The kids that come after my generation will probably get so fed up they’ll revolt. They’ll be much tougher than we are. I bet by the time they’re eleven or so, they’ll just slash the shit out of us. Kids’ll eat their folks, and with their mouths full they’ll parrot their parents talking about real meat. I’m not saying it serves them right, just that if you’re honest about what people are like, it’s understandable. People who don’t know how to keep their mouths shut always get fucked with.
Skulking west down all the roads from Portsmouth Harbor, up to the town limit, back down around the green, single-click stubby dead-end streets and halting culs-de-sac. My eyes are sore. I look away from the screen for a few minutes, hold up my finger and alternate my gaze between it and the wall beyond, roll my eyeballs under the lids ten times in each direction. Blink hard. I can’t believe I’m still here.
This is no good. Google Earth’s imagery runs on a delay, so there’s every chance I’m looking too far back in time and they’re not there yet. I need to look in real time. Change tack, browser window, search the networked cameras nearby. Hardly anyone bothers to change from the factory default passwords, and they’re all online. You don’t even need to go through the dark web. A few clicks and you’re in. I start at the top of the list and work my way down.
In the low sun, a man’s face glows green through the cheap security camera, staring into space like an idiot while he fills his gas tank, kids strapped down in the back seat, each on their own Nintendo DS. He pays at the pump while another guy inside buys a quart of something (windshield-wiper fluid or motor oil maybe) and palms a pack of gum at the checkout. Most people who steal don’t really need to, and people who don’t need to steal never get caught. A lady in a fur coat fills up a shopping cart in one of those warehouse-size liquor stores. The parking lot camera shows her tipping the kid who had been stocking the shelves a few minutes earlier for loading her bags into a car with out-of-state plates.
Weird thoughts keep popping into my head, so fast I can’t keep track of them or try to figure out what they mean. I go out through the kitchen door onto what’s left of the backyard and turn away from the water, shiny and black like an oil slick without the rainbow. I lie on my back and look at the show-off spread of clouds. I count the stars in a slow, steady rhythm. My breathing falls in line with my counting, and I go on like this until it’s too beautiful and the number’s too big for me to be able to think anything in particular.
Tonight’s a bit of a nothing moon. Not a half or a sliver. Not full or new, not really, really big or orange-tinted. There are no wicked-witch clouds shuffling across it. It’s just a moon that was full a few days ago. The black water slaps its side against the cliffs. I give my mind over to the waves that never tire of the same old dance moves. The cliff and the ocean, a mosh pit of two.
When my skin cools off and goose bumps start to form under the dried sweat I head back inside. The paper’s still open on the couch. Dead black men, white-collar criminals getting off with a fine, a drone attack incinerates a wedding, an op-ed piece declaring an end to the age of “isms.” Goodbye racism, sexism, feminism; the world is all grown up and sooo over it! I close the newspaper and flip through the channels until I find a gentle documentary about religious cults in Japan, settle in, tuck my feet under my legs, and pull the blanket off the back of the couch over my shoulders, more for comfort than warmth.
Just then there’s a jolt, hard like repo men kicking down the door. I sit up straight and look around, but no one’s there. Everything is still for another second but after that moment it starts again and I realize that it’s me, my body shunting with the shock of the noise coming from the cliff outside. The sea is trying to break me. It got sick of slapping and it’s punching now, hurling its side against the cliff, pulling back to get its breath before banging, pounding its body, slinging slimy arms up the cliff, trying to pull my house down.
This is one of those moments when you can feel your eyelashes brushing your cheeks and you feel so alone you don’t know what to do. At first you can’t even scream, but you try again and scream and scream out at the tide pushing against your life and it doesn’t give a shit about the fact that you’re alone and no one’s coming back to save you. You’re alone with your voice and the noise and the nothing, nothing but the terrible rest of your life, laying out to mock and taunt you, and there’s no one to help.
The monster roars at me; there’s nothing in the air but the noise. It’s like thunder shouting in my ear, rock and rubble smashing into each other and crashing into the sea below. My muscles grip my bones. This could be it, my house falling down, finally, once and for all. I grip the blanket, force my eyes closed, and wait, listening to the shout and smash of the land falling.
Then nothing for a long time except the gulls and the wind and the waves.
I consider going to the window to see how much land I’ve lost this time. It’s hard to tell if what keeps me inside is fear or resignation, but I guess it doesn’t matter. If my house falls down tonight I’ll be tucked into my bed when it happens. The guest bed, I mean.
On my way up, something catches my eye from the top of the stairs. A crack all the way down the far wall of the house, from the ceiling to the foundation. It splits a few feet above the floor. It looks like a huge man, standing angry, in my house. He’s the slice that lets air through in a sharp, pernicious whistle. Already, mosquitoes are invading through his belly and between his legs. And it’s clear he’s going to grow.
They have to come tomorrow. I can’t stay here.
Chapter Six
Morning tiptoed in while I was sitting up in bed, looking down at the live-streamed world. People carry their shoes along their walks of shame, sometimes stopping to retch in a trash can or the gutter; video baby monitors catch weary parents impatiently scooping crying children from behind the bars of their cribs, trying and failing to bounce them into another hour of sleep; the milk in someone’s fridge expired yesterday; rats scurry and scratch and fuck in some kind of warehouse.
The island coos, playing innocent. Gentle swells lap the shore; diffused light drifts through the window. I listen, hard, until I make my ears tickle with the strain. But no matter how hard I listen, the phone still doesn’t ring. The only thing I can hear is my stomach rumbling. Acid fumes rise up and bathe the back of my throat. I finished my pie yesterday and didn’t bother with dinner after Jason left. I’m going to have to make something. And I know exactly what. The perfection and sadness of it cancel each other out and I feel pretty neutral as I abandon my laptop, roll over onto the floor, and crawl to the stairs, roll down them in a tumbly ball, and walk into the kitchen. The fall hurts just enough.
Eggs out of the fridge to come up to room temperature, butter in a large bowl over the vents at the back of the stove, oven preheated to 350 degrees, flour sifted with a teaspoon of baking powder per cup. One cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, four eggs.
It was a slave recipe that came down from my great-grandmother. My mom said that their recipes had to be simple because they weren’t allowed to learn to read. Not really an issue with cooking. Everybody can do that. Baking is all proportions and reactions and ratios. My mom always said that people who can’t cook are never really smart, never real adults. It was years before I gave this enough thought to realize that she was probably completely wrong about this. There’s probably no relationship between intelligence and cooking either way. She was wrong about lots of things, but I was only six or something and I didn’t know that then. Parents aren’t really that old. They don’t really know anything yet.
When my finger pokes easily into the butter I add the sugar and beat it until the mixture is pale lemon yellow and bubbly. Lick the beaters and then turn the mixer back on to add the eggs one by one. Fold in the flour, gently at first until I get bored and dump the rest in. “One third at a time. Don’t get impatient with it. You’ll get a sad streak.” That’s what my mother would say.
Into the
oven until you can smell it from the living room. Tiptoe, never peek. She forced me to develop a sense for it, to know, just know. I always meant to time it but never remembered. When I open the oven the top has a lightning bolt crack and bounces back when I press it. While it cools, I beat a pound of butter with a pound of confectioners’ sugar and a tablespoon of vanilla. I make myself wait—learn to be patient—a whole hour, a little more than an hour, before I frost my cake. In the little utility room behind the kitchen there are some sad little candles in the bottom of one of Lolly’s drawers, mostly broken or half burnt, but there’s a blue one that’s still in pretty good shape, so I take it out, stick it in the middle, and light it. But I don’t sing to myself and blow it out or anything stupid like that. I just watch it burn down. It doesn’t take that long. I take out a knife and cut myself a slice. Perfect crumb. So much for your compulsive folding, Mother. Only I don’t feel like eating anymore, so I slot the slice back into its place, take it outside, plate and all, and throw it off the stupid cliff.
Everyone was born. Who gives a shit.
Chapter Seven
After last night’s landslip the backyard’s taken on a half-moon shape as if the sea took an actual bite out of it. Almost noon and the heat is like a boxer, heavy but fast and violent in the air.
There’s one particular rock close to the edge—flat and broad, barely visible above the line of the grass—just before the ground goes hollow, where it’s really just an overbite with everything underneath already gone. When I squint I can see the heat blurring just above its surface. There might not be enough cliff underneath to support my weight, but I’m drawn to it. I crawl, super low to the ground, more like a snake than a baby, and pile my body on. I relax against the searing stone. It’s the perfect size, practically made for me. As I slide out of my T-shirt and underwear, the sun is so hot my skin turns to scales and my blood burns and my bones toast. The light and heat penetrate the density of my hair and sting my scalp and summon up itchy, prickling sweat. I let the heat in under my arms and between my toes. I open my pussy and let the light get as far inside me as it can reach. It’s noon up my nose and in my lungs and the ocean can have me if it wants me. Everything can end if it ends like this.
When I can’t stand the burning any longer, I go over to the honeysuckle clinging to the front of the house, piggybacked on the five-finger ivy. I pick a flower, pull out the stamen, and let the honey drop on my tongue. A really stupid thought pops into my head: flowers taste better than boys. I’m such an idiot, but for once that thought doesn’t get me down. It’s so hot. My skin tingles hard, like a violin string, like the surface of a drum. There must be music coming off of me. Maybe I can just stay here forever. It might not be that long.
I think I hear the phone ring, and I freeze, ready to sprint inside, but it’s just one of those noises my brain makes.
I settle back onto the rock and stare out at the ocean. It’s not so bad right now.
I have a hard time thinking about a wave. Like, a single wave. I see them as more a they than an it. They’re beasts, a school of them. A swarm. They move with one brain for a common purpose, making more waves.
The tide’s gone in, gentle, orderly, diligent. The waves are Japanese. Their shape is just how they look in prints and on plates; they were definitely invented overseas. The perfection in the way they roll, many in a single unit. Orderly as time, the back pushing its way over to the front. Life went and got perfect, literally a couple of minutes ago, and maybe it’ll stay like this for a while, maybe all day even, but I’ve never been as lucky as that.
* * *
It’s uphill most of the way west to the garden. I have a pair of Lolly’s khaki shorts strapped on with a patent leather belt, which, thankfully, my T-shirt hides. Maybe I get too caught up in thinking about times I put my foot in my mouth or about the Swans who are shitty to me. I’m probably being too sensitive. Most of them don’t mind me being here too much; being a little cold to me is just part of it. They know I’m a valuable object in the Bad Place: my energy, my health, my body and face. I have a lifetime ahead of me of buying shit made by slaves and then shipped around the world to be bought by wage slaves. When the army recruiters and traffickers and groomers do their rounds, I’m the one they’re looking for. Everything to envy and everything to pity about me, these are the things people worship in the Bad Place. I’d reject it too if I was old enough. Instead of taking it personally, I might as well put my difference to good use.
The garden sits on a little plateau, about the size of a decent city playground. There’s a greenhouse at the end banged together from materials scavenged from a few ruins around the Shoals. A few yards beyond that are the solar panel and the pump attached to it that brings in seawater and filters out the salt. An army-green rain barrel punctuates the end of each row of raised beds, all heaving with leaves and vines and flowers.
To my left, at the inland side of the garden, the three blond Swans sit at a table they’ve set up in the shade of a handful of blossoming apple trees. As I approach, I notice their knees are red or smudged with dirt, their faces pink and fixed on fans of playing cards. Their elegant bones pick and rearrange their cards like tidy bouquets.
Grace extends an arm, long and freckled in a yellow sleeveless top, to put down a card. “My zucchinis are unstoppable this year.”
“You deserve a good year,” Ruth says, taking up three cards from the table, “after last year’s massacre.”
Grace flutters her hand of cards in Agata’s direction. “It’s the coffee grounds. Fantastic tip. I mean, they just won’t stop. Joanna thinks I’m unloading so many zucchinis on her as some kind of prurient joke!”
Grace and Joanna are kind of paired in the unwritten buddy system of food production on the island. There are few enough of them that no one has to keep track. Anyone who doesn’t work in the garden has to get their vegetables from someone who does. This means the Wrinklies who can’t will have veggies hand delivered fresh from the garden, almost every day in the summer, and anyone who’s busy with other projects or just can’t be bothered has to hand over cash in Rose’s shop. Rose supposedly calculates the market rate according to how well each crop is doing, but I think she mostly goes by what she knows everyone can afford to pay. It’s different with me because I don’t have the same claim to the land that they do. I didn’t have to do any of the initial heavy work getting it set up, or pay for the desalination system or build the greenhouse. So I pitch in, and Rose charges me next to nothing in the shop, which is a real lifesaver.
Agata plays two cards. “I swear it’s the best thing for keeping slugs away. You know”—she leans her strawberry head toward the others conspiratorially—“this woman told me about using coffee grounds in compost when I was working my community garden project in Detroit. This poor thing, prostitute on crack or meth or God knows what, seven children running around. Well, she knew absolutely all the tricks. Greenest thumbs I’ve ever seen.”
They all make noises like they’re so impressed that an idiot junkie actually knew something. It’s weird how people make fun of drug addicts in a way that they would never make fun of other kinds of disabled people. I guess they think addicts do drugs like they do, all selfish and jolly, like it’s fun for them, like addicts live in a massive imaginary nightclub where it’s always the weekend and they’re having a jamboree. As if it doesn’t occur to addicts that they can just stop. They look at people suffering and see people partying.
“Now we approach the annual nightmare of endless zucchini peeling,” Grace drawls, sounding almost British.
“You peel zucchini?” It’s a relief to hear Agata say what I was just thinking.
“Everyone peels zucchini.”
“No one peels zucchini. Why would you peel zucchini?”
All three are still putting down and taking up cards, but Ruth seems to be taking advantage of the distraction the other two are indulging over vegetable prep.
“It takes out the bitterness.”
<
br /> “It does not.”
“It does too. Earl, you peel zucchini, don’t you?” The way Grace says Earl kind of sounds like a car swerving hard into a U-turn.
“Sure, when I’m making raw pasta, you mean?”
“No, before you cook it, you peel it, right?”
“Why would you peel zucchini?”
Grace puts her cards down in her lap. “You mean that I’ve spent nigh on three-quarters of a century peeling zucchinis to no end whatsoever?”
The question hangs for a bit, and they all laugh.
Earl’s putting some tools away, so I ask him what he needs help with.
“Well.” He takes a long pause and looks out across the garden. “The compost heap could use a turn, and the two beds on the far left, see, those two at the end? They need a bit of weeding. Think you can handle that?”
He gives me a rough pat on the shoulder like he’s the coach and I’m the quarterback.
I grab some gloves and the pitchfork and hike out to the compost heap. Its stink is hot and satisfying. I almost drink it. It resists the fork, exhales in my face as I rip it apart and fold it over on itself. Worms panic. Gases rush the atmosphere. My back and arms ache. I work the mound over until I start to feel sick and realize I forgot to eat again.
I wonder for a second where everyone else is, before remembering that they mostly avoid gardening in the early afternoon. But I think that advice is just for old people and white people. The blondes are in the shade, probably waiting until later to start again. As I return to put down the pitchfork, the telltale coconut scent coming from Earl’s deep brown skin reminds me that I really should start wearing sunblock, but I always forget.
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