Walking the Iowa River with My Grandmother after the Floods by Grace Morse
With her flash nonfiction essay, “Walking the Iowa River with My Grandmother after the Floods,” Grace Morse attempts to bridge the space between the living and the dead. Morse describes a walk through City Park in Iowa City, where she has relocated for graduate school. As she walks, she converses with her grandmother, who passed away years before. “Since January of 2021,” Morse writes, “I’ve begun the process of burying your words inside of me, all their trauma and treasure.”
Morse moves through the park and imagines the things her grandmother would have commented on: her appearance, her safety as she walks alone, her fear of geese, the way the English-Philosophy Building resembles the Orleans Parish Prison. Her grandmother’s characterization is woven into both the setting and the essay’s sense of forward momentum. “Conversation becomes a cartographical tool to chart the literal and metaphorical space of our relationship,” Morse writes in her author’s note. “In this essay, I’m vulnerable about who I am becoming and the parts of myself I’m newly discovering or previously hid from her.” Morse is not simply remembering her grandmother—her grandmother helps shape the way she perceives the world around her, a world in which she finds herself an outsider, a Black Southerner from Louisiana in a primarily white town in Iowa. The decision to deliver the essay through one-sided dialogue also allows Morse opportunities to vary the pace, quickening the replies to speed up the walk and extending the description between replies to slow it down. This decision creates a dynamic reading experience, one that movingly depicts the way our day-to-day lives are shaped by the memories of those we have lost. —CRAFT
I told you it wouldn’t take long to get to the river. No, I don’t come here alone at night. Yes, I do come here when night is impatiently waiting to arrive, streaking the sky with pink and cobalt and butter yellow in premonition. I fly out the door and down my apartment building’s steps. The street hums with cars and I dash between them. I’m sorry that worries you. No, Iowa City proper is not some sprawling metropolitan area. Two years ago, the government or Google or both stated that the population hovered around 70,000 people. No, Iowa City is not known for gang violence that I’m aware of. Yes, the town is often filled with men who aren’t our shade who do the terrible things you’ve always known them capable of doing. Yes, Campus Safety did send an alert about a violent sexual crime that happened in the late-night hours. Yes, I know where I live and whom I live next to. I don’t mean to move too fast. My body knows the way and is comfortable in the choreography of the routine, that’s all. My nerves set me alight and I’m drawn here like a gnat to sugar water. Yes, the walking helps. So do my daily fifty milligrams of sertraline.
The Hancher Auditorium is where I go to see all the nice performances I tell you about. Yes, my former college roommate’s mom takes me here. She drives us and buys the tickets. Right, it would not be very ladylike of me to attend a professional performance with a glossy forehead and a body dripping with sweat. My salty, vulnerable body would be smelly and distracting; you’ve said this before. Since January of 2021, I’ve begun the process of burying your words inside of me, all their trauma and treasure. You know, it was very generous of you to choose cremation. Thank you for not making me bury you.
There is a party at the auditorium tonight. The new executive director, Andre Perry, is passionate about cultivating a creative community that is accessible to Iowa students. Yes, it is nice how the food trucks and parked cars sparkle like diamonds under the auditorium lights. The new director is Black, and he’s doing great things for the community. I like the sound of his name, the open mouth of it all, the way it avoids too many labiodental articulations. No, we don’t need to stop; there’s more up ahead.
I have never, ever tried to swim in this water. You remember my failed swimming lessons at the community center, and then the ones at the private pool. I know this water would consume me whole. Yes, Iowa is like Louisiana in the way it struggles with pollution. No, I don’t know much about nitrate toxicity or E. coli or MRSA, but research suggests that they severely impact the water, which means they severely impact Iowans. But nobody I’ve ever met here believes me to be an Iowan. They clock something in my accent—yes, the people here do believe me to have an accent; ask the barefoot lady in the pink athletic set approaching us and she’ll probably confirm it; the undersides of her feet are probably burning and black-brown and pierced with sediment, but that’s not our business—or they are perceptive to something else entirely. Yes, it is clever that there are buildings like the Beckwith Boathouse and the Theatre Arts Building that frame this walkway. The trees hang heavy as they spill onto the path. Yes, like our people used to. Take my hand. I’ll come around to the other side. Yes, there are beautiful birds here. Geese waddle up and down this part of town. I fear them. Yes, I know that sends you into a laughter that buckles your knees. I brace myself to catch you and wipe at your tears. I’m stuck in a memory. I know you no longer feel pain, or rather, that there is no pain for you to feel. But please hold on because we are about to approach elevation. Here, to your right: this is where I teach and cry and sometimes write. The English-Philosophy Building does resemble the Orleans Parish Prison but yes, this building survived Iowa’s flood of 2008. No, condemning something as ugly is not the same as killing it. On the top floor, there is a room stuffed with desks and old computers. That is my office. I feel the radiation of your pride and it casts a glow on everything that I do here.
I know the dark is finding us now. I am not always happy, but happiness always finds me. No, I am not dating anyone. No, you would never have predicted that I’d go through so many heartbreaks, most of them women. Yes, the sky is parting and something gold electrifies the outlines of the clouds above us. I get to witness this most nights. I know it’s time for you to go. I’ll keep holding your hand. Yes, it took me a while to find my way here. The river is as faithful as it has ever been as I continue to find myself in places that have been ravaged and reborn through deluge. No, I don’t believe in God the way you do. Yes, I will continue to try and believe in anything that keeps you here with me. Yes, I will be careful of cars, though it’s unlikely any will find me on this trail. Yes, if anything bad happens I will scream and thrash and fight. I will do what I did two years ago when I first got the call about you. This white town is starting to look black, so it is time for me to start walking now. Yes, we should do this more often. I have so much to say now that death has eroded the secrets between us.
GRACE MORSE is a multilingual memoirist/New Orleanian/Sagittarian currently getting her MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She loves to dance, laugh, and fall in love with new books she finds in the Little Free Libraries around town. She was shortlisted for the 2023 CRAFT Flash Prose Prize. Find her on Instagram @gracemorrr.
Featured image by Bill Benson, courtesy of Unsplash.
