The Short Stories of Laura Wiltse

Waxing Nostalgic & Flying Objects

Waxing Nostalgic

The Max Wax is on the second floor, on top of a bakery that makes the best peanut butter chip cookies I've ever tasted. The baking scents wander up through the vents, making my mouth water. The intensity is partially masked by that of hot wax, and I'm thankful for that. I can't allow myself to enter the bakery very often, considering what it could trigger. Waxing is usually considered the poor cousin to manicures, pedicures, massages, tanning. Many wax technicians are forced to wait in an overheated back room until someone finally wanders in for de-hairing like a lost sheep. However, my current employer, The Max Wax, is devoted only to waxing. It keeps me busy, leaving less time to think, and that is a blessing. We specialize in every kind of hair removal, from eyebrow shaping to back hair removal to Brazilian bikini waxes. We also offer designer waxes-hearts, stars and other shapes. I've even been asked by a particularly smitten teenager to wax her boyfriend's initials into her bikini line, although that kind of request is rare. We are referred to as estheticians here, a nice fancy title, but I don't bother fooling myself. I know the truth of what I do every day. The Ivanofs, an old Russian couple, own the shop. Ivan, the husband, hired me. I thought he had a penchant for pudgy girls, judging by the way he appraised me with a sparkle in his eye and hired me on the spot, no resumé, no experience. Olga, his wife, relishes telling each customer about her first wax 50 years ago-how she cried and cried. We've lost a lot of customers that way. "Wax came straight from the candle back then," she says and chuckles, "my mother and sisters had to tie me down to the chair!" I happen to think she is full of shit but the story makes me smile, a foreign feeling these days. I try to keep my amusement to myself to avoid Olga's attention. She's waxed her legs so many times that her hair doesn't even pierce the surface anymore for fear of getting its head ripped off. Olga once waxed Cher. The way she tells it, Cher walked in with bikini-line hair as long as the famous black strands on her head. The process took hours and Cher yelped the entire time. Olga says it sounded just like the chorus from "If I Could Turn Back Time." Olga hummed along as she worked. Cher's autographed photo still hangs in her office today. But Olga's caseload is lighter these days. She leaves the body below the neck to me and focuses on the face, and only then in special circumstances like the overgrown unibrows, abnormal chin line hair growths, and especially stubborn mustaches. She made an exception for me on my first day at work. "Samantha, you are a hairy girl," she said, unsolicited. "But that is nothing to be ashamed of. I'll give you Olga's special full body treatment-the legs, the bikini, the arms. You'll look like a newborn baby." She made a stroking motion with her hands as she spoke that looked like she was petting a cat, rather than handling a child. "No thanks," I said. I couldn't imagine exposing my body to a stranger that way, especially to Olga. Although it pays my bills, I have never had my own hair stripped off. I think of my hair as a shell-losing it could leave me as vulnerable to attack as a bald chick. "No charge for you," Olga persisted, "But you really should consider it. You represent The Max Wax. You should not have those fuzzy arms dangling in front of the customers." When I refused again, Olga bit the inside of her cheeks and made a clucking sound. Then she turned her back on me to speak with Louella, the receptionist. One of my first customers at The Max Wax was a gum-chomping mother who dragged in her eight year-old for her first leg waxing. I felt like an executioner, ripping the wax from the girl's pre-pubescent skin as tears slid down her face. In my second week I treated a fifty-something woman with more hair than I've ever seen on a female. Perhaps she had a hormonal imbalance. I wanted to suggest she check with a doctor, but I kept the words trapped in my mouth and concentrated on the body in front of me, as I always do. I had to wax her back, which was covered in black tendrils like a wool vest. She didn't even tip me. I don't plan to do this forever. In fact, I don't really belong here, not with my background. I went to an Ivy League school where I received all A's. I majored in psychology and still plan to be a psychologist eventually. But I might as well not dwell on the unattainable right now. I almost fainted yesterday when a classmate from my Psychology 110 course came into the salon. She was one of the born-and-bred New York City girls I barely spoke to in school. Heather Wallace. She was wearing an enormous square engagement ring that flashed chips of light all over the walls. I remember her and others like her gossiping and laughing in the back of the classroom. I didn't have time to joke around like that, not with the full-credit load and various evening obligations like the National Honor Society and the French club for which my mother had signed me up. Mother doesn't like free time-she considers it a waste. "Bikini wax for this nice lady please," Louella shouted to me when Heather came in. I had to rip my feet from the floor to get to her. If she recognized me, she registered no reaction. As I plastered on a grimace and led her to a clean room, I sensed Olga assessing me, as if she could see the hairs growing beneath my uniform. My eyes glued downward, I started to whip my former classmate's pubic hair out of her skin. I could tell she was a frequent waxer-the hairs hardly resisted. As I dripped and ripped the wax, I couldn't help but marvel at the toned surfaces of her body, the etching of her stomach muscles, the hipbones jutting out from the top of her tan thighs. Even the delicate folds of her vagina looked well tended to-pink, slim and delicate. These parts of my own body had grown puffy and pallid. I try not to think negatively. I tiptoe around the minefields in my memory, wary of smoking questions and regrets. But waxing my former classmate was enough to ignite a series of explosions. As I applied the cotton cloth to her inner thigh, I was hit with another memory. I didn't engage in a lot of socializing when I was in school. I concentrated on my class work and my few select friends, paying no heed to the cliques flowering around me. But the label that Heather Wallace invented for me my first semester was impossible to ignore. It originated in Psychology 110. As I focused on the lecture, Heather and her friends buzzed behind me, snickering at others' poor fashion choices, mocking the professor's passionate delivery, and honing in on fresh targets. When it was my turn, Heather led the charge with a nickname. Fuzz, she called me. She spread it like pollen throughout the group of those girls. "Hey Fuzz," people called from then on when I entered a room. The name stuck for four years. I certainly didn't like it, but I had never quite understood it-until I met Olga. I probably shouldn't have done what I did. But it was very small and barely visible. Even I could hardly read the two letters I waxed into the triangle of her bikini line. Heather didn't seem to notice much during the appointment anyway-she was talking on her cell phone the entire session. "This will dull the pain," I murmured, as I applied the healing cream to Heather's tiny inner thigh. The numbing agent always reminded me of what the Zoloft I took twice daily was doing to my brain. Sometimes I was so deadened that I couldn't feel the water hit my skin in the shower anymore. *** I stayed late at work that night, as I did most nights, because it kept me from going home where the demon lurked in the silence of my apartment. He had crept in uninvited when I moved into the city on my own last year, taking control of my life in my mother's stead. He began by waking me in the darkness of night, leading me to the kitchen. There, he commanded me to devour anything remotely edible. I did exactly as he ordered. Moldy cheese, chocolate chips, frozen hamburger meat I had to hack at with a knife-I did not discriminate. My main instrument was my hands. I thrust them into jars of jelly, mayonnaise, olives. Utensils took too long to locate, were too difficult to wield in my half-asleep depravity. One of the worst nights I found myself sitting in bed at 4 a.m., eating a rotten head of lettuce, the only thing left in my refrigerator, as if it were an apple. Every morning I awoke to scraps of food in my hair and sheets, a sour stomach, and a gutted kitchen. "Get hold of yourself," said my friends, my mother, my better self, "Don't leave any food in your apartment. Throw it all away." The demon scoffed at such futile measures. If the kitchen was bare, he would simply take me out into the streets in the middle of the night. Soon after tossing the contents of my refrigerator, I became a member of the midnight club, haunting empty delis to get my eating fix. One night I ate a whole pack of olive bologna while still in the store, combing the aisles for Doritos, Snickers and muffins to heap into my basket. The hungry drunks, dirty junkies and night shift clerks didn't flinch at my gluttony-they looked through me as if they'd seen worse. "I'm working on it," I'd say, "It's getting better," But it wasn't, and I was as puzzled and disgusted as everyone else. Life had become knots of fear and darkness and I could see no way to untangle them. My face grew pasty and bloated, turning me into a fun-house mirror version of myself. I turned inward, ignoring the phone calls of concerned friends and family, and became obsessed with my reflection, as if looking longer and harder might change my once-pretty face back to itself again. When I wasn't staring at myself, I'd gaze out my window instead, looking in on the dance school across the street for hours. I'd follow the tiny ballerinas on the second floor as they twirled on point across my view. Even smaller girls learned to dance on the first floor, toddlers who clumsily jumped along the same path, dreaming of being like the beautiful girls who danced above them. When I was younger, I too took ballet classes. I always felt so graceful in my pink leotard and ballet shoes-until my mother pointed out the mistakes I had made during class. Meanwhile, the professor with whom I was conducting memory studies was frustrated by my own declining memory. The statistics I stared at all day had become senseless black symbols, made to skitter and dance by my tired eyes. I was paralyzed under the weight of the fatigue from my night activities. The most action I could stir within myself was to quit and avoid being fired. I was tumbling farther and faster. Mother provided a safety net. She called it Zoloft. I studied antidepressants and their side effects during school, and part of me had reservations about taking them. However, another, more desperate side clutched at her solution as if it were a life preserver thrown to me in deep waters. I started the prescription that week. *** This may sound strange, but I'm fond of the wax. It's pure, predictable. Initially it acts angry, hissing and hot in the warming pot. Yet I soon soothe it into submission, guiding it over folds of flesh, into armpits, around nipples, between thighs. The wax always adapts to the circumstances, whatever or wherever they may be, cooling off as it does so. Then, it grows angry again as it's pulled away with a cloth, desperately clinging to the hairs to which it's just been introduced. Sometimes I take the wax directly from the pot and spread it on the back of my hand, withstanding the searing pain just to let it harden into a smooth surface that I can rub against my cheek. If you don't like the wax, if you resent it, you will be miserable here. I've watched a few girls come and go, whining about the blisters or the burns on their hands and arms when it bubbles over or spills when transferred to the cooling container, before it's ready for the waiting body. They complain that the wax doesn't peel out from under their fingernails or come out of their hair easily. Truthfully, the fact that these side effects of the trade don't bother me, scares me. Perhaps I am too well suited to this job. When I took the position at The Max Wax, I had no idea how I would feel about the wax itself. After quitting my job with the professor, I was desperate for employment and knew only that I could not handle a job as taxing on my fragile mental state. In a moment of frantic spontaneity I practically tossed myself into a salon across the street from my apartment and asked for work as a hair stylist. The manager jeered at my lack of experience and suggested I try waxing, with a laugh. So after being rejected as a dog walker, a short order cook and a waitress, I came at last to The Max Wax where Ivan, miraculously, hired me. Taking the job snipped my frayed tie to my mother. She refused to take my calls from that day forward. "No diet, no money," she had proclaimed, confident that the threat would whip me into shape. But the demon was now in charge and he overpowered any monetary carrot-or even drugs for that matter. The pills she had poured down my throat hadn't stopped the night eating-they'd only blunted the edges of my misery the next morning. I felt like a defective robot with a strong metal casing on the outside and dangerous malfunctions sparking beneath. One of The Max Wax's Korean employees trained me. "Spread, dry, rip." she'd instructed in broken English. In less than an hour I was dealing with the hirsute public. "You're a natural," Olga proclaimed, and I had to admit, I was incredibly adept at hair removal. My aching brain was calmed by the simplicity, relieved to sedulously labor on one limb or body part at a time. I felt we had an unspoken understanding, those naked bodies and I, that a wordless waxing was the most dignified for both waxer and waxee. I did not converse with, barely even thought about, the people inside of those bodies, and zoned in on eliminating the hairs in my path. *** At 2:00 yesterday, Heather Wallace's appointment was finally over. I dropped her off with Louella at the front desk, and rushed back to the waxing room where a new People magazine was hidden underneath the wax warmer. Heather caught my arm as I reached the doorway. Pausing in her phone conversation for a moment, she thrust a crumpled wad of dollars into my hand and turned to leave. Then, as if an afterthought, she glanced over her shoulder. "Thanks Samantha." The sound of my name emerging from Heather Wallace's mouth was like a hiss, "So nice to see you again." I was too stunned to answer. As she turned back to her conversation with a laugh, my ears grew hot. Later that day, after a particularly challenging toe waxing-the customer kept laughing and pulling her feet away-I was called into Olga's office. Olga rarely uses her office. She prefers to mingle with the customers and chat with Louella. She stands by the front desk, tapping her gel tip red nails against the Formica, her figure still slim, even at sixty-five years of age. Always immaculate in appearance, her hair is scared back into a bun, her lips stained a scarlet red. Olga reminds me of my mother. Although the two have radically different styles, there's something in their controlled posture that makes me stiffen my own. I don't know how they manage to look fabulous and stay full of energy at their ages. It's more than I can handle at twenty-four. I walked into the office and took a seat as Olga chattered on the telephone. Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed Sammy, the stuffed squirrel, staring at me with paws outstretched, next to the picture of Cher. Ivan, rarely seen at Max Wax, is passionate about taxidermy and has managed to plant one of these creatures in his wife's office. Olga has made her own mark on once-furry Sammy though-he has been waxed down the middle of his back. Olga hung up the phone abruptly and put her hands together as if to study me. "Soooo Samantha," she purred, "you've been with us for over a month now at The Max Wax?" I tracked the movements of her shining red nails, avoiding her eyes as if they were vacuums. "Yes, I think it's a wonderful salon." I wasn't sure what she wanted me to say. I never was, even when I applied my modest arsenal of psychological skills. Her eyes were like curtains, open and welcoming one minute, drawn completely closed the next. I was being partially honest with Olga. Yes, it was only a waxing salon, but I was good at this job. I knew it. And to my relief, when I hit my bed after a long day of waxing, I slept deeply, and the demon began to lose his grip. Yet even now, waiting in Olga's office, I sensed him lurking somewhere in a dark place. The smell of the cookies downstairs was beginning to distract me. The aroma was more potent in Olga's office and the thought of those fresh, doughy packages seemed to be pulling moisture from my eyes. Gobbling one down, maybe three, would calm my jumpy stomach. "Samantha, you are a gifted waxer." she began. I smiled and shifted in my seat, pulling at the pant strings of my esthetician's uniform. The billowy, purple outfit was as forgiving as a favorite pair of pajamas with an adjustable waist that easily adapted to my fluctuating stomach size. I hoped that some of the stares I got on the street were out of respect for my profession-perhaps they took me, in my oddly colored scrubs, for a special kind of Doctor or exotic nurse. The mini skirts, and the sleek, shiny tops I'd purchased when I first moved to the city were relegated to a cramped area of my closet. "You know, when I was your age and a young waxer in Russia, I too had the gift. The wax obeyed me like a snake does its charmer." I started to respond, "Thank you, I…" Olga held up her hand to stop me. "I developed a loyal following from the very start of my career-Olga's girls. Each of the girls visited the salon at least once a week, and sent me birthday and Christmas presents. " "How nice," I said. I pictured Heather and her groups of friends bestowing gifts at my feet. "Samantha, I could have seen this future for you," she continued, "but this vision is clouded." Suddenly, I felt panic starting to boil its way through the haze of my medication. "I don't understand," I said, "I don't have problems with anyone here." Rather, I just ignored them, preferring to spend my down time in the waxing room, reading magazines. My teeth started to throb, as they often do now when I'm upset-all the late night sugar has turned them into aching stubs. "My husband and I discussed this last night." Olga said. How Ivan could have insight into what was happening at Max Wax was anyone's guess. I hadn't seen my benefactor in the last three weeks, but Olga liked to lob his name into conversation for effect, somewhat along the lines of "wait until your father gets home." Indeed, I wished he would come to my rescue now. "Stop crying" Olga demanded, interrupting my thoughts. I was shocked to find that indeed, my face had become drenched and my nose was running. I fingered my tears out of interest. I hadn't produced a single one in months. "I'm sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me. But I thought I was doing a good job. I never leave a hair!" The tears were becoming a river, one that was strangely refreshing. "I didn't know you were so delicate." Olga sniffed. I wiped at my face with my sleeve. She went on. "Samantha, perhaps you forget that we have video cameras in every room! I saw what you did yesterday." I thought of Heather, and the sound of my name on her lips. "I must say, what you did to that young lady's bikini line was absolutely wonderful. And in cursive too! Really, Samantha, it was a true tour de force." I felt proud in spite of myself. "But despite the artistry, I am disturbed by your actions. To etch swear words into a young girl's most important body part? How could you?" She hacked her hands at the air as she spoke. The tiny letters I'd etched into Heather's pubic hair flashed into my head. The entire word Fuzz hadn't fit. Only FU. "But Olga, you don't understand! I know her from school. I wasn't trying to swear, I was trying to write…" Olga cut me off, shaking her head from side to side. "Of course, I must fire you. You leave me with no choice. What you did to this girl was pure genius, but it was, unfortunately, wrong." Olga's phone rang. She waved her hand at me and she picked the receiver up as if the matter was settled and I was old news. Sammy, his mouth pried open to bare his jagged teeth, seemed to reach out to me. I felt for him, stuffed, paralyzed, and stripped of dignity, as I was myself. I pulled myself up and left, the swishing sounds from my oversized pants making a graceful exit difficult. Olga did not even look up. I marched past Louella, strode downstairs, and swept into the bakery. The young employee jumped off the counter she lounged on and stood at attention as if she knew I meant business. I requested three colossal peanut butter cookies, then changed my mind and purchased the entire tray that had just come out of the oven. As I rode the subway home, the weight of the greasy paper bag felt like a baby in my arms. I cradled it and practically cooed at the sweet smell. The train was almost empty at this time of day, populated by strays similar to the members of my old midnight deli crew. They were the unemployed leftovers of society, those that emerge when everyone else is either at work or asleep-the man in ripped jeans lying across three seats surrounded by the aroma of urine, the obese woman who scowled as if she carried the weight of the world in addition to the ample weight of her own body, the teenager moving his head to the senseless beat streaming from his headphones--and me. The teenager and I glanced at each other, locking eyes for a moment and I felt myself turn red. I shifted the cookies to my side, as if they were an afterthought. Walking up the stairs to my apartment, I brought a cookie to my mouth and continued to cry. The sweet fatty treat slid down my throat, coating my stomach with a carbohydrate calm. I had the fleeting thought that the energy spent walking up the stairs might balance out the calories of the cookie. But, by the time I made it inside, there were only two cookies to go and the balance was clearly on the intake. The answering machine light was blinking and I hit Play with one hand, shoveling chunks of a double chocolate chip cookie into my mouth with the other. "Thursday, 1 p.m.," the automated female voice announced. "Hello Samantha. It is Olga." The sound of her voice ripped into me. "Immediately after you left today, a young man with ears that looked like they were stuffed with porcupines walked into The Max Wax. You would have been the perfect esthetician for this rare case. In addition, many clients have asked for you this afternoon. So, I have been thinking that although you are rather hairy and you made a very unfortunate error, that letting you go was a mistake. You are needed here. Samantha, I must ask you to come back." Suddenly I was acutely aware of the weight of the cookies in my stomach. I gagged a little as they almost came back up. I went to the window for some fresh air. The ballerinas were pliéing at the bar by the window. I waved as if I knew them, as if they were an old version of me. I combed over Olga's message in my mind. I had never been permitted to work on the ears before-the area above the neck was always Olga's domain. The ears would require intricate maneuvering so as not to drip wax into the eardrum or damage the hearing. I felt honored that Olga would consider me, but was this it? Was I going to dedicate myself to this profession? The candles were there on the windowsill, a pair of fat yellow ones I'd bought to cheer up the apartment. There had never been an occasion to light them. I ran my hands down their smooth unmarred surfaces, and then brought them over to the kitchen table. I turned out all the lights and lit the candles. My apartment glowed as if I were throwing a dinner party. I stared at their flickering flames, the scent of cookies waving under my nose, the blinking answering machine light beckoning in the corner of the room. Olga would have to wait. I grabbed a scarf from the closet and sat down in the kitchen chair, wrapping the scarf twice around my waist and the chair, and tying a knot at the end. Pulling up the legs of my uniform, I uncovered a pair of furry dimpled legs. As my shadow danced on the wall, I held a candle over a shaking leg. I braced myself. As the hot wax dripped onto my body, oozing over my skin, I screamed and writhed at the pain. It felt amazing.
The End




Flying Objects

The floors of my childhood bedroom sizzled with my grandmother's anger. Her fury boiled over from downstairs where she attacked my father, and rose towards my pajama wrapped feet. It burrowed into my mouth, my nose, my ears. "Stupid child!" my grandmother screeched one chilly evening before dinner, "Silly factory worker! How could this idiot come from my womb?" A small hole in the knotted wood floor allowed me a view of Grandma Joan as she tossed this insult at my father. Along with it came a cheese grater which shaved small round holes in his forehead. Grandma's aim was surprisingly accurate from the compromising position of her wheelchair. Like a nefarious knife thrower, she honed in on her target, aligned her weapon and victim in her line of vision, and threw with precision and speed. As the night continued, and my father ducked eggs, whisks and rolling pins, I worried that Grandma Joan would kill him and I would be trapped alone with her. If only he would throw something back at her, or throw her and her wheelchair out of the house. Yet my will was no match for Joan's arm. Soon I stood up from my prone position on the floor, for fear of getting scalded. Grandma Joan was angry. She was also a genius. An intelligence test she took at Darville high school had told her so. Joan never forgot it and made sure no one else did either. "Look for the corner pieces first," she hissed to me one day as I struggled to piece a jigsaw puzzle together. "You would be wise to listen to me, little one. My IQ is 140. Do you know what that means? It means your grandma is very very smart." "Leave her alone, Mom," my father said when he caught her, "Let her have some fun. She's just a kid." "Some good that philosophy did you," she snapped and a corner piece shot towards his head. "You were just a kid who didn't go to college, got a tramp pregnant at eighteen, and wound up with a sniveling baby at nineteen. And now you're stuck working in a factory. All that kidding around really paid off, huh?" Grandma Joan shook her head in disgust as I lowered my own. That night when I cried to my father, he said gently, "Grandma's had a hard life. She's been in that chair since the day she was born. That means she's missed out on a lot of things that you and I love to do, like running and dancing." Then he tucked me into bed and sang: Hush, little baby, don't say a word. Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird… I lay awake wondering who else that chair had made Joan hurt. I was eventually knocked into sleep by an army of angry wheelchairs charging towards me. My father was buried on my eighth birthday. All of his life a victim of flying objects, he was killed by a renegade factory machine part. The piece that killed him shot out of Edith McGee's sewing machine. It launched through the air into my father's head, piercing his skin, chipping through bone, tearing through muscle, and coming to a stop somewhere deep in his brain. Edith could never forgive herself for killing the friendly man who had worked next to her for years. Three generations of Edith's family had worked in the very factory seat she proudly occupied until that day. Yet, after the death, she didn't, she couldn't, return to work. As we stood at the burial site, I wiped my tears with my coat sleeve as Grandma Joan shook her head, murmuring, "Never could take care of himself, that boy. Always needed his mother to think for him." I returned home with Joan as my sole guardian. She swooped in immediately. "Smarts skipped a generation in our family," she told me. "Your poor father had a rotten apple of a brain. But you've got a ripe one for the picking." Her shining blue eyes singed me with intensity. I imagined her plucking my brain from my skull and shuddered. Joan cleared my afternoons for studying, keeping the house silent as a black hole, the sole interruption the creak of the rusty wheels of her chair and the hiss of the heaters. On occasion Edith McGee appeared at our door, her red hair blown out of place, her skin damp with nervousness, and my heart fluttered like a butterfly's. Joan would answer, commanding me to remain at the kitchen table with my pile of books. "Joan," Edith tried one brilliant day as I sat caged by piles of books, sparkles of sunlight struggling to pass through the heavy brown curtains. I took in a mouthful of air, wishing she would think of something to rescue me. "How…how lovely you look today." The hope was just as soon walloped out of me. Joan's looks were of no interest to her. Her brains were her source of vanity "Edith." Joan said impatiently, as if to a pestering child. I squirmed to be seen over her head. "Well, uh, well," Edith stammered, "I thought Meghan and me could go out for some fresh air. Maybe a stroll in the park? Or a trip to town? It would be nice break for her." "I'm sure you meant 'Meghan and I." Joan said, affecting a strict school teacher tone, "It so happens there's a very significant English test tomorrow that could secure a spot for my granddaughter in the advanced class next year. You probably recall that intelligence runs in the family. Unfortunately, my granddaughter must work a little harder than most as she has been left fatherless, as you are more than well aware." Then Joan swung the door closed. "That's a high school dropout for you," she muttered, powering her wheelchair across the floor. "I should have her thrown in jail for murder." She threw the ham she was preparing for dinner at the door. Loneliness tightened its arms around me. My own attempts to take a break from studying were always thwarted by Joan. Once, I claimed that I'd be attending an extra study session with Professor Stromberger after school. Joan snuck up behind me as I sailed on the swings. The delicious whoosh of freedom zooming by my ears had covered the creak of her wheels. "No more swinging silliness," she said as she gripped my arm and dragged me away, powering her wheelchair with one hand. "Extra math help, now that's something you could desperately use." One afternoon, I sat at the kitchen table as usual, trying to absorb both the bits of light pushing through the curtains and the details of the Civil War. Now thirteen years-old, I'd spent a third more than a third of my life under Joan's dictatorship. My oatmeal had grown cool as usual. Eating was too unpleasant-my mouth and head were crammed with food, letters and numbers competing for space in my body. I could barely clear a small place for a plate on the table littered with bloated notebooks, teeth-marked pencils, and worn textbooks. My weekly homework, upcoming tests and study assignments loomed large above me on a giant chalkboard-Joan's master battle plan. The clearer it became that I was not the brilliant granddaughter Joan so desired, the deeper she funneled inside me, as if sifting for gold genius. She shoveled information into me, but wound up filling herself instead. She always recalled more of the lessons than I did. Joan rolled over and poked her chin over my shoulder. Her sweet lotion burned my nostrils. "Ha! The answer is Longstreet," she clucked, seeing my practice test answers, "I knew that from just glancing at the book!" "Sorry," I said, hoping she'd retreat, "I'll remember that." But Joan parked in her regular spot. With her breathing over my shoulder like a Lamaze partner, I couldn't focus. The letters in front of me squiggled and hopped. I filled in a "C" on the next question and braced myself. "C? C? Did you even read this? The answer is A!" yelped Joan. "You are so behind! At your age I was already planning my dissertation!" Then under her breath, wistfully, "I should have known better about you." The doorbell rang. My hope deflated as I realized that Edith always knocked. "Stay there and concentrate," Joan commanded. I swiveled my head back to the thick book, keeping one eye on the door. A white haired man's broad shoulders filled the width of the doorway, casting a shadow over Joan's sunken body. "Joooan," the name was rich as cream in the stranger's mouth, "Joanie, the smartest girl in town." He sounded like someone in a movie, at least from what I'd gathered from the few I'd snuck out to when Joan was out. Joan just shook her head of cropped grey from side to side, as if the big man had swallowed her voice. The silence sent the hairs on my arms to attention and I rustled the pages of my book to slice it. No one noticed. Then a strange, squeaky noise emerged from my grandmother. It was a pale imitation of a genuine laugh, as unnerving as a parrot mimicking a human voice, offering 'Polly a Cracker.' The unnaturalness made my stomach twist. "Charles?" she said, "Yes, it is Charlie, isn't it? Ohhh myyy. What are you doing here?" "I had to come by and see how you were after all these years. I can't believe you're still here in little Darville. I thought by now you'd be running the country-or at least the state." I imagined Joan tearing around the Oval office in her wheelchair, lobbing pens at cabinet members, screaming obscenities at world leaders, setting the country on a seesaw. Again, the faux feminine laugh. "Oh Charlie-you flatter me. But you were the genius." I stared at the two of them, stunned at the modesty that had slipped from my grandmother's mouth. "Joanie, I have something I want to discuss with you. Is now a good time?" Joan whipped her head around before answering and caught my stare. "Back to work!" she barked, recovering her regular voice. I snapped my head back to the book and read the same sentence over and over again, puzzling over this welcome interruption. I could hardly imagine my grandmother in a romantic relationship. But perhaps once upon a time, before all the years stewing in small Darville had soured her, she had been sweeter-a bright girl on wheels? "Charlie, let's chat outside" Joan sang now back in her new high register. She rolled out the door and sealed off my view into the outer world. A few nights later, as I reviewed geometry notes, Joan's perfumed lotion, more potent than ever, announced her entrance. "I'm going out for a few hours," she announced with her back to me, as she reviewed my assignments on the board, "I'll quiz you on the proofs when I get back." A horn sounded. As she zipped away, I glimpsed a sliver of the side of her mouth painted several shades redder than her washed-out lips. I rushed to the window only to catch the back of Charlie's head of white curls as he loaded my grandmother into his car. That week Joan allowed me to go out with Edith for the afternoon. I tripped over the table legs in my rush to leave before she changed her mind. The unexpected permission sent Edith's nerves into overdrive, causing her voice to shake more than usual. "Ooooh," she said, "Ohhh, how wooonderful." "Now don't fill her mind with ridiculousness," warned Joan. As we pulled out of the driveway, Charlie's van pulled in. At the park, I clung to Edith. She was all I imagined in an ideal grandmother-proud smiles, soft wrinkles and permission. We went on the swings, Edith catching my pace for a few moments until I pumped ahead of her. We picked the small flowers that poked their heads out from the grass. She told me stories about my father, how he'd told everyone at the factory about my first steps, how his singing had made the day go by faster for his friends at the factory. Then we sang as loudly as we could to Kenny Rogers on the way home in the car-Edith had all his cassettes. By the end of the day, I felt little flakes of my misery chipping off, revealing fresh, vulnerable flesh. When I got home, the air in the house was thick like a brewing tornado. Joan was at my spot, her wheelchair wedged between the table legs, my papers askew. Her head was buried in my Western Civilization textbook but her voice drifted up from the pages, muffled by a description of Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo. "Come over here. You've been wasting time long enough." I gingerly placed my bouquet of wild flowers by the stairs and went to sit next to her. Joan kept her head down, avoiding my gaze, but I thought that I saw a glint of wetness in her eyes. I marveled at this hint of her humanity. Was Charlie thawing Joan? "Quiz time" Joan said, interrupting my musings, and recalling Napoleon's ventures quickly became more crucial to my survival than pondering the mystery. Flashes of the French leaders' exploits began zooming through my head. I had reviewed the material only once so far and the sequence of his campaigns was not yet ordered in my memory. "When was the first assassination attempt on Napoleon's life?" she demanded. I spotted a long scribbled red list beneath her nose and my mouth went dry. My memory flipped through its catalog, fumbling for a page with that particular date. I fought to block the scent of freshly-cut grass that still lingered in my nose and the residual sensation of swinging. Sweat snaked from my armpits and slithered down my sides. "Too slow, too slow, too slow!" Joan chanted, banging the text book to the beat. "1798?" "No! No! No!" Joan shrieked from low in her wheelchair, resembling the diminutive leader himself. She crumpled her list and her face into balls of anger. "1796?" I tried tentatively, wincing in advance. "Wrong! Wrong! You must study harder!" she said, sounding almost desperate now. This time I was sure I saw tears suspended in her eyes. "Can't you see I am doing this for your own good Meghan?" The softer sound of my name of my grandmother's lips was rare. It made my heart ripple for a moment. I waited for her to elaborate, to explain to me why she put me through what she did. Instead, she threw the paper ball directly at my face. A wayward edge hit my eyeball. As tears came to my own eyes, Joan fired another question. The flying objects increased in weight that night as Joan's wet tears froze to ice. I missed a question about Josephine and a pen struck me on the neck, tattooing me with ink. A quiz on Napoleon's illegitimate children took me by surprise and a glass was lobbed at my head. I dodged the object just in time but splashes of prune juice spattered across my white sweater like blood. Eventually, my bouquet was thrown and run over by the wheelchair when I guessed that Napoleon's birthday was in September. When Joan finally went to bed early the next morning, I scavenged the floor for surviving flowers but they had all been mangled. I turned the least damaged ones into bookmarks so I could visit them again. From then on, I was Joan's bullseye. The impact hurt less as my body grew numb and my insides turned slowly to stone. And the two of us, grandmother and granddaughter, cemented our perpetual attachment, joined together by despair thicker than even blood. Charlie made several more appearances at our door over the next few weeks, only to have it swung back at his face each time. My curiosity at what had happened was crowded out by my burden of work. Raising my head from my books to see who was there was merely a vestigial instinct. "Joanie, please, let me explain," I heard Charlie say, "neither of us ever meant to hurt you" and "You know how much we think of you" and "Edith sends her regards." Edith? The sound of her name vibrated somewhere deep inside me. Charlie must have chosen Edith over Joan. I couldn't blame him, even if he was the flame that fired my grandmother's intensified attacks. At least someone would enjoy spending time with Edith; she'd finally stopped visiting me when Joan had flung a thesaurus at her chest. *** "ALL-STATE SPELLING CHALLENGE: MARCH 15," Joan wrote on the chalkboard that December. The two of us obsessed over the competition, a team in shared wretchedness, for it was the only pinprick of light in both of our worlds. I was drilled every possible hour, even pulled out of school for the last week to prepare. I had grown deft at avoiding Joan's attacks by being so prepared that no question came as a surprise. And, just as I dodged Joan's objects, I dodged sleep deftly as a swordsman. Joan helped me. "Drink this coffee. It's brain food," she said of the constant supply she brought me. It coursed through my veins, forever buzzing in my fingertips, my stomach, my brain. One night I had so much of the bitter drink with so little sleep that I became convinced that my stomach was disintegrating. No matter-I kept studying, the dictionary my bed partner, its pages crinkled and spotted with perspiration and coffee stains. Anthophorous, Arcosolium, Arenicolous When my eyes lost focus, my mind sometimes went along for the ride, passing images that had been abandoned long ago. I saw my father singing, "Papa's going to buy you a looking glass" while a little girl I hardly recognized as myself giggled at his off-key efforts. I watched Edith's frizzy hair blowing in the wind, strands in her eyes and mouth, as she pushed an older version of me on the swings. I saw my mother's face, as I'd memorized it from the photograph I'd found of her crumpled in the back of a drawer years ago. And I saw the flying machine part that killed my father, ripping through the grey matter of his brain, the one Joan considered so lacking. Peripatetic, Peritrichous, Phagocytosis. I dug my fingernails into my wrist and studied on. Joan and I arrived early on competition day. My brain itched with caffeine and my gut churned. I knew that my own body would be the next flying object if the trophy wasn't mine. I was seated onstage next to a boy with metal headgear protruding from his mouth. I admired his straightening teeth and the soft purple band that secured the piece around his neck. Joan would not allow me to visit the orthodontist. "Vain nonsense," she called it. I heard a yelp and realized it was Joan being pushed from her front row position to the back of the room. The ushers would not allow her wheelchair to block the aisles. I felt my shoulders move a centimeter down from my ears. The competition began. A girl a few years older than me took the microphone. As she wrestled with Pernicious, I pictured Joan smirking at her. I suddenly realized to my horror that the very smirk I envisioned was now on my own face. I strained to turn the look into a smile, but my mouth no longer seemed to work that way. The head geared boy was up next. "Spell myelopathy," said the moderator. The boy tugged on one of the metal rods and began. "M..Y..L..O..P..A..T..H..Y. Myelopathy?" Eliminated, he took his seat. I was stunned to see his mouth turn up slightly behind the metal as he did so, as if losing were not significant to his life. A glimpse of this boy's carefree existence flashed through my mind. I saw him running through the park, hugging his parents, and joking with his friends. As the next competitor fumbled with the microphone, a head of white curls followed by a shock of red peeked into the doorway of the auditorium. Charlie and Edith emerged and snuck into seats next to Joan. A bubble of joy rose in my throat. My turn. My heart threatened to crack my ribs as I took the microphone. "Spell Olfactory," commanded the moderator. "O L …." I began the word and focused on Edith's beaming smile. "F." As I continued, whispers rose from the back of the auditorium and quickly turned to yelling. Audience members craned to see what was going on. "How could you? She's a dunce! A dunce!" "Now Joan, please keep your voice down," intoned Charlie calm baritone. "How could you? It was always the two of us! We were a team!" shrieked my grandmother. "Excuse me, ma'am and the gentleman in the back, please save your conversation for after the competition," interjected the moderator. "Hmmmph," said my grandmother. I fought to regain my composure but I couldn't remember where I had left off. L? F? "A!" A muffled voice shouted out from the back. The moderator did not seem to notice. "A," I repeated, and finished the word, "C T O R Y, Olfactory." "Correct. Next word: spell Polypetalous." A wet chill swept over me. This was not on my study list. The audience began to look fuzzy. I scanned frantically for Edith but couldn't find her. Before I could begin, the voice rose up again, this time louder. "P!" Everyone heard it this time. The moderator interjected. "Ma'am, please do not shout out the answers or you will have to be asked to leave. I apologize, Meghan. We will move onto another word. Meghan, spell…Colluvium." The shout had helped me locate Edith and I locked onto her face. "Colluvium," I repeated. This one was easy. "C" I began. "C!" the other voice echoed. "O!" Joan's voice took over my own. I looked to the back of the auditorium. She was bending to unlock her chair. Suddenly, Joan was rolling herself down the aisles. Picking up speed, she continued to spell. "L! L!" she yelled. Her chair was flying now, as stray bags and feet were whipped out of her path. "U! V!" The word was almost complete and Joan was close to the stage. A murmur rose from the auditorium as we all saw it-the thick extension cord in her path. Joan was moving like she was on a roller coaster track. And then she hit it. As she sailed through the air, leaving her chair behind her, "I!" and "U!" were heard trailing from her body. Then there was only the slump of her body hitting the stage. *** Charlie explained what happened as he drove me to the hospital to pick up Joan later that afternoon. He laughed when I asked him whether the two of them had broken up. "Joanie and me? No, no, we were never an item. Partners though, in a high school academic decathlon. Oh, the two of us dominated that competition. Joanie was at the top of her game. Scared the other teams half to death the way she flung her answers at them!" Then why the visits to our house? Why had Joan been so angry at him? Charlie explained that a Senior Citizen's academic decathlon had brought him to town and that he had originally asked Joan to be his teammate. "Funny enough, I ran into our old classmate Edith McGee in town and I told her about the event. Well, after some prodding, I found out Edith's IQ-it's 160! Who would have guessed it? Turns out that after she left her job at the factory, she was given an IQ test at an employment office. She had never taken one before-she always did sell herself short. Anyway," he sighed," I'm afraid Joanie didn't take it well when I asked Edith to be my partner in the decathlon instead. But the truth is I really wanted to win that prize money!" And so, perhaps to show Charlie what he was missing or to take advantage of the only competition left available to her, Joan had thrown herself, literally, into my spelling bee. *** The "M" in Colluvium burns in Joan's throat to this day, but all that emerges from her mouth are hisses and spit. Her voice has been gone since the moment she hit the stage. Her tosses are fiercer now, her arms muscle-lined from all the years of powering a wheelchair, but these days, when she attacks me, the plates, mugs and pencils don't hurt as much. Without her biting words to accompany them, the lobs are much less effective. Joan is shocked at their dwindling effect, her mouth left twitching like a crushed spider. When I leave for work, I play a Jeopardy DVD, knowing Joan will gravitate to it. I admit it's a streak of cruelty that compels me. Often, I come home to a scratch in the TV screen or a broken vase. The memories cover me like a sweltering quilt. "Difficult day, Joan?" I'll inquire, not expecting an answer. Her silence is enough. And then I make sure to lean down very close so she can't help but inhale my perfume, and, as she squirms, I tell her every single minute detail of my day as a university professor, because, really, I owe it all to her. The End

Email Laura Wiltse
Stories by Elisabeth Fay
Photos by Lisa Wiltse.
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