Shirley

Malika came up to the whiteboard before class, a pair of earrings in her hand, blue, with bitty rhinestones. For me, ooh. “Put one on,” I said, lending her my ear. She fumbled with my hair, tried, tried more. “I can’t,” she said. So I stuck them in my bag and took them home. Where I discovered they weren’t the clasp kind. “I don’t have pierced ears,” I said to Malika, next day. Pierced. Perhaps I wrote it on the board. Every interaction in a class like this—English for immigrants—is a game. You’re endeavoring to communicate without making things complicated. If that isn’t a trick I don’t know what is. Teacher and student, you’re trying to bore down to the word’s core, spark understanding, connect. It’s intimate, intense. “Why?” asked Malika. “Why?” Every female in her culture, she wanted me to know, down to the babies, had earrings. E ar holes . She maybe didn’t say holes. How to respond? Oh, well, I grew up Mennonite. Say that? Say I kind of have a Mennonite predispositi...

It’s Ama. She’s going to be Ama. AH-ma. That’s what she’s decided—Jennifer, our daughter, whose son Jonathan is now a father. Perfect, I think. So now am I GrandAHma ? Wait, Great-grandAHma ? Or just Ma (pronounced Mah )? I’m de finitely not Maw. Now that would be revolting. Or could Solomon, the new baby, just say Grandmommy like all the others when his soft suckling mouth grows brave enough to try the word? Great-grandmommy, I think, would be taking things too far. It sounds overly greatly grand. I’m all thumbs. Mere days after his birth, over at Jonathan and Hannah’s, carrying Solomon across their grassy, bumpy yard and trying not to fall and break him—Jonathan had handed him over when I got out of the car—I realized I might be stabbing his tender fetal-curled back (through his clothes) with my car keys. Another day, Hannah on our sofa, Paulson and Jonathan outside somewhere, and me prowling the house with Solomon, I let his head slightly wobble. Obviously I was f...

Now That Mine’s Worse than My Dog’s While the world blows up we go along, go along, attending to trifles. Some of us, at least me. I think all the time about my hair. I was running over to Jennifer’s for my trims. No wrangling for beauty shop appointments, anymore, and having to drive all the way into town. But there were issues. I’d go over with my towel, maybe my head already wetted in anticipation, and she’d plant me on a stool on her porch in the cold wind and demand how much do you want off? and then whack whack whack, she’d be done. No wasting time with that woman. No coddling me, as if she’d pined for me to visit and now I was there she could deliberate with me over how to best fix my mop, weigh every snick, draw out the process. So for one thing, I needed more attention. The other thing was what my grandgirl said. She said my hair was damaged. She said I shouldn’t be blow-drying it, frying it to death. She said to soothe the frizz, instead I should work in some coconu...

Wintry Morning   Dog eats dog’s—no, deer’s—leg.