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River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative 5.2 (2004) 75-76



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What the Scorpions Know

Exterior

Every L-shaped house is the same in Lavender Lakes (which is neither lavender nor near a lake). Each one is conveniently divided into two not-quite-identical duplexes. On Wednesday mornings, the trash cans uniformly appear on the curbside. They uniformly disappear Wednesday night. The pointing of the bricks is perfect; in fact, the only blemish is the dark stain on the white driveway of 216 that appeared the night I moved in and parked my beat-up truck there. My pickup is the only vehicle in the neighborhood more than five years old. Here, the cars and the houses are the same age. Nothing grows old.

The neighborhood is twenty minutes from town, conveniently located off Tallassee Road, which connects to Jefferson Highway and the Loop. The development was cut out of cheap, unused pine and scrub. Around each house, the trees have been neatly leveled and replaced with hydroseed. Twenty yards from my back door, the woods resume. At night, they buzz and chirp and howl.

Interior

My two BR, two BA duplex has a total of three windows. Each is 2 1/2 feet by 4 1/3 feet and dressed only with vinyl blinds. The light is surprisingly good. The walls, tile, and carpet are beige. And I'm thankful my raggedy sofa isn't, or I might wash away in the sterility of colorless color.

Everything works perfectly. The toilets don't run in between flushes. The faucets don't drip. The spin of the ceiling fan is absolutely regular. It never wobbles. And I know this for a fact, because I've watched, as I lay on my not-beige sofa. [End Page 75]

Amenities

If anything breaks, a theoretical possibility only, there is a handyman on call twenty-four hours a day. The lawn people come every Thursday to blow the leaves, trim the hedges, fluff the pine straw, and mow the grass. On the first Monday of every month, the bug man sprays. He is always very polite when he knocks. He always smiles before he starts his work.

Terms of Lease

The scorpions keep creeping in. I don't know where they come from. My neighbor says they live in the pipes, but I always thought they were desert insects. She says they come in when they cannot find enough moisture to live. I wonder if survival is their motive. Surely, they know the bug man comes every fourth Monday. Surely, they saw, like I did, the same-sameness, the perfect pointing, the white driveway as broad before them as the Lethe.

All the scorpions I find are in varying degrees of rigor mortis: their tales rigidly straight, their claws still flexed. Little black-brown Ys. This is no place to live.

At night the woods buzz and howl. Or, perhaps, they call. I watch them from behind the horizontal bars, the blinds that cover my 2 1/2 by 4 1/3-foot window. Something inside me is stiffening.

Siân B. Griffiths is a doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia, Athens, where she lives with her partner, Nathanael, and daughter, Gwendolyn. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Idaho in 1995.


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