JOY WILLIAMS
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eager fingers. Jenny's nightie is damp and sweaty. Her mother takes
it off and goes to the sink where she washes it with sweet-smelling
soap. Then she makes Jenny's breakfast . Jenny is not hungry. She
takes the food outside and scatters it on the ground. The grass covers
it up . Jenny goes back to her room. Everything is neatly put away.
Her mother has made the bed. Jenny takes everything out again, her
toy stove and typewriter and phone, her puppets and cars, the costly
and minute dollhouse furnishings. Everything is there: a tiny papier–
mache pot roast dinner, lamps, rugs, andirons, fans, everything. The
cupboards are full of play bread, the pool is full of play water. A book
is open to its play pages.
On the wedding day, James 's companion cautioned him to have
a large vessel full of water ready when he went
to
bed that night .
.. And when the bride gets up, toss her into it," the companion
said. "Then she will turn into a raven. Put the raven back in the
water, and she will become a dove. Plunge the dove under water,
and she will come out in her true form, as gentle as an angel and
a true and perfect wife ."
Jenny's face is tense and intimate. She knows everything, but
how aimless and arbitrary her knowledge is! For she has only desire;
she has always had only the desire for this , her sleek, quiescent lover.
He is so cold and so satisfying for there is no discovery in him. She
goes to the bed and curls up beside him. He is dark and she is light.
There are no shadings inJenny's world . He is a tall, dark tree rooted
in the stubborn night, and she is a flame seeking him-unstable,
transparent. They are in Oaxaca. If they opened the shutters they
would see the stone town. The town is made of a soft, pale green
stone that makes it look as though it has been rained upon for cen–
turies. Shadows in the shape of men fall from the buildings. Every–
thing is cool, almost rotten. In the markets, the fruit beads with
water; the fragile feathered skulls of the birds are moist to the touch.
The man sleeks her hair back behind her ears . She is not so
pretty now. Her face is uneven, her eyes are closed .
"You're asleep," he says . "You're making love to me in your
sleep.
Vete a fa chingada.
"
He says it slangily and softly, scornfully as
any Mexican. She is nothing, nowhere . There is something exquisite
in this, in the way, now, that he holds her throat . The pressure is so
