The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [83]
I know, Má. I know. I have never left your womb, is how you want me to feel. I will always be protected, safe inside of you, is what you want me always to remember. Yes, Má, I know. Yes, Má, I am there still.
My mother took a red pouch from the inside of the money belt that she had worn around her waist since my birth. The one place where the Old Man will never look, she thought. She put the pouch in my hand and told me she had no real need or desire for that bit of extravagance anymore. I gave her back the pouch, but she pushed it back into my hand. "I have all that I need," she lied. I smiled because my mother, even at a time like this, could not manage to sound angry or harsh. I put the red pouch in my shirt pocket. I kissed her cheeks, taking the time to smell the oranges in her hair.
17
STEIN AND TOKLAS are brazen, you tell me. Lovey and Pussy? My Lord, those two really have no shame, you say, laughing out loud.
You, Sweet Sunday Man, want to know everything about them, from their pet names for each other to whether they have kissed in front of me. You refer to them both as "the Steins," which confuses me, but you assure me that all the boys who gather at their Saturday teas call them "the Steins" as well. Behind their backs, that is, you say, warning me never to say such a thing to their faces. The Steins? Of course not, Sweet Sunday Man, that would make them sound like some sort of a machine. My Mesdames, believe me, are many things, but they are definitely not mechanically inclined. GertrudeStein and Miss Toklas own an automobile, but only GertrudeStein drives. Miss Toklas navigates. GertrudeStein has a love of the open road, but only Miss Toklas has the maps. Both my Mesdames, however, are equally ill equipped when it comes to the sludgy oil drips, the sputtering engine, the familiar slow rolling motion before each unscheduled stop. An automobile, my Mesdames agree, is a machine and animal confused into one. Caught somewhere in between, it is, understandably, a bit temperamental. Experience, though, has taught them that breakdowns are just temporary. Automobiles, unlike humans, have many lives. My Mesdames simply have to be patient and wait for the next reincarnation. Actually, they just have to wait for the next car. The sight of two women sitting in a vehicle, unaccompanied by a man and therefore seen as "alone," always stops traffic of all kinds, though traffic, or what passes for it, is often scarce: a young man on a bicycle, a hay-filled cart pulled by a farm horse and his owner, another man, this time not so young, on a bicycle. All are eager to help, but all are slow to reach it because the actual help is often several towns away. In France, mechanics are not like bakers. One is not needed for each town.
When Miss Toklas knows that their drive will take them outside Paris, to places where a taxi cannot be hailed at a moment's notice for the return trip home, she packs along their "waiting kits." Hers contains a set of knitting needles and several balls of apple green yarn, the disheveled kind with wispy hairs tangled on its surface. She likes the color, so unripe it makes her pucker just to look at it. But most of all, she likes how the crispness of the color serves as a foil for the texture of the yarn, a melt-in-her-hand sensation. The eyes tell her one story, and the hands tell her another. Miss Toklas is particularly fond of this sort of interchange. She thinks it makes the difference between a well-knitted scarf and an intriguing, well-knitted scarf. "Fashionable, stylish, pretty" are too subjective, she thinks, accountable as they are to personal foibles and the mood of the time. "Intriguing," however, always calls for a second look, an irresistible glance back, a heightened desire to know and to have. Intrigue cannot be added at the very end. A sprinkling of sequins, a glazing