Erin McGraw - Joy: And 52 Other Very Short Stories

Table of Contents

America originally appeared in American Short Fiction; Ava Gardner Goes Home in The Sewanee Review; Before in A Very Angry Baby: The Anthology; Breaking Glass, Dogs, Happiness, and Priest in Image; Cat, Comfort (1), Comfort (2), Job, Rock and Roll, and Sympathy in The Georgia Review; Clich, Pariah, Pebble, and The Tenth Student in The Cincinnati Review; Compliments, L.A., and Love in Great Jones Street; Fat and Haircut in Blackbird; Hello from an Old Friend in Tin House Flash Friday; Hope in Ploughshares; Management and Teeth in Kenyon Review Online; Nutcracker in Five Points; Prayer as A Statement from the Defense in St. Katherine Review; and Wedding Gown as Deanne Stovers in Winesburg, Indiana.

This book would not have been born without the steady help and support of Gail Hochman, to whom I owe more than I can count. Thank you to the miraculously patient Jody Kahn. Deep and happy thanks to Jack Shoemaker and the marvelous Counterpoint teamWah-Ming Chang, Yukiko Tominaga, Megan Fishmann, Sarah Grimm, Hope Levy, Jennifer Kovitz, Katie Boland, and Jennifer Alton. You all made it fun.

I owe particular and heartfelt thanks to readers who helped me with these stories, particularly Anna McGrail, Debie Thomas, Kathleen Blackburn, and Alyssa Sumpter. Jamie Lyn Smith Fletcher saved me from myself more times than I can count. And my husband, Andrew Hudgins, read and reread, helped and rehelped, and kept me and the book alive through the bad parts.

ALSO BY ERIN MCGRAW

The Baby Tree

Better Food for a Better World

Bodies at Sea

The Good Life

Lies of the Saints

The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard

Nadia Peters

ERIN MCGRAW, born and raised in Southern California, lived and taught for many years in the Midwest before retiring to rural Tennessee with her husband, poet Andrew Hudgins, and her dogs. She has written six previous booksthree novels and three collections of storiesalong with essays and occasional journalism. Find out more at erinmcgraw.com.

Mr. Bixby is showing us again how to do the lay-back. He says were all too stiff, but what he means is that were all too white. Curl your upper backs! With every kick youre giving yourselves. He kicks as high as his shoulder and lets his upper back droop and he looks idiotic, but hes trying to get Melissa Ridge to quit it with her ramrod ballet kicks, and anyway, Mr. Bixby is Mr. West Side Story, and all we can do is go along.

Hes already got us, the Sharks and their girls, training with the Spanish teacher to improve our accents. Hes training the Jets accents himself, and now Trent Boynton, whos playing Action, goes around muttering, Kick da can to da koib. If Trent runs into any of the Sharks, hes supposed to refuse to talk. Mr. Bixby wont let the Sharks and the Jets eat lunch together or hang out after school. This isnt just a play, Mr. Bixby says. Its a life. The day I woke up surprised to see my regular room and not a tenement, I told him about it. Thatsgood, thats real good, he told me. I wasnt five feet away when he complained to Rob, the script boy he always keeps nearby, Weve been rehearsing for two months. What has she been doing?

Ive been learning to be Puerto Rican. At first I wanted to be Velma, Riffs girl, but Mr. Bixby cast Antoinette Mercer, whos so stupid that she can say her lineOublee-ooand sound like she means it. Now Im Marisol, the name Mr. Bixby gave me, and Ill have leeway to improvise lines once Mr. Bixby thinks my accent is good enough.

First, though, I have to learn the steps to America. Its an all-girl number, which I thought would make the dancing easy, but Mr. Bixby says were supposed to dance in Spanish, and none of us knows how to do that. At first he told us to wiggle, but now hes telling us to ripple. You cant just jiggle your skirt and think youre going to look Puerto Rican, he says, holding his hands up as if he were shaking out a towel. In case anybody has missed it, hes gay. Your whole body is alive and flashing. The Jets girls are wound tight, but you are exploding!

We try to explode. Some of the shows weve done are stupidnobody has forgotten that cowbell in Oklahoma!but I can feel West Side Storys angular music scraping at my brain, its constant anger keeping me buzzing like a high-tension wire. Every day my lay-backs get a little deeper, and my body is moving in new ways, as if its barely holding back something I didnt know I had. One night, Mom asks me if Ive taken out the trash and I say S without thinking. In the moment before she frowns, shock blanks out her face, and I feel a sizzling pleasure.

Because Tony and Maria are using the stage, were practicing in the cafeteriaNeutral territory, Mr. Bixby says. By the silverware bins, I tap my foot and watch the America rehearsal stop because of Marina Rowe, who must have been cast as Rosalia because of her boobs, not that Mr. Bixby cares about them. Shes a terrible dancer and cant remember any of her sixteen lines. But shes the only girl other than Maria who argues with haughty Anita, and even though Rosalia loses, its still thrilling to watch someone take Anita on. Or it would be thrilling, if the person werent Marina.

What do you think youre arguing about? Mr. Bixby says to her.

Whether America is good or not.

Deeper than that.

Immigrants should go home?

Mr. Bixby takes a deep breath, the one that signals weve just hit the end of his patience. Inclusion. Youre arguing to prove you belong. Theres nothing more important than that.

Okay, says Marina, happy to have the question answered for her.

So how do you pour the hunger to be included into your dancing?

We ripple, she says promptly, then glances at his face. We explode?

Quietly, my feet moving lightly over the tile floor, I start again with the shuddering little steps, then the explosive kicks that make me cry out. I may be a sixteen-year-old German-Irish girl living in flat Ohio, but West Side Story is a chute I slide down, and every day Im a little more Marisol, working in a West Side dress shop and kissing Pepe on the fire escape. When Jeff OBrien, who plays Snowboy, bumped into me in the cafeteria, I hissed at him.

Mr. Bixby notices me marking out the steps, and I see him pause. I feel the moment like a hitch in the breath, and for a second all the sound in the cafeteria stops. Hes never seen me beforeor rather, hes never seen Marisol, sixteen years old and hungry for an American car, an American house and boy and life. She did not come here to mark out tiny steps in a white cinderblock room that smells like gravy. Can Mr. Bixby see my sneer? Mr. Bixby would be lucky to have Marisol walk over him in her sharp-pointed shoes. Promises have been made on every side, but so far all Marisol has been given is a script, the boys she has known all her life, and one small hope in being picked out by a man in tight pants and dancing shoes. I kick again, laying back into the air, which catches me.

Mr. Bixby claps his hands and sound rushes back in. Again, he says. Marisol, show them.

I swish my skirt, walking to the front of the room, and feel every set of eyes. We are living this play, almost all of us, and I wish a Jet were here so I could spit on him. This is my country now.

Just tell the truth, they say, and I cant even count how many things are wrong with that sentence. There are a lot of truths, and most of them arent on speaking terms with the others.

True: I am the man who killed a child. My family and friends dont believe that, pointing out that all my life I have liked kids. Also true, and irrelevant. People bring up stuff that they want to matter.