Free Getting Mother's Body by Suzan Lori Parks Page A

bag. Lots of other pancakes, red, white, and blue, in there.
    She fiddles with the lever on her armrest, cocking her seat back once. Twice. A little boy in the seat behind her begins to cry.
    â€œI’ll tell you about me,” she says. “It makes me feel good talking and the story’s interesting so it won’t hurt none.” Myrna Carter’s Hole is her mouth. She can talk to you or to herself. It don’t matter. Some of her talking is nice, though, and she did ask about the baby.
    â€œI can tell you the minute to the day my Dale quit loving me,” she says. “I’d just had Daleen. Dale Junior, Dale-two, Dale-three, Dale-four, and Daleen. I’d just had her. And sure, I was big. I’d put on weight with each kid, so I was five times as big as I was when me and Dale locked eyes that first time. Dale ain’t no Charles Atlas though, I mean, he ain’t the boy who gets the sand kicked in his face, but he got a gut three times the size of mine. And there he was laughing.”
    She opens a beer, offering it to me. I shake my head no. She drinks.
    â€œHow come he was laughing at you?”
    â€œNot at me. At a joke,” she explains, swallowing her beer down fast and jiggling the near-empty in her hand. There’s a quarter-size stain of beer on her blouse. “His brother Jimmy comes over and they’re sitting around watching wrestling, you know, Saturday morning. I’m in the kitchen but I can hear what they’re saying.”
    She got me listening to her now. Her big chest breathing smooth, her wide elastic three-snap belt coming unsnapped at the bottom. Her hair, the same red as the doodads on her shoes, is whipped high like cotton candy.
    â€œJimmy was telling a joke,” she says, continuing, “ ‘How you f— a fat girl? Roll her in flour and look for the wet spot,’ that was Jimmy’s joke. Dale didn’t have to laugh. And I’m fat and standing in the kitchen thinking, Dale, please don’t laugh. And he didn’t. Not right away. Then he like, leaned his chair back so he could see me watching him, fat in the kitchen and begging him with my eyes not to laugh and you know what he does?”
    â€œHe laughs,” I says.
    â€œMinute to the day, anything he felt for me was over and I knew it.”
    â€œThat musta hurt,” I says.
    She looks me up and down. “No one ever called you fat, I’ll bet,” she says.
    â€œThey called me other stuff.”
    â€œI got the last laugh on Dale, though,” Myrna says. Her voice turns low. Lower than when she was talking about the cowboy billboard. Like she’s dragging her words behind her on a rope. “He thought he was gonna get me with kid number six. He knocked me up, but Myrna got the last laugh.”
    She takes two fresh cans out the bag, opening both and handing one to me. She touches her can to mines. “Cheers,” she says and we drink.
    â€œYou in trouble?” she asks. Her voice is so low, so right-in-my-ear that I almost don’t hear her. “If yr in trouble, I know someone who can help.”
    I turn to the window and sleep.
    When I wake up we’re stopped. There’s a faded red wooden depot with a windmill water-pump in front. A small sign, plain and white with faded black letters:

    Three Mexican cowboys, small and handsome in they clean just-bought duds, get on.
    Myrna gives them a low whistle. She’s peeling an orange with a Case knife. The skin comes off in one long spiral. She sees me looking at it and hands it to me.
    â€œYou good with dreams?” she asks and right away she starts in with the telling. “I had me a dream once that I was sleeping and my breasts fell off in the middle of the night. Both of them.”
    I fiddle the orange peel, squeezing the dimply skin, making it spray. She divides the orange, juice going everywhere, and gives me half.
    â€œHad me another dream,” Myrna goes on,