Dianne McKnight
Television
I
One summer when she was a girl she spent nights lying on her bed in
the dark looking out her window to her neighbor's house, watching their
television, the first on her block. Voices and music drifted over the
hedge of yellow roses that separated the yards.
If the shades on her neighbor's windows were up she saw a box filled
with shadows. But she liked watching even more if the shades were
pulled. Nothing like the ordinary light from lamps, the light behind the
shades from the television was alive, rising and falling, filling up,
emptying out, light and dark and light again. She imagined floating up
to the ceiling on pale silver water, floating back down. She dreamed of
growing up, of changes. When the music was beautiful she dreamed of true
love.
Girls at school talked about their wedding nights like they were just
around the corner instead of years away. Teresa, a sixth grader, wanted
to wear a white negligee over a push up bra. But she said she would wear
pearls.
II
In high school she met her first boyfriend. It happened just like
she'd hoped: a nice, good-looking boy asked her out. On Friday nights
that first fall they'd ride around after football games looking for a
place to park, the song "Last Date" on the radio. But the first time
they kissed, her first and his too, they sat on the couch in front of
the television at her house. He put his arm around her and drew her
near. His eyes were closed when his mouth bumped into hers, late night
tv in the background, the sound of wild laughter. His lips moved as if
they shaped faltering words and hers made words back, words with no
sounds, but she heard the orchestra, felt the light change.
III
In college on a starry December night she walked to the student union
to see the Vietnam draft lottery on tv. She took a seat in the back of
the room. In the light from rows of overhead fluorescents, the
television looked weak, like it would never be up to the task at hand.
But when an old man drew the first number someone turned off the
overheads and the television lit up full strength, beamed its hardest
industrial grey. The room was jammed with students and they sat there in
light like cement, heads black against it, breathing, changing breath.
Dianne McKnight holds BA and MA degrees in English, and an MFA in
Writing from Vermont College. She has published in various literary
magazines including River City Review; recent flash fiction and
nonfiction appears in Doorknobs and BodyPaint, Tattoo Highway,
riverbabble, flashquake, and In Posse Review. She
won the 2003 Bloomsday Prize and the Hayward Faultline Prize, and was a
finalist in recent Glimmer Train and Tattoo Highway
contests.
