by Joy Williams
But they honored Father in spite of what he said. Father was God’s instrument and we were all the instruments of Father. They respected him enormously, because in that land of silence, he managed to be more silent than them all. It was known that no one ever had a conversation with Father. The words he made had … great silences between them. Their lives depended upon the interpretation of the absence around them. And my life depended upon the interpretation of Father.
The people valued me too, of course. Our family was highly thought of. For eleven years we were the only ones on that island who were ever born or died. Sister and I were born and then sister and Mother and baby died. Nothing was going on all that while except my childhood, if you know what I mean. Everything else remained the same. Summer brought no rebirth there—just the same blighted berries and the same dry wind from the sea. The island swung in the Atlantic, out of time and out of season, and the only things that happened were to me. Of course all that has changed and the people there are dying now. Everything I ever wished for has come true. It all came out the only way it could and hustled me right along with it. No, I’m never left behind.
34
They are always driving me out of here. Grady’s awake now, I am told, although nothing has changed. There are two glass jugs, one leading in and one leading out, with the clear liquid lessening in one and gaining in the other. Not a drop is lost. It doesn’t seem proper that the stuff’s all the same. Healing should be different, don’t you think? The processes of life should be distinguishable from those of death. Wouldn’t you say?
Some woman leads me roughly to the door. Face pretty as a cardboard crate. They don’t even want to give me my postpartum pack although it’s required. They’d like to see me bleed to death. Problems like me can all be attributed to a great laxity of morals and a promiscuous admission to the Lord’s table. Father said that this has always been so.
35
I’m at the Siesta Pig, which is a convenience store, selecting a cup sundae when the bag of waters breaks. It’s not unlike the bottom of a bottle falling out and I can almost feel the color draining from my lobes, my lips, both inside and out. I push up closer to the freezer, at a loss.
A woman with a hearing aid pushes past from sherries. I drip discreetly. It’s pure water, I have nothing to be ashamed of and if it were bottled it would probably be a cure for something, God knows. Acne perhaps or gout or glossitis. “Thank yew,” the woman hollers.
It’s nothing nasty but I hustle out, alert to the manager’s possible distaste. I feel nothing except that my pants and skirt are soaking wet. I walk across the street to a gas station. I have to get the key to the rest room from the attendant. It’s hanging over his head on a plasic ring six inches wide.
“I’m sick of people like this,” he says, handing me the key. “They ain’t got no cars, they ain’t got nothing but full bladders.” There is no one in the place but me. I feel that he speaks to me at the expense of others in deference to my condition. I walk to the cubicle with my incredible key. It is not very clean but there is paper everywhere. In the holders and stacked against the walls. I try to blot myself dry but the water pours out and can’t be checked. I sit on the bowl and wait. I put my head on my knees. I may even doze a little. I can’t tell, I don’t feel anything. I know I am supposed to be lying down with my feet elevated. Moving around may injure the baby’s head. I don’t know. Nothing seems to apply. I am spurious and specious to the moment. The moment does not seem to be significant. I work my skirt off over my head and attach it as best I can to a chrome nozzle on the wall that dispenses warm air. Where is the deception and the shame? The water’s pure as tears. I saw Grady cry this morning. They disagreed but I wiped away the tear. They say the signs he shows can no longer be interpreted in the same manner as those exhibited by a living person. But he wept. It was only for an instant. I wiped away the tear.
That seems to lack significance as well. Nothing seems to bear. At times, all things seem to center on those parts of Grady’s arms where the tanning stops. Each afternoon I look first at his arms and I see the demarcation of the sun and then I sit and hold his arms. But that promises nothing one way or the other. It is suggestive of nothing. I enter Grady’s limbo when I hold his sunny arms.
The water stops at last. I put on my warm skirt and open the door. Half a dozen women are there in a ragged line and three little girls with their legs crossed. Waiting to enter. Vacationers all. Polite as refugees. I return to the Siesta Pig and complete my transaction with the sundae. It tastes greasy as though it were revolutionarily fried and frozen.
“Big doings at your place tonight, huh?” the manager says to me.
“Pardon,” I say. I can’t feel the baby any more. It as though I’ve misplaced him. I look around a little uneasily. I do not want him crawling around and knocking jars off the shelves and cutting himself.
“Those shows you girls put on at the school. They’re tonight, aren’t they?
The Serenades. I had forgotten. I was supposed to borrow a car and help Corinthian bring the leopard down.
“I always make a point of attending for good relations,” the manager is saying. “Besides that, it’s a nice break in the routine. In addition as well, some of those favors those groups give out are pretty nice. Last year I got four of those insulated mugs to keep your beverage cold for nothing. If I sold them in here I know I’d have to charge at the least two twenty-nine. And one of those sororities was just giving them away and another one of those sororities smarter yet was pouring free beer into them.”
I have to borrow a car. It is a small leopard but with wild, judgment eyes.
“What’s your group going to be giving?” the manager says.
“Thrills and chills,” I say.
“Nothing, huh? Well that’s probably not too smart.”
I buy a box of cereal from him and start walking toward the college. Several times before I arrive there I tell myself that the baby is going to be born soon. It doesn’t seem relevant. It is not that it seems impossible, it is just that it does not seem indicative of change.
At the hospital they are cutting Grady’s hair. I beg them not to, but they do it every week. They are always cutting his hair.
36
The girls are all on the top floor of the sorority house getting into their bikinis, and Corinthian and the leopard have been brought here by someone else and are in an old garage behind the house. The leopard is sitting on its haunches in a cluttered corner and is still as a statue. The garage is hanging with cobwebs and there are cobwebs spanning the leopard’s ears. Corinthian rubs them off with his fingers.
Just outside the bolted door of the garage, the housemother is straightening the garbage cans. She is wheezing and red.
“It disturbs me,” she says, “it disturbs me so. These men never put the containers back in the same place twice. Sometimes I can’t find the lids and sometimes I can’t find one of the cans. Sometimes there’s still garbage in the bottom. They won’t scrape it out and all they need is a stick. There are plenty of sticks around here. They wouldn’t take yard trimmings away if you begged them. Well, today I told them. If you don’t tell them, they think you’re not noticing and all the easier for them. Well, I spoke to them. I was up early this morning and I came out as they were banging around and raving at each other and I said, ‘I give to the NAACP, I send out their stickers on the backs of all my envelopes and I just want you to know that I am a member of that organization and I would think that a great many of the girls in this house are members too.’ So we’ll see. We’ll see what happens now. Miss Jenson down at Sigma Kappa says she puts a quarter on the cans each collection day and she never has a bit of a problem but I told her, I said, ‘That sounds to me like someone has bullied someone proper.’ I don’t know what kind of a budget some of those women have to work with but our budget here certainly doesn’t allow me to throw quarters away like that and I don’t think you girls would approve of me throwing away your quarters
like that.”
She looks at me and realizes that I’m the one she does not care for. “Aren’t you going to get dressed and sing in the Serenade with the others?” she asks sharply.
“No,” I say.
“I suppose I should say, ‘Aren’t you going to get undressed and sing in the Serenade.’ ” Her head shakes heavily.
“No. I have a cramp.”
“You always have a cramp,” she says, chuckling. “You always look as though you have a cramp. You haven’t ever understood the idea behind sisterhood. Generosity of time and talent. Co-operation.”
She climbs the back steps into the house and just before she opens the screen door she says, inspired, and without turning around, “You are a cramp!”
I go over to the garage and look through the dirty panes at Corinthian. He sees me and raises his chin. I unbolt the door and go inside. I latch the door from within. Just a little hook and eye. The leopard is much smaller than he appears in Bryant’s. His paws, however, are the size of buckets. His flanks rise and drop imperceptibly. Around his neck is a light strong rope that’s been wound with purple velvet that the girls bought.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come out to get you,” I say to Corinthian.
He rubs softly at a bloom of scale on his jaw. He is so slim and peeling down to nothing. A suffering novitiate. “Did you forget?” he asks.
“I remembered when you were almost here, I guess.” It is not so bad that I forgot to get him. He is here and isn’t that the point? I sit beside him on the floor and open the box of cereal. Count Chocula. Some gruesome kiddy fare. The leopard shuts his eyes, deep in an animal music.
“That girl Cords came out in a van for us. She is a menace on the roadway. She doesn’t know her left from her right.”
“That’s Cords,” I say. “It’s a persistent mannerism.”
“It’s just in the last few minutes that he’s calmed down.”
Curiously, the leopard does not seem out of place here. He has made a jungle of the close air. A terror grips me.
“I’m sorry!” I say, panic-stricken. “I’m sorry!”
Corinthian stares at me wonderingly.
“I am a very easy driver,” I say more quietly. “I am very sorry that I didn’t come out to get you.” The terror fades. None of this is out of place. I have arranged this for Corinthian so that he can earn seventy-five dollars. He has brought the leopard down here and that is half the money and bringing the animal back is the other half and in the middle is just one minute and a half where Doreen holds onto the purple rope and walks the leopard between the singing sisters and the crowd.
None of this is the point. There is nothing in Father’s house any more. There is nothing to reconcile any more. We are all somewhere. Even the baby and Grady are not nowhere and that is not the point.
I have arranged this for Corinthian so that he can make seventy-five dollars. I have tried to be a friend and I have tried to be a lover and I have disobeyed Father who always had the point.
“I will take you back as soon as it’s over,” I say.
“I am never going to do the likes of this again,” he says. “I have taken away any little bit of peace this animal has made for himself and I feel bad. I can see that this all is beneath him when it wasn’t at all beneath me and I feel bad.”
“I’ll take you back as soon as it’s over,” I repeat helplessly.
“I certainly would appreciate that as we are not about to get into any mode of transportation at all with that girl again.”
The light has stopped struggling through the windowpanes. It’s dusk. The leopard’s eyes are open in the darkening garage, glittering and isolated. His eyes are furnished by the coming night. With the night, he opens his huge floating eyes.
Corinthian and I sit and chew Count Chocula. I know I am not supposed to be eating anything. I am supposed to be lying down with my feet elevated and not eating anything. If I wish I may fill my head with numbers or conundrums. If I wish I may keep my mind occupied that way. There is a twinge deep between my thighs. Not of pain. It is nothing. Just a ripple. It stops. Corinthian doesn’t eat any more than a handful but I eat and eat. I weigh one hundred and seven pounds. That is not enough. I have been feeding something outside myself all this time. Some famished object took its form outside me long ago. I look at my arm. It’s a stick. My legs are sticks. I do not look at my stomach. I am so forgetful I want to starve to death. I remember between swallows.
Corinthian’s hands tap the rope nervously. He shrugs his shoulders sorrowfully, thinking to himself.
“If he were free,” he says aloud, nodding toward the leopard, “he’d be hunting incessantly.” He says the word with astonishment. “Incessantly.”
The animal’s eyes are fixed and emphatic, watching the fading light.
37
I tell Corinthian to put the leopard in the van as soon as Doreen has finished her walk with it. I will get the keys from Cords and meet Corinthian there and drive him and the leopard back. We will be there before Bryant returns from Miami where he has gone to buy a monkey. Bryant would not know that Corinthian had taken away the leopard until after he returned and everything was over and successful.
“I certainly hope that it is not a mandrill that he brings back,” Corinthian says.
“I certainly hope not,” I say.
“He wants to bring back something curious and ferocious so that people will feel it would be dull of them to stay away.”
I feel the twinge again. It is hardly anything. A hesitation is all, like the skipping of a heartbeat. Think of riddles, they’ll tell you. Think of the curiosities of numbers, of ellipses and enigmas. A concern with riddles, Father told me, is permissible. The oldest riddle on record is in the Bible.
Yes, Daddy. Judges 14:14.
That’s right, darling. It is summer. I am on his shoulders. He walks along the beach and into the frigid water. I am squealing with the cold. My hands beat upon his neck. I slip off. I start to drown.
“Perhaps we can take the long way back there,” Corinthian is saying. “I haven’t seen much of this town by car. Actually I haven’t seen a bit of it by car. All the time I spend sitting in those automobiles … Now if only they’d been moving, what places I’d have been.”
I agree to his suggestion greedily. I am an easy driver and will drive till the gas runs out.
“I can’t stay away too long,” Corinthian says, “but I thought a slightly roundabout route back would be nice.”
I tell him the long way back doesn’t take much longer.
The baby is coming soon. It will be here soon. It’s not a matter of much time. But if I am not there? Not present? If I have other promises to keep?
Father, wait for me
Father, wait for me The little wombless
Who is it that has forgotton my mother?
The little wombless …
How swollen are those eyes!
Wait till the little wombless comes.
I think of Father telling me a story once. It seemed just odd imagination. I am talking to Corinthian but I am thinking of Father. I see him sitting at the open window, watching the late spring sky. The house is empty of its past. There is nothing there, but Father has bought a cradle. It has been delivered and is on the dock. He walks through the streets, holding it. The wood is light and gracefully woven. He carries it in one hand. He enters the house and chooses a room. He puts the cradle in the middle of it, where the light falls. He buys a chair, a blanket, a picture for the wall. He attaches a string of Christmas tree lights around the window frame. They cast a soft and sourceless glow such as a child might find comfort in, waking in the night.
“What’s the matter?” Corinthian is saying.
“Isn’t it about time?” I say. I hear the distant sounds of crowds and music.
“Someone is supposed to come out and tell me.” He gets up and moves over to the leopard. He rubs his knuckles down the animal’s backbone. The leopard is impassive, indifferent.
“How is that man of yours doing?” Corinthian asks me.
I feel leaden. Dust motes dance around the leopard’s perilous head. Grady’s boots are in the locker but they had to cut his clothes away. The laces are caught beneath the locker door, knotted and muddy and forceful. I try to think of Grady before he was so still.
I don’t answer.
“I am going to watch the Serenade from the porch,” I say. “I’ll see you in a little while.” I leave the garage. I walk through an arc of bougainvillaea. The sky is bloody with flowers. The petals on the ground are as delicate as rice paper. I try not to step on them. I make every effort to avoid the sound of breakage.
38
I pass Cords. She looks at me indulgently but doesn’t speak. She has such curious, brittle ways—distasteful yet effective ways, for I had done what she requested. I had asked Corinthian for the leopard. They are here. I have stopped, I tell myself. I have stopped long before now, but the decisions I cannot make continue, subtle and unslaked.
In the bathroom, one of the girls is shaving off some of her pubic hair. She puts the bottoms of her bikini on, frowns and shaves off a little more.
I sit on the porch swing beside the housemother. She smiles at me gassily. Her lipstick bounces disembodied. The crowd mills about wooden and impatient, waiting for action. On the lawn is a deputy sheriff. It is Ruttkin. I lean forward.
“Ruttkin,” I whisper, “hello.”
He looks at me with a friendly lack of recognition.
“How is Ronald?” I persist shrilly.
This time he does not look at me.
“Do you know that young fellow?” the housemother says.
“I guess they all look alike in the dark,” I say. It seems the punch line to some joke. The jokes themselves are hardly necessary any more. The endings will suffice. I feel so heavy. My legs feel buttoned up in mattresses. Think of quizzes of all sorts, they’ll tell you. Keep your mind off the pain.
