Pictures of You: Michelle Bailat-Jones

 “we counted the birds off instead,” by Michelle Bailat-Jones

Deviled eggs, our mothers told us, that is what the men would want on a day like today. We woke at dawn, for there were cousins coming and neighbors and children. Our dresses grew limp from all the boiling. Some of us took the time to change before the cars started rolling up the back field—tires crunching, horns squawking—some of us ran outside anyway, grateful for the cool air on our faces.

Over at the creek, tree branches tssked their fingers at us in the eleven o’clock wind. You said there would be ants, swatting already at your skirt, smoothing and pulling at the darts, and I wished I’d chosen a floral print, too.

The men carried their bottles and blankets and footballs and jackets. Their hair was combed, their shirts open at the collar. They were forgetting the children already, shouting only half-hearted rules and reminders. Watching them dash and tumble in the grass and the weeds, then vanish at the wood in a line of bright heads.

Here by the river we will soak our feet and your husband will win at skipping stones—he is already in up to his ankles, already hefting the rocks and filling his pockets. You cut an apple in half, said what’s the use of worrying?

And that one is unpacking her basket too slowly. Keeping her secret where it feels the safest, so there was nothing for the rest of us to do but pass around the napkins. Everyone else’s husband was lying down with his ankles crossed. Mine had gone back for the cutlery and I took a breath because the others were not keeping track.

Two of us insisted we pray, even if we’d all started eating already, so we counted the birds off instead—swallows and magpies and jays, phoebes and flycatchers at the river, she said woodpecker and you said not in these woods and we all agreed on a lazy last dove in a dart of white wing. And who finished all those sandwiches?

Two of us watched the sky, waiting for rain that did not come. Only the children came, tumbling back from the forest in lines of twos and threes, dirty and darkened by leaf and mud. They tore through the food without speaking and were off again, slinking back to their freedom, the dog skittering at their feet. We watched them, not one of us willing to admit the double heartbeat of our fear.

It was heavy and hot, and the corn rustled. Someone said snake, and I twisted the foil just in case. And there were thoughts of the whitewashing needed on an old shed and how on earth we would finish so many goddamn eggs. You smiled and then all three of them said, knowingly, of course our mothers had been joking, had wanted to see if we’d really do it.

I kept my shoulders up anyway, kept my smile even when they whispered, she’s always tucking and pressing. I did not skip stones. And he was still missing so I knew to go strong with the tea, let the ice make the prickle for me. That silence then as we packed up the plastic bowls and rolled up those balls of cling wrap. Two of us said we must call the children. We all agreed.

But the men were napping. She rested her head on his knobby knees. The others fanned themselves with folded newspapers. I let an ant walk all the way down my leg, told you, who’s worried? I closed my eyes and counted us, and listened to the tapping of that woodpecker. Cousin and sister and husband and child.

Eventually the sun began to paint the corn silks red, but no one moved. Not a breath, not an inch. We all just kept folding our hands. Folding and smoothing our hands.

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Michelle Bailat-Jones is a writer and translator. Her novel Fog Island Mountains won the 2013 Christopher Doheny Award from The Center for Fiction and Audible and was published in 2014 with Tantor Media. Her fiction, poetry, translations, and criticism have appeared in a number of journals, including The Kenyon Review, The Rumpus, The View from Here, Hayden’s Ferry Review, the Quarterly Conversation, PANK, Spolia Mag, Two Serious Ladies, Cerise Press and The Atticus Review. Translations include Beauty on Earth by C.F. Ramuz (Onesuch Press, 2013), If the Sun Were Never to Return, also by Ramuz (Onesuch Press, forthcoming) and shorter work by Claude Cahun, Julia Allard Daudet, Céline Cerny and Laure Mi-Hyun Croset.