I haven’t written or published a lot of short stories—don’t always love reading them either. (I know!) They just don’t sing to me in quite the same way novels do. Sometimes I liken it to speed dating: a little frantic, a bit rushed, a guzzling instead of a sipping.
Maybe that’s it—I often read short stories sitting up, online, perhaps in a magazine, instead of lazily snuggled up in bed with a book. I actually quite miss books since I got a tablet and read mostly ebooks these days—space is at a premium since we’ve become semi-nomadic in Europe.
Really I think reading short stories is like going on a whirlwind 10-city vacation: you’ve barely gotten to know a person, place, or thing, and you’re already up and at ‘em, packing all over again and schlepping onto the next stop. It’s exhausting. Short stories are exhausting. Actually, everything is exhausting, but please enjoy this rare and quiet outing anyways.
Originally published over at courtesy of the brilliant who also produced this marvelous cover image, some of you will have read “The Crier” a year ago, but many of you are new to FORD KNOWS, so ~
Welcome! Thanks for being here.
~ MTF
Hilma was a serious baby, quiet and bright-eyed throughout her first many months of life, but she never cried. She fussed and she burbled, she smiled and gurgled, but she did not cry. Though her parents were surprised, they did not permit themselves to be overly concerned on the advice of their pediatrician, who found Hilma responsive and energetic, with a good appetite and charming dimples that appeared at the approach of Mommy or Daddy, Grammy and Gramps, other family members and strangers too, dogs, cats, and ducks at the park.
“Consider yourselves fortunate!” old Dr. Ward said. “You have a perfectly happy and healthy baby girl who just happens not to cry. Don’t complain—I know parents nearly frantic over their baby’s crying.”
In due course, Hilma learned to talk, and learned to walk. She went to school, made friends, got good grades, and only sassed her parents sometimes. When Gramps died, she was very sad, and she wrote a beautiful poem (for a seven-year-old) about how much she loved and missed him, but she did not cry. Her parents took her to Dr. Ward to see if something was wrong with her tear ducts, again, but he couldn’t find any physical reason why her tears shouldn’t flow, again, and as she was a popular child and friend to all at school, smiled and laughed when she was happy, frowned and moped when she was sad, he simply saw no compelling reason to worry.
“Nature works in mysterious ways,” he said, “she may just have been born without the biological need to produce tears. Maybe that’s a good thing—maybe there are tears enough in the world already.”
Although Hilma grew tall and straight, she was a late bloomer in that one other way. While her dad stood ponderously by, saying things like, “Well, now…” and “Gee, maybe…” her mom and Grammy discussed their situation in hushed tones despite old Dr. Ward’s assurances: some girls bloom late, there’s not a thing wrong with her, it will happen when she’s ready.
One day at home, alone with her mom watching baseball, Hilma had to pee and went to the bathroom. Seated on the porcelain throne, she looked down at her panties stretched open across her knees and was shocked to see a single bright red spot of blood there. She let out a short scream, and her mom came calling and knocking. As she showed her mother, a single tear fell down Hilma’s cheek. Her mom squealed and carried on, and afterward, she baked peanut butter cookies to celebrate. Hilma was never sure whether it was the arrival of her womanhood or the tear that made her mom so happy, though she didn’t much care because peanut butter cookies were her favorite, and her dad’s too, who came home from bowling later to a house full of laughter.
Each month thereafter, as things really began to flow, Hilma found herself crying, at first just a little, and then more—a lot more. Not at silly things, usually, or in an unseemly way; not all the time, or in every class, or when she needed to stand very quietly by as Townswoman #2 in the school play, for example. But where once, as a baby and a toddler, and then a little kid and then a pre-teen and even a teen-teen, she could be sad or grumpy but dry-eyed, as Hilma grew into maturity, got breasts, noticed boys, she also became a crier, which drew almost more attention than her other pubescent eruptions.
Hilma’s wasn’t a sobbing, blubbering sort of cry, not at all, but it was genuine and definitely very wet. Her eyes would blur, and the tears would stream, sometimes more, sometimes less, and it did make it difficult to function, somewhat, to take tests or see the blackboard, but she did the best she could. As people began to question her, she didn’t always know how to say what she was feeling—it wasn’t always sad tears; it was often very happy, very sweet, or joyous. She got used to it, for the most part, being a little off-kilter but hardly a spectacle; she told her parents it was like trying to get things done in the rain: it didn’t hurt, it was just a bit awkward.
They took her back to Dr. Ward, as what had once been wrong with her had now reversed itself completely, but he could still find nothing physically or emotionally wrong with her: tears of joy were normal. Everything that caused her tears might cause anyone tears at the right moment—yes, it was unusual that it all caused her tears all the time now, but it wasn’t manic, unbalanced, no, not inappropriate—just … different. Hilma’s mom and dad took her for ice cream and then home, and life settled into their new normal.
Songs made her cry. Commercials, too. Hilma cried at her baby cousin’s baptism, which her aunt thought sweet and somehow fitting. She cried in movies, at sunsets and sunrises, reading books, over birthday cakes, when other people cried, and won ball games. That same baptized baby, now a toddler, made her cry over its curly black hair and blue eyes. Hilma cried in the back seat of the car when they arrived at Disneyland; she cried while meeting Mickey; she cried at the fireworks, and she cried as they were leaving. She even cried when they couldn’t find the car—it was dark by then, and they had forgotten where they parked—and she cried with relief when they finally found it.
At school, the boys all teased her and called her a crybaby, but secretly, where once they all liked her, now they all loved her. One day, one boy told them all to “Shut up!” and they did, one after the other until all the boys who used to tease Hilma were watching out and scolding anyone who treated her poorly. And when she sometimes cried because someone teased one of the unpopular kids, the boys who used to tease her started to stand up for those kids, too. When Hilma, still crying, smiled and thanked them, they smiled and felt proud, and the teachers noticed and were pleased with everyone as many got better grades, and there was more laughter and getting along generally.
When Hilma went away to a sleepy little college surrounded by trees back East, she had a more difficult time (which made her cry.) She missed her mom and dad and Grammy and her friends from school whom she had known all her life and who knew about her “condition” and didn’t care. At the college where she studied Library Sciences, people were a little cold, not understanding “that chick that cries all the time”—many of them were wearing their adult hats for the first time and didn’t want to fall in with a baby who couldn’t let go of childish concerns.
But as a few people got to know her, they realized the crying didn’t have to be a deal breaker—it was just something that happened to Hilma, albeit persistently, like a cough. She made a few very good friends that she kept all her life, but even then, she realized that adults didn’t always drift together like kids might do on an empty playground. In fact, they usually drifted apart, which is exactly what she did with some of her classmates after graduation, when she cried on her diploma and smeared the ink. She moved back to the Big City where she was born, to be close to her family, though she got a little apartment of her own and a job as a librarian.
Grammy died, and Hilma cried, which made her mother very happy. Then her mother died, and Hilma cried with her father, who also died not very long after. Hilma cried again, a little sad, but cried even more with gladness that he had not lingered long in his widowerhood, lonely and depressed, but that now her mom and her dad and Grammy and Gramps were all together and would be there waiting for her, eventually.
She cried during and after sex, and that really was a problem because the one or two longtime beaus she dated felt slowly but inexorably eroded in their confidence—this was a joyous, wonderful thing, she assured them, she enjoyed it very much, but their doubts ate away at their love.
She went to Dr. Ward, who was hesitant. What to prescribe his patient who was neither depressed, anxious, manic, or deranged? There was simply nothing physically wrong with her, and even the psychiatrist with whom he played golf every Sunday, upon his referral, declared Hilma utterly charming, mature, and well-balanced. Hypnosis, they wondered aloud on the back nine? Best not to tinker with what God saw fit to give her, they decided. Dr. Ward delivered their verdict at Hilma’s next appointment, expressing sympathy at the difficulty in her relationships—love is a battlefield—and prescribing autoerotic alternatives for those times when she found herself without congenial companionship.
“Battery operated, I should think,” he suggested. “Better not take any chances with electric cords and outlets, all things considered.”
Fortified, Hilma made a point of getting out of the house, meeting people in clubs, classes, and concerts, and she had suitors but grew cautious after her former fiascos, preferring to “let life happen”—as she put it to herself and anyone who asked—and life did. As in school, Hilma was very popular again, and within the certain sort of artsy set she fell in with, her frequent tears were considered romantic and stirring, cause for admiration.
An artist named Andrew who would later become very famous but was, when he met Hilma, still young and unknown, asked if he could film her crying. She had doubts. At first, he said he wanted to put a lot of mascara and eyeliner on her and then film her in a single very long shot, perhaps ninety minutes, as the tears ran and her make-up smeared and dripped down her face—a kind of disaster film, he said, but from the perspective of the bereaved. Hilma said no. Andrew apologized if he had offended her, but she assured him she was not offended, only concerned it would not be tasteful.
Eventually, he agreed to film her without make-up, maybe just a little powder on her forehead and nose—Hilma had grown into a pretty woman, and the camera loved her—and in the end, she sat for three and a half hours, and cried and cried as behind the camera they showed her pictures of puppies and kittens, stone angels in cemeteries, poignant scenes in old movies; they read last letters of dead soldiers to their loves, especially sentimental greeting cards, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson.
The Crier was an arthouse hit despite its length and quiet dignity, and though Hilma enjoyed a small amount of attention at the time, it was Andrew who made a name for himself soon thereafter. What connections her participation in that film afforded Hilma led to a long run as a tear-prompter for an actress well-known for her voluptuous figure and even more voluptuous performances of weeping, who needed a little help getting going for her tearful scenes. She insisted everyone call her “Miss White” except for Hilma, who became a refuge and confidante as, over the years, Miss White’s roles became less frequent and less important.
“Shall we have a good cry?” she would call Hilma to propose, well into her dotage, and Hilma would arrive at her mansion through the front door to the great relief of Miss White and her maid, who was rather too busy for that sort of thing, and too dour.
“Tear Porn” became a thing for a while during that time, and there were many offers from less obscure but somewhat seedy filmmakers who promised Hilma good money and a kind of fame. Apparently, all of their actors were so obviously not really moved on-screen that they hoped she might reconsider her firm refusals. She received far too many follow-up pleas and crank calls asking her to cry over the phone until she was forced to unlist her number. Happily, the fad died down.
Meanwhile, despite the occasional sabbaticals to Hollywood, Hilma worked at the Big City University Library, where she spent most of her time in the archives conserving, cataloging, and shelving books very few people except PhD students and Professors Emeritus ever read. These were all kept in a sprawling underground complex beneath the BCU Library proper, windowless and silent, where Hilma could work in peace without the disruptive force of other people merely going about their business upstairs, whose unfortunate hair days, ink-stained shirt pockets, frantic deadlines, and adult acne often reduced her to tears on the rare occasions when the regular librarians were sick or on vacation and she was called up from the stacks to fill in.
Later, after over forty years of quiet service, Hilma retired, much loved if slightly pale, and the entire library staff, many students, professors, administrators, alumni, and chance passersby gathered at the long, long research tables in the main hall for her going away party, where nobody shushed anybody (just the once) and everyone was happy, and they all ate cake, and cried.
When Hilma began to have hot flashes and irregular periods, the tears really began to flow, though, by this time, she was mostly used to it. She did make an appointment with Dr. Ward to check in on The Change, but he clucked and smiled and mentioned the many women who welcomed this new chapter in their lives.
“And that’s that,” he said, “done and done, nothing wrong with it,” and Hilma cried because she was relieved to be rid of all that monthly hubbub.
After her retirement, Hilma decided to see a little bit of the world, and just to make things easier, she did so by boat and would lean over the railing when she needed to and let her tears fall into the sea. On one such voyage, embarking from Tokyo directly after the Cherry Blossom Festival (which was so beautiful it really made her cry,) a very funny lady comedian performed for the passengers, and though she never could remember any of the jokes, the sight of the elegant woman in a ballgown falling to the stage and addressing her audience in a heap made Hilma scream with laughter, which made everyone else howl—her laughter was as contagious as her tears.
She laughed so hard she cried, of course, and so that became a thing too, cry-laughing, because it inspired a Japanese gentleman, with whom she had a passionate and sopping wet affair on the cruise, to draw a little doodle on a cocktail napkin of a very round face, laughing and crying, which inspired many other expressive caricatures, and later, when everybody started using these doodles to add some pop to their digital messages, nobody ever knew it was Hilma who got that ball rolling.
As the years wended, Hilma became more and more involved in her local church—not a conservative sect (Mom and Dad hadn’t been religious) but one of those universal, inclusive churches with lesbian and gay pastors whose God was a technicolor non-binary diva with a voice as vast as the universe, and who wore soft, shimmering robes big enough to cover everyone in their glory. Hilma would bake peanut butter cookies from Mom’s recipe every Sunday, and she would sit in the back row for the sermons because she didn’t want to disturb anyone with her crying, which was more and more now, so open to witnessing the great heights of happiness and the deep depths of sadness in the world had her heart become.
But really, nobody was complaining about that crying woman in the back row, and pretty soon, after service, people gathered all around her in the pews to sit for a spell and to chat about all the beautiful things and some of the ugly, too. Sometimes they would just sit in silence, and as Hilma’s tears flowed, some of the others learned to cry too, and this became such a beloved tradition after a few years that the whole congregation—and by this time, the whole neighborhood, and a good portion of Big City as well—put up some money to build a beautiful visiting chapel beside the church, with walls that opened all the way to let in the air and the light, and people could come and sit with Hilma as long as they liked, arrayed all around her and spilling out onto the lawns on blankets and cushions in fine weather, and on folding chairs under pavilions when it was wet.
Sometimes they sang, sometimes they just talked—they told Hilma all about their troubles and their triumphs—and though Hilma, as she got older, preferred just to listen, their stories filled her with such joy and grief both, she always cried, and like Miss White before them, “having a good cry with Hilma” became another whole thing.
While she was still living, people came from far and wide to meet Hilma and sit and cry with her, some of them very important persons with titles, both official and honorary, and over her remaining years, she was often asked to travel and speak and tell her story, but really, she would say, there wasn’t much to tell—she had had a very ordinary life; she had just been blessed, she came to realize, with the ability to feel, really feel, her own and others’ delights and troubles in a rather wet and wonderful way. Hilma always refused these invitations but was always forgiven because sitting down for a good cry with Hilma was a healing balm for princes and paupers alike.
Before the end, Hilma made one exception. She received an invitation to come to a fateful joint meeting of the United Nations and the WHO—during a particularly nasty outbreak of a fever no one could explain and which claimed many lives—and she, at the last, agreed to visit this august assembly, with one condition: she would not speak, she would only sit, and she asked that everyone else there also sit quietly, and if they chose to cry with her, they could, though they didn’t have to. Her tears were her message, the only message she would give, and so that is what they all did at the historic summit, Hilma’s only official public appearance ever. After that moment, it did seem to everyone as though the talk was gentler, the borders softer, fortunes more generously shared, and people more willing to listen and less interested in arguing, which was considered a very good thing indeed.
Back home, as Hilma’s health began to fade and she could no longer make her way to the chapel every day, they called old Dr. Ward and asked what could be done.
“She’s old,” he said, “she’s worn out and a little dehydrated, but otherwise, there’s really nothing wrong with her—she’s had a full life, and a woman her age should be slowing down.”
She continued to attend service on Sundays for a time but could not sit long afterward or in the chapel as she had, but people came anyway, talking, laughing, and crying together, though she stayed at home more and more.
Hilma loved to have their letters read to her in bed every day, until that one day, and that one letter from a little boy who had written to say how happy he was to have finally received a puppy for his birthday, when Hilma closed her tearful eyes, and with a joyful smile on her lips, breathed her last breath.
For seven times seven days after she died, Hilma’s body continued to cry, though it did not decay or smell bad or do any of the yucky things a corpse normally would, and they called in old Dr. Ward one final time, just in case, well … well, they didn’t really know why, but he said he was happy to come and take a look.
At her chapel, where they had moved her after the funeral and in which a beautifully carved marble tomb had been installed, her casket remained open, and Hilma lay in state, crying. Dr. Ward checked her pulse (none), took her temperature (stone cold), and even held a mirror up to her lips (nothing.)
For the first time in all the long years of Hilma’s life and now death, Dr. Ward scratched his head.
“Well, this is strange but not exactly what I would call alarming,” he said. “Keep an eye on her. Let me know if anything changes.”
On the forty-ninth day, after people far and wide and from all over the world had their chance to stop by and have a good cry, Hilma stopped crying. They called Dr. Ward, who gave his blessing, and they finally sealed up her casket. She was interred in the beautifully carved marble tomb in her special chapel beside the church, to which people continued to flock with much reverence and tears for many, many peaceful years afterward.
This is such a touching and quiet parable, Troy. I’m not sure how I missed it the first time around. I want more of Hilma. I think the world needs more Hilmas right now. I love how Dr. Ward is ageless and constant. I love the image of her tears falling into the sea from the back of the ship. Bravo!
"On the forty-ninth day..." I like what you did there. Everything is indeed exhausting, my dear; but not this. This is wonderful 💜