Burn Our Bodies Down

by Rory Power

  “Suck in,” she says. “There’s a good girl.”

  The zipper closes inch by inch, scraping my skin, until it finally hits the top of the collar. So tight I can barely move. For a moment the attic swims and stripes, here and somewhere else, me and someone else, everything happening over and over and over again, and I’m so dizzy I have to rest one hand against the wall to stay upright.

  “Come on,” Gram says, stepping back. “Let me see you.”

  I’m not sure what seeing she can do in the dim light from the single bulb, but I stand there and let her look. Let her think the sway of my body is more than dizziness. Let her think she’s unsettled me—this is no worse than Mom’s pajamas, than her bed and her room and her house.

  “Are we done now?” I say, but Gram only purses her lips, considering me.

  “I can’t remember what your mother wore this for,” she says. I go to undo the zipper, but Gram’s grip tightens on my shoulders, and I can feel the seams straining. “It’s a bit fancier than what she usually preferred. Your christening, maybe?”

  I stop fussing with the dress. “I had one of those?”

  “After a fashion.” Gram shakes her head. “No, it wasn’t that.” And then she smiles, gently tucks my hair behind my ear. “Oh, yes,” she says. “I remember now. It was when I took her to the clinic.”

  “The clinic?”

  “Right.” Gram’s gaze is steady, her expression calm. “For the abortion.”

  I nearly choke. “Excuse me?”

  “She changed her mind, obviously. They’d only given her the anesthesia when she came back out.” Gram chucks my chin and steps away, starts stacking the boxes back up. “Aren’t you lucky?”

  My breath coming shallow and quick. I knew Mom never planned for me. She never mentioned a word about my father, like if she didn’t tell me his name she could pretend he didn’t exist. But it was more than just blocking out him, wasn’t it? It was blocking out me, too. Because she never wanted me at all.

  “Why did she change her mind?” I say, my voice hoarse and half here. Maybe she heard my heartbeat and couldn’t do it, and maybe I have always belonged in her life. But Gram doesn’t even turn to look at me.

  “I’m not sure,” she says, lifting the last cardboard box back onto the stack. “I never asked.”

  She leaves me. Goes back down the stairs, the light throwing her shadow across the floor, twisting it, shredding it, until it’s just me in the damp heat, shaking in my little blue dress.

  And now I know. This is how Gram punishes. This is where Mom learned it, only it’s different here, sweeter and sharper at the same time, and I don’t know how she survived it as long as she did, because I can’t breathe, and I can’t be here, and I can’t do this for one second longer.

  I claw at the dress, fumble over my shoulder for the zipper. One of the seams splits as I pull at the back, yank at the fabric until it tears along the zipper and falls away from me. My whole body hot, my skin itching, crawling, but the dress is off and falling to the floor. I step out of it, kick away the fabric tangling around my feet.

  The air cold, sweat like salt in my mouth. For a second I stand there and catch my breath, my skin so pale it’s edged in a glow. Not right. Something with me is not right. Gram and Fairhaven, and I’ve been letting it happen all around me, shutting my eyes and pretending, when of course that girl lived here, and of course Gram knew her, and loved her, and let her die.

  I hurry back into my clothes, run downstairs and through the hallways, bang out the screen door and into the sunlight. I brace my hands on my knees, feel an acid sting in my stomach. But I won’t. I refuse. Tears pricking my eyes, bile climbing my throat—none of it will ever sneak out. Fuck this family, and fuck this house. I don’t have to stay here a second longer.

  TWENTY

  Mrs. Miller doesn’t look surprised to see me when I turn up on her porch, breathing hard and on the edge of tears. It’s around lunchtime, and over her shoulder I can see the table set for two, silverware gleaming, but she lets me in without a moment’s hesitation and asks if I’m hungry.

  “No, thank you,” I say, my throat embarrassingly tight. “I’m sorry to just show up.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re welcome anytime,” she says, depositing me on one of the couches in the open living room and going into the kitchen. I hear the clink of ice cubes in a glass, and she’s back in a second with water for me. I take the glass from her and try not to drop it when she smooths her thumb along my forehead. “I’ll call Tess down.”

  I haven’t seen Tess since the station. Haven’t even thought about her except to wonder if she got in trouble. But if Mrs. Miller’s smile as she leaves is anything to go by, Tess is fine.

  The quiet presses in as soon as I’m alone. My mom somewhere in Phalene, waiting for me. Gram at Fairhaven. And me here with the Millers, with a family whose roots reach almost as deep as mine. This is a family that can help me.

  “Hey,” Tess says, coming down the hallway from the staircase, her mom behind her. Tess only has one sock on and is in the middle of pulling on the other, her balance precarious, ponytail coming loose.

  I get up from the couch, checking to make sure I haven’t left any dirt on the white fabric. “Is Eli with you?” I ask. I have things I need to ask Tess, but I don’t want to have this conversation with him around.

  “Yes, is he?” Mrs. Miller adds.

  “No, he’s at his.” Her tone is light and easy, but there’s a strain to her smile I think I’m not supposed to notice. Did she get in trouble for being at the station? I was pretty sure she’d gotten away clean. “You said to ask next time he stayed. And I didn’t ask, so he’s not here.”

  “Look at that,” Mrs. Miller says, and Tess sighs.

  “I’m a very good daughter, you know.”

  “A very good daughter who’s about to skip lunch, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Tess nods to the doors behind the dining room table, which open onto the back porch. “Want to go outside, Margot? Or more importantly, want to not be here?”

  It doesn’t sound like a joke, the way it’s supposed to. I look guiltily at Mrs. Miller, but she doesn’t seem to be bothered. “I’ll leave plates for you both,” she says, and before I can respond, Tess is pulling the back doors open and tugging me through.

  It’s just like Fairhaven. Or what Fairhaven must have been, once. The same kind of view, the same kitchen light behind me. But this place is still a working farm. Machinery waiting in the distance, a trio of silos far enough away that they look like toys. Gram must have cut Fairhaven in half when she sold this plot to the Millers.

  “I won’t ask you what happened,” Tess says, and I jump. “But if you want to tell me, I want to know.”

  I’d forgotten she was there. Next to me, in a sweatshirt that’s probably Eli’s and a pair of basketball shorts that definitely are. Startlingly serious, her eyes red and weary.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  She waves me off and drops to sit on the edge of the porch, stretching her legs out into the grass, tracks left there by the mower still clear. “Fine. Come on. You look like you’re about to keel over.”

  I join her, leaving space between us that she immediately fills, twisting to lean back against one of the porch posts and tucking her feet against my thigh, her knees drawn up to her chest. For a moment she just looks at me and I look right back.

  I don’t know what this is. The reaching in my chest. I thought I recognized it when I met her—the attraction I’m familiar with, the one I know from girls at school. But it’s not that. Tess is . . . she’s someone who knows. I don’t want to be with her. I just want someone to see me, and she does.

  “My mom came to get me today,” I say. Turn away from her, stare into the afternoon. It’s easier like this. “I left her in Calhoun to come here. And I didn’t think. I didn’t expect her to show up here. But she did.”

  “And?”

  “We’re not like you and your mom. I
mean, I don’t know your shit, and I know everybody has something, but—”

  “I understand,” Tess says. “Don’t worry.”

  “She’s everything,” I say, and I knew it, I’ve known it for a long time, but saying it out loud, that’s something else. “And we’ve fucked each other up for a long time, but I guess I thought that under it, somewhere, I was everything too.”

  Tess’s hand brushes my arm. The barest touch, like she knows I’ll shy away from any other comfort. When I look over at her, her chin is propped on her knees and her eyes are gentle. Just letting me tell her. Just wanting to know. That’s a gift I could never have known how to ask for.

  “And then today,” I keep on, “today she comes back for me and I think I’m right, I think I finally have the proof I wanted.” Until the attic. The boxes. The dress. Yes, she kept me. But the trip to the clinic, the guilt she’s put on me every day of my life—she’s never forgiven me for existing in the first place. The original sin I will never, ever be clean of.

  “You didn’t go with her, though,” Tess says.

  “No.” Because . . . I don’t know how to put it. I try anyway. “The thing is, I’m starting to understand a lot more than I did. About her. About why she is the way she is.”

  Tess shifts next to me. “But?”

  It spills out of me, ungrateful and nasty, and I hate that this is who I am, that this is what I can make out of knowing a person. “Does understanding her mean I have to forgive her?”

  Quiet. I reach up, tuck my hair behind my ear and risk a look at Tess. She’s staring out across the fields, a thoughtful expression on her face.

  “I don’t think so,” she says at last. “I mean, maybe it helps. But maybe it makes it worse.”

  I tip my face up to the sky. Worse, to know that Mom hurt the way I did, that Mom had a mother like I did, and despite all that, to know that she didn’t do better with me.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”

  For a while we just sit there. I can feel Tess’s body going tight next to me, can feel the tension coming off her. She’s thinking about something. I want to ask what, but she just gave me the peace I needed, and I can do the same for her. If she wants to talk, she can. I won’t make her. Not when there’s so much else going on.

  And sure, I ran here on nothing but instinct. Not Fairhaven, that’s all I was thinking. Anywhere but there. But I’ve got questions curled in my throat, scratching each other deep as they wait their turn, and Tess can help me put the answers together.

  “You get out of the station okay?” I start with.

  She shrugs. “I should be asking you that.”

  The girl in the morgue, and Connors watching me as I took her in. His face, so unsurprised as I fell apart over Katherine. He knew. But I wonder if that story made its way out of Mom’s generation. If it reached Tess.

  “I found out about the fire in the apricot grove,” I say. “And I found out about Katherine, too.” A test, one I’ve given to Gram: how well can you lie when you’re looking right at me?

  Tess frowns, her mouth dropping slightly open. “Who?”

  “Everybody knows.” My voice too sharp, too near to breaking. “I get it. You don’t have to pretend.”

  “No, seriously. What are you talking about?”

  I let her sincerity ease through me, let it loosen the knot in my chest. Don’t I know better than anyone how things can be kept over our heads? On the highest shelf, in a locked room. Jo, part of Phalene legend. Katherine, wrapped up and put away.

  “My mom’s twin sister,” I say, and the surprise on Tess’s face is real. “I found her name in one of the files, and when I asked my grandmother, she said Katherine died. But she lied to the police. It just . . .” I drop my head into my hands, press my palms against my eyes. “It doesn’t fit together.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I mean the girl in the morgue. I mean the way I need a word for her. Sister, or cousin, but neither one works. “Connors showed me the body from the fire.”

  Tess tilts her head, sun catching her eyelashes. “What does that have to do with Katherine?”

  I think about the diary entry, about the X-ray sketch. How it matched the report at the morgue. “I don’t know exactly. But I keep finding these lines, these things that must tie together. From then to now. Only . . .”

  “Only what?”

  “I thought that girl could’ve been Katherine’s daughter,” I say. It feels almost embarrassing somehow. “A cousin. But she looked exactly my age, and even if Katherine had her right before Mom had me, even if Gram somehow kept her hidden here all that time, or even if she just showed up, there was something else weird about her.” I sigh, stare down at my hands. “Her body. She looked . . . I don’t know. Wrong.”

  “Wrong how?” Tess leans forward. “She seemed fine on the highway. I mean, dead, but normal dead.”

  I snort, and catch a glimmer of triumph at the corner of Tess’s mouth, despite the tightness that’s lingering there. She wanted me to laugh. Too bad there isn’t anything remotely funny about this.

  I don’t know how to explain it, really, but I do my best to describe it to Tess. The eyes, how they spilled down her cheeks. The odd scarring on her leg. “Connors asked me if I’ve ever seen anything like it before,” I say, “and of course I haven’t, but he just kept looking at me. And waiting. God, everybody here thinks I know something they don’t.”

  “Well,” Tess says slowly, “somebody has to know something.”

  “Sure, but—”

  “I mean, Vera has to.” There’s a light in her eyes, one that sparks dread in my stomach. “You said she told you Katherine died, right? How does she know that for sure if they never found a body?”

  It’s the same question I have. But I don’t sound like that when I ask it—entertained, excited.

  “She just does,” I say. It’s the eager way Tess is looking at me that makes me say it. Makes me come to Gram’s defense, whether she’s earned it or not. “She saw the fire happen, after all. Maybe the body burned to ash, or—”

  “Or maybe there was never any body at all,” Tess cuts in. “Maybe Katherine really did run away. Maybe—”

  “Stop,” I say. A warning. This isn’t a story. This isn’t yours. “No, maybe Josephine is the one who died,” she says, picking up steam, “and your mom is actually Katherine.”

  I almost laugh, but the anger is too thick in my throat. Stop playing games, Tess. This is real for me.

  “Okay,” I say. “Okay. You’ve had some fun, but really, stop.”

  “I thought we were trying to figure this out.”

  “Yeah, figure it out,” I snap. “Not make shit up.”

  “Oh, come on,” she says, nudging my arm. “You don’t have to get pissed over—”

  “Over what?” I stand up, and she looks at me with wide, almost fearful eyes. “You picking my family apart?”

  She holds up her hands. Like surrender, and it should calm me down. But it just leaves me even angrier.

  “Why bring it up if you weren’t serious about it? Is this fun for you?”

  Because it isn’t for me. It’s my life. I don’t have anything but this. Take it apart and I’m left with nothing.

  “I’m just trying to help,” Tess says. It’s almost satisfying, how dismayed she sounds. “I don’t understand, Margot. Why are you being like this?”

  “Like what?” I say.

  “Like . . .” She hesitates, drawing herself in close. Shoulders up, hands curled over her stomach. “I don’t know. Like your grandmother.”

  It’s not what I expected. And it hits me so hard I can’t breathe. Like my grandmother. Like Mom. Is that how I am? Fighting with Tess the same way those women have fought with me?

  “I . . . ,” I start, but I can’t find anything to say. She’s right.

  “Yeah,” Tess says, getting up. “So. You want to apologize?”

  I should. Should admit this day got inside me, made me overreact. Made me
something else. But I think it just showed me who I’ve always been. I stay quiet. Shut my eyes to keep tears from welling up.

  “Fine.” Disappointment heavy in her voice. I hear Tess get up, hear the door open, and she sighs. “Go home, Margot.”

  I don’t want to. But I don’t have anywhere else.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I follow the road back to Fairhaven, dust coating my tongue. Finally, the reach of the back porch, where Gram is standing, leaning against the post, her arms crossed over her chest. I wonder how long she’s been waiting for me.

  “Welcome back,” she says. A few feet away, her face impassive. For a moment we just watch each other. Will she scold me for leaving? Or will we pretend nothing happened?

  “You hungry?” she asks then. “Or did Sarah feed you?” I think of the lunch I missed at the Millers’. It’d be better by a mile than whatever Gram’s got ready. But my stomach is empty, and Gram’s offering me something. I’ll take it.

  “I could eat,” I say.

  She sits me down at the kitchen table, and I watch her at the stove as she cracks two eggs into a frying pan and scrambles them. We don’t say anything. Maybe she’s surprised I came back.

  Gram scrapes the scrambled egg onto a plate. As it steams, she swings the freezer open and fishes an apricot out of a plastic bag stacked there. I frown, remember how she said it wasn’t for me. But then the freezer is shut and her back is to me as she splits the apricot and palms the pit before dropping it into the trash in the cabinet under the sink.

  Finally, she turns and sets the plate of food down in front of me. The eggs, with a fork speared in them, and the two apricot halves lying open next to them. It makes me feel almost sick. I’m not sure why.

  The fruit is still frozen. I ignore it in favor of the eggs. Gram watches as I take a bite, and then another.

  “Clean your plate,” she says. “You look unsteady.”

  That’s one word for it.

  It should grate on me, the close observation, the almost distrustful way she watches to make sure I finish my food. But it’s a relief. All I have to do right now is sit here and take one bite after another. No questions. No confusion. No bodies with faces like mine. Just someone who might have been a mother, once. And me.