“Traditional Somethings”:
The Persistence of Ààlè
in Nigeria
by David T. Doris

December 15th, 2004
by Joanna Solfrian

The Ventriloquist’s
Daughter
by Susan Morehouse

December 15th, 2004
    Joanna Solfrian

I can’t help but think of eels, tiny electric eels; that’s what blood starts to feel like in these places: silvery, amped up, and flashing, as if legions of swishing tails have become such a blood-blur that the ordinary roundness of cells is dopey by comparison, a dull thought, a slow stupidity. Then there’s the liquid blue light spilling from the fluorescents, dryly washing the scarf rainbows, the leather gloves lined with this year’s fur—O, the shiny lives of gloves!—the display boxes wrapped in red and green paper and my god, if I could just find the rotating jewelry stand or the sunglasses rack, then maybe I could get a decent reflection, not out of narcissism, but out of a desperation to remember my face among these racks and racks of pants—juniors pants, misses pants, clearance pants—I am standing in the Marshalls in Watertown, Connecticut, with an Operation Santa letter in my hand. “Dear Santa,” it reads. “My name is Matthew. I would like Yu-Gi-Oh cards, the GameCube game Bloody Wars, a beanbag, something for Miss Stone, and whatever else you think I deserve. Love, Matthew.” The rest of the list I have taken care of: the animation trading cards, a different GameCube game rated E for Everyone, and even the beanbag—a giant red pleather ball that will probably leak noxious beans in a month. I am here for Miss Stone. Who is Miss Stone? Matthew’s teacher, I suppose. What woman is this who teaches third grade in the Bronx? Does she show up early, while the janitor is still buffing the hallways?—Now the perfume section, flowers wrapped in cellophane. How old are you, Miss Stone? Are you a twenty-two-year-old, right out of college, with inexpensive, fashionable clothes and a heart not yet capsized? Or maybe you’re older. God forbid, I think of your breasts. Are they low and pendulous, have your bra straps made permanent dents in your shoulders? Maybe you’re from the Bronx. Maybe you’re Hispanic or black. Would we have coffee? Oh god, maybe you’d think I was ridiculous. A thirty-one-year-old white woman with five pairs of red shoes in her closet. Miss Stone, Miss Stone. When you’re held up to the light, are there tiny holes in your surface where seawater came through? The shameful thought breeches: Black women love lotion. That college break when I worked at Victoria’s Secret, most of the women who bought the lotion were black. But then again, most of the customers were black, so it probably follows that the women buying lotion were, too. (Why wouldn’t the laws of probability apply in the silken world of camisoles?) I can get you a nicer present if I go over to the sale rack. I look at the handbags, imagine your tissues and lipstick and odds and ends—How much do you carry with you? How many pockets do you need to stow things away? Where do you hide the expired driver’s license from when you were still round in the cheek? Where did you tuck the clipped braid from your first haircut, the old lover’s phone number? Nothing seems right. This one’s too large and the leather is mealy, that one’s a dejected barfly bag. How much time has passed? I am too short to see beyond the racks, beyond the glass doors to catch a scrap of sky, maybe a furl of purple light, the kind that is a five-minute gift. My hand lands on a pink bag with a designer tag. I don’t care about the tag—or OK, fine, I do, but mostly I care about the pink: It is as pink as pink gets, sea rose pink, open-mouth pink, the pink of a scalded palm, so I hand over the twenty-nine dollars and the world becomes what it always has been, a world of hurt and love, and my heart swells with the thought that, with a wrinkle of the universe, we could meet at a bus stop one day, me with no notebook in hand and you with a pink bag on your lap, and we would strike up a conversation about the war or the weather or what little kids are like when they’re sleepy—but I pause for the electric eye to open the glass doors. I know this will never happen, Miss Stone. When the suction of wind sends me into the parking lot, the light is gatherless and gray. The sedans are lined up like patient horses, and I realize it’s not snow on the pavement, it’s only last week’s salt. I tighten my jacket around my throat and get into my Volkswagen and start to cry. If a savior did come into the world all those years ago, born for everyone, he still wouldn’t have heard the voice, barely louder than a whisper, say Merry Christmas, Watertown, Merry Christmas, Miss Stone, a sweet little boy wanted you to have something to open.