The Bone Mother

by David Demchuk

  “Thanks,” she said. “I needed that.”

  “You did most of the work.”

  “It was fifty-fifty. Or maybe sixty-forty.” She turned towards me, leaned up on one elbow. “I know you don’t want me to see, and that’s okay, I totally get it. But I could just—touch it? Rest my hand on it?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I sighed. What I wanted to say was: I don’t want it to know who you are. Even at that moment, I could feel it was awake, awake and aware. Instead I said, “It’s very sensitive, it’s hard to even wear clothes sometimes.”

  “Then take them off,” she said coyly. I shook my head, smiling.

  “One day I will, but not today.”

  She put her arm around me, carefully, as if she thought I might push her away. “I just want you to know that whatever you have, I’m good with it. Whatever it is, we have it together.” This seemed like an impossible thing to say, but maybe that’s how it works. Maybe that’s when we can accept the most from each other, at the very beginning—before we can imagine what we have agreed to accept.

  Alice fell asleep soon after, and soon after that I slipped out from beside her and made my way out of her apartment, out of her building. I found the fence, and the handbill pasted to it. On the handbill was a face, a woman’s face, wreathed in fire or snakes or a wild mane of hair. Someone had tried to tear it off, the upper edge was ragged and rough. There had been some wording, you could see where some of the letters had been, but the words themselves were gone. Was this the same image that I saw in the graffiti? Whose face was it? And who was she to me?

  Little Sprout twitched.

  I glanced across the street and saw a man, two men, watching me. Standing apart, but somehow together. Little Sprout twitched again. I pulled my coat tighter around me and hurried home, keeping to the well-lit streets and surrounding myself with crowds.

  The next morning, I came upstairs to find Maryan setting out a breakfast of boiled eggs and cucumbers and white cheese and brown bread. Out of nowhere, she asked: “Have you had any headaches or body aches? Fever or chills? Have you seen or felt anything unusual?”

  Like what—the touch on my back, the image sprayed on the wall? A lithe young woman, naked, her body curled against mine? I shook my head no.

  She picked up a heel of bread and smeared it with bacon drippings she kept in a bowl in the fridge. She had told me many stories about my mother at this table, over meals like this. I knew they couldn’t have been true, but I loved hearing them regardless. One was that she had been a prima ballerina who had toured the world, another was that she had been a trapeze artist in the Bolshoi Circus, and in another she was a celebrated designer who had slipped through the Iron Curtain. But this time, Maryan told me a different kind of story, one I had never heard before.

  “When my brothers and I were young, just ten or eleven, when we were still living in Krakow, your mother was brought to our family. She was only six years old. Her parents had been killed in a fire, we never learned by whom or why. She came to our door with two men and a woman—my parents knew them as the vartivnyk, the keepers. For five years, the keepers had moved from city to village to town, from country to country, and now had come to ask my parents to take this girl, this child, across the ocean to the new land and then to hide her from sight. They would make the arrangements, pay for everything we needed, and help us settle wherever we wished. They bought this house for us. They paid us a monthly fee for our efforts. And so we made a new life for ourselves. And while we went to school and played with our friends, your mother stayed down in the basement. There was no apartment back then, just a bed in the corner with a few books and toys. We lived upstairs, as if she didn’t exist. We were never to speak of her to anyone. I was the only one allowed to visit and play with her, to read to her, and even then never alone.

  “As we grew older, I discovered that your mother would come up from the basement in the middle of the night, unlock the back door, and then vanish into the streets until just before dawn. She would then slip back in, relock the door, and go back down to her corner. Very early one morning I woke from my bed and went down to the kitchen to wait for her. She crept in like a cat, turned the bolt on the door, then saw me and froze. Right there in the doorway. She was covered almost head to toe with blood. Blood in her hair. Blood in her teeth. I knew the blood was not hers.

  “We stared at each other for what seemed like hours, and then she walked past me and down into the basement, pulling the door shut behind her. My parents began to lock it at night, but that didn’t matter. There was a wood-covered hole that had once been a coal chute—of course, that’s long gone now. But that was what she used when she went out at night. I realized my parents were afraid of her even as we sheltered her, they were afraid that she would one day turn her hunger on us. But I was not afraid of her. I loved her. I should have been afraid.”

  Maryan looked up at me, looked back down at her plate. Took another piece of bread, dipped it in the grease.

  “One morning, she brought you home, nearly naked, afraid—you were four, maybe five years old. I doubt you remember any of this.” I shook my head. “My own father had died the year before, my brothers were away at a school. My mother and I were alone. Panicked out of her mind, she made a telephone call, and within a few hours the vartivnyk arrived—not the same keepers I saw in Krakow, but three others with the same dark clothes and severe expressions. I remember I was surprised to see them here, in the new land, but I now know that no matter how far or how fast we run, our ghosts and demons run with us, and are always close at hand. One of the keepers sat with us, a girl younger than me, while the two older men went downstairs. When they were finished, your mother had passed from this life. They had removed the sprut from her body and had placed it in yours. And my mother and I were left to care for you.”

  I was so shocked to hear this, I struggled to piece it together. “So she—was not my mother? She stole me? Where are my parents?”

  “Your birth parents were killed,” she said bluntly, “and when they were killed, she became your mother, if only for a moment. She brought you here so that you could live. And as she passed, she gave you a wondrous gift.”

  “A gift?” I was astonished. “It’s a parasite. It’s feeding on me, crippling me. I’m a murderer, thanks to this gift—and so was she!”

  “I wish things could be different, but they are not. I have protected you as long as I could, and I have made difficult choices. It is time for you to know the truth. What you carry inside you is one thousand years old, and must live one thousand years more.” She took the plates from the table, set them in the sink, then came over to me, and then kissed me on the top of my forehead. “Now,” she said. “You must be watchful. Danger is around you, and inside you as well—held back by a thread, but not for long. I no longer know how to reach the keepers, but I know that they are watching. And so are those who would harm you. If nothing else, you must understand this: your time is coming soon.”

  I wanted to speak but no words would come. I shivered, felt a twitch and a quiver along my spine. Maryan took me by the hand, led me to the basement door, gently ushered me down the first step. “Be careful of your friend,” she said. “And stay away from the market. It is not safe.”

  Another kiss, this time on my cheek. “Get some rest.”

  The twitch along my spine once more, and then a slipping down into stillness. I started down the stairs as Maryan closed the basement door, and for the first time I heard the click of the lock behind me.

  I slept on and off all day and into the evening, and wondered if I was falling ill. I couldn’t seem to get warm. As midnight came and went, I was still half in a daze after all that Maryan had said, and I decided to go back to see if I could find the first wall, the one where the graffiti had been postered over. Even if I couldn’t scrape it clean, I might find something else, a clue. I couldn’t guess why the image meant so much to me, but it did. I was compelled.

 
The market was in an old part of the city. Shops came and went here, houses were torn down and built back up, but you could have held a photo up from a hundred years ago and seen the same streets, the same churches, maybe even some of the same eyes and jawlines. I imagined the present slipping away with every step, the past rising up all around and taking hold.

  I thudded to a halt at a stop light, looked up, and saw that I was a block or so away from where I thought the wall would be. Across the street, a delivery truck, tagged on one side with a jaunty scrawl, pulled away from the curb and sped by to catch the light, the driver leaning on the horn. As it whipped past, I saw the back of the truck had been sprayed with the same image, the same woman’s face, that I’d seen earlier—neon green this time and obviously a stencil, slightly askew with overspray around the edges. As if realizing it had caught my eye, the truck abruptly turned a corner and flew out of sight.

  But now I was curious: where else would I find it? Instead of continuing east to the wall, I began to walk south, casting my eyes across storefronts and newspaper boxes, peering down alleys, searching out any sign of another similar image. It was late now, and all around me the shops and cafes were starting to close. As I approached the end of the block, a greengrocer started to bring down the large steel shutter that covered his storefront. On it was the face, just a few feet away from me, this time sprayed in purple. The same woman’s face, surrounded by—spikes? Shards? I stopped him, asked him, “Do you know what this is? How long has it been here?” He shook his head at me, shooed me away. “Closed! Closed!” I pointed at the face and he looked at it, disgusted—then ducked under the shutter and pulled it down with a slam. I took out my phone, snapped a shot of the image. I wondered if Maryan or Alice might recognize it—but some small voice, at once inside and outside, whispered: No. Do not tell anyone.

  The next morning I felt better, so I messaged back and forth with Alice from the library and saw her between classes, at a Japanese spot near her campus. “Penny for your thoughts,” she said as I sipped my cool green bubble tea. The tapioca beads were round and fat and black and I was determined to capture all of them with my oversized straw. I had been thinking of the sea witch, stabbed by the young girl rescuing her sailor brother. She had clutched her heart and fallen backward into the tide pool below, had floated out and expelled her cache of eggs into the ocean as she died. And then the embryos had bobbed aimlessly in the darkness of their shells, orphaned, alone, until they burst through into the water, the light, the new unknown. Some swallowed by fish, others scooped up by birds, until only a very few survived.

  But instead of this, I looked down at the waves and swirls scoured into the steel countertop and said: “I’m worried about Maryan. She’s imagining things now, spies and intruders and such.” I frowned, stirring circles in the milky green liquid. “She barely goes out, sometimes she spends the whole day in bed. I’m afraid she’ll hurt someone, or maybe herself. I would talk to a doctor, but she hasn’t been to one for years.”

  “Isn’t there someone you could call? Any brothers or sisters or cousins?”

  “Two brothers, I think.” I stirred and I stirred. “But I’ve never met them or spoken to them. I don’t know where they are, or even their names.”

  “When my dad died, I found some stuff in a tin box in the garage, and then some other things in a safety deposit box. She might have some legal documents, a birth certificate, something about the house. At least it would be a start.”

  “I’m sorry about your dad,” I said.

  “It’s okay, it was years ago.”

  “How did he die?”

  “He was hit by a car,” she replied. “Nothing special, and I guess that’s the sad thing. People die every day.”

  A ping from her phone—a message, or an appointment alert. She glanced down at the screen and then jumped up suddenly. “Shit, sorry, I have to run. But let me know if you find anything.” She leaned in towards me, gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, then turned and ran out the door, bells jingling in her wake.

  It was just a few minutes later, when I was on my way home, when I saw the face once again. I had only walked four or five blocks when something caught my eye across the street, on a weathered wooden fence behind an old empty bank building, a shock of bright yellow.

  I slowed and stopped and stared. It was the same image, the same face, that I had seen in the market. But what exactly was it? I waited for a break in the traffic, then sprinted across the street to look at it more closely. This one was clearer. And below it, a few words in Russian or Polish, or possibly Czech.

  I took out my phone, snapped a few photos, then something—a dizziness, some kind of nausea—swept over me for a second, the pit of my stomach dropping, the way it does in an earthquake. I dropped the phone, crouched to pick it up and nearly fell over. I stood and leaned against the wall, next to the face, my hand touching it, and I waited for the world to right itself.

  After a moment, I heard a car pull up with a small screech, the slam of a door. I looked up and saw a small dark-featured man standing over me, obviously worried. He was saying something about a hospital, emergency. I shook my head. It was like he was calling to me through a heavy grey fog. I mumbled Maryan’s address. He nodded, reached down, lifted me by my arm, helped me into the back of his taxi, then hopped into the front and sped me away. I was dizzy and tired and thirsty. I wanted to sleep, my eyes were stinging. Every few blocks the driver would glance at me in the rear-view mirror. His expression told me to be afraid, but I was oddly calm.

  I reached into my back pocket, pulled out my phone, thumbed through the photos I’d taken. This time, something about the face seemed familiar. A singer, perhaps, or an actress? ОНА БЛИЗКА. A name, a place? Maryan would know what it meant.

  And then suddenly, the house, the yard, the door. I reached back to take out my wallet, then saw the meter was off. He shook his head—no pay, no pay—then asked if I needed help. No, I answered, and thanked him, pushed open the door and stood up, stood against it for a moment, then propelled myself to the gate. I must look drunk, I remember thinking, so I turned back and smiled weakly, waved him away. ОНА БЛИЗКА. I found my way to the side of the house, down the stairs to my door. Then the key, and the bolt, and the shoes, and the bed, and then blackness.

  This was the dream, so real, so close: I felt a rhythmic rocking movement and a soft steady roar filled my ears, like the ocean in a seashell. I opened my eyes, and Alice was there, holding me. I was in the back of a car, lush and dark and soft, and the cab driver was there with me and Alice, he was speaking to someone—he was on a cellphone, speaking to someone in the old language, the one that I’d heard Maryan use. I wondered if Maryan was in the car as well, I must have said her name. Alice trembled, the cab driver looked at me, alarmed, and started speaking louder and faster.

  Alice brought her lips to my ears and said, “Lena, your aunt is dead. Someone broke in and killed her. I followed you home, to see where you live—I know that I shouldn’t have—but as I got closer I heard a scream, I saw these two men run out of your house, they looked—I don’t know, like cops. This man next to you, he was in his cab waiting outside, he said you hadn’t looked well. We went inside and found your aunt, and then we found you. He said he knew where to take you. Something’s wrong, Lena, something’s wrong with you and I’m so afraid.”

  I wanted to tell her that it was all right, that we would be fine, but I couldn’t catch enough breath to speak and I was cold, I couldn’t get warm and my teeth were chattering. She pulled me up against her, held me close, and her hand slipped down my back, down over Little Sprout, and I wanted to warn her but I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t breathe, and Little Sprout twisted and turned under her touch and she first pulled away, then placed her hand back over it and gently stroked it back and forth until it calmed.

  The car veered off to the right and came to a sudden stop. The door swung open and the cab driver placed his arms around me, lifted me, swept me out of th
e back seat. I saw we were parked on the outskirts of the market, around the corner from the greengrocer. He carried me down an alley as Alice followed, gestured for Alice to take his keys and open an unmarked door, then led us through a small hallway and down a dark flight of stone stairs into what seemed like an old ruined church, a church beneath the streets. The face was here, the graffiti was here, overwhelming the wall at the front of the room. ОНА БЛИЗКА it said below the face, and beneath that it said SHE IS NEAR. And it was then that I realized: the face was me, the woman was me. I had been near, all this time. And now, here I was.

  Little Sprout stirred again and it was as if I shared its thoughts: its mother had been the true sea witch, the first of its kind, and now its new host would make the journey to its home in the northern waters, to assume its place and its power.

  Dozens of people waited here, some of them old, but some younger as well. I knew these were the keepers, and with them we would be safe. “Malen’kiy sprut, malen’kiy sprut, ya tvoy drug,” they sang. “Malen’kiy sprut, malen’kiy sprut, ya pomogu.”

  “What are you doing?” an old woman asked. “She is starting to pass! We need a new host!”

  “Let me see it,” Alice said. The old woman shook her head.

  “Where is Maryan?” another demanded. Others shouted out in agreement.

  “Maryan walked away years ago,” a much older man said loudly. “And now she is dead. We will not speak of her again.”

  “Let me see it,” Alice repeated. “Please. I want to see it.”

  “Are you crazy?” a younger woman shouted. “We do not know who this person is!”