Except in the case of Mrs. Mean. I am no representative of preternatural power. I am no image, on my porch — no symbol. I don’t exist. However I try, I cannot, like the earth, throw out invisible lines to trap her instincts; turn her north or south; fertilize or not her busy womb; cause her to exhibit the tenderness, even, of ruthless wild things for her wild and ruthless brood. And so she burns and burns before me. She revolves her backside carefully against a tree.
2
Mrs. Mean is hearty. She works outside a good bit, as she is doing now. Her pace is furious, and the heat does not deter her. She weeds and clips her immaculate yard, waging endless war against the heels and tricycles of her children. She rolls and rakes. She plants and feeds. Does she ever fall inside her house, a sprung hulk, and lap at the dark? The supposition is absurd. Observation mocks the thought. But how I’d enjoy to dream it.
I’d dream a day both warm and humid, though not alarming. Leaves would be brisk about and the puff clouds quick. This, to disarm her. She’d be clipping the hedge; firmly bent, sturdily moving, executing stems; and then the pressure of her blood would mount, mount slowly as each twig fell; and a cramp would grow as softly as a bud in the blood of her back, in the bend of her legs, the crooksnap of her arms, tightening and winding about her back and legs and arms like a wet towel that knots when wrung.
Now the blood lies slack in her but the pressure mounts, mounts slowly. The shears snip and smack. She straightens like a wire. She strides on the house, tossing her lank hair high from her face. She will fetch a rake; perhaps a glass of water. Strange. She feels a dryness. She sniffs the air and eyes a sailing cloud. In the first shadow of the door she’s stunned and staggered. There’s a blaze like the blaze of God in her eye, and the world is round. Scald air catches in her throat and her belly convulses to throw it out. There’s a bend to her knee. The sky is black and comets burst ahead of her. Her hands thrust ahead, hard in the sill of the door. Cramp grasp her. Shrivel like a rubber motor in a balsa toy her veins. Does her husband waddle toward her, awag from stern to stem with consternation? Oh if the force of ancient malediction could be mine, I’d strike him too!
… the vainest dream, for Mrs. Mean is hearty, and Mr. Mean is unpuncturable jelly.
Mr. Wallace can bellow and Mrs. Wallace can screech, but Mrs. Mean can be an alarm of fire and war, falling on every ear like an aching wind.
Among the many periodicals to which I subscribe is the very amusing Digest of the Soviet Press and I remember an article there which described the unhappiness of one neighborhood in a provincial Russian city over the frightfully lewd, blasphemous, and scatological shouts a young woman named Tanya was fond of emitting. She would lean from the second-story window of her apartment, the report said, and curse the countryside. Nothing moved her. No one approached without blushing to the ears. Her neighbors threatened her with the city officials. The city officials came — were roundly damned. They accused her of drunkenness, flushed, and threatened her with the party officials. The party officials came — were thoroughly execrated. They said she was a dirty woman, a disgrace to Russia — an abomination in the sight of the Lord, they would have said, I’m sure, if the name of the Lord had been available to them. Unfortunately it was available only to Tanya, who made use of it. The party officials advised the city officials and the city officials put Tanya in jail. Useless. She cursed between bars and disturbed the sleep of prisoners. Nor was it well for prisoners to hear, continually, such things. They transferred her to another district. She cursed from a different window. They put her in the street, but this was recognized at once as a terrible error and her room was restored. The report breathed outrage and bafflement. What to do with this monster? In their confusion they failed to isolate her. They couldn’t think to shoot her. They might have torn out her tongue. Abstractly, I’d favor that. All the vast resources of civilization lay unused, I gathered, while Tanya leaned obscenely from her sill, verbally shitting on the world.
Mrs. Mean, too, dumbfounds her opposition. There have been complaints, I understand. Mrs. Mean, herself, has been addressed. The authorities, more than once, have been notified. Nothing has come of it. Well, this is wisdom. Far better to do nothing than act ineptly. Mrs. Mean could out-Christ Pius.
Thus the trumpet sounds. The children scatter. They run to the neighbors, pursued by her stick and her tongue, so she can mow and tamp and water her crop of grass that it may achieve the quiet dignity of lawn. At the distance of oceans and continents, I admire Tanya. I picture her moving lips. I roll the words on my own tongue — the lovely words, so suitable for addressing the world — but they roll silently there, as chaste as any conjunction; whereas Mrs. Mean’s voice utters them with all the sharp, yet exaggerated enunciation of an old Shakespearean. They are volumed by rage and come sudden and strident as panic. Mrs. Mean, moreover, is almost next door and not oceans and continents and languages away.
“Ames. You little snot. Nancy. Witch. Here now. Look where you are now. Look now, will you? God almighty. Move. Get. Oh jesus why do I trouble myself. It’ll die now, little you care. Squashed. That grass ain’t ants. Toll, I warn you. God, god, how did you do that? Why, why, tell me that. Toll, what’s that now? Toll, I warn you now. Pike. Shit. Get. What am I going to do with you? Step on you like that? Squash. Like that? Why try to make it nice? Why? Ames. Damn. Oh damn. You little snot. Wait’ll I get hold of you. Tim. You are so little, Tim. You are so snotty, so dirty snotty, so nasty dirty snotty. Where did you get that? What is that? What’s it now? Drop that. Don’t bring it here. Put it back. Nancy. Witch. Oh jesus, jesus, sweet, sweet jesus. Get. Did you piss in the flowers? Timmy? Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, did you? By god, I’ll beat your bottom flat. Come here. You’re so sweet, so sweet, so nice, so dear. Yes. Come here. All of you. Nancy. Toll. Ames. Tim. Get in here. Now, now I say. Now. Get. I’ll whale you all.”
It is, however, an old play and Mrs. Mean is an old, old player. The recitation, loud as it is, emphatic, fearsome as it is, everyone has heard before. The children almost wholly ignore it. When her voice begins they widen away and start to circle, still at their little vicious games. Mrs. Mean threatens and cajoles but she does not break the rhythm of her weeding. Toll digs with his shovel. “Don’t dig, don’t dig,” Mrs. Mean chants, and Toll digs. “Don’t dig, Toll, don’t dig,” and Toll digs harder. “Didn’t you hear me? didn’t you? Stop now. Don’t dig.” Toll comes red with effort. “I’ll take that shovel. Don’t dig. Toll, you little creeping bastard, did you hear me? I’ll take that shovel. Toll!” The earth is pierced and the turf heaved. Mrs. Mean drops her trowel, rushes upon Nancy, who is nearest, and slams her violently to the ground. Nancy begins screaming. Toll runs. Ames and Timmy widen out and watch. Mrs. Mean cries: “Ah, you little stink — eating mud!” Nancy stops crying and sticks out her muddy tongue; and perhaps this time she learns, although she isn’t very bright, that Mrs. Mean always moves on her real victim silently and prefers, whenever possible, surprise.