Every Bone a Prayer

by Ashley Blooms

  Seven

  Misty woke to the sound of shouting.

  It sounded like her mother’s voice, her mother scolding, her mother hurting, and Misty struggled out of bed, her legs tangled in the sheets. She didn’t know what was wrong, but she knew that she needed to see her mother, that she could help, somehow, if only she was there. She slammed her shoulder into the doorframe on her way out of her room; the bruise would last almost a week before it yellowed and faded. The porch burned the soles of her bare feet as she stumbled outside.

  Her mother wasn’t there.

  Neither was Penny.

  For a moment Misty stared at the bottom as though it was hiding from her and at any minute the real world would shutter into place and her mother would appear, shouting and crying in the middle of the yard. Misty rubbed her fingers against her eyes as her heartbeat slowed.

  Her father stood by Earl’s garden. She hadn’t seen him since the morning before. He’d left after he fought with their mother and didn’t call, didn’t come home. He worked on the powder crew at a surface mine nearly an hour’s drive from their home, and all that Misty knew about his job was that he was one of the men who blew the mountain apart so other men could reach the coal inside. He’d always worked long hours, but lately he spent more time gone than he did at home.

  Another man stood in front of her father, but Misty didn’t recognize him. She walked a little closer, lifting her hand above her eyes to block the sun. She stopped.

  The man in front of her father wasn’t a man at all.

  Misty wasn’t sure what it was, except that it was made of green glass. It had a head shape sitting on its shoulder shape and a long, narrow body. It was taller than Misty’s father and broader, too, but it didn’t have a face like him or a face at all that she could see. There were no features—no nose, no ears, no hands—but there were little dips in the glass where those things might have grown once, or might grow still. Its body was the exact same shade of green as the bottle Misty had found in the barn, except the green glass man had no crack running through it. Its body was perfect and whole, and the glass shone in the morning sun with bright pricks of light on its shoulders. The light left thin trails in Misty’s vision when she turned away—little worms of yellow and purple that wriggled across the yard until they disappeared into the sky.

  She looked for William, wanting to ask him about the green glass man and the bottle they’d planted in the garden, but he was nowhere to be seen. Shannon’s truck was still parked in the driveway, but the door to their trailer was shut.

  Earl walked across the yard and handed Misty’s father a beer. They stood together, staring at the green glass man staring back at them.

  Speaking to her father without her mother or sister nearby always felt strange, like maybe Misty should reach out and shake his hand, introduce herself to him. Hello, it’s Misty, your daughter. Hello, do you remember? But she walked up to him all the same and stood in the place where all their shadows converged. Her father looked down at her and smiled. He ran his fingers through her bangs, raking them down onto her forehead like he always did, and like always, Misty waited until he turned his head to brush them away again.

  He said, “About time you got up, Little Bit. It’s almost eleven o’clock. You get some breakfast yet?”

  Misty shook her head.

  “Not even a biscuit? I swear you eat like a robin. You need at least three biscuits and a side of ham.”

  Misty wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like ham.”

  “Don’t like ham? You sure you’re my youngin’ then?”

  Misty knew that it was a joke, but the thought of not belonging to her father still sent panic scrambling through her chest, little sharp-toed beasts squeezing at her heart. She squinted at the green glass man and said, “I thought I heard Mom.”

  Her father glanced at Earl and away again. “You just missed her. She ain’t too big a fan of this, ah, this new addition.”

  “This miracle,” Earl said.

  Misty’s father laughed, but Earl didn’t.

  “I don’t know what else you would call it,” Earl said. “Last night I went to bed and this ground was empty as it’s ever been, and this morning there’s this.”

  “Uh-huh,” Misty’s father said.

  “Have you ever seen something like it?” Earl said. “Touch it. It’s cold as ice. Even in the middle of this heat. You can touch it, Misty. Something like this, something that God Hisself made, it belongs to everybody. Not just me. All these years I been telling myself that if I kept trying I could find—”

  Misty’s father squeezed her shoulder. “Why don’t you go around back, baby? See if you can find your mama and Penny.”

  “All right,” Misty said.

  Earl was still talking as she turned away. He didn’t even notice her leaving, his eyes were so fixed on the green glass man.

  Around back, the yard was smaller than out front, but it was made of the same dry, yellow grass. The woods behind the yard extended left to the creek and right toward the barn. The trees were thick and green with a heavy layer of leaves beneath them from last year’s fall. The leaves exhaled cool puffs of air when Misty stepped on them, as though she was walking on the edge of something’s soft teeth while that something was asleep and dreaming about little girls with soft-bottomed shoes.

  A clothesline ran the length of the yard, attached on one end to the trailer and on the other end to a maple tree. The rug that usually covered the living room carpet hung over the line, and the line sagged beneath its weight. Penny stood by the woods with her arms folded over her chest, watching as their mother lifted an old broom handle over her shoulder. She did this often. Sometimes after being shut up in the bedroom with their father. Sometimes after a long day alone with Misty and Penny. Sometimes after church.

  Their mother brought the handle down, and a plume of yellowed dust swallowed her whole. She held her breath while the dust settled, then exhaled loudly, pulled back the broom handle and swung again. The rug shed grayness for redness, becoming, by degrees, more of its original self, though there were some stains that couldn’t be beaten out—a dark smudge in the corner that might have been coffee and a smattering of faint bleach stars.

  Misty stood beside her sister and crossed her arms, too.

  “You sure picked a day to sleep in,” Penny whispered. “Mom yelled.”

  “At who?”

  “Earl. She kept going on about how that thing wasn’t from God. False idols and all that. I was happy about it up until Earl balled up his fist and stepped toward her like—” Penny shook her head. “Sometimes I wish Mom would break bad on all of them.”

  “Just not us,” Misty said, and Penny nodded.

  “What is it though? That green thing?”

  Penny shrugged. “I don’t know. Nobody does.”

  They watched their mother beat the rug until all three of them were covered with sweat for different reasons. Eventually, their mother’s arms gave out and she dropped the broom handle. She rinsed her hands with cool water from the garden hose.

  “I thought I told you to go inside,” she said, looking at Penny, then to Misty. “When did you get up?”

  Misty and Penny shrugged in tandem.

  Their mother dried her glistening palms on the knees of her long denim skirt, then held them out to the girls. Misty and Penny each took one of their mother’s hands, then took each other’s. Their mother asked them to bind together in prayer every time something went wrong or someone was hurt so Misty fell into the ritual without question. She bowed her head and closed her eyes as their mother said, “Dear Heavenly Father, you said where two or three or more were gathered in your name that there you were in the midst of them and that whatever they asked believing they would receive. Today we’re asking for discernment, Lord. That you help us understand what’s happening in the garden. That you let us know how to
respond and that you keep us close to you until we know the best thing to do. Watch over us, Lord, and protect us. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.”

  Their mother squeezed Misty’s hand before she pulled away. She looked at each of their faces. “I want you to promise me you won’t touch that thing in Earl’s garden.”

  “Is it bad?” Misty asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what Earl’s done. I don’t know what he’s capable of, and I don’t know what that thing is. Until I get some kind of answers, I need you all to listen to me. All right?”

  “All right,” they said.

  “Good girls,” she said, and walked into the trailer alone.

  * * *

  “It just showed up,” Penny said. “That’s the worst part of it. If it had been growing for a while, then it wouldn’t be so bad, you know?”

  Misty nodded and curled her knees to her chest. William sat beside her in the tall grass by his front steps and Penny sat on a step higher up, her long legs splayed by Misty’s side. William’s mother had left for work not long after Misty had woken up, and William was having Grippo’s for dinner. He shared the open bag between the three of them and they snuck handfuls, chewing slowly, watching for Misty’s mother. From this angle, they could see the green glass man only from the side. His chest was flat but deep enough that Misty’s father or Earl might have fit inside him with room to spare on every side.

  “Maybe it’s been growing for a while, though,” Penny said. “Just growing where we couldn’t see it. It could go all the way down for all we know.”

  “Down where?” Misty asked.

  Penny shrugged. “Hell.”

  “It don’t come from Hell.” William jerked the chips toward him. “You sound just as bad as your mama, you know that?”

  “Oh, hush,” Penny said. “I do wish they wouldn’t act so stupid, though. One little statue pops up, and every adult in five miles is acting like the Rapture’s come.”

  “Is that what it is?” Misty asked. “A statue?”

  “That’s what it looks like to me. Like in a museum or something. Maybe we could call somebody and have them take it away. I bet somebody would pay to have it in their yard instead.”

  William frowned. “You can’t move it. Earl tried earlier. Wrapped a rope around its middle and pulled and everything, said he was afraid somebody might hurt it, but it won’t budge.”

  “See,” Penny said. “Who knows how deep down it goes.”

  “It’s cold, you know.” William scooted a little closer to the garden, a little further from Misty and Penny. “Like ice. I bet if you stuck your tongue to it, it would freeze in place like that. Have you touched it yet?”

  “I don’t want to touch it,” Penny said. “It looks like an alien.”

  “I think it kinda looks like me,” William said.

  “It don’t look like nobody I’ve ever seen,” Penny said.

  William frowned. “Well, it’s still the prettiest thing in the county. That’s what I think.”

  Penny snorted. “Well, you sure are the only one.”

  “Earl likes it. And my mom’ll like it, too, after she gets used to it.”

  “Not if she’s got any sense,” Penny said.

  “She will,” William said. “She’s got to.” His mouth was parted slightly, and he leaned toward the garden. There was a hungry look on his face, the skin beneath his eyes dark with need.

  “I bet Earl did it,” Penny said.

  “Why did it have to be Earl?” William growled.

  “Who else could it be?”

  “There’s lots of people,” William said. “Just because it’s Earl’s land don’t mean he had anything to do with it. Whoever did it must be special, though.”

  Penny stood up. “I’m tired of talking about this. And my mouth is on fire from them chips. You coming, Misty?”

  “I’ll be there in a minute.” Misty waited for the screen door to slam behind her sister before she shifted from the step to the ground beside William. She watched his face from the side. His nose, short and blunt, his eyelashes long and blond. “It looks like the bottle, don’t it? From the barn?”

  William nodded. “I don’t know what else it could be.”

  “Does that mean the garden did it?”

  “How?” William shook his head. “I think Earl must be right. It had to be God.”

  “Why does it got to be God?”

  “Because if it wouldn’t him, then it had to be the Devil. They’re the only two things that could do something like this.”

  Misty bit her lip. “I guess so.”

  “And it has to be from God because it’s a good thing and He only does good things. We asked the bottle to help the garden, and now it’s growing something. That’s what Earl wanted, ain’t it? That means he might leave it alone, like you said. And—and my mom almost stayed home with me today because of it.”

  “Why?”

  “She was scared or something, but she’ll come around. She said she ain’t never seen anything like this before. And maybe your dad will stay next time, too.”

  Misty looked toward the driveway where her father’s truck had been. He’d stayed less than an hour after she woke up before he was gone again. She’d seen the bag he packed, stuffed with clothes, but when Penny asked him where he was going, he just kissed the top of her head and promised he’d see them soon.

  “Yeah,” Misty said. “Maybe.”

  They sat together that way, without speaking, until near dusk when William scrambled inside his trailer to answer the phone on its second ring. Dark came an hour after that and still Misty sat alone by his porch. She had watched the green statue in all the light that the day had to offer—bright and golden, harsh and white, waxing, and fading, and gone light—and still the green man glowed around his edges—still he shone. There was something familiar in the statue’s shape, as if Misty had seen him once a long time ago. As if he might be there at church next Sunday, sitting three rows up, his shoulders gleaming under the overhead lights. He could be in the bleachers at her next school assembly, standing between all the parents, and no one might notice anything was different. He had slipped into their world so quick, so quiet. He might not stop at the field.

  And there was something about the statue’s presence that felt almost like a threat. Like the more they wondered about it, the more the statue would unravel everything they understood about the way the world worked. The way God worked.

  But the statue had to mean something.

  She and William had planted it together. She had sent the garden a message in the bottle, and then the green glass man had grown. Maybe it was from Misty’s memories—the bottle turning into her father because he was gone or William because he had kissed her. Or maybe it was shaped after something William asked for as he’d dug the hole where the bottle was buried.

  Misty closed her eyes and reached out to the bottom. She didn’t offer her name but waited as the crow nestled on the roof of the barn offered its name and the crawdads under her porch and the June bugs with their mouths full of leaves and all the other familiar things that Misty had come to know.

  But there was something else, too.

  A faint knocking at the back of her mind. A new presence. Something she’d never spoken to before.

  Misty waited for it to offer a name, but the presence faded like a hand slowly lifting from her shoulder. Misty tried to follow it, but it was smoke-thin and shifting, then gone.

  Misty opened her eyes and stared at the garden and the green glass man. She had tried to do something kind by offering the bottle to the garden, by sending it a message, but now she wasn’t sure what she and William had done.

  Maybe the garden had woken up now. Maybe it was ready to speak, finally.

  Maybe that was a good thing. But maybe it wasn’t.

  Eight
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br />   Their mother didn’t tell Misty and Penny that they weren’t allowed to go outside the next day, but she stopped them every time they walked toward the front door. Every time she had some new task for them, a bed to make or clothes to fold. So the girls spent the morning cleaning the kitchen from ceiling to floor. The cabinets were dark wood, and a tan countertop separated the kitchen from the living room, its surface nicked with a thousand tiny cuts. The linoleum was a flowered pattern colored dirty orange and green and yellow, and if Misty stared at it too long, the colors seemed to wobble and trade places. A small window trimmed with pale lace curtains overlooked the backyard where the girls often played, the soft wear of their feet still visible in the grass, like they’d only been there a moment ago, or might be there still, some ghost of them standing out there while they were working in here.

  They washed every dish and every pot and rearranged the cabinets. They pulled the refrigerator from its nook with their mother’s help and swept beneath it. They found Penny’s missing bracelet, a handful of Cheerios, eighty-seven cents in loose change, and a thin line of dark mold growing on the wall. The mold crooked like a finger at the tip, inviting Misty to join it there, in the damp, in the warmth, and she couldn’t push the fridge back into place quick enough.

  Their mother supervised them from the living room. She worked quietly, too, taking all of the porcelain figures from the television stand and setting them on the carpet beside her before wiping a damp cloth across the stand’s surface. When their mother finished, she placed each of the figures gently back in the exact place it had been before. There was something peaceful in watching her clean. Something in her movements, so precise, so sure, that felt as though she was putting the whole world to right. That somewhere a crumble of brick and stone became a house again all because Misty’s mother had swept the dust from the television stand.

  When she could, Misty stole glances out the living room window, but only when her mother wasn’t watching. No matter how many times Misty looked outside, William and Earl were always there, their position just slightly changed—sometimes standing beside the garden, sometimes sketching on a battered notebook, sometimes crouched directly in front of the green glass man, bathing in its shimmering light.