Noy Holland - The Spectacle of the Body

Pitchfork,

Moon Pie,

tarpaulin,

Lipton’s,

hangers to mend the fence,

morphine—

Not the sea I hear in Sugar, but my brother saying penknife , Orbit saying saltines to put on the list for supper. But town is a long and, even in the cool, blistering walk through the hollow. We keep near her, Mother on a good day taking toast and tea, a day when the sound she makes at night is not Mother Goose but Mother, the words we know of her, her calling over the windowsill my brother and me by name.

Night to night, day to dark, very night of very night , Orbit recites to the undershells as white as the buffed soles of our feet come bootless to the turtles. We learn in the dark with our fingers what, with a crooked nail and a kitchen knife, by candlelight we have named them.

We take our time to name them. We lie with our chins hanging past the edge of our twin beds. Turtles are shy when they open, the swung-down half of a moon of shell a ramp the kept inside of them might lift up and walk out over. In me, also, is a flap of shell, hinged, according to Orbit, open when I squat to pee and, when I am finished peeing, drawn shut accordingly ahead of the hooked and wrinkled neck the size of Orbit’s thumb, and mine; the skin of a turtle’s neck, as the skin of our mother’s neck, is fit to be shed at the side of a road, our mother not a mother to sing before this jack-in-a-box of cheeks rouged with the skin of beets we peel to pop out when we want her. And we want so much of Mother.

In bed, the dark between our sheets keeps the smell of lumped dirt, of crops we have left, of Mother — if we touch her before we leave, or when we come back to her from the garden. We smell ourselves of the garden. We smell of Bingo — who smells of her kill she has left in the woods and who sleeps her dog’s sleep with her head underneath Orbit’s pillow.

Orbit’s pillow, since our father left, has become our dog’s pillow; Bingo’s name we changed from the name we never liked all along. The nights since then, since Father left, the nights our mother is singing, Orbit curls up at the foot of his bed, thinking I am sleeping. But I am not sleeping. His boys’ breath I am of him and of the fallen dark with him. I am the keeping sheath of him, slipping on his penis.

I see him reach his hand out. I see him turn his hand to let our Bingo lick it clean.

We try to lure the turtles out with shiny slugs and straight-pinned flies, with the luck of rabbit’s foot saved frozen from the garden.

We are lucky when they open.

They are so shy.

We try to pry them out with kitchen knives and pliers, to burn them out with candles, mute things, toothless. Do they know it when we sleep? Do they rise up in their old homes and walk out in our room at night?

But we are not sleeping.

Maybe they dream.

Might it be not the sea we hear but of some lurching, yellow dream we wake to keep from dreaming?

I am no weak sister gone kneeling through the house at night to harvest lint from carpets, to polish and to clean. I am not afraid to sit darkly among our things and in the room where Mother sleeps, or is not sleeping, to sing, or am not singing.

But I do not sleep with Mother, shall not when she lifts the sheets and pats our father’s place to lie against her in their bed.

Our beds are one bed, my brother’s bed and my bed. We lie across together. But I would go, should Mother call — between this room and that, between sister and daughter. Or if she does not call, I will go to sit and watch her dreaming.

You will know the place, should you ever come, as soon as you have seen it. You will see it from the dirt road — the house leaning, and leaning, slumped, from the narrowing wind from the hollow.

Should the stone in the road you are walking past lift up on its legs and move, pick it up. It may be Vernon.

The spotted dog is Bingo, her paws webbed for swimming.

The goosenecked goose is Gander, hitched with a rope to the trailer hitch.

And the swaybacked mare — what of her? She lay in the grass behind the barn that stands beyond the slumping house and squeezed out her dead filly.

And of the mother?

And of the father — what shall we say of him?

It will be done as soon as the father comes or not — until he comes. The father will come by train or truck as fathers betimes are wont to come. Or by some flight of fancy.

Or he will not come.

Or he did not go, and shall not go, but stayed in Tuscaloosa.

Tuscaloosa is a good town. There are fathers in Tuscaloosa. There are no cars in Tuscaloosa, no guns, no books, no telephones, no telephone books to finger through waiting for dark to come. Or do you not wait for it? Or do you live in Little Crab? Mightn’t you live in Oneida? Might you not wait for a father to com, driving himself in a vented rig with a feather alight in the bill of his cap in the dash-light light of the cab of his truck, driving chickens by night to Oneida?

I was born in Ohio.

My mother was someone, chances are, I never might have known.

Do you know Oneida? Would you take my word for what I would tell you about Oneida?

Ask anyone.

Ask my mother.

Is it pretty somewhere near Oneida?

Is there a boy you know named Orbit living on the outskirts there?

Ask yourself any old thing you might think of to want to ask yourself, or not want to ask yourself. Will it be done, for instance, when it is done? In a whimper, will it? In a heartbeat?

Old Mother Hubbard lived in a cupboard covered with pudding and pie. Who saw her die? Who saw her die?

It was I , said the fly, with my little teensy eye.

Who caught her blood? Who caught her blood?

It was I, said the fish, it was I, in my pretty silver dish.

When Daddy comes, Orbit claims, I will show him.

I will show how in the tree, turning above the dogs, we keep the filly safely there to show him when he comes. The lean-to, I will show him. I will show him the broken place where the animals come into the yard.

Do you know where Turkey is?

How does a turnstile work?

Turtles have been toothless for one-five-zero, zero-zero-zero years.

This one is Oscar. Oscar, meet Doll. Daddy and Doll, meet Oscar. After a single mating, Doll can lay fertile eggs for years. Will they all at a time break open?

She will not show them. Our Doll will not show to me even her belly still. And if she is not with them? If our Doll is old and gray and nodding by the road one night, who will there be to show them? And which way goes to the paved road and on to the yonder sea?

I have not seen it. I have not seen the sea.

I see crows.

I know there are buzzards banking turns up there.

I keep the flies from Momma. It is my job to keep them from her. The sky is yellow. The fields and the fields and the fields are green. The lean-to is blue. My name is Orbit.

“Oh, you’re that little Gibson boy with buckeyes in his britches.”

“Momma,” I say, “it’s Orbit.”

But who am I to tell her? Who am I to Momma? What am I to say?

For luck, I shook a buckeye down to clatter from our buckeye tree. She put it in her mouth.

Our dog is Bingo. We gave Bingo Bingo. Bingo is a dog’s name. We took Jane away.

So is it Jane’s or Bingo’s tail we worry in our pockets? — broken, ropy, gyplet tail Daddy cut away. So maybe it is Daddy’s. But it is in our pockets. Our goosenecked goose is Gander. If Gander is our Christmas goose, will we take his name away? And will it still be Christmas? Will Daddy come to carve the goose when she is dead who took his name and with it died away?

Sometimes I cannot hold my breath for Momma’s long not-breathing. I keep her sheet snugged up under her. One Mississippi , I count. Two, three Mississippi. Four.