The Animators

by Kayla Rae Whitaker

“Finding stuff by accident,” she said. “That’s how most people get started,

Something wonderful has happened, and we have enough people in our lives who are made joyful by our success to fill a room.

hair on my snatch goes gray

Nope

prison morgue is

If she hadn't seen her in years how can she id her?

Greaph,

Ha! Pun

Mainstream America has a big fear of the rural. If this story isn’t rural, then it definitely takes place at the margins of the suburban.

Disagree

Lite-Brite,

Loved lite bright probably still would

you’re lucky, what you’ve made will be better than anything your flimsy imagination could have put together.

Inspiring

I have never been more aware of my body than in this period of weakness.

Wow

But I am our finisher. I make us Finish Shit.

“You’re so brilliant, your brain exploded, superstar.

continues, it would be nice if we were defined, ultimately, by the people and places we loved. Good things. But at the end of the day, there’s the reality that we’re not. Does the good stuff really have the weight that the weird stuff does? What makes the deeper imprint—all the ridges and gathers—on who we are? Do we have a choice?

isolation was defining. It was not only how I thought of myself but how others thought of me as well.

My parents liked my siblings more, a suspicion confirmed by nicknames, tones of voice. They understood my sister and brother. I baffled them.

Maybe I just repel people.”

Inside, she has fled. The ability of anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of something violent to grasp the details

It is, for the desperate, the only chance to leave what happened with the part of yourself that is still yours.

discorporate.

“Everybody hurts—sometimes.”

REM

guilt is a sleeping giant,

Missus Kisses.”

solipsism.

It’s her practice to take in what you tell her rapidly, then give a response that makes you wish you hadn’t told her anything in the first place.

sentimentality. “I been prayin over it, and I made lots of mistakes. I know that now. Specially with you, and you turned out so good.”

I want to be able to feel this way all the time. To be able to laugh about the things that have happened to me, baggage and all, light and dark.

I have always assumed that my leaving is the reason my family doesn’t like me, but it could be the other way around. It’s a circular problem, a snake with its tail in its mouth.

cows and Christians

my father didn’t say anything, but reached out and grabbed my head, something between an embrace and a noogie. This, coming from the man who typically responded to anything I said with a creased brow and some irritated head-shaking, who once, when my parents refused to send me to a gifted-and-talented program at Duke on the argument that it was too far away, turned

“is a bucket of sand crabs. One tries to climb out, the others’ll reach up and pull him back down.

where a man will hit a woman in public just as easily as he’ll open the door for her. And if that woman is dressed like a man down here, he could do worse, and get a pass for it.

Family genetics mean spreading out is inevitable; we are an insistently lardy people.

instead of a divorcée, she became a widow.

It’s a weird sensation, knowing your family believes the worst of you. It makes you want to disappear a little.

“Anything that makes you in that way, anything that makes you hurt and hungry in that way, is worth investigating. No matter how disgusting the source.”

“I did not deceive you.”

Yes she did

“November Rain” is playing in the bar. Fuckin love this song, man, she always said. It’s sadness porn. Skanky, melodramatic sadness porn.

soon the whole room is in a trance, singing. Fart sings, Donnie sings, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, Brecky sings

Tears

Christ

Blah

Draw me.”

You people dance shamelessly with the devil.” She appears to give this a think. “You’re right,” she says finally. “Or you ain’t wrong. Let’s say.”

less I could do, the more I wanted. Wanted things I couldn’t have and I wanted things

Had a mallard bite her hand once in a petting zoo in Jacksonville and forever after fostered a hatred of ducks—always ordered it off the menu out of retribution.

go back to work, mostly because I’m boring myself shitless.

This is exorcism sketching: making a story so you can kill it and bury it. She was making this in order to put something to rest for herself.

“Sometimes I think I don’t see enough of you,” she says. “And then other times I think it’s just enough.”

He’s worked PR long enough to have adapted aspects of his job as primary mode of operation.

blabbity bloo,

Love this phrasing