OCR Text |
Show Blue Run/15 through silence such as has never been heard. "Sure beats the piss out of me," Davey said. Vi laughed and so did the sister leaning on an elbow. Buddy threw both hands up and let them fall to the bare chair arms and shut his eyes again And that was that-they just went on and let the day unwind as if nothing had happened, as if it was good common sense to have your stories straight in matters of love and death Vi stared through my flesh, my baby-Joey? My mother says the blue-gowned doctors at Pima County Regional walked out and said, "The mother won't make it," and then, "The baby won't make it," and then "We'll lose them both," all Christmas day long, 1960. Carolers sang "Silent Night" up and down ammonia-scented corridors, all through the pediatric unit O.R. When labor started I'd been standing in the kitchen of the bungalow we'd rented, lighting candles on one of those angel mobiles-the three that spin clockwise with gold wings, dinging. And the pains came just as the bells started ringing. The house was quiet Dee'd gone out for a walk, disgusted with the place, having spent Christmas Eve with Buddy's people Violet had coughed up brown phlegm and kept spitting it in a sock she kept in the palm of her left hand, all through Christmas Eve dinner. Dwarf Davey's little Chihuahua bared its teeth and growled all through pie time. Tiny bells dinged and I looked out the window. Way off, a thirty foot saguaro waved, like a , dark man telling me to come home: behind him, the sky looked like a fire and a white cloud pierced the blue sky. Christmas morning, the pains came We'd decorated an avocado tree with a tin foil angel and strings of cranberries and popcorn Dee'd brought a branch of Arkansas cedar, |