Free Getting Mother's Body by Suzan Lori Parks

goes.
    We pass more signs. She says them out loud but low under her breath. Then she nudges me hard. “Look,” she says.
    There’s a billboard with a cowboy on it.
    â€œI met my Dale at the rodeo,” she says. Her voice goes lower, more private. “It was love but not true love. You know what I’m talking bout, dontcha?”
    â€œMe and my husband, Clifton, we got true love,” I says.
    â€œYr lucky,” she says, “All me and Dale got is five kids.”
    â€œFive is luckier than none,” I says, thinking of Teddy and June.
    â€œFive is luckier than six,” Myrna says. There’s a meaning to what she’s saying but I don’t catch it. I’m looking out the window staring hard at the land going by and trying not to look at her big face in the reflection. She’s talking to the back of my head.
    â€œWant one?” she says. Something warm and metally touches my arm. She’s pressing a beer at me. A freshly opened can of Pabst. “It’s warm, but it tastes better warm,” she says.
    â€œNo thanks,” I says.
    â€œIf yr thinking it’ll hurt yr baby, it won’t,” she says.
    I shake my head no and she drinks it herself in long slow swigs. When she’s through, half her lipstick’s left on the rim.
    â€œYou gonna tell Myrna yr name?”
    â€œDepends on whatchu gonna use it for,” I says and she throws her head back and hoots.
    â€œKeep yr voice down,” a man riding towards the front says.
    â€œKeep yr shirt on, honey,” Myrna calls back. We giggle together.
    â€œBilly Beede,” I says.
    â€œGot a nice ring to it. BB. Like a gun. Fast.” She glances at my belly. “I didn’t mean nothing by that,” she murmurs.
    â€œI got a husband,” I says.
    â€œCourse you do. Pretty gal like you. Course you got a husband.”
    When we stop at Frankel City two little boys run down the street to meet the bus then stand there with they hands behind they backs just looking and grinning. When the bus takes off they throw rocks that ping ping against the sides and tires.
    â€œIf they break a window I’ma jump off this bus and whip them,” Myrna says. They keep throwing rocks but they don’t break nothing.
    After Frankel City comes Truscott then Flagg. There ain’t nothing out there but flat reddish-brown dirt and scrubby bushes and sky. And heat. There ain’t no people. Some cows. No clouds. I wonder if my stomach’s gonna get any bigger before tomorrow. Even if it do I’ma fit my dress. By hook or crook. I’ve decided but I gotta get the baby to decide too.
Don’t grow no more today,
I says to it, making the words in my head then swallowing them and sending them down straight into the baby’s head.
Don’t grow no more today. Hold off yr growing until after the honeymoon then you can grow all you want
. The baby hears me. I can feel it hearing and listening to me, the mother, and saying yes. It’s a good baby already.
    â€œI wonder if this land round here was ever crowded,” Myrna goes. “You know, if like, millions and millions of years ago this part of the world was a busy place. Sorta like Dallas, or New York City, you know. Bustling with Stone Age activities, Stone Age skyscrapers, cave people, you know, in they animal skins, hurrying hither and yon, shoulder to shoulder. You know there’s a place in Mexico where they got evidence of the visits of spacemen.”
    â€œHow about that,” I says. Myrna’s eyes are set wide apart. They’re bright blue colored and she’s got pasted-on lashes and lots of green eye shadow. The start of a sunburn on her cheeks. Lines from too much worrying around her mouth.
    She finishes her beer, stands the empty out in the aisle and, easing off her slipper, brings the heel of her foot down on the can, making a little tin pancake. She puts the pancake in her department store shopping