First, Body

by Melanie Rae Thon

  This Lewis, who grins, who says, “I am thirsty,” who takes the lemonade in his big hand and drinks it all in one pull, this Lewis who gives her the empty glass, leaves her mute. It’s his hands that silence her, the way they flutter like wings opening so she sees the pale undersides marked with fine dark lines. This Lewis who squints, who almost scowls, makes her feel ashamed of her small body. She hears Lily say, Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t stand in the sun. She hears Grandpa: Go get the gun. The heavy-bodied birds drop from the sky, and Max whispers, You’re dangerous, girl. It must be true, because even though she never said a word, Max, her sweetheart, her first love, was caught again.

  Lewis says, “You meet me up the road I’ll take you for a ride someday.” She says she can’t, and he laughs but it’s mean. He says, “I thought you liked me.”

  She thinks of Max in jail, Max blaming her all these years, dangerous eleven-year-old Dora getting him drunk.

  She says, “It’s not what you think.”

  Lewis is sliding his long body into the gold Impala; he’s closing the door slowly, a deliberate softness, he’s whispering his words so she has to lean close; he’s saying, Tell me what I think.

  “Tomorrow,” she says. And though she’s afraid of what she’ll do to him, she can’t stop what they’ve begun.

  They make love in her grandfather’s car parked in the dark garage. They make love in the gold Impala at the end of a deserted road. They can’t be seen together. They know this but never speak of it. They find a refrigerator in a field, a white box, a home, and they lie down but it’s much too small. They remember childhood paths through woods and swamp, under barbed wire, over walls. Lewis knows how to come at night into the huge dark house, which door she’s left unlocked; he knows how to be a shadow among shadows moving through the long halls, how to breathe as the house breathes, how to find Dora in the blue room in the soft bed, how to slip his hand over her mouth so she won’t cry out, how to move like water through her and out of her, how to flow down the dark stairs into the dark yard before gathering himself into the hard shape of a man. Go get the gun. There’s nobody here to say it now, nobody but the old man with half a face, the old man who can’t get out of bed alone, who lies like a bug on his back till morning when Estrelle comes. There’s nobody here but the mother fallen across the couch, snoring in wine-thick sleep. Nobody here but little Dora in the damp bed.

  Tonight he lifted his grandmother, carried her from the chair where she sits all day to the couch where she sleeps. Even without her legs she’s a big woman, heavy. She never leaves this house, but she sees far beyond these walls. She feels the heat of the boy’s skin where he touches. She knows. She says, You watch yourself, Lewis. She says, Your mama’s had all the sorrow she can bear.

  He would never tell Dora, would never name his mother’s grief, would never describe the three rooms where he lives with her and her mother and two sisters, the kitchen table where he and his sisters and brother were born, would never try to explain what it means to be the youngest child of seven and the only man in the house.

  But somehow she knows. She imagines the old woman in his arms, knows that despite her losses she weighs more than Dora ever will, that this weight is a thing he carries every time he climbs the stairs of her house.

  He does not find her pretty in any way. She has a flat butt, barely swollen breasts. The thick blue veins roping her thin arms seem unnatural on a girl so small. Her blond hair is clipped short, dyed black, but comes in yellow at the roots. In any light she looks too naked, not just stripped but skinned.

  He’s had girls before. Women, he calls them. They knew what to do. They had red mouths, quick hands. They were never this naked. They were wet and open, their bodies full and safe and soft. They had rubbers in their purses. He could meet them anywhere, anytime. No one had to lie.

  He and Dora never talk. They know everything and nothing; they’re bound: his mother combs her grandfather’s hair, clips his nails, wipes his bum. She’s more than wife or daughter ever was. What the old man feels for Estrelle is his secret but will never be as fragile or forgettable as love.

  The blue car.

  The stifling heat of the garage.

  He says, “Does it scare you?”

  She knows he means his body, how long it is, how dark, and she thinks of her mother climbing out of the tub, all that flesh rushing toward her, loose breasts flapping, dimpled thighs whispering where they rub — she thinks of her grandfather grabbing with his one good hand, the thumbprint of bruise he leaves — she thinks of the cheek she’s supposed to kiss, the rough white-whiskered skin — she imagines these familiar bodies, how they make her forget what’s her and not her, how she’s terrified of the place they blur.

  Where Lewis touches, he defines — dark hand on white rib. So she’s not afraid. But he is — afraid of these frail ribs. He can rest his long fingers in the spaces between them — she’s that thin, and her skin too, so fine he feels he might put his hand through her. He would not say he loves her or even likes her. If he could explain it at all, he might say it is this fear that makes him tender, this fear that brings him to the house again and again — he sees her brittle ribs as the rigging of a tiny boat rocking on black water; it is this sound, waves lapping wood, that calls him. Small and breakable as the girl is, the body he enters is a way out.

  Tonight Dora’s grandfather could not be comforted. He rolled around and around the room, using his cane to move the chair with his strong left hand. He dumped the drawers, looking for something that can’t be found. He refused to understand who Lily was, and finally she left him, locked him in the room so he wouldn’t propel himself down the hall, so he wouldn’t fly down the stairs. He banged the wheels of his chair against the door. He rattled the knob. When his yell broke to a whimper, it was Estrelle’s name he called.

  Dora tells Lewis none of this. She wants to be her body only, her body in the car, in the rain, out here on the black road. But her body is a map. Her body is a history. His fingers find every scar and bruise. What happened here, and here? He doesn’t ask, but where he touches she remembers. She cries, and he holds her. He expects no explanation. He isn’t scared of sorrow. It doesn’t surprise him. When he’s calmed her, he touches her again.

  She imagines her grandfather upstairs in the house far from this road. He’s rolled his chair close to the window. He’s trying to see through the rain, trying to remember his right shoulder, how the raised rifle kicked as he fired. He’s trying to count the ducks falling from the sky, but there are too many, they always come too fast, and then he sees, he understands this one thing: it’s only the rain.

  She imagines Lewis’s grandmother — one stump, one wooden leg; Lewis is touching her legs — and she sees her own future, her body coming apart, how she’ll lose it piece by piece. She doesn’t know how he does this to her, why he won’t stop. They make love so many times, so long, her fingers and feet and lips go numb.

  They will be caught. It’s necessary. They know this as they know each other: without words. They are waiting in their silence to see how it will happen.

  The gold Impala, empty.

  A dirt road.

  Tonight they saw the pretty little horses, the setting sun.

  Four ponies, lean and glowing in the gold light. One deep ginger with hair like velvet. One the bleached white of bone. Two bays nuzzling. They heard the hum of insect wings, saw the ginger pony brace his legs to piss hard.

  Later they stood on a bridge, watching gulls swoop high, then dive toward water, saw them vanish at the surface as if a blue hole opened between air and river.

  Tonight when they lay down in the woods where palm and pine grow together, they touched each other’s bones: hips, cheeks, spine. Tonight, for the first time, they closed their eyes and almost slept, the man enfolding the child, one bird fallen — her body the white belly, his the dark wings — and it is in this way they wake to the sound of glass shattering on the road.

  It’s only boys, thr
ee of them, nine or ten years old.

  They beat the car with sticks and rocks. Lewis knows that if he closes his eyes the bare-chested boys with sticks will become men with guns. He lies naked, watching children destroy the car. His hand clamps Dora’s mouth, and she wonders, Does he think I’m fool enough to yell? It’s not that simple, his fear. What he wants is for the body beneath his body to be gone. But her body insists. Still as it is, it is too many sharp bones. It will not soften, will not be hidden, will not sink into this ground. The boys jab their little knives into tires; the air escaping hisses off the road. His body hot on top of hers has a smell of something smoldering, about to burn, and then the match is struck, the first one, and the vinyl seats are split open with the sharp knives and the stuffing spills out — the first match is thrown and the second match is struck and the smell in the night is melting plastic. Together, two boys stand on the hood to drop a rock onto the windshield, and the glass is a shattered web caved in that does not break apart. Black smoke billows from open doors. The man in the woods has pressed the air from the girl’s lungs, and the boys, who are thrilled with their miraculous destruction, are mounting their bikes and peddling home.

  He is off her and she gulps air. He hates the boys, their bare white skin, their whoops and their strange silence in the end, but they’re gone, so it’s only the girl beside him now, silent but for her gasping, and he hates that sound, and he hates her bright reflecting skin — he can’t see his own hand at the end of his own arm.

  He wants her dressed, and she knows; she’s quick. He wants to leave her or be able to love her despite everything. But he can’t escape the smell of fear, strong as piss, rising from his skin. He can’t escape the rage, a shaking too deep to stop, blood quivering in the veins. He wants to weep, thinking of his mother in the morning, walking to this girl’s house.

  There’s nothing to do but let the car burn. The sky’s gone green with clouds. If the storm comes soon enough, if the rain’s hard, these flames might flicker out.

  They walk together partway and then alone. They do not touch or speak. They do not look over their shoulders. They do not look up and hope.

  When he disappears, he disappears completely, moving across the field, silent and invisible as the black canal. She thinks he is gone forever. She leaves no door unlocked. But that night he comes again.

  He’s green sky and wind. He swirls up from the south.

  He’s the wind uprooting palms, pavement that seems to melt and flow, the drone of pumps. He’s three stones hitting the glass of her window, sharper than rain. He’s all sound.

  She’s afraid of him but more afraid for him, his new recklessness and what would happen if her mother woke and made one call? What would anyone see here but a dark-skinned man at a white girl’s door? So she’s opening the window, letting the rain pour in — she’s speaking his name into the wind and he hears her — she’s moving down the stairs to open the door so carefully locked.

  He’s inside, he’s there, filling the doorway, dripping, dark, his clothes drenched, his skin wet, his hair full of rain. Water flows from him, puddles on the floor; muddy rivulets stream across the tile, and Dora thinks of Estrelle on her hands and knees tomorrow, Estrelle not asking, not her business what the white people do in their own house, just her business to make it right when they stop.

  She’s wearing a long T-shirt, her underpants. Nothing else. She’s cold. But it’s not cold. Her shaking is a spasm now, in her chest and knees. She leans against the door so she won’t fall. She says, Why are you here? He moves close and she smells his breath and body, the burn of adrenaline, the acid rising in his throat. He grabs her wrist, pulls up his wet shirt to press her palm to his stomach. Can you feel it? he says. He means the quivering, the blood jumping under the skin — he believes she’ll know. But she doesn’t know.

  He says, I have to lie down.

  She thinks he wants to hurt her still. His body’s hard against her — belly, hip, hand — hard. His fingers twist her hair and pull. She remembers the weight of him in the woods. He squeezes her bare arm, says again, I have to lie down. He says, I want this to stop.

  He’s following her up the stairs. He’s leaving his muddy tracks through her house but he doesn’t care — it’s the last time, he’s not coming back. So what if the doors are chained and bolted after this, what if there are big-headed dogs in the yard after this, what if the girl is slapped and questioned till she spits out a lie or the ridiculous, unbelievable truth, what does he care?

  In the blue room, on the blue bed, he strokes her body through the shirt; he strokes her bare thighs. She wants him to hate her. She wants him to do this and be gone — she wants to lie on the bed alone while the wind tears the palms out of the ground, while the rain blown sideways batters the house — she wants nothing left of him but the damp place where he lay in his wet clothes. She wants him not to kiss, not to touch her face, not to put his fingers in her mouth; she wants him not naked, only unzipped — quick, hard — she wants to hate him and be hurt and be done. She wants him not to speak ever again. She wants not to feel the short blades, not to hear the hiss of air, not to smell the vinyl melting on his skin.

  But he is naked. He’s pulled the T-shirt over her head. He’s pulled the panties down to her ankles. She’s small in this room, in this bed, a child in this house, herself and not herself — she’s letting him touch her, everywhere — he’s inside her, everywhere, and it’s wrong, she knows, to want him and be this scared. She thinks of the grandfather down the hall, wide-eyed and helpless in his bed. She imagines he knows everything and wants to come but can’t come. She imagines him weeping, longing to put his big hands on the smooth gun. And the man in this bed is kissing her eyelids. His long fingers are in her mouth. She’s terrified, and he knows and he holds her head in both hands and he moves so slowly, and his lips are almost touching hers when he whispers, Baby, no, and she sees she’s herself again, not blurred with the boys on the road; she’s his lover, and that’s what breaks her and breaks him, because they see the muddy tracks through this house, because they can follow those footsteps back along a muddy road to a place where a gold car exploded hours ago and is burning still — it’s a fire the rain can’t put out.

  He wants to go. He’s pulling on his wet clothes. She knows how it ends here. He won’t risk this again, for her. The boys in their bright skin will dance around this bed forever. The gold flames will rise forever from the road.

  He’s his own footprints wiped from the stairs. He’s the rose-splattered bedspread washed and dried. He’s the faint outline only she can find.

  But it’s not over.

  It’s just begun.

  Hard as he tries to go, there’s no way out of her. Not long now till she’ll know. First the swelling. Then the sickness and no blood. Actions have consequences. Your grandfather can’t say it now, but it doesn’t matter: you know who can’t help you, who can’t be called. And the consequence of no action is to understand what you’ll do alone.

  It’s easy to steal what you need. You don’t ask yourself what’s right. You think of boys with sticks and Max in jail, how dangerous you are, rocks thrown at your window, a wet man who flows through you: first rain, then fire. You imagine your life forever in this house.

  There’s cash in Lily’s purse, wads of it, uncounted — for Estrelle and the gardener, for any shy boy who might bring wine to the back door. You know how much to take each week for four weeks. You know how soon and where to go. Seven miles. It’s not that far. You ride your bike. You don’t think what you’ll do after. After is another country, a place you can’t know.

  The woman at the desk counts your money, says, Age?, squints when you say Eighteen but writes it down. She says, How will you get home? And Dora says her boyfriend will come; he’s got a car and all she has to do is call, and the woman Dora won’t remember says, That’s fine, but we can’t let you go till somebody comes, and Dora nods, of course, somebody will come.

  There’s the finge
r to be pricked and one drop of blood. There’s a movie and a clever girl who shows you the pink model of your uterus, who explains what she calls the procedure. There’s the yellow pill to calm you and seven colored birds hanging from the ceiling, twisting on their strings over the table. There’s the clever girl in green scrubs now, offering two fingers for you to grip. She says, You can’t hurt me. And the doctor comes in his white mask. He’s a face you won’t know and don’t want to know, and he says, You’re a little one; he’s already between your legs, so you’re not sure what he means, but you can squeeze too hard, and the girl says, Let go. The sound is water in a vacuum. The paper birds spin. The curved blade is quick, and the doctor says, That’s all.

  In a room with tiny windows too high there are eleven beds; you are number eight. You eat cookies, drink juice — obedient Dora, you hold out your arm, let one more woman in green take the pressure of your blood, ninety over sixty, a lie, what could they know about your blood? A third woman tells you to rest now, just for an hour, don’t move — here’s a pad, your underwear, call me if there’s too much blood.

  How much is too much?

  How many times do the little boys jab their knives into soft tires?

  How many matches make a car explode?

  She’s too weak to do what she needs to do. She drifts and wakes. A woman’s whispering, We’ve got a bleeder. Dora hopes it’s not her. She feels the stabbing from inside, the doctor again, the bright boys. It could be her. She checks her underwear, sees the black clots, the thin red streaks — not too much — there’s so much more blood in a body than this — and the woman who is the bleeder is screaming now, feeling the blood beneath her, slippery, the blood, and the three women in green hold her down.