Maybe it’s time, Grandma said, indicating my grave with her cane.
I dived down, had a look at that desiccated brownish-green figure of medium height (length), cleaved in half at approximately the hip-line, left arm disconnected at the shoulder, a fuzz-beard of mold on what was left of its cheekbones, wearing, still, the outfit Lloyd had picked out (beige skirt, pale pink blouse, black pumps, my favorite in life, a fact Lloyd had sweetly remembered even in his grief).
I shot back up.
(No bun in oven.
By the way.)
No, I said.
Why not? Grandma said. What keeps you here, Doll?
What keepsyouhere? I said.
She leaned forward to answer, as if about to tell me some long-kept secret.
Then did a little fart, like in the old days, so we might part on good terms.
And off she went.
Off they all went, to their various afterlife tasks.
I stood there looking around.
What was I doing?
What was I doinghere,in this crappo graveyard, in this ugly little town that could never mean anything to me again?
I’d received the gift ofelevationfrom our great God in Heaven himself.
And this was how I behaved?
Elevationwas true. It was. For sure.
Me,elevated? Was real. Realer by a mile, at this point, than “Jill ‘Doll’ Blaine.”
All righty then, I thought.
Gosh, golly, embarrassing.
I must put her behind me forever, that girl who once was, then was no more, and would never be again.
—
Up I shot and raced back across Illinois and Missouri and then entered Oklahoma.
As I may have mentioned, it was sometimes good, when rattled, to think in the highest possible register. And, by this, regainelevation.
So:
The porch light of a farmhouse outside Tulsa threw a chute ofyellow light out across its rough lawn, as if intending the light-chute to be taken for a path to the farm’s white-fenced goat-pen.
But something was off.
I dropped, flew the length of the goat-pen, exciting the goats therein by my presence; heads humbly lowered, they fled to positions against the glowing white fence, propelled there by my strangeness.
Nope, still rattled.
