Burn Our Bodies Down

by Rory Power

  “Hello?” But I can’t answer, and in the silence that follows, the woman on the other end of the line—Vera, her name is Vera—says, “Josephine? Is that you?”

  My heart drops. Will I ever be somewhere my mother hasn’t been first?

  “No,” I say. I stand up straight, try to wrestle back some composure. “This is—”

  “Who is this? If you’re one of those telemarketers, I’m sorry, but I won’t be buying anything you have to sell.” Impatience and urgency in a low voice, roughened with age. Like my mother’s, but with a core of iron running through it that Mom’s never had. It has to be her. The woman who wrote that dedication, who left Mom her phone number—my grandmother.

  And I should just tell her, just say my own name. But I want my grandmother to know me already, to recognize my voice. I want to have mattered enough to my mother that she told people about me. Even people she’s spent my whole life keeping me from.

  “It’s me” is all I can give her. Please, please, let her know. Please.

  “Oh.” I hear a staggering sigh. Don’t know if it’s mine or hers. “Margot. You’re Margot.”

  Something hooks itself behind my chest. Tugs hard enough that I feel it in my whole body. This is what it feels like to get what you want. “Yeah,” and I’m embarrassed by how close to crying I sound, after barely any words between us. I squeeze my eyes shut, try to picture the woman on the other end of the phone. All I can conjure up is my mother’s face. “That’s me.”

  “That’s you,” she says, and I’d bet all the money still under my mattress that she’s as close to tears as I am. “That’s my little girl. That’s my granddaughter. God, it’s good to hear your voice, honey.”

  A strangled laugh lurches into my throat, and I swipe at the fresh sting of tears. She sounds like she means it. “You too.”

  “I’ve been hoping I would,” she says. A pause, one I recognize in my bones, one you take when you’re weighing the risk of what to say next. Is that where Mom learned it? Is it part of our line, like our gray hair? “Your mother keeps you to herself,” she goes on finally. “But I’ve been thinking all about you.”

  “So have I,” I say, and it’s eager, embarrassing, but none of that matters. My grandmother. My family. Somebody who isn’t Mom.

  “Where are you these days? Are you well?”

  How much does she know? About how we live, Mom and me? “We’re fine,” I say, a touch of annoyance sneaking into my voice. We’re fine, and even when we aren’t, that’s our problem.

  “All right,” my grandmother says gently. “I’m glad.”

  None of my searching ever turned up even the outline of this woman, the empty space she left behind. It certainly never taught me how familiar I should be. “Do I . . .” I clear my throat. “Do I call you Vera, or . . . ?”

  She laughs, sharp and clear. Immediately I think I’ve ruined it, made a fool of myself.

  “I get to pick,” she says, “don’t I?”

  Oh. “Yeah.” It’s just something funny. She’s laughing and it’s not at me, and it’s not because I said something I shouldn’t have. It’s just something funny.

  This might be the nicest conversation I’ve ever had.

  “I never liked Granny,” she says. I hear something in the background, like the creak of floorboards. “And I’m much too sensible for something long like Grandmother.”

  It’s real. It’s real because she said it. Proof, I think, and I want to write it down in my notebook.

  “What about Gram?” she says.

  Maybe it would be more polite to just call her by her first name for a while. But if she’s opening a door, I’m going through it full speed. “I like that.”

  “So do I,” Gram says. It’s easy to start thinking of her that way. I’ve been wanting this my whole life, after all. “Listen, Margot, I’m glad you called.”

  I can feel my cheeks fill with heat, a silly smile tugging at my mouth. “Really?”

  “Of course. I’ve been hoping to meet you for a long time, but, well. You know your mother.”

  “How about now, then?” I’m being too eager, I know it, but I will never get this chance again. “I’ll come see you. I’ll stay the summer.”

  “As much as I would love that,” Gram says, “it wouldn’t feel right to steal you away from Josephine. The two of you should visit together.”

  I barely hold back a laugh. Me and Mom, dropping by Gram’s house like a regular family. “I don’t know,” I start, but Gram’s determined.

  “It’s been too long,” she says. “Bring her home to Phalene; there’s a good girl.”

  Phalene. That must be where Fairhaven is. That’s where I need to go.

  “I’ll try,” I say, and it’s half true. I’m about to ask for something more, for a promise that Gram will be there waiting, when I hear the squeal of brakes behind me and the slam of a car door. Engine still running, the smell of leaking oil trailing toward me.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  FOUR

  I freeze. Mom’s voice, knifing through the heat, finding me right between my shoulder blades. She’s supposed to be at work, north of the high school and nowhere near here.

  “Margot?” Gram says in my ear, but I don’t respond. A shiver in my skin, breath coming shallow. I keep the phone pressed to my ear, the cord clutched in my fist, and turn around.

  Mom’s standing on the sidewalk, our station wagon idling at the curb behind her. Hands in the pockets of her work trousers, head tilted, and my body rattles with panic. She’s too relaxed. That’s how she is before the worst of it, always.

  Lie, I tell myself. Lie, and apologize now, before she can ask for it. If I pull the pin myself, the grenade will hurt me less when it goes off.

  “I was just calling your office,” I say. She’s been out—she won’t know it’s not true. “I was gonna see if you wanted me to bring you lunch, but—”

  “Give it to me.”

  She holds out her hand. Gram’s gone quiet in my ear. Just the hush of her breath. She’s waiting too.

  “It went to voice mail,” I start.

  But Mom just says, “Now.” It jolts through me, sends me stumbling to one side, making room for her in the phone booth before I realize I’m even moving at all. I drop the phone into her hand.

  She doesn’t say a thing. She’s looking right at what I left on the counter. The Bible I bought back from Frank. The photo of Fairhaven, and the message written on the back.

  She knows. She has to know who’s on the phone, what I’ve done. Still, she lifts the phone to her ear and she says, “Who is this?” Like she’s hoping more than anything she’s wrong.

  She isn’t. And Gram must say something, because I watch it happen. I watch Mom turn into me. The look on her face, suddenly nervous, frightened, and the hold of her body, the hunch of her shoulders, one arm curled around herself. That’s mine. That’s what she gave me, shelter and cower.

  Vera is the woman who taught her to be this kind of mother. A flash of pity in Mom’s eyes, of recognition, because she knows. She knows what it feels like and she still did it to me.

  “No,” she says into the phone at last. Her voice is a quivering little thing. “I can’t.”

  This feels wrong. I shouldn’t be watching. But I can’t stop, because I’ve seen Mom angry and I’ve seen her afraid, and I’ve seen her with a fire between her fingers and a smile on her face, but I’ve never seen her like this. I’ve never seen her belong to anyone. Not even to me.

  A pause while Gram talks. Mom turns her back to me. I watch her clench her fist tight, nails digging deep into her own skin.

  “No,” Mom says again. “I told you then I was never coming back, and that’s all I have to say.”

  Gram’s turn, but it’s quick, and Mom shakes her head. “I’m not,” she says. “I’m not doing this.” Stronger now. She means it. If Mom has her way I will never see Gram, and whatever bridge we just built between us will never be crossed. And I can he
ar Gram now, loud and wordless from the speaker. If I listen hard, if I wish harder, I can make it my name she’s saying. Come home, Margot. Come home.

  Mom takes the phone from her ear. For a moment she doesn’t move. Neither do I. Both of us holding our breath, until she hangs up so hard the receiver clatters back off the hook and dangles there on the cord, swaying back and forth.

  “Hey,” I say, as gently as I can, but Mom whips around, so close the ends of her hair snap across my cheek, and I stagger back, into the sprawl of the sun.

  “Why would you do that?” she says, frantic. Her skin flushed with anger, scar standing out white. The Bible on the ledge behind her, catching the sun. “You went to Frank’s? You went through my stuff? I told you never to go to Frank’s alone, Margot. I told you.”

  “What?” Another fight for the notebook. “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Just like you told me about her?” I say, gesturing to the phone. “Just like you told me about Phalene?”

  She flinches, and of course she knows the name of that town. It’s the place we’ve been hiding from all my life.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mom says. Something animal about the curl of her lips, something I’d be afraid of if I were smarter. “You have no idea, Margot. You talked to her for thirty seconds and you think you can give me shit?”

  “For lying to me? Yeah, I do.” It’s climbing up my throat, the real thing I’ve been wanting to ask her ever since that first day I wrote Nielsen at the top of that notebook page. “Why didn’t you tell me about her, Mom?”

  “I’m not doing this here,” she says, straightening her shirt and tucking her hair behind her ears. “I’m not fighting with you in the middle of the street.”

  She’s locking herself back up, but I won’t let her. There’s nobody around, the sidewalks empty and glazed with heat-shimmer. And I’ve kept this down for so long, so long. Until today, when I heard Gram say my name. “Didn’t you want me to know I have family?” A tremor in my voice, a break. I hate when I get like this, when I let her see how much I care. “Didn’t you want me to know there are people out there who love me?”

  “That woman,” Mom hisses, “does not love you.”

  I let out a bark of laughter. “What the hell would you know about it?” And I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t take it so wide when there’s plenty to be mad at right in front of me. I am supposed to be quiet, I am supposed to be good, but I was born at war and I can only keep from fighting for so long. “You barely even know I’m here half the time. I take care of myself—I do that for you. You could thank me, you know.”

  “Me thank you?” Mom smiles. I can’t stop my mouth from curling in answer. Fighting is when I feel closest to her. She drops her guard and lets me near enough to see her then, because that way she can hurt me.

  “Yeah,” I say. A flare in my gut, a warning. This is bait, and I shouldn’t be taking it. But it broke something inside me—Gram on the phone, and Mom nowhere near remorse for keeping me from her. She doesn’t care, so why should I? Why should I pull any punches for her sake? “Yeah, you thank me. Thank me for making a life out of your mess.”

  For a second she looks like I’ve hit home. It can’t be real, though. When has anything I’ve ever said mattered to her that much? And it’s gone in a moment, papered over by a grim determination. It must have been nothing. Just the sun in my eyes.

  “Listen to me very carefully,” she says through gritted teeth. “I am your mother. Do you know what that means? It means your life is mine. I gave it to you. And I am the only thing keeping you alive. Keeping you safe. So thank me for that.”

  She’s handing me a way out of our fight, and every other time I have taken it. Every other time I’ve given ground, tried to rebuild a peace between us because it was worth it. Because she was all I had. But I don’t think that’s true anymore.

  “What about everything after?” I say. “Huh? You gave me my life, but there’s more to being a mother than that.”

  She shakes her head. “Stop it.”

  I can’t. Not now, not when I’m finally saying everything that’s been beating in me like blood. “Don’t you know? The shit you do touches me, Mom. It fucking hurts.”

  “You think it doesn’t hurt me?” Her eyes are overbright, her hands trembling as she pushes her hair out of her face. “What about that? What about me, Margot?”

  As if we haven’t been answering that question my whole life. And that’s all it takes. That’s the whole of my decision, in one heartbeat. Mom, with me in front of her, with me in pain and alone, and she asks, “What about me?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not my job to know,” I say. Maybe it should be harder to talk to her like this. But it feels like relief, drifting and cool. “Honestly, Mom, I don’t care.”

  I expect some sort of reaction. Some sort of pain, or even my relief mirrored in her. But she only laughs. That same dismissive look on her face as at the end of every fight. I don’t understand how she can swing back and forth so fast, how things can stop mattering to her from one second to the next. “I told you, Margot,” she says. “I’m not doing this. It’s my goddamn lunch break and I’m just not doing this.” She nods to the phone booth, to the Bible and the photograph. “Sell that back to Frank. It’s not worth whatever you paid for it. And we’ll talk about where you got the money later.”

  She doesn’t understand what’s just happened. I have to tell myself that as she steps away from me, as she gets into our station wagon and pulls away from the curb. She doesn’t understand that this, this conversation, this rejection—that’s what I needed. I’m ready to leave her.

  Even if she did get it, I’m not sure she’d ask me to stay.

  I spend the afternoon in Redman’s, don’t go back to the apartment until dark. She’s already asleep when I get there. Doesn’t wake as I sneak into the bedroom to get the rest of my money from under the mattress. Doesn’t wake as I pace through the night in the living room, waiting for dawn.

  Nobody but you and me. She doesn’t think that’ll ever change. I didn’t used to either.

  When the sun breaks the sky, I know it’s time. I leave three twenties stuck between the pages of the Bible and hide it in one of the cupboards above the stove, the photograph and the rest of the cash safe in my pocket. She’ll find it if she needs it. I can do that, at least.

  Outside, the air is just touched with chill. I take my hair down from my braid, let it hang around my shoulders. No phone and no ID, but ahead there’s the lure of the street-lights along the highway. There’s the rush of a passing car, and east or west, wherever it is, that’s where I’m going. Phalene.

  FIVE

  Morning finds me in the back of some guy’s pickup. He passed me on the sidewalk outside the Safeway in Calhoun, and if he’d looked at my bare legs for a half second longer I wouldn’t be here. As it is, he told me I could ride in the cab or climb into the truck bed. I picked the bed.

  Johnny—that’s what he said his name is—didn’t know what the hell I was talking about when I told him I was looking for Phalene, but he typed it into his phone and said sure, he could drop me in the town center. It startled me, how close it looked on the map. Barely three hours away on the back roads. I expected it to be over in the east, near Omaha, or even out of state, but instead it’s practically next door by Nebraska standards. As if Mom ran as far as she could, and it turned out to be not very far at all.

  It’s taken us longer than it should, though. Johnny insisted on a too-long nap at a rest stop just before Crawford, and I spent the whole thing ready to bolt if another truck pulled into the lot. But we’re close now. And here I am, sky fresh and wide overhead as I sink farther into the pile of burlap and tarps and hold tight to a bungee cord Johnny’s got hooked to the side.

  Just get to Phalene. Just find Gram. She’ll take care of the rest.

  This far northwest, Nebraska’s not as patched-up with farmland. The ground
we crossed on the drive seemed layered with long grasses and low, broken hills. Here, it’s starting to level out. Now and then I can spot a house dropped into the middle of nothing a mile or two back from the highway.

  Lives going on like nothing happened. I wonder what Mom’s doing at home. Whether she’s noticed that I’m gone. Whether she’s already on her way after me.

  I grip the bungee cord so tightly that it cuts into my palm. That’s not happening. Mom’s probably as happy to have lost me as I am to have left. She doesn’t matter anymore. I left her behind. I picked something else.

  Gram, and maybe more. Maybe a grandfather, aunts, uncles, cousins. The kind of family you see in pictures. As long as Phalene’s still on the horizon, I can wonder, and I can hope.

  If I’m remembering the map right, we’re coming in from the east, through what should be fields thick with green. But they’re stripped bare, flattened, with barely the slightest hint of any furrows for planting. Someone used to farm here a long time ago, but there’s nothing more to get out of this land. It’s dead.

  The town starts all at once, sprouts from the black earth on either side of what passes for a highway. It’s only been one lane in either direction since Calhoun, but now the pavement starts to fracture and gape, and houses press in, their shapes familiar, like they were all built from the same plans. I let them glaze past me. None of these is Fairhaven, the house I saw in the photograph. This might be Phalene, but it’s not Nielsen land.

  After a few blocks the houses drop away and the town opens onto a square. That’s where Johnny leaves me, on the sidewalk in front of a laundromat, his truck’s exhaust sticking to the back of my throat as he disappears.

  Late morning. Barely anyone around, and it’s quiet, the air stale as I squint through the sun to get a look at the town. There, laid out like a handkerchief in the center: a park, lush and well kept, with a circle of brick in the middle, where two spigots are spraying out a high arch of water, rainbows ricocheting onto bronze statues of children playing.