Twice he circles me, and my ears track his movements. I hear the tasseled grass heads stroke his sleek flanks, hear the careful setting of his hooves as he moves in closer with each orbit. I smell his scent, shifting with the wind, changing with his changing emotions, as plain to me as speech. His excitement is rising as he thinks he has me unawares. I look up at the blue sky through my interlaced lashes, my face carefully impassive. His forest eyes will be shining, his cheeks flushed, his lips slightly parted as he breathes soundlessly through his mouth. I sense him beginning his third stalking circle, closing in tighter. He will be able to see me now, and I feel him pause, peer at me through the tall stalks of grass.
He halts. The wind is blowing from me to him now, and I cannot scent him, but I can feel his eyes on me, studying me to see if I am aware of him. Too much stillness will give me away as much as too much movement. I move slightly, feigning a stretch that rolls me just enough to see him through my shadowing lashes.
Yes, he is watching me. But he is frozen, a kind of awe or horror marring his face, and as I watch, his nostrils flare again, taking in my scent. Puzzlement ridges his brow. He lifts a hoof, starts to take a step forward, then replaces it. He rocks his weight, soundless in his indecision. Then he lifts the hoof again, places it, takes a soundless step.
Backward.
Away from me.
I open my eyes, heedless now of the stalking game. He meets my glance, and for an instant he pauses. He is looking at me as if I have betrayed him. I have changed, made a difference between us. I sit up, grass tangling in my hair. I do not speak. There have never been words between us. But I look at him, and I know he must be reading the same thing in my eyes. Betrayal. He has let the change in me make a difference between us. How could he, how can he draw away from me, be the first to scorn me because of my body’s treachery?
I want to reach for him in some way, to lift my voice or a hand and beckon him, but I cannot. Instead I watch him as he takes another slow step backward. And another. And another. I rise, and the tall grasses between us become a waist-deep ocean rippling in waves of wind. It is a scene from a painting, the young girl and the faun, the blue sky, the yellowing grasses masking the brown of his flanks, his tanned skin, his hair the color of honey on polished mahogany. I can feel the sun touching me through my thin cotton shirt and his eyes also, puzzling out for the first time what must lie beneath the garments I have draped over my body. His forest eyes drop suddenly to my crotch. He takes another backward step.
It is all I can stand. The banked anger in my heart flares up into leaping tongues, and I launch myself at him, screaming something, to this day I don’t know what, blasting him with my human voice, sending him stumbling to his knees, and then up he leaps, spry as a goat, and he is bounding away, leaping like a deer over the uneven ground as he flees me. Panicked.
Rinky leaps to his feet at the sound, bounds around me in a short circle, trying to see what has alarmed me. He spots the faun and bounds playfully after him, not interested in catching him so much as in seeing where he is running to. I scream again, after him, wordlessly, comforting myself with the pain of ripping my throat with the harsh sound. A scream like a stalking lynx’s might sound, a cat cry of fury and threat. The faun reaches the edge of the meadow and the forest embraces him, many-armed mother reaching to comfort her child, to hide him in the safety of her bosom. Rinky takes a final bound, pauses on the edge of the woods, staring back at me with his round, brown wolf eyes. Aren’t I coming? Don’t I want to play today, to run on the rabbit trails with them, to hunt, and then to fling myself down and pant in the shade?
I stare at him, my heart hot and heavy, waiting to watch him vanish, for Rinky, too, to desert me. He stands still, puzzled, the sun striking glints off the sleek guard hairs interspersed through his black pelt. His small ears are pricked toward me, his jaw hung slightly ajar as he pants in cooling air. Go on, I mentally urge him, get lost, see if I care. Leave me. Go away. Who needs you, who needs anybody?
He shrugs. It is not a movement of his shoulders, but a wolf movement, a rippling of his scalp, a shake of his ears. And then he comes back, trotting back to me, the grasses parting before him and rippling in his wake. When he reaches me, he rears up on his hind legs, wrapping his front paws around my waist, playfully snapping at my face, catching the tip of my nose so sharply that I cry out and push him away, and then fall, and we are wrestling in the grass, his teeth closing on my thin wrist whenever I grab him, clamping down until I must release him, and then we are grabbing each other again, pinching and biting, snarling and yelping in our turns, until we are both tired and fall back, panting in the fading sun. I hug him tight, putting my face into the thick fur on the back of his neck, feeling his trueness, his loyalty like a closed circuit of warmth between us. He feels it, too, for he is still in my embrace, not struggling or trying to bite and start another tussle. Tears sting my eyes and I wipe my face against him, not in sadness but glad to know I have found one place to put my trust.
Fading sun. Yes, the day is going, not into night but into that cooler daylight that is the night hours of an Alaskan summer, a time when colors seem to have shadows of their own. This shadowed light is easy on my eyes, and it is easier to spot game, and not just because more game is moving this time of evening. This is the natural light of the hunter and the natural time for hunting. Both Rinky and I sense it, and as we head home, we move silently, moving with the woods, not against them, flowing easily between the trees, looping under low-swagged branches, moving purposefully, deadliness in our eyes and stride.
We spot the rabbit at the same time, but Rinky is the one who gives chase, springing forth soundlessly and stretching long and low as he races after it. I am unaccountably tired and my lower back aches. I continue toward home, knowing that soon Rinky will catch up with me, and his muzzle will be edged in red, and his front paws dappled with sweet blood.
Thoughts of blood bring me back to my dilemma. To be a woman and deny it, or be a woman and try to enjoy it. I cannot think of the second alternative without disgust. But it is there, a possibility, and I force myself to turn it over. I think of Candy and Sissy, at home, doing whatever it is they do all day. How will they treat me, now that I am one of them? Are there secrets to share, a new camaraderie to be discovered? I imagine them teaching me, stroking bright reds onto my nails, outlining my green eyes in a darker green, and something very like anticipation shivers through me. Perhaps if I learn how to do it, it will not seem so bad; it may be a skill I can master and use as needed. Being a woman. Dabbing perfume onto pulse points. I imagine myself going back to school in September, a new sway in my walk, a new sureness in my eyes, my clothing bright and easy on my back, my hair soft around my face. Will it make me accepted, will it make anything easier? Then take what small good it will offer, and be it, since it is forced upon me.
I racket up the steps, and push open the unlatched door. I’ve missed dinner, again, who cares, peanut butter on half an apple later, that’s plenty. For the first time that I can remember, I go seeking my sisters with no specific errand. They will turn to me and smile, and perhaps I will smile back, showing I share the secret.
I find them in the basement, their laughter leading me to them. I turn the corner from the stairs and freeze.
Kimmy is my youngest sister. Eight. Blond hair that curls at the ends of its own free will, perfect white teeth, dimples, everyone’s favorite little girl. Cute. Little. Girl. Obviously destined to be a woman someday.
She stands between them, basking in their attention. Sissy is fixing curlers onto her flaxen hair, carefully rolling up the strands into fat bobbing sausages that cling to her skull. Candy is painting her toenails, a different shade of pink to each nail, Pearl Pink, Moon Pink, Opalescent Glow, Cotton Candy. Her eyelids are already striped with colors, her cheeks boast two red highlights, her lips are stained peppermint pink. She is smiling blissfully, and Candy and Sissy laugh aloud as they talk over her head about some boy at school.
“But,” I say, wondering how they can make this mistake, forget that it is I who have started this miserable bleeding, I who deserve this measure of acceptance, this welcoming to womanhood.
Candy looks up. “Bet you think you got out of the dishes again, Evelyn. Well, you didn’t. I left all the pots and pans for you, and Mom said it was okay, that you had to learn that skipping dinner is no way to get out of chores.”
“Fuck you,” I say in my coldest tone, and they gasp, and I flee up the stairs, fear balancing on a knife edge, knowing it will go hard with me if they tell my father I have said the F-word, but suspecting they are too scandalized to even be able to tattle about it.
It is as they have said, the pots and pans are sitting in the sink in cold, greasy water, and my mother looks at me knowingly as I come into the kitchen. I don’t even bother to speak. I haul the pans out of the sink, refill it with pure hot water that scalds my hands as I scrub at the stubborn pans. “It’s time you started doing your share of the chores around here, and I’m glad you finally seem to realize it,” my mother observes as I take the last sudsy pan from the water and upend it in the drainer. I don’t trust myself to speak as this first noose falls and settles around me. Tighter and tighter every day they will get, until I’m strangling in dainty femininity. I swallow, get two apples, and take a knife and the whole jar of peanut butter to the back porch. I eat in the dark, hunkered on the porch like a small animal, licking peanut butter from the edge of my thumbnail. Like myself.
Later that night I get cramps in my belly, deep aching cramps as my body gives up the semiclotted blood. I don’t tell anyone, but I go to bed, calling Rinky up onto my bed and under the covers, curling my aching stomach around his warm back, putting my face into the fur on his neck so that my tears can remain secret in the shared bedroom.
And the damn booklets are wrong. Not three days, nor four, nor even five does this misery last, but seven fucking days of leaking blood. Seven fucking days. I say the forbidden word savagely to myself, feeling how appropriate it is.
NINE
* * *
The Farm
June 1976
“Tom, where’s your dirty coveralls? Today is my wash day.”
He doesn’t answer. I pull my head out of the closet I am searching and turn around. He’s gone. Probably in the kitchen, getting a cup of coffee. I trail him there, but he is already out the door and headed to the equipment shed. I venture out onto the splintery steps in my bare feet.
“Tom. Tom!”
He stops and turns an annoyed look on me. “What? I’m in a hurry!”
“Your dirty coveralls. Where did you put them?”
“Mom already got them. She threw them in with Dad’s yesterday when she washed. See you later!”
He turns and swings off down the path again. I am left leaning out the door, staring after him. The day is already getting hot, and the sun bounces off his red baseball cap. There is a white patch on the front of it that says “Potter’s Equipment.” Truth in advertising. The anger inside me is like a clawed bug, growing by shredding the lining of my stomach. The screen door slams loudly behind me as I reenter the house. The kettle is boiling over on the stove, striving to whistle even as it pukes up gouts of boiling water through its spout. I turn off the flame and slam the kettle onto a cool burner. Whoa.
Let’s calm down now. You are angry, Evelyn. Would you mind telling me just why you are angry?
Because his mother washed Tom’s coveralls, that’s why. Just who the hell does she think she is?
His mother, that’s who. Now calm down. Why is it so terrible that she washed his coveralls? Maybe she just had a load she wanted to fill up, conserve energy, save hot water, all that good stuff.
Maybe. But I doubt it. Usually it takes an Act of Congress to get Tom out of his coveralls. So what made her go after him, pry him out of them? She figures they were too dirty for him to work in, I bet. Bad image for Potter’s Equipment for her poor baby to run around in dirty old work clothes, because his lousy wife doesn’t look after him.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. All right. All right. Let’s just look at this coolly. Make a cup of tea while you’re thinking. That’s right, get your hands busy, and see if we can’t get your mind back to an adult stage. You, Evelyn, are offended because Mother Maurie washed Tom’s coveralls. You feel this is a direct reflection on your skills as a wife, right?
Mostly.
Tsk, tsk, Evelyn. I thought you were beyond that. Weren’t you telling Annie several months ago that you thought you had really made it to liberation when you could let the beds go unmade all day and not feel guilty? You and Tom both know he is a big boy now. If he feels his coveralls are too dirty to work in, he can tell you so. He can even wash them himself, or ask his mom to do it. Or do you enjoy washing coveralls, Evelyn? Do you get your kicks out of being Susie Homemaker?
No. No, it’s not that at all, it’s just that …
Enough said, Evelyn. You need a job. And I don’t mean a job watching the jelly boil or canning peaches. You need an honest-to-God, eight-to-five job. You are beginning to get really weird, girl. It’s time for a dose of reality.
Yeah. I guess so. And put Teddy in day care, with kids his own age, where he can play. All this bratty stuff lately is just from being the only kid around, from too much adult attention of the wrong kind. He needs to play. And I need to work. I need to find my own life again.
I drag myself out of the kitchen chair and return to the bedroom. The laundry basket is heaped. I fill a pillowcase with the overflow and head for Mother Maurie’s big house. Go back, I forgot the detergent. Then out the door into the baking yard, squinting against the white light. The sun is beating down, the day is baked in hot ceramic colors, and smells of dust and growing plants. And something else.
I pause. I hold my breath, refusing to take that scent. But my arms are full, I cannot clap my hands over my ears, cannot block that faint sound.
It could be a car radio, playing down by the equipment shop. Playing faint and thin, left on in a car with the windows rolled up. But this is not country-western, “My Baby’s Got the Hots for Someone Else” twang. This was the breathless panting of a hot summer day. Pipes. Panpipes. The sun is beating down on my bare head, making me dizzy, and sweat is running into my eyelashes, stinging my eyes. Another drop of perspiration slides like a sly finger down between my breasts. Reed pipes. Playing a green frog hiding on the underside of a cool green leaf by a stream, playing alder cones rattling on fallen leaves …
I am standing by the fence, leaning my laundry on the top strand of barbed wire. The woods are over there, beyond the chicken yard. Brush comes right down to the electric fence of the chicken yard. Behind the fence, the hills begin, almost abruptly. The hills are the source of the tiny trickling stream that feeds the pond in the chicken yard. There are small trees beyond the brush by the fence, and then larger ones on the hill itself. Tom has told me there is a larger main stream back in those hills that our little stream branches off from. A stream where one could catch small trout that flitted across the sandy bottom beneath the water. A long time ago, before we came to visit here, he told me that he and I and Teddy would go on a picnic lunch there someday, pack a big wicker basket with deviled eggs and cold pop and potato salad and cold turkey sandwiches with creamy mayonnaise and crunchy lettuce and go on out there. Tom would carry the rods over his shoulder, and Teddy would run ahead and then back to us, trying not to shout because he didn’t want to scare the fish. I’d wear a white summer dress with no sleeves and my legs would be bare.
The piping seemed fainter. I cling to my images of Tom, how his white T-shirt would stick to his golden skin with perspiration, and how he would stand behind Teddy and cheer for him as he dragged the fish out of the water, but he’d be so careful not to touch the reel, not to take the triumph from him. Or so he might have been, three or four months ago. Now he’d be too busy to go fishing with his little son and wife, there were more important things
to do, tractors to fix, parts to sell. The piping waxed stronger.
“Looking for Teddy, Lynnie? He went to town with Grandpa.”
I jerk suddenly, dropping the pillowcase of laundry into the dust. The embroidered pillowcase with the lecherous rooster on it, I note guiltily as I hastily retrieve it. I spin to confront Steffie behind me. She is walking across the yard to me, talking from the big steps of the shaded and screened porch of the big house. After gazing at the sun-bright pond and hill, I can barely see her.
“Lynnie?” I say inanely. I am a dreamer awakened, and my dreams are sweaty, guilty ones. Am I blushing, or is it only the heat of the sun burning my cheeks?
“Sure. Lynnie. It fits in better, sounds more down home. Maurie and Steffie and Teddy and Ellie and Lynnie. Evelyn always sounded like a storybook name to me.”
Steffie is trying to be friendly, I realize. She means this as a kindness, this altering of my name to fit her family. Like cutting off the stepsister’s toes to stuff her foot in the glass slipper. I am still staring at her, I suddenly realize, for she feels compelled to add, “It’s more countryish than Evelyn. Evelyn sounds like a city name.”
“Wal, shure. Just pass me the freckles and the old straw hat and we’ll both go milk cows somewhere.”
We laugh, almost together. Steffie is pleased with herself, as if she has persuaded a shy child to take a cookie.
“Doing your laundry today?”
“No, just taking it for a walk.” She laughs at my weak joke as if it’s the line of the century.
As I cross the lawn toward her, she adds innocently, “You sure seem to like that view. What were you watching out there at night, a week or two ago?”
“I.” The sun is too hot, the yard too bright. I feel I am falling into a whiteness, scalding myself. The brightness is her eyes watching me from the screened darkness of the porch, seeing through me, seeing everything. “Nothing.”
Cloven Hooves Page 11
