Jaimy Gordon - Bogeywoman

“Whatcha gonna punish her for?” Emily asked in genuine consternation. “For too big will,” Doctor Zuk replied, “she eats too much, she talks too much, she sings too much, she takes whole room and lives only little bit for somebody else.” “She wrote me that purty song,” Emily pointed out. Doctor Zuk smirked knowingly behind Emily, but only for my benefit. “At everything, everything she touches, Miss Bogeywoman is good,” Doctor Zuk agreed, “but she can be better . So what is right punishment for her?” Emily looked around for some kind of help, her grave little Joan of Arc eyes gone watery, almost scared now. “Make her sing her own ugly song,” I whispered in Emily’s ear. “Make her sing her own ugly song,” Emily repeated in relief. “Your song, please,” Doctor Zuk ordered. She was furious. Her eyebrows arched, her eyelids descended; she was imperially bored. “It’s ugly,” I warned em. “I hope is ugly, since you have steal show from Miss Peabody,” Doctor Zuk said, “now please to get it over.”

MY SONG

Bugs Baloney, who’s a phony?

The fat begins to fry

Nobody home but the telephony

Who’d call a goyle like I?

Doowop dwop dead

The blind eat many a fly

Every slave will have a slave

Why not you and I

It was ugly all right, hungry and repulsive. It was Emily puffed up in her yellow salve and white gauze like a cheese stick, and me trying to save her, and Zuk trying to save her from me, and me showing off and feeling rotten. It was me feeling like kissing somebody, but even more like throwing up.

Egbert caught the smack of gay disgust as only a musical genius could, and gave it a Leprosy Tango beat on the bed-panioforte, and where the eyeball goes into the highball, O oowooed inside the flag with the righteous spookitude of one in whom spookitude is innate. Emily blatted in the classic manner of a fabulous girlgoyle, somewhere in the general vicinity of the beat and just slightly off key. O, she was a Bug Motel all right from the first blat. Now I see it was always Emily who gave us our air of ninny self-confidence, of dumb innocence ploughing on, of infant hope already caught in the jaws of failure but bumping cheerfully over the molars, like a babe bouncing down thickly carpeted stairs.

Just then Dion showed up in the clubhouse and took over the sterilizer-top steel drum, energetically playing pianissimo (it had only one dynamic, pianissimo) so you could thank godzilla hardly hear him. It didn’t matter how he played, for with his black forelock leaping around like Mighty Mouse, he was as handsome as he thought he was, and while we stared at him, he stared entranced at his own spoonified face in the drumhead mirror.

Nobody home but the telephony

Who’d call a goyle like I?

Dwip dwop dwop dead

Boruch a tweet tweet tweet

ENTER THAT DIRTY STOOLIE, MARGARET KODERER

And this is where you came in. “Ursula?” “Margaret! Godzillas sake what took you so long and where the hump have you been. How’d you find me?” You smiled slyly. “This adroit professional showed me around the hospital and escorted me down here poisonally and even fixed the parking ticket on my pickup truck.” Behind you stood the Regicide in his custom-tapered white orderly’s trousers and three-button white jacket, which, pinkies genteelly extended, he was just now buttoning once, at the breastbone, as was the fashion.

Everybody was waiting to be introduced. O even came out of the flag and got in line. Reginald had a new Polaroid camera, ker -POP, ker -POP, ker -POP-a Great Day in the Bug Hospital. That’s why this famous picture exists. “Doctor Zuk and The Bug Motels: Egbert, Dion, Emily, O and me. May I present my older sister, Margaret Koderer?” “Hi.” “Pleased.” “How ya doin.” “Enchanté.” “Gr-r-r-r-r.” [“Cheese, O, you look all ballooned up, are you pregnant or sumpm?” “None of your beez-wax, what do you care.” “So whose is it?” “Keep your big nose out of it but suppose I tell you my hubby-to-be is here in this room and is a lowdown royal.” “Reggie! You don’t think the Regicide is gonna marry you?” “He better cause I gotta get better fast or they won’t let me keep my baby, I mean I been in the bughouse two years already.” “You wanna keep it? You call that better?” “Oink yourself, Ursie.”]

“So you are Margaret. I have heard very much about you and now is fascinating to see you with own eyes.” “Well don’t look too hard or my legend will crumble.”

How do you do it, Margaret? Even with O in the room, and Emily, and Doctor Zuk herself, the forbidden love of my life-even in that starry group, you were the center of attention, ker -POP, ker -POP, ker -POP. Well, for a minute, anyhow. That certain air of erotic abandon you have-godzilla knows it isn’t your good looks. “Pfui,” Doctor Zuk muttered, sniffing the air, peering around for the reason the whole clubhouse suddenly smelled like a horse barn. They eyed your bristly pigtails tied off with red vegetable-stand rubberbands, and your muck-stiff dungarees, and your yellow-green eyes afloat in big black eyeglasses like two frogs in two ponds. For maybe a minute they eyeballed you, and Reggie snapped shots of you, ker -POP, ker -POP, ker -POP. O thought about cutting your throat, no doubt, but she had to get better now.

Then you broke the spell: “Say, that tune was cooking, Ursula, you got genius like I never knew you had. And you look good, surprisingly good. I don’t know, I was gettin a message on the pineal channel like you’d landed at the end of the world and I’d better swoop in and get you outa there, but I’m beginning to see this joint must have its compensations. For example who woulda thought you had blond hair under all that grease? But long as I’m here and that barber chair is so handy, lemme give you a haircut.” You unrolled the Morning Telegraph you had in your pocket, fanned out sheets of it, produced scissors, waved your hand at the chair. And like a zombie I climbed in, ancient habit.

[“Who are these people?” you whispered in my ear, “I mean, can we talk here?” “Nothing too poisonal,” I hissed back, I mean how was I gonna tell you that I’d changed my mind about leaving?]

“Ahem,” you began, “well who would have picked this dump for the place where the birth of the blues O-riginated? But I’m only a sane person, you bughouse guys are so talented… [Ursula, who is that cute, well sorta cute, little girl wrapped in gauze and what in godzillas name happened to her?” you fizzed in my ear, snip snip snip.]

“Excuse me, we Bug Motels don’t presume to play the real negro blues on our bughouse instruments,” Egbert expounded, trying to collect any little stray crumbs of your attention, and I could see you registering his dimensions, thinking, The glasses are cute but what a squirt, I could wrap my legs around that sardine twice, “we play conk -fusion,” he continued, “which is to say, using whatever hospital stuff we can pinch to play the tinny tiny noises of our own unknown inner machinery, on the notion that love will get us out of here, er, are you doing anything tonight?” (I eyed O, who eyed me. I shrugged. Poisonally I was beginning to wonder what was with all these bugheads? Had every one of them scarfed some love gunk today like in A Midsummer Night’s Dream ?)

“Blues was just a manner of speaking,” you smiled serenely, as if this happened to you every day, which it did, snip snip, tinka tinka tinka, “and actually I’m only here to parlay privately with my sister, that is, if I can ever pry her out of this schubertiad, but thanks.”