wonder whose heart was a doomed spoon. Mine or Gary’s.
The best I could do for Gary at this point was hold him, and ask him what he was going to do after.
“After what?” asked Gary. “After shooting,” I said. “I’m going to Barcelona,” said Gary. Now, that really ceiled me. I would’ve said “that really threw me off the heap,” but I wasn’t invited to be on the heap. Wasn’t really sure I ever wanted to be on the heap. “There are these scrambled eggs in Barcelona,” said Gary, “I really need to try.” “Oh, come on, Gary. You know you’ll scream the whole way.” In the States Gary was just fussy. Overseas he screamed.
And then I remembered Gary’s problem with malapropping. “Barcelona?” I asked. “Barcelona,” said Gary. “Scrambled eggs?” I asked. “Scrambled eggs,” said Gary. I looked over at the heap. My mother was halfway out of there. “Six more years,” she yelled, “and then I quit.” My father gave Gary an idealistic thumbs-up. “Did you know,” said Grandma, “that the fear of puppets is called pupaphobia?” “Well,” said Grandpa, “bye.” “I’m not going yet,” I said. I was still holding Gary. I held him as tightly as I hold my breath when I pass the cemetery. “Why do you do that?” asked Gary. “Do what?” “Hold your breath when you pass the cemetery?” I looked over at the heap. Aunt Rosa smacked her hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter, but she wasn’t even laughing. She wasn’t even smiling. “Because I don’t,” I whispered, “want to make the ghosts jealous.” “This isn’t about you,” said Gary.
“This is about me and my burden of dreams.” “I know, Gary.” “I know you know,” said Gary. He picked a few leaves off the tin can and handed them to me. I put them in my mouth, chewed, and swallowed. A month later I was pregnant.
I stayed on the set until my husband, the black man, came to pick me up.
There once was a very old man with large gray eyes who collected all the fairy tales in the whole wide world. He put them in a large sack, and carried the sack from village to village. Some believed the sack to be filled with gold, others bones, but all were too afraid to ask. I know this because the very old man with large gray eyes is my great-great-grandfather. He left me this sack when he died. For many years I would not open it. I hung the sack from a tree in my yard. At first it swung drowsily, but the years turned the sack savage and soon it whipped around even when the air was still. Little yellow teeth began to poke through. It was not until my seventy-seventh birthday that I opened the sack. What was inside will not astonish you: glass coffins, the belly of the big bad wolf, ovens, forests, magic mirrors, men caught inside beasts, and frogs, and cats, hundreds of shoes, and a glittering sea. At the very bottom of the sack was a girl who had once, long, long ago in a land far away, become pregnant by swallowing a rose petal. I asked her who she was. “Before the sack?” she asked. “Yes,” I said, “before the sack.” She told me that before the sack she lived inside a fairy tale called “The Young Slave” by Giambattista Basile. I believed her because she was pretty and sad. “Do you want to know,” she asked, “what all the things inside the sack filled with fairy tales are like?” “Very much,” I said. She brought my hand to her belly. “They are like home.” “Home?” I asked. I felt confused. “Containers,” she said. “Either we are inside or we are outside.” “Who?” I asked. “Us,” she said. “The figures”—she blushed—“of fairy tales. Either we are inside. ” She climbed inside the sack. “Or we are outside.” She climbed back out. “It is like in your story ‘My Brother Gary Made a Movie and This Is What Happened,’ how you are outside the heap.” “It’s not really me,” I said. “Exactly,” she said. “You are outside of you.” I looked at my story. “Gary’s head is inside the paper bag!” “Now you’re catching on,” she said. “Even the moobie is a container,” explained the girl. “Because Gary is trying to capture the Holocaust?” I asked. “Exactly,” said the girl, who was both pretty and sad. “Fairy tales are about questions of belonging, and Mouse does not belong.” “Me?” I asked. “Yes, Mouse,” said the girl, “you.” “Because I married a black man?” I asked. “This is not about you,” said the girl. “Oh, right,” I said. The girl handed me a rose petal. I put it in my mouth, chewed, and swallowed. Nine months later I gave birth to a very old man with large gray eyes.
AIMEE BENDER. The Color Master
OUR STORE WAS EXPENSIVE, I MEAN EX-PEN-SIVE, AS ANYTHING would be if all its requests were clothing in the colors of natural elements. The Duke’s son wanted shoes the color of rock, so he could walk in the rock and not see his feet. He was vain that way, he did not like to see his feet. He wanted to appear, from a distance, as a floating pair of ankles. But rock, of course, is many colors. It’s subtle, but it is not just one plain gray, that I can promise, and in order to truly blend in, it would not do to give the Duke a regular pair of lovely pure gray-dyed shoes. So, we had to trek over as a group to his dukedom, a three-day trip, and take bagfuls of the rocks back with us, the rocks he would be walking on, and then use those, at the studio, as guides. I spent five hours, one afternoon, just staring at a rock, trying to see into its color scheme. Gray, my head kept saying. I see gray.
At the shop, in general, we built clothing and shoes, soles and heels, shirts and coats; we treated the leather, shaped and wove the cloth, and even when an item wasn’t ordered as a special request, one pair of shoes or one robe might cost as much as a pony or a month’s food from the market stalls. Most villagers did not have this kind of money so the bulk of our customers were royalty, or the occasional traveler riding through town who had heard rumors of our skills. For this pair, for the Duke, all of us tailors and shoemakers, who numbered about twelve, were working round the clock. One man had the idea to grind bits of rock into particles, and then he added those particles to the dye washing bin. This helped, a little. We attended visualization seminars, where we tried to imagine what it was like to be a rock, and then, quietly, after an hour of deep thought and breathing, returned to our desks and tried to insert that imagery into our choices about how long to leave the shoes in the dye bath. We felt the power of the mountain, in the rock, and let that play a subtle subtextual role. And then, once the dye had reached ultimate power, and once the shoes were a beautiful pure gray, a rocky gray, but still gray, we summoned the Color Master.
She lived about a half mile away. In a cottage, behind the scrubby oak grove. We summoned her by sending off a goat down the lane, because she did not like to be disturbed by people, and the goat would trot down the road and butt on the door as her cue. She’d set up our studio and shop, in the first place, years ago; she does the final work. But the Color Master has been looking unwell these days. For our last project, the Duchess’s handbag, which was supposed to look like a just-blooming rose, she wore herself out thinking about pink, and was in bed for weeks after, recovering, which had never happened before. Pink, she kept saying, as she tossed around, in her bed. Birth, sex, blushes, kisses. She had a very high fever, and lost too much weight. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Also her younger brother suffers from terrible back problems and cannot move or work and lives with her, on the sofa, all day long. Also she is growing older, and she is certainly the most talented in the kingdom and gets zero recognition. We, the tailors and shoemakers, we know of her gifts, but does the King? Do the townsfolk? She walks among them, like an ordinary being, shopping for tomatoes, and no one knows that the world she’s seeing is about a thousand times more detailed than the world anyone else is looking at. When you see a tomato, like me, you probably see a very nice red orb with a green stem, smelling fresh and delectable, with a gentle give to the touch. When she sees a tomato, she sees blues and browns and yellows and curves, and the vine it came on, and she can probably even guess how many seeds are in a given tomato based on how heavy it feels in her hand.
So, we sent over the goat, and when she came into the studio, with the goat, we’d just finished the fourth dying of the rock shoes. They were drying on a mat, and they looked pretty good. I told Cheryl that her visualization of the mountain had definitely helped, because it was a deeper, stronger gray than I’d expected. Cheryl blushed. She’s one of the nicer ones. I said, too, that Edwin’s addition of the rocks to the dye had added a useful kind of rough texture. He kicked a stool leg, pleased. I hadn’t done much; I’m not the most skilled, but I like to commend good work when I see it. But the thing is, even with all our hard work, with all our deepening, they still looked like really beautiful gray shoes. The kind any normal person would love, if they didn’t have this curious vanity about vanishing feet.
The Color Master walked in, wearing a linen sheath woven with blue threadings. Her face hinting at gaunt. She greeted us all by nodding, and stood at the counter where the shoes were drip-drying.
Very nice work, she said. Esther, who had fronted the dying process, curtsied.
We sprinkled rocks into the dye, she said.
A fine choice, said the Color Master.
Edwin did a little dance in place, over at his table.
