Total immersion is one thing. Going under quite another.

Sex changes everything—Bloody Kansas, Missouri's compromise, the rate of exchange.

We escaped our mothers' fate, the Nembutal and Crisco, Miltown and rocket bras.

Their Meriwether a Miss America who died young, big hair and one sitcom to her name.

Saint of Shenanigans

On the lip of dark ages, a canker, a queen of deceit, her felicity of tongue unfathomable to legions weary of empire.

Fidgety quick, she worries a selvage into the thunderous needle's path, hair full of pins and thread, shirtwaist starched and blinding white for modesty's sake.

Mouth that won't quit—the sass of that girl! Barbarians, the lot of them, brothers in their cups, mother shrieking like a banshee over her beads.

Ah Brigid, spare us, we pray ye, the Know-nothings, their nativist spleen. Abide, sweet saint of spit and fire, and brace my fierce, fierce heart.

My Old Man

Singing Volare right into my eyes, dancing with me. Well, dancing me: I only knew the Twist. Taught me lead and follow; taught me dip and twirl and Lindy hop to tunes by the Russ David Orchestra. Like we were dates. Like all the other fathers and daughters at the dinner dance—men in their daytime suits, girls in princess heels, our fourteen-year-old earlobes pinched by our mothers' earrings. Air in the Starlite ballroom an ether of VO-5 and cigar smoke, Aqua Velva and beef au jus.

A man who always wept for Nat King Cole, sometimes Vic Damone or Mario Lanza. Who snapped his fingers like a hep cat to Louis Prima and Keeley Smith and begrudged TV comedians their shiny sports coats and wise cracks. Told me B-girls flirted with him at the Marlboro Lanes lounge and that he'd smoked weed with his buddies at Mizzou before the war but if he ever caught wind of me touching that crap he'd turn me in.

Bought me my first legal drink—A Rusty Nail at the Europa—then tucked into a booth with a single malt to watch me wrangle free from the advances of a Chivas rep who thought I was alone. Leaving, I grabbed the keys and, from the driver's seat, unlocked the passenger door for him, my weepy dad, spilling yet again, sobbing into his sleeve that my mother would not have been so kind.

Where We Were Headed

I had a hat that fit so well I knew I was blessed, hugging my skull like it was the shape of life itself. My bangs showed and it didn't itch and the ties were loose enough to tuck under my chin without strangling me. I would admire the way the hat framed my face in the little mirror of the pay scale—Your Accurate Weight in Seconds!—as Dad talked the McKesson rep down from his price on a case of Bufferin, winking over the sample case as a signal to unbutton my coat and wait. To flip through Little Dot comics and grab fistfuls of redskins from the hot nut case and smear Revlon's Roses in the Snow on the back of my hand and dab my wrist with Straw Hat and Tabu and English Leather and Emeraude and Woodhue and Wind Song and Blue Grass and Canoe and Tigress and Old Spice until he said Time to go, kiddo and I followed him, that man with all the keys, out the door as though we were both destined for happiness.

Charlene Manor, 5 a.m.

1. Snippet of sleep crushed by a thud. Nurse bashing tablets. Gritty topping of blood thinner for 17-B's applesauce, her (for we are mostly women) favorite. Wagon train wheeling past our door, stragglers to the breakfast corral. Marie, the elastic of her hairnet a monstrous seam over her brow, waiting for them, six bibs in one fist, six spoons in the other.

2. Kareena hovers like a new moon as she prepares to lift me, the heaviest part of me, off the metal pan. Seventeen, a lifetime of urine and slop trays before her, cradling my new hip in her hands, the foot-long incision a weak smile as our eyes meet. Mutual need, insufferable wages, Good Morning America on the tube.

3. Malva comes for blood, her kit an orange tackle box. Plumps my vein and regales the room with a tale of her greatest find, a kaleidoscope signed by Julio Iglesias—Merry Christmas To My Dear Friend Andy Williams—from the annual fan-club yard sale in Branson, Missouri. A wink, the clink of two warm vials and she's done, cooing, Nap time, hon, as she snaps a latex glove from hand to biohazard bin in one crisp motion.

 Holly

 Iglesias