Portland Magazine
April 1, 2022
Story by Jessie van Eerden
Illustration by Madeline Martinez
HERE, INTERIOR MEETS exterior, threshold between kitchen scent and a wind murmured with skunk. Screen blocks June bugs and bats though not the slant rain. There is a little time. Metal washtub harbors nasturtium and petunia, and here, the boots to pull on when ready. I tweeze five ticks off the dog, suffocating them first in Vaseline. Yesterday, she snagged a bunny from under the hosta and, the day before, massacred the new robins. Her murderous face spoking bird legs, her hind leg trembling. She sprawls now to my touch. Board fitted and mesh tacked to make space for mercy. And this heat—let the sky make use of it. Out here, I read a letter from my brother who, last year, put that turnbuckle on the screendoor to lift its drag and who has loved his wife for twenty years. He’s building some chairs out of cherry and teaching his son our country’s dark truths. Letters slow life down, he writes. I picture him calling forth the deeper cherry grain with Minwax finish and filling out the shapes outlined for us that seemed so large, capacious, and demanding when we were small enough to fit in closet forts and snug vests with snaps. P.S.—he doesn’t remember that summer I asked him about, when we went to the demolition derby. But I remember his friend Jack’s name called on the loudspeaker and the blue raspberry snowcones in the stands and our disposition toward homesickness. He is, I think, a good father to his son. A good teacher at the community college. Good husband. May the chairs turn out. He prays for me in his hot kernel heart to know what shape my life. I water dog and nasturtium and hear my mother’s thoughts on the governor over the phone, my sister’s talk of graduate school, my friend’s news of her dad dying. And the radio, bad news all around from Yemen, Detroit, the local high school. On the table, the market Cherokee Purples and Brandywines ripen, two nectarines and a newspaper boat of blue lake beans for my love. Out here, in these two chairs, was our beginning when we said I miss your shape when you’re not near, I his shape of father of two, trim beard shaved neck smell of sandalwood soap but stronger smell of lakewater, filling my hallway, shirt sleeves rolled up and shoulders to knead and to help brace me, and he my shape of something. I know it only to be a shape of something not yet final. Please, God, a little more time before I go. I promise I’ll be ready. After a bit, I won’t really need the screen so intact. See here, this corner is already loose and I’ve left it unrepaired, and a few bats get in. I put my cheek down upon the porch floor, my temple, my heavy hair, and feel the flutter of a wing. Then, come evening, when the storm begins, all that heat finally useful, when some spray blows in and the temperature falls an octave, I promise I will follow you down those porch steps, in my ready shape. I swear I will follow you anywhere.
Jessie van Eerden is the author of three novels, Glorybound, My Radio Radio, and Call It Horses, and the essay collection The Long Weeping. She teaches English at Hollins University and serves as nonfiction editor for Orison Books.
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