Burn Our Bodies Down

by Rory Power

  I know, I think. Believe me. I know.

  Gram sits me down at the table again and heats up a half-empty dish of casserole. The smell makes my stomach growl, but it’s too heavy, too rich, and I nearly feel sick when Gram slides a plate of it in front of me, the cheese bubbling, steam soft against my raw skin.

  I should’ve taken the first-aid kit with me from the police station. Although I don’t know what I’d do, really. The flush is draining from my arms and legs, but I still feel tight all over, like if I move too fast my skin will split and I’ll pour out. Gram sets another water bottle down by my elbow, and when she’s not looking, too busy cleaning the already clean countertop, I press it to my forehead to ease the fever I can feel simmering in my veins.

  It’s still so early, but I barely have the strength to stay upright at the table. I haven’t slept in more than a day, not since the last full night I spent in Calhoun, and every time I shut my eyes I see her, the girl, sprawled on her side in the corn, waiting for me to save her.

  I wish we’d pulled over on the way here and I’d thrown back the sheet covering the body and said, “Look. Tell me who that is.” That way Gram wouldn’t be able to stay so calm. So normal. I’d have the proof I need, the proof I thought I’d find here, but there’s no sign of anyone else in this whole house, and I can’t fit it all together. Sister, twin, and empty space.

  I nudge the plate away, take a slow, deep breath. If I have to throw up again I’ll do it where Gram can’t see me.

  “All done?” Gram says. I nod. “I’d prefer a clean plate,” she tells me, but she takes it to the counter and starts scraping the leftovers back into the casserole dish. “I’ll make an exception for today.”

  I get up, legs unsteady. All I want is to disappear into the ghost halls of this house. Find somewhere my mother never touched and stay there for a hundred years, until everything’s gone, until my whole life is just half a memory. I’d be safe. I’d belong to nobody and I’d be so safe.

  But that’s not an option. Somewhere my mother never touched—good luck.

  Gram turns from the counter and frowns at the sight of me. “Wait for me on the stairs,” she says, a surprising gentleness to her voice. I must look worse than I realize. “I’ll call your mother.”

  Please don’t, I want to ask her, but it’s no use. This has to happen. I don’t have to watch, though. I leave her to reach for the landline and wander back into the entryway, collapse onto the stairs. The red runner is soft against the back of my thighs, worn nearly smooth. Just the feel of it comforts me, steadies the dizzy sway of the room. The knowledge that time has passed here, that Nielsens have come and gone. It isn’t only me.

  A long quiet from the kitchen, and then I hear a muffled swear, and the sound of footsteps. Gram, pacing. More minutes, more silence. How many times has she called by now?

  Then: “Finally. You’ve been incredibly rude, Josephine.”

  Mom won’t take kindly to that. Or she wouldn’t if it were me saying it.

  “That’s all well and good,” Gram says after a moment. “But I need to know how much you’ve said about—”

  She breaks off. I can’t hear Mom on the other end—Gram’s too far away—but to interrupt Gram, Mom must have come in strong.

  How much Mom’s said about what? About the girl? About the sister I seem to have?

  “Nothing?” Gram asks. She sounds almost incredulous. “That’s fine. That’s in fact preferable.” A beat of quiet, and then, more softly, Gram says, “That’s well done, Jo.”

  Mom must hang up at that, because I hear Gram mutter something to herself, hear the phone land back in the dock before she steps into the entryway, sun streaking through the storm door to set her edges on fire.

  “Jo’s being Jo,” she says.

  I hold back a laugh. That’s one way to put it.

  “But there’s nothing to worry about,” Gram continues. “You’re with family now.”

  Family. All this was waiting here for me, really really waiting, and Mom wouldn’t let me have it. Wouldn’t let me have it and her both. It must have been the daughter she wouldn’t claim keeping her away. That girl here, me in Calhoun, and nothing more important than the distance between us. But why?

  “Nothing to worry about,” Gram repeats. She comes toward me and holds out her hand. When I take it, it’s startlingly warm. She’s real, I tell myself, and let her pull me to my feet. “Come on. Let’s get you settled in. We’ll work it out tomorrow.”

  ELEVEN

  I follow her upstairs to a landing, off which sprout two hallways. Between them, a window seat overlooks the back acres of the farm. Gram leads me down the left-hand hallway, past a number of closed doors, until she reaches one standing slightly ajar. Inside, deep blue walls, white trim, and a white bedspread, delicate scrollwork above the bars of the headboard. It’s been dusted but I can tell it was recently from the streaks left on the nightstand.

  “It’s nice,” I say. And then, feeling silly, “Really nice. Thank you. Whose room was this?” It’s not what I want to ask and we both know it, judging from the frown that flashes across Gram’s face.

  “Nobody’s.” She crosses to the bed and pulls back the spread. “For the most part. There’s the dresser,” she continues before I have time to ask what she means. She nods to the corner. Next to the chest of drawers, a crooked door is shut. “Bathroom’s through there.”

  I wander over while Gram fusses with the linens behind me. Rest my hand on the latch and gently lift it, leaving the door open as I ease inside. A black-tile floor, and a claw-foot tub angled across the left-hand wall, black porcelain with brass taps. The lights are off and there are no windows, but I catch my reflection in the mirror over a pedestal sink to my right. The wall opposite me is taken up by built-in drawers and cupboards, stacks and stacks of them, the kind of storage you need when your family is too big to fit in a rundown Calhoun apartment.

  “The water’s all right in there,” Gram calls. “We draw from two different wells. And I put a pair of pajamas in the dresser, and a few other things. They’ll do until we can get you something of your own.”

  I come back into the bedroom, open the top dresser drawer and pull out a pile of cream silk. A pair of shorts and a matching button-up, a frill at the neck. Gram bustles past me into the bathroom and sets about pulling clean towels out of one of the drawers, not realizing what she’s done. Because there, ironed onto the neck of the pajama top, is a small woven label, with a name handwritten on it in faded, bleeding ink.

  Josephine Nielsen. These were Mom’s.

  “Sorry,” I say, my throat tight. “I know it’s early but I’d just like to rest now. And wash my hair.”

  Quiet, for a moment. “Of course,” Gram says. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  She sidles by me with a touch to my back, then leaves me, and I listen as her footsteps echo along the hall, the stairs creaking as she heads down them. Outside, through the narrow window, the air is just starting to clear of smoke. I sit down on the bed, feel the springs separate underneath me.

  This wasn’t her room, I don’t think. Not the one she grew up in. But these are her clothes, and this is her house, and God, I wish she were here. She should be here. Telling me stories, sharing this with me. Showing me all the spots where she carved her name, showing me all the secrets she and Fairhaven kept from my grandmother together. Instead it’s just me. It’s always just me, even when it was the two of us in our apartment, but I feel the emptiness next to me more than I ever have.

  I pull the photo from the Bible out of my pocket, the one of Mom that makes my heart ache, and stick it in the drawer of the nightstand before I go into the bathroom and change out of my shorts and T-shirt. I leave my sneakers in the sink to keep the ash and earth staining them from getting everywhere.

  There’s no shower, so I run a bath. The water isn’t rosy, like what’s downstairs. None of the texture, the grit. Once the tub is full, I ease in, my clothes strewn across the black floo
r, all ash and earth.

  Heat licking across my skin, but it’s like breathing again, and I remember the fire. The air clouding with gray, the earth gone dry, and no way out. Not for that girl. I owe her. I couldn’t save her, so I should at least know what it felt like for her to die.

  I take a deep breath and duck under the surface of the bath. Eyes squeezed shut, fingers curled into fists, the porcelain smooth against my back. The water stings the open sores across my forehead, sets my hair drifting. Stay under, I tell myself. Even as the air gets tight, as it bursts in my chest.

  She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t get out. She crawled and she crawled and she died, out there, she died, and I didn’t save her, and I don’t know who she is but she’s mine, isn’t she?

  I burst up out of the water, gasping. Enough. Whatever should’ve happened, this is where I am. Nothing will change that now.

  The water is thick with dirt. I can taste it, can feel it under my nails. I fumble for the shampoo, wash my hair as quickly as I can and hurry out of the tub. When I scrub myself dry, I’m so rough I tear my skin like tissue paper, leave blood behind.

  Mom’s pajamas slide on easily, just a little too big. I wonder how old she was when she wore them, if maybe she already knew, then, that I was on the way.

  I avoid the mirror as I head back out into the bedroom. I don’t need to see myself looking like Mom, like the girl I saw in the field. I just need to go to sleep.

  But it takes me forever. Hours, until the moon is high, the sky blacker than black. I’m on my back, stretched out on top of the covers, sweating even with the window open. I can hear the breeze, though it’s not reaching through to touch my skin. The fire engines are all long gone. Either the fire is out, or they’ve given up.

  I can still hear the sirens, though. Faint, like an echo. Just the smallest cry, thin and wailing.

  I sit up. It’s not sirens at all. It’s a person. I swear it’s a person. For a heartbeat the fire sweeps across my sight, and there she is, my own body curled on her side, but I blink and she disappears. It’s not that. It can’t be that.

  Still. I get out of bed, the floor cool against my bare feet. When I peer out into the hallway, the only light is coming from the landing, where the windows are letting in the moon. The opposite hallway, where Gram’s room must be, is shut up, the door closed.

  I tiptoe out to the landing. I can still hear the crying. And that’s what it is, crying. Like an animal. Like a girl out there alone.

  One set of windows overlooks the back of the farm, the acres I could see from the kitchen. I think that’s where it’s coming from. Glancing over my shoulder to be sure Gram isn’t out here with me, I kneel gingerly on the window seat and peer outside.

  The corn is nearly blue in the night, the breeze leaving meandering patterns across the top of the plants. The apricot grove I saw before is out on the horizon, maybe a mile away. That’s it. Nothing out of the ordinary, just the wind on my skin and the lure of the moon.

  I wait for a moment. Count the cries as they come, hitching and plaintive, drifting through the air like smoke from the fire. I can taste it still, lingering so thickly that sometimes a cloud of it will hold the moonlight inside, hovering in midair like breath in winter.

  Too suddenly the cries go quiet. I jerk back from the window. My heart catching in my chest, breath coming quick. Whatever was making that noise, I don’t think it’s living anymore.

  “Gram?” I say, into the emptiness around me. “Gram? Are you awake? Did you hear that?”

  She must not hear me. She doesn’t answer. And the dark stretches on, filling the gaps left in the silence until I’m sure I must have imagined them.

  I go back to my room. Sit on the edge of my bed and wait for my nerves to knit themselves back together, but they don’t.

  It’s a long shot. But I open the nightstand drawer and root through it, looking for a lighter. Matches, a candle. Anything. I need the calm of the apartment in Calhoun, the fan on low and the window open, the flame steady as I pour my whole self into it.

  I get lucky with a banged-up lighter and a thin candle, the kind you hold at church during a vigil. My hands shake as I light it, and the orange glow wavers across the walls, casting strange twisting shadows.

  There, I think, breathing easy at last. That looks more like home.

  TWELVE

  I swear morning comes earlier at Fairhaven. It tumbles through the window at the top of my room, crawls up the bed to open my eyes. My body aches, tired so deep down that I’m not sure it’ll ever go away, and I dreamed about the crying I heard, about the moment it stopped dead. Next to me on the nightstand, the candle is piled up with fresh wax.

  I didn’t imagine it. Not any of it. Not the girl, and not the story of my mother, of what it means to be a Nielsen. Gram said family is honest with each other. But she hasn’t really answered any of my questions. And I wonder if maybe I’m on my own. With this, just like with everything.

  Take the easy explanation, that’s what I should do. Of course Mom’s been keeping secrets. Of course Mom stayed away from Phalene because of the daughter she left behind. And Gram’s part of this because Mom asked her to be. That’s what makes sense, but I can’t help feeling like it isn’t right. I know Mom better than anyone, and I know that if daughters were what made her run from Phalene, she would never have kept either of us. Something happened here.

  I get up already too hot as I slide open the dresser drawers, sorting through the piles of clothes in each. I’m not exactly looking forward to dressing in more of Mom’s hand-me-downs, but anything’s better than my dirty clothes.

  In the top drawer, I find a little long-sleeved dress, lace tacked onto the hem, Mom’s name written inside the high collar. I hold it up to get a good look, my chest going tight. It’s familiar. Of course it is. I saw one just like it on the girl in the fire. A girl with Mom’s face, dressed in Mom’s clothes. I’d bet anything Mom’s name was pressed to the nape of her neck when she died.

  This is where she came from. It has to be. I can picture her here, sleeping in this bed. Just like me.

  I put the dress back in the drawer. Gram said this room didn’t belong to anybody, but Fairhaven told me the truth. Maybe the rest of it can tell me more.

  I head to the top of the stairs. I mean to try the door to the other hallway, but before I can, I spot a police cruiser out the window at the front of the house. I watch as it rolls up the driveway, back toward the highway. They were here. Talking to Gram. Pressing her for answers just the way I want to. And I bet she didn’t give them any, but I won’t let her stonewall me. I have proof now, solid and real and something she can’t get away from.

  Fairhaven restless around me, creaking floors and peeling wallpaper. I go downstairs and pass through the entryway, hesitating by the front door. There’s a pair of rain boots tucked in the corner, on top of a muddy towel and a ratty glove. I don’t remember them being there yesterday, but then I don’t remember much of yesterday at all that isn’t the sight of my own face and the heat of the fire.

  Gram’s not in the kitchen when I get there. She was—the chair’s pulled out, a mug of coffee still warm on the counter. I push open the screen door and step out onto the back porch. The wood is still cool, sun only just starting to reach under the roof. I stand there for a moment, breathing in, the air sweet with summer, spiked with a touch of smoke. It looks like it rained in the night, broke the heat and left the sky clear, left the plants glimmering and glossy. Maybe it put the rest of the fire out, tamped down the drift of the ash.

  The ground slopes gently away from the porch, down into the spread of the fields, but even from up here the corn seems so tall, and so close. Across the crops I can see another house in the distance, one I didn’t notice yesterday. It’s off to the left, on a higher little hill, and though it’s too far for me to see much, it seems almost like it was built to mirror Fairhaven. The same sort of porch, and the same white siding, although Fairhaven’s is weathered with age. />
  That must be the Miller house. Tess said we’re neighbors, and I can’t see any other houses out here. I wonder what happened at the station after I left, with her and Eli. I can’t imagine it went anything like it did for me in that conference room. Tess could’ve walked right out of there any time she wanted. But she didn’t.

  I squint up at the windows of the Miller house, small squares of sun. Maybe she can see me. I barely manage not to wave, just in case.

  “Oh, good. You’re up.”

  I turn, and Gram’s there, leaning in the doorway, dressed in practically the same clothes as yesterday, a bucket hanging from one hand, a pair of work boots from the other.

  “Get dressed,” she says. “There’s work to be done.”

  Not a word about the police who just left, or the fire. Not a word about the girl. And of course, not a word about my mother.

  “Well?” Gram says, when I don’t move. I came looking for her with a hundred questions waiting on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t find my voice. Not when she’s right there, and looking at me. “You waiting for directions back upstairs or what, Mini?”

  It’s the nickname that does it. I am not my mother. I will not let a lie live inside me. I will carve it out, no matter what.

  “What were the police here for?” I ask. “Did they have any news? About the girl?”

  “Don’t worry yourself with that,” Gram says easily. “It’s Thomas Anderson doing what he does best, which is being bothersome.”

  Fine. Fine, I’ll try harder. Carefully, gently. I’m used to doing this, anyway.

  “Look, you can tell me,” I say, taking the words a parent should say and holding them on my tongue. Never mind that I’m in my mother’s pajamas, my feet bare. I’m as old as I need to be. “I saw the girl. I know who she is. You don’t have to cover for Mom anymore.”

  I don’t expect her to give in right away, but I do expect more than what she gives me. Which is a blank stare and a tilt of her head.

  “Cover?” she says. “Cover what?”