Archive for the ‘Jen Larsen’ Category
Destiny
Thursday, October 14th, 2010
So I found this sword out back behind that abandoned building on Third Street where I shouldn’t have been playing, my mother says. I’m always going where I shouldn’t go, and it’s my own fault, she says. I told you someday you’d get yourself in a bunch of trouble, she says, and there you are.
But it was right there, lodged in concrete all the way up to the hilt. And you know, I know what that means. I didn’t want it. But it shook when I touched it, and then it came loose when I pulled. Just a tiny tug and there was this sword in my hand, and it wasn’t even shiny. I had to drag it home behind me. I left a groove in the sidewalk, all the way up to our front door. I split the stairs in two.
My mother came out and she said, “Where did you get that? You put that back where you found it!” I lifted the sword, and her words fell right down between us on the old braided rug. My brothers said, “No fair! Give it!” and they tried to take it from me, but I couldn’t let go. It was my sword, even though I didn’t want it. It’s my sword, and I can’t give it back.
I left it at the bus stop, but it was on my bed when I got home. I tried to put it back in the rock, but the building is gone. I tried to give it to a homeless guy, but he told me he didn’t believe in violence and did I have any change? Ravens follow me. They hang like black moss from the tops of street lights and the chimneys of the apartment building across the street.
An old man came out at me from behind a mailbox yesterday. He had a beard down to his belt and wild eyes. I didn’t mean to—he came at me so fast, and the sword is easier to lift the more I lift it, and I forgot to get milk. I just ran all the way home. I hid the sword under my bed. I did my homework. I wish I knew what he wanted. The sword isn’t even shiny. My brothers say, “You think you’re so fancy, Eileen, with your destiny,” but I’d like to see them try it.
Flight Risk
Friday, October 8th, 2010
He decides a baby is the answer. The baby is plaster and lathe over cracked brick, a rickety, newborn bridge, a pair of handcuffs. The baby, he thinks. The baby.
She drinks nothing but seltzer. She swallows the air. He urges steak on her, potatoes and meatloaf, pineapple upside-down cake and caramel apples. Sticky things, heavy things. “Eat,” he says. He clutches at her hand. She shakes her head at him and drifts away from the dinner table. His forehead crumples and his shoulders tumble down. She grows larger and lighter.
He wishes she were happy. Instead, she is buoyant, giddy and strange. She doesn’t lumber the way other pregnant women do. She steps lightly, floats up the stairs. She never trips; she glides. She sleeps on her back now, her stomach straining up toward the ceiling fan, the sky light. It could break through the glass and drag her soaring through the sky, arms and legs dangling and limp, her enormous belly taking her away. He sleeps downstairs on the couch and wonders if she’ll be there in the morning.
When she goes into labor, she begins to laugh. She holds her belly and doubles over. Her laughter fills up the living room, bursts like bubbles in his ears. She laughs through delivery, and he sits in the corner, grim. The baby comes quickly, and when they spread her out naked for weighing on the cold scale, she bounces up and wafts through the sterile air of the hospital room. The baby glances off the corner of the room and glides across the face of the overhead lights. She casts a tiny shadow.
“I’ll get a step stool,” one nurse says, backing out of the room. The doctor sits on the floor. On the labor table, emptied out and hollow, she laughs. He stands and watches his child rotating slowly under the air vent, far above his head.
She will not let him touch their baby. She holds the baby in the crook of her arm. She holds her by the heel. She sits and looks at her floating above. She puts on her housecoat and goes out into the yard. She ignores him. She ignores the neighbors lining their driveways and yards. Clutching the baby’s heel, holding tight, she lifts up on to her tiptoes and reaches upwards, waiting for a strong enough gust of wind.