See that dress over yonder? The one hangin’ over the door? My sister made that dress outta four chicken-feed sacks; from a pattern in Butterick’s, Number 1129. I ‘member ‘cause that was my sister’s birthday: November 29. She said it was her birthday dress – blue bachelor buttons, an’ yellow triangles with vampire-eye red dots in the center.
I saw my sister last week. She was sittin’ on the sofa when I went in; sittin’ in her room starin’ into space. I said, “Clodah, what ya doin’?”
“Oh, nothin’, Chaos,” she said. Our parents had a penchant for exotic names that began with “C” – Clodah and Chaos. . . .
“Why aren’t’cha watching TV?” I asked her.
“Don’t work,” she said.
“Don’t work?”
“Don’t work, uh uh.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Just don’t come on.”
“How long for?” I asked.
“Two weeks er so,” she said.
I pulled the TV from the wall, an’ there on the floor I saw the plug.
“Plug’s pulled outta the wall,” I said.
”Plug’s outta the wall?”
“Pulled out.”
“Oh, how?”
I pushed the plug in and the TV turned right on; the six o’clock news.
“All this time ya coulda been watchin’ the six o’clock news,” I says.
“Nothing on the news,” she said. “Nothin’ new; there’s nothing new anywheres.”
My sister died yesterday . . . on the toilet. When the emergency took her off, there in the water below was her business big-as-life; shaped like a brown question mark an’ floatin’ in the water.
I’m gonna bury my sister in her birthday dress. My sister who said there was nothin’ in the news.
About Alan Brasington
A newcomer to Alan Brasington, I feel he’s an antidote to smug. Only so much room for correctness.