Burn Our Bodies Down

by Rory Power

  When I’m done, Gram sets my plate in the sink and then comes back to crouch in front of me, so close that I can see the small ring of hazel at the center of her dark eyes, same as me and Mom.

  “I wouldn’t have told you about the clinic,” she says in a voice that wouldn’t sound gentle from anybody else, “if I didn’t think you needed to know. Your mother might have come here, and she might have said she’ll wait, but I don’t want you thinking she means it. That will only get you hurt.”

  I don’t answer. I can’t. Gram is probably right. Mom came here not to save me, not to bring me home, but to score a point in the fight she is still having with her mother no matter what. If she really is still in town, it isn’t for me, is it? Gram wanted me to figure that out. That’s why she put me in that dress. To snuff out that last flare of hope. To show me how things really are.

  “You know her,” Gram goes on. Softer and softer with every word. “You know what sort of games she’ll play. Don’t let her fool you. You’re too smart for that.”

  I shut my eyes and try to remember the look on Mom’s face. It felt real, then. When she asked me to come with her. As real as the pride I felt in turning her down.

  Gram reaches out and carefully lays her hand on my knee. I tremble, sway toward her before I can catch myself. “And I know,” she says, “that things have been complicated. But you belong here, Mini. Remember that. It’s better without her.”

  Not comfort. Not a threat, either. Just the truth. I feel it settle into me, wonder if when I look in the mirror it will be written across my forehead, in the marks my blisters have started to leave behind. This is the only place for a girl like me.

  “I will,” I say, and then, because I finally understand it all the way: “Nobody but you and me.”

  There is nobody else who will want me. There is nobody else who will give me half of what she will.

  “Exactly,” she says. When she kisses my forehead, her lips are dry. “That’s exactly right.”

  She leaves me then. Disappears into the depths of the house, and I stay there in the kitchen, my heart beating too fast, my breakfast sitting horribly in my stomach, until I have to wrench open the cabinet under the sink and coil over the garbage as I dry heave. Nothing comes up, but I wait there a moment longer. Staring down at something small, tucked inside the eggshells from my breakfast. Shining and white.

  A tooth.

  For a moment I don’t move. I just look, and look, feel a strange, detached curiosity well up and fade again. And then I shut my eyes. Sit back on my heels. I don’t know what to do with any of this. I need someone to be here in it with me. I thought maybe that could be Tess, but I messed it all up.

  And I know what I should do. Answers, I keep saying I want answers—I should be tearing this place apart. I can’t, though. Not when it’s all I have, not when I’m terrified of what I’ll find.

  I wish I could. I wish I were stronger; I wish I were better.

  I’m not.

  I get to my feet. Climb up the stairs, back to my room, where Katherine’s Bible is sitting on my nightstand. Maybe she can reach through the years and secrets keeping us apart. Maybe she can come back.

  I flip to the last entry I read and then keep going, skip past sections where the pages have been torn out, past entries about Bible study, about fights Katherine had with Gram, about the weight of summer and how much Katherine wishes Gram would go for air-conditioning. Until there. I recognize it like it’s my own face in the mirror: panic.

  The other entries I read were fond. Maybe a little strained, and a little worried, but nothing like this. The handwriting is jagged. In a few places, the pen tore through the paper, and I have to press the page flat to read what it says.

  i don’t know what to do i don’t fucking know what to do something’s wrong with mini

  That’s as far as I get before I have to stop. Something’s wrong with mini—something’s wrong with Mom.

  i think i’ve known that for a while and god everybody in town certainly has a lot to say about it

  but honestly it’s hard to tell because sometimes it’s just that she’s saying the things i want to say and doing the things i want to do and sometimes it’s that i don’t recognize her anymore

  those don’t sound like the same thing do they

  but they are mostly

  mini’s always just been bigger and brighter and the fun one i mean she would be if we had any friends and it’s freeing or something to see her fight with mom and run out to the grove and scream and scream the way she does and i like that she does that really i do that’s not what i’m talking about

  what i mean is okay i woke up and she was gone and fine fine she can go i’m not saying she has to stay by my side every minute of the day

  but i went downstairs to look for her because i wanted one of those nights like we used to have when we were younger when we’d sit out on the porch until the sun came up just us and then never tell mom

  that’s what i wanted

  and i get downstairs and i can’t find her and it turns out she’s in the dining room and she had all these pictures laid out across the table pictures of us

  I turn the page eagerly as the writing cuts off. On the back of that page there’s the start of a word, now crossed out, and the entry picks up again on the right-hand side, where the ink hasn’t bled through.

  she stopped when i came in and she started to put everything back into these boxes she got from mom’s study that’s where all the photo albums are

  and she didn’t say anything she didn’t try to explain anything but i saw it of course i saw it

  she was scratching out my face in every picture

  she even took the one from the wall the one of her and me and mom when we’re like fourteen the one we took to put on the wall next to the rest of our family

  she even took that one down and scratched me out with an actual knife and i asked her what the hell she was doing and she wouldn’t answer me and so i

  i made a mistake i guess i mean i know that now but i reached out and i just touched her i swear that’s all i did and if she ever tries to say i did anything else i will show her this because i swear i just touched her arm that’s ALL

  and she lost her mind i mean she actually lost her mind i’ve never seen her like that before and i’ve seen mini like everything i mean i was born with her and i’ve lived every second after that at her side and i’ve

  she screamed so loud i thought she would wake up mom and she didn’t hit me but she got so close and it’s ridiculous because she would never. she would never hurt me like that. but there was a knife on the table and i was scared and i hate that i hate that i was scared of her scared of my sister like i was scared of myself

  it’s not fair

  fuck you mini for making me afraid

  It looks like the entry ends there, but to be sure, I turn the page, and there’s more. This time in carefully, deliberately neat writing, only in the margins of the Scripture so that it can be read easily.

  today we are sixteen (lucky us) and as a gift mom gave us a lecture about responsibility and taught us to drive stick

  then we sat down at the kitchen table which is where we do everything now that mom’s seen the scratches mini left in the dining room one and no i never told her what happened but i know mini thinks that i did

  and anyway she made us a cake which she never does but sixteen is special or that’s what everyone says

  and she told us the story she always tells us which for posterity i will record here (hello older self yes it was just as weird as you remember it)

  the story is that we were born in the apricot grove. mom was pregnant but she wasn’t showing much, and our father—may he rest in Whatever the Fuck—was long gone. she was out in the grove one day, collecting the fruit, which was still growing (mostly) properly then, when her water broke. she never made it back to the house, never mind to a hospital.

  ta-da

  two baby girls
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br />   we’ve always thought she must have been joking (i have anyway) or that maybe her water broke in the grove, but then she got in the truck and drove to the county hospital with her usual unbreakable practicality

  today i think she wasn’t joking at all and this is why

  she lit four candles and she put them on the cake and she put the cake in the middle of the table and i was worried that my hair would catch fire so i let mini lean over to blow them out

  (i am writing this very carefully. i want to know that this is what i remember. it is the kind of thing that very easily turns into something else. but this is what i saw.)

  mom was behind mini holding her hair back because i had to get my neuroses from somewhere didn’t i but mini still burned her finger

  she saw one of the candles tipping over and she burned her finger trying to prop it back up and she didn’t say anything because i bet she knew mom would fuss and fuss

  but i saw later on her skin where the fire touched

  like little lines or maybe scars running across her skin all coming from one spot and spiraling out to the edge of the burn

  i only saw it for a moment

  and then she put on a band-aid and she’s left it on since and maybe it wasn’t anything

  maybe it’s just how burns are

  but i don’t think that’s true

  I sit back, frown down at the page. Does Mom have a burn on her finger like that? I can’t remember. I should be able to remember.

  What’s fresh in my mind, though, is the girl in the morgue. The white spirals on her burned skin. Katherine’s description sounds just like it. Another link in the chain, connecting everything. I just don’t understand how.

  I think of Mom leaning over the candle flame, the way Katherine wrote it. Of the scar that must be on her fingertip, locked away between memories. Mom wrapping my hand around my first lighter. Telling me “Keep a fire burning. A fire is what saves you.”

  Saves me from what?

  From her?

  I let out a shaky breath and keep reading. Whatever composure Katherine managed to find for that entry, she’s lost it by the next, scrawled across the opposite page in the same ink.

  mini’s sick she hasn’t come out of our room since after cake yesterday and mom put all my stuff in the guest room and said to pray about it and she said mini looked like death warmed over which wasn’t a very comforting thing and now i’m panicked because she can’t die mad at me she can’t

  we fight all the time of course we do we’re sisters but it’s more than that more than being half of each other

  it’s that sometimes i’m not sure which of us i am

  sometimes we are just mini and sometimes we are something else entirely

  if we die it will be together if she dies i am going with her

  I shut the Bible. Katherine, holding tight to Mom. And look at them now. One of them dead, the other one only half living.

  Gram said it was Mom’s job to tell me how Katherine died. And Mom didn’t give me much, but it’s enough. “I’m what happened to her,” she said in the driveway this morning. Mom, scratching out her sister’s face. Mom, full of anger and envy both. I’m scared I might know what she meant.

  I’m safer here, I tell myself. Safer without her. And whatever Gram’s willing to give me, that’s all I deserve.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I stay in my room the rest of the afternoon. Skip dinner, and try to sleep, try to force this day into memory, but it nags at me all night. Mom, and the blue dress she wore to the clinic, and Tess, and I lie there, eyes open, until the sun rises again and the exhaustion is finally too much. It hits, takes me deep, wraps me in heavy, feverish dreams. Keeps me under until a knock on my bedroom door startles me awake.

  I stagger to my feet, disoriented and dizzy. “Hang on,” I mumble, and I hear Gram’s voice say something back that I can’t make out.

  When I open the door, Gram’s standing on the other side with a dress in her hands. Brightly patterned with blue flowers, fluttering sleeves and a skirt too full for my liking.

  “What are you doing asleep so late?” she says, bustling past me. She’s got a pair of sandals too, dangling from her wrist by their white straps. “We’re due in town at five o’clock.”

  I check the clock. It’s after four. I still feel like I could sleep another day, everything since arriving in Phalene a weight pressing me back into the mattress.

  “Come on,” Gram says. “Up.”

  “What?” It’s too normal, all of this. I can still feel Gram’s hand on my knee when she told me this is the only place I’ll ever belong. And here she is. With a dress. Like a different dress isn’t the reason I ran from her in the first place.

  Gram turns to face me, holding the dress pressed against her chest like she’s seeing how it looks on her. “The police fundraiser. The Millers have had it planned for ages.”

  That sounds like nothing she’d ever want to do. I know how she feels about Phalene. How Phalene feels about her. And I certainly don’t want us to see the police any more than we have to. They’re after Gram, and they want my help, and I’m scared that if they ask again I might give it. No, we’re safer if we stay away.

  “Why are we going?” I sit on the bed, throw the covers back and swing my legs up. “It’s not like we’re gonna be particularly welcome.” Let’s just stay here, I want to tell her. You and me and nothing else and that’ll be the rest of our lives. I won’t have to see Tess. I won’t have to face the way I treated her.

  “That’s why we’re going.” Gram sets the sandals down, lays the dress on the bed and stands over me. “We’ll show how little their gossip matters to us.”

  I’m sure there’s something she’s not saying. There’s no way we’re going into town just to be seen. Not with the body and the fire. And me.

  “Sure,” I say, because it’s not worth a fight right now. Gram looks pleased and nods to the dress.

  “Put that on,” she says. “I got it just for you, in Crawford.”

  I frown. “When did you have time to do that?”

  “After you left our breakfast with the Millers so abruptly,” she says, her voice just sharp enough to let me know she’s still put out. “I guessed the size. Come into my room when you’ve finished dressing. I’ll do your hair.”

  She leaves me then. I get up, stare down at the dress. I can’t tell if it’s an apology for the blue dress in the attic, or if it’s a reminder. A warning. You have lost your mother already; do not lose me.

  No. I squeeze my eyes shut and undo the zipper. Not everything has to be picked apart. She bought this for me, even after I all but ran away from her at the Millers’—that’s care. That’s something to hold close.

  The dress slips against my raw skin as I put it on, too carefully to hurt. I grab the pair of sandals Gram brought in with it and head back out to the landing. The door to Gram’s room is open, buttery light spilling out along with the faint sound of music.

  The floor uneven under my feet, and I hear it creak as I near the door.

  “Don’t dawdle,” Gram calls. “Come in.”

  Inside, the bed is neatly made, like the last time I saw it, and Gram is sitting at the vanity on the far wall, her long gray hair spread across her shoulders. She’s wearing a dress like mine—I can see it in the large oval mirror—but hers is red. She’s got a curling iron in one hand and is touching up the ends of her hair, making sure they follow the same exaggerated curve. She looks like she’s from another age. Plucked out of time and put here in this room for me to find.

  “Margot,” she says, meeting my eyes in the mirror. “Don’t you look like a picture.”

  “A picture of what?”

  Gram gets up, crosses the room in stockinged feet and reaches out to tug on the bodice of my dress, smoothing a wrinkle. “A picture of your mother.”

  Everything in my life, a gift and a wound at the same time. When will anything just be what it is?

  “Come on,” she says. �
��Let’s get some curls in that hair.”

  It’s too hot in here, worse than in my room, even with the ceiling fan going. The blinds are drawn so low over the windows that I can’t catch a glimpse of the sunlight or the fields outside. I follow Gram to the vanity. Its bench is plush and velvet, out of place in Gram’s house, where everything is simply what it needs to be and nothing more. Nothing much on the vanity besides some old perfume, brown and dried along the sides of its glass bottle, and three tubes of lipstick. I reach for one of them.

  Gram knocks my hand away. “Those colors won’t suit you.”

  I sit still as she works the elastic out of my hair and undoes my braid. So carefully, each lock of hair laid gently over one of my shoulders. I shut my eyes. I’m afraid I might cry.

  “Today’s important,” Gram says in my ear, her hands careful against my scalp. “I’m counting on you to keep things tidy.”

  I open my eyes, meet hers in the mirror. “Tidy?”

  “As in,” Gram says, “do not make a mess.” She separates my hair into sections and strokes it with a stiff brush, smoothing it. I watch in the mirror as she sweeps it back from my temples, the gray streaks there stark. I don’t know why—they never have before—but they set a blush going in my cheeks. Gram presses the back of her hand to my skin, cool against my rising heat.

  “Just like a Nielsen,” she says, something wistful to her voice. A dreaminess.

  She picks up the curling iron then, and the whole world stretches out as she works it through my hair, piece by piece. Slow, pulling, the hum of the fan, the air beating against my skin. This is what being hers means. This is what I wanted.

  I let it sink into me, wrap around my heart, until she finishes the last of my curls, sets down the iron. I lean back against her stomach. Matching dresses, matching hair.