Noy Holland - The Spectacle of the Body

Here is what I figure:

But I cannot figure.

Figure there are flies inside.

I pulled the flap back. I had to light a light inside.

Inside the filly are flies inside and in our house also. Also in Bingo worms inside and in our house also.

Inside the snakes are fishy eggs and maybe frogs also, and in the fish also.

Inside the frogs are flies inside and in the filly also, in maybe Bingo also. Maybe fishhooks also.

In the whiskered fish are fishhooks and maybe ducks also. Maybe Vernon also.

There could be a dog.

Then is me and Cissie dove and held our stones and sank with them until we sank to the bottom of the lake and we lay on our backs on the bottom of the lake with our stones on top to hold us, we would hear our dog.

Because I bet she is digging.

We would hear Bingo digging. Because she is just our dog.

Our Oscar put his flap down and walked between my pockets. True:

But I cannot figure true .

The pin oak tree is down. The filly, I dragged to the lean-to. It is my lean-to, true. It is my vole I found. It is in my pocket.

If the vole is my vole, is its head mine also? Is it my head also?

Once it was the vole’s sharp head. But if the vole is not now, if it was and is not now, its head is only mine now, its feet, its tail mine also.

My broken head,

my feathered neck,

my ropy tail my daddy cut—

mine—

my muzzle also,

my long toes mine,

my yellow eyes,

my bones of Momma’s fingers mine.

She will be mine also.

One Mississippi, I count, two , to know the seconds by. I think she is not breathing. I try to keep from breathing. But sometimes we breathe.

Her mouth is open. I thought Momma sings. But Momma does not sing, I know. There is no such song she sings that only she can hear, I know.

I take my time some. I wash my finger. I put it in her mouth.

One-five-zero, zero-zero-zero-zero — I cannot remember the zeros it should be — the toothless years that turtles pass. But a tongue, I know the turtles have, a toothless frog a tongue, too, else it would not sing. Else you would not hear it sing.

It is getting looser. I work it with my finger some — a sharp tooth, Momma’s dog’s tooth.

A goose’s tooth, you cannot pull, though Gander knocks at the door at night, though maybe you could pull his tongue to quiet down the yard t night — if you broke his neck first. If you had a pliers.

They are Daddy’s pliers.

I work the gum up. I shut the curtains. I pull the window closed.

Listen: Between day and dark, you hear them. With the breath I breathed in Momma’s room between her breaths, you hear them.

But the frogs are not calling me.

“Open your mouth, Momma. Open your mouth, Momma.”

I thought they were calling me.

But they are not calling me.

They are calling Momma.

Come.

The trees are green still. The cows can be heard feeding. I will keep quite near.

Only come, if you will, from the dirt road that ends, if you wish, at the paved road. Where there is dirt, the path will have been worn smooth. Where saw grass, the blades are broken.

Cross the slough, the levee. I will not be far from you. The way is perfectly clear.

From the levee, you will see a high red bank gouged by the flow of a river. True: perhaps there is no river.

Perhaps the almanac is right: There will be no river this year.

But the road — there will be the road, yes. The arroyo, yes. Some truck stop, some Sears. Some fairgrounded border town of tooled belts and Kewpie dolls, dirty-shirt dog shows, souvenir spoons.

Remember he kept a rabbit’s foot saved frozen from the garden. Remember a vole in his pocket.

The doors, I left both open — her door and our door.

There was something Orbit wanted to show me. He kept bumping around in the hall for me, to wait for me, to show me. I put my shoes on. The sun was dropping. Mud swallows sang in the eaves. We crossed the yard, the garden, stepping over the boughs of the pin oak tree.

“What is it, Orbit?”

We were marching. We crossed the hidden field. The geese were flying so high above the field, I could hardly hear them. I could not see them. I looked to see over the trees as we went, thinking that I would see them.

We walked on. The path we walked, I could not see myself to follow. Still I followed. The shade was spotty when we reached the trees. I saw a swatch of something blue showing between the trees.

“This is where I come to think,” Orbit said.

I saw he had made a lean-to with a tarpaulin in the trees.

“You brought me out here to tell me that? That’s what you had to show me?”

No rain falls. No birds swift past. On the bank of the lake is a shallow skiff the riverbend has come to. The river is quite near. The wide boats going slow to sea, you can see from Tuscaloosa.

Tuscaloosa is a good town. There are doctors in Tuscaloosa. No guns, no books, no telephones. But a river — yes. A yellow house, a lake near Tuscaloosa.

The lake is deep, the river. The door to the house is open. Inside the door is a woman’s purse. Inside the purse is a pair of gloves. The purse is open. The door is open.

In my mind is an empty room Mother walks into when I speak.

But this is silly.

I sat on my hands in the parlor. I closed the window. I drew the curtains.

Listen to me, Orbit. It was not the sea we heard. It was not Ohio.

It is just a sound I like to hear, the name Ohio.

He said, “Come on, Cissie.”

I saw the bird first — it was a redbird. It hung from its feet from a string from a limb the tarpaulin was lashed to.

Orbit folded the flap of the tarpaulin back. There were rows. At the mouth were the rabbits he had brought from the garden whose necks you can break with your thumb. We stepped over the rabbits to step inside — we had to light a light to see. I was too tall to stand inside.

He said, “Close your eyes, Cissie. Open your eyes, Cissie.”

A blue wall hung with a gaggle of frogs — pinned, quartered. A yellow cat. A turtle — the beaked neck of a turtle, the dark shards of shell. Orbit had teeth in his pocket. He had a pitchfork, looped with snakes skinned from behind their angled heads, and mice — pink, puny, hairless things Orbit had driven the pitchfork through, that you could see the prongs of the pitchfork through.

“This is where you come to think?” I said. “You brought me out here to tell me that?”

There was a pin oak tree in our yard. In the tree was a crooked limb—

What of it?

She read limericks; she wore knee-highs.

The yellow cat is a yellow cat.

The blacktop runs beside the river, to sand against the sea.

What of it?

Orbit pulled away the filly’s hide, the slab of her rib with the toe of his she. He nudged her open.

The way is easy to see — to see her, to word her, to be shut of her. I cannot get shut of her.

Come. There will be a road, an airport. There are lights so bright at airports, you can hear them burning. Come. Forget about Ohio. The salt bluffs, the sea.

The door is open.

We may go now.

You may leave us.

I drew the sheet back. Needles, implements, morphine, salve. It would have to be needles — the body seen, the witnessed skin. The light grayed, blanched her. Mother’s skin grew weak, and pulled away.

Mother, please.

I love you, Mother.

A signal, a word. If she spoke, I did not hear her. Maybe she asked for water. Maybe a light was on.

I drew the sheet back. Her gown was twisted. No rain came, no father. When the rain came, it stayed, the wind, the no-time of waiting through — the dry, disordered days, dog days, days of heat and of the wild cry of geese faintly above the fields and in the dusking garden.