Every Bone a Prayer

by Ashley Blooms

  The nameless presence had faded from Misty’s mind once they left for church. Everything Misty spoke to had a certain reach—a distance they could speak across—including herself. For most things, it was fairly small. A hundred feet, maybe more, and the more Misty spoke to something, the greater their reach grew. She closed her eyes and concentrated as hard as she could on the crawdads in her creek, weaving their name over and over like a long strand of steady rope growing between her fingers. She cast it toward them until she felt them calling back to her from all that distance. Their connection wasn’t as strong as it would have been had Misty been standing in the creek, but the crawdads were still there in her mind. And they shared the creek with her. They shared cool water and deep shadows, the current rippling over their shells, the flutter of their tails as they propelled themselves backward into the dark.

  For the first time that day, Misty felt relaxed, almost happy. All the tension in her body eased away and she could have slept under the bright lights of the church, surrounded by her family with the low drone of the preacher’s voice like a fan blowing in her ears.

  Misty’s mother tapped her on the knee and Misty startled. Her connection with the crawdads snapped like a twig, separating them. Without thinking, Misty sat up higher and crossed the leg that her mother had touched. Her thighs had slipped apart as she spoke to the crawdads, her body sinking into the pew until her dress pulled up, exposing her bare knees and an inch of pale thigh. And even though no one could see her skin except her mother and aunts, Misty still had to be careful. Of what, she wasn’t sure, but she knew that it was wrong for her dress to slide up, for her shirt to be cut too low, for her body to be shown to anyone, even her family. She had to be careful of herself.

  At the pulpit, the preacher’s message drew to a close. He shut the Bible on his podium and placed one hand gently atop it as he looked out across the congregation. This was the preacher Penny talked about in the barn. He was Earl’s uncle, but it was hard to see any resemblance in him as he stood at the pulpit in his white dress shirt and dark slacks, the tips of his shoes gleaming beneath the lights.

  “Before I send y’all home tonight, I’d like to speak a little more on community. I’ve heard some rumors are being spread about something happening on Preacher’s Fork. I’d remind you all what the Book of the Lord says about idle gossip. It’s our job to spread the word of God, not the word of man. Now, I will be praying on this and seeking His counsel. But for tonight, all we should be worried about is getting our hearts ready for Revival next month.”

  A smattering of applause rippled through the church, but Aunt Jem snapped her hymnal closed so hard that dust flew from the pages. “Gossip, my rump. He just don’t want us talking about what his nephew is up to.”

  “The church protects its own,” Dolly muttered, “but so do we.” She nodded at Misty as the pastor bowed his head and led the congregation in a final prayer.

  Nine

  Penny was quiet on the ride home from church. The kind of quiet that felt like waiting, like plotting, like Misty would soon have something to worry about, so she wasn’t surprised when she woke from a bad dream to find Penny’s bed empty.

  She knew it was empty before she rolled over and saw the quilt kicked to the bottom of Penny’s bed, her pillow slumped to the floor, the same way that Misty could tell when the television was on in the living room even if the sound was muted. There was a kind of hum, a warping of the air that life made. All someone had to do was walk into a room to change it, to bend everything around themselves like water rushing past a stone.

  The room spun a little when Misty got out of bed. She touched the walls to keep her balance as she walked down the narrow hallway. All the furniture had turned to hard-edged darkness, making it impossible to tell one shape from the next. The green light was there where it had first appeared. It swung slowly back and forth in a way that made Misty think of a smile.

  The front door was open just a crack, which meant Penny must be outside. Misty almost shut the door, almost locked it, too, leaving Penny to get into trouble on her own this time. She would deserve it. But the bad dream was still wedged in the corners of Misty’s eyes. Something about the green glass man, the sound of glass breaking, and trees all around her. Penny had been there in her dream, and the dream made Misty just afraid enough to open the door and check on her sister.

  The air tickled the back of Misty’s neck as she stepped barefoot onto the porch. A single light burned in William’s trailer, in the room Misty knew was his own, though she’d never been inside. His mother’s truck was parked in its usual spot, the muffler tied up with a loose string. When the wind blew, the muffler bounced up and down, tapping out a little message against the gravel. Lights flickered in Earl’s windows, and the front door was propped open so television noises drifted across the yard. The lawn chair he kept by the garden glistened under the moonlight, and Penny was there, too, standing in front of the green glass man.

  Penny looked smaller than Misty had ever seen her look, or maybe it was the statue that looked bigger in the sight of Penny. It loomed above her. Its shoulders sparkled with white moonlight and orange lamplight.

  Misty crept down the steps and crawled beneath the porch where the moonlight fell in pale-blue diamonds. Her bare knees were cold against the hard ground. There were more crawdad chimneys now—three where there had only been one before. Misty drummed her fingers across the ground to draw the crawdads out, but she kept her eyes locked on Penny.

  Earl had started building a fence around the garden. He’d used old wood that had fallen off the barn, soft wood that had gone gray in the center, started to rot. The boards lay on the ground, hammered together in the shape they would soon keep, but were too weak to stand on their own just yet. Penny walked over the boards, dragging Earl’s plastic lawn chair behind her. The moonlight poured through the green glass man and cast a deep-green shadow on the ground and on Penny, too. She swam through the green light, her skin bubbled and shivered like she was changing into something else as she climbed onto the chair. Penny held her arms straight out for balance, and when she straightened her legs, she stood almost even with the statue.

  Misty jumped when a crawdad skittered over the back of her hand. She cupped its small body in her palm and drew it to her chest. The crawdad shared murky images—snakes’ holes buried into the bank of the creek, a mouth stretched wide open, two sharp fangs glistening. Misty’s chest contracted and her arms pinched to her sides like she was being swallowed whole.

  They were scared of the green glass man.

  “I don’t like it, either,” Misty said.

  They filled her body with the feeling of water rushing back from the shore, drawing something away. Pull her back, they urged, because even though the crawdads weren’t that fond of Penny, they knew that Misty loved her.

  “I can’t,” Misty said. She felt rooted to the spot. She was sure that stopping Penny would be worse than watching her. She wouldn’t even give Misty a chance to explain why she was there, but would stop speaking to Misty and refuse to play with her. She would use loneliness like a punishment and Misty didn’t want to be more alone than she was already.

  So she waited beneath the porch with the crawdads gathered close.

  Penny’s body was solid and pale next to the statue, which was clear and bright and green. His body of light and shade, hers of cotton and skin. No two things ever looked more and less alike than they did.

  The breeze picked up and whipped Penny’s sleep shirt to the side, revealing the backs of her pale thighs. The grass rattled and shook, the sound of it like whispers in church, like everything in the bottom was watching as Penny placed her hands on the green man’s shoulders. The moonlight stained the tips of her fingers bright green, and for a moment, it seemed like Penny might be sinking into the glass, like he was taking her, inch by inch. Soon, she’d be submerged to the wrist. Soon, her arms wouldn’t be arms at
all, but clear, bright glass. She’d be nothing but a bubble in his chest, another shade of green for the sun to pass straight through.

  Penny leaned forward and pressed her lips to the green glass man.

  Misty’s stomach twisted with shock and embarrassment and fear as Penny kissed the place where the statue’s mouth would have been, had he been a real man instead of glass. Her fingers clutched at his shoulders. Her legs stiffened. She held herself there until she shivered violently. The plastic chair tipped to the side, and Penny stumbled to the ground.

  She looked up at the green glass man and touched her fingertips to her chin like she was making sure she was still there, that she hadn’t left something behind when she fell. And even though the night was warm and balmy, Penny’s breath formed a little cloud of mist when she exhaled. It was like winter had come while she was kissing the green man, like the deep, dark cold of the earth was deep inside of him and Penny had let a little of it out. She had let it inside herself.

  Misty slunk further beneath the porch as her sister backed away from the garden. Penny didn’t even glance in Misty’s direction as she ran up the porch steps, her bare feet pounding against the wooden boards, Penny a flash of pale skin and the twirl of an oversize T-shirt before the front door clicked shut.

  The crawdads inched closer, crawling across Misty’s thighs, bunching together at her belly. She stroked their hard shells and stared at the place where her sister had been. She didn’t know exactly where the statue had come from. She didn’t know if it could hurt anything or anyone. If it could hurt Penny somehow.

  But it might.

  There was only one way that Misty knew to find out. Only one way that she could know for sure what the garden or the statue or the nameless presence wanted.

  She had to share her name with it.

  She had to speak to the garden.

  Ten

  “I have to go,” Misty said. She placed the crawdads gently on the ground.

  The feeling of a thousand reeds cast across her bones, pulling her down, keeping her in place. The crawdads shuffled forward, their claws damp and cool against her skin.

  “I have to,” Misty said. “I won’t get hurt.”

  The ropes tightened, then loosened. The crawdads eased back to their burrows.

  “I’ll be careful. I promise.”

  Misty crawled from under the porch and stood barefoot in her front yard. The light in William’s room was gone now. Earl’s front door was propped open with a chip of concrete. Faint television noises seeped through the open space, and pale-blue light flickered on his porch. Misty hurried to the garden and knelt behind the plastic lawn chair so it might camouflage her if Earl came outside.

  The green glass man’s light pooled on Misty’s thighs and her outstretched palms. She turned her hands over and the green light swam over her skin, bubbling and twisting as though it were made of water instead of light. She balled her hands into fists and closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure which she should speak to—the garden or the statue—so Misty aimed her voice outward, to the bottom. She didn’t ask any one thing in particular to answer, but invited any answer. Any voice.

  Misty’s name stirred inside her chest—her hand reaching out for her grandmother’s when Misty was barely old enough to walk, the paper-thin feeling of the older woman’s skin inside Misty’s palm; the rattle of her mother’s breathing, rocking her, shushing her, begging her to sleep; the first time Misty had ever tasted snow, bright and shivering cold; her father’s voice from a different room, muffled and rumbling; a fawn in the woods, blood on its hip and pain in Misty’s leg, pain in her chest, swelling until it blotted out every other feeling and she almost let go. She almost halted her name right there, afraid of feeling that kind of pain again, but she held on and watched Penny standing beside her in church and singing along to a song she didn’t know, making up the words until Misty’s sides ached from trying not to laugh; the feeling of a crawdad skittering over her thighs, resting against her belly; her mother sitting on the couch with her head in her hands; her father’s truck peeling out of the driveway, gravel pinging against the metal sides of the trailer; the faraway look in her mother’s eyes, a feeling of sadness like many small stones stacked inside her stomach; green light swimming on her face, on Penny’s face, the press of lips on skin; the press of William’s lips against her cheek, warm and soft; a small cloud of cold breath hanging in the air.

  Misty braced herself. She expected pain, hurt, despair. She waited for a swell of the garden’s feelings, and she hoped she wouldn’t be washed away by them.

  Dozens of other voices answered instead.

  The barn called back to her and so did Shannon’s truck, the tailpipe tapping out a little message as the wind picked up. A few birds stirred in their nests and cooed their names, an owl circled overhead, watchful, and a dozen rats scurried out of their hidden homes to get a closer look at Misty kneeling by the garden. All of them spoke to her, but she pushed them all back, held them at an arm’s length and listened, listened.

  Until a voice she’d never heard before answered back.

  “Hello,” the voice said.

  Misty whipped around, expecting to find someone standing behind her, but the bottom was empty of everything but moonlight and cricket song. The voice wasn’t like that of the crawdads or the snakes or the owls. It didn’t speak in images, but in words, like hers. It spoke like Misty spoke, and she’d never heard a voice like that inside her head.

  And there was no pain, not yet, though her hip ached like there was shrapnel lodged inside, slowly working its way to her surface. Misty looked up at the green glass man’s face. “Are you the statue?”

  “No,” the voice said. “Not statue. Not glass.”

  There was an oily quality to the voice. Slick and sliding. Misty imagined it like something long and sleek, something hidden under the surface of dark water, and she could only make out its shape by the waves it stirred inside her mind. And because she thought it, the image swam between them, murky and gray.

  “Are you the garden then?” Misty asked.

  “That’s what he called me.” An image of Earl flashed between them, his back bent over the garden with a hoe in his hands, the feeling of a dull blade digging into Misty’s shoulder, pulling her apart. “That’s what you can call me, if you need to call me something.”

  “Don’t you have a name?”

  The garden hesitated. “I used to. Once.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Misty felt something like fog collecting in her skin, sweeping up from her elbows and into her chest. It was a cold feeling, damp and lonely. But it wasn’t unbearable, not like speaking to the injured fawn.

  “I don’t remember it now,” the garden said. “I lost it. Gone, gone when the bad thing happened. I don’t know it anymore.”

  “What bad thing?”

  Branches. A woman’s pale face looking back over her shoulder, searching for something in the dark. Her fingers pressed to the trunk of a dogwood tree. Misty heard birdsong inside her head, dozens of different voices, panicked, overlapping.

  “Who’s that woman?” Misty asked.

  “It doesn’t matter now. She’s gone, gone, too. She took my name with her.”

  “I don’t know if I can keep talking like this,” Misty said. “I’ve never talked to something without a name before.”

  “I won’t hurt you.” Weight curled inside the palm of Misty’s hand like fingers touching her palm, tentative, cold. “You’re the only thing I’ve spoken to in a hundred dark nights. I was sleeping ’til you woke me.”

  Misty shook her head. “How did I wake you?”

  “The bottle,” the garden said. “You and the little boy, the little bruise.”

  “William?”

  “Yes,” the garden said. “Him. I heard your voice in the bottle’s name. You were calling to me. And I
was asleep for so long, down deep in the under, dreaming, down where the nameless things go. I never thought I’d come back again, but you were so…sweet. Are you always that way? Little gentle girl.”

  “I don’t know,” Misty said. “I try, I guess.”

  “And you’re so good at speaking for such a little tadpole girl. You must be very brave.”

  Misty blushed and dropped her face to hide the color creeping into her cheeks. “Penny is the brave one, not me.”

  “Is she the one who kissed the statue?”

  Misty nodded. The statue’s green light twisted across her skin, and for a moment she almost felt its touch like cold, like frost. She shivered and scooted a little further away from the garden. “Did you make the statue grow?”

  Silence.

  Misty tried to feel for the garden in the darkness, in her own body, but it was hard to pin down. Since Misty had shared her name, the garden could see all of her thoughts, could tell if she was lying or holding something back, but without the garden’s name, Misty couldn’t do the same in return. She was a vessel that could be filled with whatever the garden offered, good or bad, true or not, and there would be no way for Misty to tell the difference.

  And just because she’d never heard of a nameless thing didn’t mean they couldn’t exist. There was still so much about names that she didn’t understand, and she’d never had anyone to talk to about it, no one to teach her.

  “Did you make the statue?” Misty asked, more frantic.

  “No,” the garden said. “No. I’m not the statue.”

  “Then where did it come from?” Misty asked.

  “I don’t know,” the garden said. “What are people saying about it?”