Terrible
Things
by
Joan Shaddox Isom
It's night time. I'm
trying to fall asleep, but my Terrible Things Scenario
has kicked in.
A giant asteroid is
approaching earth. It will hit five yards from my house but I'll
be miraculously saved, only to endure attacks from hordes of hungry
and thirsty people who want my last piece of bread and the little
water I have left, actually a half cup or so standing in the cats's
bowl. I don't have a cat, but in this scenario, my daughter has
left her two felines with me.
A moral dilemma is
upon me. Shall I keep the doors locked and stay inside with the
cats, sharing with them the last water and food I have, or shall
I let in the mob and watch them tear me and the cats to pieces
as they fight over the bread? (They will spill the water in the
fracas, so that's a moot point.)
The Terrible Thing
Scenario switches abruptly to an airplane: I'm at the controls
trying to land it. It used to be a single-engine plane, but in
later years it has changed to a Lear jet, the kind rock stars
own. I don't know what's happened to the pilot. Maybe he had the
fish for lunch. Maybe it's a heart attack. It's bad enough that
they expect me to land the plane, but to complicate matters, my
husband is on the radio giving me instructions. Never mind
that he hasn't flown a plane in his entire life.
"Push the button under
the top one," he tells me. Why he doesn't just say "Push the second
button from the top" is beyond me. But we don't communicate well.
He is a practical man who rolls engineering terms off his tongue
like an anteater flicking insects — when he's a mind to.
Mostly, he's the silent type. When he asks me to help him lift
or carry something (he's been remodeling the house since the day
he finished building it thirty years ago), he never tells me where
we are going with it, nor when we are going to put it down. This
is annoying. I don't know whether to get ready to turn left to
the kitchen or right to the deck; neither do I know when to start
getting my toes out of the way. But now, he's telling me everything.
"Lift your left flap!"
he commands.
"Which flap? Is that
the button by the red and white thingie?" He's getting exasperated.
"I said, your left flap!" he shouts. Our daughter, the psychotherapist,
would tell me it's now time to turn off the radio and figure out
how to land the plane myself. She could never communicate with
her father when she was younger, but lately I note the two of
them are getting closer verbally. In fact, she may be turning
into her father, but I can't deal with that stark possibility
right now. I have to land this darn plane. Just as I'm ten feet
from the ground and haven't figured out which button controls
the flaps, the Terrible Things Scenario switches once again
...
We're at war. Our town
is surrounded. An entire platoon of enemy soldiers comes to my
house and demands to be fed. I go to the kitchen (after all, they
have guns pointed at me) and check my larder. What to make? My
practical side says open all cans (a bit difficult with a rifle
in the ribs, but I manage) of vegetables and dump everything into
a big pot, pour in some chicken broth, heat the mixture up and
float some raw eggs in it. Get out all the old, freezer-burned
bread, the pita that's been in there since my niece visited three
summers ago, and find the crackers, even the ones that taste odd
and maybe have weevils in them. After all, we're not talking
crepes and mimosas here. Throw everything on the table and
pray they are so hungry their taste buds will accept anything.
Just as the officer in charge tastes the soup and I wait breathlessly
for him to give a thumbs up or thumbs down sign, the scenario
changes once more...
Do other people have
these fantasies? And what is the meaning of them? Why do fragments
I see on television or read in the news stick in my head, to be
pulled out at bedtime and used as tools of torture?
Like the tsunami fantasy,
in which a giant wave produced by a meteorite that falls in the
ocean creates a wall of water tall enough to swoop over the Rocky
Mountains and engulf us. (No longer can we flat landers count
on these heretofore insurmountable peaks to protect us.)
Am I punishing myself
because I'm too comfortable in my bed with the clean, crisp sheets,
the shaded lamp, a night stand with fifteen unread books, and
a cup of hot, strong tea when I could be out helping the homeless?
Or might these ludicrous half-awake nightmares be a way for my
mind to deal with the real life terrors that confront me —
us — each time we get out of bed in the morning and turn
on the television or look at a newspaper? Imagining myself trying
to land an airplane or being commandeered to act as a short order
military cook is laughable in the clear light of Anne Curry's
morning news when I'm listening to people tell about real terror
in real time.
Looking for causes,
Guilt usually surfaces as a reason for just about anything
in my psyche. After all, I was brought up in a region and a time
when everyone's elders, from the grocer to the mailman to the
first grade teacher (it was the forties — forget separation
of church and state) all made it their business to convince us
just how evil we all were. Permanently etched inside my head in
lurid color is a tract someone brought home, probably from a chance
encounter with one of the transient, self-ordained preachers who
seemed to always be wandering the back roads in those days. On
the front is a scene depicting two groups of people: one is made
up of clean-limbed beings, clearly the chosen, looking pure and
radiant as they swan upwards towards the light and a beautiful
angel. The other is a group of grotesque, twisted beings who are
slogging their wretched way down toward a roiling river lit by
phosphorescent fire( and I knew full well who was under
the surface). Thankfully (or maybe not) the scene didn't continue
past the first leg of the journey. One was left to imagine what
happened next.
Maybe because I'm a
visual artist who works with color, or maybe just because I've
been blessed (or cursed) with an extra vivid imagination, my actual
dreams — once I finally nod off in the midst of some Terrible
Things Scenario — would rival the Extreme Homes
show on the Home and Garden channel. Every night it's a different
house, more bizarre than the one before. Sometimes the kitchen
is on the roof; sometimes the house is on rollers, like a giant
Humvee, at home on land or water. I'm the decorator, usually on
a six-hour schedule and a slim budget. Picking up paint at discount
stores that carry fire sale items and hiring painters who, once
they arrive, rip off their coveralls to reveal that they are mimes
in leotards who produce a play within a play as they work is just
a hint of what I endure. Plus, the paint is never, ever the same
hue as the sample.
But by far my most
disturbing, most common dream is this: I'm thirty-six years old
and stuck in the eighth grade. For some reason, I can't pass on
to the ninth. I'm driving a car, trying to slouch down and look
younger. Everyone else is twelve or thirteen and riding scooters,
probably Razors, and wearing cool clothes from The Gap. I'm wearing
my mother's house dress and apron. I ask the principal, Mr. Olson,
to figure my credits. He does, but I'm always one short. I drive
home over a mountainous road of endless switchbacks that I've
traveled so many times, and finally it occurs to me: Mr. Olson's
face is the spitting image of Kafka's.
Joan
Shaddox Isom is the author of The
First Starry Night (Charlesbridge) and coeditor of The
Leap Years: Women Reflect on Change, Loss and Love (Beacon
Press). Isom's fiction, poetry and plays have won awards, and
her work has appeared in numerous publications, including anthologies.
Of Cherokee descent, Isom lives near Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
