It Chooses You - Miranda July [7]
Primila:
Okay, I’ll tell you because it’s a funny story. One day I was at work and my nephew Benny calls me and he says, “Auntie, I’m hearing voices from the wall. Not from the roof, but from the actual wall.” I said, “What nonsense.” But when I came home I listened, and sure enough, in the closet, behind the wall – in the wall – there was a little meow meow. So my son-in-law cut a hole in the closet wall and he put a little food there. Then in the morning there was the cutest little black and white kitten, just two weeks old.
And then a week or two later, just behind the water heater, he calls me up and says, “Auntie, there’s another meow going on there.” And sure enough, we cut a hole there and another kitten came out. And then it happened again! There was a tree that had grown over our wall, so the cat from there had climbed up, made a hole in our roof, and got into our attic to have her kittens. And then they were falling through the insulation. My daughters are married and I’m waiting for grandchildren, but the joke is that the stork brings only four-legged babies to my house.
Before we left, she showed me how to wear a sari properly. As she wound the fabric around my hips I realized I would join the Latina actress when Primila told her story about people who had answered the ad. I had thought of myself as outrageously forward, but PennySaver sellers weren’t hung up about inviting strangers into their homes. So I didn’t have to be so nervous — I could drop the Leave It to Beaver voice and focus on the secret clues each person was trying to convey to me.
That night I wrote down: (1) Each day is a gift, and, (2) Look for the rainbow. Gift. Rainbow. Primila was a hellcat, breaking down doors and threatening officials with eternal damnation. She had adopted four kids and had three four-legged grandchildren. I crossed out clues one and two. These were obviously decoy messages. Of course the truth wouldn’t be sweetly concealed in a motto, because I wasn’t Hansel or Gretel. My inquiry was open-ended, but it wasn’t pretend, I wasn’t in a fairytale or a fable. I shut my eyes and absorbed the silent whoomp that always accompanies this revelation. It’s the sound of the real world, gigantic and impossible, replacing the smaller version of reality that I wear like a bonnet, clutched tightly under my chin. It would require constant vigilance to not replace each person with my own fictional version of them.
PAULINE & RAYMOND
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LARGE SUITCASE
$20
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GLENDALE
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Pauline had been eager on the phone; she’d begun telling me about her life even before I asked the question or offered the fifty dollars. She lived in a pretty part of Glendale, my ex-boyfriend’s neighborhood. As I exited at the familiar exit, I thought what if it was the same street, the same house, what if it was him selling the suitcase, what if the suitcase was mine, something I’d forgotten, and what if I bought it and inside there was myself as a child or my dad as a child, or my child as a child, the one I hadn’t found time to have yet? But my ex-boyfriend’s name wasn’t Pauline, so we drove right past his street and parked on one a few blocks away. The house was big and grand, again. Pauline was in her seventies, and she immediately began showing me pictures and telling me stories about her amateur singing group, the Mellow Tones.
Pauline:
We sang “Two Sleepy People,” “Hello Dolly”…
Miranda:
What’s this photo where you’re holding the gun?
Pauline:
Oh, that’s me – oh, yeah. Well, in other words, you could call me a ham. That’s my Cohan medley – I forgot the name of what I sang. “Hello My Honey,” I guess. I can still sing but I had an operation on my ear because of a little growth and it turned out to be two cancer cells. So they had to dig harder. And somewhere along the line, I lost some of my hearing and so it comes out foggy