Stories in an Almost Classical Mode by Harold Brodkey

Author:Harold Brodkey [Brodkey, Harold]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780679724315
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 1988-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

SOMETIMES HE will throw a tantrum then: he will stamp his foot, and shout—so that the furniture slides a little bit—that it is the school’s fault or Momma’s, “NONIE IS A GOOD GIRL!” He will shout: “SOMEONE IS RUINING HER.” Then he subsides: he says, “There’s a pain in my chest—I can’t breathe.”

He holds a hand to his chest: his eyes are stricken: it is frightening how sick of everything he is, then, for a while.

“He is more afraid of Nonie than of anyone,” Momma said.

Nonie trafficked in innocence.

And in the opposite of it: in accusation, in cruelty.

Daddy used to say, “It’s better to leave well enough alone.” And: “Nonie’s a fine girl—and that’s the end of the subject.” That was love and not-love. He didn’t want to think about her.

If Nonie is playing with other children, the nurse takes me outside in the afternoons. If I see Nonie, I will run to her, and she will turn red and yell, “Get away, get him away, I’m busy—”

If I didn’t go away but stood and stared at her—without comprehension—and if the nurse, who was fat, delayed, Nonie would come over and push me so that I would fall on my rump (she almost never hit me in front of witnesses: she’d learned that was not wise). Sometimes what she did made the people she was with uneasy—or they’d point-blank dislike her: she would blame me: I ruined everything for her always.

On the whole, it was better for me when she was pretty solidly defeated.

We play under the porch, and then Nonie has me lie down on the automobile blanket; and we go through the complexities of her undressing me: she pulls down my snowsuit pants, lifts my shirt and snowsuit jacket. I am nearly naked.

She wants to enjoy me as Momma does. But also she is curious why I am loved the way I am.

Nonie poked my belly with a stick: “You have appendicitis: I’m operating on you.” She said of my prick, “It’s silly.” She poked it with her stick. I wriggled. I pushed at her hand. She stuck the twig in my ear. I struggled; then she stopped, and we played—I think she was an airline pilot doing an appendectomy in a thunderstorm. Then she tried to stick the twig into my mouth: I turned my head: she grabbed my nose, held it, pressed the nostrils together: for air, I opened my mouth: the twig, its bark, its smell of dust—it had lain in the dust—entered my mouth, touched my palate: I gagged.

Nonie slapped down my struggling arms and legs. “Do what I tell you! You have to do what I tell you! We’re playing a game!”

She held my nose and put dirt in my mouth: “This is food—eat it—you have to eat it.”

I would think the thing of being suited to give birth would go along with an innate patience with, oh, physical explorations, curiosity about pain, about courage and submission. And nothing middle-class approves of that; being middle-class consists of privileges, of being spared pain.

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