Short Prose The Girlfriend Biography A.C. Koch Woman in the Closet SuzAnne C. Cole What Mother Knows Colleen R. Little ~ . ~ . ~ The Girlfriend Biography A.C. Koch 1. She tied a scarf around her neck regardless of the weather. Her nails were real but looked fake. I never got anything I wanted from her because the weather was against us. It rained, I showed up late, and she was gone. It was sunny, we met in a café, but she split to take her abuelo for a wheel through the park. It was cold and starry, we met in the park, she was stuffed up and sick and afraid to kiss. Nothing else ever happened. 2. She was a sculptor with a dimple in her chin, and she waited tables at Dot's Diner. She had a thing for me, but I no longer remember how I knew that. Years of backburner crush culminated in two weeks of nakedness and rubbing. She tasted of freckles and smelled of cilantro and onions. Her apartment was wildly messy. She had a parrot that learned my name and screeched at me, Nice ass! Nice ass! That's all I remember. 3. She thought that Queen lyrics were poetry, because English wasn't her first language. I thought that Jacques Brel lyrics made good quotes for love letters, because French wasn't mine. When she dumped me, she explained it like this: Nothing really matters. I wrote back, Ne me quitte pas. She never answered that letter. 4. She had a caramel-colored birthmark in the middle of her chest that made it impossible not to fixate on her breasts. She knew this. What are you looking at? she said with a half-smile. It wasn't necessary to answer. Nothing much ever happened between us, although my imagination continues to work through the possibilities. 5. She had this tattooed around her left ankle: Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les cœurs, où tous les vins coulaient. She didn't even know what that meant, only that it was from a French poet and that a lot of people thought it was cool. Her boyfriend was a drug dealer named Lance and he got shot between the eyes as he was parking his convertible BMW downtown. She told me this while we were in bed; it had happened that morning. He was dead now. I'm going to shave my pussy, she said, and start over, you know? I didn't know. Later, that line from Rimbaud became my favorite thing to repeat to myself when I was walking around the city alone, and it wasn't long before I forgot all about her. 6. She was perfect and beautiful in every way except that she was foul-tempered in the morning. Fuck, she said, my bitch dyke roommate used up all the fucking coffee. I dumped her. 7. She was a dance major. She was always sweaty and ripe, and she thought her farts were hilarious. I told my friends that she might be the sexiest person I had ever laid eyes on, but also the stinkiest. We screwed in my dorm room behind the sheet that curtained my bed while my roommate masturbated to the sound of it. Unique among all lovers before or since, she violently orgasmed during intercourse, every time. It almost killed us both. 8. She painted abstract watercolors on the front pages of newspapers. Then she broke into an art museum and hung one of her pieces in the modern gallery between a Stella and a Rauschenberg. When the police showed up and arrested her, she asked for an art critic instead of a lawyer. 9. She worked at a television station and devoted all her energies to producing public service announcements that aired at four in the morning. We stayed up in bed to watch them, and the difference between us became clear: she thought her public service announcements were avante-garde, and I thought they were sad. I can't watch tv now, on any channel, because I don't want to be reminded. 10. She was a lot older than me, and had the face of a silent movie star. She was a jazz singer but would never sing me my favorite standard, "Corcovado." This was because her husband had been decapitated in a car wreck while they were listening to that very song. She walked away without a scratch, as they say. 11. She was a teenager and still lived with her mother. Her boyfriend was an abusive thirty-five year old Iranian immigrant who managed an International House of Pancakes and did cocaine and drove a Jeep and fucked her in an unfurnished apartment he kept on Capitol Hill just for her, and the others like her. She mistook all of it for love. She dropped him when we hooked up and I spent months looking over my shoulder, but he must not have taken it too hard. 12. She was a lot like all the others. There was no single thing that made her unique. There was a snowstorm, then a freezing wind. We stayed in bed for three days while the world turned white. It may be that all these women and girls were the same one. The same single person. And that I was continually being given the chance to work through some problem I couldn't quite solve. Over and over and over and over, while the snowflakes fell. (A.C. Koch's work has recently appeared in The Mississippi Review, Exquisite Corpse, Posse Review, River City, in Spanish translation in Tower of Babel, and is forthcoming in Oyster Boy Review. He lives in Zacatecas, Mexico where he teaches English at a university and edits fiction for The Zacatecas Review. zacatecas.org This is his first contribution to the magazine.) ~ . ~ Woman in the Closet SuzAnne C. Cole Come in, come in. Yes, it is a bit crowded, I know. Some of you can stand outside. There in the hallway. The rest of you, have a seat. Well no, I don't really have any chairs. The carpet is quite comfortable, though.           So? What do you think? Simple, isn't it? I love simplicity. That's why I choose to live in my closet. Simplicity.           Oh yes, living here is voluntary. Quite voluntary. That house you walked through on your way here? Mine. Mine alone since my husband left. He was the last to go, you see. Long after the children we built the house for. My husband…he used to make all the decisions. For both of us.           Then he was gone. Leaving me with all the choices. Overwhelming! Think about what I had to decide. Every single day. To begin with, breakfast. A simple meal? Well you might think so. Especially when it's just cereal and tea. But…Ten kinds of cereal in the cupboard. Flakes or granola or biscuits? And my tea. Caffeinated or decaf or herbal? Which flavor? Oh, I was really dizzy by the time I had it ready. Then, where to eat? The table on the little porch outside the back door? But maybe there would be bugs. The breakfast room table? But it seats eight—too big for just me. A tray in the family room while I watch TV? Every day those choices. Lost my appetite. Thought about just going back to bed. Sooner or later, though I had to get dressed.           Came in here with a sinking heart. Yes. This very closet. Can you imagine? I had so many clothes then….All this space wasn't even enough. True. Out-of-season clothes were in another bedroom closet. Too-small clothes—you know, the ones that might fit someday when the moon was in the right orbit?—they were in still another closet.           'Let's see,' I'd think, 'what should I wear?' I hear you: What's the big deal? Why not just jeans and a T-shirt? Okay, black or brown jeans? Dark blue, stone-washed, chartreuse, khaki? Even white jeans. My husband had my clothes arranged by color—light to dark. Dressy jeans, casual jeans? Bell-bottom, boot-cut, straight leg? Which one of fifty T-shirts or thirty belts? And shoes? Heaps of them. Jumbled on the floor, hardly room to walk in here, shoeboxes stacked to the ceiling.           By the time I was dressed, I was exhausted. And there was still housework. More decisions. Dishes? Laundry? Gardening? So many tools and supplies to clean, sweep, dust, polish, repair, wax, scrub, mop. So many things that needed something done to them. Couches. Dressers and tables. Porcelain figures and wooden fruit. Hundreds of books. Fireplace tools, baskets, brass. Chandeliers. So many things. None of which I had chosen.           One day—the last decision I ever made…I called the Salvation Army. Had it all taken away. Kept a bowl, a spoon, and a cup. And what you see here. Now I'm really free. Free from decisions.           This rope? Here on the door handle? Remember the TV show about the pioneer family? They lived on the prairie. Remember in winter they tied a rope between their cabin and the barn? That way—when there was a blizzard—they could feed their livestock without getting lost. When I have to leave my closet, my rope guides me to the bathroom and the kitchen—even with my eyes closed. That way I'm never lost. Lost in freedom.           I only leave when I have to, though. I'm never happier than here. My back to the wall. Door safely shut against your world and its bewildering choices. That bare bulb hanging there my sun and moon, the ceiling my sky. For windows, my imagination. I need nothing else.           I'm afraid it's time for you to go now. Your visits exhaust me. Thank you for coming. See you next year. (SuzAnne C. Cole, a Houstonian since l972, has published books, essays, poetry, plays, and fiction in many commercial and literary magazines, newspapers, and anthologies including Newsweek, Houston Chronicle, USA Today, Troika, Personal Journaling, and Writing Your Life Story. She also wrote To Our Heart's Content: Meditations for Women Turning 50. Cole adds a short prose piece and poem to Big City, Little/Houston. (Houston)This is her first appearance on the magazine.) ~ . ~ what mother knows Colleen R. Little I can't take it anymore. For five hours now, this pain has torn through me. But my mother told me I had to keep going. She said it was better to go natural. No drugs, no epidurals. She didn't have any painkillers when she labored with me and she's still alive.           "Oh man, oh man. Mother, it hurts."           "I know it does. It's supposed to."           She knows, she knows. I should have listened to the things she knows nine months ago. It's hard to breathe. The pains are rolling on top of each other.           "You need to stay focused. The baby will come soon. You shouldn't have done the things you did."           "I'm sorry. I didn't know, I didn't know. I should have listened."           "That's right. I knew what was best. I always told you never to treat your body like it was a free night at the 40 Winks Motel. God only knows what you let crawl in. Now look at you. Was it worth it? Was it? Fifteen years old and look what you're about to do."           I can't speak. I won't tell her of things I've done. This pain is going to swallow me. Something feels wrong inside of me. My mother is patting my hand, wiping my brow, telling me through her anger that I can do this. I can do this. She won't let the nurse give me anything for the pain. Mothers always know what is best. Right? Seven hours now. There is no point to this. The baby won't come. The baby doesn't want to come out and know things I know.           The nurse stands at the end of the bed. She's been begging mother for hours now to let me have medication. This pain is splitting me in half.           "This is torture to me. Let your daughter have pain medicine." The nice, nice nurse is on my side.           "This is what my daughter wants. She told me she doesn't need anything to help her. Just God and me." Mother's mouth is tight.           I watch as the nurse's expression changes. Panic. She knows what I know, what my mother cannot know: There is something wrong with the baby.           "I'm sorry, the heartbeat has dropped too low. I'm getting the doctor." The nurse runs out the door.           "We're taking the baby. It has to come out now. It will die if we don't." The doctor smiles for my benefit.           "No." Mother puts her hand out. The doctor brushes it aside.           "I don't want her drugged. She's fine. The baby will be fine."           "The cord may be wrapped around its neck. Your daughter needs surgery now."           Sleep, I'm falling asleep. No more pain. No more mother. Mother tells me it was the will of God. It's better this way. I'm still young enough to have more babies when I'm older. Until then, keep my legs closed. She continues to talk to me as if she knows about things.           Mother knows nothing. © 2002 Colleen Little (Colleen R. Little is a stay-at-home mom and writer. She resides in Michigan's Lower Peninsula with her family. "What Mother Knows" originally appeared in illustrated version in Insolent Rudder and is reprinted here by permission. This is Little's first appearance on Big City Lit. Other work has appeared in Beginnings and in Encore.) ~ . ~ . ~