Prickly Heat

When the girl came back home to bury her mother that summer, Roger knew there would be trouble. In some low-lying part of his brain, he had always dreaded the moment he would let himself fall.
He’d tried to ignore the changes in the girl. Whenever she’d sidle up to him, he’d try not to smell the new sharpness inside her familiar fragrance. He’d tuck his mind into an innocent white place whenever she whispered in his ear, “Want some lemonade, Mr. Wilson?” her breath tickling the hairs along his neck. He’d imagine how her calves must look, standing on tiptoe like that. Her voice had a touch of whiskey in it when she’d hand him the sweating glass and say “This might cool you off some.”
The girl vandalized his senses with her too- wise eyes. Nights, when he ran his fingers over his wife, he wondered how much the girl could see or hear of him through the open window. He liked to think it was her harsh breathing he heard on the breeze, her desire ruffling the gauze curtains.
Since Jean couldn’t read his mind, things remained pretty calm between them. They didn’t get in each other’s way, and whatever she cooked him he ate, no complaints. After dinner they would take cold drinks out back and watch their daughter play badminton with the girl.
The girl would reach up, straining for the shuttlecock, and flash a crescent of breast. She wore white shorts a size too small. Roger hid his need behind dark glasses, watching the girls until the fireflies came out. He watched until they were just rushing shadows.
One night, Roger rolled a gin-soaked ice cube around in his mouth and said to Jean, trying for some small talk, “Ever notice how this heat sucks its own self dry, as soon as it’s done sucking up every other damn thing?” Jean’s eyebrows shot up quizzically. “It’s called evaporation”, she drawled. Roger turned his chair away. “Don’t you think I know that?” he snarled. It was becoming harder and harder to have any kind of conversation with his wife.
There was a time when my life began the minute I came home to her, Roger thought. He remembered the way he used to rub up against her from behind without a word. She’d be stirring something at the stove, maybe humming a little. He’d nuzzle her salty neck and palm her breasts like puppies. She’d lose the rhythm of her stirring and Roger would whisper “Tell me a secret.” She always had something to say.
Now he was the one who had secrets to keep. He began to imagine them leaking out of his dreams like sorrow, and he worried about that. He obsessed about the girl day and night, and barely noticed the cold spot like a ghost that had sprung up between Jean and him.
Jean would often get up in the middle of the night to shut the window. Probably it’s just the crickets, or else the rain slanting in, Roger would think sleepily. Maybe she’s got her own secrets, something that explains the bags under her eyes and makes the worry lines come, new ones every day now.

There were two places in the house that Roger claimed: the old green La-z- Boy by the fireplace in the living room, and the basement. As the summer wore on, the living room seemed too public for him to drink and fantasize in. The good thing about that room was the curtained window. All Roger had to do was push aside a fistful of fabric and there he was in a waking wet dream: every week the girl mowed her yard with one of the old push-mowers, and she did her job dressed in bikini tops and cut-off jeans. Her dark ponytail switched behind her like a question mark. Roger wished she would leave off the dark glasses once in a while so he could get a clue. Did she know he was watching? Did she like it?
Most nights, Roger was too buzzed to sleep. Besides, he didn’t trust himself to sleep beside his wife anymore. A couple of times she’d almost caught him: whaddya thinking? she’d whispered once or twice, just as he’d begun to drift off. He’d felt a chill along the knuckles of his spine and his eyes flew open; relief flooded his body when he realized that he had not answered her question in words. There was no proof, not this time.
So he began to spend more time in the basement. He had an old chair down there with beer stains and tears in the fabric that reminded him of lost freedom. Boy, if this chair could talk, he thought, patting the grease stain his head had made so long ago, when he had more hair.
He spent hours rummaging in the boxes of Christmas decorations, in his daughter’s old school projects, fooling with discarded appliances. Maybe I’ll fix this old radio or that broken TV, he thought. If I can find my tools, that is. If I’m not too drunk to see.

Jean never said a word about all the time Roger spent in the basement. Not a single look of reproach, nothing. It wasn’t the first time he had withdrawn from her, and she had learned to tough it out, knowing these periods would end, usually without warning. On the other hand, she didn’t wait up for him anymore, and she made sure she was asleep by the time he stumbled into bed. She kept the door shut tight, let him feel like an intruder whenever he let himself in.
Once in a while Jean approached him, as if on a dare. Her eyes would be all hard glitter, with no warmth, only a hunger in them. She stalked him, took him in pursuit of her own pleasure. When she licked his face and chest, Roger imagined she could taste the booze in his sweat and that she liked it. A man needs a drinking buddy, he thought. We used to have that much in common, anyway.
He kept making it worse. Like the one night when Jean mentioned their daughter would be spending the night with the girl. She said it like an invitation. They could make love right there in the living room. Roger could unfasten the long tease of buttons down the front of her dress, excite all the little hairs of her still luminous skin, make her say I love you until he believed those words were coming from his own mouth.
But on this particular night, Roger fumbled the ball. He said, “What? No badminton?” face crumpling in disappointment Jean would have had to be blind to miss.
There was no turning back, no place to go but to the basement. He had tried to call his words back, but the more he talked the worse it sounded. He took a chance, touched his wife; she swatted his hand away as if he were a bug. She stomped off to bed, and Roger knew that this time she would lock the door.

Roger always liked a burned bridge. Too much choice bothered him, made him feel guilty. You can get used to anything, he told himself. So the dingy basement with its bare bulb dangling over the beat-down chair suddenly looked comfortable and homey. He dragged a heavy box to one side of his chair, set down a pair of binoculars that must have belonged to his daughter on its surface. He tested it for stability, then carefully placed his old harmonica alongside it. There, he thought. All set. To hell with her.
Roger sat there for who knows how long. He watched the light cast odd shapes on the whitewashed walls, riveted as if he had been in a movie theater. He believed he’d mastered the art of being barely there. He tried to remember an old saying, something about all the bad stuff in the world being caused by man’s inability to stay quietly in a room by himself. But he couldn’t remember how it went exactly, and he knew very well how the gist of a thing was never really good enough.
The outside world settled itself down for the night. The crickets’ serenaded birds grown silent. Cars surged into driveways, doors slammed their goodnights, human voices echoed and decayed in the distance. The girls should be getting in about now, Roger thought. I better check on them.
He grabbed his binoculars and walked to the window unsteadily. He noticed how quiet he was trying to be, and it made him laugh. He cleaned the lenses on his shirt tail and brought the girl’s bedroom into focus. Jeeze, it’s like looking up her skirt or something, he thought. It made him whistle low in his throat, the sight of the girl on her frilly bedspread, extending her dancer’s leg, painting her toenails red. When the girl ran her hand over her leg as if it didn’t belong to her, Roger’s gut contracted. He squinted hard; watched how her dark hair surrounded her like smoke, how her smile dazzled the soft light. He watched until his eyes burned and his hands shook. I could use a drink, he thought.
He held his glass in one hand; fooled with his harmonica with the other. He weighed the glass against the instrument, wondered which would better push down the urge to stand under the window all night, longing for whatever that girl represented.
What about some old songs -- make out music? he suggested to himself. He tried a few tunes but only remembered the openings. That’s what I’m good at, Roger thought, beginnings. I get bogged down in the hot dry middle of things.
He surprised himself over the next few days --he got pretty good on the harmonica pretty quick. I thought this would be just one more thing to screw up, he thought. She can probably hear me over there, especially with the door wide open. Wonder how she likes it.
Some nights, when he failed to sink into the stupor that passed for sleep, Roger would take his harmonica out to the backyard and sit by the badminton net. There’d be a weak breeze and the sleepy chirping of a few birds irritated by headlights passing through. Sometimes when Roger began to play a little tune, a bird would answer back.
On one such sleepless, sultry night, Roger heard a car with a bad muffler drive up next door. Probably that greasy little bastard the girl calls her boyfriend, he thought. He strained to see over the hedge that separated the two properties; he had tucked his harmonica into his back pocket like a surprise for later. And then he caught a glimpse of the girl, a red shoe dangling off her painted toes and the other foot pressed hard against the dashboard.
The girl’s giggles infuriated Roger--with his hands fisted at his sides, the vein in his temple throbbing dangerously, he stood there motionless, unable to move. Suddenly there was a threatening silence, the kind that comes just before lightning strikes. By the time the girl’s angry cry had penetrated Roger’s brain, the door had been slammed and the boyfriend was burning rubber. Roger positioned himself under the girl’s window; he would be able to tell how upset she was as soon as she turned on her light.
But the light didn’t come on, and Roger stayed rooted to the spot like some clueless Romeo. When he smelled cigarette smoke, he couldn’t identify its source. The girl’s voice, “Whatcha doin’, Mr. Wilson?” startled him. She stepped off the porch and showed herself in the moonlight.
Grateful for the dark, Roger could feel the flush start up in his face. He stammered a little as he tried to make a believable answer, something that would let him hang on to his dignity. “I was just looking at the stars when I heard you get in. Did something happen-?” She shuffled a step closer to him and replied, “Oh, you know-- it’s always the same with guys. They only want the one thing.” She sighed, scowled at her bare feet for a moment before brightening. “Want a ciggie? I’m supposed to quit so you gotta promise not to tell.”
She held out her smokes to Roger. Maybe she’ll light it for me, he found himself thinking. Maybe touch my hand. “Who would I tell?” he said softly.
They smoked for a few minutes while Roger’s brain raced back and forth over an incoherent plan. Finally he blurted out, “Want to have a drink with me?” and she rewarded him with her wide-mouthed smile and a nod. Roger happily opened the door to his ‘apartment’ and mumbled, “Now you have to promise not to tell.”
The girl gushed, “Could this place be any cooler? You got all your necessaries and none of your aggravations.” Roger handed her a glass with a little gin in it. He watched her lap at the liquid like a cat: pink tongue tipped in the glass, unblinking eyes watching him as he watched her. “Where shall I sit?” she asked after a long moment.
Roger took a chance. He sank down into the only chair in the room and patted his knee. The girl smiled as she wiggled herself into position. “ This why you only got one chair?” she murmured into his ear. Each sipped at their drink; neither spoke. Roger held the girl close and felt her snuggle in, sighing. It was his perfect, golden moment and if Jean had busted him right there and then, no punishment could have cancelled out the pleasure of it.
“Hey, these are just like mine,” the girl said, picking up the binoculars from the box beside the chair. She giggled and said, “Wanta know a secret, Mr. Wilson?” Roger nodded, and the girl said, “I can see into your bedroom with these babies,” thrilling him.
He managed to say, “See anything interesting?” while his fingers spread against her ribcage, lightly grazing one breast. She didn’t seem to mind. She smiled, but she said nothing. Roger’s heart rose high in his chest--she must be able to hear this, it’s so loud, he thought. He carefully rubbed her arm and said in a hoarse whisper, “Maybe you could call me Roger, since you know all about me.”
“Oh no, I could never do that,” the girl exclaimed. “ Well, I could call you Uncle, I guess.” She saw his face fall, and she slid off his lap quickly with a little smirk. “Well, I better go get some beauty sleep. Thanks for keeping me company, Mr. Wilson.” She yanked at her shorts unselfconsciously and, not expecting him to see her to the door, let herself out.
Roger sat there paralyzed, transfixed. He watched a spider spinning its web; he tried to learn the lesson, apply it to his own life somehow. But thinking things through had never really worked for Roger. Life went better when he took it for granted a little. So he picked up his harmonica and played until the cool pink dawn grew gold and warm. He played as the light bounced off the insulation and turned the room silver.
When he heard Jean’s footfalls above his head, for the first time in a long while he remembered what he liked about her. Memories that had been lodged in his brain like a metal plate loosened now, surfacing as if they were lyrics. When she appeared before him he had the sensation of being rescued.
Jean held out his favorite old cardigan to him. “Felt a chill in the air this morning,” she said, her voice steely and business-like. “ Think we beat the heat wave?” He saw the hard question in her eyes so he took a chance. He held out his hand to her, let her lead him up the steps. Behind them, the basement filled with morning light; it shimmered like a mirage.

-first published in Eclectica

Bad Blood

BAD BLOOD

"Kumar hates all business" declares the beautiful Jaya. We are in my kitchen, heads bowed over a bowl of okra. It's the second day of my sister-in-law's first visit. She and her husband have come so far after so long to see me for themselves: the blonde American who waylaid their favorite son on his way back to India. Oh, what plans they'd all made for him and his shiny new credentials! Now, like a cheated-on spouse, they want to know what went wrong. They need details.
Kumar,
Hope your work at the college goes well. What new results you have got from your theorems? Please send $750 by bank draft made over to Hubby for a new scooter only. Waiting list is 5 years. What is your programme this side? When you come bring at your convenience only: dozen pair of socks, shirts and trousers for your nephews and Hubby, electric mixer for baking cakes occasionally, slippers for mother's cold feet, perfume bottles, cassettes of music (western is ok), also empty cassettes. Also remember to send congrats to our junior brother and bride. They will explain their wedding gift requirements. Marriage is important step for all Indians!
Affectionately,
Jaya
"Of course Kumar doesn't hate all business-that would be absurd!" I argue delicately. "Business is not his field, however, science is. You've seen how it takes up all his time. But I know how proud you must be of him-- to have made such a success of himself, all by himself in a strange land!" I add mischievously. Jaya's lip stretches out flat, straight and stoic, just like her brother's when he doesn't want to concede a point. I check off all that's familiar in her face, and for a moment I wonder what it might be liketo touch her.
Kumar,
My daughter has married with Krishna. We have no news from you regarding same, so must assume your invitation became lost in transit. I have enclosed the boy's CV, and I charge you to cooperate in his business plan that side. This is of grave importance! It is a matter of prestige!
Afftly,
Yogesh
" All Kumar does is work, work, work, it seems'' says my sister in law's husband, startling me. "What about retirement? It's not too soon to think!" Of course he would say that. He's a strong, healthy 58 year old, who is spending his own ridiculously early retirement going from one religious festival to another; he wants the whole world to join him, I guess, except whoever he's secretly chosen to take care of him. I suspect he'll have to change his plans about all that, now that his son will be taking on a wife who has no family wealth to spread around. Maybe that's why the first words out of his mouth to Kumar were, "Got any American dollars?"
Bet he was a pickpocket in a previous life.
Well, I can't just ignore the old boy. I'll have to respond to whatever drops out of his mouth as if it's a real conversation: "My husband certainly does work hard," I say, "but we manage to have our fun". Four black eyes quiz me. I think they're waiting for me to make a cultural faux-pas, something they can gossip about later. I plow ahead: "Our last dinner party was given to honor the science counselor of India. I prepared about a dozen south Indian dishes; later, I played the piano for them." For a long moment there is no sound but the methodical chopping of the doomed
okra. Then Jaya sighs tragically and says, "These are the things we never hear
about."
Silence thickens the air, makes it electric as if we were expecting a storm.
But the moment passes; the okra gets slammed into the fridge, and Jaya speaks, all business now: ''I will make for my son masala dosa tonight.Kumar will come early? We need supplies from the Indian grocery.'' She tries a tone she hasn't tried before, part schoolmarm, part insinuation. I wonder how many times she has been refused anything in her life, anything atall. She probably keeps a record.
''Kumar is at work, you realize. I never interrupt him there. In fifteen years, there's never been an emergency serious enough for me to call him away early. You wouldn't want me to break my record now, would you?''I know I'm smiling; I can feel my mouth turn up at each corner. Jaya stares at me blackly; we wait to see who will blink first. "We could take a cab to the store this afternoon,'' I finally offer in as nonchalant a way as I can.Oh boy, do I hate to lose!
"As you wish," Jaya replies. She gathers up her sari and regally ascends the stairs. She'll dress her husband and together they'll whisper their new crop of complaints against me in relative privacy.
Our cabbie, as luck will have it, is Indian. He and his two countrymen talk past me in a language that sounds like gravel in their mouths. When we reach our destination, there is an awkward moment before I realize I'm holding things up; they're waiting for me to pay the fare.
''That driver claims to have a brother who is medical doctor in this country!'' Jaya informs me in a stage-whisper, after we've shut the door.
" Yeah, so?" I wonder.
She looks at me incredulously and explains it all: "He is lying! No brother who is so well-settled would allow his own blood to do such lowly work! I cannot believe! Correct?"
Dear Kumar,
My son arrived last month. Mother and child are both fine. Recent events have no bearing on my plans to come to USA. Be advised keep up all effort on my behalf full strength! If you still love your brother you will pull necessary string for admission to your university. Since already you have tenure and promotion, it will be easy to make a place for me. Please pay all application fees as conversion rates rupees to dollars is unfavorable. Also, now is time to think about marriage, or else you will be a bald, lonely professor emeritus without family ties. You are well-qualified for finding a suitable bride. Send me your requirements and leave all details to us.
Affly,
Anil
The grocer has small cruel eyes and an avid mouth. He has a decision to make: which of us is the customer, which of us will best respond to his oily brand of subservience? Jaya tilts her perfect nose in the air, sniffs in an ambiguous way. Yes, my good man, I think, she's the logical choice. I loiter at the counter looking over the Hindi-movie music tapes and batting flies away from the trays of sweets. Nothing more is required of me until it's time to pay the piper.
As I hand over the crisp American bills, the grocer's attention is suddenly all mine. He bends toward me, close enough for me to catch his aroma of leftover curry, sweat, and bay-rum toilet water. "When you return home today, your sister-in-law will instruct you to make proper dosa for your husband!" he whispers as he fondles my money.
"Too bad he'd rather have a pizza!" I loudly whisper back.
Kumar,
Hope this finds you in good health. Mother had asthma last month, but is a little stronger now. Bangalore is too cold for her still. Please send leg tights of the same type as before, but try another color, just for change. Your nephew passed recent exams with 85 in arithmetic and 80 in language. Not so good marks for us. He will have to do better. You have given no further news of your marriage. Surely there is a child by now? I hope you will not use this marriage as excuse to postpone your trip this side. You owe it to Mother and your real family to visit at least a few weeks every year atleast. Do not forget we are your blood, and you will always be Indian!
Jaya
When we arrive back home, Jaya’s husband resumes his perch at the kitchen table,
armed with today's catalogues. "Watch me carefully" orders my sister-in-law.She begins the ritual of love and nurturing, the all-important task of bringing these simple sour-dough pancakes before her family with exquisite concentration. Of all her abilities and talents, this is what she's taught her relatives to value most in her. I watch her soak and grind and stir, completely absorbed in a task she's repeated hundreds of times. I watch helplessly, as a single dark strand of hair escapes her braid and a bead of perspiration forms on her upper lip. I could help her here, let her in on some shortcuts I learned by myself, by trial and error, but nobody here believes I can cook in the Indian idiom. I am an extra in my own kitchen.
Dear Mama and Mami,
Hope this finds you both well. I am sorry to have not written sooner to thank Uncle for all his help in making my U.S. study possible. Please ignore requests for further application fees, references etc. as I am coming August 10 to your house only. I will stay one week then I will travel to my friend's apartment in Amherst. I can stay with him until I have secured my own apartment. Uncle, you will be my only blood-tie in U.S. and Mother requires me to think of you as I would a Father. I will take notice of all advice.
Love,
Ram
p.s.: I need you to advance me the price of an auto, second-hand is O.K.
"I bet you are looking forward to visiting with Ram tonight," I say to
Jaya, as we mix the dhal with rice flour.
"Correct, correct," she responds absently. She's worried that time is running out both for tonight's dinner and her tenure as the most important woman in her son's life. She sighs and says: "This visit is the final one we share with Ram only, marriage will change --" She waves the spatula around in an enormous and aimless gesture. Suddenly she looks every hour of her age.
"But you approve of this bride, don't you?" I ask ingenuously.
"Her family is good," Jaya says slowly. Her voice is lukewarm, one big shrug. "Also the important thing is horoscopes match exactly, you cannot just discount astrology you know".
Sure I can, I think, but now there is no more time for our pointless arguments. The doorbell's rung and Ram the virgin bridegroom falls into our three pairs of waiting arms.
This kid likes me; he calls me Aunty and touches me at the slightest provocation. I notice his parents hate our easy familiarity. Jaya shuttles between kitchen and couch like a nervous cat. "Where's Kumar?" she keeps asking me. "We are almost ready for Dosa!" She yanks her head in the direction of the phone; I allow a vaguely puzzled expression to settle over my features.
"So, talked to your fiancee lately?" I ask the boy wonder.
"Oh yes Aunty, every week I talk. I am on Cloud Nine!"
"So what can you tell me about the girl? So far all you have said is her nose is too big, and she is not allowed to wear high heels when she is with you in public."
"Hmm, well she meets most of my requirements for marriage," he says, a wariness creeping into his voice.
"Almost?" I pounce on him. I recall a long-ago sorority house now: the little girls clasping their bridal magazines, fantasizing their perfect mates out loud to each other, as if that could materialize them.
"Well, I insist she learn to speak Kannada," the boy tries for a strict tone.
"And I don't like her accent when she speaks Telugu, but I will soon put a stop to that!" He throws back his head and laughs. His teeth are very white.
Dear Kumar,
Trust this finds you in good health. There is no point asking after your work and your programme for next visit as your answers always the same. I am advised that it is best to own a fire-arm in Hyderabad. I have hence obtained a license for a revolver. I will be happy if you will gift me a 0.32 bore Smith & Wesson from USA. The cost is about $200 and also include an affidavit saying you are staying abroad for more than ten years. Reply to all parts immediately.
Affly,
Thumbi
In the morning we say an elaborate good-bye. I give Jaya gold earrings in the shape of the Pyramids ("American gold, only 14 carats," I overhear her mutter). I make ritual false promises-- to buy a pressure cooker (“for Kumar's sake”) and to write ("A few lines to everyone once month is good. Let Kumar add greetings to everyone at the end").
We divide the photos from last night. I notice the boy remembered to suck in
his stomach in all but one of them.
Now, finally, Jaya steps off the porch flanked by her men. The wind carries her voice back to me as she moves away, "Even as a child Kumar held a book in his hands." Her sari embroidered with gold thread by her blue-eyed grandmother, glints in the sun.
She could have told me more, that time when we had the chance.

Healing Louise

As she grew up, Mama, ice cream and the idea of nursing school were enough to keep Louise from falling off the edge of the cliff in her mind. By the time she graduated and held her starched white cap in her hands, she believed she was more than a big round top spinning alone in the universe. That was partly because of Norm.

Norm was the only male nursing student in the class and the only one who would let Louise sit with him at lunch. She could talk, so long as he didn’t have to answer. One day Louise thought up something that might make him talk back. “I want to curl up in some big old bed with you, Norm,” she said. He stared at her, knocked over his chair, still speechless.

When the twins were born exactly nine months later, Louise did not tell Norm. “Because they’re mainly mine,” she reasoned. “I bet Norm couldn’t even tell them apart.”

At first, the babies slept all the time and Louise kept right on working her new job at the hospital.Soon, she needed a looser schedule. The babies needed more and more attention and Mama was getting too old to baby-sit all day long. She was willing to, but Louise worried that she might start to do it wrong. Who really took care of things when I was growing up? She scratched her head, trying to make the bad memories pop out.

The emergency room always dazzled Louise with its white walls. She liked the way the disinfectant pinched her nose, and the nurses looked like angels, white from halo hats to soundless shoes. “ That’s what I want to be when I grow up,” Louise would tell her little wounded birds. “A nurse who lives at the hospital and saves everyone all the time."

Louise had had many jobs when she was little. She nursed neighborhood birds back to health or to their inevitable deaths, and she helped Papa, with Mama spilling out of his arms, get to the hospital in time. Staring from the depths of the clanging old car, she’d nudge Papa to turn, or else to wake up. She’d check on Mama, moaning in the back seat under the tattered black raincoat. Moans sounded bad, but were actually good—it meant Mama was alive enough to be fixed one more time.”

Now she was grown, with grown –up problems. Louise looked from her mother to her daughters. “The twins need their own Mommy,” she decided. The next day, she
signed up to be a home health care worker and immediately put on her nurse’s uniform,in case someone needed her right away. “Nobody thinks that’s weird, now do they?” she asked her tiny girls. They seemed to agree, in a commotion of gurgles.

Her first assignment had her worried. Her palms sweated slippery as she knocked on the patient’s door. “Come,” mumbled a weak voice. Louise pushed the door open and saw one Mrs. Dodge lying like a beige mushroom in the vast field of her frilly bed. Her ashen hair was strewn around her pillow and her lips tightened into a severe line at the nurse’s approach. Maybe she’d let her closer, and maybe she wouldn’t.

Louise arranged herself on the other side of the bed;it was the only way for someone so large to reach the patient.A strand of hair kept escaping her cap and dangled into her eyes. Every time she pushed it back, the bed bounced and the patient moaned.

On the way home that night, Louise picked up a bucket fried chicken.“I deserve a treat for putting up with that ungrateful old woman,” she told herself. She thought of her old job and bit into something with give.

After Papa left them flat, there had been no more trips to the hospital. Louise felt kind of homesick about it. She had to figure out how to get back to the bandages, the disinfectant, the nurses. Maybe if she saved her lunch money for bus fare, she could take the bus to the hospital after school.

It took some doing. Louise starved through each lunch hour,watching girls in pastel angora shovel red Jell-O and cocktail weenies into their lip-sticky mouths. Louise stared into her glass of water as if something interesting was floating in it and eavesdropped on their conversations. Listening to them learning to become cruel distracted her from hunger pains.

Today’s fried chicken was to make up for the hunger of those days. Louise decided not to feel guilty, but it took willpower.

Each time she got an assignment, Louise got as excited. She panted and shook,and it took forever to get her uniform washed, starched and pressed. But by the time she got to the patient’s bedside, a big sweat stain had appeared, traveling down her back and spreading under her armpits. The lace hanky that Louise kept tucked into her rolled up sleeve never did a damn thing.

One day the supervisor summoned Louise to the office. “Must be about my next case,” she thought as she locked the car and brushed crumbs of an Egg McMuffin from her skirt. The supervisor was someone Louise had never met. She imagined someone thin and French-twisted.

Louise entered the office, resisted the urge to salute.“You’re fired,” said the
supervisor.When Louise made no answer, the other woman said,“We’ve had complaints.” More silence from Louise; an exasperated sigh from the boss. “They say you insult them. They say you have no tact. Like the paraplegic for whom you advised suicide.” The supervisor pointed to the exit.

Once in her car, Louise broke down and cried. She cried at the drive-through at
Mickey D’s, at Burger King, at Taco Bell’s. She cried as she ate one thing and as she unwrapped something else. By the time she pulled into her driveway, her car looked like a landfill and she had a bad case of the hiccups.

The nostalgia she felt for nursing soured on the spot. All that time and trouble!
She thought of her junior high days, how she shot out of school day after day, plastered herself against the bus window, waiting for the first glimpse of the
hospital. She could have been home having after-school cookies and milk with Mama!
Instead, she flung herself against the door marked EMERGENCY a hundred times,
skipped along the dingy green corridor to the cafeteria where everything was perfect.

First thing, Louise would say to the cafeteria lunch-lady, “I’ll take the chocolate
cake, please.” Once, as the cashier opened her mouth to speak or swear, another
woman said, “ I know this child. I’ll pay for her cake.” It was one of the nurses who had fixed Mama. “Your mother’s hurt again?” the woman scowled.
“No, she’s fine,” Louise stammered. The nurse’s eyebrows shot up like punctuation.
“Well?” she prompted the girl.
“I just missed the hospital, that’s all,” said Louise. “I want to be a nurse when I
grow up.”
The woman sighed like a punctured tire. “What-- no ballerina fantasies?” She barked out a mean laugh that had confused Louise until right this moment.

Just when it seemed Louise was home again for good, she said to her girls,“Mommy has to go find us money.”
“Why?” they asked as they jumped up and down on the bed.
“We need food,” said their mother.
“We have food,” they said. “Ding Dongs, Oreos, Twinkies.”

Nobody would hire Louise. “You’re finished in this town,” she told her mirror
after another fruitless job hunt. She pulled off her cap and crushed it between her palms.

Now Louise watched TV all the time, eating chips and trying to get an idea.One day she came across a show in which middle-aged mothers were trying to explain to a hostile audience why they sleep with their daughters’ boyfriends. “Where do they find these people?” she asked her girls. “ Trailer parks and shopping malls in Cleveland?”

Louise fantasized about what would happen if she got into the audience. She’d give them the unvarnished truth, the good advice she was famous for. She’d wear her
uniform, and people would take her seriously.

She did just that and it was as easy as falling off a chair. Her first time out she
the show featured a trio of naughty middle-aged people. The title of the program was
Women Who Share A Man. Louise raised her hand as soon as the panelists shut up.
“Have you all had your carotid arteries checked? Because you may not be getting
enough oxygen to your brains what with all that blood pooling in your groin areas. You might be anoxic and that could cause you to think your lifestyle is acceptable when it isclearly just plain rude.” The audience roared its approval and the camera zoomed in on Louise.

Soon she found herself invited to all the shows: Dr. Phil, Oprah, Jerry. She made
blunt comments and the hosts took her to dinner. They didn’t seem to care how much she ate. It was safe to laugh at her old memories now, like that time at dinner when she cleaned her plate as usual, held it out to Mama, and said, “More.”

“Are we having another growth spurt?” Mama had inquired sweetly. The words pricked at Louise; she checked to see if Mama had on the same smile that used to infuriate Papa. There it was, plain as day.

It didn’t matter how big she got now. She wished she knew it would turn out like
this. She’d been such a big child, nobody would believe she was just a kid, so big the hospital banned her for lying about her age. And what about the time when she showed up at a Halloween party dressed as a nurse? They threw her out for being a grown-up.Her life got quiet, the only sounds: chewing and swallowing.

People began to recognize her in the street and in the grocery store “Hey, it’s
Louise the Nurse!” people whispered all the time now. They never looked down when
they saw her coming, or got mad when she couldn’t fit into a chair.

“Well, look at me,” Louise thought. “I must be a star!”

One day Louise was out front pulling up the crabgrass and a stretch limo
pulled up; a man stepped out. “Louise the Nurse?” he asked politely.
“What?” she said, trying to see behind his dark glasses.
“I’d like to offer you a job on my radio show. You could tell people what to do
with their problems.”
“What-- for money?” Louise asked suspiciously.
“OK” the man said.
“Can I wear the uniform?” she wanted to know.
“Well, it’s radio, but sure, I guess so.”

Months later, Louise watched from her deck chair as her girls frolicked by the pool. The daughters were dressed in identical nursing uniforms. Toy stethoscopes dangled from their ears. Presently they crouched over a hurt bird, poking it with Popsicle tongue depressors. “Bring that thing to me,” Louise said. In no time at all she had made a splint from the girls’ Popsicle sticks. Pleased that she still had the knack, Louise said, “There you go. Good as new!”

The little girls looked at the bird skeptically. “It’s still not flying,” one twin
whispered to her sister. She looked her mother straight in the eye, as if she knew the truth when she heard it, and there would be no point in lying. “Mom,” she said, “Are you a real nurse?”