by Rhonda Riley
He reminded me of my momma and my brother, Joe.
When we were going to bed that night, he asked if he could sleep in my bed for the whole night. I thought of Cole, then set that thought aside. This was not the same. This strange man was different and, I reminded myself, not quite a man anymore. I pushed the blanket aside to make way for him as I had the night before.
He laughed a soft belly laugh, clear and pretty as springwater, and climbed in beside me.
Though we slept fully clothed for warmth as we had the night before, I was very conscious of him next to me under the covers. He went to sleep almost immediately. Then there was just the warmth of his breath on my neck, the sound of the rain, and, harmless on the other side of the walls, the night.
What he was doing was impossible: no one healed or changed so fast. It was impossible and unnatural, but I had watched it happen. Tentatively, I touched his hand and found it as warm and smooth as my own. What he had done could not be done; it could not be. But it was. A dizzying panic filled me. I took my hand away from him. I wanted light. I focused on the gray rectangle of window in the darkness, forced myself to listen to the rain. Rain was still just rain. It sounded on the tin roof as it always had. I calmed myself by listing the other things that were also the same: Hobo sleeping on the porch, the chickens in their coop, and the cows making milk, my family sleeping down the hill, the houses of the mill-village spread out on either side of my family’s house. In each of those houses slept the people I had known all my life. Nothing else had changed. And no one else knew about him. I was the only one who had seen him change. The experience was mine. Only mine. How could I possibly explain what he had done? I pictured myself trying to tell my momma, and my mind froze. How would anyone believe me? Eventually, I slept, dreaming the same dreams as the night before—disturbing, beautiful dreams of touch and taste.
For two more days I explained the farm and its various chores to the strange man who shadowed me, ever more agile and confident, recalling nothing of who he was or where he came from. The rain abated for hours at a time, then swept through with renewed fury.
Sunday morning arrived. I got up in the darkness, stoked the stove, set the coffee on it, and then went back to bed. On Sundays, I allowed myself the luxury of snuggling warm in bed for the time it took the kitchen to warm up and the coffee to begin percolating. Aunt Eva would have considered it a sinful self-indulgence not to begin the chores immediately upon waking, which I did every other morning. But I was queen of the farm now, and the animals were no worse for the half-hour Sunday delay, and the Lord, I was certain, had better things to judge.
I returned to the bedroom with the lantern, and, as I slipped back between the covers and settled on the pillow, he turned, his face inches from mine. His eyes were green now, flecked with gold. Like Momma’s eyes and Eva’s, the eyes I’d looked into all my life. We lay there for a long time, absorbing each other. No one had ever regarded me like that, not even Cole when he lay with me. We touched each other’s faces—lips, eyelids, cheeks. A single reverberation of thunder broke our reverie. The rain began its pounding anew. We got out of bed.
I heard a voice call my name as if from far away. I turned him to face me, to see if this was one more strange thing he could do.
His shirt had come unbuttoned in the night, and I saw them—breasts. Not the fatty chest muscles of a boy, but a woman’s small, fully formed breasts. I stepped back, alarmed.
“I have to see!” With my hands shaking, I fumbled the lantern and pulled him toward the light.
I opened his shirt. His nipples puckered in the cold. “You’re a girl!”
He peered down at his breasts, too. “I’m like you.” He smiled, as if his breasts were gifts for me. Behind his voice was another, fainter, more familiar call: “Evelyn!” He had breasts, and he called my name without opening his mouth. Blood banged in my chest and ears.
I pulled the long johns away from his stomach. He was a woman for sure: small breasts, curve of hips, and nothing at all coming out from the patch of light red pubic hair.
Blood rose to my face, a flush of embarrassment, not for his nakedness but for my own. I was in deep waters, drowning in innocence, betrayed in some new way I had no name for.
“Don’t,” he said softly. “It’s okay.” He wiped a tear from my chin, and I realized that I still held his pants open, still stared down.
Again, I heard my name as I turned to the mirror on the wardrobe. Just for a second, I saw the two of us, facing the mirror, identical. He had my face. I took a deep breath. My diaphragm locked. Then he turned from me, toward the voice that I suddenly understood was coming from outdoors. My name again, small under the pelting rain, “Evelyn! Help, Evelyn!”
It took great effort to breathe, to pull myself away from him, from the reflection of us in the mirror. A voice outside called and the stranger was a woman now and looked just like me. Anything was possible. Anything, anyone could have been outside calling my name. I had to go and be ready. I wanted, suddenly, to get away from him. I stopped only to put my boots and coat on, and I ran to the voice that continued to call to me.
Sharp, icy rain slashed at me. I clenched my jaw and willed myself not to shiver. Cold was easier to take than what I had just seen. Rain pecked my face, so I could barely see. There was no ground, not a surface to step on, just an expanse of moving, shallow, clay-red water. I waded toward my name. “Help! Evelyn!” It was Cole’s voice.
I staggered down the driveway until the ground dropped away suddenly. Cole sprawled on the ground four feet below me. He lay in the mud, facing up, his hat had tumbled away from him and his left leg stuck out beside him, the angle of it so wrong it seemed to belong to someone else. His horse, a young gray mare his daddy had just bought, stood a few yards off, tensed as if to bolt. There were deep gouges where the stone and clay of the driveway had given way.
Cole held his hand up to his eyes, shielding his face from the rain, and struggled to get up on one elbow when he saw me. I glanced back at the house. My stranger was in there, warm, dry, and calm where we had been alone for five days—a place like a dream of comfort. I was the link between Cole and the cold and her—her—in the house.
I could barely see. My skin prickled with the heat of alarm. None of this was a dream.
I turned back to Cole below me, shouting over the rain, “Cole, I’m here. Don’t move! I’ll get help.”
I felt a warm hand on my arm. She was there beside me, a jacket and Uncle Lester’s hat on. I allowed myself one short glance. “Stay here with him. I’ll be back.”
Below us, Cole grimaced with pain, his face ash-white against the mud. The rusty rainwater eddied around him.
“Cole, we’re going to pull you up. I’m going to get some rope.”
When I returned with rope, a wide plank, and an old sled, she stood where I’d left her, looking down at Cole, who squinted up. His face was all pain, but his eyes held a question. I gave her one end of the rope and had her back up a little while I went down for Cole.
His voice was hoarse. “I was worried ’bout you.”
“Hush,” I told him, and tied the rope around his chest. The fabric of his pant leg was blessedly coarse, easy to grip. I straightened his leg. He made a high, whimpering sound, shuddered, then passed out. While I strapped his legs to the plank, his horse came over and pulled at my coat. With Cole so slick and wet, dragging him up onto the sled took several tries. Unconscious, he was heavy, dead weight. We would need the horse.
I glanced up, but the mare was gone. Then I heard a sharp whinny behind me. Further down, past the driveway where the rise was less steep and covered with grass and rock, she stood above the horse, her hands open, encouraging. Under the drone of rain and the horse’s sharp cries, I first felt, then heard a tone expand, sweet and imploring. The horse struggled, muscles straining at the collapsing mud. Crouching, she opened her arms. Her strange voice soared, split through the drumming of rain. Brilliant. The horse reared and beat the ground below
her. She straightened, her arms open wider. The mare gained purchase, heaving up, then pranced straight toward her, neighing triumphantly. She tilted her face up and closed her eyes. The mare nosed under her hat, mouthing her short red hair intimately. She held the horse’s head, laughing as her hands trailed the wet mane. Turning, they encircled each other.
I had to look away. Take a deep breath.
The two of them walked side by side, both seemingly oblivious to the rain and cold, to where she had dropped the rope. She picked it up and tied it to the saddle horn in a knot, her movements swift and sure.
I checked the line that bound Cole to the sled, then dragged him to a spot close to where the horse went up. She led the mare pulling the sled, and, with me guiding and pushing, we made it up over the rocks.
Cole came to, shouting a curse of pain just as we reached the top. Raising his head enough to see her and the horse ahead of us, he grunted, “Who is she?”
She. I glanced at her. Uncle Lester’s big hat covered most of her face. She was drenched to the skin. She.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled, unable to form an explanation.
In the white noise of the rain, he heard a name. “Addie Nell? Addie Nell,” he said. He grasped the sides of the sled as it lurched forward. “That’s a nice name.” Then he cursed God and passed out again.
She put Cole’s horse in the barn and came back to help me. She was strong and well-coordinated, taking his whole weight from the bottom as we pushed him up the steps. I fought to keep my concentration, to not stare at her.
We set Cole up by the stove, on the spot where I had slept beside her a few days before. He shivered and then opened his eyes. He inspected her as she wiped mud off his face. “Evelyn?”
“Yes?” I replied.
He peered down at me as I cut his pants away from his swelling leg. His eyes went from me to her and then back and forth between us. “Addie Nell, right?” It seemed to please him that he remembered the name.
She turned to me. I shrugged.
“Yes,” I told him.
Cole opened his mouth as if to say more, but a wave of pain hit him as I pulled the boot off of his bad leg. He closed his eyes and trembled silently. The bone had not come through, but it was a bad break. Except for a few moans, he lay quietly while we finished covering and cleaning him the best we could without moving him anymore.
We stood, dripping on the floor. My momma’s eyes—my eyes—staring back at me. She left, came back with another towel, and began to dry my hair.
“No.” I pushed the towel away. “I have to go get help. He needs help now. I’ll just get wet again. We have to keep him warm or he’ll go into shock. You get some dry clothes on.”
She nodded and disappeared down the hall. I went for more blankets. I moved mechanically and did not allow myself to think.
She returned quickly and began wrapping warming bricks in towels. I froze, unable to take my eyes off her face. She laid the bricks at his feet then stretched on the floor next to him. She motioned for me to tuck the blankets around them. “Like you did for me.”
I touched her arm as I pulled more blankets over them. She held my gaze a moment, then smiled. One thought came to me, overriding everything: I don’t know who she is, but I trust her.
Then I had to go.
I shut the door behind me and stepped into the familiarity of the cold, stinging rain. In the barn, Cole’s horse startled and backed away, head high, and rolled her eyes while I saddled Becky. I fumbled the bridle. Cold and shock numbed me.
The ride to Cole’s house seemed endless. Twice I had to get off and walk for fear that my own horse would slip. My mind was as blurred by her, by Addie Nell, as my sight was by the veil of driving rain. I worried about Cole, but I knew what a broken leg was. Broken legs could be set and healed. Addie Nell—who had been neither woman nor man and now seemed to be my twin—I did not know.
What I had seen in the mirror just before I ran out to Cole rang like a deep blow to my chest. I had to catch my breath, to let my internal organs slip back where they should be. There was no logical, no reasonable explanation for her to look like me, no natural explanation for her transformation. My mind kept going back and forth from the seemingly faceless person I’d found in the mud to the face I’d seen next to mine in the mirror. My panic rose again. I dismounted, fell to my knees, and retched. I stayed there kneeling on the ground until long after I had stopped gagging. I was dumb, senseless as the water that streamed down my shoulders and back.
I wanted to go on past Cole’s and into town and tell Momma. I wanted the dry comfort of my mother’s kitchen. But she—Addie Nell—appeared so normal now. Would anyone, even Momma, believe me? It was unbelievable. But I had seen it with my own eyes.
I thought of her bright gaze and smile, of the sorrow on her face as she handed the photograph of the Japanese woman back to me. Another kind of panic filled me. I knew then, instinctively and with certainty, that I would not be able to tell anyone the truth. I sensed, just beyond my attempts to imagine telling anyone, a darkness and confusion, an amalgam of all the people around me—those smiling GIs in Frank’s pictures, the Thompson family sneering when the Catholic family moved in next door to them, the eyes of the white men at the gas station and the feed store as they followed the colored people walking by, the strained face of the Murray girl as she hurried her bastard kid down the street. I remembered the faces of the boys who had teased me voraciously, sometimes cruelly, simply for the color of my hair or my height.
Soon she would be among Cole’s family, then my family, then the town of Clarion.
For the first time in my life, I feared and distrusted my own kind. I saw them for a moment as an outsider might. If I told them and they believed me, how would they view her? A circus freak to stare at? Someone unnatural to be avoided? And if I told exactly what had happened and I was not believed, would I be pitied and tolerated or would they think I was crazy enough to be locked away? Away from her? I could not imagine her among the people in Clarion, the people I had known all my life. Folks who got up every morning and walked to the mill, the other kids I had gone to school with, or the congregation of the church. My head throbbed and my stomach churned violently. I fought the wave of nausea that swept through me as I lurched into the saddle.
She waited for me on the farm. I had to say something. I needed a plausible explanation for her presence and our resemblance. I needed to protect her and myself.
For a crazy moment, I imagined us boarding the train, heading for a new life in Chicago. Maybe we could find my aunt there, my father’s long-lost sister, Doris, who had run away so many years before. No explanations would be necessary where no one knew us, and surely she would take us both in as family.
Immediately, I abandoned that idea. I knew I could not run away. I could not leave the farm and my mother. I could not leave the people I loved.
Then it hit me and I stopped, stunned.
Ignorance ran both ways. If my aunt in Chicago knew nothing about us, then it was also true that no one in Clarion knew anything about her. Rather than explain Addie Nell to my estranged aunt, I could use my estranged aunt to explain Addie Nell to my family. She could be the daughter of Doris Roe and the Hardin boy Doris had run off after. Addie Nell could be my cousin, come to find her mother’s family. That would explain her resemblance to me. The thought seemed as wild as running off to Chicago, but it was the only thing I could think of. Within minutes I’d concocted a story: I’d ridden Becky into town for bag balm. The cows’ udders were often chapped in winter. I’d taken Becky instead of walking, hoping to beat the approaching storm. Addie Nell, arriving in town to find her mother’s relations, had immediately spotted me as family when I passed the train depot. Then the rain hit and we headed straight back to the farm to stable Becky and pick up fresh dry clothes for Addie Nell. It was plausible. I’d taken Becky on mid-week errands a couple of times.
Addie Nell Hardin. It could work. No one had heard from Doris since she
left when my father was a teenage boy.
Giddy with relief, I laughed into the cold rain and urged Becky toward the Starneses’ land.
All my life, I’d been a good daughter. Except for my nights with Cole, I’d never lied to Momma and Daddy, never done anything of importance that I knew they really didn’t want me to do. But the lie would, I thought then, be easier than the truth. For everyone. Especially me.
I worked the details of my story, clinging to it like a drowning woman, while I made my way to Cole’s family. I imagined Addie Nell at the train station and how I would phrase my story. I repeated the story of Addie Nell to myself as I crossed the Starneses’ pasture. Wild fear pressed into the core of me, guarded by my desire to keep that bright gaze safe. By the time I got to Cole’s house and saw his mother’s worried face at the door, my teeth chattered violently. But internally, I was iron-calm, steady as a rock. As Mrs. Starnes opened the door and the warmth of her kitchen embraced me, I remembered her first name—Nell—and realized that Cole had heard the name Nell because he was familiar with it. We hear what we expect to hear. We accept things in the terms we can understand. That’s what I was hoping for—that everyone would, like Cole, see what they expected to see and believe me.
From that point on, Addie Nell was just Addie to me.
We rode back to my house. Cole’s father, his two brothers, and me. We squeezed into the front of their truck, with me sitting on the younger brother’s, Reese’s, lap bunched up against the door. We drove as far up the road as we could, then walked and slipped the rest of the way. The sky had grown even lower and darker, a hand slipped between us and the sun. Mr. Starnes fell coming up the bank and muttered something about his son being a fool. Otherwise, we were silent and hunched against the thick, cold rain. I feared this first meeting: my strange new twin and these quiet men who smelled of tobacco and cold leather.
Inside, Addie rose from the floor where she had been lying next to Cole. I was the first in the door and heard that soothing faint bell tone withdraw like a wave back toward the two of them. The skin along my forearms tingled. Cole did not move; he seemed to be asleep or unconscious.