10 MWE

Paralysis, death, home, what people live with, the violence that is in us, flight from all concerns, a piece of whistling in the long-toothed dark

When I was younger, I had tried to bite off someone's finger, and I had done great damage. My teeth are not what anyone would call small, though they are not overly large either. I bit as hard as I could. I did great damage to that finger. It nearly came off. It nearly came off my sister. I bit her finger when I was young. She was even younger. That I did this surprised my mother. My mother had once been beautiful, but now she was not. I once had to share a room in an attic with one of my mother's cousins. He assured me that my mother had once been beautiful and that he, too--a close relation of hers even--had wanted to be with her. He assured me this as I waited for him to fall asleep. He told me of his own beautiful wife and children. As he told me this, I waited for him to go to sleep because I wanted to do something awful to him. Or to his car. Or to his children, who were far away. In some other state. When he spoke with me, it had been a long time since I had bitten my sister's finger. I had nearly taken her finger off with what was in my mouth. What was in my mouth at the time? Teeth. But not all of them. I had some of them missing. My teeth are most likely not as strong now as they were. For years, I have clenched and ground my teeth. I did not know that I was doing damage to myself. I never woke with bits of my teeth in my mouth, so I must have always swallowed them before I woke up. I would have dreams about dogs. They were all biting my arms. What they did did not hurt me, but, now, I have a feeling that it got me to clench my teeth in my sleep. These dogs--many of them--biting my arms. It was later that I took to poisoning whatever dogs I noticed penned on my walk home. I would buy a sausage and put dark chocolate in it. I would put Tylenol in it. I would put small silver watch batteries in and feed these to whatever dogs I saw on my walk home. The dogs always ate the whole sausage, and I never stayed around long enough to be spotted. I considered putting fish hooks in a sausage. Nearly bit off my sister's finger. Wanted to do something horrible to my mother's cousin in his sleep. Killed dogs. Imagined myself being speared.

This cousin saw my aunts rub my grandmother's green ashes on themselves. We had been sitting in the kitchen, joking about what we would do with her. We had said that we'd get over one hundred small film canisters. We'd have the grandchildren all decorate the canisters with puffy paints and glitter. Next, we'd put a spoonful of her dark green ashes in all the canisters. We'd have all the funeral guests take them. We'd encourage them to travel and, wherever they went, leave a little bit of her. We liked the idea of this, but we also joked about it. We were trying to show that we could joke about all this. But then my aunts came into the kitchen rubbing my grandmother's green ashes on the faces and necks. They came up behind me and rubbed them on me. My mother rolled off her chair and onto the floor. I had never seen her on the floor. I had always wondered if she had had anything to do with counterfeiting. I knew she didn't go in for the big bills, but I wondered if she counterfeited quarters and dimes. I saw a machine in her bedroom that could have done such a thing. She was killed by method. I was far away when she was killed. She was killed by one of her cousins--one who had once thought her beautiful but who had since gone on to travel too much and rent cars too good for his borrowing. He knew too much about ferns and what his children were doing. He knew a little too much about his children's minds. He knew how they performed in too many ways. He mostly kept track of how they performed abstract things. He knew nothing about music or history. He knew nothing of even what most newspaper readers would know. He had the gall to ask the neighbor if he could smoke on his property. We never saw him. We didn't see him later. He took on a big project--the paving of some ground that was very hilly. He should not have taken on such a thing, but he wanted to impress us. My mother on the floor. My aunts covered with the ashes of my grandmother. My uncle spent two days cleaning a trailer he'd sell for fifty dollars. I spent most of one day hiding ice cream. I bought gallons of the cheapest stuff I could find. I found a scoop in the wash. I walked around the house with a gallon of ice cream and would leave scoops in the luggage of my family. I opened my grandmother's files and left in scoops. I went into her closet and left what I wanted. I left flavors. I realized I had tasted rotten milk many times in my life but that I had never tasted rotten ice cream. I had never tasted it gone bad. I looked for any bit of sky. I looked for anything to clean. I made a woodpile once, undid it, and made it again.

Her name was Mordo, and at least she knew that caffeine is a diuretic. She wanted to be a wet nurse. First, she put an ad up in the supermarket--by where everyone selects a cart. Then, because she got no answer, she put an ad in the newspaper for a wet nurse. She wanted to be one. Though she had never ridden a motorcycle in the snow, Mordo knew that to make a good meal, every now and then, you should add some sort of nut. She rode her motorcycle in the snow, and she did not care if a member of the police would pull her over. Mordo had never flattered herself in front of anyone, but she could have. She flattered herself in her room so that she would know what it's like to be private. She knew how to get to the roof of her house. She knew how to get under the basement. She knew there was a room under her basement. Mordo drank coffee. Mordo had a scepter she held in her room. None of her dresses were clean at times, but that was fine at those times because she would wear her father's slacks. All she had to do was take a pair of his slacks and put them on. She would wear them with suspenders she had won at the fair. Mordo didn't cook with butter. She had to make a path that led from the back of the property to the fount. It was a fount that had been installed before any one of the not too serious holidays. He uncle was a sponger. Her mother was the only one who knew which tree branch to pull. Mordo did not want to go into the river because, earlier that day, she had seen a horse in it. She had walked on the side of the road for an hour before a motorcycle passed by. She began to try to find out if other house had rooms below their basements. And which houses had a room above the attic? She wanted to be a seabird. She wanted to be on the shore. She wanted to see sand between pieces of wood. On the last trip she had taken, she had had to be the navigator and the one who kept track of the money. Her grandmother had done all the driving and all the speaking in other languages. Mordo's sister's only job was to sit in the back and hold the playing cards. She was the unhappiest of all them. She had egg on her lip. She did not see the animals Mordo sighted. She did not get to sleep in the room that had the desk with the secret compartments.