Dilley

How to Effect Continental Drift with a Nutcracker

By Jordan Dilley

The brick courtyard is a castle in the clouds, and I am a giant stomping the little walnut people that drop from the gnarled tree, grinding their nutmeat bones to make my bread. Nan is mulching in the flowerbeds, breaking clods of new soil, rubber boots up and down and up again. Whose bones does she grind to make the cauliflowers grow? Does their phosphorus fertilizer glow during the new moon? I will sneak out tonight and watch the radiance hang over the germinating seeds.

Nan is still mulching when I’ve finished baking my bread. Bits of the walnut people are lodged between my teeth. I suck them free, grinding the last specks between my incisors, sending them into indecipherable oblivion. I bang the silvery nutcracker against the beanstalk trunk, determined to chop it down so no other giants can interfere on my turf. Small gouges appear on the gnarled trunk, and I’m pelted with bits of bark, but the tree stands firm. I’ll have to keep an eye on this elevator of destruction, just like the cauliflowers.

Muddy boots leave footprints that end in front of me. Nan squints at me mid nutcracker chop. The tan lenses of her sunglasses are flecked with bagged soil.

“Bath,” she announces before frog-marching me into the house.

I pat the pocket of my trousers where the nutcracker resides. Nan pretends not to notice; we are forgiving when it comes to each other’s foibles.

But soap and water aren’t forgiving: they are a harsh mistress who exacts her due. Nan scrubs my head, telling me each time she finds a bit of bark, walnut, or even what she swears looks like the shell of a robin’s egg.

“How?” she asks, holding the blue-chipped shell out for me to inspect.

I shrug. Perhaps a giant pitched it down the beanstalk. Or a villager. That’s more in line with story logic. Garbage disposal is a menial task.

Nan mutters something about hellions and douses my head with conditioner. She drags a fat comb through the shoulder-length strands, and I clench every time she hits a snag. There’s a pair of scissors in Nan’s kitchen junk drawer. The blades are as long as my forearm. Perhaps the next time she’s weeding in the garden…but no, Nan is as vigilant as a jailer. She says she has eyes in the back of her head, but she doesn’t, I’ve checked. One night, when she fell asleep in her recliner watching Wheel of Fortune, I lifted the wispy tuffs of gray-brown hair. No eyeballs, just scalp.

Soon, I’m wrapped in a bathrobe so large the back drags like a train behind me. Nan asks what bedtime story I want tonight. Her eyes drift toward the big black Bible on the coffee table. It’s not that I don’t want to give her the satisfaction, let her fantasize for one night about me rolling in the aisles with the congregation, hair plastered in pink barrettes, my Sunday dress stain-free. But I can see those plotlines from a mile away. Cue: a mysterious voice tells a social reject to do something, the social reject obeys the voice/possible hallucination, the reject’s family thinks he’s insane, and somehow, the reject is proved right in the end against all logic.

The litany never changes:

Deliver us from evil,
lather, rinse, and repeat as needed.

Nan grabs a book with DayGlo pirates on the cover. Her fingers pick their way toward the end. Bits of dirt that escaped the vigorous scrubbing she gave me show from underneath her nails. Short brown-gray hairs cling to her damp forehead, a halo of toil.

I try to square this version of Nan with the one that meets me in the kitchen every morning. Morning Nan wears neatly pressed slacks, a button-down blouse, and loafers. Her hair is coiffed just so; she wears her old wedding ring and, sometimes, earrings. Polished and prim, prepared and capable. She’s a far cry from the Nan that bends over my bed to kiss my still-damp hair. Like Cinderella after midnight, the magic has rubbed off. Her body excretes odors, her skin is covered in a slick of sweat, and her patience is worn thin. She is transformed.

I think of the person I was before Nan’s ministrations in the bathtub. My hair was a tangled mess, populated by bits of eggshell, twigs, and walnuts, all mingling with my scalp oils. My pants were stained. My hands were filthy. Our transformations are in sync, though the outcomes are different. We move through our nightly routine, each asking the other to believe in reverse transubstantiation.

Nan tells me to sleep well from the doorway, a yawn threatening to break free from her dry lips. I nod, as I reach under my pillow. My hand feels the cold metal of the nutcracker. She didn’t notice as I slipped it out of my pocket while undressing for the bath. It is a sword in the stone, a ring of power, and Moses’ staff—an insurance policy that will protect me tonight as I keep vigil in the garden.

I wait, forehead pressed against the bedroom window, breath fogging the cold glass. I fight my dropping eyelids, biting the inside of my cheek until I taste blood. The moon is halfway past the wide spread of branches on the walnut tree. A beam of milky light shines between two black, knotted boughs, straight into my eyes. I jerk awake.

I am in the process of dividing the blame for my somnolence between a lack of discipline and the new pajamas I’m wearing that are extra soft, when I notice a shadow moving in the garden. I press my forehead against the glass again, three inches from its previous location. I squint, wishing the moon would shine brighter.

I was wrong. Two shadows are moving in the garden. One is very tall.

I creep downstairs, pajama legs tucked into my garden boots, wielding the nutcracker in both hands. I feel exposed, the crocheted sweater Nan made for my birthday last year is my only armor. I cast around for a shield, a strong defense to protect me if my rendezvous ends in blows. But I’m no Achilles or Ajax, and all I find is a flattened cardboard box, a poor defense against an atmospheric giant with notoriously bad intentions.

My hand is sweaty on the backdoor knob, and for a moment I can’t bring myself to open the door. Who am I kidding with a nutcracker and nothing else? I take a step back. No one will know if I go back upstairs, pull the covers over my head, and wait for morning.

But then I hear Nan’s raised voice from the garden. She has the same tone now as she did when I accidentally broke a colored glass bowl that was her mother’s. I grit my teeth and squeeze the nutcracker until my knuckles are white. I open the door into the milky darkness.

There’s no phosphorus glow emanating from the garden. I deflate, realizing the cauliflowers must be fertilized by common garden-store fertilizer; no one’s bones are feeding us. We may as well buy our cauliflowers from the supermarket, like everyone else. I look toward the walnut tree, doubting its enchanted trunk, the leaves that shiver in the breeze like metal coins on a belly-dancer skirt, and the crooked branches that twine up…up. I want to throw the nutcracker at it and give it a good gouge for being just a common nut tree.

But the two figures move toward me, the tall one trailing Nan. I duck into a nearby clump of rhododendrons, sending forth a cloud of pink petals. Under normal circumstances, Nan would notice the slightest disturbance in her verdure, but her voice is raised again, and I can see her hands on her hips as I gaze between the petals and stamens of the rhododendrons. The giant’s face is hidden in the shadows, but his voice is deep, vibrating across the paving stones of the courtyard. The balled-up fists that swing at his side are huge; I’ve never seen hands that big before. His knuckles alone are a whole mouthful.

He walks toward Nan. His pace is slow and determined. She doesn’t turn away, but I can see by the way she holds herself that she is tense. He lets out a roar, smacking one fist into his other hand. The rhododendron petals vibrate. I want to reach out and hold whatever counts as their hands. I wish someone was there to hold my hand.

The breeze picks up and parts the tree branches. A shaft of moonlight illuminates the tree trunk. I was wrong about the cauliflowers, but perhaps I wasn’t wrong about the tree. What appeared as randomly dispersed knots and gnarls in the daylight are revealed as evenly spaced footholds too far apart for me or Nan, but close enough for someone with his leg span.

The giant steps into the moonlight. He’s wearing glasses and a sports coat. My mouth hangs open. He’s nothing like the giants in my storybooks. He looks more like the men at the church Nan drags me to on Sundays when she has nothing better to do. They’re all slicked-back hair, polished loafers, three-piece suits from the cheapest department store in town, and cotton hankies they dab their foreheads with when they’re filled with the spirit. They talk of holiness and turning the other cheek in the chapel, but then exchange gossip between drags on Mavericks in the parking lot.

One Sunday Nan marched me into her ten-year-old Cadillac in the middle of a downpour. The rain was coming down so fast I couldn’t see where we were going until we pulled into the almost-full parking lot.

I groaned, instantly recognizing Nan’s ruse. Instead of the scratchy dresses she normally forced me to wear to church, this time she had turned a blind eye to the corduroy pants and turtleneck sweater I normally wore when we went out. But this wasn’t the SaveMart or bridge with the girls at Janice-with-the-senile-cat’s house.

“Just behave,” she said, shoving a pink bible into my hands.

And I did. Until we were grouped off into Sunday school classes and an unconvincing weave started talking about the story of creation. I couldn’t help myself. The Discovery Channel had just run a whole series about geology, and I was now an expert in all things tectonic plates, continental shift, and …

No! the unconvincing weave had said. Earthquakes were put here to test our faith. And so were volcanoes, tornados, sinkholes, and—God help you—anything fossilized or subjected to radioactive dating.

Nan had had the audacity to look surprised when they kicked my corduroy ass out the Sunday school door. But she bought me a double-fudge sundae with sprinkles on the way home. She even bought herself a malt, and then asked me what I wanted to do the rest of the day. It didn’t occur to me at the time that an interest in geology didn’t exactly work in tandem with a belief in fairy tales.

“You need to come back to church…Dorothy.” The giant’s voice is low, but it rumbles across the brick courtyard, and I feel it pass through my slippers. There’s an underwritten threat that follows the vibration, and the joint of my big toe aches fiercely. Gone is the memory of ice cream and warm, corduroy pants. My arms and legs feel cold, so cold I don’t shiver though goosebumps erupt, and my hair stands on end.

Nan takes a step forward. “And open my checkbook wide when the collection plate comes around, isn’t that right?”

The giant takes two giant steps forward until there’s only the smallest space between them. “It’s a matter of your spiritual well-being…”

I fight my way out of the rhododendron bushes, leaves, petals, and twigs flying around me like a verdant maelstrom. My vision is clouded by rage and fear, but I plow ahead, hoping Nan isn’t in the way as I unleash the silver nutcracker hidden in my pajamas’ pants pocket. A well-aimed swing takes out the giant’s left knee, another cripples his right. He hits the brick courtyard with a thud. He groans through clenched teeth, fumbling for his kneecaps. A small spot of red appears on his pants’ leg before he manages to cover it with his hand. He’s panting as Nan and I stand over him wondering what to do with a felled giant.

Nan holds out her hand. I sigh and drop the nutcracker into her palms, disappointed when I don’t see a smear of red on its gleaming surface.

“Not that I don’t appreciate what you did,” Nan says, squeezing my arm.

I nod, knowing that I will eventually find its hiding place—the empty countertop jar that says “Flour” across its center, or that old purse in the back of Nan’s closet where she keeps the cigarettes she insists she doesn’t smoke.

We stand together, watching this giant cradle his knees, sweat dripping off his forehead. The red spots under his hands have stopped growing, but he hasn’t stood up yet. Nan makes an impatient sound and looks back toward the house, probably wondering if we should just leave him here and lock ourselves safely inside.
Disgust makes my stomach clench and unclench. But I know, even when he rises muttering threats, that part of the disgust I feel is at myself for believing Nan grew glowing cauliflowers and that the walnut tree was a giant’s personal staircase. I can’t recognize the girl that played in this courtyard earlier, twigs and robins’ eggshell in her hair. Being a geological, bible-doubting expert hadn’t managed to erase my penchant for storybook monsters.

Nan gives my hand a squeeze and motions with her head toward the backdoor.

The giant slowly stands. “I won’t stop trying, Dorothy.”

“Best get a new pair of pants before you do,” Nan says looking at the blood stains on his knees.

Before he can answer, Nan is leading me away, toward the backdoor and the kitchen. Before she closes the door and sets two bowls of chocolate ice cream on the kitchen table, I look across the courtyard. He’s standing there, looking up at the walnut tree, his gaze lost in its leaves as they are tossed by the night breezes. His giant hands find two of the knots and his uninjured leg twitches in his polished loafer.

Jordan Dilley lives and writes in Idaho. She has an MA in literature from the University of Utah. Her work has appeared in the Vassar Review, Heavy Feather Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Loch Raven Review as well as other publications. Her short fiction piece “Lani in the River” was nominated by JMWW for a Pushcart Prize.