Saffee glances at April’s red-checked pinafore, proud that her mother sews so ably.
“I bet ya met some nice ladies, Joann,” Nels says, obviously hoping she had.
“Nice? Well, maybe, but short on looks, shorter on brains,” she scoffs. Joann scoops the last of the scrambled eggs onto her plate and declares, “I won’t be going back.”
Nels knows it is useless to argue.
That afternoon, flushed from the July heat, Saffee hurries into the house with an armload of books and heads to the kitchen for a glass of water. Which should she read first? Kon-Tiki or Pygmalion? Her mother, at the breakfast bar, does not acknowledge her. She is scribbling in a spiral notebook, imagination meeting memory, a wry smile on her face. More and more she dashes off lines of doggerel, revising for a number of days until a piece gives her pleasure.
“The library was so nice and cool,” Saffee says. “Wish our house was air-conditioned. Most of all, I really wish I could have a bike, Mom. I’m tired of walking all the time. I could have a basket on the front for books and stuff.”
Whenever Saffee asks for a bicycle, her parents remind her they live on a “very steep hill,” and she’d probably “break her neck.”
Gulping water, she watches her mother. “Whatcha writing, Mom?”
Engrossed in her own drama, Joann does not respond. Saffee asks again.
“Talk, talk, talk,” says Joann, still not looking up.
Saffee stamps her right foot on the floor and sets the glass on the counter a little too firmly. “I have not been talking!” she blurts. “I haven’t even been in the house! And all I did was ask for a bike.”
“Clean up the water you spilled, Saffee. No, I’m writing about talking. All that yak-yak-yak last night at the sewing club got me started on a poem.” She surveys the page, nodding slightly, clicking her tongue. “Actually, it’s turning out kind of good. Maybe I’ll read it to you when I’m finished.” She bends to resume. “Now, let me be so I can follow where my mind is going.”
Over the next two days, Joann labors on what she calls an “essay poem.” When relatively satisfied, she summons Saffee and April to a dramatic reading in the living room. Joann sits with one leg elevated on a hassock; her varicose veins are “killing her.” The girls sit at her feet.
“The title is ‘Ensnared,’” Joann says. “There are three parts. Here’s the first one.” She reads,
Advance. Retreat.
Offend. Defend.
Bumper cars converse, reverse.
Teasing push here, sudden jab there.
Touché! Good hit!
For a while, April is swept into Joann’s theatricality, which is much like her own. She bobs and sways to the rhythm of the words. Her sister sits very still.
Smiling masks belie sweaty palms, stiff necks.
Stupid! I knew I should not have come.
Stomachs knot.
Voices blabber.
Batteries rush toward their own extinction.
Blam! Quiplash! Cornered!
. . . At last, they slither away.
Smoke and mirrors.
Forgettable . . .
But not forgotten.
The confrontational words startle Saffee. She eyes her mother doubtfully. “What’s that got to do with sewing club, Mom?”
“That part just sets the stage for the next two parts, so listen.” Joann resumes reading.
We bring to the table the raw material of unspoken thoughts . . .
The fabric of our words becomes weightier. Riskier . . .
The essay poem drags on and on. By the time Joann reads the last part, she is giggling, thoroughly enjoying her own melodramatic absurdity.
Beware! Beware the delicate dance! The delicate verbal dance! . . .
April has become disinterested and has left the room. Saffee listens, hoping to understand even a little about her mother’s stinging reflections on the “verbal dance” and the “raucous undercurrent and pieties” at the sewing club.
. . . Naïveté trampled, again . . .
Rude cacophony retains its rule . . .
The Lord is in His holy temple.
Let all the earth keep silent before Him.
When the work finally concludes, Joann continues to edit, energetically inserting a new word here, hazarding a new line there.
Saffee sits silently. She’s too young to fully comprehend that what her mother has read from the notebook reflects a growing paranoia that writes on the tablet of her mind. Yet, on a simple level, Saffee relates.
“Like you said, that was about talking, right, Mom?”
“Right,” Joann answers, intent on her editing.
“I don’t like to talk to people much either, Mom,” Saffee says quietly.
Joann stops writing, looks down at her, and says, “Well, of course, the other night wasn’t really quite that bad. I made up some of it.”