I should have told him not to let her go to sleep. I should have told him lots of things, but I sat there in the backseat and let him drive us back into something we couldn’t have understood.
When we pulled up to the house, Mina was asleep, and together, we carried her inside, and laid her on the bare mattress. Dad found a clean sheet and draped it over her.
“You okay?” he asked, and I nodded.
“Yeah. Just tired.”
“You get some rest, too. You both need it,” he said, and I thought he would pull me to him, thought he would kiss me on the forehead the way he used to when I was a little girl and Momma was still here, but he smiled and then left.
I stood over Mina, watched her chest rise and fall, and cupped my hand over her mouth. Her breath streamed over my palm. Easy and soft.
“Are you dreaming? Is she there yet? With you?” I said.
Mina’s eyes were the color of rainwater when she opened them. Unblinking as she stared past me at some fixed point I couldn’t see.
“She wears the crown. They pried her apart with their hands, burned the pieces, the shards of bone, but she’s still there. Momma saw her. At the very end. And then the light went out.” She reached for me, and I bent, let her put her arms around me, and she shook. We sat locked together that way, two sisters clutching at something that our mother had seen and tried to lay at our feet. But she hadn’t understood what it meant when the Dark Lady came to her and spoke those promises in her ear. She saw only the clear faces of her daughters, and she’d opened her mouth and said yes.
“What do we do?” Mina said.
“I don’t know. She won’t come to me. Won’t let me see her.”
“Don’t let me go to sleep,” she said, and I hugged her to me, felt the quiet beating of her heart against mine.
“I won’t,” I said. Because Mina wasn’t the first. It wasn’t hers to take.
When the sun streaked across the ceiling, Dad knocked on the door and opened it. “Mina, honey? I made a doctor’s appointment for you. Just to make sure you’re completely okay.”
Mina brought her lips to my ear. “Don’t fall asleep,” she said and stood. She was still in the clothes she wore yesterday. Dad placed a hand on her shoulder as she walked past, and then he looked at me.
“Can I stay here?” I asked, and he nodded.
“Get some rest. There’s bread for toast if you get hungry.” He paused, lifted a hand, and then put it back on the doorknob. “I love you,” he said and closed the door behind him.
I listened for the sound of the car starting and then went to the window, pressed my face against the blinds and lifted the edge of a blade so I could watch as Dad backed the car down the driveway.
“I love you, too,” I said and their faces disappeared, blurred impressions of eyes and mouth, and then I turned back to Mina’s bed and lay down. “Momma,” I said even though I knew it wouldn’t be her when the dream took hold.
For a long time, sleep wouldn’t come. The morning was bright against my eyelids, and I pulled the blanket over my face, but it was too hot, and so I pushed it off and stared at the ceiling. The plaster circled outward in never ending rings, and I followed them, tried to find the place they ended, but my head started to hurt. I closed my eyes again and counted my breaths, tried to find the moment where my lungs emptied out, tried to feel what it was like to be hollow, and then I was in the dream.
The deep acrid smell of something burnt filled me up, threatened to split me open, and I coughed. A hand twisted against my back, and the smell grew stronger.
“You were the first,” the voice said, and I knew that it was her. The Dark Lady.
“Yes.”
“Your sister. She was the one to find me. Your face in miniature. Your mother’s face. That dark root inside each of you like it was inside your Momma. Already twisted in your blood. You’ve felt it already, haven’t you?”
“Take it out. Please.”
“Can’t,” she said, and her hands were black and red, and her tears fell into the dirt and sizzled. “So many things I’ve taken out of the women who came to me. So many wriggling creatures drowned or pulled squalling into the air. Cut them out so their husbands and fathers wouldn’t break them open, their blood vermillion and burgundy on those pale hands. So many things I gifted them. Taught them how to keep their babies inside of them, how to bind up their wombs so they could hold onto the things they wanted so desperately but would pour out of them over and over. And they came and they thanked me. By the time your mother saw me, it was too late. What was inside of her was too deep to rip out. What she had to offer was so small.”
She licked her lips, and the skin blistered and cracked. “Three women. All bound up in diseased blood and bone.” Her hands threaded in my hair, and I leaned into her the same way I leaned into Momma. “I had a little girl, too. They took her and filled her mouth with earth. I could still hear her cry at night, and I’d wake up with my arms empty, and I wanted nothing more than to cut my own heart out, but there was nothing sharp in the place where they put me.”
Her fingers burned against my skin, but I didn’t pull away, didn’t run. “Please,” I said, and she sighed, her breath like the wind or cold water moving quick, and she tugged at my hair. I winced, but I stayed still.
“Your mother said the same. Your sister, too. So many with that word pasted on their lips as they lifted their hands and asked for things they didn’t understand, and then I did what they asked, and they clawed against me, begged me to take it all back. But when something’s asked for, there’s no changing it. Do you think that your mother knew what she asked for? Do you?”
I looked down at my hands. I wanted to say yes, wanted to tell her I understood, but my skin prickled, and I thought of Mina, her whisper still heavy in my ear as she told me not to go to sleep.
“You don’t,” she said and her words died in the air, and I was alone.
I opened my eyes. Deep inside my chest, something twisted, and I could feel it moving through my blood. Spider like. Fanged. Delicate legs fluttering and then growing stiff as they solidified. I pressed against my breastbone. “How long have you been there?” I said, but I already knew that it had always been there, just like it had always been in Momma.
I threw the blanket off and stood. Dad wasn’t back yet and so I went into the kitchen and made some toast. I took two bites and it sat in my stomach like cardboard, so I threw the rest away, turned on the kitchen tap, and pressed my mouth to the stream of water and drank until I gasped and pulled away.
I went outside, knelt beside the hole Mina and I had created, and dipped my fingers into the dirt. The thing inside of me reached out, too. A paper chrysalis unfolding to reveal the tender meat beneath. I used my fingernail to scratch numbers into the earth. Ten. Twenty-seven. Thirty-five. Counted out the possibilities of how many years would pass before that chrysalis turned dark and then unfolded sharp wings.
“What did you ask for, Mina?” I said, and the sun beat against my back, sweat working its way between my breasts, and the grass seemed to shimmer and drop away, the heat inside my bones, and I breathed in, exhaled, and the grass withered beneath me. Full summer dropping into decay, and I felt the moon beneath the world, the full weight of her and how the sun pressed down and down, and how she burned with her own quiet heat, and I understood.
I didn’t need to ask. I knew what it was Mina asked for; knew the price of what such a thing cost, and the dormant, hungry blackness inside of me reached out to its like as it curled inside of my sister. From deep beneath the hole we put her in, Momma reached up, too.
When I heard the car pull up, the sun was already sinking, and I stood and went back into the house. Dad helped Mina up the stairs, and she looked up at me. I nodded, and she pushed her hand against her mouth—a brief flash of teeth—and then her eyes focused on the stairs in front of her.
Dad helped Mina to the couch, and she tucked her knees to her chin. She looked so small. He turned on the tel
evision and handed Mina the remote. “I’m going to go get you some water so you can take your pill. Just rest,” he said and left us alone.
“It’ll get dark again. Won’t it? We’ll spend the rest of our lives waiting for the sun to set,” she said, and she lifted her shirt to show me the mark spreading like a bruise across her chest.
“Waiting to sleep. Waiting to wake up.”
“Look,” Mina said and pointed to the television. “You see her?”
A reporter faced the camera, her face serious as she held a microphone. Behind her, a small crowd of people milled together, their heads leaning as they spoke to each other. Only one faced away from the camera, her back hunched, and her hair long and tangled with leaves. We knew her—my sister and I—and Mina reached for the remote and turned it off.
“What did she tell you,” I said, but my sister turned away, her dark hair streaming behind her, and Dad came back into the room.
“Here. Take this. It’ll help you sleep,” he said.
“Don’t,” I said, but Mina had already tipped her head back, the glass in her hand as she drank in long, messy gulps, the water spilling over her chin as she watched me.
“Good girl,” Dad said as she handed him the glass and sank back into the couch. Behind me, the television turned back on, but the remote was on the floor where Mina had put it. Dad didn’t notice, but turned and headed back to the kitchen. “Try to get some rest. The pill should help,” he said, and Mina watched the television. I didn’t turn around.
“She said she could smell it inside of me. The same smell that Momma had. Festering and ripe. Said she knew how to cut it out.”
“You can’t, Mina.”
Mina eyes flashed as she looked past me, and the sound of dry wings brushing against each other filled the room, and I went to her and pressed my lips against her forehead. Her pupils dilated, stretched so that the whites looked bruised, and I pulled away, felt the darkness inside of me singing to the darkness inside of her.
I stretched my body alongside hers, and she tucked her head against my chest, her hand over my heart, and closed her eyes. The television clicked off, and I smoothed my sister’s hair, and sang to her, hoped that inside the glittering world the Dark Lady created she could follow my voice back to me.
Dad didn’t speak when he came out of the kitchen but sat in the armchair next to us. His face was worn, as if I could lift it off with no effort and peer at all of the things he hid beneath. Mina twitched, and I pressed my skin to hers. “Don’t listen to her,” I whispered and hoped she heard me. Hoped that the pill she’d taken would tie her tongue and keep her from speaking. Keep her from saying the words I had been too afraid to.
“I didn’t know what to do. After she died. Spent night after night staring at the ceiling and wondering how I was going to do it. I’m still not sure,” Dad said, and I turned to him. He sat forward, his head leaned against his hands. “Every morning I’d wake up and want to ask her if I was doing it right, but her pillow would be cold, and I’d remember, and oh, God.” His voice cracked, and he covered his face. I turned back to Mina and tried not to listen to Dad’s sobs.
“When will she come back?” he said.
“Don’t ask her to,” I said, but I didn’t think he could hear me. Mina smiled in her sleep, and my skin crept into gooseflesh. The television turned on again.
“They had hungry little mouths. Always crying in the middle of the night, and you couldn’t sleep, and so you didn’t dream, and eventually you forgot her face. Forgot the sound of her voice.” The Dark Lady’s voice crackled—a distorted, mechanical buzzing—and Dad turned to face the television, and his mouth went slack.
“There were nights they cried out for you, and you buried your head, covered your ears and pretended you didn’t hear them, but they came scratching at your door, and so you went to them and wiped the tears from their faces and pressed cool washcloths to their foreheads and opened closet doors and lifted frilled bed skirts to check for monsters. You made sandwiches and braided their hair and stood behind them while they brushed their teeth, and every minute you thought of how much they looked like her. Like they’d sucked every bit of her into themselves, those greedy, little teeth open wide, and you wanted to break them open and pour them out and re-shape all the things you lost from their broken bones, like so many puzzle pieces spread across the ground.”
A thin line of saliva worked its way down Dad’s chin, and I looked away. The voice droned on, a lifted chorus of buzzing, mechanical voices, and Dad closed his eyes. The sound shouldn’t have been beautiful. It was.
“Tell me what you want,” the Dark Lady said, and then the world dropped away.
* * *
I could feel Mina next to me, her breath cold as she exhaled, and I shifted and pushed myself up. Dad was gone, and the house was dark.
“Mina. Wake up.” I didn’t try to hide the fear in my voice. If Mina had been with the Dark Lady, she would already know.
“He’s gone. Isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
She opened her eyes. The whites were completely black now.
“What did you do, Mina? What the fuck did you do?” I wanted to scream at her, wanted to shake her until she was normal again, but my voice was a whisper, and she twitched her hands across my face.
“I gave him what he wanted. It won’t last though. She told me. He’ll wake up tomorrow and think it was a dream, and he’ll wish his blood would freeze in his veins and his heart would stop. But he wanted it so much, Hayley. Wanted to see Momma again. Just for a moment.” Her tears were as black as her eyes, and they stained her cheeks.
“He won’t remember,” I said, and she shook her head.
Mina took my hand, and together, we stood, walked through the kitchen, and opened the back door. We were both so hungry, and we went down on all fours, crept through the night’s warm grass and found the skittering, squirming things and put them between our teeth and crunched down.
Mina sighed, and I went to her, and we traced our fingers over each other’s faces. “Sister,” she said, and I pressed my lips into her palm. “She gave us a new name.” Mina reached under my shirt and traced the letters against my naked back, and I held the syllables in my mouth, too afraid to say them aloud.
“I don’t want to say it either,” Mina said, and I took her hand in mine, and we watched the moon and stars bleed into something else, something alien, and the earth broke open beneath us, the sound of wings fluttering and mandibles clicking as they opened and closed.
“Did she give Momma a new name, too?” I said, but I already knew the answer. We watched the sky and waited for the buzzing wings to melt into morning sun, but the night was long, and we shivered in our thin T-shirts and shorts.
“He’ll come home. Won’t he?” I said, and above us the sky came together and apart like the popped seams of a doll, and we pressed our bodies into the dirt as if we could take root, but there was nothing beneath us but emptiness.
When the sky finally began to change, we crawled back to the stairs. Went up, up, and up and pressed our faces to the window—our foreheads leaving a slick smear of oil against the glass—and stared inside the house.
“Do you see him?” Mina said.
“No. Not yet. But I can feel him breathing. Like the edges of it, you know? He’s not completely back yet, but he’s hiding somewhere. Behind everything. He’ll be here soon,” I said, and we opened the door. Our footprints dark smears against the linoleum and carpet, and we stretched ourselves on the couch like bookends, our toes barely touching.
“He’ll ask for it again. If she comes back to him,” I said.
“Probably.”
“How much more will she ask for?”
“Whatever’s left to give.”
“And when there’s nothing?”
Mina shrugged. Her eyes were back to normal, the deep brown surrounding the pinprick of her pupil.
From the hallway came the sound of someone shifting. A cold body coming
awake.
“He came back,” Mina said, and we turned our heads away. Neither of us wanted to see him, to see the blackened eyes that would surely be there.
The sun came through the blinds, lit the room and our prone bodies in gold, and we lay still as death, our eyes squeezed tight, tight, tight, until our father opened his door, and then he was past us, opening kitchen cabinets and muttering to himself.
Only when the thick smell of coffee floated through the air did we open our eyes, scrambled off the couch, and crawl back to our bedroom.
“Still hungry,” Mina said. My own stomach clenched around emptiness, and I pressed my fingernails into the flesh there; the imprinted half-moons fading as quickly as they’d come.
“We’ll have to wait.”
“She already changed us. Didn’t she? Without even asking.”
“Yes.”
Dad shuffled back down the hallway, and his bedroom door opened and closed, the lock clicking as he shut us out.
“How long do you think he’ll be in there?” Mina’s lids were already heavy, her voice drowsy and thick with sleep.
“Until he forgets. Until he knows it wasn’t real.” I said, but I knew he wouldn’t forget. Would come back again and again to the memory, nudging it like a sore tooth, and he would try every night to slip back into the dream, and Mina and I would wither in our skins. It wouldn’t ever change.
“I don’t think I love him enough,” Mina said. A cold thing to say, but I understood. She’d been too little when Momma died, and Daddy was already mostly gone, too.
We wrapped ourselves in our blankets and sat facing each other. I tried to memorize her face, but it was so much like looking into a mirror I found I could close my eyes and still see her, close as skin.
“Come and find me once we fall asleep, okay? She doesn’t like it when you’re there. In my dream. I don’t think she likes it when we’re together.”
“Okay,” I said, but I didn’t know how to find her. Didn’t know the way. When the sound began—the droning sound of wings taking flight—Mina tipped her head back but did not close her eyes.
Everything That’s Underneath Page 13
