becoming too comfortable here. “Would a little loan help?” I asked.
Her tears, her words had become all one snuffle. “No,” I heard her say, and then she shook her head to negate the word, and sobbed “Yes.” She felt obliged to explain, “Dumb AFDC hardly covers the rent, and the WIC is just food vouchers. I could use cash to buy a decent chair or something for when people come to visit. I mean, this stuff is junk.”
I took two twenties from my wallet, and considered inflation, and pulled out another, and gave her the three bills. I could walk by the bank on the way home and replenish my cash at the automatic teller, the little computer whose screen always politely says THANK YOU and PLEASE WAIT WHILE YOUR TRANSACTION IS BEING PROCESSED . When she held out her hand, its smallish plump palm was creased with lines lavender in color, like the newborn infant she had described.
Our transaction cooled us both off. Tucking the moneyinto the pocket of her robe as she simultaneously removed a handkerchief, Verna sniffled one last time, wiped her coarse nose, and looked at me dry-eyed, with the defiant calm of a criminal. A wonderful moral plasticity seemed displayed before me, to go with her pliant pale flesh. “So now what?” she asked.
“I’ll look into equivalency tests and night courses,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, “just like you looked into getting Dale his grant.”
I ignored this; it was time to reassert some dignity. “And I’d like to have you to my house to meet Esther and our son, Richie. Perhaps Thanksgiving would be a good time.”
“Thanksgiving, Jeez-o, thanks,” she said, mocking.
“Or, if you prefer, Verna, we could do nothing. I came here to investigate your attitude and now consider it investigated.”
She hung her head. I could look down past her loose lapel at nearly the full curve of her young breast, its silken weight and faint blue veins. She was shorter than I, as was Esther. “Thanksgiving would be nice,” she said humbly.
As we parted, I made an effort to see her not as a child but as a young woman, sturdy and to an extent competent, a biological success at least, and her life no more alarming than most of our animal lives as a hypothetical Mind might see them from above, their appetitive traffic apparently undirected but rarely producing a crash. “You were nice to come, Nunc,” she added, offering her plump dimpled cheek for a kiss.
As I bestowed it (her skin had a startlingly fine texture, like flour when you dip your hand into it) I saw that little Paula had fallen silent on the floor because of an intense plucking interest in something discovered between the nubs of shag rug. Her lips were covered with fine purple threads. She looked upat me and droolingly smiled. I bent to caress her head and was startled and a touch repelled by her scalp’s warmth.
Yet the secluded squalor of this unnumbered apartment pulled at me as I left. Its musty aroma searched out some deep Cleveland memory, perhaps the basement where my grandmother had laid up canned peaches on dusty shelves and where she did the week’s washing with a hand-turned wringer, amid an eye-stinging smell of lye. Verna’s place had for me what some theologians call inwardness. My own house, on its “nice” street with its equally pricey neighbors, felt sometimes as if the life Esther and Richie and I lived behind its large windows were altogether for display.
Outside the much-thumbed blank green door, I paused long enough to hear Verna shriek at her daughter, “Will you stop eating those fucking fuzz balls!” Then came the sound of a slap, and of whimpers breathlessly mounting into unstanchable wounded cries.
Hot times . I could not imagine what Edna had related; my only recollections of ever touching my half-sister were of wrestling in anger, over some toy or injustice. I vocally detested her and often protested to my mother my having to share a few weeks of summer with her. I called her, it came
Her tears, her words had become all one snuffle. “No,” I heard her say, and then she shook her head to negate the word, and sobbed “Yes.” She felt obliged to explain, “Dumb AFDC hardly covers the rent, and the WIC is just food vouchers. I could use cash to buy a decent chair or something for when people come to visit. I mean, this stuff is junk.”
I took two twenties from my wallet, and considered inflation, and pulled out another, and gave her the three bills. I could walk by the bank on the way home and replenish my cash at the automatic teller, the little computer whose screen always politely says THANK YOU and PLEASE WAIT WHILE YOUR TRANSACTION IS BEING PROCESSED . When she held out her hand, its smallish plump palm was creased with lines lavender in color, like the newborn infant she had described.
Our transaction cooled us both off. Tucking the moneyinto the pocket of her robe as she simultaneously removed a handkerchief, Verna sniffled one last time, wiped her coarse nose, and looked at me dry-eyed, with the defiant calm of a criminal. A wonderful moral plasticity seemed displayed before me, to go with her pliant pale flesh. “So now what?” she asked.
“I’ll look into equivalency tests and night courses,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, “just like you looked into getting Dale his grant.”
I ignored this; it was time to reassert some dignity. “And I’d like to have you to my house to meet Esther and our son, Richie. Perhaps Thanksgiving would be a good time.”
“Thanksgiving, Jeez-o, thanks,” she said, mocking.
“Or, if you prefer, Verna, we could do nothing. I came here to investigate your attitude and now consider it investigated.”
She hung her head. I could look down past her loose lapel at nearly the full curve of her young breast, its silken weight and faint blue veins. She was shorter than I, as was Esther. “Thanksgiving would be nice,” she said humbly.
As we parted, I made an effort to see her not as a child but as a young woman, sturdy and to an extent competent, a biological success at least, and her life no more alarming than most of our animal lives as a hypothetical Mind might see them from above, their appetitive traffic apparently undirected but rarely producing a crash. “You were nice to come, Nunc,” she added, offering her plump dimpled cheek for a kiss.
As I bestowed it (her skin had a startlingly fine texture, like flour when you dip your hand into it) I saw that little Paula had fallen silent on the floor because of an intense plucking interest in something discovered between the nubs of shag rug. Her lips were covered with fine purple threads. She looked upat me and droolingly smiled. I bent to caress her head and was startled and a touch repelled by her scalp’s warmth.
Yet the secluded squalor of this unnumbered apartment pulled at me as I left. Its musty aroma searched out some deep Cleveland memory, perhaps the basement where my grandmother had laid up canned peaches on dusty shelves and where she did the week’s washing with a hand-turned wringer, amid an eye-stinging smell of lye. Verna’s place had for me what some theologians call inwardness. My own house, on its “nice” street with its equally pricey neighbors, felt sometimes as if the life Esther and Richie and I lived behind its large windows were altogether for display.
Outside the much-thumbed blank green door, I paused long enough to hear Verna shriek at her daughter, “Will you stop eating those fucking fuzz balls!” Then came the sound of a slap, and of whimpers breathlessly mounting into unstanchable wounded cries.
Hot times . I could not imagine what Edna had related; my only recollections of ever touching my half-sister were of wrestling in anger, over some toy or injustice. I vocally detested her and often protested to my mother my having to share a few weeks of summer with her. I called her, it came
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