| Deborah J. Shore |
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| Wee Grow As she succumbed to another weak spell, Annie McKinley’s great-great-grandmother felt the roundness of the chignon under her clammy palm. She had begun to suspect that the ones who pisseth against the wall had the power of a looser waistline. Annie, however, routinely felt herself shrink to the size of an ant without the aid of whale bones. Feeling thus nomi shin, as a young woman she would wrap her eyes in the kimonos of ivory carvings. These were inlaid on a mahogany box passed down from the imperial era. Holding beaten brass handles shaped like leaves, she opened the decorative panels and then a drawer lined with velvet. She ran her index along the texture of antiquity. Inside were tarnished screw-on earrings she’d played with as a child. The leaves swung and then dangled motionless. She turned away, not bothering to close the compartments. Glancing over to the vanity, she smoothed her purple bags and felt their familiar composition. Under a strange pall, she walked down City Avenue. Tokens spilled from pursed lips. The purple bags continued to sag and darken with age. Now the populous paid to see strangers’ hands open their clasps and slither out with spoils. Sex and faith were stolen with particular dexterity. Onlookers, after having their eyes kissed by these fingers, shouted mantras of power or abuse. With this muse mesmerizing them, they’d pat the round balls of a clasp, as if for luck, rubbing the cold metal of evidence, keeping it warm. These brass ducts of statuesque goddesses are still guarded, so that when tears escape they can be gathered on a page. Cries of anger are considered of particular value, and Annie had collected them in books of wrinkled pages. These often penned the many men who visited her temple of free love. Desiring a new liberty, with much celebration she declared her attraction towards an ethnic, a Latino. But like the men before, she soon found she had to look at him sideways in order to love him. Now, as Ms. Annie McKinley-Ortiz, she does this daily while standing before a mirror, where she shaves her once hairy legs and dabs concealer on the bags beneath her eyes, wondering how they compare with those of the other women. She can feel them swell. She looks at him and wonders. This is love. The cicadas are loud as she leaves for work. Only male cicadas sing. They sing non-stop. Her little goddess asks her if the womyn would want to sing, but Ms. McKinley-Ortiz assures her little goddess that a cicadas’ song is too menial. She reminds her of bees and drops her off at “Wee Grow Center.” Ms. McKinley-Ortiz then speeds to a job where she is compared with men and other goddesses. She is in the line of deconstruction. It has her hammering glass ceilings for hours each day. Quite a workout (and she’s proud of that bod), but while multi-tasking, there is a pioneer woman forking bales of hay and dancing in elfin circles with her children during the heat of day. Annie has been looking at her sideways for quite some time and wonders if she should tell her therapist. Today, she also dreams of bread rising. She punches it down and kneads it. She has never done that. She is surprised that it is warm and slightly sticky. She is quite cool in the conditioned environment at work, but it keeps rising beneath the buzz. |
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