by Isla Morley
Keeping my back wedged against one wall and my feet pushed against the opposite one, I work my body upward. I shimmy and grunt, using my elbows as levers, my feet as gears, and my rear end as a stopper. What was easy at first becomes increasingly difficult.
Several feet into the exercise, the bottom disappears. I may as well be suspended in space. I look up and half expect to see stars. What I do see is just as surprising. In the darkness is a spark, a fissure of light. Is this the devil up to his old tricks? I work myself a little farther up the shaft, and the light changes from a spark to a silver vein. There is no mistaking it now: daylight. I press on.
If Dobbs comes now, it will be my absence that greets him. Will he picture me without chains, clearing farm fences, and crossing pastures? Because that’s how I am picturing me. I am giddy with the thought of running free. I start to giggle. It isn’t all nerves. Part of it is imagining Dobbs all alone with his papers and dead animals. A cackle sends the silence rolling up like a cartoon tongue. I keep rushing upward, toward the light, toward that punch line.
Which is farther than I thought.
Just keep laughing.
I get up where the light pours in, thick as a running faucet. Thirsty for daylight, I turn my face and open my mouth.
I am close enough for the light to cast a shadow. My shadow! How I’ve missed you. I get so excited, the tension in my legs lets up. I slip a little.
I push against the side till my muscles in my legs are burning. My hands are so slippery with sweat, I have to keep drying them against my pants. I keep scuttling up. My back screams in pain. And finally, I’ve gone as far as there is to go. I’ve reached the light.
I press my fingers against it. It is protected by a grate. Rising above the grate is a small aluminum canopy, something that allows for fresh air but keeps rain and dirt from entering the shaft. I bang against the grate to dislodge it and slip a little. Should my leg muscles slacken, I will fall.
“Shut up!” I tell the voices. “This is going to work. It’s just going to take a little patience.”
Years of crud and moisture have sealed the edges of the grate. Getting myself into the most bracing position possible, I have a go at them with the end of the spoon. Bits of dirt fall in my eyes. I scrape all around the edges, scrape some more and then give another whack. The grate budges not an inch. I jam the handle in the crack and try wiggling it, but the spoon bends. As for the grate—nothing.
An angle. That’s what’s called for. I reposition myself and give the grate a decisive thump to make it give way. Nothing.
My back might as well have a white-hot poker rammed through it. Tremors run through my legs so hard it’s only a matter of time before they get to my feet and dislodge them. There’s not much holding me up other than sheer determination.
I put the fondue fork to work and hack at the light. It gets even by snapping off the tip. My grip keeps slipping. I cannot give up. Another bang, and the fork slips clear out of my hand. A mocking clink comes up at me from the depths.
“Damn you!” I yell at the stupid light. I pummel the grate. “I’m not giving in!” I slam my fist against the grate and hear rather than feel the gristle in my knuckles give way. The light is not the least bit moved. I thrash some more. There is stuff dripping from my hand. I will not give the light the satisfaction. So what if it’s blood? I put my mouth against the wound. Defeat has a saltiness to it.
I scream up through the holes. “Help! Somebody! Help!” How far does the sound of a scream travel?
“Help!”
AS DANGEROUS AS it is, as futile as it is, I still scale the shaft periodically. Getting down, as I discovered the first time, is still the tricky part, and so far I have fallen only once. A twisted ankle, nothing serious enough to prevent me from going up there occasionally to yell for help. Mostly, though, I wedge myself against the grate just so I can be reminded that there is still a world up there. One of these days, I won’t be able to do that. Muscles need exercise, otherwise this happens: pudding. Dobbs has hauled down a piece of equipment, something with a seat and cables that are supposed to give the impression of rowing upriver. Doesn’t help. Nothing helps.
No one helps.
I’ve lost track of the days. May, he said a little while back. I’m not doing very well with the calendar now that it’s on its second round, so there’s no way to know if it’s actually been ten months or if he’s lying. Instead of day and night, there is Lights On and Lights Out. Instead of Monday, instead of month, hour, and minute, there is only Sleep and Awake. Two seasons, I’ll say that much. Despair, a packed-down bitter cold, and Memory. Memory doesn’t pester me to do my exercises or read a book the way Despair does. Instead, it draws me away to some forgotten thing—the field where Daddy and I sometimes used to go for walks, say. I’ll be drifting among the big bluestem, listening to the wind moving across the prairie. Wading deeper into the field, I’ll suddenly get the feeling that I’m drowning, like I need to tread water to keep my head from going under. That’s how it is with Memory—a two-faced, double-crossing backstabber. The stalks will start to fold over me until I can’t stand it anymore. I’ll have to turn around and run as fast as I can. It’ll be closing in on me, the invisible thing, and I’ll clear the last line of bluestem just in time. And then I’ll open my eyes and look around and see the circular walls have moved in another inch. A memory like that, and I’ll have to get up in that ventilation shaft and climb up to the grate just so I can gulp air.
Can’t say I have much control over my thoughts. If I did, they wouldn’t be all about giving in. Just so they don’t always get the better of me, I have my notes to remind me. They are taped everywhere. Every cupboard, chair, pipe, door reminds me. THEY ARE COMING. YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN. YOU ARE THE CHILD OF HANK AND IRENE HALLOWELL, NOT THE PUPPET OF DOBBS HORDIN. You’d think he’d mind, the things I write, but he doesn’t. He’s near impossible to provoke. He says it’s a creative outlet. He says he likes to read them so he knows what’s going on with me. HOMEWARD BOUND is the sticker I’ve taped to the seat of his chair.
But what if they aren’t coming? What if they think I’m dead?
I tear out a strip of paper from my notebook. After writing on it, I tape it to my chair. I AM NOT CRAZY.
Because the lizard is gone, and the lady in the mirror, too, I rehash conversations from the past. Some I finish; some I embellish; some I invent. I talk to Mercy the most. Sometimes to Arlo. I can’t bear to ask him if he has another girl, so I pretend I’m still his girl. Mostly, Arlo’s too busy to talk because he’s out looking for me. I talk to Theo, who must be a big boy by now; to Grandpa; to Mrs. Littleton, who says there is really no excuse for not practicing piano. Anyone will do when the silence starts to hurt. It’s like having someone scream in your ear, then quit. That gap, when your eardrums are still vibrating from shock—that’s what it sounds like. I have to talk, just for the sake of ears. I think I’ll talk to Mama today—it’s been a while.
But out of nowhere steps Bernice.
One spring afternoon, when thunderheads were barreling across the plains and dumping enough water to make the rivers go on rampages, Mama found in Daddy’s trouser pocket a love letter. We all knew it was a love letter because Mama anchored it to the kitchen counter with the sugar bowl and seemed not to mind the little procession that passed by and read it.
The note said: Call. Anytime. Bernice XOXO. At the bottom was a phone number with a little heart around it.
The fight went on for days, even though what Mama said to Daddy lasted less than a TV commercial and what Daddy said to Mama was shorter than a knock-knock joke.
“It’s nothing, Irene,” was how he put it.
But it wasn’t nothing, because Mama couldn’t pass through the kitchen without making something clatter or crash, couldn’t pass by a door without testing its hinges with a good slam, couldn’t do the wash without a great deal of wringing and sheet slapping. Mama’s anger was like a boil that just kept getting bigger and bigger. I
nstead of having the good sense to let it be, Daddy kept poking at it. With shaving cream on his face, he’d walk down the hallway to deliver another of his oneline speeches. “You sure are enjoying this, Irene,” he’d say. Bang, bang, slam, would come her answer. Or with a wrench in his hand, he’d storm through the back door. “Irene, give it up, would you please?” Smash, would go another pitcher.
To offer Mama our support, we kids whipped ourselves into a flurry of domesticity. Suzie ironed Daddy’s forsaken shirts, Gerhard cleaned his room without being asked, and I took Theo for long walks in his stroller down the rutted country road. Our family rearranged its habits so thoroughly we were barely recognizable to one another.
Just when we thought their fight would go on forever, Daddy came home one evening and asked Mama to take a walk with him. We watched them go down the road, Mama with her arms crossed, Daddy quick-stepping to keep pace with her. When they came back a couple of hours later, Mama’s arms hung somewhat stiffly at her sides. Daddy, red-eyed, kept blowing his nose and talking about his allergies acting up. We all sat down and had dinner together that night. Daddy came home early every day after that. Instead of calling each other by their first names, our parents went back to using their pet names. Eventually, Mama started rolling her eyes at Daddy’s jokes, and Daddy stopped asking her permission for everything. Gerhard went back to being a slob, and Suzie stopped trying to garner sympathy at school by telling everyone our parents were getting divorced. It was meant to look as if the fight hadn’t happened. But it had, and I had the note to prove it.
Maybe it was curiosity, maybe it was spite, maybe it was because spring had used itself up in just two weeks and we were headed into a long summer and that was somehow her fault, too. Whatever the reason, I unfolded the note, picked up the phone and dialed the number.
It rang. Somehow, I’d not expected that. I promptly hung up.
Seconds later, our phone rang and I jumped as though a porcupine had readied its quills. I let it ring. But the answering machine was about to click on, and Daddy’s voice was about to proclaim this the Hallowell household, and who knew what that woman was apt to say?
I snatched up the receiver. “Hello.”
“Hi there. You just called.”
“Yes.”
“Who is this?”
Dreadful at lying, I sputtered. “Suzie.” I thought it might be a good time to hang up. There had to be a thousand Suzies in Douglas County, any number of whom could have dialed the wrong number, but she said, “Hank know you’re calling me, Suzie?”
“No.”
“Well, then. What’s on your mind?”
I should have given her what for. I should have explained how thin Mama had become, how cautious she’d grown in her moods, as though she couldn’t quite trust herself with anything other than lukewarm emotion.
“Suzie, you still there, hon?”
I wanted to say, “We’re all different now.” I wanted to say, “Happy now?”
“Are you married?” I asked instead.
“That’s awful personal.”
I almost apologized but remembered I was Suzie now, not Blythe. “You might have thought of that before you took up with my daddy.”
After a long pause, she said, “I was married once, a long time ago.”
“Do you have any children?”
“I do. I have a boy.”
“How old is he?”
“Come the twenty-second, he’ll be three months.”
I felt my legs go numb.
“Suzie, honey, he ain’t your daddy’s.”
So strong was the relief that I started to cry.
“Oh, now, honey, it’s all right.”
I tried to stop, but it just kept coming. I cried for Mama and Daddy and all us kids, even Bernice’s baby growing up without a father, for how he, too, would have to go through the wringer and come out the other side flat as a pancake and be expected to get up and take on living some more.
Eventually, I settled down. “What’s your son’s name?”
“Elijah.”
“Like the prophet?”
“Like the prophet. I suppose you might say this boy’s going to keep me on the straight and narrow.”
Must be nice, I thought, having your own prophet to keep you headed in the right direction.
She said, “You aren’t Hank’s oldest girl, are you?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Blythe, then.”
“Yes.”
“Well, Blythe, before I let you go, I want you to know you kids is all he ever talked about. And that’s all we ever did. Talk.” To my recollection, that’s where the conversation ended.
Somehow, her voice finds its way underground, and the conversation picks up where we left off so long ago. Now, Bernice says to me, “You’ve got your head screwed on straight. You’re a deep one, a thinker. It’s going to serve you well one of these days.”
“Has my dad forgotten about me?” I ask her.
My eardrums start vibrating again.
She takes her time in replying. “Sometimes it feels like the end of the world, what we go through. But it’s not. I promise you that. I’m not saying there ain’t going to be storms. I’m saying you got to look for the rainbows. If you don’t find any, you got to make your own.” And then, Bernice is gone.
I look around. There is so little color down here. Everything is muted. Even my skin is losing its pigment. I pinch myself to see if it can still muster a bruise. How am I supposed to make a rainbow?
I get an idea. I race around the room, pulling from all the food supplies and craft supplies and garments those items least faded. I arrange them in piles according to their colors. Purple balls of yarn beside red tins of spaghetti sauce, yellow rain ponchos still in their packaging beside the orange hazard cone, a dozen blue boxes of toothpaste beside green Excedrin bottles. Merging blue into violet into red is almost as reassuring as hearing another human voice. Across the floor, I blend tins, boxes, wigs, and scarves into a rainbow.
* * *
Dobbs is stumped by what’s happening on the floor. Puzzlement quickly gives way to vexation—nothing rankles him more than disorder. “What’s all this about?”
“You keep saying this place is the Ark. Well, every ark needs a rainbow.”
“Put those things back where they belong. How do you expect to find something when you need it?”
“I like it like this.” I like me like this, is what I really mean.
“Don’t test me, young lady. I’m not in the mood for one of your episodes today.” He hoists the duffel bag onto the counter. Instead of packing away the groceries, I add the cans to my rainbow on the floor.
Dobbs kneels down next to me. Sometimes the smell of disinfectant on him is so strong I can’t help but gag. “You heard me, I said put this all back. Before one of us trips and breaks a neck.”
Defiance finds itself in cahoots with the yellow box of cornstarch. What on earth am I supposed to do with cornstarch anyway? I tear open the lid and empty out its contents. The air turns powdery white.
Dobbs grabs the box from my hand. “What has gotten into you?”
What has gotten into me is Bernice. The next package—a blue one—is flour.
“No!”
But he’s too late. I give the package a vigorous shake, then make a dash for the pancake mix.
Dobbs knocks the box out of my hand. “Stop it! Stop!” he shouts, as twenty-four servings of pancakes go flying.
I reach for sugar. No reason why trapped air shouldn’t taste sweet.
This time, Dobbs throws his weight at my back and I hear the soft poof of air go out of my lungs when I land. Were it water and not concrete, this would be a belly flop worthy of cheers.
He turns me over. It feels good not to breathe. I watch the white dust coat his hair. In seconds, he ages twenty years. And I must surely be an old woman, too. Perhaps old-lady breath will never figure a way back into my lungs, and I will not be robbed of dying an old w
oman after all.
Color seems to seep out of the irises of Dobb’s eyes, muddying up the whites. He looks bilious. “Oh geez!” he says. “Breathe!”
The last time I saw Daddy was when he was parking the truck at the Horse Thieves Picnic. Good-bye, Daddy, I might have thought to say, if I hadn’t been in such a big hurry to meet Arlo. I might have paused to listen to what he had to tell me. I keep giving him words. “Hey, Punkin, we love you and we miss you, and wherever you are, we’ll find you.” Not this time. Now, I see a shadow across Daddy’s face. I wait for him to tell me to be brave, to hang in there, but nothing comes out of his mouth. My father looks me square in the face and says nothing.
“Come on, breathe!” I hear Dobbs insisting from someplace far off. He’s shaking my shoulders.
Daddy’s not looking at me, I realize. He’s looking through me. This is why Bernice didn’t answer my question. It’s too late. If they were going to come for me, they would have been here by now.
My flattened lungs expand, the air rushes in. To spite Dobbs’s relief, I hold my breath. He grabs my forearms and shakes me some more. Being limp, my head bangs hard against the floor.
“Why are you doing this?” he cries.
As soon as Dobbs threatens mouth-to-mouth, I try to wrestle away from him. He pins me on my back, pegs my legs down by stretching himself on me. He holds my hands above my head.
“I don’t know why you got to be this way.” His voice is screechy and high. “I don’t like hurting you.”
He’s damp, always damp. Because we are exactly the same height, we are face-to-face. Only he’s about three times bigger than me. I can’t stand him this close. The pores of his skin are open, giving off a coppery smell, like a wet match against a strike pad.
I don’t like the way his weight has shifted. I glare at him to let him know I know what’s happening.
His eyes roll, one eyelid droops. He knows what’s happening, too, and this time he’s not going to stop himself.
My tailbone feels as though it is about to shatter. “You’re hurting me!”