The Bone Mother

by David Demchuk

  “We have no time!” the oldest man shouted back.

  “Show her,” I rasped. “Please, show her.”

  The oldest man nodded and the cab driver took me to the front of the room, placed me on my side on a long table, and I curled into myself as the oldest man lifted up my blouse, unfolded a small pocket knife and cut through the sutures one by one. I could feel him use the tip of the blade to peel back the skin along my spine. Alice reached forward. “No,” he said. “You must not touch it.” But then I felt Alice press her hand against me, against Little Sprout, caressing us, soothing us both.

  “Yes,” she said. “I can do this. Please.” And then she climbed up onto the table facing me. I could see over her shoulder as another man took the pocket knife, pulled up the back of her shirt. She winced, eyes tearing, as he sliced into her.

  “You don’t have to,” I whispered.

  “I want to,” she said.

  I felt a tugging, a disentangling behind me, and then suddenly I was so tired, I could barely keep my eyes open. The oldest man stepped forward with something in his hands—the malen’kiy sprut, the “little sprout” that I had carried within me since I was a child, and that my not-mother had carried within her. It was not, in truth, an actual sprut but one of its distant cousins, a long thin gelatinous creature with one large bright eye, another smaller dark eye, and dozens of fine glassy tendrils studded with tiny shards of bone. Little teeth. The oldest man swiftly moved behind Alice, held the creature down behind her. She cried out, let out a half-dozen short sharp breaths, and then relaxed as he proceeded to stitch the wound and dress it.

  I closed my eyes, and the darkness pressed against my face like a thick black curtain. And then light, and movement, red upon red upon red. I was somehow in two places—one cold and distant, the other warm and moist and close. I stretched and entwined and unfurled. I had a thousand fingers and I could touch and taste and think with all of them.

  “Where am I?” I whispered. “Am I inside you?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “You are.”

  “People die every day . . . isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “They do.”

  “Am I a monster?” I asked, with my old body’s last breath.

  “Yes,” she sighed back. “A beautiful monster. And soon, the whole world will see.”

  Livia

  There are tales, where I come from, about a girl who walks. You may have heard them, you may have told them yourself. A girl, sometimes very young, sometimes older, fourteen or fifteen, sometimes sixteen, who walks along a lonely stretch of road. A road where something happened. Hundreds have seen her over the years. She never ages, never changes. At first you can’t see her face. You think maybe she’s lost, or hurt in some way. She stops, and when you approach her, she turns to look at you. And then she vanishes. So many stories, I am certain you’ve heard them.

  Where I was born, there were once three small towns, and roads of course between them. The towns are gone, but the roads remain, including the road where the girl walks. Other roads in the area were improved years ago, covered with asphalt, painted with clean white lines, but not this road. The workers refused to work on this road.

  The oblast administrators were outraged, said they would bring in new workers, from one of the cities, where desperate people would go anywhere and do anything for a few rubles. The workers said “Bring in whomever you like.” They finished the other six roads on the list, even the ravine road that was long and twisted with sharp sudden turns, but they would not touch the short straight road where the girl, it was said, had died. Either the administrators had no success, or they didn’t bother to try. No one was brought in from the city. No one did anything for any number of rubles. The road is what it was eighty years ago, a worn stretch of dirt with a hasty sprinkling of gravel. On some maps it doesn’t even exist. People come upon it and wonder, “Where does that lead?” Then they feel a shiver for no clear reason, and go off in another direction.

  The stories themselves of course are absurd. One is that the girl was deaf, was walking on the road alone, and did not hear the cart coming up from behind her, did not hear the shouts of the driver, who was young and not in control of his horses, and so she was trampled to death. A deaf girl would still have felt the rumble of the cart, would have smelled the dust in the air, would have turned around and jumped aside. Of this I am quite sure.

  Another story is that the girl was walking with a young suitor after a dance or a wedding or some other occasion. He lived in one town, she in the other. He made jealous remarks about another young man who spoke to the girl or danced with the girl, and she said something or did something or said nothing at all, it’s always the girl in these stories, and he lashed out and struck her and knocked her to the ground and she died. He may have struck her more than once. Other things, worse things, may have happened. The story depends not on the truth but the teller. What he leaves in, what he takes out. But still, dead. On the road or pushed into a ditch. This is an old story, you hear it everywhere. However, I can assure you, this girl had no suitor, not even in secret. These towns rarely had dances or weddings, and there is no ditch along that road. It is even and dry and edged on either side by farmers’ fences and waving wild grasses.

  And as always the beast story—they are so common here, in these parts. A girl walks along the road alone, quite late or quite early. She sees a shadow, low and long, lying on the ground ahead—a man, or an animal, possibly injured. She wants to help, hurries to help—it’s always the girl in these stories—and then of course the shadow is a man, and the man is dead, horribly mauled, and the beast springs out from somewhere, all claws and teeth. Or the man is in fact the beast, if that can be said to be a fact, and it cannot. There was no beast, there was no shadow. Though if he was a beast, perhaps now she is one as well.

  What there was, is this: a girl, a road, the late summer sun. The grasses are just starting to brown, the leaves on distant trees just lightly touched with red and gold. She has walked this road, between the towns, so many times since childhood, first with her father or mother, then with neighbouring friends, or alone, and she has always felt safe.

  Today is different. The road is different, though of course it is the same road. It may be the heat, or the way the sunlight falls, the road seems very long today, strangely so. She stops and looks back and wonders if she has turned herself around somehow, if she is walking the wrong way, is somehow heading back from where she came. Neither town is in sight. There is only the road.

  The girl has done nothing wrong. She is not injured, not in pain, not in any obvious danger. But somehow the road she is on is no longer the road she was on, she is somewhere else now. The road has no beginning, and now it has no end. The heat, the light, the late summer sun. And now this road can be any road, can be the road you walk along tonight. Your mind wanders as you walk and you find yourself by yourself, looking forward, looking back—you don’t remember when the world fell away, but here you are. And ahead, the figure, the girl from all the stories. Perhaps she is lost, or confused in some way. She slows, she stops, and when you approach her, she turns to look at you. And then she is gone.

  And this road, this is your road now. And you, now you are the girl, the story, and you are waiting to be told.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many thanks to Tony Burgess, Derek McCormack, and Ing Wong-Ward for their early readership, thoughtful comments and boundless support.

  And to Brett Savory, Sandra Kasturi, Samantha Beiko, Erik Mohr, and the entire ChiZine family.

  Thanks as well to Jacob Zimmer, Judy Virago, Moynan King, Chy Ryan Spain, Shaista Latif, Mikhail Ivanov, and Zhenmei Wong-Ward, translator Stanislav Novak, as well as Jordan Tannahill and William Ellis of Videofag, for their efforts in the production of the staged version, The Thimble Factory, performed in October of 2015.

  Much love always to my partner, Chris Poirier, and to my treasured friends Asif Kamal, Laurie Martin, and Steve Lu
cas.

  Love and admiration for my friend Dominic Fournier, who grapples daily with darkness and embraces monsters in his art and life.

  And so much gratitude to Samuel R. Delany for his encouragement over many years.

  This book would not have been possible without the extraordinary photographs from the Costică Acsinte Archive.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  David Demchuk was born and raised in Winnipeg and now lives in Toronto. An award-winning playwright and accomplished journalist, he has been writing for theatre, film, television, radio, print and other media for more than thirty years. The Bone Mother is his first novel.

  A NOTE ON THE IMAGES

  In 1985, the Ialomița County History Museum acquired more than 5000 photographic plates made by Roman photographer Costică Acsinte between 1935–1945. In 2007, the museum bought more than 300 prints taken during WW I. At 23rd of June, 1991 all his photographic work fell into Public Domain, as per Decret Lege nr 321/1956 and Lege nr 8/1996. Efforts are underway to preserve the collection.

  You can find the Costică Acsinte Archive at:

  http://colectiacosticaacsinte.eu/

  https://www.flickr.com/photos/costicaacsinte/