Zsuzsi Gartner - Better Living Through Plastic Explosives

“This your ’hood?” came the voice again. It was Corinna D. But not the Corinna of a month ago. This Corinna, leading two small boys by the hand, was a stout, middle-aged woman, though still regal in bearing. The word matriarch sprang to mind, embroidered in cross-stitching, giving off a comforting vibe. The boys were fighting loudly over a Nintendo DS. Corinna wrenched it from them and dangled it above her head while the boys paddled at the air ineffectually.

“This is Cousin Kevin and this is Cousin Tristan,” she said, plopping the gaming console into an enormous handbag, and then holding each boy up by a wrist as if offering them for sale. “Boys, say hello to my teacher Ms. Alex Dinesen.” Alex was surprised Corinna actually knew her name. Her eyes looked warmer, even welcoming, the lids no longer on sentry duty. Or was that just the difference between seeing someone in daylight versus under fluorescent lights?

“You stopped coming to class,” Alex said, not sure what she expected from Corinna at this point. An apology? Absolution? The class, like so much of her life, was now mere historical fact, receding into a mist of could-haves and should-haves. She stroked her crepe-paper neck, a new habit, as she waited for Corinna to reply.

“I can give you some lotion for that,” Corinna said, digging around in her bag. She pulled out a small amber-coloured bottle. “You have to shake it real good and then massage it in before bed. It works so well you’d swear it was voodoo.” She laughed with her mouth open, teeth all there, shiny and white.

A candidate for mayor strode past, swinging a gold-tipped cane, his white spats gleaming, and tipped his bowler to Corinna. “The Widow D., looking mighty fine. Don’t forget to exercise your franchise.” Corinna waved him off with a “Shush now.” The cousins simultaneously whined, “We’re missing Prank Patrol /I have to pee!”

A group of Kamper Kids drifted by wearing nubbly oatmeal-shaded robes, like the deeply hooded monks in A Canticle for Leibowitz . You could no longer tell the girls from the boys. They stopped a few feet away and began to perform a pantomime. One of them bent low and put a hand to his (or her?) back, while another stood tall and raised arms above her (or his?) head as if wielding a mighty axe. Several knelt in prayer and a couple of others held out hands, palm over palm, beseechingly towards passersby. They froze in tableaux as a siren sliced across East 1st and someone yelled out of an overhead window, “ Armand, do not, I said- Armand!! ”

“I have been young, and now am old,” Corinna said quietly, “yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. Psalms, 37:25.”

From the Kamper Kids came a low murmuring that cohered into a chant: “ Nun puer fui siquidem senui et non vidi iustum derelictum neque semen eius quaerens panem .”

Or vice versa, thought Alex. But that was just her opinion.

For your final exam

Write an editorial piece on the following: Why did the reporter ask for the African assignment? Are witnessed atrocities more real than unwitnessed? (See: “If a tree falls in the forest…” Bishop George Berkeley, philosopher of immaterialism-or the metaphysics of “subjective idealism.”) How near the flames can you stand and not get burnt? Take your time before handing in your final draft. Take a lifetime.

N.B. Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

There’s a grinding sound, like the approach of a Howitzer tank, and that’s how Alex hears her husband before she sees him. As she teeters down the front steps, hauling herself painfully along by the railing, she sees Rufus, pants hanging below the rubberized waistband of his SpongeBob underwear, small bony hips like the horns of a kid goat, rocketing down the street on a skateboard, his feet huge, with their two sideways baby toes that had always made them seem so vulnerable despite their size, inside ratty sneakers, laces flapping.

“I knew a girl in Africa,” Rufus once said, back when they still lolled about in Sultan Blunda , “and she was the bravest girl in the world.”

Well, that was a fact.

I used to love you, she could shout. We used to be happy! Once, we were Swedes!

But even without the green plastic buds in his ears all he would hear was the clacking of her new dentures, large and loose in her mouth.

She could be saying, Kaxig! Minnen Fackla!

She could be saying, Tie your shoes, Besta!

GLOSSARY

(in order of appearance)-IKEA product in parenthesis:

Drömma to dream (Lycocel flat sheets)

Blinka to blink (pillow)

Sultan Blunda noble man & to shut your eyes (mattress)

Smila Blomma smiling flower (children’s wall lamp – light pink or white)

Fira celebrate (storage system – mini chest for CDs)

Slabang funny (alarm clock)

Skarpt sharp or sharply, suddenly (kitchen knife series and ceramic sharpener)

Duktig good, well-behaved (toy cookware)

Mammut mammoth, huge (children’s furniture series)

Kaxig cocky, overconfident (children’s pendant lamp – blue or white/green)

Minnen Fackla memories, reminiscences & a torch (children’s wall lamp with flickering “torch light” option)

Besta asshole, blockhead, doofus (TV storage unit)

Dear Miss Subramanium,

It may strike you as ridiculous (as it did my husband) that I could lose several nights’ sleep over the fact that Georgia is “not yet meeting expectations” in art. It’s only art, my husband told me. She’s only in grade one. But lose sleep I did, and in fact I am now in such a deeply caffeinated fugue state that I fear my letter to you will come across as intemperate. That is not my intent.

Please note that I am not suggesting Georgia is some kind of artistic genius or that she even has any particular talent. This is a defence of artistic expression, not of my daughter’s abilities. Or rather, a defence of art itself.

Your penchant for feathered dreamcatcher earrings and tight, sequined T-shirts bearing the names of various headbanger acts has not gone unnoticed among the parents (my husband in particular seems more inclined to pick up our daughter this year than when she was in Mrs. Tam’s kindergarten class-where, FYI, Georgia did manage to “fully meet expectations” in art). I take it you may think this gives you a somewhat “free-spirited” or “bohemian” air. But bohemian resides not merely in the costume, Miss Subramanium.

There was a time when I would gladly have sold my soul to curry favour with a particular curatorial demagogue, but I can tell you with certain authority that even back then I would never have stooped to impose strictures on others. A free-spirited woman does not make girls and boys form separate lines before they can enter the classroom, she does not restrict conversation during snack time, and she most certainly does not insist that when six-year-old children draw people or animals their feet MUST be touching the ground.

When my daughter informed me of this “rule,” despite the tears of frustration puckering her drawing of our late cat, O’Keeffe, I couldn’t suppress a snort. (Not an attractive habit, I admit, and one I’m attempting to rein in after a particularly ill-timed one at the head table of my husband’s annual Conservative Party fundraiser-I blamed the dill sprig on the poached salmon.) “I guess she’s never heard of Chagall,” I said to Georgia, trying to sound offhand, as I’m well aware that it’s considered verboten to undermine a teacher’s authority. Georgia, ever curious, wanted to know more, so I hauled out my dusty Gardner’s Art Through the Ages , only to find that the small black-and-white photograph of The Crucifixion did little to convey the intensity of vision and colour and the infectious joie de vivre of Chagall’s work. The Internet proved a more satisfying resource, as it frequently does these days.