Joy Williams - State of Grace

The people protested but it was difficult to disagree. Father quotes everything more or less, and is impeccable in his sources. The souls on that island were simple, good-hearted, ordinarily vicious. All they ever had were boats to catch fish from and a pot to cook the catch and a ballroom in the center of town where a five-piece band played monthly. They knew that all was worthless and that they were lost but they didn’t want to be as lost as the animals they shot. That was asking too much. Because they knew how they died. And they knew that their hides whipped from car antennaes and rotted on mud-room floors. They didn’t want any part of that.

But they honored Father in spite of what he said. Father was God’s instrument and we were all the instruments of Father. They respected him enormously, because in that land of silence, he managed to be more silent than them all. It was known that no one ever had a conversation with Father. The words he made had … great silences between them. Their lives depended upon the interpretation of the absence around them. And my life depended upon the interpretation of Father.

The people valued me too, of course. Our family was highly thought of. For eleven years we were the only ones on that island who were ever born or died. Sister and I were born and then sister and Mother and baby died. Nothing was going on all that while except my childhood, if you know what I mean. Everything else remained the same. Summer brought no rebirth there — just the same blighted berries and the same dry wind from the sea. The island swung in the Atlantic, out of time and out of season, and the only things that happened were to me. Of course all that has changed and the people there are dying now. Everything I ever wished for has come true. It all came out the only way it could and hustled me right along with it. No, I’m never left behind.

They are always driving me out of here. Grady’s awake now, I am told, although nothing has changed. There are two glass jugs, one leading in and one leading out, with the clear liquid lessening in one and gaining in the other. Not a drop is lost. It doesn’t seem proper that the stuff’s all the same. Healing should be different, don’t you think? The processes of life should be distinguishable from those of death. Wouldn’t you say?

Some woman leads me roughly to the door. Face pretty as a cardboard crate. They don’t even want to give me my postpartum pack although it’s required. They’d like to see me bleed to death. Problems like me can all be attributed to a great laxity of morals and a promiscuous admission to the Lord’s table. Father said that this has always been so.

I’m at the Siesta Pig, which is a convenience store, selecting a cup sundae when the bag of waters breaks. It’s not unlike the bottom of a bottle falling out and I can almost feel the color draining from my lobes, my lips, both inside and out. I push up closer to the freezer, at a loss.

A woman with a hearing aid pushes past from sherries. I drip discreetly. It’s pure water, I have nothing to be ashamed of and if it were bottled it would probably be a cure for something, God knows. Acne perhaps or gout or glossitis. “Thank yew,” the woman hollers.

It’s nothing nasty but I hustle out, alert to the manager’s possible distaste. I feel nothing except that my pants and skirt are soaking wet. I walk across the street to a gas station. I have to get the key to the rest room from the attendant. It’s hanging over his head on a plasic ring six inches wide.

“I’m sick of people like this,” he says, handing me the key. “They ain’t got no cars, they ain’t got nothing but full bladders.” There is no one in the place but me. I feel that he speaks to me at the expense of others in deference to my condition. I walk to the cubicle with my incredible key. It is not very clean but there is paper everywhere. In the holders and stacked against the walls. I try to blot myself dry but the water pours out and can’t be checked. I sit on the bowl and wait. I put my head on my knees. I may even doze a little. I can’t tell, I don’t feel anything. I know I am supposed to be lying down with my feet elevated. Moving around may injure the baby’s head. I don’t know. Nothing seems to apply. I am spurious and specious to the moment. The moment does not seem to be significant. I work my skirt off over my head and attach it as best I can to a chrome nozzle on the wall that dispenses warm air. Where is the deception and the shame? The water’s pure as tears. I saw Grady cry this morning. They disagreed but I wiped away the tear. They say the signs he shows can no longer be interpreted in the same manner as those exhibited by a living person. But he wept. It was only for an instant. I wiped away the tear.

That seems to lack significance as well. Nothing seems to bear. At times, all things seem to center on those parts of Grady’s arms where the tanning stops. Each afternoon I look first at his arms and I see the demarcation of the sun and then I sit and hold his arms. But that promises nothing one way or the other. It is suggestive of nothing. I enter Grady’s limbo when I hold his sunny arms.

The water stops at last. I put on my warm skirt and open the door. Half a dozen women are there in a ragged line and three little girls with their legs crossed. Waiting to enter. Vacationers all. Polite as refugees. I return to the Siesta Pig and complete my transaction with the sundae. It tastes greasy as though it were revolutionarily fried and frozen.

“Big doings at your place tonight, huh?” the manager says to me.

“Pardon,” I say. I can’t feel the baby any more. It as though I’ve misplaced him. I look around a little uneasily. I do not want him crawling around and knocking jars off the shelves and cutting himself.

“Those shows you girls put on at the school. They’re tonight, aren’t they?

The Serenades. I had forgotten. I was supposed to borrow a car and help Corinthian bring the leopard down.

“I always make a point of attending for good relations,” the manager is saying. “Besides that, it’s a nice break in the routine. In addition as well, some of those favors those groups give out are pretty nice. Last year I got four of those insulated mugs to keep your beverage cold for nothing. If I sold them in here I know I’d have to charge at the least two twenty-nine. And one of those sororities was just giving them away and another one of those sororities smarter yet was pouring free beer into them.”

I have to borrow a car. It is a small leopard but with wild, judgment eyes.

“What’s your group going to be giving?” the manager says.

“Thrills and chills,” I say.

“Nothing, huh? Well that’s probably not too smart.”

I buy a box of cereal from him and start walking toward the college. Several times before I arrive there I tell myself that the baby is going to be born soon. It doesn’t seem relevant. It is not that it seems impossible, it is just that it does not seem indicative of change.

At the hospital they are cutting Grady’s hair. I beg them not to, but they do it every week. They are always cutting his hair.

The girls are all on the top floor of the sorority house getting into their bikinis, and Corinthian and the leopard have been brought here by someone else and are in an old garage behind the house. The leopard is sitting on its haunches in a cluttered corner and is still as a statue. The garage is hanging with cobwebs and there are cobwebs spanning the leopard’s ears. Corinthian rubs them off with his fingers.

Just outside the bolted door of the garage, the housemother is straightening the garbage cans. She is wheezing and red.