People, the ghosts down in North-of-the-South aren’t see-through, and: I’m moved by her, that big-nippled girl

Abstract

People, the ghosts down in North-of-the-South aren’t see-through, and: I’m moved by her, that big-nippled girl Diane Seuss (bio) People, the ghosts down in North-of-the-South aren’t see-through They don’t wear nightgowns or whisper or singor want hazy things from the ones of us who are living.They have skin, bones, people. They’re short in statureand they don’t walk through walls. They come in our houses by kicking down doors, wearing porkpie hats and smokingthose My Father cigars. Yellow sweat stainson their sleeveless undershirts, my people. I’m surethere are other kinds of ghosts other places, sad angels wearing bloomers and fanning their wings,but here their faces are made of gristle and their eyesred from too much Thunderbird. They want to stealour valuables, mess shit up, drop a match and burn down the house. I don’t know any other way to say it,people. They walk right into our kitchens without being invited,tracking mud, lifting the fish by the tail out of the fryerand stuffing it in a cloth sack the color of a potato just pulled out of the ground, and if there was a potatopulled fresh out of the ground they’d take that too.Their pee sizzles when it hits the floor. They don’t hearprayers or heed four-leaf clovers. We have to give our bodies to the task. I mean we push back, people.Harder than day labor. Harder than shoving a bullout of the cow paddock. Two bulls. We have to sayleave my goddamned house. Go, motherfucker. My fucking house. Shouting while pushing, like breech birth,or twins. They slap on that corpse-smelling aftershaveand come calling, holding a bouquet of weeds. They wantour whiskey, our gravy, our honey, our combs, our bees. [End Page 199] I’m moved by her, that big-nippled girl with the diminutive vulva. Sometimes when I wipeafter peeing I say the phrase “cow lips” out loud. Irefuse, these days, to romanticize myself. That girl, her red shoes. If they’d been high heels I would haveordered her out into the rain, but they were scuffedflats with a black vinyl abstraction lolling over the top like the innards of a poppy or an oversize houseflyrubbing its hands together. Her nipples were huge.It’s liberating to say that. Having noticed it, why not say it? Some will take umbrage. But when I say“ordered her out into the rain” I mean “extracted herfrom my imagination.” Does that help? My hair smells like oven cleaner. My tongue is pale; there’ssomething wrong with my spleen. The girl’s nipples,the size of flying saucers. Her hairstyle from 1964, the year my father died. Lace stockings and elbow-length red gloves. Jade earrings shaped like my body.Stop saying that she could be my daughter. I could be my daughter, my daughter’s daughter. I havea dead bone in my leg, and eight screws, which haveno structural purpose. They’re symbolic; one for each screwup. I’ve brought my hands to my mouth to tampdown the ruthless tears. Mine are elongated, my tearsnot my tits, like El Greco’s penitent St. Peter. How can I say this so you can begin to understand? Her stance,frontal. Her nipples, emitting their own light, twoasymmetrical baptismal grottoes. The slant rhyme [End Page 200] of her stomach, slender but without muscle tone,punctuated by an off-center belly button, a period’speriod. Her vulva, unassailable. No bigger than a sphinx moth, with just a wisp of hair over the lips,like the mouth of a little mute puppet. It reminded meof an envelope of mouse-colored curls that fell out of the Book of Psalms that time I turned to the Biblefor solace. The faint loops of hair were mine, secretedaway by my mother from my first haircut at the hands of her father, a barber. My name on the envelope,the hair like a dead shrew...