Off the Rack

herself, they were impressed. They asked me if she took a big knife and stabbed it into her chest. They raised their arms and pantomimed this, hands rushing down, like men in moves committing Hari Kari. They were disappointed to hear she just drowned, just swam out into the ocean until she couldn’t swim anymore.

  After my grandmother’s funeral, we went to where my mother’s sister lived, by the ocean, by the same water in which my grandmother drowned.

  The two of them, my aunt and my mother, sat in the kitchen drinking cups of coffee and saying the same things over and over.

  My aunt said what she thought my grandmother had been thinking. What she was thinking when she was dying, when she was drowning, was that she would make her children feel miserable. She would make my aunt go crazy with guilt.

  I watched my aunt’s hands, her oval fingernails tapping and tapping against the table. These same hands, earlier, pulled the cactus spines from my palm. On the porch she held my hand in her lap and pulled the spines out with tweezers. My cousin, the one who called out to my grandmother on the beach was inside the house, on the stairs, sliding up and down the banister, eating a tube of toothpaste. When my aunt finished, I held my hand up to my face and made a circle with my fingers in front of my eyes. I closed the circle and the world got smaller and smaller and disappeared.

  I didn’t want to listen to my mother and my aunt talk about my grandmother so I left the kitchen. I walked through the living room, the Florida room, trying to touch everything my grandmother once touched. I put my hands on her embroidered pillows and left them there, trying to feel where her hands had last been.

  When she was young my mother wet the bed, so my grandmother pinned a towel around her every night, like a diaper. In the dark my mother laid swimming in her own urine, moving and moving, rubbing the place between her legs.

  For a while we lived near the ocean, and my mother and my brother and I went there every day. We got very tan, but my mother’s skin was darker than mine, like we were a different species, like the blood in her body was not the same as my own blood.

  My grandmother had been dead for years then, but I remembered what it felt like to be with her. I was with my mother all the time then. I floated in her life, the two of us together. She wanted to share everything. She would put her face close to mine. She would kiss me and I could taste what her mouth tasted like. It was different from my own mouth.

  At night I didn’t sleep because my bedroom was filled with black water. I thought if I closed my eyes, I would drown.

  My father never thought about water. It meant nothing to him. When he swam, he floated easily on his back. If he looked at anything, it was the women on the beach. Sometimes he tossed me out into the ocean to see what I would do, to see me suddenly swim.

  The time my grandmother drowned in the water was not the first time. Once she shut herself in a house and turned on the gas, and twice she took a bus to different towns and swallowed a bottle of pills in a motel room.

  My grandmother lived with us when I was very young, before either of my brothers were born. But then my mother made her leave. And my grandmother moved into my mother’s sister’s house, the house that was near the ocean.

  When she lived with us, my grandmother, my mother, and my father argued in her room at night. My father yelled, my grandmother cried, my mother stood off to the side with a certain look on her face that was not a smile, but was like a smile, even though her mouth was not moving.

  I hid in the kitchen. I made cards for my grandmother with red hearts on the front. I put them in her lap while she was crying, and she held them with both her hands but I could tell they did not make her feel any better.

  My mother said, Mamma, this is my family and it’s time for you to get your own life.

  My father just stood over her, my grandmother. He stood over her while she was in her bed.

  I have read that it is painless once you stop trying to fight, once you give up and go under, once you stop trying to live.

  My grandmother and I bathed together. I thought her body was beautiful. She was soft and white under the hot water. There were intricate blue veins beneath her skin. But my grandmother did not like the way she looked. She tore her face out of every photograph she had ever been in.

  My mother left my father when I was four because he had sex with another woman, a math major who, my father said, was more intelligent than her. My grandmother came to live with us. We moved to another town and while my mother went to school, my grandmother took care of me.

  We walked to the mall every day and got ice cream cones that looked like Mickey Mouse heads, candy eyes, vanilla wafers for ears. My grandmother made costumes for me to wear instead of clothes. She stole books for me from her doctor’s office. She bought me a Shirley Temple doll and gave me a permanent so my hair would be curly like Shirley Temple’s hair.

  My grandmother was magic. She made butterscotch candies rain from the ceiling. She lit the grill in the backyard to cook hamburgers, and while we were waiting, she passed her hands back and forth through the flames without ever burning herself.

  After a while, my mother decided she didn’t like school and went back to my father. My grandmother went with us and the four of us lived together. Sometimes we left her. We went on trips and left her at our house, alone. Before we went, I would go into her room and crawl into her bed with her. My mother and father sat in the truck with the truck’s engine running, and I went to my grandmother’s room. I put my arms around her and I said goodbye grandma. It always seems like this time could be the last time.

  Now it would not matter to me what her face looked like, or her body looked like, or how long she had been in the water. I just want her however she is, to come back to me.

  The Carnival

  Nancy H. Rainey

  Have you ever been to a carnival? I mean, you know—the kind with rides and weird people and all them gold fish? The kind with funnel cakes and cotton candy and thangs on a stick you don't know what is but it sure tastes good? I never had because them thangs cost a lot of money which is somethin we don't have much of. And when we do have it we have to waste it on thangs like shoes and peas. Who wants peas?

  Anyway, I finely got to go to one of em and boy was it a strange day. My brother got his bull in some contest and tole me I could go with him for free if I was to wash his belly and bottom half while he washed his top half. As much as I like ‘at ole bull I really don't care much for washin his you-know-what. But I wanted to go to that carnival somethin fierce so I did it. Every one of them girls from town talked about it all thru recess all week long and this was my chance. I knowed it wount make them like me any different but it sure would be nice to be able to talk about it on Monday when school started.

  I guess I should tell you who I am and all that stuff. My name is Mae Ella and Ima gone be eleven this year. I's borned rightcheer in Watauga county an aint never been nowhere othern inta Boone a coupla times. I got three brothers oldern me and one of the brothers is a twin to my stank sister, Lorna. She is some sorta beauty queen in her own mind. Momma says we gonna have to move off the farm in order for her to 'go far' whatever that means. I don't care to move. I'm fine right where we are. Why in the world Lorna wants to go to town is beyond me. Them in town got to get their corn and thangs from the store and they all in cans and when you open em up it’s like they forgot to put the flavor in. And what Diddy will do for a livin in town is beyond me. You sure can't make no money drinkin, which is what he does mos the time. If you could make money drinkin and starin into space, we'd be pissin in high cotton. Excuse my french. Momma woulda kilt me if she’da heard that.

  Anyway, back to my story. I tend to wander so if I wander again just know I'll get back in line sooner or later. My oldest brother Fred is 17 an this is his last year in 4-H; if he don't win a prize this year it'll just be too bad for him an we'll never hear the end of it. Well, we'll never hear the end of it ifn he wins too but it
sure will be a nicer thing to hear tell about. So we washed up ole Bobo real good and Fred even cut the hair rount his face so he looked all nice. Fred was so pleased with the job I did he gave me a half- dollar and tole me to go have fun but not too much an don't ask for no more an be back by…I didn't wait to hear no more. A half-dollar! That is 5 different thangs I could go see or ride or eat or combine it all or…it was too much.

  I set down against the Future Farmers of America booth to think it over because I knowed I wanted to ride the Ferris wheel and an it sure would be fun to eat one of them candy apples because momma said we couldn't have 'em because they rot the teeth right outta your head. One thing was for sure—I had to get away from them booths because even though I smell it all the time, all that animal sweat and poop was startin to wear me out. I decided to walk around the whole carnival—it's in a circle so I figured I'd walk arount it oncet an then decide what was the best then go an do them but save a dime for a candy apple.

  “Mae Ella! I didn't think we'd see you here, honey! Does your momma know you is here? I know your Mammaw don't!” I looked up to see Miss Melody the church organist and her ole better-than-you crowd gigglin and lookin at me