Trash (30 page)

I knew then. Arlene would go on as long as it took, making that sound in her throat like some bird creature, the one that comes to sing hope when there is no hope left. Strength was in Arlene’s song, peace its meter, love the bass note. Mama’s eye swung in lazy accompaniment to that song—from me to Jo, and around again to Arlene. Her hands gripped ours, while her mouth hung open. From the base of the bed, Jo reached up and laid her hands on Mama’s legs. Mama looked down once, then the good eye turned back to our bird and clung there. My eyes followed hers. I watched the thrush that beat in Arlene’s breast. I heard its stubborn tuneless song.

Mama’s whole attention remained fixed on that song until the pupil of the right eye finally filled up with blood and blacked out. Even then, we held on. We held Mama’s stilled shape between us. We held her until she set us free.

“Deciding to Live.”
Writing Women’s Lives: An Anthology of Autobiographical Narratives by Twentieth-Century Women Writers,
edited by Susan Cahill. HarperPerennial, 1994.

“Demon Lover.”
Off Our Backs: A Women’s Liberation Bi-Weekly.
Fiction/Poetry Supplement, July 1979.

“Gospel Song.”
Downhome: An Anthology of Southern Women Writers,
edited by Susie Mee. Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1995.

“Her Thighs.”
The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader,
edited by Joan Nestle. Alyson Publications, 1992.

“I’m Working on My Charm.”
Conditions Six.
Spring, 1980.

“A Lesbian Appetite.”
Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present,
edited by Lillian Faderman. Viking, 1994.

“A Lesbian Appetite.”
The Penguin Book of Lesbian Short Stories,
edited by Margaret Reynolds. Viking Penguin, 1994.

“A Lesbian Appetite.”
Women on Women: An Anthology of American Lesbian Short Fiction,
edited by Joan Nestle and Naomi Holoch. Plume, 1990.

“Mama.”
Calling Home: Working-Class Women’s Writings,
edited by Janet Zandy. Rutgers University Press, 1990.

“Monkeybites.”
The Second Gates of Paradise: The Anthology of Erotic Short Fiction,
edited by Alberto Manguel. Macfarlane, Walter & Ross, 1994.

“River of Names.”
The Picador Book of Contemporary American Stories,
edited by Tobias Wolff. Picador/Pan MacMillan, London, 1993.