The Lightness

by Emily Temple

  I felt something hot moving in my stomach. No, it was only his tongue in my mouth. I pushed into him, pushing him backward, that large man, a kind of magic in that alone. He made the tiniest sound, not a groan or a complaint, but something like air escaping, and suddenly I felt light-headed. He put his hands on my hips, and then they were lower, and I remembered something I’d seen from the back of the cab on the winding road up to the Center weeks before: a heavy policeman in sunglasses standing on the side of the road, the door of his cruiser open into oncoming traffic, pointing his gun into the ditch; at what, I couldn’t tell. He fired two shots in quick succession, but by the second one we were too far past; I pressed my face against the window and saw nothing. The cancerous cabdriver had seemed not to notice. What was it? An exercise? An execution? A mercy kill? It was the first time I had ever been kissed.

  Luke pushed me away from his body with stiff arms.

  “You don’t want this,” he said.

  “I want it,” I said. Just a little more, I thought. A little more and I would be the one to lift into the air. I had felt it, the lightness, I had felt it, and it was Luke, and I would get there first, before all of them, and then I would have everything, he would love me again forever. I leaned forward, but Luke was stronger.

  “You’re a peach,” he said.

  There was a knock at the door. “Shit,” he said. He looked me over quickly before catching his own eye in the mirror. He ran a hand through his hair and then went to open the door. It was Dominique, in a pretty brown dress I’d never seen her wear before.

  “Oh,” she said, seeing me there. I’m sure we were both thinking the same thing.

  “I forgot to leave Olivia a note about rota,” Luke said. He smiled down at me the way he might at a small dog. “No need to go back to the garden, just take some extra free time now.” Dominique nodded, casting her eyes around the room, as if searching for clues. Whatever she saw, or did not see, it was enough. She stepped through the doorway, and we changed places. Over her shoulder, Luke winked at me, but as soon as I had crossed the threshold, I heard the door lock.

  I walked back to the empty garden. I had the urge to throw myself against the looming electric fence, to climb it and hang on while the shocks ran through my body. I imagined myself held aloft by its power, my body frozen, limbs akimbo, like one of those cartoon cats who’ve stuffed their fingers into sockets, my skeleton lighting up and darkening over and over again. Then nothing about me would stay hidden. Then I would not be ignored. Then my outsides would be my insides, everything shot through with light, and everyone, everyone would see.

  Then I reminded myself: that fence didn’t work. Serena had proved that much. Its power was no match for ours. Luke was wrong. I was not a peach.

  8

  I couldn’t go back to the dormitory. I was trembling, as if I really had become electrified. Everyone else would be in rota for another hour at least, and the empty lawn looked scalped, like a trap. I elected not to be caught, not yet. I started up the mountain, toward Serena. For this instinct, I have no explanation, except to say that I have always felt compelled to carry anything to its logical extreme. I’ve mentioned the thing with horses. More, more, more, sang my stupid little heart.

  Here’s a story about my father, one I never could have told Luke: I was twelve when I discovered pornography, on that first edge of things. (Serena’s mother was already dead.) I looked for hours that first night, but didn’t feel anything flicker in myself until I began clicking on the insistent ads, which, once touched, bloomed into all manner of images, filling the screen with naked bodies slapping against each other or purled and poised, tongues and fingers extended. I suppose I too find my ecstasy in excess. Before this I had only seen the soft-colored sex scenes you find in PG-13 films. I had only recently worn out my gruesome bed-man. I remember the shame afterward, as I closed each window, and each one resisted closure as aggressively as it had before. Except now each blooming felt like an affront, a hydra sprouting new and uglier heads, and by the time the screen was blank I was cold and tired and disgusted.

  Of course, I know now that no matter what you can imagine, someone, somewhere, is masturbating to it. Some of these urges have names. Psychrophilia: sexual arousal from being cold; agalmatophilia: sexual attraction to statues; nebulophilia: arousal by fog; lithophilia: attraction to stone and/or gravel; climacophilia: arousal from falling down stairs; chasmophilia: attraction to caverns and valleys. Don’t be shocked. Don’t laugh. We’re all deviants. (Does this mean none of us are?)

  (Well—no.)

  My father approached me a few days later with a book. “I’ve noticed you’ve been looking at some pretty hard-core pornography on the internet,” he said.

  I could say nothing. I wanted to coil into myself like a pill bug, beginning with the back of my throat. I searched for an explanation, or some kind of denial, but my father just stood there, holding out the book.

  “If you’re interested in knowing more about the theory and history of porn—why people look at it, why they make it, its place in our society—you could read this.” He waggled the book at me. “It offers a little bit of context.”

  This was unbearable: porn, he’d said. I can’t remember what I mumbled back, but I know I didn’t take the book. I felt worse than I would have if he had punished me.

  I wonder now what my mother would have done if she had been the one to discover this early exploration. She wouldn’t have given me reading material, of that I am certain. Maybe a slap. Maybe some condoms. Well. She wasn’t afraid of sex like he was.

  It was beautiful in the woods that day. I haven’t said this enough—how beautiful it was at the Center. I felt it the most on that climb to Serena’s tent, my mouth swollen, the trees sturdy on either side of me, their leaves glowing bright green in the sun, casting a chiaroscuro of warmth and shade across the verdant ground. The clean smell of pine and rock, the shuddering, singing air, the soothing empty fullness of the mountain. Something almost like the Feeling crept into my limbs.

  I had kissed Luke, and he had kissed me back. But now, as I climbed, the thrill began to wear off, and I found that underneath it was that same dull shame. Why, when I had gotten what I could finally admit I had wanted all along? I have my theories now. But that girl there, pressing her palms against her hips to try to reclaim the feeling of the first hands that had ever touched her that way, though not the last, not by far—she doesn’t see that she was trying to put her tongue in her father’s mouth. She doesn’t recognize him in all that makeup. But she feels the falsity all the same.

  Desire is the root of all suffering, the Buddha taught.

  A memory: once, when I was a child, I saw a beautiful blue backpack covered in little gray ponies in a store window. I wanted it desperately, of course. Horses, etc. I threw myself at my parents’ feet in supplication. My father laughed and stepped backward. My mother picked me up by the shoulders, reset me to standing, brushed off my knees. They tugged me away. It was too expensive, and besides, I already had a backpack. I became inconsolable, dragging my small feet, sobbing. The world had ended. I could not live without my pretty pony backpack.

  Eventually, my father knelt in front of me. “You’re miserable,” he said, “because you don’t have what you want.”

  I nodded.

  “But yesterday, you had never seen that backpack, and you were happy.”

  I guessed this was true.

  “So what is creating the unhappiness?”

  Another: my mother, sitting on the porch swing, drinking a glass of wine. I was in the kitchen, pretending to wash the dishes, watching her watch the sunset. She liked to watch the sunset. I wished I had her eyes, her waist. My father came around from the front garden. He leaned his shovel against the house and climbed the porch steps. My mother was swinging, and the regular scrape of chain against hook made a wheedling music. As my father passed her, he reached out a hand to pat her shoulder. My mother caught his hand with her own and held it tight. He
stopped, leashed by his own arm. She pulled his hand down, rubbed it once with her thumb, and then placed it firmly on her left breast. They were still for a few seconds, looking at each other, and then my father carefully extracted himself from her grasp. She turned her face back to the sunset. He kissed her on the head and came inside.

  “Hey, kid,” he said.

  Outside, my mother threw her wine glass into the bushes. I expected a crash, a shatter, a flock of ravens exploding into the air, but it made only the smallest rustle.

  I called out for Serena when I reached the clearing. Nothing. I called again, louder. The empty tents seemed to create their own sound, a sort of negation that drowned out my voice. I peered up into the trees, but could see nothing through the bottoms of the glowing leaves. Cracks of light crossed my eyes.

  “Ki ki,” she shouted from somewhere above me. “So so!”

  Then she landed neatly at my feet, absurd magic thing that she was. She was wearing her dress again, but there was still something unclothed about her.

  She took my hand and led me to her tent. Inside, I was surprised to find Janet and Laurel. Between them, on the floor of the tent, was a heap of giant, leafy stalks.

  “You’re here,” I said, stupidly. I don’t know what I had been expecting, or not expecting. I hadn’t imagined this moment at all.

  “Reports of our deaths have been mildly exaggerated,” Janet said. The palms of her hands were bright red.

  Serena was looking at me intently, as if trying to read my mind. I thought of Luke’s mouth on mine, and then I thought, hard, of the opposite of his mouth, just in case. Ice cube. Sidewalk. Tire iron. Without meaning to, I also thought of her comb, now hidden in my cubby, tucked into the pocket of a pair of jeans it was much too hot to wear. Splinter. Apple. Coin.

  “Did something else happen?” she asked.

  “What did he say about us?” Laurel wanted to know. I could see her appraising my feet, my fingernails, in much the same way that Dominique had. Well, that much I could tell them.

  “He stormed off to his cabin after you left,” I said. “Obviously I followed him. But he was meeting Dominique there.”

  Serena bit her lip. “I thought she was done with him,” she said.

  “After last year,” Janet said. She shifted uncomfortably on her cushion.

  “What happened last year?” I asked.

  Serena waved her hand. “Long story,” she said.

  Laurel was still regarding me coolly, as though she knew something had changed, and was trying to figure out exactly what. I felt a stab of fear. I didn’t know what Serena would do if she found out I had broken the rules.

  But then again, there was no reason she would. I would keep my secret. Glass door. Pineapple. Hole. I smiled at them. I shrugged.

  We snuck into the kitchen that night to prepare the nettles. Tenzin had printed up a healthy number of signs since the last time we’d been there, and posted them everywhere: thieves will be boiled, they read, above a black-and-white photograph of a steak. Janet drew a smiley face on one of the steaks in purple Sharpie, to throw her off our trail.

  We made the soup with Tenzin’s immersion blender, mixing water and the cooked nettles with handfuls of sea salt and garlic and lemon. I tried a spoonful, and was surprised by how much I liked it. The tea, which we made by straining the nettle boil-water, tasted good too, somehow both bright and earthy, and though there was no sting, I swear I could feel a resilient tingle in my throat, the barest hint of danger.

  “Freud thought the human dream of flying was all about sex,” Laurel said afterward, as we cleaned the bowls. “Both being rooted in the same obsession with the unknown.”

  “Freud also thought that women only want sex so they can pretend to have their own penises,” Janet said.

  “Typical,” Serena said.

  “You can’t blame him,” Laurel said. “All men think sex is about them. It’s hardwired. Even the words for sex are all masculocentric, have you noticed? Screwing. Banging. Nailing. Pounding. Smashing. Ramming. Tapping. You’d think they were building a goddamn boat.” She poured the nettle tea into a large thermos. We had tucked the soup in the back of the fridge. I had noticed her drinking surreptitiously from a flask again. I wondered where she was hiding it, and what exactly was inside.

  “Masculocentric?” I said.

  “I told you I’m not fucking stupid,” Laurel said. “Look it up.”

  “Bumping uglies is pretty neutral,” Janet said.

  “I hate that one,” Serena said. She looked down, put her hand between her legs. “Anyway, mine’s not ugly.”

  “Well, I think we should say pocketing,” Laurel said. “With pocketing, we get the power.” She reached an arm into the air, made her hand into a cup, and tapped her fingers together at the top, like ma che vuoi? or a cartoon Italian after a bite of his mother’s pasta e fagioli. She sucked her teeth. “So you say, ‘I totally pocketed that guy,’ or ‘I’m going to pocket the shit out of you.’”

  “You do want a penis for your very own,” I said.

  “I want to start a new vocabulary,” Laurel said.

  “I’ll suffocate you,” Janet said.

  “I’ll drown you,” Laurel said.

  “I’ll swallow you whole,” Serena said.

  It was at that moment that the lights turned on. Tenzin stood in the doorway, her hand on the switch. She was not disheveled. Her hair was not in curlers. She looked as though she had been expecting us. It would have been just like her to wait for us to clean up after ourselves, Laurel told us later.

  “This is a severe infraction,” Tenzin said. Soap leaked slowly from the sponge I was holding, dripping down my forearm. Tenzin looked like a drafter’s study in concentric circles. Two round eyes in an almost perfectly round face, a neat round bun perched on top of her head like a scoop of salt-and-pepper ice cream. Below the neck, too, she was round, but somehow not fat—it was as though she’d somehow possessed a large, taut ball of blue silk and was now walking around impersonating it. Even with the gray hair, her age was impossible to discern.

  “We couldn’t sleep,” Serena said. She wiped the scraps of nettle off the counter and into her hand, and casually deposited them in the trash.

  “I’m going to have to wake up Shastri Dominique,” Tenzin said. “You girls may have a long tether here, for reasons beyond my understanding, but this is my kitchen.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” Serena said. Tenzin raised her eyebrows and Serena pushed past her out into the hall. Tenzin sighed and followed. When they returned a few minutes later, Serena looked intensely smug.

  “All right, girls,” Tenzin said, her face tight. “Go to bed. But don’t let me find you here again.”

  Serena, of course, refused to answer any questions about this. “Don’t worry” was all she would say. “I know how to talk to people.” Janet and Laurel didn’t even bother asking. Either they knew something I didn’t, or they knew they didn’t want to.

  When we got back to the dormitory that night, I fell asleep immediately. I woke only once before the conch shell: in the very early morning, as the light was beginning to line the windows, when I heard Janet climb up into her bunk, returning once again from wherever she’d been.

  9

  Here’s something my father once told me, when I was ten or so and hated, violently and for no reason, a girl in my fifth grade class: that I should feel love and compassion for everyone, no matter who they were, because in the countless past lives and reorganizations of atoms, every single person on earth was at one time or another my mother. It could be in the past or perhaps in the future, but on some existential plane, some other incarnation just as real as this one, everyone was my mother, and had given me life, and fed me, and cared for me, and therefore I owed them my love and gratitude.

  “But I hate my mother too,” I said. (And why not? She was the one who chastised me, punished me, swore and screamed and pulled my hair when she was supposedly trying to braid it
.)

  “No, you don’t,” he said. “But all right, how about this. You can remember that everyone you know, even the worst person you know, even Veronica, was once me, or will be me in the future. I’ll die, like I have a thousand times, and because everything is connected, at some point, part of me will be Veronica, and part of Veronica will be me.”

  I’d reached for him then, because the idea of his dissolution, his separation from me into millions of atoms and time and space and other people whom I hated, particularly Veronica, stupid Veronica with her ludicrous shiny unbraidable hair, was too much for me to bear. “I don’t want you to be anyone else,” I said. “You can’t die.”

  “Death comes without warning,” he said. He spread his arms. “This body will be a corpse.” Then he took me to get a cinnamon bun. The people at the cinnamon bun place all turned and smiled when we entered, and they all knew my father by name, and remembered his order, and this reassured me. If the cinnamon bun people know your name, I figured, death can’t be so near.

  Dentists are something like twice as likely as other people to kill themselves, of course. Everyone knows that, especially the daughters of dentists. Some years, more doctors kill themselves than dentists, but since dentists are much likelier to suffer from psychoneurotic disorders, that seems more or less down to luck. It’s stress, people say. Stress and access to drugs that’ll do the job. Plus, everyone hates going to the dentist. I can see how that would wear on a person. There’s no denying that the human mouth is a weird place to work. Teeth can readily alarm.