My mother was not like us.
* * * *
The Water Here
When my husband found me, I was beautiful. They all say that, I know. I do not have any pictures to show you. Here there are dark woods, and it is always night, never day. And I traveled through them. Once I found a blond boy, I knew he was going to die. I tried to tell to him but he couldn't see me, wouldn't listen. And I told the people around me to warn him, and they just shook their heads sadly. “We already know.” He walked away through the fields, and I tried to follow but I got lost.
Once I found the road, the boy was already dead and gone. I was hitching rides, sleeping in the backseat, the driver refusing to answer my questions and I not caring. The landscape always flat and dark fields. Farmhouses and barns silhouetted against the sky. No power lines. No other cars. Lightning but no rain. That journey lasted months. There was a man, in a house, when we finally stopped. He died. I left them, then. Took a knife, double-edged, a triangle to do the most damage. To make them bleed.
I have told my son these stories from when I traveled this world, before I met his father. Of the town, the only town I have ever seen here, the only place where I have seen people living together. There were no roads or cars, just walking paths. Houses. Where they kept books. Where they gathered. They did not talk to the rest of their world. They had great fires in the graveyards, and they wanted to hurt me. There were secrets that went on in their houses that were terrible. This is the reason why everyone lives apart here. They do not want to be like the terrible town, with its graveyard, with its gallows between the trees. So they live separate, and silent, and never say good-bye.
When I met your father, my son, I was beautiful. I had left the terrible village, and been wandering alone for months like Rapunzel. Because I could not see, either, only trees and hills and moss. I had to suck the underside of leaves or the dew off rocks for water. I looked for running water; that would be like my road. I wanted to go to the beaches. Then when your father took me there, I knew that the beaches here were wrong, too.
Can you imagine no shells or rocks? The sand was so smooth, and I laid my cheek on it and cried. If only some seaweed had flung itself on shore, then at least maybe the water would be right. In my world, tortoises live in the ocean and swim through colored rocks, corals. Sailors used to keep them in holds for months on end, to have fresh meat at hand. They could live hundreds of years, and people carved their names on them. But when I asked him how far, how deep, he smiled. “I could walk to the horizon, and then there's the edge."
I tried to tell him, how it was, but he wouldn't listen, only smiled and stroked my head. And so I told you of the giant whales and lands at the edge, of a world round, of white bears that lived only on other white things, ice and snow, and would sometimes get trapped and float away from home, and swim miles back to their icy coast. Labrador. They had to brave black and white whales, with saw-sharp teeth, on their three-day journey home. If only I knew where the hole was, I could go back, but I couldn't take you, my son, and I can't leave you.
Wandering the forest, the only sounds I heard were animals at night, birds in the day. But for weeks I could see nothing, damp shadows, fallen trees, brush that scratched my eyes—and then there was a path.
This is how I found your father, by a path in the road—I had to pick one way. I had been here long enough that I knew about their roads. Your roads. There was a fork, and I had to pick, and if I went back, the road would be only straight. Right hand is for God, left hand is for Devil. That is what the desert people believe on my world. So I went left. And I followed it for days until I came to a house. A cottage, a hut really. Door, two windows, walls of stone, roof of grass. The door was unlocked—doors here always open. I do not know how to tell which doors should be locked and which shouldn't.
At first I thought if I could find the beach, everything would fall into place. I had this need to see water. I would take walks in the woods to find puddles, boggy valleys where the trees sit in water. A bright red leaf, preserved under water. That would make me content enough to return home, to return to your father's house. I would stare out the kitchen window at dew-covered bushes, a kitchen where the fireplace was always cold and bread appeared like magic, always almost stale, and think about waterfalls, rain storms, breeding frogs. Sounds that do not exist here.
So I told your father, “Take me to the beach.” We got in the car, the long dark car, and drove for hours. I fell asleep, the roads were shiny and wet but it was not raining. The trees were green and shadowed us. There were never any other cars, are never any other cars, even though our neighbors have garages. We do not see their cars. We do not talk to the neighbors. Their daffodils come up in the spring, bright and sad and silent. When I woke up, we were on another black road, no trees, just dunes with scrub pines. More pools, shallow and full of rusty water.
No fog, no breeze. There was sad, tan sand, and the sky blue and hard. No clouds. We were at the beach but it was all wrong. There were no birds, no other people. The sky was hard. The air was still, the water still. Like the puddles except no trees, like the puddles but no autumn leaves. I could see my toes in the water, the half-moons and the wrinkles. “They used to argue if Adam had a belly button or not,” I told my husband. You were not yet born. “Who is Adam?” your father responded.
"I'm sorry,” he says now. “I'm sorry that I can't make it right.” He should have never taken me. I knew this at the time, but didn't care. “Where would I be without you?” he says, and his arm circles my growing waist, and I think of all the places I have left forever.
* * * *
The Books Here
I tell my son about carnivals: there are teacups, giant teacups. “Turn the cup around in the saucer, faster until the tea almost spills over the edges. Like that.” The tea slops over the edge, leaves another ring on the library table. I tell him about popcorn and cotton candy. Like dust motes, only sweet. They spin the sugar granules until they drift upwards in the air. My son looks as though he does not believe me, but wants to.
The library used to not be mine. It belonged to someone in the pictures, long gone, whose name my husband wouldn't tell me, the smell of pipe smoke and rich leather and still air mingling. My son taught me to slide the knife between the latch and the door frame, he opened up my first book and cut the pages. From his almost-man hand, I read, “We lived in a house. It was in a house in a land of robbers.” And I put the book away, high high up on the topmost shelf, next to the dusty sea tortoise. I had to climb the shelves like a tree, like the trees I had climbed before meeting my husband. The trees here all stretch to the sky and the branches are impossibly high. Even squirrels cannot reach them, only birds. The birds do not touch the ground, the bread I throw out my window lies untouched, until the leaves fall and covers it.
On the tortoise's shell I wrote, “I was here.” I flipped the shell over and wrote in on the concave inside, where the animal's spine was. My finger letters dark and glossy. I had no days, no date to put there. But I could climb up there again, if I had to. Take the shell away from the wall, its display, and the message is always there. Waiting.
This is my favorite room, my favorite place. There is a fireplace, and it is almost like a breeze. There are books, mostly dusty. My husband laughs at my reading. All of the books are tales and stories with people I've never heard of. “How about this one?” I ask my husband, it is dinner, the table gleams, food is brought on pewter platters. Maybe lead, maybe like the Romans we will go.
There was a man who went to the market. There, he saw Death, staring right at him. So he ran to his mother and asked, “Mother, may I have a horse? For I have seen Death, and I must be away.” And because his mother loved him, she said yes, and gave him a horse. That night, there was a knock at her door. It was Death. He said, “Where is your son?” and she said: “You will not find him.” And Death never did.
This is one of the stories that I know is not right. Death finds the son, he alway
s does. The son has run away to another city, where he was supposed to die. His mother needed to help him get there first.
I used to think that the library had answers. None of the books have any answers, though. They just have more stories and riddles. I found books that I have seen before: paper covers, yellow pages, the edges worn soft and smooth like cloth. Their covers are garish and unbelievable: hot pink, orange, heavy lines. The scenery of a carnival, the girl in a black slip perched in the corner, dragging at the reader with her eyes.
They watch each other here without using their eyes. They measure heartbeats and listen for signs of agitation, know if someone is looking up or down, in a dark room, by the sound of breathing. They read me but I cannot read them. I am transparent, like a new bug.
There is another story in the library that is not right. Once upon a time, the story went in my land, there was a man named Bluebeard. He had a beautiful wife, and told her that all his riches and castle were hers, with the exception of one room. And everything was going fine, except for he went away, even though she begged him not to. There was some excuse, war or business, but she knew it was a test. And she couldn't help herself, and opened the door. The dead wives, hanging and bloody, and the blood that she couldn't wash off the golden key, even though she tried, and how he returned and killed her.
There are never any bodies here. “What happens when I die?” I ask my husband. “Where do you put dead people?” “Die?” he had responded. “But you'll never die.” And then twirled me around and around the library, laughing. Like the red-headed girl, I almost say, but don't.
There is a room in our house that no one must enter. It is not at the top of a tower, nor deep in the basement. There is simply a locked door at the top of the stairs, a window from the outside. Were the roof less steep, perhaps I could crawl around and peek in the window.
Our son has done so. His mouth and eyes tell nothing of this venture, even when I sigh and pause from washing the dishes to look at my left hand. He is good at pretending not to see. The door had a lock that cannot be picked, but he knows the secret of the golden key. Cover the others’ blood with your own, and no one will know.
* * * *
The Schooling Here
My son has grown old before my eyes, no calendar to measure time. He comes into the library to watch me, and asks questions about “out there.” He teaches me how to be a robber. We practice walking silently, first without shoes on the hardwood, finally in heavy boots through clots of paper. My discarded drawings.
He brings locks, little delicate silver ones, heavy brass doorknobs, and dismantles them. Puts them back together, methodically, slowly. He looks pained at the noise I make, grating the metal pick on the metal parts. When I drowse in the big leather chair, he steals my books and returns them in the wrong places. I cannot wade silently, I cannot slow my heart or breath. I cannot watch unblinking, the sound my eyes make wet and staring in the dark, the sound that always gives me away.
* * * *
A child's bones are more fragile, and less solid, than an adult's. So many bones in the walls, they dance, they leer. And this, they tell me, is normal. The handle on his knife, the pen in my hand, hollowed reeds of the once-living. The cups we drink out of. I tell my son about Africa, how people would drink out of enemies’ heads. About how they massacred Indian women and children, too. He does not believe me, although he knows better than not to believe me. I tell him things that his father cannot know, cannot say.
Every man, woman, and child carries around a bag of bones, here. They clink. There is no Halloween with skeletons dangling. A jack'o'lantern is a toy they could never begin to understand, because here no one knows how to cast away evil spirits. They are the evil spirits. Someday my son will travel to the crossroads, make a deal, and get lost. He will never come home again, and then he will know that everything I have told him is true.
The walls are filled with ideas that drip out of my head after I read. I am too tired here, weakened. My boy grows in leaps and bounds, sometimes forwards and sometimes backwards. He is wearing footie pajamas, the key concealed by his forearm, unlocking my door. He leads me down darkened hallways to the kitchen, where the fire is dull and red, warm. There is warm bread on the wooden table. My boychild takes a silver knife and cuts apple slices and cheese, warm bread. He wraps me in a quilt that I will make from my wedding dress, his baby clothes, a graduation gown.
I fall asleep in front of the fire and it is only my husband's wrath that awakes me. I have left him alone, I have refused to leave my library. I have become a little like them—I slip out unseen, I do not keep all promises. I refuse to sit with him at parties; I only eat what is brought to the library. Yet once he is asleep, he cannot help but hear the tread of my feet on the flagstone, the whisper of a door hinge. Try as I may, I cannot be one of them. Try as I may, I cannot hide. The tremor of my wings, the molecule of blood on the golden key, these cry out to him.
In Italy, the fishermen's wives used to poison them. If the men spent too many nights away, their dreams would be filled with roaring monsters, krakens on the horizon, dark mouths open and bloody. The plan worked. The errant fishermen would sail home and eat their wives’ food, stews and bread; the dreams would stop. No one wanted to ever leave. Like a molecule, ownership can be measured in the sway of your bones, in the minutest decisions. We all own a molecule of each other, and they pull, fighting, straining. It will take a long while for those molecules to own their paths, but when they do, the dreams will come, the call growing stronger as the distance and time lengthens, distorts. I promise you, my son, these molecules can break, will break. I cannot promise it will be bloodless or monsterless.
* * * *
The Visitors
Sometimes people come and the house is alive and pulsates, and then they go away. I cannot keep track of their visits, when they arrive, when they go. That is part of my husband taking me here; that is how I know this world is not real.
I fall asleep in the middle of the day and wake with deep creases on my cheek, the fire long cold ash. It feels as if I have slept a minute, my bones still ache, but my son seems taller, my husband grayer. Other times I drift away from the loud crowd at supper, the gifts they pull from sleeves and pockets, and go sit alone on a cushion in front of the fire. Just as the fire sparks, a coal jumps to the grate, my husband pushes back a chair to thank our guests—I fall into deepest slumber: bottomless, wavy dreams that do not disturb. My son shakes me, “Mama, Papa says to come for dessert,” and I raise up from the bottom of an ocean, breaking open into the same piece of coal glowing red hot, just out of the grate's safety; my husband's commanding voice, the rustle of guests. I stretch, my voice deep and raspy. The crowd still at the table, but are they the same? There is an art to disappearing; these people do it well.
Other times I wander the portrait gallery, portraits of people waiting to happen. Their eyes beg me to look away, to take my cold stare and return to my room. They ask my husband why he picked me, why he brought me here, when they knew I would only send you away. There is a picture of me, old, stooped, in a loose cotton shift, standing in front of a car that looks more like a horse-cart. There is a picture of me as a baby, in the gown of a noblewoman, surrounded by attendants. Your father nods and smiles when he finds me here, telling him this. He thinks I will piece it all together, and become whole. He is careful to keep his eyes from my left hand at all times. I can never be whole.
The party the night he got me. Took me, won me, found me, wooed me. I cannot remember that. I think if I could remember that, all of this would disappear: this house, my son, these long hours in front of the fireplace. Maybe.
If I get tired, if the grayness is too much, I could open the book and page back. And then I would find myself in a new town, a new place. The place where there are carnivals and swirling teacups. I would see my son, holding the hand of a strange mother, but our eyes would meet. I would be older, a tired woman in a solitary apartment, with grown children who would
tell me funny stories and show me photographs about Sunday picnics at an aunt's house. I would see my son, but he would be a homeless man in a wheelchair under the People Mover, and I would pass you by without a coin in your cup, without a glance in your eye.
There will be a time when I am ready to go back, unless I am too tired. Then I will go back to my husband's bed, and fall asleep, and never wake up.
This is the place where all lost things go. Socks, my sunglasses, a book of poetry in another language. Things that I put in one place that disappeared. One day I put myself in one place and disappeared. My other life sits empty and waiting. Where you go, I cannot follow. Where he went, I should not have gone. When I found you, my son.
I sit in front of the fire and it is tomorrow. It is still this morning. Your father brings in endless cups of tea and smiles. He promised that all I had to do is ask, and the ring is mine. That I can go wherever, whenever I please. He knows I am sad here and does not understand why I do not leave. That it would kill me and kill him.
He treats me like a little child, slowly, the first tricks. A rabbit in a hat. Doves in his sleeves. A silver coin behind my ear. I smile, laugh, and am thankful. But he does not know what my heart desires, while you, my son, do. When he was given up, when he has retreated, you bring in your knives. We tear pages from books no longer read, in languages I do not know, and wade through seas of paper in silent tag. We practice throwing knives at each other. We tie each other up and lock each other in closets, and count the seconds by heartbeats. I hold you in my arms and whisper stories of the great Evil Knivel, chained and locked in a barrel. How he went over a waterfall, a hill of water that crashed and the spray was like a cloud. That there are holes so deep that bodies don't always come back.
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 16 Page 3
