A Wonderful Small Town Short Story
By Loreto Eibhllann
Just like you sometimes forgot things you thought, like when you were little and all you nearly wanted was just to own a nice horse, just as your grandmother thought those perfect thoughts for you, as a way of thinking of things other than the horror of a barren womb, and how you unbecame a mother. The childless baby of your very own self preceded only by the witchcraft of a crusading tower of babble long ago unravelled about those from the Planet of Manure, whose stunk-up factories reap until this very day a smell and the scent of a sewer so repugnant that the small cult of beings from that place had to relocate to a poor mountain on the edge of nowhere. Busy enough within a world who said, “No babies. Fine.” Sarah moved through the downtown New York, N.Y. crowd at lunch time and as her red coat whipped around at her, it was as if she plowed through people as a ship who parted waters. But the dream was always the same. Thousands and thousands of women pushing red lacquer baby strollers went right through her. They came at her with every kind of baby possible. Japanese. Chinese. Russian. Black. Cute. Ugly. Big. Small. There was only one thing about these babies. They were all calm.
One more thing each of the babies all had in common meant one more factor. Mothers. And sometimes, she found herself in a room with them. It was a birthday party. A child’s birthday party. Suddenly, a woman with a heart as black as pitch flew forward. Extending one thin finger, she pointed at Sarah’s barren belly. “You! Bitch!” Said the woman who only thought she was a tough little bitch. “You can’t come to this….to my child’s birthday party!” She said. Another woman smacked the dark hearted bitch across the face. “Leave her alone!” Shouted a woman who seemed possibly and perhaps only lovely and inquisitive. The possible heartful woman looked at the mayhem bitch whose home, and despite filled to the brim with lovely children, only wanted to drown herself with booze and hatred. The barren woman glanced out the window and glimpsed a homeless man, head hunched and he dredged alongside the home of the baby woman. Taking a shortcut, Sarah guessed, through backyards. The thought occurred to Sarah that this man had once been a baby son of some woman at one time.
The small and very unappreciative, and not to mention ungrateful dark hearted bitch was speaking to a group of mothers who standing by the cupcake table all clutched newborn babies. Strange, thought Sarah. You would think that a newborn baby should be held soft and cradled more than cuddled. “I want the world to revolve around me sun-up, and sundown,” said the selfish woman. “Everyone must think about how to love me and help me, and me alone all of the days of my life,” she remarked. “More or less drown in the stenched sea of your rotting pussie?” Queried one of the newborn babies, directing the comment to the dark hearted woman. Sarah raised her eyebrows. Suddenly the scene became more interesting to her. Boredom flew right out the window. So, it was true. The babies had more heart than the most of the mothers, and they and they alone refused to be silenced. Insisted on speaking their peace. Dark bitch became silent. Her jaw sagged open. And it was at this time that Sarah knew she knew one thing, and one thing only. Nothing had grown in hers for more than five years. Sarah thought of the farm she had lived on. The stolen farm. She was running through the wheat fields and smiling though she could not speak. Her heart-felt God anyway. And she saw herself huge and pregnant, even as her paisley dress with tiny flowers covered her soul, her hair a sweet summer horse mane.
Also wrapped around her soul, she refused to stop running. She awoke from her daydream though and also realized that she stood smack dab at the center of a room with a whole lot of mothers who had babies with them. She began to make her way to the cupcake table while the same dark hearted woman hollered out, “Hey bitch!” Another woman with a baby crammed into her side hip said, “Why don’t you leave her alone?” referring to the dark bitch about Sarah. “Fuck you,” said the dark bitch. “Get the fuck out-of-the-way!” She glared at Sarah. “You know the rules. Mothers with children present and fertile women get to eat the cupcakes first. Babies and small children go next. Barren women last.” Sarah quaked slightly. She wondered as scientists once did, which came first. The chicken or the egg. Pass out or upchuck.
Sarah pulled a candy bar out instead and placed her lips around the edge. The chocolate began to melt and as she soothed a layer of dark upon her tongue, she thought again. “We got us some god damn big fuckin’ wild plans for the weekend.” All of the mothers with babes on a hip stood around and a circle formed as a simultaneous rapture of head nodding began. The thing had more unity and agreement than a Pentecostal church prayer circle on Sunday go to meeting time. Sarah felt strangely left out. On her mind, the even more strange planet she had come from. A planet of real unity, maturity, love and acceptance, as she felt, and she knew she was right, that she had never dealt with so many immature people at one group party all of the days of her life. She also found another fact about earth strange. A planet where God would give children to mothers who cussed liked sailors and ran the night club circuit, and laid like rats on a hot tin bed at night for one night stands. And took away all of her children, and gave Sarah no more babies.
The candy bar now soaked away and gone, Sarah began to try to edge toward the cupcake table again. By now, most of the babies and children had smashed a great deal of them onto the floor and all over the carpet. The mayhem bitches just looked on. One of them finally spoke up. “Carl,” she spoke to her little baby boy. “Let Callie smear cake against the warm, rich carpet too.” The baby daughter of one of the other women with big wide eyes looked up from iced cupcake hands. Grinded pink on white cake iced souffle’ onto the top tufts of the hot, red, fertile carpet. A baby mother who took on something as like a party supervisor said, “Respect, that’s what it’s all about.” Her armband had a swastika slapped upon a felt design of a tiny child within a bassinet on top of that. “Only a woman who has hopped on pop and rocked more than rolled, greater than Robert Plant,and mightier than Led Zeppelin, soothed out the honey lump gets our respect.”
Sarah looked down at her toes and sighed as she thought about how much she needed to paint them. The women began to look like dog women to Sarah. Bitches. She hoped that they would not vote and decide to begin to pee on anything to mark some territory or another. Boned she thought, and also the fact that these women represented a very possible air-headed waster and excuse of a God formation of female tissue. Sarah very bored by now, began to wonder what about the party meant intellectual or interesting. Sarah took leave of a quiet chuckle. Several children helped by a few babies began to pin a tail on the donkey. Unfortunately, the donkey was one of the baby mammas who yelped after a huge hat pin stuck her swelled post-childbirth bottom.
A few of the other uncouth and classless baby mammas began to whisper about all of the one night stands they got. A cloud of laughter rose after dark bitch bragged about how she had made her baby daddy commit suicide. She had told him the night he did it the words that made him do it. “I’ll make sure you never get to see this baby,” she had told him the night he did himself in. She jutted out her huge belly right now, and as a memory reminder more to herself than the others, she then grinned big. Real big. The action which nearly knocked over the cupcake table, only made Sarah think of some time she had spent at the theater of the childbirth simulator. How much fun she had had. The workers who had strapped her in felt the reality of the fantasial, and imaginary evening of childbirth with such strength, she thought for sure they had bought her balloons that said, a baby boy. “Congratulations.” It was so much fun she had even felt like she had slapped her husband hard at the painful part. She looked down at the eyes of her newborn son and said, “Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful boy.”
Mysteries & Other Short Stories 