Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Shakey Eyes Horton had nystagmus too. That’s what my father said and took me to the record store so we could buy him and take him home to listen. Babe says he’s so square but we go all over. We listen to music for hours and dance around the house like crazy skeletons: loose with all our bones knocking, we go, “click click click” and wave our arms and shake until we rattle all the china in mom’s cabinet. He turns the volume up and we spin like planets round the sun. Babe says he’s no fun but I know different because I see him laughing and I try, which she just never does. She walks into the house with Jasper waiting in the car. She grabs some clothes or asks for money, though she doesn’t even come to do that anymore. They don’t even talk. Last time we had the music on loud and we were dancing. I was letting my head swing back and forth and she just stood and watched us with the strangest look and I said, “I’m Shakey Eyes! Come dance,” and moved my arms around. I followed her up the stairs, swinging like a satellite and going, “Ooh ooh ooooohhhhh,” just like a low-down good- for-nothing so and so. I know she thinks I’m funny but she didn’t laugh and I said, “Come dance! You know you’ve got the blues.” Then I said, “You’re no fun.” She said, “You don’t know him like I do.”

My eyes are shaky and glimmer like the stars. My head turns to the left and it moves just like a pendulum. The kids laugh and shake it back to me, all the ways I’m stupid, not like them. But I know how the grass sounds when the locusts come, like a spaceship taking off and how it makes the air shake. Captain Lovell, I heard it in the branches and the leaves. I heard the rocket leaving. My teacher said it wasn’t so, that you’re past hearing but my father said I could. He puts his hands hard on my shoulders from behind and holds my head still with his looking. But I can feel how much I want to shake and let myself go loose and double like a cloud of mayflies on the lake, you know just how they rise so you couldn’t see just one of them, not even with your thumb held up to catch one with your eyes. It’s something I can’t do that Babe and David can, can’t sight the stars or use a telescope or ever fire a gun. Dr. Lovell, I like to think you’re spinning and can’t feel it like I can’t feel the world shake unless I’m really tired and then it’s like a gift to let it go and just stop trying so hard. I like to think you let go too and when the kids run at me and move their heads from left to right and call me “Zigzag” I look up and wish myself up there with you just calm and swinging through the stars.

Dad calls her the Dowager but I call her Aunt G. Aunt G. at the Polo Lounge. Aunt G. drinking gimlets by the pool. Aunt G. asking about Babe even though she’s the only one who sees her that much anymore. She wears ten rings. Seven on her right hand, which Dad calls the Seven Stars. They make the glass seem like it’s going to crack. She doesn’t like me very much. I know it. I’m not her kind of girl. I won’t wear dresses and when she placed the ring inside my hand I just said, “No, thank you.” Not even thinking how rude that might sound. What would I do with a ring like that? I’ve got my own stars and she doesn’t really want to give me presents anyway. She gave Babe a car, her dark brown Aston Martin. And she gave David a watch to “remember home by.” She gave my Dad a look when he said, “David’s a good soldier.” Like he gave her something bad to eat. She just shook her head and said, “I’ll never understand what kind of man you are.” And then she said Dad would have that young boy’s blood on his hands. Which I don’t understand. Or why she said, “You’ve gone and lost the both of them. You’re your very own Pol Pot,” while looking through her purse. It shone so bright it blinded me. For a second I saw spots and couldn’t focus on the thing. One clear stone that caught the light and made reflections on my glasses. I didn’t want it. I don’t wear things like that. “Who are you?” she asked, not in a mean way but like she truly didn’t know. And didn’t really care. She took it back and asked me if  I’d talked to Babe and I said I had not and no one else had either. I said, “She’s living in the hills.” And she looked at the ring for a minute and put it back in her purse.

Like the horn you played in Catholic school the city will open its mouth and cry out.Don't worry 'bout nothing. Don't mean no thing. It will leave you stunned as a fighter with his eyes swelled shut who's told he won the whole damn purse. It will feel better than any floor that's risen up to meet you. It will rise like Easter bread, golden and familiar in your grandmother's hands. She'll come back, heaven having been too far from home to hold her. O it will be beautiful. Every girl will ask you to dance and the boys won't kill you for it. Shake your head. Dance until your bones clatter. What a prize you are. What a lucky sack of stars.