Joy Williams: Honored Guest

Lenore said, “God is nothing. OK? That’s Meister Eckehart. But whatever is not God is nothing and ought to be accounted as nothing. OK? That’s someone else.”

Helen didn’t speak.

“I wasn’t born yesterday,” her mother said. “That’s why I know these things. I wasn’t even born last night.” She laughed. It was snowing again. It had been snowing freshly for hours. First sleet, then colder, then this snow.

“Helen,” her mother said, “would you get me a snowball? Go out and make me one and bring it back.”

Helen got up and went outside as though hypnotized. Sometimes she behaved like this, as though she were an unwilling yet efficient instrument. She could have thoughts and not think them. She was protected, at the same time she was helping her mother do her job, the job being this peculiar business.

The snow was damp and lovely. Huge flakes softly struck her face and felt like living things. She went past the bush the dog had liked, pushed her hands deeply into the snow and made a snowball for her mother, perfect as an orange.

Lenore studied this. “This is good snow, isn’t it?” she said. “Perfect snow.” She packed it tighter and threw it across the room at Helen. It hit her squarely in the chest.

“Oh!” Lenore exclaimed.

“That hurt, Mom,” Helen said.

“Oh you …” Lenore said. “Get me another.”

“No!” Helen said. The thing had felt like a rock. Her breasts hurt. Her mother was grinning avidly at her.

“Get two, come on,” her mother said. “We’ll have a snowball fight in the house. Why not!”

“No!” Helen said. “This is … you’re just pretending …”

Lenore looked at her. She pulled her bathrobe tighter around herself. “I’m going to go to bed,” she said.

“Do you want me to make some tea?” Helen said. “Let me make some tea.”

“Tea, tea,” Lenore mimicked. “What will you drink in Florida? You’ll drink iced tea.”

That night Lenore dreamed she was on a boat with others. A white boat in clear, lovely water. They were moving quickly but there was a banging sound, arrhythmic, incessant, sad, it was sad. It’s the banger, they said, the fish too big for the box, that’s what we call them. Let it go, Lenore begged. Too late now, they said, too late for it now.

“Lenore!” she cried. She went into Helen’s room. Helen slept with the light on, her radio playing softly, books scattered on her bed.

“Sleep with me,” her mother said.

Helen shrank back. “I can’t, please,” she said.

“My God, you won’t lie down with me!” her mother said. She had things from Helen’s childhood still — little nightgowns, coloring books, valentines.

“All right, all right,” Helen said. Her eyes were wild, she looked blinded.

“No, all right, forget it,” Lenore said. She shook her head from side to side, panting. Helen’s room was almost bare. There were no pictures, no pretty things, not even a mirror. Plastic was stapled to the window frames to keep out the cold. When had this happened? Lenore wondered. Tomorrow, she thought. She shouldn’t try to say anything at night. Words at night were feral things. She limped back to her room. Her feet were swollen, discolored, water oozed from them. She would hide them. But where would she hide them? She sat up in bed, the pillows heaped behind her back, and watched them. They became remote, indecipherable.

It became morning again. Mother … Earth … said someone on the radio.

“An egg?” Helen asked. “Do you want an egg this morning?”

“You should get your hair cut today,” Lenore said. “Go to the beauty parlor.”

“Oh, Mom, it’s all right.”

“Get it trimmed or something. It needs something.”

“But nobody will be here with you,” Helen said. “You’ll be home by yourself.”

“Go after school. I can take care of myself for an hour. Something wouldn’t happen in an hour, do you think?” Lenore felt sly saying this. Then she said, “I want you to look pretty, to feel good about yourself.”

“I really hate those places,” Helen said.

“Can’t you do anything for me!” Lenore said.

Helen got off the bus at a shopping mall on the way back from school. “I don’t have a reservation,” she told the woman at the desk.

“You mean an appointment,” the woman said. “You don’t have an appointment.”

She was taken immediately to a chair in front of a long mirror. The women in the chairs beside her were all looking into the mirror while their hairdressers stared into it too and cut their hair. Everyone was chatting and relaxed, but Helen didn’t know how to do this, even this, this simple thing.

Sometimes Helen dreamed that she was her own daughter. She was free, self-absorbed, unfamiliar. Helen took up very little of her thoughts. But she could not pretend this.

She looked at the woman beside her, who had long wet hair and was smoking a cigarette. Above her shoe was a black parole anklet.

“These things don’t work at all,” the woman said. “I could take the damn thing off but I think it’s kind of stylish. Often I do take the damn thing off and it’s in one place and I’m in another. Quite another.”

“What did you do?” Helen asked.

“I didn’t do anything!” the woman bawled. Then she laughed. She dropped her cigarette in the cup of coffee she was holding.

The washing, the cutting, the drying, all this took a long time. Her hairdresser was an Asian named Mickey. “How old do you think I am?” Mickey asked.

“Twenty,” Helen said. She did not look at her, or herself, in the mirror. She kept her eyes slightly unfocused, the way a dog would.

“I am thirty-five,” Mickey said delightedly. “I am one-eighteenth Ainu. Do you know anything about the Ainu?”

Helen knew it wasn’t necessary to reply to this. Someone several chairs away said in disbelief, “She’s naming the baby what?”

“The Ainu are an aboriginal people of north Japan. Up until a little while ago they used to kill a bear in a sacred ritual each year. The anthropologists were wild about this ritual and were disappointed when they quit, but here goes, I will share it with you. At the end of each winter they’d catch a bear cub and give it to a woman to nurse. Wow, that’s something! After it was weaned, it was given wonderful food and petted and played with. It was caged, but in all other respects it was treated as an honored guest. But the day always came when the leader of the village would come and tell the bear sorrowfully that it must be killed though they loved it dearly. This was this long oration, this part. Then everyone dragged the bear from its cage with ropes, tied it to a stake, shot it with blunt arrows that merely tortured it, then scissored its neck between two poles where it slowly strangled, after which they skinned it, decapitated it and offered the severed head some of its own flesh. What do you think, do you think they knew what they were doing?”

“Was there something more to it than that?” Helen said. “Did something come after that?” She really was a serious girl. Her head burned from the hair dryer Mickey was wielding dramatically.

“These are my people!” Mickey said, ignoring her. “You’ve come a long way, baby! Maine or Bust!” She sounded bitter. She turned off the dryer, removed Helen’s smock and with a little brush whisked her shoulders. “Ask for Mickey another time,” she said. “That’s me. Happy Holidays.”

Helen paid and walked out into the cold. The cold felt delicious on her head. “An honored guest,” she said aloud. To live was like being an honored guest. The thought was outside her, large and calm. Then you were no longer an honored guest. The thought turned away from her and faded.