SIV CEDERING FOX
225
one of the I's in "still". I corrected the mistakes, and the
corrected lines typed themselves back. Then an extra line ap–
peared:
YOUR MOTHER'S DREAM.
I looked over the input page. Had I typed "YOUR MOTHER'S
DREAM" anyplace? Not that I could see. Something was not
right. I continued:
As he speaks I see myself through his eyes. The tall V of my
legs meeting in purple and soft black above him. I have not
thought about the incident, but now I see us as I did then,
standing on that bed. Nothing can be taller than a tall woman
standing on a bed, looking down. Once I climbed up to the
crow's nest of a transatlantic ship, crossing the ocean in mid
December; I was fifteen. The waves swelled and the crow's
nest seemed to lean way out over the waves, from side to side.
The deck of the ship was brightly lit, and it seemed like it was
miles away, below me. Bundled up in layers of clothing
against the wind and the night, I swayed above the ship, a
sweet dizziness inside me. That's how it was that night on the
bed. I could feel my long hair touch the bare skin of my
buttocks as I swayed, moving my head, seeing, through great
distances, a face, and then, falling down
to
that face.
I felt uneasy about the writing and gave the print command
again. The terminal started to type "The Green Dress." An
asterisk noted the lines where I had made corrections in the first
paragraph. The second paragraph had no mistakes. But after the
last word, there was that extra line:
YOUR MOTHER'S DREAM.
I don't know why I did it, but I typed:
What dream?
The terminal typed, and I read:
Your mother dreamed that your brother was pulled out of the
river with a truckload of dead fish.
