Joy Williams - State of Grace

At last she sees the bus approach. In the last few seconds that she waits, she falls. She has broken her hip. But it is not when she falls that she breaks the bone, it is while she still stands. The hip has simply worn out. It’s tired, out of calcium and out of luck. They will tell the housemother this later in the nursing home. They will reassure her that it is not an exceptional occurrence.

I KNOW THY WORKS THAT THOU ART NEITHER COLD NOR HOT: I WOULD THOU WERT COLD OR HOT.

I met my love in a movie theatre. A silent film. Dim interminable images. It seemed as though I had been there for hours in a plushy seat leaking out its dreadful contents. Every place I put my hand it would come away with something on it . Thread or foam or gum rubber or whatever.

It was directly after Father left. A hot day. Imagine Father coming down by train in all that heat in his black wool suit, black blouse, black hat. With only a tiny tab of white at the throat to throw the costume into relief. It was soiled. Nodules of hair low on his neck. His hair was sweetly island ragged, like a boy’s, and he smelled like a boy too as he introduced himself to me. SO THEN BECAUSE THOU ART LUKEWARM AND NEITHER COLD NOR HOT, I WILL SPEW THEE OUT OF MY MOUTH.

Grady’s dead. In the operating theatre. Men in lime smocks and a few wine vests watching from the balcony. A few women too. And I swear I saw several taking notes.

Grady’s dead. They gave me the word but not until after it had happened. I expected as much from them. I expected no better.

Any changes in the information on the birth certificate must be made within six weeks, they’ll tell you. These corrections will be made for a fee of five dollars per correction. After six weeks, corrections will not be made.

They have released us from the hospital, the baby and me. The day is hot and still. The sky is full of rain. Every afternoon now it rains punctually at four. There is a sale on white whiskey. There is a sale on hams. There is a dead egret lying in the gutter. A man walks past us with his little girl.

“It must of been sick or it wouldn’t have come into town,” the man tells her. “It must of been sick or it wouldn’t have been hit.” This seems to comfort the little girl. She doesn’t look at it.

The first warm drops of rain fall. A guilt beyond memory. A threat that is not fulfilled by the rain. I walk into a department store, into Infants Wear. I buy a back pack, six little shirts, three dozen diapers, four little gowns. Nothing else is necessary. The baby is so weightless on my hip. It is as though someone has bandaged the crook of my arm.

We leave the store and walk through the rain to the grocery. I take a cart. We orbit through the aisles. Behind the delicatessen counter is a man in a white apron, packing potato salad into a plastic bowl.

“They got that nigger,” he says to his customer.

“Thank God,” the customer says.

The man in the apron bends over the counter and looks at us. “Why if that ain’t the cutest child I’ve ever seen,” he says. “Lookit all that hair.”

I wheel the cart back through the aisles. I have forgotten something. We travel past the same foods and bottles and boxes again and again. I have forgotton something irrevocable. I put a jar of peanut butter in my cart, a loaf of raisin bread. I have a great desire for ice cream. I must have ice cream. But I have no place to go. It will melt before I get there. My forgetfulness! The cart wobbles. The wheels will not turn. I abandon the cart and get another one. Blame must be placed. One of us has made a mistake. I put in another jar of peanut butter, another loaf of bread. The wrapper is torn. There is a small scissure in the crust. I continue shopping. There is bubbling in the canned fruit. There is movement in the yellow corn meal. There is sugar on the flour and glass on the cream pies.

I release the cart. Something terrible has been happening. Someone is responsible.

What have they done with my Grady? I ask this now but I did not ask it then. I had just been released, you understand. I inspire innuendo, if not slander, I know. But the door closed behind me and the tumult, before it did, only served to stupefy me. The paperwork, the bills that must be satisfied, the statements that must be signed. And I wanted to ask. It was up to me to contact the proper authority, I know, but the context of their conversation precluded it. There seemed no way it could be brought up. And it was not simply a question of transition or tact. I have difficulty in keeping up my end of a doctor’s dialogue. There seemed no way it could be phrased in a meaningful fashion. And then the door closed shut behind me and they watched me from the air-conditioned inside until, I suppose, I was out of their sight.

Lost. The heat followed me in a small traveling stream of silence. The baby’s eyes were squeezed against the sun. Her diaper stayed dry for hours and hours. Gone. In what parasitic place.

I did not ask a soul. And the accident was not mentioned. I never saw his friends after the accident. Even if I had seen them, the Fern Fellow and his wife, they probably would not have referred to our absence at dinner that night. They would have been hurt and insulted at our failure to show up. The man is particularly sensitive to slight. He would have put our unused glasses and plates back in the cupboard without a word. Larger servings for themselves would have salvaged the evening nicely.

I did not ask and no one spoke of Grady. Nothing on the radio. I gave them a day. I confess I expected some report, if only a line. The first night there was nothing. The second evening, I caught my Answer Man, my Action Line chum saying,

“The zone of life, the area which not only all that live and breathe and move inhabit but in which all vegetation is contained is a mere twelve miles.”

I turned it off, feeling a bit mollified. One has to learn to deal with the unspoken. As it turned out it was the only information offered. The newspaper was indecipherable as always. Something about a traffic light erection. Something about children milkeholics. Our own story was lost in overset I suppose, but I should have inquired further.

Thrown back upon myself, upon my own devices, I went to his room. 17. It was empty as I feared. I lay on the bed for a moment with the baby, although I was not tired. When I got up, I smoothed the sheets. I do not mind criticism but it seemed important that I leave the room at least the way I found it the last time.

They released me in three days. I might have mentioned it. Another holy number, fixed as any race. Its implications arose immediately. Father would have noted it. The three that bear record in heaven and the three that bear witness on earth. I could go on and on. The angel flying through the middle of heaven said, “Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of earth”—and three angels were yet to sound their trumpets and by these three, fire, smoke and brimstone, was the third part of men killed, and those not yet killed failed to repent of three things, their sorceries, fornications and thefts. And three unclean spirits came out of the mouth of the dragon, and the dragon and the beast and the false prophet constitute three.

Oh, I could have gone on and on but the door closed behind me. And I realized I had failed to ask where they put my Grady. In what terrible cold ground, his sunny arms.

I have left something behind. I have lost something and cannot find it. I am in a grocery. I clutch my stomach but the baby is in my arms. My hunger leaves me forever. The meat bleeds into the freezing coils. Body hair falls from the endive.