Joy Williams - State of Grace

Grady turns his head a bit. Something black runs erratically out from someplace in his head. At first it doesn’t matter. It comes and goes. I can’t even remember it beginning, that’s how slight it was at first. In less than a minute, however, it overwhelms everything here, even though it is hardly anything, a trickle, very tiny, and a dull black. In less than a minute again it becomes a lake, very miniature, but enough to flood this room, and although I am here (or rather, although my stomach is here, my mountainous stomach spraddling this tiny bed), I dare not move for to do so would be to crush thousands of weeping invisible things, for the air is full of them. For this shrinking room where my Grady lies, into which an assault of personnel are coming to take me away, is crowded with things infinitesimal. Things annihilable and yet without end. Like the pain the evil suffered in Daddy’s pulpit hell, there is no limit to their reduction. And the very least of their reductions has a weight that the mind can’t bear—

It all stops. Three nurses come in. They are actually a little larger than I. The room becomes quite ordinary. White. Airy. I see the lacing of one of Grady’s boots trailing out of the closet locker. There’s a breeze and it shakes the shade. The nurses are very angry. Two I’ve seen before. One depilates her arms, but only to the elbows. The other is the novice who gave me the substitute gum. The third does all the talking.

“How did you get in here! It’s quite apparent that there’s to be no one here. You have to get a pass at the desk and the pass must be punched. It’s only good for the other floors. There are no passes accepted on this floor.”

“Oh please,” I say, crawling from the bed. “There’s something there on the pillow. Something that’s come from his head. Please.”

“That’s our concern,” she says.

“You’d better straighten up and start breathing deeper,” the shaved girl says, “or that baby of yours is going to come out harder than a watermelon.”

“That’s right,” the talking one says, “you’ve got to think of those who haven’t had their living yet. Put the other affairs behind you. Last summer I worked in the birthing ward and each night I’d go home, I’d like to tell you, with a song in my heart.”

I try to think of the baby once and for all but things keep getting in the way. I know this is my only chance, to think about him now, before he comes. I try to think of his needs. Things that I can buy that will define him.

I forced myself to go into a store. But I was stymied by a bib. A tiny drooling bib. And then a small washcloth. No bigger than a saucer. I stared and stared. I couldn’t think. Women came and went with casual assurance. Salespeople asked me again and again what I wanted. At last I was asked to leave.

It was not a success. Except for one thing. I learned one thing. Hidden beneath its blouse, each Raggedy Ann doll has I LOVE YOU printed in a heart upon its chest. I think that is one thing that more people should know.

It’s June third. Where has the time gone? Sometimes you can hear it overtaking you, making, while passing, small crunches, like owls breaking the backbones of mice. There’s certainly nothing subtle about it.

I’ve always disliked this date. It’s an anniversary of course, everything is. And every day brings back to mind something mean or blue. The man on the radio reminds one of this continually. Just before daybreak, the last caller calls in. Yes. The lady caller says,

“The parakeets nest each night in my punk trees and are driving me crazy and what can I do?”

“Action Line” is a little annoyed. After all, he’s answered this before, but he gives the proper reply as always and then it’s sign-off time, preceded by one minute of “On This Date.”

“Eleven years ago today,” he says, “a nurse shark in the Durban Aquarium threw up a human arm before the distressed eyes of visiting schoolchildren.”

On this date, the Japanese beetle was introduced to this country.

And 135 people simultaneously went mad in Sverdlovsk U.S.S.R. after eating rolls from a dirty bakery.

Then they stop transmitting. The man goes home, I suppose.

Well, I want to tell you something.

On June 3, 1844, on the island of Eldey, off Iceland’s southwestern coast, a nesting pair of auks were killed by Jon Brandsson and Sigourour Isleffson. Their single egg was smashed by Ketil Ketilsson and the great auk was forever lost to the world .

A CRIME AGAINST NATURE. At last, the proper use of the term. No one speaks any more about crimes against God. Perhaps they never did. And the auks were good creatures. Not wicked, like the types that attempt to defend themselves. As for the men, I imagine they had good teeth, warm clothing and sweethearts. Now where has all the time gone with them safe in their graves? I have heard that others wanted to claim the distinction. But were not accepted. Turned down by diligent research. Like the Hiroshima pilot, everyone wants a piece of the pie.

It’s seven o’clock and the sun has come up as usual like a picture postcard. It’s June third, come around again for the first time. With just a slight dislocation, I feel that things could be better. A small act of substitution could make up our life. But the variance never comes. Each day has only enough difference in it to make what you’ve already learned unnecessary. We’re all left out of the years that might make the difference. Not scheduled. Scratched. We’re all just pieces of marbly meat, with great margins of white to our lives, not off to the sides where they belong, but running right through our best days.

Grady’s sleeping. They say it’s only sometimes that he sleeps. Other moments he’s doing something else. It takes a conscientious eye, however. It takes a practiced witness to tell the difference and I am neither. His lips rest on my face. His breathing whispers to me but it is almost impossible to understand. It rises in despaired intensity. I try to calm him by placing his hand inside my blouse. My nipples are shiny and like glass. His fingers fumble and slip off them. They are so bright. Like hard little spoons. Once I looked intently at them myself and found reflected there a child, baking obscene cupcakes. It’s only a toy oven but, nonetheless, everything works.

I kiss him. My mouth is tired. My lips swollen, my gums faintly metallic. I practiced my cornet for two hours one evening but that was more than nine years ago and surely my lip would not be exhausted still. I was a child then and now I am of course a married pregnant lady, waiting for deliverance and stinking dimly of milk. For weeks now I have been awakened by the cold wet sheet of my bed and the sight of my poor wilted breast, the left, squashed as a tube of toothpaste carelessly employed.

Deftly, I unbutton my blouse further and slip out a breast. I feed it to his cheek, hoping he’ll root for it, not that it would give him any nourishment certainly but it might mean something. But the gesture’s dry as my tit once was and someone comes in and interrupts the moment. I can tell they’re not going to like me in this place. They don’t like my attitude and they despise my circumstances. As Father said (of course about himself), easy to calumniate but difficult to imitate . And I’m my father’s daughter, born and bred in his love.

Father, of course, was the one who alerted me to this date, albeit in another season. He mentioned it at Mother’s service and drove the congregation wild. He said, FOR THAT WHICH BEFALLETH THE SONS OF MEN BEFALLETH BEASTS AS THE ONE DIES SO DIES THE OTHER THEY HAVE ALL ONE BREATH SO THAT A MAN HAS NO PRE-EMINENCE ABOVE A BEAST FOR ALL IS VANITY.