she said, “he used to tell me that when I turned forty, he’d trade me in for two twenties. It was a big joke.” She pushed her hair back with both hands and looked at Opal. “I guess that’s what he's done, isn’t it?” “Yes, Ma’am, it is.” Opal thought of her three children around the dinner table every night, arguing and talking about school, laughing and teasing her. Henry don’t have that. He don’t have nothing. “I was scared at first but men ain’t everything, Ma’am. We getting along at my house. A man ‘ ain’t everything.” The woman sat with her arms resting on her knees, staring out the picture window. She had stopped crying. The yellow maple on the boulevard reflected a ‘ light that spread across the room like the diffused sunlight on the cover of a Sunday School text. Opal rubbed a dirty spot on the window with a corner of her apron, then put the pillows back on the sofa and sat down next to the woman. After a while, the woman said, “What time did he come?” “About eleven.” “Was he alone?” “She didn’t come in the house.” The woman turned away and said something Opal couldn’t hear. “He brought a big van.” “Did he say anything to you?” “Nothing much. He ask me to help carry, but I say I can’t.” “That’s all?” “He say he be back Sunday morning to finish in the studio and he left his phone number on a card. I put it on the refrigerator.” ’ “His phone number? That was fast.” The woman stared at the floor, her head bobbing slowly, moving closer and closer to her knees. hey sat without speaking again. Opal let her head touch the soft upholstery and closed her eyes. She saw Henry in that dream she had, laid out and shameless in his black suit and red tie on a white satin pillow. She wished he were dead so she could forget about him. She shook her head to slough off the old feelings, then leaned on the arm rest to get up. The woman put out her hand to keep her. “Did he say anything else, anything at all?” “He asked where you were and I told him.” The woman nodded. ‘‘What else?” “He say he make the house beautiful.” Opal spoke carefully. “He say it was hard to work here.” The woman looked at her sharply. “Did he say I have no sense of space or form?” Opal nodded. “ I better be getting to my work.” The woman slung another pillow across the room. “That cross-eyed weasel.” She looked around for something else to throw, then got up. Standing there, in the middle of the half-empty living room, the woman reminded Opal of a picture she saw once of a girl in a corn field with the stalks bent and broken. Her eyes held light the same way. “All right. Let’s get to work. We’ve got work to do in the studio.” “Ma’am, he say not to touch the studio,” Opal said. “I’m sure he did. Come on, Opal.” “It ain’t my place to clean that studio.” Opal dabbed at a lamp shade with her rag. The woman grabbed her hand. “I’ll pay you extra. This has to be done now.” Opal tried to hold back but the woman pulled her up the two flights of stairs so suddenly that she could hardly move her feet fast enough and she had to lean against the wall at the top to catch her breath. The woman opened the door and flicked the light switch. Half the roof was glass and spotlights shot out of the corners. Opal shielded her eyes. The room was filled with shapes and bright colors—hunks of iron and sparkling mounds of plaster that looked like unfinished sand castles. Covering one wall was a painting of women cut off at the waist. They were bending or twisting or pointing straight ahead- black women, white, brown and all of them naked. Opal chewed her lip and surveyed the room slowly. In a corner was a thing that looked like a woman’s breast. She narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “What you want me to do, Ma’am.” “Open the windows to the back and take off the screens. We’re going to throw all this stuff out.” “Out the windows? That sound crazy.” “Good. You just open those windows.” The woman dragged the breast over. “I hate this...this tit,” she said and forced it through the open window. Opal hauled over a rusted piece of iron that was curved like an anchor at one end and flared like a crow’s wing at the other. The woman pushed it out. The point of the anchor pierced the giant breast and foam and plaster spewed over the back yard. “Did you see that?” The woman’s eyes were wide and bright and she stared into the yard. She put her arm around Opal, smiling. “‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above,” Opal pulled away, “or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth.’” Opal blinked like gnats were swarming around her face. “I don’t think we ought to be doing this, Ma’am. I’d just as soon carry, this stuff down the back stairs.” “Don’t worry, Opal. The neighbors can’t see us. Just haul the rest of that garbage over here.” “No, Ma’am, it’s not the neighbors.” Sweat stood on Opal’s face like rain drops and she felt dizzy and her stomach twisted inside her. “Heaving stuff out like this don’t seem right. Everything’s all breaking up.’” “Exactly. ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Keep heaving.” hey worked without a break, the woman pointing and Opal hauling pictures and sculpture over to the window. The woman was thinlipped and sweaty and her tears left squiggly lines in the dirt on her face, but after a while it all looked like sweat. She whooped and quoted scripture everytime she shoved something through the window. “‘Man that is born of woman is full of trouble.’” She dropped a half-finished carving that looked like a bouquet of , women’s hands. “‘A time to kill,” ’ and she hurled a chisel after the painting of the naked women. Opal’s nausea passed and she felt light-headed. “‘The soul that sin- neth, it shall die.’” She handed the woman an unfinished painting of a tree with human limbs for branches penciled in. “Good, Opal, very good.” The last piece was a huge parrot with blue and gold feathers glued to a canvas of trees. The woman couldn’t get the bird through the window. “Get me that saw, Opal.” She sliced the front off the bird, pushed both pieces out and flung the saw after them. “‘Joy to the just.’” The room was empty. They stood together at the window staring down into the backyard. “Oh, Opal, what have we done?” The small yard looked like a cemetery that had been backhoed. Iron, wood, fake body parts and metal strips filled the yard so that only patches of grass were visible. “Ma’am, you crazy.” "Thank you, Opal. Thank you. Say that again.” Opal grinned. “You plumb crazy, Preacher.” She leaned out the window to get a better look. “Now who you think’s going to clean up that mess?” “I’ll call Max at his new number and tell him I loosened up a little and moved his art to the back yard.” She straightened her sweat shirt with exaggerated dignity. “I’ll insist that he get his things out of here immediately. He doesn’t have to wait until the Sabbath to do his dirty work.” She slammed her hand on the wall. “It’s quite a sight, isn’t it, Opal?” She held her head like she was crying, but when she looked up, she was gasping and snickering. She started to laugh out loud and put her arm around Opal. “Did you see the perfect tit explode? Too bad Max wasn’t lying across it.” Opal shook her head at the thought and started to laugh. Soon the two of them were laughing so hard that they had to hold on to the wall and each other to keep from falling. “It’s just art.” The woman could hardly talk, she was wiping her eyes and laughing. “It doesn’t mean anything, he always says. Everything doesn’t have significance. I don’t have to be so damn serious, do I?” She linked her arm through Opal’s and waved her hand at the room. “Now what?” “Well,” said Opal. “I’ll do the Graven Images ife a story out of The High Price of Everything by Kathleen Coskran and published by New Rivers Press. floor. It’s filthy up here.” She got the mop and the woman carried up a pail of hot soapy water. “You can wax it next week when you come. But get it clean as sin today.” She paused at the door. “We had quite a day, didn’t we, Opal?” Opal nodded and hummed to herself, swirling the mop in the clean water. She would do the walls next week, rub out the rectangles where art used to hang. Kathleen Coskran is currently a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, working on an M.A. in English with an Emphasis on Writing. She was a Loft/ Mentor winner in 1986 and is a Regional Writers Series winner for 1988. Dave Eckdahl is a Twin Cities artist. Eric Walljasper is a Twin Cities Art Director who is quickly discovering the joys of home ownership. 38 Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1988-89
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