Two Microfictions
by Bonnie Jo Campbell
The Maple, the Cherry
“It won’t fall on the house, Mama, I know it won’t.”
I bawled when her boyfriend cut down a big maple that shaded us, but if you wanted a man around you had to let him put his mark on the place. He used to watch me. I asked for a lock on my bedroom door. “Why are you so sensitive?” Mama asked.
When a cherry tree fell, breaking windows, my mother said it was an act of god. The man chain-sawed more trees. There was a real competition here between that man and God. And the next man, too.
Lyme Rhyme
“There might be ticks on some of these chicks, but there ain’t no ticks on me,” I sing to my husband after he inspects me in the shower. This is necessary after walking in the meadow. We have permethrin-infused socks, tweezers, tick spoons, magnifying glasses, rational minds. We apply tick and flea spray on the cats, but the wild rabbits are covered with bloodsuckers, the deer too. We wipe crumbs off the counters to prevent ants, roaches. We carry spiders and crickets outside. I’ve had lice, crabs once, even survived the bedbugs. But we know who will win in the end.
Bonnie Jo Campbell is the bestselling author of Mothers, Tell Your Daughters, Once Upon a River, and American Salvage, among other works. She was a National Book Award finalist and a Guggenheim Fellow, winner of the 2019 Mark Twain Award. She is six foot tall and rides a donkey.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of these two pieces? I’m writing a lot of personal essays these days, thinking about how my mother’s boyfriends interacted with us kids. The first piece is not a true story, but my poor mother, after her divorce, was over-eager to keep men around her. The men in her life were like gods to her, which was confusing to us kids. The second piece was written while contemplating the photograph Modern Dance, which features a meadow and small tree, an idyllic vision, until I suddenly remembered what happens whenever I venture into such a meadow nowadays. Ticks! They’re maddening, and any walk in a meadow will almost certainly result in picking a few up. Last week a tick took up residence in a small wound on my torso—ugh! The phrase I sing is something I always sing after my husband checks me. And all the infestations are true reports, so I guess this must be a true story!
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