by Laura Migdal
from her novel Parachute Woman,
available from LEGIBLE Books.
We're driving south and then west. I've lost the map, you've lost your fingers, we're confused, bottomless. I lend you my hand. It's okay, I say. I really only need one.
At the Mississippi River we stop on a bridge and watch the wide brown water slither beneath us. Why is it brown? I ask. It's mud, you say. It's all that silt. Why is it famous? I ask. I refuse the actual; I'm in the presence of America, something great should be occurring. It's hot here and I've been bitten by insects; your back streams with hot sweat. I taste one bead. It's salty. I'm hungry, I say. Never mind about the river, it's not going anywhere. Let's move past this obstacle — west has always been the symbol of re-invention.
But in the Badlands I am covered with primeval dust. There's a full moon. Did I tell you that? I ask, in the tent. It's so bright out there, I saw a pronghorn antelope, we exchanged phone numbers and promised to call each other. You roll over in your sleeping bag. Your large body capable of causing so much demolition. Let's get out of this moonscape, I say, Farther, until we see the Pacific Ocean, blue like my father's eyes. Your father has brown eyes, you say. How do you know? I ask. Because you have brown eyes. It's genetics, you say. I've never met the man, I say, I can invent anything. I can tell you he's a big-deal lawyer in San Francisco. I can tell you he makes doll parts in a factory on the outskirts of Duluth. Or he's a singer in a traveling opera troupe, he's a troubadour, he's a medieval wanderer, he's the court jester, he's the freak at the wedding that never happened.
We're eating hot fudge sundaes on the beach. I call them sprinkles, the little brown things on top of the whipped cream, but you call them jimmies. That sums up our relationship, I say.
We can't go further. I need my hand back now, I tell you. You'll find your fingers, they're on the side of the road next to a sign announcing five miles to the Delaware Gap. After all of this meddling we still haven't found any vapors to take us out of a certain arterial occlusion. I'll be alone here, I announce, even as I watch your back becoming a white blot on the horizon. I'll be all right, I tell you, even though you're already in Detroit. Really, I say, curling up inside a large brown basket. I'm fine without you. Anything else would be too difficult. I hope you make it home, I mumble, through the dimness of the woven reeds.
© 2004 Laura Migdal
Laura Migdal was born in New York City in 1968. She has a B.A. from Hampshire College and an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and has been the recipient of numerous writing residencies and fellowships. Migdal has taught creative writing at Hampshire College, and English at the University of New Mexico. Her prose and poetry have been published in BOMB, Other Voices, The 13th Warrior Review, The Doomed City, and gestalten. She lives in northern New Mexico with her husband, two cats, and three dogs. Her first book, a novel called Parachute Woman, is available from LEGIBLE books.
Go here to read The Boy, another story by Migdal.
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