99 Stories of God by Joy Williams Page B

beads.
    The mother nevertheless remembered now that it had belonged to Iris, her little child.
    She had heard that in this decimated world, people who enjoyed songbirds should hang mesh bags filled with twigs, hair, fur, and yarn for nesting material.
    I saw an oriole’s nest once that was constructed with cigarette butts, the owner of the wild-bird store said. Sad.
    The mother placed Iris’s white rabbit-fur muff on the branch of a tree in the hope that birds would find it. So many beautiful, safe nests will be made from this, she thought.
    But it remained on its branch untouched and remarkably resilient to the elements through the mild winters and dry springs.
    Eventually, the mother needed assistance with living and moved to one of those establishments that provided such assistance. The house on its little plot of land was put on the market and made available for sale, but not before agardener pruned the branch that held the rabbit-fur muff from the tree along with many others.

No
     

13
     
    It was May and in the garden they were drinking mango margaritas. Martha and Constance were discussing throwing an Anti–Mother’s Day party.
    Martha says that in the movie A.I., there are seven words Monica uses to imprint the boy David. They are: Cirrus . Socrates . Particle . Decibel . Hurricane . Dolphin. Tulip . She is now his mother, and he will love her unconditionally and forever.
    But he was a cyborg, she adds.
    Constance becomes anxious when conversation deteriorates to talk of movies. She brings out her mother’s replacement knees, which she requested upon her mother’s cremation, though her husband, Jim, maintains that he was the one who requested them.
    Laughing, Martha says that this is the most macabre thing she has ever witnessed in her life.
    The heavy knees are passed around.
    Later, Martha tells the story of the tenant in her Palm Beach condominium (willed to Martha by her mother) who committed suicide there by shotgun. It cost two thousand dollars to get the blood out of the carpets.
    The other tenants of the condominium are annoyed at Martha because she didn’t come up right away from Key West to deal with the situation.
    Why didn’t you? I ask.
    Because I didn’t want to, she says, smiling in that way she smiles.

Moms
     

14
     
    A newborn baby abandoned in the Kenyan capital was saved by a stray dog that apparently carried her across a busy road and through a barbed wire fence to a shed, where the infant was discovered nestled with a litter of puppies, witnesses said.
    The short-haired dog with light brown eyes has no name, residents said.

Cozy
     

15
     
    His grandmother was reading to him a story by Hans Christian Andersen, the other gloomy Dane, she said. Her memory had become spotty. She really couldn’t remember the tales very well.
    It was bedtime, his mother was off doing god knows what with her husband. It was only the grandmother who strove to maintain the standards of what had once been their station. The child understood there was what was called a Trust, which the grandmother described as “not being grand enough to corrupt you but sufficient to keep you from being entirely at the mercy of your worthless father’s salary.”
    The grandmother didn’t read “The Bog King’s Daughter” or “The Ice Maiden,” for they were too long. She read “The Shirt Collar,” for it was short, then “The Jumping Competition,” for it was shorter. Still he wanted another, for at bedtime he never wanted to go to bed and his thirst for stories seemed unquenchable.
    She commenced reading “The Storks,” which concerned how it came to pass that storks delivered babies to families.
    “There is a pond,” Hans Christian Andersen wrote, “where all the little children lie until the stork comes and gets them for delivery to their parents. There they lie dreaming far more pleasantly than they ever will later in their lives. All parents love and desire such sweet little babes and all children want