I Was Trying to Describe What it Feels Like

by Noy Holland

  The fish were as big as dogs.

  I saw them swimming. I threw the fish eggs one by one, but once I threw a bunch at once so the fish would fight for them.

  But I did not want to see the fish. I did not want them bumping me.

  I did not want to feel their whiskers pulling past my arms.

  THE BOY WAS putting on my shoes. The boy was just a tall boy stepped up taller in the ticket booth. He was not an older boy much by far than me. When he walked, my shoes made squeaking sounds like the sounds they made on me. My coins played songs in his pockets.

  I stepped up with the boy in the ticket booth. There was a mark on the wall of the booth which even tipped up on my toes I could not reach with my head.

  “Uh-oh,” the boy said.

  I was too small, he said.

  I had seen my daddy—he had walked into the tent.

  Inside the tent the men were clapping. There was music when the clapping stopped. But I was still not tall enough. Even tipped up on my toes, I was not yet tall as that for the boy to let me in.

  My hands were in my pockets. I could not make a run for the tent because my hands were in my pockets. I had to keep them in my pockets.

  I listened for him. If I listened hard enough and if I stayed still long enough, I heard Oscar’s neck come out and sometimes, too, his feet came out and I would feel him walking on my legs between my pockets.

  I HAD HEARD him, on the bank of the lake, in the weeds as soon as the sun came up. I had pulled my skiff up. I had my lidded pail. Oscar’s feet made slow scraping sounds when I put him in my pail.

  The boy had a scar on his forehead.

  I thought the boy had sisters. I thought the boy had a stone to kick, or to keep with his hands in his pockets.

  But he did not have sisters. I gave him my store list Cissie wrote, since he did not have sisters.

  But he did not have pockets. I thought all boys had pockets.

  I thought all boys had sisters, girls to carve their names in trees and in the shells of turtles boys can carry by their pockets.

  “How old did you say your sister was?”

  How old do you think Oscar is? How old are you, Cissie?

  I swapped my shoes, my lidded pail, my Oscar who I held up in my pants between my pockets. I swapped until the boy in the ticket booth promised to let me in.

  It was dark almost inside the tent when I first went in. The stage was empty. The men inside stopped talking. I could not see them yet, coming into the dark from the bright outside, but they saw me.

  They said, “It’s Buhl’s boy. Why, Parson’s boy. Hey, Orbit.”

  They smelled like piss and horses. They lifted me up on the bandbox so I could almost see. But I did not see Daddy. I was on the bandbox, sitting, seeing over the hats of the men, but I could not see Daddy.

  “Somebody tell Parson that his boy has found him here.”

  But I could not hear Daddy.

  On my hands, I could smell my shoes. I heard the thick flaps of the tent beat in the wind outside the tent and the boy walking out in the wind outside. I could hear my shoes. It was just the trees I heard and the wind which beat the flaps of the tent and the squeaking steps my shoes made and then the music started. The girl had feathers in her hair which flew out when she danced. The light shined down along her. She had a jerky way of dancing, a tooth which as she danced I saw her loosen with her tongue.

  “QUIT THAT,” CISSIE says. “What is it now, Orbit?”

  I pull the porch light on.

  I say, “Oscar will not come tonight. Will he, Cissie? And Daddy not the next night?”

  Not even if we hear the cars go quiet past out there. You cannot see the trees out there. Tonight the trees are quiet.

  Even if that boy left him there to find his own way home from the fair, still there would be the road to cross, the slough, the stubbled field to cross—so even if Oscar came on, even if Oscar did not stop, it would be high time by then, by the time we maybe saw him, to polish our swapped shoes again to be on our way from home by then to see Clem at the fair.

  There is not a leaf that turns. There is not a drop that falls. There are not the trees to see until the bright heat lights them.

  “Is that all, then?” Cissie says. “That’s what you wanted to ask me?”

  WE LEAVE THE porch light burning.

  Momma is in her room.

  We try to go how Momma went when Momma could leave her room. We walk along the dirt road which quits against the paved road the river runs on beside of and takes the boats to sea. Ours is just a small boat. It is just a lake boat. It is not a boat to ride the river out to sea in.

  The river moves fast.

  It sweeps beneath the limbs of the trees which bend along the broken bank. The rain clouds stay at the river, at the crooked lake the river left.

  Go on.

  The pelicans go on.

  We do not turn back. We go on walking down, catching onto the limbs of the trees to reach the high wall of the barge, the low rail of the sloping deck we use the chains to climb to. The chains come up from the river. We swing our feet up over them to monkey up the slope to the barge, the mud of our shoes dropping past into the passing river.

  I say, “Be careful, Cissie.”

  The river goes to sea. The sea ourselves we have not seen nor had the taste nor smell of.

  We lie on our backs on the deck of the barge. We lie so our heads hang away from the barge, listening to the river. Sometimes a river turns back.

  “I saw a girl at the fair,” I say. “Her hair was kinked and yellow. It was not like your hair. I did not want to touch her hair.”

  MY HANDS WERE dirty. My hands smelled like Oscar smelled and my hands smelled like Daddy—like the shoes I wore to the ticket booth, the eggs I threw to the whiskered fish, the necks I threw so I could flip the skiff so snakes would not swim in it.

  She danced. The men were hooting. They were calling for the next girl, calling for something else. She took her top off, her thin brassiere. She took her time with her panties, tugging so they fell down, so they were on the floor. Then she quit dancing. She got down into the webby chair folded out in the swinging light. She let her legs drop open.

  She pushed the eggs up into her—three, I counted. Four. Maybe I lost count of them.

  Maybe they were Doll’s thin eggs.

  Maybe they were the kingbird’s eggs, crowning in the gash she dropped her legs apart to show us. She popped them out again. I saw her watching. I saw she could see me in the tent light there. She lobbed the eggs over the hats of the men.

  I did not want to catch the eggs. I did not want to touch her skin, and not the small eggs that broke and left in her no shell I saw, no shut place she could open.

  SAY THE RIVER turns back.

  Say the river turns back, sucking at the sea to turn, will the pelicans turn back also, Cissie? Will the salted fish turn back when the sea has turned back to run back into the sea itself in the turning river?

  Go on.

  Our lake is our lake. Our barge is chained here.

  Go on.

  THE FAIR STAYS here for twelve days. Then is yet the next town I can think of that it goes to. Then the fair stays eight days. Then figure for the next small town as small by far as our small town, it stays for maybe ten days. I cannot figure.

  Maybe I lost count of them. I counted nine and seven—nine eggs going into her, seven coming out.

  Plus there is this also—also to think how many times to figure in a fair night they can fill the tent to do it. It is not a big tent. And where they find the eggs she keeps, plenty more would come. Twelve, say, eight days, ten days spent in Little Crab, plus maybe days in towns to go I have not even thought of. So say another two towns. Say she does it twice a night, since maybe they won’t wait for her to let the tent get filled. She is seventeen, say, or maybe she is twenty. Maybe it is nothing you can start before you’re twenty. So maybe she is twenty. Cou
ldn’t she be twenty?

  MAYBE IT IS not a redbird. It could be a kingfisher bird.

  Couldn’t it, Cissie?

  Because don’t the kingfisher birds steal bones to knit them on the water?

  The bones could be our Bingo’s bones, the small bones of birds she kills, the bones of Momma’s fingers.

  Couldn’t they, Cissie?

  Because maybe it is not a redbird. Maybe it is a kingfisher bird.

  Maybe it flies at the windowpane because kingfisher birds need bones and hair and there are the bones of Momma’s hands and the hair which falls from Momma’s head and the hair which falls from your own head and from my head also.

  And we have bones also.

  HER SHOES WERE dirty. Momma’s skirt of her dress was dirty. I felt the cool where the skirt of her dress, where the cloth of her skirt, doubled back, was wet from the river still.

  Our mouths were burning. The fireflies were burning.

  “There, now,” Cissie says.

  “Let’s go now,” Cissie says. “Hum up, Orbit.”

  The boats are moving. The lamplights are on.

  But we are not moving. We are not moving. Our beds are one bed. Our lake is our lake. Our barge is chained here.

  Go on.

  She is here with us now. She will die with us.

  Go on.

  THE BIRD CAME back when Orbit came back. I heard it hitting at the windowpane again.

  It kept on at it. For a time I could not see it. I thought at first it was mud Orbit threw, but there was no mud to throw, no rain yet to pock the dust to clop against the windowpane so that I would lean across her bed and say through the window, Orbit? What is it now, Orbit?

  But he did not throw it.

  He was working at his tree.

  His ax made hammering sounds working at his tree. The blade was shiny. The light that fell from Mother’s room, Orbit chopped the tree by. There were pieces chipped of the bark of the tree and of the pale wood of the tree scattered in Orbit’s shadow as if it were not his shadow but a still pond by some accident he had stepped in there.

  He swung the ax back. He had choked up on the handle. I saw it slipping in his hands. The window sweated. I let it close then.

  I saw the bird swoop down then from where it sat in the pin oak tree, where the filly shook in the pin oak tree when the iron head of the ax homed, and so I pushed it up again, the window, the shadow of the window sash lifting on my brother’s back—and the bird banked.

  It was a redbird.

  I saw that it was a redbird. It was common.

  I pushed the window open enough to lean out past the windowsill to be heard above the chuck of the ax. I saw he had not eaten. I saw the plate I had brought to him gathering wood chips still. Orbit’s shirt hung down from the waist of his jeans for a rag to keep to wipe his hands and the shadow had lifted away from his back and gone off into the leaves of the tree and I leaned out.

  “Hold your hands out for me,” I said. “Let me see your hands.”

  I saw his shirt was stained and wadded. He kept his back to me. He went on with the ax.

  I said, “Stop it. You’ve got to stop it.”

  I said, “You ought to come inside.”

  But I could not stop him.

  Even when the tree was down, even with the filly down, dragged away from the pin oak tree, I tried to tell my brother that Bingo would not come.

  But I could not stop him.

  I could not stop any of it. I knew she would not come.

  OH, TO BE a junkyard dog and run the woods with Daddy!

  Gander knocks his beak on our door at night. I keep my vole in my pocket.

  I say, “Lookit, Cissie.”

  I take my hammer.

  It is Daddy’s hammer.

  It is my vole I found. It is in my pocket.

  “Lookit, Cissie.”

  I put my vole on the porch step.

  She says, “Stop it, Orbit.”

  But I do not stop it. I do not stop it. I go on hitting. I hit it on his head.

  I WAS PEELING potatoes.

  In the sink, the mounding strips of skin gave off the smell of turned earth. Everything had stopped growing. The fireflies lay in the field.

  I saw Orbit walking between them with his shoes off in the field.

  He was walking to reach the place in the fence he had mended before he left for the fair—he had forgotten. I could see that he had forgotten. His hands were ragged. I saw that his cap was frayed.

  I peeled all we had of potatoes.

  Orbit I suppose had not eaten much in however many days it had been, and it had been a ways, I knew. It had taken my brother some walking, I knew, to get back home from the fair.

  I boiled the potatoes and poured off the water and added what we had of milk. We had a good dollop of butter. I let it melt some. I used two colors of pepper. I salted the potatoes in a metal pot and mashed them together with the tines of a fork and spooned them into a casserole.

  Orbit was burying tadpoles. I was sorry about the tadpoles.

  I listened outside the door of the room when he went in to talk to Mother. He told her about the tadpoles, about Clem he had seen and the girl at the fair, about how he thought he had seen Daddy.

  He didn’t say a thing about Bingo.

  He fixed the fence back. I mean that he pulled it apart again so that Bingo could get back through.

  He got the ax out.

  It was almost dark when he started. He kept at it, working into the next day and on into the next dark. I carried a big plateful of potatoes to him and set the plate down in the path in the yard beneath the crooked limb of the tree Mother used to read in.

  She read limericks. She wore knee-highs.

  I closed her mouth some. A tooth had abscessed. The side of her face had swelled.

  THE ROPE I used was rotty and thick and there was the hanging weight of it, I said the waiting hang of it. When I went out on the limb of our tree I could see our momma’s bedroom from, I saw that the knife blade bent and caught with never so much as a nick in the rope I had lobbed across the limb of the tree I had climbed the tree to saw through.

  So Momma said to me, “Orbit, so why don’t you cut it down?”

  So I cut the damn thing down.

  I found the ax our daddy used, which I had seen him do it.

  After the tree was well and down, it was easy with even a flimsy knife to cut down past the hide of her into the long neck of her, the blade going quick along and smooth behind the soft muzzle even Bingo had fought to get at, that I had seen her jumping with the other dogs to get at. The muzzle was torn from them and hard-blooded and soft-haired still to want to kiss, but I did not stop to kiss it. It was near to yard-dark and soon to watch the darkened woods, I would see the dogs.

  So I went quick.

  I had not thought to think it yet that Momma said my name: Orbit.

  So, Orbit, so why don’t you go ahead and cut the damn thing down?

  But I had not thought Orbit.

  I was thinking of the filly still and the knife blade pulling deep in her and the dark shapes of the dogs I saw bunch up in the field. The light from Momma’s window fell bright before the field. It was all the light I worked by. I worked to get the hide free the way once Daddy showed me.

  First you put her head back. I had put her head back. At first the knife went smooth.

  It was how he showed me. At first the knife went smooth the way he showed me down the front of her, smooth all down the neck of her. It was just a knife I had I sneaked out from the kitchen with and then the light to work by, down by night from Momma’s room.

  I heard her name me in her room.

  It was just the one time. I only heard her one time.

  At first the knife went smooth.

  WE PASSED THE barn. The slough was dry. The lake was left by a river.

  The lake was dropping. Where the skiff had scraped on the b
ank of the lake, the paint was flecked and silver.

  I did not know why we had come there. I remember the snakes were blind. My brother brought the bent skin he had found in the woods that the snakes by then had begun to shed, and a turtle—Vernon, I remember—and chicken necks, and the rhinestone shoe he had found of Mother’s that had not been chewed or buried; he brought tadpoles, I remember, a poke of frogs—a damp stash he had gigged in the trees—a flat stone, a kitchen knife, a lamplight, though the sun was high, though the moon would rise behind us.

  Our house lay bright behind us. We paddled out with our hands. He threw a frog, a chicken neck. He threw an old bone from the garden.

  We waited.

  I did not know what we were waiting for.

  We were quiet.

  I did not know why we were quiet.

  The lake slapped at our skiff underneath us. I sang. Of the cranes in the trees I sang of, and of the pelicans I sang of, no cry came.

  I sang, Oh, what a bird is the pelican! His beak can hold more than his belly can!

  But Orbit didn’t want me to sing. We were waiting for the moon, I thought, for the sun to fluke in the sea, I thought. I thought he would tip us over. He threw great wads of tadpoles out and the rhinestone shoe of our mother’s out and our Vernon gone scudding out in a slapping rain of frogs.

  There was something he was trying to show me. He kept stepping up onto the thwarts of the skiff to look for it to show me. But whatever it was was not out there, or he could not see it out there, and Orbit started to scream at me that I wasn’t really trying, I wasn’t really looking, but he never did say what to look for, see. I never really knew what it was he had brought me out in the skiff that day he had wanted so much to show me.

  That was August. It must have been August.

  Because I remember Orbit saying to me that the snakes were blind. I know that it is dog days, that dog days are August, that these are the days the skins lift away and the snakes themselves go blind.

  SOME DAYS THE crows are blue if the sun is yellow. The lean-to is blue all days. The weeds are going yellow. Tomorrow if the leaves are green, the next day the leaves are red if they are not yellow.

  The girl’s hair was blue, then yellow. I did not want to touch her hair.