Eric Morris - photo credit Susan DeLoach
Throughout the year we like to feature some of our literary artists whose work appears in the Jasper Project literary journal, Fall Lines - a literary convergence.. Today, we’re featuring a piece of short fiction from Eric Morris, author of Jacob Jump, USC Press, 2015.
A native of Augusta, Georgia, Eric Morris is a production designer for the stage and teaches at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of Jacob Jump, a Story River Book selected for publication by USC Press editor-at-large, the late Pat Conroy. Morris holds an M.F.A. from Western Illinois University and a B.A from Augusta College. His professional work includes productions for dance, theatre, opera, live music stages, and trade shows. Morris writes and records as one half of the musical duo Classes of Dynamo. He lives with his wife and son in Columbia, South Carolina.
The Gift Before
By Eric Morris
This child dances as she learns to walk, because dancing is the first thing. It is the first thing and it will be the last. This child taught no light of fire is needed to dance and neither speech.
Her grandmother lay in bed silent and not opening her eyes. Her hair now loosed from her bun in tributary about her head as white as the heart of fire. She did not open her eyes or speak for two days, as if to tell, I am tired and it is time to rest now, and all of you can do this without me. The child stood alone in the room at her grandmother’s bedside, almost a teenager, becoming stronger every hour, tall and learning by legacy, fast within her growing body the unspeakable language of art. The third day when her grandmother wakened they looked upon each other viewing in brimming pools the same clear gray eyes they had been born into.
“Take my hand, baby.”
Their hands thin and elegant and of the same nature and intelligence, though two generations apart. Hands of a selfsame history and destiny, reaching one for the other, layered in embrace a last time.
“Yes, Gran.”
“You know y’all are going on without me.”
“Yes, Gran.”
“Baby, you know what to do, now. You know the gift, don’t you?”
“Yes, Gran.”
“I know you do. And you will always respect it, won’t you.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“I know you will. Because you know why.”
“Cause--”
“Ah.”
“Because. You said it is what I have, and I will always give it, and it is my way of helping.”
“That’s right baby. When they see the truth of it in you, they see something about themselves. And that is how we help one another along. I have seen you and I have watched you, and you are the one. It was taught to me and I taught it to your mother, and when she teaches it to you I can see you are the one. And that is a precious thing. And why.”
“For within our gift resides all there ever was or will be.”
“That’s right, baby. That’s right. Now, you can remember this, yes?”
“Yes. I will remember this.”
“I know you will. Alright, baby, you go get them now.
“Ok, Gran.”
This blooming child goes to her Grandmother’s walnut chest and kneels to open the third drawer. She knows these shoes and has held them many times. The rosin taken from a lightning struck yellow pine still staining the platforms, pleats and soles, the ribbons yet stitched to the bindings, sewn the morning of Mary’s final performance.
“These are yours now. To keep right along.”
“I love them.”
“Yes, baby.”
“Thank you, Gran.”
“You knew they were already.”
“I know.”
“Alright, baby. Now I want you to go and get your mother and your father and any who want to come. This will be the end of it.”
“Oh, Gran.”
“Now, no. Don’t, baby. You know better than this, we talked about this.”
“But can’t I cry.”
“Yes, you can. But after, then you can cry, after. Like we said. Like we agreed. You cry then you stop crying. I don’t want to see that pretty face sad. I want to see your light. You do that for me. Now call them in.”
When they returned to her grandmother’s room, the body of her family stopped and attended. Mary had risen from the bed and she was away from it in the center at the footboard. She stood without aid from human or device and she made a slow dance at the cheval mirror in her bedclothes and bare long feet with her hair spilling loose, white as the heart of tumbling fire. This elegant woman speaking a last time the unutterable language of truest art in the moment of its creation. She danced slowly turning with her arms aloft, and her aged body making a final figure, the same posture as statues and paintings from the ancient world cast in unknowable times, the form that is telling of things to come because a woman’s arc is the most beautiful thing made, then and now, and too is the most enduring, the truest, the most heartbreaking. The most unreachable.
Her grandmother danced slowing, a final turn with her twin mirrored, her arms assuming en bas down by her side, the line of her core easing, giving to the end of her days.
Alright,” she said softly. “You all can help me now.”
And they took her and returned her to bed.
“I’m closing my eyes now,” she said to all of them, taking each of them in, and finishing at her granddaughter. “I’m closing my eyes now, Maryanne baby, but I will see you. I will see you.”