Free Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman Page A

for me to see that Mama’s forehead is covered with lines and the girls’ bathroom is covered with words. The tiles say i hate Rory D . in black marker but I don’t know what the lines on her face say. I don’t know all I’ve missed, what made the Hardware Man disappear, what I did. When I go pee at school my eyes move from the lock on the door to the words on the wall and when I pull the toilet paper I think I hear the door handle moving. When I go to sleep I dream of the alphabet and black markers, but when I’m awake I don’t fucking say anything. I don’t fucking say anything to anyone ever, especially not to Viv because I haven’t seen her since we went to the playground together to swing, since I must have got her in trouble by making her go to the Truck Stop and she probably doesn’t want to be my friend anymore.
    School is the same, except it’s third grade now, and we are only supposed to write cursive and the letters on the bathroom wall are in cursive too. I write the alphabet in one curling line and my letters bend in a way I recognize, the slash I see in Mama’s notes to Ms. Kohler saying, Rory still isn’t up to talking much please understand, thank you . It’s the same slant I see on Grandma’s clippings from the Reno Gazette . Her angry scratch in the margins: Can’t believe this shit! and Who gives a rat’s ass?! My penmanship is pure Hendrix for sure, I bet even my blood runs wrong.

    The toilet paper rolls and I pull up my pants quick when I see that the letters slipping across the tile, wrapping around faucets and pipes, the letters making the words i hate Rory D . are Hendrix letters. The slants and slashes, even the little i , are all mine.

green thumb
    G randma grew things. Whatever the climate wherever she moved, a garden soon followed after her, tomato seeds went down, a fence went up, and on the Calle I was Grandma’s Chief Gardener. My Chief Gardener’s duties were comprised of deciding which garden hoses felt like snakes to bare feet in the dark pools of slow moving water that puddled in the desert sand too stubborn to swallow it and holding funerals for the birds found dropped dead, exhausted from flying without rest through a land without trees. Discovered by Grandma’s rake and shovel, the birds were buried in the dirt beyond the lot’s edge and Grandma’d stand still long enough to amen my silent prayer over their cardboard coffins.
    Grandma set me loose on all this make believe, but her work was real. She bent her back before its time, pulling weeds and planting seeds. Whatever Grandma got in the way of surplus food and government cheese was supplemented by something fresh from the ground, ground that she coddled and coerced, encouraged and berated, just like she did me.
    Grandma could make things grow in the desert climate, she could read the dirt’s tells, knew if it would prove barren or rich. She watered in the moonlight, and again just before dawn, sweetening the soil with sheer persistence. Mama inherited that ability too, to make things grow in spite of herself, her gladiolas surprising the teachers at Roscoe Elementary spring after spring, and Mama’s and Grandma’s children, some of us grew too.

cut off
    T he Hardware Man had worked a disappearing trick. Once Mama and Grandma got to talking again, she followed a nagging worry she’d had, pulled me from Carol’s babysitting shifts, and sent me back to Grandma’s, and as suddenly as she did that, the Hardware Man decided to take a little trip of his own. But when he got back, it was Mama’s turn to work some magic. She had promised to kill anyone who hurt me, who dared to reach those places kept safe by the double knots in bathing suit string, and she may not have kept that promise to the letter but I’m pretty sure she kept it to the number, because soon after the morning of heaven and hellflowers, the morning the scabs on my face told the tale I couldn’t tell, a tale Mama heard clear and true as if