First, Body

by Melanie Rae Thon

  You remember a farmer straddling his own sheep. Will it be like this? The knife, one slit, precise. Pain is just a feeling like any other feeling. She never struggled. He reached inside, grabbed something, squeezed hard. I can’t tell you what it was.

  She won’t drop in time, won’t give up. When you put your hands in front of you, you almost feel her there: hair, flesh, breath, blood. She wants only what you want: to survive one minute more.

  What would you do if you found her now, if her ragged breathing stopped? Too far to drag her back to the truck; you’d have to open her in the sudden dark, pull her steaming entrails into the snow.

  I wait for the next ride. Clare wants me to follow in her tracks, to find her before she falls, to touch her, to wash her blood clean in this snow, to put it back in her veins, to make her whole.

  You walk in a circle. You wonder if you’re lost. The doe’s following you now, but at a distance. She’s trying to forgive you. If she could speak, she might tell you the way home. She might say, You can climb inside me, wear my body like a coat.

  You can’t explain this to anyone. Never, no. You need me. I’m the only one alive who knows your fear, who understands how dangerous we are to each other in these woods, on this road.

  2 XMAS, JAMAICA PLAIN

  I’m your worst fear.

  But not the worst thing that can happen.

  I lived in your house half the night. I’m the broken window in your little boy’s bedroom. I’m the flooded tiles in the bathroom where the water flowed and flowed.

  I’m the tattoo in the hollow of Emile’s pelvis, five butterflies spreading blue wings to rise out of his scar.

  I’m dark hands slipping through all your pale woman underthings; dirty fingers fondling a strand of pearls, your throat, a white bird carved of stone. I’m the body you feel wearing your fox coat.

  Clare said, Take the jewelry; it’s yours.

  My heart’s in my hands: what I touch, I love; what I love, I own.

  Snow that night and nobody seemed surprised, so I figured it must be winter. Later I remembered it was Christmas, or it had been, the day before. I was with Emile, who wanted to be Emilia. We’d started downtown, Boston. Now it was Jamaica Plain, three miles south. Home for the holidays, Emile said, some private joke. He’d been working the block around the Greyhound Station all night, wearing nothing but a white scarf and black turtleneck, tight jeans. Man wants to see before he buys, Emile said. He meant the ones in long cars, cruising, looking for fragile boys with female faces.

  Emile was sixteen, he thought.

  Getting old.

  He’d made sixty-four dollars, three tricks with cash, plus some pills — a bonus for good work, blues and greens, he didn’t know what. Nobody’d offered to take him home, which is all he wanted: a warm bed, some sleep, eggs in the morning, the smell of butter, hunks of bread torn off the loaf.

  Crashing, both of us, ragged from days of speed and crack, no substitute for the smooth high of pure cocaine but all we could afford. Now, enough cash between us at last. I had another twenty-five from the man who said he was in the circus once, who called himself the Jungle Creep — on top of me he made that sound. Before he unlocked the door, he said, Are you a real girl? I looked at his plates — New Jersey; that’s why he didn’t know the lines, didn’t know that the boys as girls stay away from the Zone unless they want their faces crushed. He wanted me to prove it first. Some bad luck once, I guess. I said, It’s fucking freezing. I’m real. Open the frigging door or go.

  Now it was too late to score, too cold, nobody on the street but Emile and me, the wind, so we walked, we kept walking. I had a green parka, somebody else’s wallet in the pocket — I couldn’t remember who or where, the coat stolen weeks ago and still mine, a miracle out here. We shared, trading it off. I loved Emile. I mean, it hurt my skin to see his cold.

  Emile had a plan. It had to be Jamaica Plain, home — enough hands as dark as mine, enough faces as brown as Emile’s — not like Brookline, where we’d have to turn ourselves inside out. Jamaica Plain, where there were pretty painted houses next to shacks, where the sound of bursting glass wouldn’t be that loud.

  Listen, we needed to sleep, to eat, that’s all. So thirsty even my veins felt dry, flattened out. Hungry somewhere in my head, but my stomach shrunken to a knot so small I thought it might be gone. I remembered the man, maybe last week, before the snow, leaning against the statue of starved horses, twisted metal at the edge of the Common. He had a knife, long enough for gutting fish. Dressed in camouflage but not hiding. He stared at his thumb, licked it clean, and cut deep to watch the bright blood bubble out. He stuck it in his mouth to drink, hungry, and I swore I’d never get that low. But nights later I dreamed him beside me. Raw and dizzy, I woke, offering my whole hand, begging him to cut it off.

  We walked around your block three times. We were patient now. Numb. No car up your drive and your porch light blazing, left to burn all night, we thought. Your house glowed, yellow even in the dark, paint so shiny it looked wet, and Emile said he lived somewhere like this once, when he was still a boy all the time, hair cropped short, before lipstick and mascara, when his cheeks weren’t blushed, before his mother caught him and his father locked him out.

  In this house Emile found your red dress, your slippery stockings. He was happy, I swear.

  So why did he end up on the floor?

  I’m not going to tell you; I don’t know.

  First, the rock wrapped in Emile’s scarf, glass splintering in the cold, and we climbed into the safe body of your house. Later we saw this was a child’s room, your only one. We found the tiny cowboy boots in the closet, black like Emile’s but small, so small. I tried the little bed. It was soft enough but too short. In every room your blue-eyed boy floated on the wall. Emile wanted to take him down. Emile said, He scares me. Emile said your little boy’s too pretty, his blond curls too long. Emile said, Some night the wrong person’s going to take him home.

  Emile’s not saying anything now, but if you touched his mouth you’d know. Like a blind person reading lips, you’d feel everything he needed to tell.

  We stood in the cold light of the open refrigerator, drinking milk from the carton, eating pecan pie with our hands, squirting whipped cream into our mouths. You don’t know how it hurt us to eat this way, our shriveled stomachs stretching; you don’t know why we couldn’t stop. We took the praline ice cream to your bed, one of those tiny containers, sweet and sickening, bits of candy frozen hard. We fell asleep and it melted, so we drank it, thick, with your brandy, watching bodies writhe on the TV, no sound: flames and ambulances all night; children leaping; a girl in mud under a car, eight men lifting; a skier crashing into a wall — we never knew who was saved and who was not. Talking heads spit the news again and again. There was no reason to listen — tomorrow exactly the same things would happen, and still everyone would forget.

  There were other houses after yours, places where I went alone, but there were none before and none like this. When I want to feel love I remember the dark thrill of it, the bright sound of glass, the sudden size and weight of my own heart in my own chest, how I knew it now, how it was real to me in my body, separate from lungs and liver and ribs, how it made the color of my blood surge against the back of my eyes, how nothing mattered anymore because I believed in this, my own heart, its will to live.

  No lights, no alarm. We waited outside. Fifteen seconds. Years collapsed. We were scared of you, who you might be inside, terrified lady with a gun, some fool with bad aim and dumb luck. The boost to the window, Emile lifting me, then I was there, in you, I swear, the smell that particular, that strong, almost a taste in your boy’s room, his sweet milky breath under my tongue. Heat left low, but to us warm as a body, humid, hot.

  My skin’s cracked now, hands that cold, but I think of them plunged deep in your drawer, down in all your soft underbelly underclothes, slipping through all your jumbled silky womanthings.

  I pulled them out and out.
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  I’m your worst fear. I touched everything in your house: all the presents just unwrapped — cashmere sweater, rocking horse, velvet pouch. I lay on your bed, smoking cigarettes, wrapped in your fur coat. How many foxes? I tried to count.

  But it was Emile who wore the red dress, who left it crumpled on the floor.

  Thin as he is, he couldn’t zip the back — he’s a boy, after all — he has those shoulders, those soon-to-be-a-man bones. He swore trying to squash his boy feet into the matching heels; then he sobbed. I had to tell him he had lovely feet, and he did, elegant, long — those golden toes. I found him a pair of stockings, one size fits all.

  I wore your husband’s pinstriped jacket. I pretended all the gifts were mine to offer. I pulled the pearls from their violet pouch.

  We danced.

  We slid across the polished wooden floor of your living room, spun in the white lights of the twinkling tree. And again, I tell you, I swear I felt the exact size and shape of things inside me, heart and kidney, my sweet left lung. All the angels hanging from the branches opened their glass mouths, stunned.

  He was more woman than you, his thick hair wound tight and pinned. Watch this, he said, chignon.

  I’m not lying. He transformed himself in front of your mirror, gold eyeshadow, faint blush. He was beautiful. He could have fooled anyone. Your husband would have paid a hundred dollars to feel Emile’s mouth kiss all the places you won’t touch.

  Later the red dress lay like a wet rag on the floor. Later the stockings snagged, the strand of pearls snapped and the beads rolled. Later Emile was all boy, naked on the bathroom floor.

  I’m the one who got away, the one you don’t know; I’m the long hairs you find under your pillow, nested in your drain, tangled in your brush. You think I might come back. You dream me dark always. I could be any dirty girl on the street, or the one on the bus, black lips, just-shaved head. You see her through mud-spattered glass, quick, blurred. You want me dead — it’s come to this — killed, but not by your clean hands. You pray for accidents instead, me high and spacy, stepping off the curb, a car that comes too fast. You dream some twisted night road and me walking, some poor drunk weaving his way home. He won’t even know what he’s struck. In the morning he’ll touch the headlight I smashed, the fender I splattered, dirt or blood. In the light he’ll see my body rising, half remembered, snow that whirls to a shape then blows apart. Only you will know for sure, the morning news, another unidentified girl dead, hit and run, her killer never found.

  I wonder if you’ll rest then, or if every sound will be glass, every pair of hands mine, reaching for your sleeping son.

  How can I explain?

  We didn’t come for him.

  I’m your worst fear. Slivers of window embedded in carpet. Sharp and invisible. You can follow my muddy footprints through your house, but if you follow them backward they always lead here: to this room, to his bed.

  If you could see my hands, not the ones you imagine but my real hands, they’d be reaching for Emile’s body. If you looked at Emile’s feet, if you touched them, you could feel us dancing.

  This is all I want.

  After we danced, we lay so close on your bed I dreamed we were twins, joined forever this way, two arms, three legs, two heads.

  But I woke in my body alone.

  Outside, snow fell like pieces of broken light.

  I already knew what had happened. But I didn’t want to know.

  I heard him in the bathroom.

  I mean, I heard the water flow and flow.

  I told myself he was washing you away, your perfume, your lavender oil scent. Becoming himself. Tomorrow we’d go.

  I tried to watch the TV, the silent man in front of the map, the endless night news. But there it was, my heart again, throbbing in my fingertips.

  I couldn’t stand it — the snow outside; the sound of water; your little boy’s head propped on the dresser, drifting on the wall; the man in the corner of the room, trapped in the flickering box: his silent mouth wouldn’t stop.

  I pounded on the bathroom door. I said, Goddamn it, Emile, you’re clean enough. I said I had a bad feeling about this place. I said I felt you coming home.

  But Emile, he didn’t say a word. There was only water, that one sound, and I saw it seeping under the door, leaking into the white carpet. Still I told lies to myself. I said, Shit, Emile — what’s going on? I pushed the door. I had to shove hard, squeeze inside, because Emile was there, you know, exactly where you found him, face down on the floor. I turned him over, saw the lips smeared red, felt the water flow.

  I breathed into him, beat his chest. It was too late, God, I know, his face pressed to the floor all this time, his face in the water, Emile dead even before he drowned, your bottle of Valium empty in the sink, the foil of your cold capsules punched through, two dozen gone — this is what did it: your brandy, your Valium, your safe little pills bought in a store. After all the shit we’ve done — smack popped under the skin, speed laced with strychnine, monkey dust — it comes to this. After all the nights on the streets, all the knives, all the pissed off johns, all the fag-hating bullies prowling the Fenway with their bats, luring boys like Emile into the bushes with promises of sex. After all that, this is where it ends: on your clean wet floor.

  Above the thunder of the water, Clare said, He doesn’t want to live.

  Clare stayed very calm. She said, Turn off the water, go.

  I kept breathing into him. I watched the butterflies between his bones. No flutter of wings and Clare said, Look at him. He’s dead. Clare said she should know.

  She told me what to take and where it was: sapphire ring, ivory elephant, snakeskin belt. She told me what to leave, what was too heavy: the carved bird, white stone. She reminded me, Take off that ridiculous coat.

  I knew Clare was right; I thought, Yes, everyone is dead: the silent heads in the TV, the boy on the floor, my father who can’t be known. I thought even you might be dead — your husband asleep at the wheel, your little boy asleep in the back, only you awake to see the car split the guardrail and soar.

  I saw a snow-filled ravine, your car rolling toward the river of thin ice.

  I thought, You never had a chance.

  But I felt you.

  I believed in you. Your family. I heard you going from room to room, saying, Who’s been sleeping in my bed?

  It took all my will.

  I wanted to love you. I wanted you to come home. I wanted you to find me kneeling on your floor. I wanted the wings on Emile’s hips to lift him through the skylight. I wanted him to scatter: ash, snow. I wanted the floor dry, the window whole.

  I swear, you gave me hope.

  Clare knew I was going to do something stupid. Try to clean this up. Call the police to come for Emile. Not get out. She had to tell me everything. She said again, Turn the water off.

  In the living room the tree still twinkled, the angels still hung. I remember how amazed I was they hadn’t thrown themselves to the floor.

  I remember running, the immaculate cold, the air in me, my lungs hard.

  I remember thinking, I’m alive, a miracle anyone was. I wondered who had chosen me.

  I remember trying to list all the decent things I’d ever done.

  I remember walking till it was light, knowing if I slept, I’d freeze. I never wanted so much not to die.

  I made promises, I suppose.

  In the morning I walked across a bridge, saw the river frozen along the edges, scrambled down. I glided out on it; I walked on water. The snowflakes kept getting bigger and bigger, butterflies that fell apart when they hit the ground, but the sky was mostly clear and there was sun.

  Later, the cold again, wind and clouds. Snow shrank to ice. Small, hard. I saw a car idling, a child in the back, the driver standing on a porch, knocking at a door. Clare said, It’s open. She meant the car. She said, Think how fast you can go. She told me I could ditch the baby down the road.

  I didn’t do it.

 
Later I stole lots of things, slashed sofas, pissed on floors.

  But that day, I passed one thing by; I let one thing go.

  When I think about this, the child safe and warm, the mother not wailing, not beating her head on the wall to make herself stop, when I think about the snow that day, wings in the bright sky, I forgive myself for everything else.

  3 HOME

  November again. Harvard Square. I called Adele. Not the first time. One ring, two — never more than this. If my mother loved me, she’d pick it up that quick.

  Don’t be stupid, Clare said.

  No answer, no surprise. Coins clanging down. Jackpot, Clare said.

  I saw Emile across the street. He was a Latino boy with cropped hair, reaching for his mother’s hand.

  Then it was December third. I remember because afterward I looked at a paper in a box so I’d know exactly when.

  One ring. My mother there, whispering in my ear.

  Now you’ve done it, Clare said.

  Past noon, Adele still fogged. I knew everything from the sound of her voice, too low, knew she must be on night shift again: nursing home or bar, bringing bedpans or beers — it didn’t matter which. I saw the stumps of cigarettes in the ashtray beside her bed. I saw her red hair matted flat, creases in her cheek, the way she’d slept. I smelled her, the smoke in her clothes, the smoke on her breath. I remembered her kissing me one night before I knew any words — that smell: lipstick and gin. I heard Clare sobbing in the bunk above mine, her face shoved into her pillow, and then our mother was gone — we were alone in the dark, and if I’d had any words I would have said, Not again.

  Who is it? Sharper now, my mother, right in my hand. A weird warm day, so the Haitian man was playing his guitar by the Out Of Town News stand. He’d been dancing for hours, brittle legs, bobbing head. You never saw a grown man that thin. Sometimes he sang in French, and that’s when I understood him best, when his voice passed through me, hands through water, when the words stopped making sense.