Every Bone a Prayer

by Ashley Blooms

  He was quicker this time. Less afraid. Misty didn’t have a chance to scramble to her feet before he was on top of her. His chest pressed against her stomach, and all the air rushed out of her lungs and refused to come back. Not even her breath wanted to be a part of this, every inch of her trying to escape as William shoved his hand under the waistband of her shorts, the only pair she found that she didn’t mind wearing anymore. He yanked them to her knees.

  “My cousin showed me this,” he said.

  He pressed one hand against Misty’s arm to hold her still as she tried to scoot closer to the wall. He held her in place as a rock dug into the soft skin of her shoulder. William moved above her, talking all the time, and when she didn’t move, he moved her. Misty stared to her side, looking for something to hold on to, something to speak to. A couple of loose nails lay on the ground near her head so she grabbed them and held them in her palm. Misty shouted for them and the nails responded with their name. They had deep voices, grating and gray. They spoke pressure, spoke the hum of the earth a hundred miles beneath. They swallowed darkness like air and Misty swallowed, too. She followed the nails back until her bones felt like long veins of oil buried deep beneath the mountains, felt herself not bigger but wider, and she would be something else one day, something that the pressure of the earth made, forced into a new shape that people would love to tear open and rip out, and the mountain knew, and the mountain trembled.

  When it was over, William took the nails from Misty’s hand and left her behind. She stayed in the barn long after he was gone.

  She knew what she needed to do to leave, but she couldn’t seem to do it. She thought of the steps in her mind—stand up, pull up her shorts, brush the leaves and dirt from her hair, make sure no one was looking, walk through the door—but her body didn’t listen. It felt both empty and heavy at once. Both hers and not at once.

  She sat up and scooted to the side until her back was against the wall so she could see anyone who came through the door long before they saw her. Loose bolts and screws littered the barn’s floor, a rusted tool bucket, the handle of a broom, a pile of deflated tires in one corner and a few busted rims in another. Any of these things—any one of them at all—would be nice to talk to. Any one of them could fill her with a story that wasn’t her own.

  Misty closed her eyes and tried to reach out to them.

  She thought of the sheet hanging down the center of her bedroom, Penny’s bare foot beneath it kicking her shirt, Penny’s ankle, bloodied; the green bottle spinning on the floor of the barn; William’s hand fumbling with her waistband—

  Misty opened her eyes. Her heart pounded in her chest. She could feel the things around her now, could hear their still, small voices reaching out to her so she tried again.

  Penny’s bloodied ankles beneath the sheet; a crawdad’s empty shell in her hand, the thin translucent skin, so light, so empty; her mother’s shoulders speckled with rainwater; the fawn in the woods with blood on its hip; William’s mouth on hers—

  Misty dug the heels of her palms into her eyes.

  More voices gathered near her. The barn tried to send her sunlight. The rims tried to send her warmth. The birds flew down from their trees and landed on the roof and they sent her wings, sent her sweeping and feathered and flying.

  But it was just fragments. Misty needed a connection whole and bright, something strong enough to swallow all these feelings in her chest. She closed her eyes.

  Green strings crisscrossing the ceiling in the trailer, swaying gently in the breeze; the smell of rainwater and fresh-cut grass; her mother rocking her as a child, begging her to sleep; William’s hand on her hip; her father brushing her bangs over her eyes; the wind whipping her hair as she rode behind Jerry; Sam turning over the cards to read Jamie’s fortune; Penny’s bloodied ankles beneath the sheet; William’s chest against her chest, the weight of him pressing her down, down, down—

  A sob broke from Misty’s throat. She smacked her hands against her face, trying to chase the feeling away, to stop the tears.

  The barn tried to help. So did the birds. They wanted to help make things better, but she had to let them in, and she couldn’t. Misty didn’t want to relive what had just happened. She didn’t want any of them to see her that way, either. If they did, they might blame her, hate her, never speak to her again.

  Misty couldn’t stop the images from coming and she couldn’t stand them, either, and she was caught in the middle with nowhere to go.

  “It’s okay.”

  The garden’s voice was slick and soft, a deep, dark water rippling in Misty’s mind.

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” the garden said. “Please.”

  Misty pressed her hands against her face. She cried and cried until she didn’t anymore. Until she couldn’t anymore.

  “There now,” the garden said. “It’s all right.”

  “No,” Misty said. “It’s—”

  “I know,” the garden said. “But you don’t have to think about any bad things anymore. I don’t need your whole name to talk to you. Just a part. Any part at all.”

  “But—”

  “Hush, hush,” the garden said. “You don’t ever have to say your name again if you don’t want to. Not never ever again. We can make our own names, me and you. I’ll show you how. Dry your face now.”

  Misty wiped her face with the hem of her shirt and dried her damp hands on her shorts. She tucked her hair behind her ears.

  “See,” the garden said. “We’re getting better already. We can choose our own names if we want. We don’t have to have any part that we don’t like. Doesn’t that sound better?”

  Misty hesitated. Not using her name would mean cutting herself off from her other friends—the barn, the crawdads, the trees. But if they knew what happened, they might leave her anyway. It seemed easier, somehow, to abandon them than to be abandoned by them.

  “Yeah,” Misty said. “Okay.”

  “Your mom is in her bedroom and Penny is napping. If you go to your room now, nobody will even notice. But you have to be quick, quick, all right?”

  Misty pushed to her feet. The barn tilted a little in front of her, and her legs felt woozy and unsure. She stumbled forward until her body caught up and she slipped through the barn doors.

  “There you are,” the garden said. “See, we’re just fine, you and me, you and me.”

  Misty crept through the front door and hurried into her room. She shoved all of her stuffed animals into the crack between her bed and the wall because she couldn’t stand them looking at her. She curled on top of her quilt with her back to Penny. All of the other voices fell away—the barn and the birds and the trailer—until it was just Misty and the garden, and the garden stayed with her until she fell asleep.

  Twenty-Five

  Misty’s mother propped the front door open with a chip of broken concrete. She tore the quilts from the windows until the whole house was filled with light. Rain dinged against their roof and the air that drifted through the door smelled fresh and cool. Her mother ignored the new statue in the garden, though Misty found it harder not to look. A bridge had grown there in the few hours between night and day, grew heavy and bronze, but it only grew partway. The bridge ended in the middle, right where it curved the highest. It stopped where it should have bent back toward the earth, like it didn’t want to be a bridge at all, so it made itself impossible to walk. No one could ever cross it. There was nowhere to go except back to the garden.

  The bridge was just like her. She’d tried to talk to the world after what happened, but it didn’t work. Misty couldn’t face her name so she’d never speak to the trailer again, to the birds or the barn. She’d never learn her family’s names. She’d never know the sound of their voices inside her head. She was alone now, except for the garden, who curled like a shadow in the back of Misty’s mind.

  Above her, the green strings crissc
rossed the ceiling, swaying gently. They caught hold of one another, snagged, loosed themselves again. Misty sat on the couch with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders while her mother stood in the kitchen, her arms sunk wrist deep in a bowl of ground beef and cracker crumbs and ketchup. The meat made a soft, slick sound as she kneaded it between her fingers.

  The phone rang and her mother jumped. She rinsed her hands in the sink, picked up the phone, and said:

  “Hello.

  “No, no, I’m fine. Just making supper.

  “They’re all right. Stir-crazy from being cooped up from the rain.

  “It’s untelling.

  “Oh. I thought Peanut was doing that. Idn’t that his job?

  “Well.

  “I ain’t mad. I just thought it’d be nice if the girls got to see you once in a while.

  “Well.

  “Be safe.”

  She let the phone clatter to the countertop. Misty pulled the quilt around her face like a shawl and waited for her mother to smile and call her Mary Magdalene, but her mother never looked up. Instead, she put the meat into a pan and poured more ketchup on top, then washed her hands with water so hot that it turned to steam on her skin. Her mother turned to walk toward the back door but stopped, her hands caught inside a dish towel. Her mouth had gone slack, her hands stilled, so it seemed for a moment that she had frozen in place.

  “Mama?” Misty said.

  “It’s back.” She stared at the space just above Misty’s head. “I thought that if I opened everything up… With all this light, how could we even see it? I thought I could drown it in light.”

  She dropped the towel on the counter and slipped a roll of tape around her wrist. She clutched the waning roll of green yarn in her fist.

  “Move, baby,” she said.

  Misty moved to the end of the hallway, her blanket trailing behind her like a long cape. Her mother’s knee sank into the couch as she crawled across it to the green light, which darted out of sight as soon as she touched it.

  “Did you see?” she said, almost laughing. “That’s what it does. Just as I’m about to catch it, it moves away again. It’s smart, Misty. It knows.”

  She taped the yarn down and turned, her eyes roving over the trailer, searching for the faintest hint of green. She found it above the kitchen window. She held the yarn in her hand, unspooling it as she walked, careful not to pull hard enough to loosen the tape from the wall. She connected the last point where she’d seen the light to the newest point, and just like before, the light wavered and wobbled and was gone.

  Her mother laughed outright this time. “I’m so tired of this.”

  She chased the light from the window to the ceiling to the television stand. It landed on the carpet and on the recliner where Misty’s father used to sit and on the handle of the front door. Their mother taped everything that it touched. She hunkered and shuffled as the web of green strings grew tighter and tighter. She crawled on her hands and knees through the kitchen to tape the light down as it hovered in the center of the floor. The yarn was quickly vanishing until she could hold it all in the center of her left hand, the right hand poised in front of her with a piece of tape, ready.

  Their mother’s skin was sheened with a bright layer of sweat, and all the muscles in her face were constricted, her shoulders pulled tight, her hands contorted, the knuckles bent like she was holding on to something that Misty couldn’t see, something that she couldn’t let go of, not now, not ever.

  “Do you see it?” she asked.

  Misty let the quilt fall from her shoulders. She leaned past a piece of green yarn to look into the living room. The wind picked up and sent the strings twisting and turning, pulling at the tape that bound them to the room.

  “No,” Misty said.

  “It can’t have just… I was getting closer.” Their mother’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t understand. I thought…”

  She looked at Misty and stopped. Her eyes widened until they seemed round as moons. They ate up too much space, those eyes, took in too much light. Misty could see the whole room reflected in them, hovering, like when her mother blinked, the whole world might disappear and take Misty with it. She took a step back.

  “Mama?” Misty said.

  “Don’t move, baby.”

  The last of the yarn unfurled in her mother’s hand as she bent over a low-hanging string and crawled to Misty. On her knees, they were almost the same height, and it was one of the few times Misty had looked at her mother this way. Her mother pressed the last bit of string to the center of Misty’s chest. The green light hovered there, now as big as a silver dollar, the edges of it jittering and shaking like it was about to pull itself apart. The light shivered and then it went still. For a moment, it was a perfect green circle right in the middle of her, and then it was gone.

  Misty’s mother blinked. She grabbed Misty’s shoulders and turned her around. Her hands roved over Misty’s back, lifting the hem of her shirt and prodding her skin, her mother’s fingers hot and clammy. She turned Misty back and pressed her palm to Misty’s forehead, searching for a fever that wasn’t there. Her eyes darted over Misty’s face, her body, her hands, and when she found what she was looking for, she pulled Misty against her chest and hugged her for the longest time. Penny came out of their bedroom to ask about dinner, but she stopped when she saw them, and she stood by the door and watched them until the meatloaf started to burn.

  Twenty-Six

  Misty didn’t recognize the sound of her father’s truck pulling into their driveway that night until his door slammed shut, but by then his feet were already pounding up the steps and his fist was pounding on the door. She’d never heard her father knock before.

  Penny stood in their bedroom doorway with a hand on either side of the frame. When Misty tried to step past her, Penny grabbed the hem of her shirt.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Something’s wrong,” Penny said. “I saw it in the cards.”

  Misty looked at her sister. It had been more than a week since Penny tacked the sheet between them, but it felt much longer than that. It felt like Misty hadn’t looked at her sister’s face in months and that Penny had aged years in that time. There were dark circles under her eyes, and the beds of her fingernails were stained with dark-blue ink. Late at night, Misty had heard the sound of scribbling coming from Penny’s side of the room.

  “Are you okay?” Misty asked.

  “I’m just tired,” Penny said as their mother opened the door.

  “Where are the—” Their father’s voice cut through the silence like a thunderclap, but the question he’d meant to ask died as he saw the green strings taped to the walls. “Beth. What—what’s going on?”

  “We have to talk. Say hello to the girls and then come to the bedroom.”

  “Say hello? I’m not going to say anything until you tell me what this is. This is all about those statues?”

  “There’s been a light.” Her arms had been crossed over her chest until then, but she let them go, splayed them at her sides like she was trying to convince their father that she wasn’t something small anymore. “You haven’t been here. You don’t know what we’ve been dealing with.”

  “We agreed on that,” he said. “Don’t try to make me feel bad for something you said you wanted from the beginning. I want to see the girls.”

  Their mother stepped back. She collided with a half-dozen strings and her weight pulled them taut. The sound of the tape straining against the wall was faint, but it seemed louder in the quiet. It wouldn’t be long before one of the pieces broke, but their mother didn’t move, her back pressed against the strings like she needed the support.

  Misty’s father seemed bigger as he shut the door, bigger in front of their mother, bigger than the strings. He’d grown a beard since the last time Misty saw him and his
face looked younger somehow than it had before.

  “Hi, Daddy,” Penny said.

  “Hi, baby,” he said. “I’ve missed you both.”

  Misty nodded but she didn’t speak. Their father held out his hand like he was presenting them to their mother.

  “Look at their faces, Beth. They’re terrified,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “You haven’t been here,” she said.

  “I’m here now. And this is going to end now, all right? You called me over. You said I had to come, and now I’m here and I’m fixing this. You hear me? All this, this bullshit with the strings. With them statues. It’s over right now.”

  Then he seized a handful of strings above their mother’s head and ripped them down. Their mother flinched as though he’d torn the strings from inside her chest. She stood perfectly still as their father stalked around the living room tearing down the rest of the strings. His legs tangled in what fell to the floor, and he kicked the strings off as he moved into the kitchen, rattling cabinets and knocking over the salt and pepper. The only sound in the room was the tape being torn away.

  When he was satisfied that the strings had been removed, he walked into their mother’s bedroom and came back with a metal baseball bat.

  “What’re you doing?” their mother said.

  “I told you. I’m ending this.”

  “Girls, go back in your room, all right? Shut the door.”

  Their father slung the front door open and strode outside into the dark. Their mother followed.

  “He’s going to hit the statues,” Penny said. There was laughter in her voice. “It won’t work.”

  Misty and Penny walked from one doorway to the next, standing shoulder to shoulder. The air outside had cooled, but it was still humid and sticky. It clung to the backs of Misty’s knees and her palm and the hollow behind her ear, all the little places that no one else seemed to notice but the heat. The garden knocked against Misty’s mind, and she answered with a scrap of her name, but a scrap was enough for the garden.