Tragic or comic? Prose poem or flash fiction? Regardless, Cori Jones’s piece on women in a racist, sexist society will entice and provoke.
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Song Lo
His name was Bob Mallory. He coached football and showed off his Semper Fi tattoo at the summer camp where we all worked seven days a week. Luann, his wife, had large green eyes and two double chins. This was in 1969, in New England. After dinner a lot of us played penny poker in the dining room. One night, a night full of thunderstorms, they left early. Bob said “song lo” and made a fist. The swimming coach asked him what it meant. Gook village, he said. We shouted song lo when we torched it. So long, gooks. Song lo. We heard their baby crying in the cabin. Her name was Mallory Mallory because some dumb fuck must have been drunk when they filled out the birth certificate, Luann told us. That’s what she said.
That summer, I wasn’t yet on the pill and the word condom wasn’t in anybody’s vocabulary. But there was a man across the lake, a foreigner who had whispered dusky words that my body understood. He told me using a rubber was like fucking with a raincoat on. I knew then that I had to get the rubbers myself. Because there was no one else, I told this to Luann. She took a drag of her cigarette. I’ll drive you around, she said. Where, I wondered. As far as I knew, Planned Parenthood was in Boston.
I took an afternoon off. Bob’s station wagon didn’t have bucket seats, so Mallory Mallory sat between us. That afternoon we stopped at seven drugstores in five towns in southern Maine: Biddeford, Saco, Kennebunk, Sanford, South Berwick. I went into the stores alone while Luann stayed in the car, smoking. When I asked if the pharmacists if they had rubbers, the answer took two forms: a head shake or a firm nope. At the last place I stopped, the pharmacist said shame on you. These items are for men. By the time I got back to the car, I had a dull throbbing headache. I was shaking. Would it have been so hard for you to go into the stores, flash that rock of a wedding ring, and come out with a 12-pack of rubbers while I stayed in the car with Mallory? Would that have been so hard? These were the questions I swallowed to keep from smacking Luann. As we drove back to the camp Mallory started crying.
Can’t you shut her up? I spoke in a hiss. Just sing to her. Rock her. Something.
Luann picked up Mallory and wiggled around in the seat. She coughed twice. Then she began to sing in toneless throaty sighs: song lo, song lo, song lo.
Mallory Mallory screamed. She couldn’t stop.
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