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Show Motherlunge a novel 244 37. The Heart Is A Fist-shaped Muscle The carpet-cleaning salesman on the phone doesn't know my name. Is this Mrs. Greathouse? Is this Mrs. James? I'm not helping. Nope. No, I say, Afraid not. Exasperated, he tries again, "Well, are you the mommy?" And he has interrupted my new favorite daydream: I am walking my infant daughter in the park. A man bends down to look at her in her stroller and gasps, draws back, horrified...! A half-formed twin grows out of the baby's shoulder, or else her arms and legs are shortened, smooth as melted candles without hands and feet at the ends. Or perhaps she has only one large eye in the middle of her head. Yes. One eye, big and brown, fringed by long black lashes. A shiny eye in the middle of her pink forehead, above her button nose and rosebud mouth. An eye that opens and smiles out like the great I AM of Sunday school banners, the fat-bellied dove of PAX looking mildly on....The big eye that sees the new mother flying through the air like a human fork (the least comforting of the flatware) toward the man still more aghast, the eye that sees her stab, wrench, pull, then lunge forward and slug the man, hitting hir \s again and again until she (Mommy!) switches to kicking as the man goes down, teeth tumble-washing in a mouth of bright and briny blood, terrified of the two of us and completely uncomprehending. Two on one! |
