I'm more afraid of the other pages in the book, but I don't want her to know. The religious guest entries are what scare me to the floor: God had a plan, and He brought us together. This inn is blessed. Jesus humbled me and now I will spend the rest of my life lifting Him higher. I can't imagine having dedication to faith, the kind that consumes and never lets go. Don't be stubborn, my mother says. Get up here.
I went to a private high school where we had to go to chapel every day. That was where I was first told to eat the wafer, the body of Christ, drink the wine, the blood of Christ. I wasn't hungry or thirsty, so I wanted to sit back down, but the thin cracker was placed on my tongue, the cup was brought to my lips. After chapel that first day of school, I chewed gum in history class to get the flesh taste out of my mouth and looked around at the other students; they all had blood dripping from the corners of their lips, right onto the notes they took.
Do you pray? I ask my mother in the dark. Sometimes, she says. When things get real tough.
I step out onto the balcony to look at the stars and have a cigarette. The smoke I blow out whirls above where heaven is supposed to be, always above. I wonder how bad things will have to get before I drop to my knees and place my palms together. I'd have to lose my car, I think. Or a limb. I rub my arm down to the elbow and stop, imagining a stump there. There are reasons to pray, I think, blowing smoke down through the balcony slats only to see it float back.
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To a Child Who Is Still a FAQ
Miriam Allred
Q: Where can I get the big picture?
A: A big picture stands in a hospital with no more patients—a triptych, burnt, trisected air and grave-gapped ground, all hinged on hands, tipsy as scales. Under a magnifying glass, you see it is also a small picture; detail bubbles out, a feather-tatted rainbow, a sinner's foot slim as a fish, an angel's fingernail.
Left Panel
Q: I've heard you have to give something up to grow up.
A: How often do you see a barefoot adult?
A: How many toes do you think grown-ups have inside those shoe-and-sock hooves they call feet?
A: It isn't five.
A: Do you believe in Santa Claus?
A: It isn't ten toes either.
A: Have you ever seen Santa Claus?
A: Yes, but you were a baby at the time. You don't remember.
The red suit always comes in climbing, sometimes like a man climbing a ladder, head up, and sometimes like an insect tight to the wall, head down so that his hair hangs in sheets across his face and his hot breath precedes him. He stops and the bars of your crib cross his face. His cheeks are jolly and his teeth flat white.
The red suit will give you anything you want, but he drives a hard bargain.
He wants your toes. Not quite yet, but before the candles blow on your fifteenth birthday. When they are ripe. Toes are never ripe. They leave the skin ripe-raw behind them. The skin soon smoothes over, careless as butter.
It's tragic what a baby will give up its toes for. A baby can't count past five or six. All those toes waving down there look like extras. A baby will laugh at its toes all day long. It will do things with them an adult would never do like suck on them or trade them for something it wants.
A baby doesn't know what it wants.
Q: What did my Aunt Maggie trade her toes for?
A: Bottles. Not rubber-tipped baby bottles—glass bottles, adult bottles, those are what baby Maggie wanted.
Now Maggie is grown up, and she has all these bottles and she's minus her ring toe, the roast beef getter, and the one that came home, and she doesn't remember why.
There are only so many things you can put in bottles and only so many places you can stash them before bottles fill up as much of your life as bottles are capable of filling.
Next time you visit Aunt Maggie, look for them, the see-through, clear-enough-to-see.
She has stacked them in top-heavy towers that jostle and elbow out when she opens the cupboard to get you a cookie. She says, “Who wants a cookie?” (You, you want a cookie.) The cupboard door swings shut. It bulges apologetically—Bottles.
Does Maggie pour you a glass of milk? No, it's a bottle of milk.
What's underneath Maggie's chair? Bottles.
What happens when Maggie turns on the ceiling fan? Something skips out and up, catches the light, turns and tips it out. Falls.
Skip, catch, tip, crash. Bottles.
Why can't Maggie jump on her bed? It would break the bottles.
Your mother drops you off at Aunty's early. You call out, but she doesn't hear you. Someone is singing in the shower; the notes float strange and not-falling, different like shower spray is different from rain. A slip, a bump, a “Shit.” You call again, “Aunt Maggie!” She picks you up. She is wrapped in a towel, and you touch a bruise all squashy around her cheek. “Hey, it's okay then,” she says.
What did Maggie slip on in the shower? Bottles.
Q: What does Santa Claus do with all those toes?
A: He keeps them in jars.
Aunt Maggie is dating a man named Dumas. She goes to his apartment when she is hot and can't turn on her fan. Maggie and Dumas lie on a mattress on the floor and watch the fan rock. “It's going to fall,” Maggie says. “It's not,” says Dumas. “The wobbles are illusionary."
The fan chops the air over their faces into shadows. Maggie and Dumas talk about things that would probably bore you. Sometimes they fall asleep while they're talking, maybe not because they're bored but because they work hard all day long. They fall asleep with their shoes still on.
This is Dumas's first apartment, and he just moved in. That's why the mattress is on the floor. The apartment greeted him with bare walls, cupboards bare, bare floor. But the ceiling and windows looked back at him, fanned and blinded, gratuitous, free.
Babies love blinds; they adore ceilings fans. Dumas doesn't. Particularly.
Q: Couldn't Maggie keep toes in her bottles like Santa does?
A: She doesn't want to.
Q: I've seen adults who have ten toes.
A: Try to ask questions.
A: Try to ask the adults—Where did you get those toes? Whose are they? What did you give for them? What would you take? Be careful, some people are toeless, and some are ruthless, and most are less than both.
A: The foot is like a fin, and toes a wave, uncountable and unaccounting. Try not to ask them to count. Try to ask something else.
Maggie hasn't seen Dumas's toes yet. She likes him, but she doesn't remember what she liked first. If she wants to keep breaking up with him on the table, she should do it soon, before his toes enter the picture.
A toe that is missing its neighbors is the most piteous creature—fishhook bone in fleshy sac, ridiculous nail like a flat, blind eye. Maggie doesn't know it yet, but she could never break up with a toe that looked at her like that.
Q: What did I trade my toes for?
A: You don't know.
Center Panel
Q: Will I be pretty when I grow up? Will I ever find love?
A: Will you have all your teeth?
A: Do you have all your teeth now?
A: Don't worry. They'll grow in and fall out and grow in again. They're already waiting to do this inside your skull.
Q: Are three quarters a fair price for a tooth?
A: You can always change money into something else.
Q: But I've been speculating.
A: Try not to speculate.
A: Didn't you know? No Tooth Fairy buys your teeth. You can't drive a hard bargain for them, even though you're older-wiser-sadder than a baby. You may be older, but no one is sadder than a baby. They cry all the time.
And no one wants your teeth. Teeth are ugly. They look like tombstones planted in a row, the colors gone rotten—yellow and gum-pink from granite and green. The incisors’ cutting edge and the molars’ grinding layer have a cheese grater pattern that's different for every tooth and every mouth. Lik
e fingerprints, but not so swirly and cute—toothjagprints (you could call them).
But you'll never make the effort to find that out because teeth are ugly. No one wants them. Your parents buy them when they fall out because they love you. That's all.
They put each tooth in a plastic bag and throw it away. Or maybe in an envelope, licked and sealed and stowed in a drawer next to the obsolete typewriter with the skeletal keys. On the outside of the envelope, they write “Baby. Tooth.” Dentist parents write “Bicuspid L. Baby's.” Teeth have names, every one, but you might not care to find that out.
One of the first things Maggie and Dumas did together was help you carve a pumpkin. It was November second. They thought they could hide it from you now that Halloween had good and gone for the year, and pumpkins didn't need faces anymore. And they did.
Dumas burnt pumpkin seeds until they smelled like coffee. Maggie held your hand which held the knife which cut out squares of pumpkin flesh and toothed the jack-o'-lantern.
Maggie put a burnt seed in the pumpkin's mouth. “Look,” she said. “How's that for a tooth? Pomegranates,” she told you, “broken open, look like skulls with an excessive number of light bulb teeth.” That's the difference between vegetables and people: one has so many limbs and teeth and the other only so many.
The smoky seed stood in the pumpkin's mouth, superfluous, like a burnt-out candle. Both of you knew that on your pumpkin the holes were the teeth.
Q: What happens to a pumpkin with teeth?
A: It goes rotten.
Q: What happens when an animal loses its teeth?
A. It starves to death.
After your mother took you home, do you know what Dumas told Maggie? (If you had hidden under the table, you would.)
When Dumas was very little, he found a tooth under his mother's bed. It was large and rough on top and jagged at the bottom. He put it in his mouth and it tasted like a penny—sharp and organic.
The girls next door had told Dumas about the Tooth Fairy. He looked under his mother's pillow. There wasn't anything there. “The Tooth Fairy had screwed my mother,” Dumas told Maggie. “And I was concerned."
Little Dumas told his mother he'd found her tooth.
She denied it.
"Why should it be mine?” Dumas echoed her. He put it back in his mouth to try why. Again the taste of currency, bitter and unchanged.
"That's yucky, Dumas,” said his mother. “Spit. Yuck."
"I'll put it under your pillow."
"Dammit, Dumas. I told you that isn't mine."
Dumas wanted to check the back of his mother's mouth for a gap, but she guarded her mouth too closely. If he had a stranger's tooth under his bed, he would open his mouth and howl. His whole face would become a hole.
When the neighbor girls told Dumas that the Tooth Fairy didn't pay for his teeth, his mother did, he saw where he had failed. He hunted up all his change and left it under his mother's pillow. Then he took the tooth and buried it in the orange peels in the under-the-garbage sink.
Sometimes he thought on the tooth, and in his memory it shriveled and began to resemble an orange seed.
Q: Will I ever meet someone who will knock out my tooth?
A: Not you, but someone will. Dumas's mother met one person who would knock out her tooth. Some people meet two. Some people meet three.
Q: Do I know a grown-up who's lost a tooth?
A: Have you found it?
Q: No. Who took it away if it wasn't me?
A: How should I know?
Maggie asked Dumas, “What am I supposed to do with that?"
He said, “How should I know?"
She asked, “Really happened?” “Father?” she asked.
"Boyfriend,” said Dumas. “Or date. Not someone around long enough to remember.” Dumas said, “The funny thing is I lost one of my teeth twice too."
Q: Doesn't Dumas mean two of his teeth once?
A: He means not a single occurrence, which is how Dumas's mother thought of the tooth knocked out of her, an aberration, a passing date, something that could have happened to anyone, and so not to her particularly.
Something twice lost is gone for good. That's why it's always part of you.
If you had stayed hidden under the table, you would have heard every word except a stupid question that Maggie didn't ask, which was whether Dumas's mother loved her boyfriend. Otherwise, what a waste.
But this was Dumas's apartment, and Dumas didn't have a table to hide you. Or cupboards or drawers. All the guts of a kitchen—which are spoons, whisks, and pumpkin carving knives—lay spread out on the picnic tablecloth. Maggie's feet were under the tablecloth, and Dumas's feet were under Maggie.
Maggie doesn't like the things her boyfriend says to make her remember him, but she likes her boyfriend. She likes the way his kisses feel like knocking. She'll always remember him whether she wants to or not. She knows him by the fingerprints of his teeth.
Q: Can I be a pumpkin and have holes for teeth?
A: I know, pumpkin, you hope your teeth fail to grow in and whiteout those little gaps, so cute.
A: You shouldn't hope. No one wants teeth, this is true, like I told. But no teeth is no guarantee someone will want you.
Right Panel
Q: What am I good for?
A: Don't ask that. You're not a machine. You should ask what your body is good for.
Q: What is my body good for?
A: Your body is a machine for dying.
Q: Am I going to die?
A: Everyone is going to die. Your grandparents are going to die, and your mother is going to die. Your father is going to die. All the white pages from Aaron Abramson to Zelda Zychafuss are going to die. Your fish are going to die even if you feed them not too little, not too much. The man who sold you your fish tank? Is going to die. Your aunt is going to die. Your dog won't live forever. Your uncle's ex-wives are going to die. Some people, they've died already.
Still, we think you might beat this. Listen carefully.
A: You didn't cut the tag off the machine, did you? You didn't sign any forms. You didn't trace the X there for those of you who can't yet write. Tell me. You didn't.
A: None of us did.
—
Sometimes your Aunt Maggie lies in bed for a minute after she wakes up and ponders her feet. Sometimes she lies in her boyfriend's bed. It all depends on where she wakes up.
Dumas doesn't stare at his feet, and he doesn't stare at Maggie's. He makes coffee for the two of them. He would like to make coffee in bed pondering his feet, but this is an impossibility.
"Maggie,” says Dumas, “I have passed the age where my soul is easy currency.” He's speculating on exchanging his soul for an apartment with a dishwasher.
Maggie, at the moment, is entirely flat—hair squashed flat around her head, arms, back, and legs flat, eyes flat down looking at her feet, which poke up, bare and full of bones. She wiggles her toes so that they resemble Martian flowers.
"Dumas,” she says, “your bed is a mattress on the floor and you can't hide underneath it."
"No,” says Dumas.
"What do you plan to do when the rapists come? Give them coffee and cake?"
Dumas shrugs. “You have a plan?” he asks.
Maggie slides, all a-sigh, out of the too-low bed. “Not a good one."
"I wish I had a dishwasher,” says Dumas.
Q: Will anyone miss me when I am dead?
A: How often do you wash the dishes?
A: How long does it take people to miss you when you play hide-and-seek by yourself?
A: People miss you more when you do the dishes. The cups that stand stain ringed and empty remind them of you.
A: People miss you more quickly when you don't do the dishes. They come calling and tell you to stop hiding and pull your weight a bit.
A: I don't know who will miss you. I don't know how we'll miss you. These are important questions, but I don't know the answers. We will be dead before you. We have plan
ned this carefully.
Q: Who will do the dishes when all of you are dead?
A: The Man in the House.
Q: Is the Man in the House a bad man?
A: Watch how your dog treats him. Does she bark at him? Yes, she does. She barks at cockroaches, and they are bad. She barks at ghosts, and they are good. She barks at pumpkins, and they are orange. The Man in the House is good, or bad, or orange.
Q: Why will you die and leave me alone?
A: We don't want to.
Q: Should I hide under the bed when death comes?
A: Yes.
When we were all this-much younger, Dumas hid from Maggie for a week and a day to test if she would miss him. He hid at the office and when the office kicked him out, he hid in an alley because an alley is a lonely space between two walls.
From time to time, the alley walls opened rectangles of light and sound and soap-smelling heat. Busboys carried plastic bags out of the rectangles. In the alley, cold and wet, the bags smelled like mouths that had just eaten.
Dumas was hiding behind a dumpster. He couldn't see the busboys. He heard the sound of their feet. One leaned against the wall opposite him and lit a cigarette. He sucked on the cigarette, then lifted it to his eye as if sighting down a gun. He smoked; his breath smoked in the air. In an alley behind a dumpster, the sky is narrow enough to squeeze out a star or two.
Footsteps at the mouth of the alley, and a woman called, “Is there someone back there?"
Dumas waited for the busboy to answer. The busboy could say, “Just me, having a smoke.” Dumas would have to say, “Yes, me. The man hiding in the alley."
Everyone held their breath, and the woman was gone.
Dumas always ended up at home, sleeping until it was light enough that he had to go to the office and hide. For nine days Dumas hid, and Maggie didn't even call.
In the end, Dumas called Maggie and reproached her bitterly. But she trumped him. “I was hiding, too,” she said. “I was hiding in your house."
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 22 Page 8