Read Online Dry Your Smile by Robin; Morgan - Free Book Online

gone to dinner. You’ll be all right, just hang on. You’re not going to die. You’ll have a fine baby, I’m sure. Grip the bedrails when it gets too bad, like I showed you, and try to think about other things, happy pleasant things … Oh you poor—Look, I’m really sorry. I know this is a bad one.”
    And the chippie spins on her squeaky rubber soles and leaves.
    Just like that.
    Eyes teary, the hypocrite. Who does she think she is, Eleanor Roosevelt?
    You won’t die, she says—her personal guarantee.
    The guarantee of a hypocrite who just said “We almost lost you for a while.”
    A fine baby, little miss crisp starched white predicts. Then she goes off.
    All right. Go ahead. Leave me alone. I can do it. I’ll show all of you. I’m special and always will be. Meant for something great and shining, like—
    Oh there it goes again, coiling around my bowels and slicing up through my spine—
    â€”think of something else something oh pleasant—
    Virtuoso pain, coloratura pain sustaining it oh high note nothing in the world but that sound demon Hitler Goebbels extracting me from myself teeth bone hair skin with his light shading through it, a whole choir of pain melting me down and spilling me out over the packed house of all my cells God David Momma!
    There …
    There. Bring it down. Slowly, pull it back in the throat lovely throat he said Klimt and wrists like a Mayan princess linda not a whore the good daughter a real American soft now like Momma’s lap after school, pianissimo . There.
    I’ll make it through. His firstborn son, his one hope for the future of his family name. Then he’ll change his mind. Avraham graduated college, became an accountant. Gold-glinted hair he’ll have, like you, David, and hazel eyes. I’ll save this baby. I’ll bring you into the world, little jewel burning in the casket of my body. I’ll show you, Momma. He’ll love me more than I ever loved you. More than I ever loved you , David. You hear, both of you?
    Oh God God God there it goes again so fast now let me die let the baby die and I promise I’ll love him, this golden creature all my very own see? Doctor if he wants to be—
    â€” think of happy things —
    â€”yes, yes, a great surgeon, a genius in the operating room, they’ll whisper. Or the finest tenor or baritone of the century. How they’ll weep at his Cavaradossi, scream for his Don Giovanni! Or a world-famous artist maybe, yes, beyond your feeble Klimt and Rubens. In the finest museums, all the different portraits of his mother. Followed by women everywhere and traveling the world but always returning to the one woman he knows understands every particle of his being. He’ll love me better than anyone has loved me. And I’ll deserve it because I’ll be the best mother the world has ever seen, you hear that Momma?
    Hold on hold on grip the rails think about—
    Then David will beg me to marry him, mother of his firstborn son. But I’ll make him wait, make him crawl through the sewers before I accept. Then Essie and Yetta will be lovey-dovey to their baby sister the doctor’s wife, mother of the prodigy. No no no I hate it I want it to die let me live free no yes I have to do it together you and me. Us against the world. How they’ll envy us with the God-given talent pouring out of you like light spilling from some secret room filled with radiant angels watching only over you and me—
    Yis-ga-dal ve-yis-ka-dash she-moi ra-ba
    â€”you will be my aria, my masterpiece, vissi d’arte, ve-i-me-ru I hate you, tsar nazi devil glittering in my bowels, fiend I’d kill you if I could . God of my fathers, decree that I shall die of this affliction grant me Thy perfect healing—Rot in hell— Heilige Führer take them all into Your fiery bosom—consume them in Your ovens Momma David Poppa who rocked and stared and mumbled his