Fanny Says 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.