|
a part of the short story:
the willy nilly
by lynn nguyen fister. may-july 2008.
Laura La. Laura La.
Decided to move out near the coast one day. Where the sand is milk fat with bone and porpoise. Water made from pelican and seamen and
starfish skin. Sky from
gelatin. Harboring heavy secrets
in the hollow, just how she likes it.
Barnacles attaching in the nooks of her knees. Her knees pucker for them.
So this is the story of Laura La. You see, what happened was this. Well, she started getting the willy nillies from the woods
and railroad in her backyard dontcha know. This thought of moving took some time though. You don’t just blink and go, you
know. First have to be sick of the
ticks and woods and trains of course.
And also fall blind in lovers like fell tree.
So
you see, after a year in the woods, the magnolia flowers would peer through her
windows and contort their faces vile, a grandiflora hue of plaque on
teeth. Trains rattled her house so
everything crickety-jumped off walls and broke into the littlest pieces of sand. Cutting her toes. Slicing her palms, when she
hand-walked. Sand here hardly milk
at all.
Nor honey. Nor peach or ripe.
Her home became a vial.
Filled brim with colored sand and blood, shaking at trains. All filthy filthy brown-ness. No more yellows and oranges…. Just mush
mouth mush slosh. To brim. Oh and
the pine trees with outstretched arms would try to finger her skin and hair in
desperation. Ugly raccoons in her sheets and brown recluse in her ears. Millions of mites crawling all
over her body. Their dumb red brown
stain on her fingertips. Biting
her in dreams.
Oh and she could take it no more she
said. Wept and screamed that she
could take it no more. Kicked and
screamed and threw her body to the ground and kicked. Fists a-pounding oak floors until Laura La’s fists were
pulpy cut. As beets between yo
teeth and yo webby fingers, juiced style.
As pulpy pulpiness pulpinitty pulp can be.
Tantrums like this you see.
And after all and all, we can
understand. We know how the woody
people are. Wearing their clothes
with holes from pine tree pokin’ fingers. Pine trees and vines overtaking home. They’d come in her house when she was
gone. Her house an empty eggshell no yolk or
white. Fissure cracked at corners. They’d come when she went out to catch
food for supper—geckos, beetles, and opossum. When gone, they’d enter so stealth so stealth and then
rearrange her tea boxes and peonies.
Rearrange toothpaste and foot cream. Not to mention the furniture. Beds and refrigerators switching places. Her quilt scissored into ratty shapes.
And then her spice shakers—her clove, her saffron, her cumin, cardomon, and
anise stars—stacked up precariously.
Right there on the cold porcelain of a toilet bowl. Not to mention her
underpants strewn about in the garden.
Underwear lanterns aglow, stringed about on the ginkgo. So unclean these acts.
She took all these intimidations as
violent threats to her personhood and who could blame her? Besides she didn’t
have a sense of humor… She doesn’t laugh you know, this all might’ve been just
a tease and whistle and tickle.
She sure didn’t think so.
But sure, this enough to make anyone
shed a tear. Stomp a foot. But this was Laura La you know. She’s a wimp really; this everybody
knows. Her thousand and hundreds
of tears streaked her freckled cheeks purple. Iodine stains turning to crust shaped amoebas, squirming on
her face. And growing tails? But they grew. These tears were tailed
and beastly, swimming in a Petri dish face pool.
And then the tails of these amoebas
receded and then sprouted again.
Into new growths…. twiggy like legs, spindly like mantis like rubber
malice snapping at joints.
These legs turned from shades of violent to apathy: now a fade of grey
blue cedar. And amoeba bodies,
once salt tears, forming wings.
Wings pied black and white.
Then manifesting birdy avocety faces. And such graceful necks. The kind o’ necks fashioned just right-o. There were a thousand four hundred and
fifty-six upturned beaks. Ebony and
slender.
A
thousand four hundred and fifty-six identical avocets perched on her face, so
heavy they were…. and they were scratching and tickling the freckles off her
face. Crossing their daddy daddy
long legs to look sexy and birdy and avocety she guessed.
Well, she didn’t mind having a birdy
face you know, and she liked the eyeballs affixed on her. Especially when she went out to
purchase milk and tapioca. Faces
at the grocer a-turning spastic, oscillating neurotic fans. All blowing wind. Her coin purse clasped in her palm in
her fist. Purse clasp impressing a
butterfly shape and kiss there.
Didn’t mind having a birdy face we
know, and you know now she liked the eyeballs affixed on her, even when she
went down to the Soaps ‘N Suds to wash her woolen stockings. The woolen stockings she’d never
wear. It is Florida, as you
know. These are no good to wear
most the year. But she did the
washing anyway for those eyes.
She walked proudly around with a cage
secured around her face, super-glued steadfast and statue-ing at her neck. Didn’t want the avocets to escape, even
though her face was far from being a proper home for things with wings. But she
supposed it was well-suited for her to have such an aviary on her face.
She’d look in the mirror and smile:
“My my I am a sight. My my.”
“We need to go to the coast. To the gulf,” the avocets told her oh so matter-a-factly
everyday, as she adjusted her cage face in the mirror. “That is where we need to go.”
“No no no no no no no no no
nooooooooooo,” she’d say back, cross-eyed, looking at one thousand four hundred
and fifty-six creatures sitting on her face and nose and cheeks. And a thousand four hundred and
fifty-five birds folded their wings cross-armed lookin’ all
sourpussly-like.
So then they did what any flock of
caged avocets could do when stuck to perch at Laura La’s throat and head—some
crowning her hair in a wreath-like-thing-like-contraption, a bird tiara I mean.
Yes and four hundred and fifty-five of them—from throat to head—agreed unanimously
that they had to conspire against Laura La. It was the four hundred and fifty-sixth bird that
disagreed. So the four hundred and
fifty-five of ‘em killed this one.
The one that obstinately refused to submit. This was only after he refused loads of cash money. He refused many other seductions as
well, too dirty to speak.
A
beak to the heart. At least it was quick.
Went limp jelly and the last heartbeat sound a loud shouted plea. And then silent. One thousand four hundred and
fifty-five avocets in a face cage.
Well, and one dead. The
ones left started devising their master plan. Operation Get Away From Laura La.
|