Machine Dreams

Ltd.
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Phillips, Jayne Anne, 1952-
Machine dreams / Jayne Anne Phillips.
p. cm.
1. Family—West Virginia—History—20th century—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.H479M3 1999
813′.54—dc21 99-18315
    eISBN: 978-0-307-80884-4
    Author photograph © Marion Ettlinger
    www.vintagebooks.com
    v3.1

for my family,
past and present

“Here is the story of flying, from the dreams of ancient Greece to the wonders of the present day, presented in brief, authoritative text and superb watercolor paintings. It is a fascinating story of people and ideas, of adventure and daring, and of flying machines.”
    — MELVIN B. ZISFEIN ,
Flight, A Panorama of Aviation
    “The Greeks believed that their heroic dead appeared before the living in the form of a horse.… The soul of the deceased was often depicted in horse-shape.”
    — NIKOLAS YALOURIS ,
Pegasus: The Art of the Legend
    “Now he (Pegasus) flew away and left the earth, the mother of flocks, and came to the deathless gods: and he dwells in the house of Zeus and brings to wise Zeus the thunder and lightning.”
    — HESIOD ,
The Theogony
, vv. 284–86
    “And the voice said:
    Well you don’t know me,
    but I know you
    And I’ve got a message to give to you.
    Here come the planes
    So you better get ready. Ready to go. You can come
    as you are, but pay as you go …
    They’re American planes. Made in America.
    Smoking or non-smoking?”
    — LAURIE ANDERSON
“O Superman”

REMINISCENCE TO A DAUGHTER
Jean
    I t’s strange what you don’t forget. We had a neighbor called Mrs. Thomas. I remember reaching up a long way to pull the heavy telephone—a box phone with a speaking horn on a cord—onto the floor with me. Telephone numbers were two digits then. I called 7, 0, and said, “Tommie, I’m sick. I want you to come over.” I can still hear that child’s voice, with the feeling it’s coming from inside me, just as clearly, just as surely as you’re standing there. I was three years old. I saw my hands on the phone box, and my shoes, and the scratchy brown fabric of the dress I was wearing. I wasn’t very strong and had pneumonia twice by the time I was five. Mother had lost the child before me to diphtheria and whooping cough, and stillborn twins before him. She kept me dressed in layers of woolens all winter, leggings and undershirts. She soaked clean rags in goose grease and made me wear them around my neck. Tommie would help her and they’d melt down the grease in a big black pot, throw in the rags, and stir them with a stick while I sat waiting, bundled inblankets. They lay the rags on the sill to cool, then wrapped me up while the fumes were still so strong our eyes teared. I stood between the two women as they worked over me, their hands big and quick, and saw nothing but their broad dark skirts.
    I was so skinny as a kid, and had such big brown eyes. In the summer I was black as a darkie and Mother called me her pickaninny. She used to say I was the ugliest baby she ever saw; when I was a few days old she lay me in the middle of the high walnut bed and stood looking. The neighbor woman at her elbow said, “Just you wait. She’ll be the joy of your life.” Mother would tell that story as I was growing up—I don’t know how many times I heard it—then she’d smile at me and say, “And it’s true, you are.”
    Later you look back and see one thing foretold by another. But when you’re young, those connections are secrets; everything you know is secret from yourself. I always assumed I’d have my own daughter. I picked out your name when I was twelve, and saved it. In a funny way, you were already real. I never felt that way about your brother. You were first-born; then he arrived and made a place for himself; I’d had no ideas about him. Maybe it’s that way with boy children; maybe they’re luckier.
    I was like an only child, growing up alone with my mother. She’d lost those three babies before me, and my brother and sister who survived were ten and twelve years older—out of the house by the time I needed someone to talk to. They had grown up very differently—Dad had money then. Mother’s furniture was new; the house was kept up; the street, with all those big trees shading the sidewalk, was referred to as Quality Hill. Dad had the biggest lumber business in the state at one time. He was twenty-five years older than Mother and she was his second wife; at the time they married, he had grown