The Anchoress
Henrietta: Now, Eudora, you stand there and you just sing out – don’t you move a muscle – just sing out so that Baby Jesus can hear you!
Myrna: Myrna, Mama! I hate being called Eudora!
Henrietta: Your name is Eudora, and I don’t care what the Pastor’s wife says about letting you change your name. I’m only going along because Myrna is your middle name and it’s so pretty. It was my grandmother’s name and it’s respectable -not like if you were trying to call yourself Britney or Kimberly! If you ask me, that pastor’s wife has some pret-ty odd ideas, anyway! Whoever heard of a pastor’s wife wearing nail polish and running a computer thing called a blob!
Myrna: A blog, Mama; Mrs. Pastor runs a blog, and it’s about her family and church, and it’s nice.
Henrietta: Oh, I suppose next you’re going to tell me that Tweeters and Blueberries and all those sorts of devil-machines are “nice.” Althea down the street told me that those words are just code for dirtytalk. I better never find out her son’s tweeters are touching your blueberries!
Myrna: (Gasps) Mama! I don’t even know her son but to say hi to! And it’s Twitters, and Blackberries, and – oh, Mama, if I could have a Blackberry, I could always call and let you know where I am, and I could download things … for school.
Henrietta: Devil’s tool! You have a computer to use; that’s good enough!
Myrna: It’s 8 years old, Mama, and we only have dial-up! And you’ve put so many parental controls on it that I couldn’t even use it to do my report on Breast Cancer because it blocked all those stories from me.
Henrietta: And you don’t need to know about…bosom matters…until you are older. Anyways, right now all you have are blueberries and they get hidden proper with a vest and jacket.
Myrna: (sotto voce) I wish I were dead!
Henrietta: What was that?
Myrna: I wish my jacket were red!
Henrietta: (narrows her eyes) I just bet you do. You’re just like your Auntie Jezebel, always with her red shoes and her red hat!
Myrna: Jessica, Mama; her name is Jessica.
Henrietta: Jezebel, I call her! A ladylike rose hat wasn’t good enough, oh no! She decked herself out in red and walked about town like a big neon sign that said “Two Harvey Wallbangers and I’m yours!”
Myrna: Who’s Harvey Wallbanger?
Henrietta: Never you mind. That Jezebel got the Orange Juice from your daddy, and that’s why you and I have to make-do, like respectable people!
Myrna: Because Auntie Jessica borrowed Orange Juice from Daddy?
Henrietta: She got more than juice, but never you mind.
Myrna: Was that before Daddy died, when I was just born?
Henrietta: That’s enough, Eudora; you just stand at that microphone and sing, now, like I taught you! Let people hear how nice you sing!
Myrna: But Mama, I don’t want to sing on tv.
Henrietta: Oh,, but you didn’t mind singing that devil’s music down at the kari-okey, didja? I heard about you singing in that Youth Show, and wiggling your hips and moaning like that Lady Gag-me!
Myrna: Lady Gaga, Mama, and I wasn’t singing anything bad; it was “You Light Up My Life!” It was Debby Boone!
Henrietta: Swiveling your hips like that Madonna, that’s what I heard, and you were licking your lips, too!
Myrna: Just to make them pink, Mama.
Henrietta: Making a show for the boys, that’s what! Next you’ll want to bob your hair straight like those skinny women in the magazines! Now sing out for Baby Jesus!
Myrna: No, Mama, don’t make me!
Henrietta: You’ll stand there like a stone, and sing out or I’ll make you wish you did! Don’t you move those hips!
Myrna: (sotto voce) Die, you miserable cow!
Henrietta: What’s that?
Myrna: I said fine, I’ll sing it now!
Henrietta: Afterwards, we’ll go to the Dairy Queen and share a cone, won’t that be nice?
At this point, Myrna begins to dissociate. She is just barely mindful of the meat cleaver hidden beneath her jacket. Her fisted hands are pressed tight against her body, holding it there; and the steel feels cool to Myrna, who actually wishes her name was simply Anne, and who wonders if Mamas blood will be as red as Auntie Jezebel’s shoes and hat.
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