Extrait
1
“Do you know what you look like when you’re crying?”
The little girl and the old man who paid for her are standing beneath the deep green grave canopy when he asks her this. It’s the same question she is asked by most people, along with a battery of other questions she will never be allowed to answer. Is it true your mother tortured you to teach you how to cry? Is it true you worship goddesses and never went to school? Do you know that it’s illegal? How much money do you make?
The little girl does not answer any of the man’s questions. They stand on opposite sides of the casket, waiting for its slow drop to end so that the little girl can begin. While they wait, the little girl picks at the edges of her handkerchief and watches the sleek brown coffin that is dropping, the shrinking gap between the casket and the hole, while her mother stands behind the real mourners, counting the money and turning away.
On top of the canopy, big drops of rain fall like a sky-full of beads shaken out of a sheet. The little girl listens to them burst against the taut canvas tent and knows that the rain wouldn’t taste like tears, it would taste like metal and freshly dug dirt. She imagines this taste, wishes she could sit in the playroom at home and watch the silvery buds cling to the storm windows as they grow and loosen their grip, melt into each other and desperately roll. They still call it a playroom, even though she is now a star without much time to play. Instead of toys, the small room is crammed with pieces of furniture that need to be fixed: a cracked plastic sewing table, her Aunt Ayin’s mirror, exhausted-looking cardboard boxes. A heavy cream curtain, its edges scalloped with rust-colored stains, hangs against one wall to hide the hot-water heater.
“Come a bit closer for me,” says the old man, gently. “A bit closer to the grave.”
Is the young minister still talking? The little girl can’t tell, can’t hear much but the sound of her stiff black lace rustling against itself, the rain, the sound of her heart in her ears. She knows what she’s supposed to do and how to do it. She’s been training at it for years. It’s what she does best, better than anyone, better even than her own mother. At least that’s what the widows say: A professional, a lady, a legend, a star. She tries to be sad but she doesn’t feel sad now. What she feels inside is the ghost-self growing, curled at the edges, gray and unstable as burnt paper. A scorched wisp.
She moves closer to the grave. I am stupid, she remembers. I am worthless, I am disgusting. The grass by her feet is fake and bright green, fringed with frail shards of gnarled brown leaves. Of all the months, the girl likes the smell of October best, even better when wet, she loves to watch her feet walk through the leaves and their just-before-dying smell. In her townhouse development, the October air carries smells the way cloth does, it touches her and is gone, a flash of dead leaves, fabric softener from the dryer vents, rain, exhaust fumes, fire. Today the wet chill doesn’t cling to her, though the leaves are wet and cling to her shiny black shoes like little drowned men. By November the smell will be gone. It will get dark and cold and it will stay dark and cold for a very long time.
She can feel the old man staring. She knows what she looks like, the white face, the famous black dress, and she feels dulled by a veil of dust. When she was younger the newspapers had called her gaunt, but this was because of an old Wailers’ trick, putting a thin girl in a thick dress too large and long for her frame. Now she feels as if she is wearing a flesh suit instead of a body. Behind the long hair, the little girl’s face looks scared.
“Don’t be scared,” the old man says and, with some difficulty, he walks closer to where she is and stands behind her, clamping his hands down onto the shoulders of her dress. His fingers shake as he leans forward, whispering into the little girl’s hair.
What does he whisper? At first she can’t tell, the rain is beating its glass fists against the tent. She closes her eyes and pretends she’s under her secret salt tree with leaves like thin tongues of glass. The old man’s fingers press and squeeze. She thinks he says, Look at yourself, aren’t you lovely? She keeps trying but the tears won’t come, she only sees white, white on white, something she can barely see the shape of, like a reflection caught in a puddle of milk. She doesn’t want to leave the salt tree but it is too late, the man’s whispers reach her even there, his not-white sounds, his wordless noises navigating toward her through the salt wasps and dry flowers.
What does he whisper? Unbearable. A hot breath, damp and loose. Unbearable. A wet smoke.
If you don’t cry for me I will turn your mother in.
She opens her eyes and looks at her hands and sees the color gray. The little girl feels his fingers squeeze, his breath get thick, his dank gray whisper. The ghost inside her is whisper thin. The old man doesn’t know her name. He whispers, gently, into her hair, Start crying.
– 1922 A.D., London, England –
Author Unknown
THE OBSCENE ARTS:
MATERIALS TOWARDS A HISTORY OF WAILING WOMEN
and Other Professional Mourners
1922
PART III.
TRAINING THE NOVICE.–Continued.
__________
D. METHODS OF ABUSE.
On The Importance of Self-Loathing
Used properly, the silent repetition of humiliating comments about oneself is often the most practical method a novice can implement in order to arouse sudden weeping. For instance, the traditional prompts I am stupid, I am worthless, I am disgusting, have been indispensable for generations of professional mourners who would otherwise have found themselves dry at graveside and thus unable to perform for their wage. Be warned that this technique must be handled with great skill and delicacy, as it can be dangerously mismanaged by the naïve and may result in suicide or the permanent disordering of the brains.
On this point should be mentioned the value of a mother’s role in the fabrication, penetration, and reinforcement of such statements which, although seemingly painful to absorb, will ultimately serve the novice once they are remembered at appropriate times (e.g. at gravesides or while procuring contracts). Some suggestions include disturbing comments concerning the girl’s intelligence, talent, worth, and virtue. It has been proven unwise, however, to berate a novice about her appearance, as a girl’s confidence about her ability to charm will play a critical role in the acquisition of new clients throughout her life.
If, by the time the novice has completed her apprenticeship, she is still unable to discern between her true feelings of self-worth and the poor esteem she must draw upon while coaxing tears from her eyes, she will eventually find herself unhinged and perpetually weeping without cause. To avoid this most appalling condition, a mother must determine whether her daughter is of an especially weak or inconsolable constitution before beginning a regimen of verbal assaults. However, if it becomes clear that the novice will be unable to perform without abuse, by all means employ whatever practices are necessary. Although not ideal, it is, after all, more profitable to have a daughter who weeps all of the time than one who must be abandoned because she cannot weep at all.
2
“Is it true you worship goddesses and never went to school?”
Mem was six years old when she was finally allowed to see her First Corpse. It was something she had looked forward to for a long time, although she didn’t like the sound of the word corpse. She loved, instead, the word deceased. It sounded like the first few seconds of water surging from a faucet, or the beginning of a song, although her kind didn’t know many songs, they weren’t allowed to listen to the radio or watch television. Mem was not supposed to want to have anything to do with the outside world, and she wasn’t supposed to desire things. She had been taught that the things she touched or thought she owned–like the new metal swing-set in the backyard, the bright stack of Letter People books (Mr. P with a Purple Pillow, Mr. M with a Munching Mouth), the wall-to-wall confetti-colored carpet under her feet–would exist long after her body had liquefied, and then even those things would not survive the next flood, asteroid, or ice age. The slow burn of oxygen would chew chemicals and atoms to smaller bits and then these would also be pried apart, revealing something even smaller but just as fragmented and temporary. To the unprofessionals, tangible things seemed to promise immortality, proof, a permanent record, but even as a little girl Mem knew that permanent was a fairy-tale word. Like the end. Or forever.
Of course this never stopped Mem from wanting things. When she and her cousin Sofie were very small and just starting their apprenticeships, all Mem wanted was a pink dress frothy as a whipped dessert, a grit-filled Big Wheel, a dog, a cadre of friends who wore Band-Aids like badges. Mem and Sofie sat at the tile-topped table in Mem’s mother’s kitchen, swinging their legs under the chairs as they shared a packet of butterscotch Krimpets. Here is the first Lesson, and the first secret you must keep. They nodded, dreaming of dogs and dresses, scraped the icing off the plastic wrappers with their teeth.
By the day she saw her First Corpse and worked her First Funeral, Mem had memorized all of the Lessons. She could recite her maternal ancestry all the way back to ancient Rome, and she knew every step of her history. H...
Présentation de l'éditeur
Mem is a wailer, a professional mourner hired to cry at funerals. One of the few remaining American girls in this secret, illegal profession, Mem hails from a long line of mourners, including her mother, a legendary master wailer hired for the most important funerals in her hometown of Philadelphia.
Though Mem is eventually to become a renowned wailer herself, she at first struggles with her calling. She is a girl who cannot make herself cry, and though her mother loves her fiercely, she must use ancient, emotionally abusive, cultlike rituals to train Mem to weep. When Mem emerges as the greatest wailer that the profession has ever seen, her infamy brings with it unwanted attention, especially from the authorities.
Interweaving poetic prose and artifacts spanning six thousand years and seven continents, Open Me is an utterly original novel about mothers and daughters, dark underworlds, and the play between fact and fiction.
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