Memoir: Red Typewriter by Wendy Smith
“I keep adding to this fantasy: then I will eat my dead”
Fiction by Wendy Smith
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1.
I decide to kill my preschool teachers.
I grab a large, metal spoon from the banged up kitchen items they leave out for toys and start hacking at the trunk of a large pepper tree. The tree will fall over and kill at least one old lady, I figure. I keep adding to this fantasy: then I will eat my dead. How will I know she is good to eat? In order to know if a mean teacher is good to eat, you have to look up her dress first--a ritual-meat-tenderizing-through-insult. I make the mistake of telling Teddy, who looks up a teacher’s dress, makes a silly face, blows a raspberry, and then runs away.
It’s so hard to get people to take this work seriously.
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2.
I take such little breaths that my lungs take in a big one and I sigh out like this: huh ah huh ah huh. Uh huh ah huh.
The grey plastic businesslike shell-with-handle over my typewriter enchants me. Briefcases make me look smarter and this is my second and most useful. The one with a zipper I loved, but I had nothing to put inside, except a dictionary. The other second graders were interested in my briefcase but not excited that there was only an old dictionary inside it.
What will people imagine about me when they see me carrying a typewriter by the handle?
I test the keys. They snap to the paper. I hold the “W” key on my finger to experiment with typing on myself.
If I typed my own book, no one would know whether I was 8 or 16 or 20! How would you know the difference between me and the president? You wouldn’t! Because we can both type!
That’s when I get my best idea: to type a letter to my mother from President Richard Nixon. She is in big trouble with the Government of the United States of America.
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3.
Dear Mrs. Smith,
You are in very big trouble because you have broken the law. You are going to jail.
Sincerely,
Richard Nixon
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4.
“Mom?”
“What.”
“I think you should check the mail.”
“I already did.”
“Maybe you should check it again.”
I’m about to burst with evil glee. My mother, pretty in her flowered maxi dress and curling-ironed short hair, finds the letter.
“Very funny.”
This is not what I expected.
I look left at our pine tree. No grass grows under it because of pine needles. Once we found a fallen nest with two baby doves in it: one alive and one dead. I wanted to rescue the live one, but my mother said “No.” Only “no.”
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5.
My bedroom carpet dissatisfies me.
Behind the door, the orange baby-shag carpet looks bright and new. It stands up straight, instead of being smashed this way and that.
I decide to remedy this. I get down on my hands and knees and brush the carpet with my white hairbrush so it all looks new. I start behind the door—see the corner of my focus in the mirror there--and work my way to the back corner behind my old cradle. Much better. Though when I walk back to the door, of course, I leave footprints of newly-smashed carpet.
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Wendy Smith most recently told the story of her first sex dream at The Narrators, a true storytelling show and podcast. A honey badger for educational equity, she is also an English professor at San Diego Mesa College.