Wanting by Margot Kahn

Author:Margot Kahn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2022-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Made of Clay

Abigail Thomas

IN HIS ROOM AT HOSPICE WAS A CLAY STATUE SOMEONE had made, and she told her daughter she wanted to make something like that too. This was before he died. Then he died, and when she didn’t know what to do with herself, her daughter gave her a box of clay.

This is what she does, first thing, every morning now: sticks her left hand into the plastic bag of terra cotta and starts grabbing. It isn’t easy. She has to keep digging and digging with her fingernails because even though it’s damp, the clay can be stiff. Her hand seems to know how much it wants. It varies. She looks at the raggedy lump when she first brings it out, to see if there’s anything implied, anything resembling something else—maybe there’s the hint of a face, or a dog’s head, or a dragon, or a fish. (There’s never actually been a fish, but she did do a woman’s face in silhouette that some people mistake for a fish. The face is thinner than a flounder filet, maybe a sixteenth of an inch thick, and she made a base to keep the face from tipping over.) Or sometimes it’s maybe the beginnings of someone’s nose. That is very exciting, because then she gets to look for the rest of whoever is there. She is enhancing the accident. She is in love with clay. Head over heels in love.

Once it was the head of a dead baby elephant, its ragged mouth open in a last cry, it was so sad, she saw its poor tattered ears, she really hardly touched it, and now it’s on the table. Its tusks were gone. She thinks, Fucking poacher. If she points it out to a visitor, they see it too. It’s quite small. It fits in her palm with room left over. She wonders if she’s crazy.

When she doesn’t find something or someone right away, she gives it another squeeze, looks again. If still nothing, she rolls it around in both hands and starts shaping the raggedy lump into an oval on a breadboard in her lap. It gets messy. She doesn’t know why it’s always an oval, except she loves the word—oval—and the possibilities implicit in its shape. Sometimes there is the suggestion of a nose. She begins with that, pulling it out of the center, because once she has the nose, she has the cheekbones, and where the eyes will be, and eventually the mouth. She loves making noses, big ones, broken ones, pointy ones, and once most of it is done, she does the nostrils. Nostrils are important and delicate, and she uses her fingernails to pinch them into a mood. Flared, she has to be so careful. She also uses fingernails to make the eyelids, fingertips to make the eyes. She keeps a little dish of water to dip in when something needs smoothing out.

At first, they were always dead. Not because of her friend who died; she thinks that was a coincidence.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.