorize her dresses. They are all white. The men appreciate that. It’s consistent. As if it’s for them. A code. They imagine her in miniature dancing on their fingertips. They create a whole life with her in their heads. What she wants for breakfast. How she will nod at them with grace. How she will not mind their habits. How she will fetch them things and rub their necks. Her nightgowns, their ruffles. But when she walks by them they cannot move. They are just men with toothbrushes in their breast pockets sleeping in their cars in front of our house. They are just useless bits of glass that can never be made whole again.

  In the bath, our sleek white bodies are stretched out into flags of surrender. I am hypnotized by this lagoon of soapy water. Between us, I blow circles of smoke in the damp air. I scorch my lungs until my dandelion head rises and pops off my spine. Rings hover above me. They are spaceships and ghosts and epitaphs. They are hints of an alternate universe.

  Mink opens the door. The steam in the bathroom evaporates and leaves all of the surfaces in wet lines. Everything is the face of a broken woman. Mink is wearing her black silk robe with the Chinese dragon on the back. She has a white robe for the morning. Black is for night. She never switches them. The morning and the night dragons match. They are gold with formidable teeth. They have fangs, they breathe fire and they are sewn into a fight without repercussion. No one ever loses.

  Mink paints her lips red. It is a red that she told me was a nightshade red. Nightshades kill. Hemlock is a nightshade. It killed Socrates. Everyone knows that one. When I first heard Mink say, ‘I have to put on my face,’ I was afraid that she had a trunk of faces and she would come downstairs as somebody else. This meant that if we were at the beautician’s together and Mink went to the ladies’ room and didn’t come back, I wouldn’t know which customer was really my mother. Anyone could have tried to convince me. So I used to watch her, my feet dangling over the counter, as she applied her concealer, her foundation, her eyeshadow, blush, mascara and lipstick to make sure that she stayed herself. And she did. Mink. Always leaning into the mirror, putting on her face. To me, a death mask. The rest of the world: possible mothers.

  I lift my hands above my black eyes and wave them in the air. You told me that if I am ever stranded in the woods and an airplane circles overhead, wave with two hands. This means: HELP! Most people wave with only one hand. This means: A-OK. Then the pilot tips his wings and he disappears and you starve, found upon first thaw. A skeleton in a winter coat.
One dumb hand in the air.

  Immaculata waves back. With one hand. A-OK. Small, like I am behind the window of a dollhouse. Mink doesn’t. She is busy. Perched on the toilet seat beside us, lighting cigarettes one off the other, she smokes in deep drags and exhales in all straight lines. It is geometric. I bet her organs are too. Her heart is an octagon, and she will be exhumed by a mathematician who will store it in a jar and bring it to bed with him where he will rub it and sing it ballads from the old country.

  Mink’s eyes are fastened on her own reflection. If she blinks, we too will vanish. First her husband, then her daughters, her face, her faucets. She is keeping us here. She is pulling it together.

  We are less than one year apart, Immaculata and I. Six months and three days exactly. They call this Irish twins. Immaculata is born after seventeen hours of labour. You are frenzied, lapping the hospital corridor, lit bright as a fish shop, smoking and tugging at your clothes as though they are shrinking and soon you will be naked. You are not allowed into the birthing room, the nurses remind you. You offer them apples, interpretive dance, a nose kiss. They are tempted.

  Mink, her face detonating, her body a yowling hell, curses the obstetrician at her feet. Ear pressed to the door, you join in. Colline de bin de bobby pin, sac à patates, crème glacée molle, beurre d’arachide, au chocolat, con, cul, couilles, chier, bite, nichons, putain, merde. Mink keens and, finally, feels her tenant leave the premises. And you, boxed by the sudden silence, burst into her room, a tornado.