forwordslashFirst Quarter 2011 / Volume One

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Departments

Letters

Numbers

Collection:Locket Lives

Continued

Features

The Female BodyMargaret Atwood

PaintErin Smith

My Mother’s HandsTracy Seeley

fLetters

As editor and publisher of FORWORDSLASH, Faith Barger is responsible for all curation of content, art direction, design, editing, production and photography un-less otherwise noted. All works by other authors or artists are copywritten and used without permission of author; Faith in no way claims ownership of these written works or images. Please visit www.forwordslash.com for supplemental material in regards to past, present, and future issues. Questions, comments, or interested con-tributors can contact the editor at fbarger@utk.edu or:

FORWORDSLASH

Faith Barger1636 Clinch Avenue, Apartment 2

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ORWORDSLASH IS about objects and people. Where the things at flea markets meet stories of their pasts and the

truths revealed in between. Every is-sue of this publication starts with a flea market and an experience or an object found there. Stories are writ-ten or curated for the object based on an imagined past to give it a life. Through discovery, imagination, and authentic nonfiction, I hope forword-slash inspires you to go to a flea mar-ket, touch people’s things, and find beautiful pasts in objects otherwise disregarded. Please visit our website at www.forwordslash.com to share your own stories about anything shown in this issue. The inaugural Hand/Body issue focuses on objects that touch skin, that travel with us in intimate places, that live alongside us unnoticed. The more hands that explore this issue, the better. So pass it on.

Faith BargerEditor/in/Chief

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Numbers

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223minutes spent at two different flea markets in search of the inspiration for this issue

4items bought forhand / body: a kitchen chair, a gold locket,and two black andwhite photographs

26dollars spenton objects forthis issue

56miles traveledin search of objectsthat inspiredthis issue

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6 people met in the process of flea marketing: Crazy Jim, the woman with mutual acquaintances, Scott Kitts: Flea Market Extraordinaire, Scott Kitts’ brother (recently divorced), Scott Kitts’ best friend, and Myrtle from Myrtle’s Mess

Collection

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liveslocket

A collection of lockets& the necks they’ve loved.

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Collection

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Collection

A gift to my daughter. Empty silver and a little girl’s hinge, a short chain to keep it close. I’ll leave it vacant though the two hollowed halves beg for smiling faces. I want her to want to put my picture inside, but I know that’s too much to ask. Boys will fill it, tall ones, curly hair, a mili-tary cut, polo shirts and khaki pants. Sly smiles with teeth too bright. Or maybe, the picture of me with a skinny face from a honeymoon in the mountains or the one with more wrinkles, grayer hair, same smile.

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All this time I thought it was my picture in her locket, the gold book with the thick chain links. Scratches on the surface from everyday wear. I thought it was our pictures snapped face-to-face on her chest every day. “Who is this?” I stood at the bathroom sink, mirror steamy from the only time she took it off. “That picture came in the locket,” she said as she ran a pink comb through her wet hair. I guess she forgot I bought the necklace for her brand new.

Collection

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My mother has feathery blonde hair and a big white smile. She hates when I wear jew-elry, especially gold and especially necklaces. It’s showy and pretentious and draws attention to the breast. As I sat at the kitchen table carving my name into the back of my favorite locket, my mother said,“You know I don’t like that, Lucille.” “I know.” I left the locket on the table, open for her to see inside. She never said anything about it again.

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Within its tight mouth, a thumb sized pic-ture of my father’s face smiling and rosy from a day at the Florida beach we went to every year before my sister got married and family vacations became that thing we talked about with wistful voices. A gold pendulum whose back and forth swept across Michael’s furry chest as he lay beneath me naked. He tested its hinge and my father’s tiny head greeted him. A quick snap shut to erase the distraction of a man he’ll never meet or live up to.

Collection

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HandsMy MotHer’s

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The day before she went to hos-pice, she polished her nails. We found, on her dressing table, 18 shades of pink. Afterwards, we divided the photos, the one box she kept. Standing against the Rockies, look-ing into the sun, she is wearing her Aran Isle sweater, cabled to catch the light. She almost smiles in that cool way that says, no big deal. No big deal to be living in Aspen, leav-ing Balsam Lake, Wisconsin, behind, teaching kindergarten in the morn-ing, schussing through powder every afternoon, and tutoring Gary Coo-per’s child. Her left hand drapes the wooden fence post, an unblemished row of fingers, all smooth skin and

manicured nails. In her right hand, the two thin strips of her skis stand upright, their curved tips sprouting above her light fingers touch. She wears a ring, three colors of gold in a braided wreath around a dark red stone. It is 1948. She is 20. They merge into one dark fig-ure against the flowered drapes, his black suit and her black dress like eb-ony against the marble of their skin. Her face, in profile, yearns upward to kiss his mouth, the fingers of her right hand spreading gently across his back. Her other hand cups his neck, her thumb a feather against his hair line, while his hand around her waist pulls her close. The air is electric, their flesh luminous. Behind them,

By Tracy Seeley

HandsMy MotHer’s

Through the observation of her mother’s hands in photo-graphs found after her mother’s death, Tracy Seeley creates a portrait of her family’s physical and emotional past.

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the wedding candles burn. Later, her exquisite fingers hold a bite of frosted cake, her wrist wrapped in pearls. It is 1953. Leaning against the Studebaker, cream over bronze, she poses in her fitted blue print sundress. It falls just below her knees, well above her crossed ankles and high-heeled pumps. This car is headed into the future, its chrome bubble front like the prow of a ship, like a wide-open mouth, like, wow! a brand new car for this brand new marriage in a neigh-borhood too new for grass or trees! The sun glints off the windshield, off the chrome, off the paint. Her left hand must be burning; it lies atop the blazing hood, her thumb and pinky lifted into arcs above the metal—but she holds the pose. Glenn Miller glamour, big bands and ballrooms, she clung to those rhythms all of her life. Her real fa-ther played a big band clarinet, lic-orice-stick swing, and she intoned the names Ginger and Fred as though they’d been friends in school. Once, when she went out dancing with my father, draped in black taffeta and rhinestones, she bent over our beds to kiss our foreheads goodnight. Her halo cloud of Chanel Number Five lingered after she’d quietly closed the door and gone. But mostly, she danced at home. When they began the beguine on the record player, she would sway and dip and whirl

across the carpet in her white Keds and Capri pants, her sun-speckled shins shining, one hand at her invis-ible swain’s waist, the other resting lightly in his uplifted palm. At other times, in the midst of dusting or carrying in the mail, she’d break out a few little dance steps, wagging her finger, Charleston style, in the suburban air. That’s when I knew she had once been a person, before she became a mother, like when she taught us to whistle with a blade of grass. Pluck a fat reed, stretch it tight between your pressed-together thumbs, put your lips right there and blow. Like a high wailing clarinet when the joint was really jumpin. She knew how to play. Sometimes my mother sat still. But not her pointer finger. It wrote secret, invisible words and runes on the sur-face of the glass-topped table. Little circles, lines, messages, the sign of something moving through her that was not worry or work. The moving finger was always dancing. No matter what, there was joy in her hand. She has Carol Merrill hands at Christmas and birthdays, the hands of the game show hostess. Carol, will you show our contestant what she has won? Holding up the red boots, the Play-Doh, the red dress with petti-coats. Showing the presents to the camera, to the birthday girl. Deliv-ering the Christmas boxes to our pa-

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jamaed laps, our legs stuck straight out in front on the floor. We found an 8-mm reel in the dusty bottom of the cardboard box. Take one. 1965. Her hands are on TV. We are all on TV! Faking excitement, my sisters and I jump up and down, throwing tinsel on a Christmas tree, also imitation. Cut to close-up. Her blue-veined right hand and perfect pink nails glide atop the cabinet of a brand new RCA. Carol Merrill again. See the lovely hand caress the RCA, the pale, pointed fingers reflected in the sheen of polished wood. Cut to the star on the Christmas tree, glinting in the studio lights. Cut to the RCA Logo. The Most Trusted Name in Electonics. Take Two. Sitting close together on tall stools, she and Dad smile and con-fer over the scrolling Christmas list that unfurls in her delicate hands. I can’t hear what they’re saying. For some reason, the sound has disappeared. The camera glides past their shoulders to reveal the RCA’s behind them. Move to close-up and pan across five new models, each one bigger than the last. Then Mom and Dad stroll into the showroom, and Mom lays a big red bow on the biggest TV. Wearing a bonnet and looking doubtful, I sit in her lap, and she sits behind me with an unconvincing smile. It’s 1959. We both look off to the left. Her hand holds me close, pressing into the small, white buttons of my coat. Her smooth girls hands now have bones and blue veins. Her thumb and finger make a little oval, like a puppet mouth, a long, flat o.

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Four years later, she said that Dad-dy would be living somewhere else. On Saturdays, she said, she would pack us a little lunch and we would spend the day with him. She cried and I cried, and she asked if we wanted to go for a walk, but I was the only one who did, so she took my hand and we walked outside, where we stood on the burnt summer grass and my mother talked to Annie, our neigh-bor, in a quiet, grown-up voice. I stared at the trickle of sprinkler wa-ter creeping through the powdery dirt in the gutter, and at the sailboats on my tennis shoes. I wasn’t wearing any socks. Three days later or was it a week?—my father came home and they hugged, then holding the back of his neck with her hands, she studied his face up close and cried. I didn’t know what was happening. When Saturday came, Daddy wasn’t living somewhere else and we didn’t get lit-tle lunches. I decided that my mother was lying. Sometime in the 60’s, she started painting her nails and never stopped. Frosted Melon; Paint the Town Pink; Love Me Red. 1961. Was this the year she dragged the Christmas tree home, her hands cracked and bleeding? In 1964, my father bought her three slim gold bands, one for each daughter, to wear next to her wedding ring. I loved to see myself wrapped around her finger. Up and down the back of her hand,

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I traced the blue veins that stood up like mine, her long thin fingers. Bony knuckles, perfect nails, Frosted Rose. She was sitting on the couch with her hand on the armrest, talking to company. It was 1967. I camped at her feet and softly pinched the trans-lucent skin on her hand, making a little ridge. She let me. When I let go it stayed there. And she let it. By 1957, since the wedding in Juneau, they’ve moved to Colorado, Los Angeles, Des Moines, Los Angeles again, then back to Colorado, Mon-trose this time. Her hands have kept busy wrapping, unwrapping, boxing, unboxing, lining shelves in new clos-ets, cleaning new windows, waxing another new house full of floors, dia-pering two babies, 14 months apart; the new one, me, born in April. In 55 in California, she had buried a baby, born too soon. Before she let it go, did she stroke its quiet head? Pumping the peddles on her tri-cycle fast, my older sister Tara tore up the block, one neighbor kid perch-ing on her handlebars and two rid-ing shotgun on the platform behind. My mother was pushing the mow-er across the new green Colorado lawn, the motor roaring and green grass smell all around. The circus act careened around the corner and spilled on to the sidewalk, my sister’s arm broke and all four kids started screaming. Shutting off the mow-er, my mother lifted up the wailing

wounded. Two weeks later, my sister Shannon was born. That year, 1960, we moved three times. My mother had her hands full. My grandmother sent dresses to my sister and me in our third Kansas house: skirts out to here with crisp crinolines; sailor dresses with red ties; polished yellow cotton; stripes and lavender plaid; red with bows and white collars. We wore white an-klets and a different dress to school every day. My mother, who in 1962, had seen the handwriting on yet an-other wall, was finishing her teach-ing degree, even as she washed and ironed ten dresses a week then hung them up in the closet. But before she washed them, she took out the hems. And before she ironed them, she put the hems back up. Ten hems a week, down, up. So that when we grew and she lowered the hems, the old line wouldn’t show. She didn’t know how to sew on a button. She said she wasn’t handy. The day she posed in Aspen with her skis and nonchalance, back in 48, that very afternoon, a man, a friend, held her hand as they talked their way home from the slopes, held her hand as they walked through town, held her hand as he pulled her into an abandoned house. Did she strug-gle, strike his chest, gouge his face, as the Aran Isle sweater was wrenched and torn, as the ski pants were ripped, as she bled, a virgin? She never told.

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Not for fifty years. Box, unbox, box, unbox. By 1970, she had moved eighteen times since she married, one for every year. She wasn’t moving again. She put her wedding band in her jewelry box and adorned her bare fingers with red stones and green, party rings and everyday. One, at least, for her pinky. Hands off mar-riage, she said. She wasn’t going to pick up someone else’s socks. Ever. Again. She never did. And she didn’t move again either, not for eighteen years. When the child support didn’t come, she took a second job. Until three o’clock, she taught first grade and after school, she went to Lewin’s where she helped women with money and husbands try on every season’s latest. She hauled sizes smaller, larger, longer, shorter and colors brighter, darker, more muter, more fun and options what do you think of this, have you considered something like that—to the dressing room and back. Carol Merrill again, this time a little depressed. After seven, she cooked dinner, graded papers, wrote lesson plans, folded laundry, and wrote checks, pulling the shoebox of bills down from the closet shelf, licking envelopes and stamps. On weekends, at home, she polished the windows then got down on her knees, dunking a scrub brush into the Pine-Sol suds. In 1973, her fingers crawled up the wall like a spider, a little bit higher each day. Up the wall and down. The mastectomy excised muscle, damaged nerves, tightened tendons. Every day, her fingers moved up the wall. Stretch.

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The grandchildren begin to arrive in 1978. In the photos, she holds babies in her arms, her hands holding theirs. Then toddlers in her lap, her hands around their tummies, or holding a storybook, a puzzle, a Raggedy Ann. The grandchildren multiply and begin to grow up. First communion pictures, her hands in theirs. Her arm around a teenager’s waist. Fingers laying down a Scrabble tile, slapping down a queen of hearts for War or Go Fish. Rings on her fingers, polish on her toes, she plays with children wherever she goes. Eyes smile at the camera and her hand gladly grasps my sister’s arm. A few tawny spots sprinkle wrinkling flesh. Every fall, she taught 25 fidgety six-year-olds how to fold their hands quietly in their laps. Now at her retirement party, in 1989, her pinky ring shines. When she was six, her father the clarinetist had knelt in front of her, kissed her goodbye and wept. She never saw him again, never heard him play. At 62 in Arizona, she became Ginger Rogers, finally learning to tap dance to her long-dead father’s tunes. A vision in feathers and satin and bows, she glided and shuffle-ball-changed, her six-year-old heart swinging with Benny, her hands held aloft like birds. When her retirement funds dried up in 1991, she became a Wal-Mart greeter, waving hello and shaking hands, patting the babies arms. Not exactly Carol Merrill. But she liked the babies. She wanted to play Scrabble with her grandchildren. Besides, Arizona was getting crowded. So she retired from sunshine and tap dancing and moved to Indiana in 1997. Her finger danced above the tiles as she carefully chose her words. She didn’t care if she won. While she waited her turn, her pointer finger wrote its secrets. 1999. An Indiana January. Cancer has moved in. Fresh snow, opalescent and quiet, spreads itself across the dark fields. As she dozes in her recliner, her hands folded as if in prayer, I stare at her closed eyes and parted lips, her stilled hands. 2000. June. Her grandchildren and her daughters and our husbands and partners, carry a box of ashes into the mountains of Glacier National Park, up Avalanche Gorge, along the streambed, under the shade of summer trees. One at a time, we dip into the box, hold her powdery bones in our hands, and let them go, cinders like sand through our fingers. The ashes dance, held aloft in a watery cloud, then begin to separate and, easing toward the center of the stream, pause for a moment, suspended. Then the current catches hold and she surges away in the turbulent rush of early summer snow melt, merging with the splash and play of flashing water, racing over boulders, over ledg-

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es, over stones, down toward the valley to become soil, streambed, life. We wash our hands in the icy water. In the grainy, jittery frames of the 8-mm print, her hands hold mine, steering my lumbering steps toward the chocolate frost-ing on the two-layer cake and the single burning candle. Naked, squat, glistening with bath wa-ter, I stand in the tub and grip the edge, grinning at the camera with two sharp teeth, doing the jerky bouncy dance of the proud, standing baby. It’s a Loony Tunes home movie. Two slender hands reach into the frame, lifting me just enough to plop my bottom down in the water. The hands disappear, and I stare unsmiling, saucer eyes wide. I scowl at the water around my waist. I shoot the camera a dirty look, lean forward onto one hand, grip the tub edge with the other, plant one stolid leg then the other, and hand myself, wobbling, up. With two chubby hands clutching the tub, I look into the camera straight-faced and innocent, then break out the two-tooth grin and be-gin the jerky bouncy dance again. The si-lent, honky-tonk jug band plays for eight more beats, then the hands reappear, reach under my arms, and my bent, shining legs fly through the air.

paintBy Erin Smith

I.My mother is shavingpaint from a chair.The bird green flakes offin sheets like Parmesan.I am sixteen and she is teachingme to sand, the smoothside of the paper against a palm,the histories of a dresserin rubbed down color.We take it to the quick,white ash beneath the canaryof my childhood.She polishes the wooden knobsto their beginnings,while my elbowspush and push againstthe dresser’s frame.

II.My mother burnedour photo albumswhen I was twenty-five,the pyre licking upwith gasoline and seventh grade.She was dancing.The wench returned,she chanted, circlingthe fire like a one-winged cowbird.

III.When she left the houseto the bank, a sunshine-yellowgift wrapped in roofing tile,she left everythingthat didn’t fit in a truck—cast iron skillets, pictures

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framed, the boxed dollswe tended to as kids.The staineddresser surely hung open in a deserted room.

IV.Our lightning-carved treestill clings to its deadbranch, but the deckagain leads to a pool,our childhood toysfinally off the lawn.It’s been three years, mom,and still I drive pastour pat-of-butter house.The one with the figtree that tempts scavengingneighbors, the square porch

still strung with your smoke.They have paved the road,cut the plum to its truck,and as I circle the house,this time at night,the windows are blue-litwith televisions again,holding new childrenas only houses can.

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Margaret Atwood offers insight on life relative to the female

body in excerpts from her larger work, The Female Body

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thefemalebody

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I agree, it’s a hot topic. But only one? Look around, there’s a wide range. Take my own, for instance. I get up in the morning. My topic feels like hell. I sprinkle it with water, brush parts of it, rub it with towels, powder it, add lubricant. I dump in

the fuel and away goes my topic, my topical topic, my controversial topic, my capacious topic, my limping topic, my nearsighted topic, my topic with back problems, my badly behaved topic, my vulgar topic, my outrageous topic, my aging topic, my topic that is out of the question and anyway still can’t spell, in its oversized coat and worn winter boots, scuttling along the sidewalk as if it were flesh and blood, hunting for what’s out there, an avocado, an alderman, an adjective, hungry as ever.

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T he basic Female Body comes with the following accessories: garter belt, panti-

girdle, crinoline, camisole, bustle, brassiere, stomacher, chemise, virgin zone, spike heels, nose ring, veil, kid gloves, fishnet stocking, fichu, ban-deau, Merry Widow, weepers, chokers, barrettes, bangles, beads, lorgnette, feather boa, basic black, compact, Lycra stretch one-piece with mod-esty panel, designer peignoir, flannel nightie, lace teddy, bed, head.

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H e said, I won’t have one of those things in the house. It gives a young girl a false notion of beauty, not to

mention anatomy. If a real woman was built like that she’d fall on her face.

She said, If we don’t let her have one like all the other girls she’ll feel singled out. It’ll become an issue. She’ll long for one and she’ll long to turn into one. Repression breeds sublimation. You know that.

He said, It’s not just the pointy plastic tits, it’s the wardrobes. The wardrobes and that stupid male doll, what’s his name, the one with the underwear glued on.

She said, Better to get it over with when she’s young. He said, All right, but don’t let me see it.

She came whizzing down the stairs, thrown like a dart. She was stark naked. Her hair had been chopped off, her head was turned back to front, she was missing some toes and she’d been tattooed all over her body with purple ink in a scrollwork design. She hit the potted azalea, trembled there for a moment like a botched angel, and fell.

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atch it. Put it in a pumpkin, in a high tower, in a compound, in

a chamber, in a house, in aroom. Quick, stick a leashon it, a lock, a chain, somepain, settle it down, so it

can never get awayfrom you again.

C

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Continued

May 25th, 1955

Dear Mrs. Browne,

I hope you are well and your daughter growing up into an enthusiastic young lady. I’m sure she is a good student and a live Christian. I wonder if you’re working as hard as ever. I think you get my personal interest when I send a letter through the Board. I want you to give my greeting to Mrs. Gayle Johnson of Bethany Church. She sent me or they sent me a beautifull birthday greeting and message but no address was given. Thank her for it. Her little girl has the same birthday as mine. Tell her I know.

Answered 8-15-55