Alma-May’s Unguent

His grandmother contracted syphilis, treponema pallidum, from a one-night stand. His greater aunt Alma-May came down with Cervicitis, for which she was prescribed Dooley’s unguent and a mild pyloric. His great aunt Alma was fit as a fiddle, never having to fend off Chlamydial trachomatis, gonorrhoeae or the ague. Having said this saying anything more would be frivolous. Oh so merciless oh so. Dear auntie hadn’t the faintest why the gonorrhoeae visited her on Wednesdays and Friday’s after fish, just the damndest thing. Now the Dooley’s have a real badger of a salve, made from mercury and crapped on doilies. A cure-all for Chlamydial trachomatis and those nasty pole marks. Auntie did the most marvelous things with catalogue stickers and unsafely pins. She could jerryrig a busted up radio or make hats from simple things she found sitting round the house. Me dear auntie could do most anything, make a cat look like a dog and a dog like a cat, those sort of uneven things. It wasn’t till the whooping got the best of her, knocking her ass over teakettle, an unsightly sight. "A dwarf's face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was. Dwarf's body, weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society pays. Penny a week for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant nothing. Mistake of nature. If it's healthy it's from the mother. If not from the man. Better luck next time." (J.J.) Them were the days, nosegays and wee crepe paper hats with windmill tops and eye-fetching baubles. Looking back onto it now, how strange indeed. So she said, she did, even if the words that came spiraling out of her mouth were covered in spittle and dead flies that hadn’t the wherewithal to see the screen door for the meadow. She could jerryrig a can of tinned beans, surefire, way out beyond where the naked eye can’t see a thing. A surefire cure-all for Chlamydia and rector’s bowel. All she ever wanted was one of those soft-seat stools, a Tavistock Venus Close Coupled Toilet with Soft Close Seat, sold exclusively by Plumbworld, the world’s leading maker of soft-seats. Never did quite get the fetch and gather, not that I’m suppose to get much of anything at all. The world’s leading manufacturer of soft-seat toilet seats, known world round. Some days, nighttime, too, I can’t help but think about her bottom trapped between the clip of the soft-seat and the front of the cistern, all that yammering and all get out, sad as cancer and frail children.