New Frontier of Minimalism

Yet under the humor is the truth that domestication is often at the heart of marriage, a domestication that miniaturizes the wife, keeping her in a permanent state of girlhood, hanging gauzy curtains and Christmas lights to dress up the house that cages her, disguising it as something fun. In “A Garibaldi Tale,” the narrator invokes language rather than lights to cope with the role society’s assigned her. Partially deaf with webbed toes, labeled “simple,” “the child with few concerns,” she is blended into the persona of her deaf, web-toed aunt, and the two of them are referred to collectively as “Auntie and Auntie.” Left out of the fishing and working life at the docks, the girl acts out narratives of femininity in rhymes she pens herself. After her sister overhears her professing her love about a boy who sells cheese, she realizes that she doesn’t love the boy but rather the sound of words about him. She has been taught to desire this construction of language, which posits a girl yearning after a boy. When another boy, “a nicer boy,” finds her in a shed and they have sex, readers realize how misleading this narrative is. Bernheimer writes, “I laid down the burlap sack and kissed him. Then some other things happened. Though the things were unfamiliar they caused no harm.” The nonchalance used to describe her first sexual experience is disorienting. That the girl describes herself as a voiceless fish at the end of the story speaks volumes. And to extend the metaphor just a bit further, take the title, “Garibaldi,” the girl’s town, which takes its name from a type of fish whose male members boldly attack anything that comes near the female or her eggs. In Horse, Flower, Bird, Bernheimer’s fourth book, femininity is portrayed as a series of traumas shaped by language. Despite its playful packaging, this book recalls the grim cautionary messages of old-world fairy tales. Bernheimer’s message? “‘[B]e careful what you read.’”