The Dress with Girl Not in It: Revisited
We never did get around to telling you about what us brothers did with our mother’s dress once it was, by the river, washed up on to the river’s muddy shore. What we did with our motherraiss dress was this: us brothers, we made it lay down flat, down in the river-made mud, down by the muddy edge of the river — we set the dress out, we laid it out smooth, the way our mother would a dress on her bed before she’d decide whether or not to wear it. Not that us brothers knew any thing much to know about dresses. But this dress — our mother’s dress — the dress that us brothers, we tugged this dress over the top of Girl’s head, that day when we made her, out of the mud, up from the mud — this dress: what we did next with this dress was, we wrung the muddy river out of this dress. We wrung this dress as dry as we could get it, and then we shook this dress out: we smoothed out all of the wrinkles out of this dress, we laid this dress out and down, in the mud, down by the muddy river — this dress with Girl not in it. And after this? After this, what us brothers did was, we stood over, looking down at, staring down into, this dress: to see if we could see Girl anywhere near it. Like this, with us brothers looking down into this dress, we could not see Girl anywhere near inside, or even near the edges, of this dress. And so, us brothers, we got down on our knees. Us brothers, we kneeled with our knees down on top of this dress. But our hands, our hands — we did not know what to do with our hands. So we did with our hands what was the only thing we knew what to do with our hands when we didn’t know what else to do with them. Our hands, we stuck them — our hands — into the mud. Now, now that our hands were good and now that they were muddy now, now, us brothers, we knew what to do with our hands now. Our hands, we let our hands go. Go wild is what we told them. Go to where you always wished you could go to. Us brothers, we closed our eyes — to watch them go in their going. The places where our hands did go, the mud on our hands, the muddiness left mud tracks, a trail of muddy stars, up and down the front of Girl’s dress. This dress, it was a dress covered up with mud. It was a dress — this dress was — that was made out of mud: it was that muddy. It was so beautiful, this dress, it looked almost good enough now — this dress did — for Girl to be inside it. But wait: I said almost good enough for Girl be inside it. Because the mud that was Girl’s skin, this was the muddiest, the most beautiful, dress of all dresses for Girl to be in. This was the dress that us brothers gave to Girl when we made Girl out of mud. This was the dress that us brothers gave to Girl before Brother did what he did after we made Girclass="underline" when he left and went back home and went into our mother’s closet and when he came back down to the river Brother was holding in his arms an armful of girl clothes. I wanted to take that dress and throw it into the river. I wanted to watch it like a dead fish float away. But now, I didn’t know what to do with this dress. Throw it back to the river now? I couldn’t do that: not to the river. The river didn’t want this dress, then or now. The river spit this dress up onto the river’s muddy shore for us brothers to find it. Where Brother got it, this dress — from our mother’s closet — I could take it back there. Hang it up there inside to dry. But no, I didn’t want to go there, to that inside-our-house place. So what I did was I did this: I got up and I started walking. I walked along side the river. I walked hand in hand with the river. I walked and I did not stop walking until I saw what I was walking toward. There was this tree down there sticking up from, sticking out of, the river’s muddy edge. This tree, it looked more like a stick just stuck in the mud than it did a growing up tree. I didn’t know what kind of a tree this tree was. I didn’t know its name. Though what I knew for sure about this tree was that it didn’t look like it was long for this world. It didn’t have any leaves on it, this tree. This tree, it was nothing but sticks and twigs. And so this, this is what I did next. I went over to this tree — this tree with no leaves growing from it, this tree that was more stick and twig than it was tree — and with my hands I broke off from this tree some of its branches, some of its twigs, and what I did then was this: I walked back with these twig branches held in my hands over to where our mother’s dress was all covered up with mud. I took the twigs that I was holding in my hands and I knelt down with them down near this dress. What I did then was I stuck them, these twigs, one by one, so that they stuck out, as arms stick out, as legs stick out, from those places in a dress, those holes, where arms and legs are meant to stick out. A bird flying high over head, a bird with eyes not so good, that bird might have looked down on this dress, and looking down it might have wondered: what is that girl in the dress doing laying down in the mud? But that same bird, it also might have wondered: I wonder where is her head? So I went out along the river looking for a head to stick out from this dress where a head ought to stick out from a dress. I did not have to walk too far to find what it was I was looking for. I found a fish — it was a dead fish — washed up on the river’s shore, its fish eyes still staring wide open like it was still seeing things — even though, in the eyes of this world, this fish, brother, it was dead. But us brothers, we knew what it meant to be better than dead. We knew that when things die they sometimes just then begin to live. And so I picked up this fish into my hand. This fish, brother, let me tell you this: it was alive. In my hands, this fish, it was more than just a fish. I carried it, this fish, over to the dress with Girl not in it: this dress that did not have above it yet, on top of it yet, a head. I placed this fish where the head needed to be. Now this dress, with its fish head and with its twig arms and stick legs: like this, looking down at it, like this: this dress, it looked good enough to eat. And so, us brothers, the both of us brothers, we got down on our hands and knees, on both sides of this dress, and we slipped our boy hands up and under this dress. Here, us brothers, we could feel, underneath here, something here in the mud beating. So we started digging. We dug down into the mud, under this dress, until we found what and where it was. What it was was, it was a drum. It was a drum shaped like a heart. This heart-shaped drum, us brothers, we started to beat it with our fists — we beat it until this dress stood itself up from the mud and this covered-in-mud dress, it started to dance. It danced its way over to where the river was and it danced across the muddy water and it crossed the muddy river over to the muddy river’s other muddy side. Not once — unlike our father, unlike us brothers — this dress, it never once looked back.
Our Mother is a Fish: Revisited
One night, us brothers, we heard us a sound, from where we were down standing, down by the banks of the river, fishing with mud for our river’s dirty river fish, it was the sound, us brothers knew, of somebody or someone chopping wood. A tree was what us brothers figured it was. But what us brothers thought was a tree, it wasn’t a tree. What it was was, getting itself chopped at like this, it was the fish-headed telephone pole out back in the back of our backyard. Into this pole’s wood, us brothers, we liked to take the fish that we’d catch out of the dirty river that runs through this dirty river town, and when we’d chop off these fishes’ fish heads, us brothers, we liked to take them, these heads, and we’d hammer and nail, these fishes’ heads, into this pole’s creosoted wood. Us brothers, we liked it, the sound that the hammer made when we’d hammer and pound our rusty, bent-back nails through these fishes’ fish heads and into this pole’s dark wood. It was a sound that would sometimes make our father step out back into the back of the yard to be with us brothers. Sons, our father liked to call out to us brothers with this word. Us brothers, we’d both turn back our boy heads toward the sound of a father. We’d wait like this to hear what other words might come from out of our father’s mouth. It was always a long few seconds. The sky above the river, the sky above the shipwrecked-in-the-river’s-mud mill, it was dark and silent. Somewhere, though, us brothers knew, the sun was somewhere shining. You boys remember to clean up before you come back in, was what our father liked to tell us. But it was our mother now who was the somebody who was taking an axe to our fish-headed, back-of-the-yard pole’s wood. Us brothers, up from the river, we ran ourselves up to our mother to ask her what did she think she was doing taking an axe to this pole’s wood. What does it look like I’m doing? was what our mother said, and she kept on chopping with her axe — with our father’s axe — at this pole’s wood. Our fish heads, hammered and nailed into this back-of-the-yard pole with rusty, bent-back nails, some of these fishes’ heads shook and flinched and then fell from where they had been hammered and nailed by us brothers into this backyard pole’s creosoted wood. Us brothers, we looked up with our eyes at these fishes’ heads, open-eyed, open-mouthed, and it was like they were singing to us brothers. When we heard what these fishes’ heads were singing to us brothers, us brothers, we took our up-at-our- fishes’-heads looks and we looked these looks at each other. There was this look that us brothers sometimes liked to look at each other with. It was the kind of a look that actually hurt the eyes of the brother who was doing the looking. Imagine that look. We looked and we looked and then we opened up our mouths at our mother. Mother, one of us brothers mouthed out loud with our mouth. Fish, the other one of us whispered. These words, we wanted to believe it, would be enough to get our mother to stop her doing. But these words, to our mother, they were just words to our mother. And so our mother, with the axe in her hands, she kept on chopping at this pole’s wood. Us brothers, to our mother, we didn’t know what we were going to do, or how we were going to get our mother to stop her in her doing, until we looked back up and saw our fish. Our fish, our fishes’ fish heads, open-eyed, open-mouthed, they were looking down upon us brothers, they were telling us brothers what it was that we had ourselves to do. When these fish told us brothers what it was that we had to do, us brothers, we knew that this was what it was we had us to do. So us brothers, we took two steps to be with ourselves two steps closer to our mother, and then we reached out to our mother with our hands to take her hands into ours. Mother, us brothers said. Give us your hands, we said. Hold your hands, we said, up against this pole’s wood. But our mother, she was not a brother to us brothers. Our mother, she was just a mother. Our mother, because she was just a mother to us, because she wasn’t one of us brothers, she wouldn’t do with us what we’d just told. Bad, Mother, us brothers hissed into her mother ears. Us brothers, we looked with our eyes at our mother. We looked with our eyes at our mother the way that we sometimes liked to look with this look at the fish that we liked to fish out of the dirty river that runs through this dirty river town. This fish here, Brother said, and he looked back at me with that look. She’s a keeper, was what Brother said. If you say so, I said back to Brother. And then I took that axe out from our mother’s hand, this axe that was our father’s, and then I chopped off our mother’s head.