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THERESA

I’m worried she’ll be a fish out of water.

ROBERTA

When do we meet her? When’re they movin’?

THERESA

Not now. Soon. We’ll see. They’re waiting to see if Mingjing can transfer jobs.

            ROBERTA puts down her cookie.

ROBERTA

What’s her name?

THERESA

Minjung.

ROBERTA

Theresa.

            THERESA sips tea.

THERESA

She’s in architecture, works for a big firm out there

ROBERTA

(indicating the under-eye skin) Those dark circles, no wonder.

THERESA

But she might give it up and teach.

ROBERTA

You seen her only once?

THERESA

Tim never said any—why would I think

ROBERTA

Such a rush.

THERESA

My brain’s exploded.

ROBERTA

I knew it: how far gone is she?

Note: A male actor plays the roles of both THERESA and her son TIM. A second male actor plays the roles of both ROBERTA and her son ROBBIE.

My mother had good hair, a term she would never use herself because, she said, it was so hurtful she couldn’t possibly believe it. But my mother’s hair was undeniably long and thick, a mass of loose curls that Callie and I did not inherit and that she was determined to cut off before we began our new life.

She tried to talk both of us into joining her, but only Callie took the bait. My mother got her with the promise of hair made so easy and simple, you could run your fingers through it. When it was all over, Callie was left with an outgrowth of stiff, sodden curls that clung in limp clusters to her forehead and the nape of her neck and made the back of her head smell like burning and sugar.

Whitman kept all the sleepers to himself but one, & she wasn’t just a demon

in the sack. When she wasn’t sleeping by daylight, she was the demon

slinging a house shoe at her children over the front seat of the Plymouth

while simultaneously steering it between the orgasmic, careening semis &

Beetle Bug Blue, Piddiddle, Beetle Bug Black.

He had that look on his face again. She remembered it now. It was that troubled look he had six months ago when his snakes got sick. “Angelica,” she remembered him saying softly, almost in tears, “they’re dying, they won’t eat, they’re as limp as noodles, all of them.” What was he going to do? He was supposed to deliver their venom to the lab days ago. They had been calling, reminding him, demanding, threatening to go with another venom vendor. They’d tell the other labs about him, ruin his hard-earned reputation.

He was screwed without his snakes. And what’s more, he really loved them.

Angelica always wanted him to look at her that way, with that much attention and intensity that would show he loved her that much too. That he needed her around. And finally here it was.

“No more pills, Angelica. You’re going to end up killing yourself.”

What is the difference between beautiful girls and ordinary ones? My face was symmetrical. I’d taken Accutane. I wore the right things. None of it made a difference next to Tarryn. She had a shimmer about her, a light that I could never fully understand. I couldn’t even make eye contact with her. It was like staring at the headlights of a car on a dark road. Later, in my sorority, and even later at my job, I’d meet other women like her and wonder how they were made.
 

In the shed the cow lies upside down mooing weakly. The men hang droplights from the ridgepole, and keeping her on her back, they spread her front and hind legs in opposite directions, tying them to opposite walls so she can’t kick. Kneeling over her swollen belly holding something that looks like a miniature fire extinguisher, the vet sprays her with antiseptic. The cow’s eyes roll, the whites showing, and she lets out faint moans, ever dwindling protests of pain and fear.

Used courtesy of the University of Iowa Press