Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

Now, if we were to turn our attention to Nurse Jones.

Now, if you will please turn your attention to Nurse Jones.

(A cognomen surely.)

THESE ARE THE THINGS she said to me.

MY MOTHER SAID HER FATHER was as strong as a horse — she said her father was as big as a horse, and also as strong as one, too.

MY MOTHER SAID HER FATHER was a giant of a man, that he was a regular six-footer, that people were always shouting up at him to try to get him to look down at them and maybe to be their friend. She said people were always shouting, "Hey, Mister Six-Footer, tell us what the weather is like up there? Is it already raining? Is it or isn't it snowing?"

MY MOTHER SAID TOTAL STRANGERS could not get over it, the tallness and the strongness of the man. My mother said complete strangers were always passing comment on it. My mother said, "Not like with some people I could name." My mother said, "With some people I could name, they go into a room, no one gives them the first courtesy of even taking any notice. You would not, with some people I could name, not even take any notice such people were in the room at all."

MY MOTHER SAID, "Stand up. Look like you are somebody. Try to look like you are trying to amount to something. Show them who you are. Make believe you are who you say you are. Are you putting your best foot forward? Put your best foot forward. Show them you intend to be a member of the human race. My father was a member of the human race. My father was not like some people I could name — people not big, people not strong, people not even a member of even themselves."

MY MOTHER SAID ANYONE could look and see that her father was a person of unquestionable refinement. She said, "You don't have to take my word for it." She said, "Ask anyone." She said, "Why should I all by myself have to be the whole judge and jury?" She said, "Why stand on ceremony?" She said, "You can go ahead and satisfy your curiosity any time you want." She said, "I can wait. I've got the patience. I've got more than enough patience for the both of us." She said, "Believe me, I've got enough patience for the whole country of China, not to mention his brother Siam."

SHE SAID, "YOU NAME THE LANGUAGE, my father could talk it." She said, "Where was the man's nose?" She said, "The answer is forever in a book." She said, "There was no telling what the man might have made of himself if God had only given him a decent interval to do it in."

MY MOTHER SAID HER FATHER was the Father of the Steam Engine and the Father of the Refrigerator and the Father of Certain Other Creations, but that the stinking gentiles came in and took advantage of the man's good nature and stole all of the man's blueprints from him, so that now you would not find the proof of it not anywhere in the world, not nowhere on earth was there one stinking way for you to get the proof of all of the things which my mother's father was really the father of, capital F, mind you, capital F.

YOU KNOW WHAT MY MOTHER SAID? My mother said with just his little finger he could have broken every bone in all of their whole stinking rotten gentile bodies, but that the man was too refined of a person for him to lower himself down to their dirty stinking rotten level where somebody might catch him stooping to do it.

SHE SAID IT BROKE her father's heart, the dirty stinking way they all stole from him, the gentiles and the government and the landlords. She said, "But you know what?" She said, "The man would not retaliate. The man would not retaliate against them for one filthy dirty stinking rotten lousy single instant."

MY MOTHER SAID,"Listen to me, I am here to tell you, the man was a saint, and this is what it was which killed him, saintliness, pure and simple."

SHE SAID, "TAKE ONE GUESS who you remind me of." She said, "Because he, him, this is who, ask anybody, you remind me of."

SHE SAID, "YOU KNOW what you are?" She said, "You are too decent, you are too good, you are too sweet-natured. That's what you are."

SHE SAID, "I AM GOING to tell you the truth — you are too good for your own good."

MY MOTHER SAID, "A creature like you, how could it expect to fend for itself?" She said, "A person has to be a bully, a roughneck, a hoodlum, a criminal."

SHE SAID, "I KNOW YOU, I'm no fool — wild horses could not make you get down with them on their dirty stinking rotten level — the gentiles and the government and the landlords."

SHE SAID, "Throwbacks, this is what I call them." She said, "I call them throwbacks — and you know what else?" She said, "I am not ashamed to say so to their face!"

SHE SAID, "DON'T THINK I don't know." She said, "I know." She said, "I promise you, I could give the whole stinking filthy rotten lousy gang of them lessons!"

SHE SAID, "YOU WANT TO HEAR something?" She said, "Sit yourself down for two seconds and I will tell you something." She said, "I had to be made of iron." She said, "This is what I had to be made of — of iron!"

WHEN MY MOTHER GOT OLD and sick, she said that when she was a little girl in an orphanage, that they gave out bread and jam in the orphanage, that they gave it out every day at three o'clock in the orphanage, and that she always ate hers the instant they had given it out to her, but that her big sister Helen didn't, that her big sister Helen saved the bread and jam that they had given out to her, and that her big sister Helen always put her share away somewhere for later, but that later, that when it was later and that when my mother got too hungry for her to wait for supper anymore, that her big sister Helen would go get the bread and jam she had been saving for later and that every day she did this, that every day my mother's big sister Helen would have saved her bread and jam for herself but that she would come running with it for her — a sister, a sister! — to give it to my mother.

WHEN MY MOTHER GOT OLDER and sicker, she said that sometimes the streetcar would come banging up the hill at the same time the clock was banging three o'clock, and that she thought that if you could hear both of them going outside and inside at once, the streetcar in the street and the clock in the orphanage, that then it was a secret sign to you that said that you were going to get a visit, that said to you getting off of the streetcar here comes one or the other of them, that getting off the streetcar your mother or your father was coming to you, but that there never, not once, was either one of them coming to her, not either her mother or her father, and that then when it wasn't, that then she would remember that her mother was crazy and that her father was dead.

MY MOTHER SAID, "This was why I had to have my big sister's bread and jam — because my mother was crazy and my father was dead."

MY MOTHER SAID, "Mine wasn't ever any good anymore because of being eaten and soaked with tears."

LISTEN TO ME — you know what my mother once told me when she thought she was going to pass away?

MY MOTHER SAID her big sister wasn't really the one who was the older one — this and that their father, that the man just went away.

SO MUCH for your brother Siam.

I WAS NEVER IN A PLACE LIKE THAT. I was an American boy when they had places like that. So everything I say is just me imagining things. Except for the names, of course. I know the names. I have a list. I have been making a list. You couldn't guess the names I already have on it. But I am not anywhere near finished yet. There is just no telling what it is going to take for me to get the list completed. Because the point of this is they only want you to hear about a handful. They only want you to hear about the same ones which they want you to hear about, which are the same ones which everybody all over the world has already heard about. Whereas there were secret ones. There were hundreds of secret ones. Even hundreds is a big understatement. Not even thousands is an exaggeration. You think thousands is an exaggeration? Because it's not! Because they had them everywhere. You couldn't guess where they had them. You would faint dead away if I told you where they had plenty of them. You would think what a liar I was if I told you, or was crazy or was worse.