Lola found herself an ocean, but she didn’t stay. Sometimes even now, I wake up in the dark and think of her, waiting for my tap on the glass. I can still hear the river and that sound, that tapping, like a message or a question I can’t answer. The smell of earth and perfume comes up at me, like she’s left her scent along the ground and in the air.
Termite
Lark smells like the soap smell on her hands. She puts one bowl and another in his arms tight against him so the bowls don’t move. Down the alley the ragged orange cat crawls low under Tuccis’ house. The cat drags its flattened legs under the porch steps and squeezes through webs and rotting leaves, over hard black beetles hiding from the light and the small scattered bones of harvested creatures. Mice bones and bird bones, bones of voles and flat-nosed moles, and rabbits too small to hop. The cat lies still on the cool dirt, safe in its litter of bones and scrap that smells of humid mold. Lark’s soap smell is like white flowers. She stands behind him so the bowl stays tight and she holds the bottle of color in his hand. Two drops Lark says, pink instead of red. She tells him how the batter folds pastel pale, and he can feel the heat outside, wavering over the grass and the alley. The heat glints on stones and gravel and presses hard to cut. Too hot to be out, Lark says. Plants droop and the grass sighs like something squeezed, but the clean almond air of the soup in the bowl lifts in the weighted heat. Lark pushes his chair away because the oven racks slide out hot, but the fan blurring side to side blows the sweet smell in circles. He sits by the window and hears the faint roots of the grass in the berm of the alley, long veiny threads that reach deep in the ground to drink where no one sees. He holds the radio to say with sounds.
The doorbell is like an alarm that no one rings. He knows it’s going to ring and it rings loud. It catches like a chime that chokes and starts and then it blares again.
Who can that be, Lark says.
The orange cat lifts its ragged head. The scars on its face shine yellow in the dark under Tuccis’ porch.
Lark pushes his chair to the living room. The couch where Nonie lies at night and rests her feet is empty. The piano is empty. The chairs are empty and the low table where Elise and Solly played cards is empty. The house is only for Lark and him and the sweet smell of the cake, but the doorbell rings again. There’s a glow through the window in the door. When he looks from the side he can feel it on his face, faintly cool. The heat from the open oven is like a shelf falling out and slamming, but the glow behind the door is quiet. Lark doesn’t always know but now she knows. She opens the door and keeps it nearly shut. She talks through the space between. Murmurs and sounds. A man talking. Not a heavy man like Nick Tucci and Charlie.
I take a secretarial course, Lark says.
The man steps closer, air that moves in a shape. The glow falls through the door onto Termite’s face and shoulders, a cool pale beam that’s found him.
I was hoping I could speak, the man says. Voices are swirling in his voice and the voices move when he moves. He’s more than himself. Lark doesn’t hear, she doesn’t see. Termite sees him, a shape glowing through the door that Lark keeps nearly closed. The shape shines like a light.
This is your brother in home care don’t you find it.
The man’s words come and go and echo with voices. The voices layer one over another and another, and they see inside, into every corner, into the boxes alone in the basement, into Lark’s room and his room, inside the wall Nick Tucci broke to make a bigger door between, into the attic with its pull-down stairs.
What’s his real name.
The voices know every name. The voices touch each plant in Nonie’s garden and move along the clotheslines and into the shed and between the stacking chairs Lark puts here and here. Voices whisper up and down the alley, over the dry grass and hot white stones, around this house and that, careful and fast like a wind that rushes and knows.
Someone’s birthday if you need anything.
Lark shuts the door. They stay still, waiting for the man to leave. Termite feels him standing on the sidewalk in front of the house. Finally the man turns and goes. His footsteps sound going away and the voices rush after him, breathing small sounds. The glow and the cool air move away, trailing him like shadows no one sees. There’s a shadow of a taste in the warm room, and the humid air darkens with a sweet tinge. Lark says oh no. She pulls the cake from the oven. Not so you’d taste, she says. Wild mint grows by the tunnel wall where the sun can reach. Solly bites the leaves with his teeth, presses them wet in his hands. Here, he says. Taste them Termite, on your tongue. Salt and sweet and bitter green, and that’s her you taste on my fingers, even through the clothes she won’t take off.
Louder he says, train’s gone now Termite. I know you want it back but now it’s gone. Hold on to me, I’ll take you in the water. You love the water.
The water comes up high. Solly breathes and swims them fast. The sky wavers and the river smells of iron where the train bled into its shadow and poured into the water. Lark sings the song about the bread upon the waters but Solly moves in the bright shallows where Lark can’t see. What can I do about her, he whispers, keeps whispering, what can I do. But the water doesn’t answer, the water is still. Nick Tucci’s hand on Termite’s head is warm and heavy and dark as the space under his house where the ragged orange cat waits for nightfall. At night the orange cat hunts and the lilacs stir and Nonie rolls her stockings down before she puts her feet up on the couch. Now the orange cat peers through the broken lattice that covers the underside of Tuccis’ porch and Lark puts the chairs just so around the plastic table. The alley bleeds its green smell where the mower cut and the ragged orange cat waits to crawl long and low where the alley is open and wet. Nick Tucci drinks his ice tea. He says he’s too thirsty to live and the sounds in his throat drain down and down into the wet dark inside him. He drinks loud and fast and Termite says and moves until Nonie sends Lark into the house. Nick Tucci puts his big hands flat on the table, but the darkness inside him follows Lark, steps close behind her everywhere she steps. Nick Tucci smells like Zeke’s tears smelled when Zeke cried in the wagon and put his wet face on Termite’s face.
One of your boys maybe.
Open the door for her to jump in.
He rings his bell once and Lark answers. She has the glass moon man in her hand and the cold across her face when she bends to get the cake.
Then she’s standing in the doorway from the kitchen. Nick Tucci gets up and moves toward her, dark as the stones in the tunnel. He steps hard across the ground, moving heavy and deep as the rolling water in the river. If he could press against Lark he would hold on tight. Don’t you make him cry more now. Joey stop teasing Zeke because he cries and Termite doesn’t. I told you Termite doesn’t cry. When he was a baby we could never tell what was wrong except by how he moved. Zeke you don’t have to cry. A dead thing is scary but now I covered it up. The dogs got her, that’s all. Look, she left her kittens before they even opened their eyes. Joey do you have to be mean. Solly take these kittens home for Zeke. Take your shirt off Solly and we’ll wrap them up and keep them warm. There. The little things. Hear them crying? All little ones cry don’t they Termite. Except you never needed to cry. The cake in his mouth is three tastes he can taste. Lark says the names of the tastes are in the colors, one drop and two drops, and she moves the knife fast, icing each layer, turning them round and round so the cakes turn too like soft sweet wheels. Then she puts one cake on top of another, turning it careful like a special prize. The alley pools its sharp green smell and glows its quiet stones. Cars plow through the heat with their tires ticking, sticky on the hot roads. Everyone waits for evening when the air gets bluer and the hot air lets go slow. Every grass yard makes a different sound, higher and lower, up and down the alley. There are sounds in every house.
Nonie sits between Nick Tucci and Lark. Nick says about the river being brown and green and they’re laughing and he says and says.
Oh that blue river.
He looks up
to say. Their laughter chimes all around while the sky goes up and up. High up the rain is holding still before it falls. It’s going to fall and fall, roaring like the ocean sound in Lark’s seashells that she holds for him to hear. Oceans have waves like a pulse, Lark says, and she puts his fingers on her wrist to feel the tiny beat. The sound in her skin surges but the sound in the shells only circles, coming and going in one curled space. His birthday comes and goes and Lark makes every birthday. Nonie has the candles. The cake comes close and holds still and he sees. The lights jump and the black thread on fire inside each flame is burning small and big, standing and falling, and then the lights go out. He can make every sound and he makes the sounds. Lark wears her swimsuit to make his bath. Nonie tells her when to turn the taps, how much hot and cold, how high, but Lark pours the bubbles and the white froth smells of soap. Nonie crouches by the hard lip of the tub and the small groan of her legs sounds when she moves. Lark sits in the bath to hold him and she moves his arms and calls it swimming but Nonie says hold still. Keep him still Lark, he doesn’t know not to breathe if the water’s over his face. Lark’s shape in the kitchen is taller and thinner than Nonie’s shape. Nick Tucci has gone home and Lark leans over Termite and Nonie stands by the sink. Nonie soaps the dishes and Lark runs his bath. The bubbles leave a sweet skim and Lark’s legs in the bath are long thin shapes. She says her legs are his legs and they’re taller than the giant in his book. The giant lives in the sky above the beanstalk and sings sounds to the Englishman. Lark says that was a bad giant.
We’re not smelling blood like him. We smell an evening in Paris. Nonie, why is it Paris?
Because Paris has the Eiffel Tower, like that picture on the bottle.
But why do they have a tower? You said Paris collaborated.
Not all of Paris, Lark. I told you, the Resistance were heroes and they fought all during the war.
Fighting when I was born, Nonie.
That’s right. You were the best thing that happened in 1942. But you were three when you came to Winfield and the fighting was nearly over. You rinse him off now and I’ll get the towels.
Fighting like Solly and Joey, Lark says when Nonie’s gone. Tough messy fighters, Lark says, yelling a curse to scare the Polish boys.
Termite doesn’t tell or say. Nonie comes back in her white slip that she wears under her uniform at Charlie’s. She’s a broad shape in her white straps, the turn of her head the same and her shoulder soft where Termite leans his head. He’s in Nonie’s arms that are wide and clean and smell of the cucumbers she slices thin and puts across her eyes. She puts him on the floor on the towels that are a hard bed and dries his hair, rubbing with a cloth. Her voice comes and goes. She says Lark is eleven years old and mother to that whole crew.
Don’t you get tired of all those boys? Don’t you ever want a frilly dress and a tea party?
Lark won’t say or tell.
All right, what a face. You cloud up like a thunderstorm. I guess it’s better you’re like you are, fast enough to keep up with them and fight them off if you have to.
Lark says she can fight anybody and Nonie lifts the towel away. Her fingers touch across his eyes and he lies still in moving air. The bathroom window is open and the morning glory vine turns and twines, reaching in, breathing its own smell.
You may not be fighting them yet Lark, but you will soon if you have any sense. You’d best remember, boys’ hands wander.
The air is soft all over him.
But not this boy’s hands, Nonie says.
She holds his wrists and pulls him up so his hips rest on the floor. She swings him gently and the air slips under him, cool and quiet. Do it careful, like this, makes his muscles stronger. He’ll hold his head up to listen if you sing something he wants to hear.
Lark sings the rhyme about the monkey and weasel but it’s the vine he wants to hear, the sound of the leaves alive like ears uncurled and furled, the flowers opened wide and the tiniest buds like soft pricked points. The smell from the dishes and the bath are two smells like different flowers. Lark bends to turn the water in the bath with one long arm and then she lets it pour. He holds the radio. The hard round knob against his wrist talks to the tubes inside. Nonie makes the dishes slide and clank.
Lark, are you in a dream? It’s way too deep.
They can’t make us send him can they?
Don’t have the training. Take care of him all this time.
He can smell the soap and the rain. The rain comes closer and the wind is in the morning glory vines, swaying them like a skirt. Water pounds and clatters into the bathtub and pours from the kitchen spigot and the night smell settles warm against the house, close against it like one animal against another. The vine has gone blind and closed its flowers but he hears it stirred and lifted in the dark, pushed against the window screen and sucked and pushed. He plays the radio to let it whoosh and roar. Nonie says he thinks that buzz and noise are music. Lark, will you take that thing away from him. Well it’s his music Lark says, but she takes the radio. She turns the chimes fast on their string so they unwind slow and slower and make their lights. Drain out some of that water, Nonie says. Cats hide in the weeds by the river, scared of the rail yard, scared of the dogs and the ditch. The dirt is dark and soft under the railroad bridge. Termite’s feet reach almost to the end of the wagon and Lark reads him the book about giants in the sky. She pours tea into Termite’s cup and says Solly don’t let that cat in here. That cat has a ragged lip, old ragged cat that follows us everywhere. Solly takes off his shirt and cuts it sharp as a rope against the stone walls in the echo. Fe fifo fum, I smell the blood. Solly’s shape walks up and down and Termite helps to say until Lark says that’s enough, the cat’s run off. Then it’s quiet. Just the heat like a buzz on the water. Solly says they’re going in the river after the train comes, the river is warm as a bath.
Lark, no one can see us in the tunnel, Termite sure won’t tell. I made a bed of weeds see how soft.
We have to go to Charlie’s for lunch.
So go later. She doesn’t know when you come and go or who you’re with.
She knows.
She doesn’t know. I don’t come around anymore when she’s there. Anyway what have we done.
The river turns and turns. The train begins to whisper in the stones. He begins to say and say.
Lark, give him your sandals to hold, before the train comes. I’ll do what you say. Everything you say. You want to. You want to every day, as much as me.
He hears them. Breathing is a bath between them, deep as the river and moving.
Wear your clothes then. I know what you look like, just not all at once. I’ll be still, so still. Here’s the train, do it now. Give him your shoes.
Lark’s sandals are warm and soft, the leather shaped to her feet worn slick and the straps thick enough to hold tight. The ground is moving and the stone of the tunnel hums itself full before the train is on them. The train roars louder and louder until the river in front of him goes dark. The brushy island in the middle of the water disappears like a sunken lump, he can’t see the blurred shape anymore or hear the sticks that swak and drag by the river’s muddy edge. The train goes bright inside him, shakes into him and through him so hard he opens his mouth to breathe. The tunnel is empty and full at once, so empty he spins down and down. The wagon turns quick as a powerful limb and he rides it deeper and deeper. There’s a picture inside the roar, a tunnel inside the tunnel. He’s been here before and he looks deeper each time and he sees. There are sleepers everywhere, bodies crowded together. The bodies are always here, so many of them in the tunnel when the train roars across above, bodies spilled and still, barely stirring. The train pulls and lifts and shows them and lets them move. They know he sees them but they cannot say or see. No sounds, just the roar, lifting them with their eyes still closed, turning them over like the pages of a book. One shape stands and turns toward him, a man’s shape opening his glowing hands as though to be sure he can. The soft light goes stark brig
ht like a white fire and the pounding starts, pounding and pounding until the train pours off, gone away where none of them can reach.
Termite? Train’s gone. Lark says you hear me.
You hear me? Breathe now, Termite. Train’s gone for today. Let go of Lark’s sandals and we’ll go swimming. Boys can go naked. I’ve got you just fine now, see?‘ I know you want the train back but it’s gone.
We’re in the water, Termite. You’re swimming. Lark, he’s smiling. Any boy likes the river. Hold to my neck Termite. See how good the water feels? Don’t tell Nonie or my dad I took you in the river though. Our secret. The flowers are secrets, each one like a soft taut moth whose petal wings open and fold. Lark touches her face to his eyes and opens his hands to take away the petals. Lark says each rose is a knot that comes apart, pink petals and red, and these yellow ones are farewells. She says the glories have eyes, inside behind their stamens, eyes that twist shut in the dark, blue like your eyes, Termite, but not so full of light. Colors pulled from the flowers smell of one thing torn from another. They’re pieces and scraps that ache. He holds them in his hands and holds them until they’re damp and dark.
They let him sit alone after his bath while Nonie sleeps. Lark fills the bathroom sink and leaves the door open a narrow space. She takes her bath standing up but she doesn’t know, she doesn’t see. She washes with the cloth and moves the wet soap smell that’s in his hair and powdered on his neck. The high ratchety sound the crickets make is louder and softer and louder. They’re under the house Lark says, and in the grass, and they know to sing when the dew wakes them.
Lark and Termite Page 12
