"A Seduced World" by Kirstin Allio
They were clearing a space for an enrichment program, an artist demonstration, and I was jamming DVDs in the slot of shame. My kids thought that was hilarious, dogs in cones. I barely glanced at the plasticized covers. Had anybody fed them into the machine, sat patiently in front of the big old TV screen? Not to my knowledge.
“You have a new memory,” said my phone. A message from the abyssopelagic zone—I looked it up—of zeros and ones. It had robotted through my photos and matched me up with one of my very own memories. Meanwhile I was still assimilating to the answering machine.
The librarians seemed like minor gods. Patient as stones. One in particular sat lost in a book, reflexively twirling the same piece of hair. She’d look up startled but still too young to be pained; it was her first job. Once, in line, I’d heard a pillar of the community attempt to control her body, “You’re not from around here.” Because that’s what it was. She shrugged lightly, “No ma’am.”
I liked that young librarian so much I loved her. I’d leaned across the counter with this tenderness that comes naturally to me sometimes, “If you don’t mind my asking, where are you from?” Just then an eddy of after-school orphans had disrupted our flow.
I brushed past the sign for the artist now, seniors stutter-stepping on each other’s arms, 3D Christmas-scene sweaters year-round. A big no-nonsense minder with short hair and a shapeless coat had her eye on them. I knew the going rate was $17 an hour. It was something women my age could do.
I was out the door but—then, Why not me? I turned around and took a folding chair at the back of the room. It was really something to sink down, even for just a moment, to lay my powers down.
The artist placed a shabby pinecone on the table like it was a whole tree. She fixed her eyes on the far wall as her hand moved on thermals, or along the planes of an imaginary Ouija board. The crowd gawked as one, and her speech sounded a little hypnotized: “Blind contour.”
Finally, grandly, she lifted her drawing hand from the page. With practiced surprise, she encountered her work for the first time. Was she pleased? She held it high for all to see, and it looked like a record of damage, all missed circles and broken lines.
Kirstin Allio is the author of the novels Buddhism for Western Children (University of Iowa Press, 2018) and Garner (Coffee House Press, 2005), and a short-story collection, Clothed, Female Figure (Dzanc, 2016). Her honors include the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award, a PEN/O. Henry Prize, and fellowships from Brown University’s Howard Foundation and MacDowell. She lives in Providence, RI.
