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Unpredictable Body
- University of Nevada Press
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: : 83 : : A snapping turtle. A snake’s tongue. Something that acts with speed and withdraws in a flash. Stinging, biting. A whip that strikes hard and fast, just like the leather belt unbuckled and yanked out of the loops on my father’s slacks on the very few occasions that he was exceedingly angry. As soon as it hit the mark, it was gone. But my flesh remembered. What else was fast like that—something that snapped hard and snapped right back? Lightning struck fast and stunned whatever it hit. The back of the hand, too. Wrist action, I’ve heard it called. The fingers making a quick getaway. An insult, sometimes leaving a red mark or a stinging sensation if the surface was flesh. And a stinger was another fast thing—the way some insects pierced and poisoned and made a quick getaway, leaving a person smarting with a big red welt in no time at all. My father’s hand also knew the fast getaway. His wrist was something like a rubber band—tension in the stretch pulled back and back and snapping hard when released—though the back-of-the-hand wrist action didn’t hurt as much as if it had been a rubber band. My father’s hand had its own peculiar schedule: when the temperature got high, when harsh light refracted off his eyeglasses, and redness flushed his face, his reptilian :: The Unpredictable Body :: 84 : : r a w e d g e s brain took charge and his wrist snapped. A snapping turtle. High heat, tantrums , tempers brought the hand out of the turtle shell. His hand. Then my hand. Irritability. Irritated. Iridescen Irreverent . Iridology. Erie Canal. Iroquois. But I couldn’t play word games. I needed to face this. Maybe agitated was mostly what I was. Agitated with feeling all alone. No friends. A workaholic husband who left at 6:45 in the morning and returned home exhausted, drawn, worn out at 6:45 p.m. No connections . No ties to anything yet. New in Salt Lake City. Missing California, the Bay Area, and Los Altos. The morning sunlight was backward in that house. Full sun in the afternoon, but dark in the morning as if there were a cold shadow over the roof when I needed the glowing generous sun so I could sing “Good morning , merry sunshine, why did you wake so soon? You woke up all the little birds and scared away the moon.” I’d always been a sunshine girl according to my parents. A sunshine girl. Spilled milk on the floor. Soggy cereal. Disintegrating Cheerios turning to mush under my slippers as I reached for a dishcloth and knew I shouldn’t because I should keep the dishcloth sanitary. For dishes only. But I was tired. All my cells weren’t awake yet. I smeared a big round circle of milk on the floor with the loosely woven cloth. I wouldn’t cry over spilled milk. The phone rang. My mother. “How are things going, dear?” but I couldn’t hear her because the baby was whimpering and Geoffrey was tugging at Christopher’s favorite Gumby toy. Geoffrey wanted it right then. I smelled urine in both their diapers. I couldn’t have a decent conversation with my mother. “Things are too crazy today. Geoffrey’s nose is running and he coughed all night and . . . Geoffrey . . . stop it. That’s Chrissy’s toy. Go get your own.” Two little boys were startled by the sound of my yelling voice, and my mother said I’d better go take care of things though I still wanted to [54.172.169.199] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 05:08 GMT) The Unpredictable Body : : 85 talk, to laugh with her and play sunshine with my mother who loved her Sunshine Girl. And Geoffrey was tipping Christopher’s cereal bowl with a long wooden spoon, lifting it up at the edge—and tipping it—a lever against a bowl of cereal and there went more Cheerios onto the floor. O O O, I wanted to say, making a joke, but as I stretched the phone cord tighter, I shouted, “Oh, oh, you bad boy, stop it,” and felt my arm raising and lowering and the wrist snapping, the back of my fingers snapping like a rubber band against Geoffrey’s forehead. One snap of the fingers against his head. But then my head began to swim as if I had snapped my...