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Fiction: :   MA RIPPLE'S LAST WORDS (originally appeared in ONTHEBUS, ed. by Jack Grapes, Bombshelter Press, Los Angeles, Winter, 1993) Included in collection, All Things Are Labor Photos by Katherine Arnoldi --------Ma Ripple and her ant farms. --------She's over there now on 11th Street with her nose to the glass, her eyes to the tunnels, making a spectacle. -------"More helpful creatures never existed," she says. -------"If you were to be in trouble, say you were stranded at the side of the road, and you needed help, pretty soon another ant'd come to the rescue. ------"Ants act just like every minute was an opportunity to do good," Ma Ripple says. ------She's got ten farms, propped up around her on top of cardboard boxes. She could turn a complete circle and, if she ignored the space between, it'd be ant farms and nothing but ant farms to the end of her world. ------Ma Ripple says the world is closing in on her. She says she's got to learn fast. She will have to decide. She's got ten more days on her two years left to live. Her time is short to be on this earth, to be in her New York, on this 11th Street, to sit on her stoop, to make a Ma Ripple impact. She says she's getting down to bare bones, she's cut the fat, she's a skinflint that's gone back to the farm. Back to the canals, the veins in the sand, back to the arteries. Right back to nature. ------The kids pick up their skateboards, come over and stick their eyes in the space between where the ant farms connect. They are looking at Ma Ripple. -------Ma Ripple says get out of my sight. She is not nodding politely to anyone anymore, she says. She is not going to service any more small talk. She is not going to be seduced by a swaying hip, a shy eye, no matter how charming, no matter how cute. Not one more human being is going to get her off her track. -------The kids act as if Ma Ripple is a TV they can sit in front of. They want to learn about nature. They want to see an ant farm. They want to be doctors, biologists, entomologists. Come to 11th Street between B and C and ask them, they'll tell you. They circle the ant farms on the outside. "Look," they say, and point to an ant carrying a piece of ant, a grain of sand. --------"So watch already," Ma Ripple says. "You look you see them touching their antlers. Do you think they're talking about a mean boss? A nasty husband? A snitty sister? No way. Their little lives are short. They are not smelling out a lucky break, feeling for a sap." ------------Ma Ripple decides to study the particular. She wants a one-on-one experience with an ant. She wants to know another individual intimately who is also going to die before winter. So Ma Ripple picks one ant, names it Gertrude and with her finger to the glass she follows Gertrude's little life. "Gertrude is not a chump," Ma Ripple says. "Gertrude does not hesitate. Look how fast she meets another ant, then goes on about what she is about. Is Gertrude sitting around complaining about having such skinny legs? Is Gertude's mind on how easy she could break in two at the waist? About how anytime there's anything good its spread out across the kitchen floor?" ---------Ma Ripple sees Gertrude slant up a canal. Help a friend drag a boulder to the top of a hill. Gertrude pushes from behind. She pulls from ahead. Gertrude makes it to the top, to the little fake barn and little fake trees and the little fake shed. --------"Yo, Ma Ripple," a kid says, "Are these real? Are these real ants?" ----------Ma Ripple squints up from the ant farms. She looks up at the kids, the buildings, then up at the rectangle of sky above 11th Street, then back down to her ant farms, to what she sent away for and assembled herself, to what she has just right. ---------"Check it out," a kid says, "Check it out." ---------"One little ant and another little ant and another..." Ma Ripple starts to say, but Ma Ripple's eyes are beginning to daze over with ants, the whole circle of them. Ma Ripple and her ant farms: the constant avalanches, the up and down, and back and forth, the on and on of it. Joy, tragedy, etc. ---------"Now I lost Gertrude," Ma Ripple says. Ma Ripple is not thinking about her own little life. About the phone ringing help. The do this and do that, the gimme, gimme, gimme or the much obliged. She is not thinking about the poor little about-to-be-made-an-orphan Ripple. No, right now, Ma Ripple is in the middle of one continuous line of ant. ---------"I can't stand it," Ma Ripple says, "The beauty of it. The sheer, by that I mean the complete, and overwhelming beauty of it, and here I am, surrounded." -------"Cool," a kid says, "Ma Ripple is completely cool." --------"The ants and the ants and the ants," Ma Ripple says. "The ants do not come easy. The first one, the little queen ant, delivered 'Live Shipment,' delivered 'Fragile,' delivered 'Rush.' Delivered to me to be put in a closet, to incubate, to make the itty-bitty baby ants, to make the ant-nation, the spectacle; each little ant, one little part, following the next little ant, making up a whole ant-story, heading towards who-knows-where, towards who-knows-what little ant-end?" --------"Shit, I can't see," a kid says, "Can I get in there? Can I get in the middle, too?" --------"Hurry up." Ma Ripple says, "You got to act fast. Your time is short. You will have to decide. You look. You'll see all that. You'll see how you can do, but it may not be as easy as you thought, as easy as you hoped, as easy as it seemed outside." ----Katherine Arnoldi This story appears in All Things Are Labor, Stories (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007) non-fiction / poetry / Go to top