Fanny Says Read online

Page 6


  she said my full name. Nickole? Nickole? Where are you?

  Well, okay. I was just making sure

  you didn’t go.

  Grandma needs you here; I couldn’t see you

  down on the floor; I wasn’t sure where you was.

  I put the pills back,

  closed the drawer, turned out her bedroom light,

  said, I’m so sorry, Fanny; I’m right here. Goodnight.

  Fanny Says She Made Him Feel Better

  Monroe and I, well, we used to have a lotta fun. We’d sneak off, do it under a tree in the countryside. And we’d sneak off while the girls finished up dinner and diddle in the back of the Chevrolet, and he’d say, Fanny, I dare you, and I’d say, Monroe, don’t you dare me, and we’d giggle and hide on the side of the road somewheres. . . . And it was half the fun of it, really, sneaking. And I tell you, we all just about worn our husbands out. I done it a thousand times pretending. And he’d say, Now, you had a good time last night? And I’d say, Yeeeahh.

  But Monroe, after his heart, just couldn’t no more. And the nurse came in, and I was sitting on the foot of his bed, and she asked us, How many times do you have sex? And Monroe, well, he got so embarrassed, his face was as red as on that Pepsi can there, and well, just like he always does when he got embarrassed like that, he says, Ask her. And I coulda just about killed him, but I said, Oh, about four times a week, and he sat up, just a grinning like a motherfucker.

  How to Dress like Fanny

  Don’t carry a purse but a pocketbook, and underneath

  don’t wear a bra and panties

  but a push-up Frederick’s of Hollywood brassiere

  and a pair of bloomers—nylon, always white, pulled up

  as far as bloomers can possibly go.

  For your shoes, two options: should you need to go shopping

  or get your pressure checked, lace up a pair of white Keds.

  Otherwise, it’s house shoes, dust-pink slippers

  curled from the dryer into tiny, warm cups for your feet.

  Now, every day, every single day, wear the exact same top:

  a businessman’s short-sleeve, white. Buy three dozen of them

  three sizes too big, cut the collars off, have them bleached bright,

  starched twice, and no sense in clasping more than two

  buttons at the top unless you’re going out—Grandma’s got to

  breathe. These are your button-downs, the only thing worth

  hanging in your closet, and the only kind of shirt

  in thirty years you’ve worn since you got home,

  pulled that girdle and them stockings off,

  them high heels too—all that shit—and first put on

  one a Monroe’s shirts. It was right comfortable, Fanny said,

  I never wanted to wear nothing else since.

  The other half of you isn’t covered with pants

  and sure as hell don’t mess with a skirt but pulls on

  fluffies—soft cotton sweats, rolled up, with all the elastic

  ripped out, cause Skinny Fanny ain’t so skinny

  no more. Now, you were young once, you remember

  being a kid in britches, a pretty thing in capris, and grown,

  on Sunday, you wore slacks to Pleasant Grove, that same church

  where we grieved your body that had died 1,046 miles away.

  The pastor couldn’t remember much—it had been so long

  since you sat fanning in the pew—but he could tell

  the story of Fanny in pants, back when that’s just not

  what women were allowed to do. Your slacks were pleated,

  pressed with a crease, camel-hair, and those slacks

  strolled towards the altar not because you were one

  for women’s rights or your husband built that church

  with his own hands back in ’63, but Baptists be damned,

  them slacks just felt good.

  Fanny Says I Need to Keep Warm

  Shit. I didn’t mind the cold weather in Kentucky. Not one bit. I’d just put on my false eyelashes and get cleaned up. I had my car in a garage, so not one drop a rain hit me as I was stepping from my house to my car. I’d just get myself dressed and go shopping, and I didn’t mind the weather one bit.

  Now, what you need to do when you wake up in the morning is set your oven about 400 degrees. Open the door and it will heat up your kitchen in no time. That’s what I used to do early in the morning when I was making my coffee. I’d make my coffee and crank that heat up and I’d sit in a straight-backed chair (I don’t know why I could always sit in a straight-backed chair. . . . People would ask me Fanny, how you do that? and I would say I don’t know, it’s just so comfortable for me), and so I’d open the oven door and prop my feet up on it and sit and read all morning. . . . I really did enjoy it, and sometimes I’d be there all day, just as toasty as can be.

  Fuck those space heaters though—before you know it, you’ll burn your whole house down with one a those things. Your Uncle Butchie wants to know: Is it a kerosene heater? Well, it better not be. You’ll asphyxiate yourself with one of those. And make sure to keep it away from your bed too; you won’t be nothing but a pile a ashes and a puddle a grease by morning time. Promise me you keep it away from the bed now?

  Well, I know I’m a runnin up your phone bill. I’ll talk to you later, baby. Grandma loves you too.

  III

  People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.

  —James Baldwin

  A Genealogy of the Word

  1.

  Saying “the n-word” is a cop-out, robbing

  history of its essential

  grit, faked out, vaguely

  Pentecostal, pleated and ironed stiff,

  like dagnabbit and bullfish and flip it to dip.

  Fanny was authoritative

  with her cussing, unabashed

  with cocksucker and fucker and dick.

  Most times, I’d laugh, pour her a fresh Pepsi

  or do whatever else she was barking out,

  but that word made me hot

  with shame; out of her mouth

  it was visible, a skidmark, a shit

  stain.

  2.

  Bernie May came to the house regular

  as the mail: she’d take a hair brush

  to the shag rugs then to my ratty head;

  she’d Comet the toilets minty blue then squeak-clean

  mirrored tables, mirrored counters, mirrored walls,

  sometimes catching a glimpse of her dark

  skin in Fanny’s white rooms. She’d flour up cold chops

  for popping-hot lard then ice

  green onions for the day’s bean soup;

  she’d make a walking path for the clean

  white floors by laying down

  clean white sheets. And always, before the day was

  through, she’d put on a pot of coffee and read

  the paper with Fanny, always finding news

  of some girl getting raped, cut into a million pieces,

  and tossed in the canal for the fish

  to eat. She’d make sure to read every single word,

  out loud, doing her best to terrify some sense

  into my head, because, besides a string bikini,

  I wore nothing

  other than scrunchie socks to protect my feet

  from hot sand. There was no getting past those two;

  before I could head down to the beach, I had to cross

  my heart and say: No, Bernie. No, Fanny, no, ma’am.

  I swear my hand I’ ll be careful. I won’t let myself

  get raped.

  3.

  Sometimes, Bernie’d stop long enough to set up

  the joke, asking, Mrs. Cox, now say again

  what would you do if your blonde grandchild here

  fell in love with a black man

  like my cousin Tyrone?

  Fanny’
d reach into her roller bowl, pull out her gun.

  She’d point it at my face.

  If she was with a nigger man, I’ d have to kill her.

  A purdy girl like her can’t get a white man?

  Then Fanny’d put the gun

  down, and they’d both laugh

  and laugh.

  Half the fun for them was to see me

  jump off the couch and stomp down

  the hall, but what they didn’t know

  was I knew Fanny’d never hurt me,

  no. It was never the gun that made me

  flinch.

  4.

  The gun—brought back from the war,

  the second, though by whom no one

  would say—was greased to an assassin’s

  sheen, the sweet char of gun oil

  cool, slippery to touch.

  She kept it buried

  in her roller bowl, a popcorn bowl

  pink and plastic, chock full of granny

  things: hard little cannons

  of hair rollers the same color pink,

  bobby pins, dentures, cold

  cream, metal nail files, false

  lashes, pills, safety pins,

  those silver, spring-loaded

  alligator clips

  women used to use

  to set finger waves.

  With quickness, she’d noodle her hand

  under it all, fishing

  from the bowl-bottom

  grit of tobacco flakes and crumbled

  blush; she’d finger

  a few stray bullets

  then wrap her palm around

  its handle,

  pulling it up with a force

  necessary to hold on to a live thing

  that’s never once had

  its safety on.

  5.

  I want to blame

  fear, blame poverty, blame

  stories back from a time

  when her daddy put

  butter in coffee, penny days

  when there wasn’t a chicken fat enough

  for anybody to eat, when the hills hissed

  cottonmouth stories of a schoolteacher

  raped in the fields.

  What I don’t want to say is

  the corn was high and hissed too,

  that the man caught there

  was shot

  in the back

  four times

  and still, Fanny said,

  that nigger lived.

  6.

  Close to death, Fanny grew more and more

  afraid, and every night I couldn’t get the blinds closed

  tight enough: They’re always looking in at me,

  you know. And I can’t walk, Koey, so I can’t be

  too careful.

  We got all these Puerto Ricans and Brazilians

  and niggers down here in Florida. The condo complex

  is full of them; the boys keep tapping on my window;

  they’re liable to come in and slit our throats.

  And your Uncle Butch wouldn’t be no help, neither.

  He’s done gone to the track today, and he’s just about

  two sheets to the wind. They’ d slit his throat too,

  no problem. And after that they’ d rape you,

  put a dick in you that long and you’ d wished

  you was dead.

  She also told me if I didn’t lock the door that night

  iguanas would waltz right in the condo and do

  the same thing, crawl up between my legs,

  until, she said, you wished

  you was dead.

  7.

  That summer, a woman stops me in the hall.

  There have been some complaints, she says.

  The elderly woman in there. Is she your mother?

  Well, she’s been waving a gun at the boys going past her

  window; she claims she’ ll shoot them dead.

  What on earth do you think we should do?

  I tell her the only thing I know to say:

  I suggest you duck and get the hell out of her way.

  8.

  When Monroe was alive, he was her

  fist, he was her gun.

  They used to make splintered,

  giggling love in the woods:

  We’ d sneak off, do it under a tree.

  And I said, “Monroe, somebody’s gonna catch us.”

  And that was half the fun . . . and I said, “What if a big nigger

  comes up here and gets me?” and he said,

  “Ain’t nobody gonna get you now that I’m here.”

  This was the same fist who beat

  his daughter for letting a black boy

  ride her bicycle.

  His name was Rodney, Mama said. Was it Rodney?

  Either way, he wanted to ride my bike around the block,

  said he ain’t never seen such purdy streamers

  on a pair of handlebars in his whole life.

  Mama couldn’t recall if the bike was blue,

  but if it was, she was beaten

  the same color.

  9.

  My grandfather, the same man who grew

  old and celebrated living

  through his fourth open heart

  by selling off all but one

  of the family cemetery plots

  to give money to a young girl

  grinning like a fool inside

  his brand-new four-door, four-wheel-drive

  shining white pickup.

  The girl was my age, light-skinned.

  Fanny said, You know he was driving

  almost a thousand miles every month

  to give her $900 out a his Social Security check?

  And bad as his heart was, all she ever coulda done

  was rub his old head and scratch his back.

  Bernie May gave me a name for her—a digger—

  that nigger girl.

  10.

  The summer of bedpans and sponge baths

  and a well-oiled gun, the television was incessant,

  kept on to keep out what was bound

  to happen next. Fanny flipped to the sports channel:

  Now that Tiger, they just hate him

  out on the golf course. And I just love that nigger.

  I want to say she loved Bernie, but she often counted

  the bath towels after she was gone.

  I just love that nigger. He done beat their ass on the golf course

  and so they’ve got to shake his hand, and you know it’s just killing ’em,

  having to do that, but they got no choice. They got to be polite and

  shake his hand and smile all big when you know it’s just killing them inside.

  I want to say she loved Bernie, but I wasn’t allowed

  in her part of town.

  I just love that nigger. And I knew that little white girl he was with

  wouldn’t stick around long. I seen her run out on the golf course,

  just a waving and screaming Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!

  and I knew right then he wouldn’t have nothing to do with her.

  You just don’t do that. And I’m sure he was out all day playing—nine to ten hours

  on his feet—and came home to her wanting to go out. I don’t think so.

  I want to say she loved Bernie, but I wasn’t allowed

  to drive her home.

  You know, I never went nowhere without my husband.

  I got invited to one a those—Koey, what you call them plastic bowls

  with the lids that snap on top? Tupperware. Yes—tupperware parties—

  and Monroe looked over at me and said, “Where you think you’re going?

  I don’t think so.”

  And I didn’t neither. And I sure was glad I didn’t when I had to wake up

  at six the next morning with seven kids. No, I didn’t go nowhere

  without Monroe. And Tiger ain’t putting up with that s
hit neither.

  I want to say she loved Bernie, but she never

  trusted her with Monroe.

  11.

  Sometimes, we reclaim words, make them

  our own. Dyke, for example.

  Say it: dyke, dyke, dyke,

  dyke, dyke, dyke, dyke.

  Say it enough times, and it’s a spoke

  disappearing on a fast bike,

  something to blow your hair back.

  But if we say this word over and over, can we make it

  change? Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger,

  nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger,

  nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger.

  You see? It’s immune, still a backhanded, redneck,

  spitwad crack. It’s mule stubborn, deeply

  set, the only word I know not up to

  this stupid-ass trick.

  12.

  There was one plot left

  when my grandfather died,

  so when Fanny’s time

  came, there was no room for her,

  no way to bury her next to her mother,

  no family earth left for her bones.