The Literary Review

Summer 2006

James Hannaham
Sneezing Lessons

The photograph was a girl. About fifteen. Wide nose, thick lips, skin the color of a school desk. Slick hair going frizzy at the roots. The back-ground was sparkly blue darkness. The subject smiled unnaturally, the way you do when someone tells you to cheer up. If you're the obedient type. Her grimace faced upward to the right. A white light lit up her cheek, symbolizing something. God or hope or success. Whatever fake emotions they supplied for you when you graduated from junior high in the black part of an East Coast wasteland. There were seven other pictures on the poster, all cropped to the same two-inch square. Arranged in two rows of four. It looked a like a little yearbook. Donna's was in the top row, second from the right. The captions said what the girl wore, then a date, and "family abduction" or "kidnapped." Donna's caption said "suspected runaway."
Donna winced. They had dug up her worst, ugliest photo. She bet C.J. had picked it on purpose. Grandma wouldn't have used that one. That thing hardly showed her features. The light overexposed her, like a model in Japanese whiteface, without a nose. It was old. She had changed her hair since. It wasn't even the main picture in the original print, just an inset. More like an insult.
She knew C.J. used that one because he didn't want anyone recognizing her. Didn't want her home, drinking his precious Cran-Grape. Just gave that snapshot to the cops to throw them off, so neighbors wouldn't wonder. That was fine with Donna. She remembered C.J.'s bulk. He was a landfill that woke up. But not as smart. Spoke with the flesh in the way. She could see him pumping the scissors, deliberately snipping that image. Bust out the mucilage, it's an art project for the blue bus kid. Here was living proof you didn't need a brain to be devious, just ferocious self-interest. Donna was small. God how it hurt.
Half-brother. Like everything else was missing. An incomplete person. Half-brother, half-gorilla. "Just the lower half," Donna joked after it start-ed. The gag was a message in a bottle that never washed up. Instead it took folks aback. Eyebrows strained; wider when she said it in front of him. But hints don't work like facts. No one sees clues until things happen. Then it's like, Oh! Beforehand, life's a happy ride through fog. Laughter masked what her joking described. But it was clawing to get out.
Donna hit three and Big Donna brought her to Grandma with all her clothes. Oops the Doll flopped on top. Big Donna went to Texas to work in textiles. You had to go there to get them. Mama pulled porcelain squares out of the ground, Little Donna used to think. It made her proud in the bathroom. But you'd rather have heard steel wheels shriek against subway tracks than the noise she made the day Big Donna left.
Grandma made a close second, though. Looked like Big Donna old. She'd been a singer with jazz, long before she'd learned to be a nurse. She still sang with jazz she played around the dusty apartment. Doilies on all the desks, brown photographs of fat and greasy men with trombones. Grandma had even made a record, but not one with just her name on the label. You had to be extra special for that. All the dust made Donna sneeze, but over time she grew accustomed to Grandma, to tuck-ins with cold wrinkly fingers, fruit instead of sweets, the taste of prune juice, the lumpy bed, the ugly tumblers, hearing the same stories about the same extra special extra boring people. The piano Donna wanted to learn, but with its rotten tooth keys and wrong notes that buzzed forever, she couldn't make it sing anything but No!
Big Donna called, wrote, visited every fifth major holiday. Never enough, but how much could you expect? People needed textiles. Big Donna missed recitals at church, special days at school, scraped knees, girlfights. Grandma stepped in, always with a pout of sympathy. That meant a lot. Soon Grandma became all Donna had ever known. All she wanted to know. Little Donna sometimes thought herself as much her mother's sister as her aunts. Had to keep that to herself.
Then C.J. showed up. A big bad surprise when Donna turned nine and a half. He was fifteen, already huge. Black as fresh asphalt. Wore knit hats, loved tough boy stuff. Loud funk, Ninja stars, naked ladies, science fiction. Just one day Grandma called out, "Come meet your half-brother! He's with us now." It's not fair, Donna thought. "What's a half-brother? How did I get one?" Grandma took her aside, said to treat him nicely.
C.J. moved from Virginia because his father passed. So Donna poured on friendliness. As soon as they were alone C.J. said, "I'll bet you think you're better than me 'cause you're a green-eyed monster. Yeah. Light, bright and damn near white. That's you." Called her other names. He moved into her playroom. Destroyed her costume jewelry. Broke her special vase, her 12-inch of DeBarge. She had finally made peace with her second-rate world, only to have a ten-ton garbage truck fall on it. She gathered little bits of anger and stitched them into a nest.
C.J. got in trouble a lot. The crimes escalated. Shoplifting became pick-pocketing became purse-lifting became breaking-and-entering, then the social workers called it a career. In June, teachers would find his name on their rolls and ask the class, 'Who was that?' No one knew. Grandma said C.J. craved attention because of what happened. Sometimes blamed Donna for not looking after him. "You know he's, you know," she said, searching for word with her hand. "Slow," Donna deadpanned. The older women in the family scolded the younger ones, never held the men accountable. The chiding increased when Grandma drank. She drank often. "At least get him to the school, Donna. At least."
Big Donna said the same when she showed up Labor Day weekend. Gave Donna her worst beating when she said, "Grandma's house is just a dumping ground for your unwanted kids." Livid, Big Donna could hardly force a reply through her teeth. After a solid blow to the cheek, she whacked her daughter's behind like a madwoman. Horsetails of Big Donna's straightened hair flew out of place. Her biceps flexed. "Who works her ass off in a Mexican sweat shop to send you money every god-damned month?" Between C.J.'s Pumas and Grandma's drinking, Donna wanted to scream, she hardly got enough for a plastic barrette. But hard truths and reason weren't welcome in that home.
By that time C.J. had started visiting her. The visits followed no set pattern. First time he came in, sat on her bed in his sweats, bothered her while she tried to read a magazine. Poking, pinching. Probing questions. One she answered, then they got filthy. She ignored him. Then he started behaving like a zoo animal. That was the first time. It got worse. He showed her his body. He made her show him her body.
Rough, he made it clear he hated her, got off on the humiliation. Found out her worst fears about what he'd do next. Took pleasure in making her do them. Needed her revulsion. Longed for it. If Donna tried to dissociate, he'd make her talk. Beg him not to do what he'd done before again. Make her remember. "Remind me what I did last time," he'd command. "Tell me how much you loved it. I'm disgusting," he'd say. "Tell me I'm disgusting but you want to do that again. Now say how that makes you more disgusting than me. Say this: 'I'm slime, I'm slime.' " All with a snicker. Wrapped up with the promise of death as a bow, if she told.
As his shadow crept across her life, the old Donna disintegrated. Instead of listening in class, she drew pictures in her notebooks of girls with wings killing gigantic dung beetles. Oceans of blood spilled out of bug wounds, off the page, tinted the whole world red. She wrote Poe-ish couplets gloating over perfect murders. Poisoned beverages, enforced suicides, icicle knives. She was neither a brain nor a cut-up, more the soft-spoken, average girl who wears pink blouses and gets ignored. The girls she hung out with talked about nothing. She wanted to talk about nothing, too. But it felt so fake to start sentences, "I'm a get me a-" with such a big secret gnawing rat bites into the root of her. To her friends, Donna's transformation didn't make sense, so they didn't try to make sense of it.
A strange boy in wrinkled clothes sat behind her in social studies. You never knew what Marcus was talking about. Always spoke to you like you'd heard of something you hadn't. Marcus constantly squinted, slouched when he walked. Peeked at Donna's journal over her shoulder.
"You don't have permission," she told him.
"That drawing's dope," he said. "Can I see?"
She opened to a specific page and told him he could only look at that one. He carefully accepted the notebook and studied her artwork, jaw wide. She hoped and feared that he could read the message hidden in its words and images. Also worried that he'd drool and smudge the ink. He assessed the dopeness of her ballpoint opus. She pretended hard. It didn't make a difference if he liked it. She'd only die if he didn't.
"You not just a girly-girl," Marcus said over wings at Happy Chinese a few weeks later. "I like that. You think about the metaphysical cosmetology of the world and whatnot." He painted her body with his eyes. His desire-a variable-frightened her. That gave his rap the opposite effect. She kept thinking of a pin she'd seen a punk woman wearing down-town, that said, 'I like your approach. Now let's see your departure.' The smile she kept on, while sucking the orange soda straw, must have looked like flirting, but it really meant nervous laughter, making fun of him a little.
Marcus took her poetry seriously though. Invited her to an after-school workshop. Run by a non-profit. She didn't like the Save-The-Children aspect. She didn't accept, saying her writing wasn't good, she did it only for herself. That Grandma wouldn't let her go. And though she didn't say it, because he'd think she liked him liked him if she went. He toppled her heap of excuses by saying, "It's free."
By that time she had a strategy of keeping C.J. out at night by moving her bookcase in front of the door. A very heavy old Grandma book-case, mahogany, hard for her to pull. But she thought of the alternative. Pretended she was the Incredible Hulk woman. Felt anger rushing, making her super-powerful. Peace was when he'd give up jiggling the door-knob. One night between awake and asleep, she heard him whisper, "What if there's a fire?" through a crack he'd made. Donna jumped, gathered her blankets. "I'd rather get burnt to a crisp," she said. " 'Cause even if you get burnt up, I know you can't follow me to heaven."
But then Grandma slipped and broke her hip by the dumpster. Lay a couple of hours in garbage water until Eduardo swept up and found her. Donna got a half day, and learned the word prognosis, only to find that it wasn't good. Grandma had brittle bones. Spoke to Donna as if her voice had snapped, too. The hospital was cold, clean, white. It smelled sweet but salty, almost human, like death. Like people died there behind those green curtains every day. Doctors pulled a lever and slid them down chutes. Big voting booths.
Donna asked a nurse, 'Grandma isn't going to die, is she?' No, but healing would take a while. Maybe Big Donna would come and be a mother for a change. C.J. showed up on the wrong side of visiting hours and fought with the nurse, who gave in. He said no Big Donna. Had no money, no time off. No authority made C.J. happy. Mrs. Coolidge from across the hall would keep an eye. Donna begged to stay with her, which worked for two nights. Then Mrs. Coolidge found it abnormal. Sent her back. "Girl, the way you fuss. It's right across the hall."
This happened in spring, as stinkweed trees burst their buds. The sidewalks flooded with their buttery pollen. Marcus wasn't consistent about meeting Donna at the subway, so she went to the workshop alone now, or with Fatima Gonzalez, a loud, long-haired girl she'd met there. The sessions were taught by a team of three mentors. Matt was their age, a meek teen with a faux-hawk haircut. He painted and tore his T-shirts. Roberta wore colorful headscarves and called good poems "tight." She was cooler than everyone, and a DJ too.
Donna and Fatima had a crush on Max, their third mentor. Fatima play-fought with Donna over him even though she called him kind of a hippie-type. Sandals and tie-dye shirts. Walked like a duck. A cute duck. He was older-maybe even 30, with dark stringy hair. Like an ambassador from the adult world, he understood their woes. He knew kid music because he once worked for an indie label. On weekends, he was an animal shelter volunteer. One day a boy in a doo-rag called Ethiopians as the Real Jews and said no Holocaust happened. Max shut the boy up by saying his father had survived a Hitler camp. You'd never have known from all the corny jokes he made. You'd think that would make someone serious for life. But Max wanted everyone to enjoy themselves, love poetry, and share.
The class shared work in a circle. As Donna read one of hers, the pollen made her sneeze. She was sure no one would hear her poems through all the achoos. The silence after didn't surprise her. Roberta spoke first, as always, with a general reaction. "That was pretty tight." Matt followed her lead and liked specific images. Max talked about the way people read, because he was a slam poet now and the workshop had a spoken-word focus. Roberta thought the ideas were dope, but Donna's rhyme scheme bordered on trite-a word she didn't think meant good. Nothing good is on a border. Matt said work on rhythm. Max said he loved the sneezing. Donna made a face.
"Are you putting me on?"
"Of course not, I think it's something you can use."
"You can't use a sneeze."
"That's what you think. I'll teach you how to sneeze." Everyone laughed. The sneezing lessons became a running joke.
"But it's a reflex," she protested after the second to last session, put-ting a table away together. Next week he'd drive cross country, miss the last class party. She'd remember his waxy hair, his funny faces. How he made her forget C.J. for a minute. "You can't learn a reflex."
Roberta was in the back on the phone, they were the last two left. "Sure you can. You've got to. The things you're born knowing are the hardest to learn. And if you don't, you die."
"Sometimes I don't care if I die." She said it sarcastic, sure he wouldn't really hear it. But he did. It was his turn not to believe. He said things in her poems worried him. There was no hope in them. Grasped her arm, wanted to hear more. Suggested coffee. Yelled goodbye to Roberta, who waved.
Donna had hot tea in a glass mug, Max sipped what looked like a cup of foam with dirt on top. Fatima would have a cow when she heard they were on a date. For an hour he asked and rephrased. She didn't say exactly. But he guessed. Glued things together, and by the end he knew. Shook his head. At the end, she squeezed her teabag on the spoon. This was the third day of no Grandma, when Mrs. Coolidge sent her back across the hall. He gave her his info and said, "No matter how late."
After the hospital, she got home before C.J., pulled the phone in, barricaded herself. Slept uneasily. Then he battered, made headway. With Grandma gone he could make noise now. She lifted the phone to reveal a grid of green jewels. She dialed. "It's three-thirty nine," a hippie voice groaned. "Donna? What's that noise? I'm on my way."
Max's knock distracted C.J. enough that Donna could run. Sprinted, nearly knocked Max down running. Grabbed his shirt and popped a but-ton. Shouted "Book!" C.J. wasn't fast enough to follow, luckily the elevator was right there. She still had on a nightgown, white cotton with straw-berries on it. No shoes.
Under his trench coat in a 24-hour diner, she asked when he was sup-posed to leave. "In two days. I'll be stopping a few times. Maybe in Chicago, then Denver." Bits of gold twinkled in his irises. The window was almost a mirror, but through the refracted neon scenes she found Max's Mazda. Could he take her with him? Just until Grandma got better. Or drop her in Texas. The restaurant bulged with truckers in flannel. The private jukeboxes didn't work, but she didn't want to hear songs by people with names like Twitty anyway. Knives clinked against plates, conversation rumbled.
"So!" he said.
"So." Turning it over with her fork, she decided next time she would ask for no powdered sugar on the French toast. "You gonna abandon me?"
She'd caught him off guard, as he pondered the impossibility of her joining him. He chose a humane reply, denial. "No, of course not. Why do you think I would do that?"
"Because everyone does."
"What will you do if I can't take you?"
"I'm not going back. Not even for my clothes."
"Who else can you stay with?"
"We been through this before, Max."
"Refresh my memory."
"No one. Refreshed?"
"Okay. Come on then. We'll sort everything out later."
She blinked, and breathed out.
That happened last week. Already Wednesday had arrived. Donna bought new outfits from Kentucky thrift shops. They didn't look her enough, but whatever. She'd never been further from home than Hershey Park. Max's sweatshirts sometimes fit her, so she wore those as well. One was from the animal shelter. Did he think she was just another stray?
Every moment of the trip, Max fretted. He thought they made an odd couple. Conspicuous. Age and race and sex. Made her walk separately from him in rest stops and stores to avoid security cameras. "People who don't know might make up a story," he said gently, "A worse one." Donna tried not to think of that as a Jew thing. She noticed that he never touched her, ever.
"You remind me of a guy I used to know," Donna told him. The guy was a social worker. She decided not to say that part.
"I hope that's good," Max replied, on the edge of a laugh.

Rain had just come through. Fog steamed up from pavements and tree fields with ferns. She thought she might see dinosaurs. The Albert K. Finger Travel Plaza had pointy roofs and wooden signs like an old-time train station. A decoy owl kept other birds away up in the rafters. Dads carried out coffee that steamed with the morning. Took dainty sips, singeing their tongues. She thought it would be interesting to have a Dad. Years ago, she wanted one badly. Life taught her to scale back.
She wasn't sure which state it was, so she strolled into the gift shop. Max had gone ahead to the john. Across the wide glossy floor, flat like the state, a food court beckoned. Brushed steel and lights the same red as her bug blood. The smell of fried chicken imitated the odor of home. But it was too heavy to be real, a moth trap with a pheromone that lures and kills.
Maps, mugs, shirts and personalized bike plates told her Illinois. They were near a city that was not Chicago, because nothing said that. She counted the black people. One. (Her.) And in the would-be yearbook on the wall, between two map racks filled with lake tour brochures and state park guides, herself again. Suspected runaway Donna Gilliam. She felt famous. But secret-famous. She wanted to share the feeling with Max. Waited by the men's exit. Waited. Waited. No Max. Soon she made all men Max in her head and was wrong. What was it, a half hour? Panic fell, squeezed her ventricles. Clicked across the plaza, painful new shoes slicing her insteps. Salad bar, bank machines, snack machines, watch cart, pretzel store, rock garden. Pine woods on the perimeter. Up and down the rows of parking lot. Didn't see the Mazda. So much foot traffic that asking was stupid. No one had seen, and she knew he knew that.
But was that a black Mazda turning back east on the overpass? Did he say he was going to buy gas and coming back? Her memory wouldn't tell her for sure. Donna dashed down the traffic islands to peer inside, check the plates. Couldn't get close enough. The westbound freeway had a lull. If she could get to the center. Panting. She'd misjudged the lull. She met a big truck in the fast lane, where neither belonged. The orange cab said Yellow. Deceitful to the end. Fifteen years should have gone by back-wards, but Donna thought instead what her mother would say. Ungrateful. Stupid. Glad. A horn sounded, loud as the Last Day. She froze. Let it come. I don't care. How could hell be worse? Then something inside, beyond control, lifted her out of the way.