Two Selections from Miss Abracadabra (As the World Turns)
(Forthcoming from Deep Vellum Publishing in 2022)
by Thomas Ross
Introductory Note
In this current epoch of the globalized colonialism of internationally mobile capital, the transactions of the marketplace usurp cultural continuity and persistence by creative destruction, producing an endless succession of ultimately ephemeral commodities serving ultimately as substrates for prices, and an abstracted, increasingly dehumanized culture in which everything is valued and identified above all by its price.
The subtle human interconnections inherent in social knowing are reduced to ownership and networked transmission of information, and truth itself is reduced to a game-theoretic margin.
The collective values which are the hallmark of indigeneity are atomized into vectors of individuality, and the social itself is not only proclaimed illusory, but under vicious assault wherever it might be considered to persist.
The imperative of collective, reparative, redistributive justice is philosophically reduced to individualist, presentist fairness, devoid of relationship to historical continuities. (The cosmetic lifting of some of the global poor from prospects of certain death and privation cannot conceal the simultaneous creation of hideous levels of social inequality which in each successive instant exceed their prior limits and ensure that those kept alive on the drip may be denied, when necessary, access to any further self-determination.)
The cynicism and misanthropy of those imprisoned by reason (and wishing above all to make themselves into gods) may well lead us to an ultimate dystopia, at whose heart will be a technologically-induced, neo-feudal totalitarianism in which plutocratic elites institute coercively enforced dominance over all other living beings and all resources on the planet, or guarantee the irreversible, cumulative destruction of life and the natural world as we know it, in the name of mythically limitless possibilities of material growth and progress.
The proverbial “road to serfdom” may well turn out to be precisely the road they have taken, and the march which will be forced upon the rest of us— unless we convene in solidarity to insist otherwise.
The pieces below are excerpts from a novel titled Miss Abracadabra; Or, As the World Turns to be published by Deep Vellum Publishing in 2022.
Pushover
Geez, was I ever a pushover. This man’s been quite clever, she thought, now that she saw the whole deal quite clearly, quite clever at getting what he’s wanted. Pushed her over with hardly a tiny tap, hardly a puff of air. Jumped on and got himself exactly what he wanted, never cared a hoot for the rest. It’s the same old story, she thought, it’s just like that one girl wrote in her true confession, But you don’t tell it till it happens to you. But soon that bed and all that she smelled and felt and remembered as she lay there upon it began to work on her. It felt more and more stupid every second to try to remember what it was clear she should try to forget. She could no longer keep her arms crossed tightly over her breasts like a straitjacket, what for, she was starting to feel antsy and couldn't stand to lie there any longer and just had to get on up, so she did. Peering back into the bathroom, she saw that he'd disappeared behind the door, gone to the beat-up medicine cabinet and rust-stained, leaking sink. She heard the creaking of the cabinet door, which tried her nerves because she knew good and well that the mirror there, right in front of where he was standing and probably looking himself over in it, Mister Pretty Boy, rotten tramp, always stuck on himself she thought, that the mirror there was cracked, and it bothered her every time she'd come here and had to go in there and then had to notice it, patched together with tape that had already yellowed and started to work loose, which the last time she looked was ready to let go of the corner it had held there for who knows how long, like a hand steadfastly cradling its fragile burden through long years, but now, exhausted from its relentless efforts and daunted to be utterly taken for granted, it will soon give way and then the glass will tumble down to shatter in the sink and scatter, of course, everywhere. It especially bothered her to imagine that, because it wasn't just glass, but a mirror which, if that happened it could be awful because maybe it was true that it was terribly bad luck to be involved with breaking a mirror or even to look into one broken, maybe that explained all her rotten luck, not just for seven years but since forever, at least her forever so far, she thought. But Mother had often warned her that such a belief is only superstition, a worldly seduction was the fancy word she called it, which anyone truly faithful would pray for and receive the strength to resist, she insisted. Because in the end there is, Mother added, smiling sweetly like she was supposed to believe that she was feeling so nice and sweet toward her for a change, yeah right, in the end there is, Mother explained, only the acknowledgement that so many things in life, for instance why, since you ask, it seems like folks who lie and steal and cheat and murder, why the Lord does not lift up his hand to smite them like in the old days anymore, why not only are they never really punished or made to really pay back but instead they keep on getting more and more in life while most of the rest of us keep on losing what little we've got, but she could really understand, she thought, why the Lord said that because he had to admit, To everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what they have will be taken away, but not only that, not only do they thrive and prosper but it is strictly required, it's not a request, it's the Lord's order, she reminded herself, also to forgive them for all the lying and stealing and cheating and laying waste and all other kind of rotten stuff they do, to just forget about it like none of it ever happened, to just snap your fingers and feel like oh all that was the past, but this is now, stupid, there's nothing to be done, nothing can be set right, there's nothing for a body to do, Mother and Father always said, but to let it be, to watch and pray, to know our place and leave all that mess in His hands, because really so many things in life are not only lie beyond our power to make them different, not only those things she was troubled and asked about Mother said, but also how you're made in your whatchamacallit, makeup, including what or who a body has no business wanting to be or to look like or to do in life, for better or worse, but also even beyond our understanding why, because all things seen by man are seen but dimly, as through a glass darkly like somebody else in the good book says, It's the Lord's plan, a mystery to us all, Father says. So then she guessed she never would and never even could understand, there's no understanding then she thought, really, no knowing, she had no place, no business knowing why she should get treated, no, dumped like garbage, this way, why there was nothing to feel but just lonely, excuse me, cheap and dirty, stuck in this little room, no in this filthy stinking hole, that might have been a bright and warm and cozy place like the little chocolate house built just for two in her favorite daydream, or at least a nicer place like the Red Jacket if he hadn't been such a cheapskate, while saving up to run off behind her back to Miami, why there was nothing to be done, why all that she could do was cry, no go jump off the deep end like a backwoods heifer, and why that's nothing more than stupid, the stupid crying of a stupid chubby pimple face gal who has no way on her own to get around in the cold and snow, to get back to get the awful she is certainly going to get when she gets home. Funny she thought, how you can look at everything in the world, and nothing ever answers, it all just keeps flying by faster and faster till you can't keep up, until you shut up asking let alone trying to say anything yourself, till you're sick again, sick to your guts and sick of yourself and short of breath, it's like a broken record, Sorry I asked.
The Night of the Living Dead
Papa, he’s come home.
Henry sank into his dressing-chair, before the bright curtain swaying over the open window, fluttering like a dove above his fresh stocking-cap.
Well lookit here, here come my old Chuckle Jaws he says,
just like every time he pinches my face, his hands, they smell like
Dixie Peach, peppermint candy.
Time to take your picture, remember? I said,
Oh yes I remember he says.
I hold up my Brownie, I see him in the window.
Papa, it’s enough light? I said.
Oh yes it is, a heavenly light he says.
Yes you’re right Papa, you are shining,
shining in that midsummer’s six o’clock, when the drowsy shadows lean into the dwindling light before nodding off into the dark. His swollen fingers unlaced wing-tip shoes, stripped the bow tie from the wilted shirt-collar, pried open the pitiless brass teeth of the Police Brace, folded the cummerbund to cradle wallet and keys.
He stopped and lifted his head to listen. On the AM FM Short-Wave radio which would be on until dawn brought his next day-shift, the pork-chop preachers from Montgomery Savannah Memphis shouted and sang in testimony to their far-flung ancient sins. Listening, nodding, he smiled to himself, remembering when, surrendering to what must and what would never be, he laid down his burden before the Lord.
I’m ready, go ahead he says.
I’m ready too.
Don’t smile if you want I said,
cause he doesn’t too much, anyway.
He held the gold cufflinks in the lifted palm of his hand, poking at them with a finger like sleepy beetles picked from the rosebushes.
Got these for my twenty years he says,
looking beyond us, eyes still uncertain of his answer.
I click.
Six o’clock. Climbing down from the neighbor’s wagon, Henry dropped his carpet bag in the front yard and ran past the house, across the stubble field, toward that lonesome whistle rising up beyond the trees, to the river. To watch, as he'd loved to run from chores and scoldings with rescued daydreams to watch years before, that old steamer slip away downstream, to listen to its churning wheel fade into silence and wish that he too were aboard, stealing away there, never to return. Like the way, after Father had passed, that Mother and two brothers and that farmhouse and that ragged patch of bottom-land had slipped from his mind after he’d first left, determined to put himself out of reach of humiliation, out of that place which he had longed never again to mark as home, out once and for all and forever. Until her letter, once reaching its restless quarry, once read, had pierced and dragged him back again (not a hunter’s shaft but a compass arrow, a hook, taken). And once that boat had drifted out of sight and the sun had nearly set, despite wanting to pick up that bag and walk back out to that road and keep on walking even though he knew it would be to nowhere, he turned back, knowing that she was watching him, as she’d always watched him, knowing that he knew it, from her chair by the kitchen window. Waiting for him to muster the good manners he had been raised with, to come in and sit with her by the fire and tell tall tales about his travels, about leaving without farewell as he had left, about living three years without a word home thereafter, about coming back, about what there was no way to explain.
Or rather, what there was only one way to explain. Come Sunday morning he knew she would call him to come to her, take his hand to drag herself out of that sickbed, lead him down to the big white tent like walking into the clouds of heaven, take him, now so-called grown at twenty-five years old just as she used to, just like what he was to her then and perhaps had always been, a wayward child not knowing how to come home. Together again, they would sink into the sea of faces and weary limbs crowding the makeshift benches, all eyes and ears turned to the pulpit and choir, to voices shouting, crying, whispering words he still could not stand to hear. Until, too soon, the preacher said Let us come down to pray. He would hold fast around her arm as she rose, offering help to stand, though even when falling she could not have cared less or protection from dangers now powerless to threaten her, or comfort from pain from which there now could be no comfort. Or was it that he wanted desperately to make her stop, make everything stop so nothing would happen ever again and she would never slip away. And he could not keep from hating her at those moments which reminded him how useless he was and had always been to her, almost as much as he hated himself, knowing how often he had been helpless without her. She had told him when he was still the small fragile one, when he had looked up and she seemed to fill up the whole world and he had cried Mama please don’t ever go away, because then there would have been nothing left at all. Let me tell you something, child, Hannah answered, and sat him down to explain how God had made the world and how he has kept on forever and ever before and after and will never disappear, but everything in the world and especially all His children, sooner or later they got to get used to gone. But long before she had grown tired of explaining for hours what he kept the next minute forgetting, of mouthing words that went in one ear and out the other, tired of dragging his overgrown hardheaded weight, tired of running herself ragged trying to make right everything he touched that turned wrong. Finally too late and a waste of breath scolding a young fool running wild, his name in every mouth in town, mixed up in all kind of foolishness he ain’t got no business in, and then one fine day running off without a trace to boot, too late now to be thankful that he'd come back.
Yes, days have gone by Papa says.
I sit down on my stool. My small fingers prod the spindle to advance.
Yes sir, that might be a good one I said.
Yes sir, could might be a good one, he says.
He’s got crooked feet too, like Pop, like me,
He pulled up his suspenders and stepped into his two-tone slippers.
I reckon Mother left chores for us out back before supper he says.
He brushed the dust from his Panama hat. Took the moment, that moment of stillness when his eyes, briefly finding the mirror, filled, glinting with a glimpse not of his reflection but of something approaching, without pause, from a great distance. And, lingering in that brief span of silent thought kept secret perhaps even from himself, lifted and turned it ever so slightly at the brim to settle onto his head like a crown.
Click
In the backyard, a flamboyance of flamingoes huddled together within the circle of their lace-wire fence, nudging out between the hydrangeas to stand watch over their stricken compatriot. Long necks wavering, eyes fixed in alarm, mouths sealed to silence, they marked the spot where she lay uprooted, inert.
Who's been messin with this he says,
I don’t know, somebody I said,
I can see it’s been somebody, he says.
Crouching beside the flower patch he laid hands on the fallen bird, like one who once in my dreaming had breathed into its hollow soul and resurrected its never living flesh from the dead.
That Cindy, she jumps on them when they wiggle I said,
How about that he says,
straightening the wire running from its spindly leg and pressing it upright into the earth.
Ok please help him, like Ben Casey, I said.
He assumed a most dour bedside manner, copper-dark fingers stroking the rounded plastic plumes across its back.
Doc, please tell me honest Doc, am I dying? I said.
Well Mr. Pink, you fixed up now, you fit as a fiddle. But remember, when the Lord call us home, that’s when we all got to go. Meantime you stand up tall with your kinfolks here like you should, he says,
I want to live, Doc, I said,
and behind my eyes, in our backyard of dreams, at the feet of our gods of gold and silver and stone, I hear the voice reciting auguries of doom. I see the hand scratching out its marks on the wall, naming all the things I’ve never understood.
That’s good I said. Hold still a second I said,
Click
I’ll need to hide after all these monkeyshines you puttin on me, Papa says.
Damned monkeyshines, wasting time and money with that fool contraption, Hannah said. That devilish light box. That instrument of will and rebellion and seduction, that treasure-chest, foretold for his hands and eyes in a magic word. He’d first felt it coming to him one Sunday school’s scripture lesson long ago, while reciting her dearest hymn, framed since her first married day above the fireplace mantle, stitched and ringed by her still-delicate hand with an adoring flock of stars. There in the Book that same song had lain across his upheld palms, the worn page illuminated in the sunlight flooding down from the arched window far above the pulpit: He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters, he restoreth my soul. Though he’d known it by heart as long as he could remember, in recitation he’d blurt out the verses in embarrassed starts, never finding the rhythm, yes still hard of heart, not wanting to find it at all. Not sweetly, stirringly as Mother had spoken them, her spirit in surrender set free and willing, her singer’s voice clear and strong and soft-spoken, a sound as fond to her as any fond sight. How she’d loved to read, to listen to any old talk, to feel words rising up through her breath, most especially praying words pressing themselves to her lips like a kiss, to give herself over to their saving grace. But for Henry then as now words felt like stones he couldn’t help but stumble over, which thrown whizz past the ear as you shrink away, which once fallen heap up into walls dividing all the numberless silent things, which conspire to remain confused and inseparable, into this and that, is and is not, shalt and shalt not, then and now and when and always and sometimes and worst of all never, tearing apart a visible world he’d never wanted to be torn apart, making him out the tattered speechless fool. Words as unforgiving as she too had been at last, at the end, as merciless and impossible to follow. So easeful instead, he'd thought, to just open your eyes and see, yes like this, all the morning pouring in, careless of interpretation. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever, Amen. Dwell in the silence left as he looked up from the Word into all the handiwork of light filling up the still air from the floorboards up to the rafters, igniting the honeysuckle pressing against the narrow panes of glass, dusting off the rough benches, opening all those prayerful faces, setting the secrets of their souls free from their hiding places to confess themselves, to his eyes only. Come whispering in unspoken words only he could hear, calling him to capture and steal them away from the chasm of time and space. This had been the calling, the vehicle which had carried him away into a world he was certain could not be the same one he’d left behind. But now, after so many seasons of blessed escape, came the boy. This toddling boy, such a piece of him yet so relentlessly just as she had been, full of surprise and sayings that don’t know no better but know everything, leaving him, after years of sure-footed steps, again at a loss for his own whereabouts.
With resolute steps, Henry crossed the stone-paved patio of the barbecue pit. Tracking the semicircle of its wall, he stopped at the broad grille set at its center to peer upward in satisfaction to the top of its chimney, and beyond to the ridge of the graveyard, the mausoleum standing silent and inscrutable amid its gnarled cedars, the street unwinding into still-country roads in the distance. Recalling how he had raised it block by block their first long summer at the edge of town, in the face of neighbors’ sidelong and curtained glances and whispered gossip of monstrosity, with all the stubborn assurance of a man building refuge, against flood and siege and firestorm and the restless departed, for that frightened monstrous thing within him which would at last rest there, fortressed and captured. He gathered the afternoon’s accumulation of our bark-stripped branches, crashed paper planes, bubble-gum wrappers and scraps of broken flowers from the iron grate, not only unconcerned but thankful that children from those once-stranger’s houses had for fifteen summers since come to explore and claim in innocence a territory which parents had deemed a born ruin, to refashion it, just as he had in answering his darkness to himself, in the precise image of fantasy. At arc’s end he leaned over the parapet to smell the clumps of lilac hanging from the bush, the first flower Claire had planted there, now reaching far beyond his grasp. Then, turning back to face the yard, he stretched forth an arm, whose hand began to bounce through the air in a languid beat.
Whatcha counting, Papa? I said,
You know, what Mother wants back here, he said. Great big canopy over five tables. Rainie Jimmy and next of kin right here. Two table there, and the other two there, he pointed. Nice little bar, on the patio. And the boys serve us from right in here, he said.
And the swing set, we can go on too, I said,
pointing to where it stood, like the fleshless bones of a once huge strange creature, at the yard’s edge.
Now that’s right. Almost forgot about that, Papa said. With all them flowers and things, it sure gonna be pretty. And folks can relax, rain or shine.
And go down the slide, I said.
I picked out a stick from the heap at his feet. One which had been preposterously outsized for our charades that afternoon, but would prove satisfactory for the pose at hand.
GI, here’s your rifle, I said.
He leaped to salute and take arms.
Yes, Cap’n, Papa says,
They’re coming quick. Better find cover, soldier I said,
Must be them German crooks, he says. Just let me at them devils, he says,
again I found him in the window, crouching there at the wall, sighting down that length of birch wood toward that threatening legion of stones. The specters of massacre and conquest we’d carelessly dismiss to end our hours of play seemed to spring into unsettling life within him and, thus refracted, receded into the indefinite future, to await me there where, as for him, both recess and reprieve would be denied.
Click
Piow, piow piow! he says, I got one he says.
Never knew what hit him. Good job, soldier I said.
My small hands were far from steady, so I knew from his own counsel that in that now-imprisoned moment he would turn out to be a ghost himself, indelibly consigned by my wavering to wander the afterlife. And knew from the way he stood and straightened his hat that he had found but little comfort in my diversions, that having saved the world, he had had quite enough. His brow clinched with a surge of irritation as he called me over.
Now you take one just like I am, Papa says.
He brushed off his trousers and strode to the center, and once there adopted a most unfamiliar gesture and expression: slightly stooped, with one arm half-extended to beckon onlookers in, with head tilted in an arrested, perpetual nod, with an overbroad, brittle smile I had never before encountered in all my experience of the bittersweet weather of his face. But I could see that no others had come to welcome.
Reckon you got me, Papa says, Go head and shoot.
Click