Follow Me to Ground

by Sue Rainsford

  –You mustn’t sicken yourself with worry for your sister.

  He was squeezing the flesh on my hips. It hurt and I squirmed, his coarse palms chafing me.

  –It’ll be an easy birth.

  –I know you think the child is healthy.

  Feeling the breath of his words where my buttocks met my spine, and then he was leaning back on his heels.

  –It is. Healthy.

  The bracken dug into my skin. A small spider distinguished itself from the black of the soil.

  –You’re wrong sometimes.

  –When?

  He didn’t answer. The spider fell to one side, tripped up by a leaf.

  –When have I ever been wrong?

  I imagined the dim, idle speak of Cures; some insistence that No, the joint was still not quite right.

  I twisted further to look at him and saw that his eyes, which had been all afternoon edged with a sore-looking red, had filled with a weak film of water.

  –Samson, when have I been wrong?

  He swallowed though his mouth was dry.

  –With me.

  He still held me tight, around my hips, and I thought, vaguely, of later hiding the bruises from Father.

  –There’s something wrong with me.

  –I listened to you closely, Samson. There’s nothing wrong.

  –I wish that you’d look.

  –I can’t, not without a reason.

  My own pleasure not being reason enough.

  –But I’ve asked you.

  Which he had, thinking it simply a matter of permission.

  His jaw tightened, and the sheen between his lids fractured and spilled.

  –Samson, you are well.

  Still locked between his legs I had rolled onto my back and reached up, laying a hand flat on his stomach.

  –There’s no reason for me to lie.

  He thought something slippery had gone wrong with him, I could tell that much. Something he knew by feeling but wasn’t sure how to say, something he felt certain would show up in the organs and muscles beneath his flesh.

  He nodded and took a long breath. Lying down over me again and putting his face in my neck, sleeping.

  It’s The Ground that brought Father here. There are only so many patches of earth like it. This is one of the reasons we couldn’t leave; we couldn’t work anywhere else. When I was young and the summer days felt long we’d sit outside and I’d ask him questions he’d already answered:

  –Why’d The Burial Patch take so long to tame?

  –Because The Ground here is so powerful.

  –The Ground is where I came from?

  –That’s right.

  –But not you.

  –No.

  –And not your father?

  –No. Though he is buried here.

  And he’d nod to the far left corner, where every other summer a red mould took hold of the trees.

  –But you weren’t worried making me? Though it’s dangerous?

  –It was risky, but no. I wasn’t worried.

  He’d tell me how he mixed my parts together and planted me inside of a sack. He tied it shut with a rope and then lowered me down during a thunderstorm, and kept the end of the rope tied to the knob on the patio door.

  –Just in case.

  –So you were worried?

  –Not especially. I had a good feeling. And look! You turned out fine.

  Though every now and then I caught him looking at me, and suspected I hadn’t gone quite to plan.

  Carol-Ann Jean

  It was for a bruise that kept coming up. It kept coming and fading, coming and fading, and then eventually it just sat on my thigh like a piece of bad fruit. Every time I got up in the night and bumped into my dresser, or every time I had to stand and lean across the kitchen table, it hurt me like a pinch.

  Miss Ada said some rot had gotten into me, and that she’d take it out.

  It was my father who came with me and talked to her father in the kitchen.

  My father took the day off from the fields even though I told him I could drive there on my own, but he said no. No no no.

  Said Miss Ada was a gentle enough sort but her father wasn’t quite right. Said her father had a lot of animal in him. Said one time my grandfather was out in the woods and saw Ada’s father naked and on all fours, hunting in the brush.

  If he was quick to bicker it was because he’d been with Olivia, and she’d said or done something to rub him the wrong way.

  –Is she much older than you?

  He shook his head. Water ran out his hair and landed on his shoulders.

  –How many years?

  –Three.

  I splashed the river onto my arms. Thought about ducking my head.

  –What?

  –It’s some hold she has on you, is all.

  Looking into the sun and scrunching his face against it.

  –Don’t think I don’t know it.

  He dove under. Came up again.

  –I let too much slide when we were young.

  The water caught the light more where he was standing.

  –I kept thinking things would be different. Once I got to be a man.

  After Olivia our next Cure was Lilia Gedeo, who arrived with her mother in tow. We sat in the kitchen and Mrs Gedeo described the spasms that took hold of her daughter, that made her flip and coo like she’d a wind trapped inside.

  Miss Gedeo was a frequent Cure, and though a grown woman she always came with her mother.

  Once Mrs Gedeo was gone we took Lilia to the sitting room and opened her in the window seat where I’d seen to Olivia. We quickly found a growth. It had latched onto her ribcage where its roots had unspooled, thin as thread: partly mucus, partly bone. Saliva cradled in her mouth, as will sometimes happen with a Cure. I emptied it with a small tin cup, pressing its side down on her tongue and gently scooping. Careful not to scrape at the skin of her throat.

  Now Father wrapped his hand around the growth and gripped it, sending small cracks throughout the ribs. Those few thin bones would take the longest to heal and so I knew he was still feeling some anger toward me, that he hadn’t asked me to reach inside her and save them the trouble of breaking.

  He’d been humming for some time.

  I emptied the tin cup into the bowl where he hoped to aim the growth, my ears twitching a little, anticipating the splash, and Miss Gedeo lay so still the bubbles in her spit slid around unbroken.

  Father liked Miss Gedeo, I knew, because she was quiet and relenting, but it bothered me – how readily her body gave way. No wonder she was so often poorly, giving up of herself so easily. She’d worn herself down. Worn herself thin as an old sheet.

  A splash: the bowl shook on the table and Father let out his breath. Over the rim I could see a fragment of the growth. It looked how I imagined pieces of coral looked when they came out of the sea.

  –Well?

  –Some of it.

  He made a displeased, grunting sound.

  –Let’s put her to ground.

  Which we had to do, to make sure the toxins left her – and to heal the ribs.

  We started to close her, pulling on the skin that was surprisingly dense for a woman so hardly there.

  It was still raining. The lawn made a belching sound. I jumped a little, looked at Father.

  –It’s just the rain.

  –Been a time since I heard it belch.

  He didn’t reply. Miss Gedeo was on the ground and he was clearing the hair from her eyes.

  –Something might have fallen in.

  By which he meant an animal. A fox or a hare.

  We put her at a fair distance from Mr Kault, who was still kicking on occasion, and I made sure that her head was to one side and that her lips were only slightly parted. It was hard to arrange her properly with the wet ground spilling in, and so I had to squat in the grave beside her. The rain ran down my shoulders and back like quick, cool fingers and made me wonder if this was what Cures felt when
we checked them over.

  By the time we’d patted the earth down smooth, evening had settled fully in a mist-blue haze.

  Back inside the quiet house I realised how loud the outside-air had been.

  We spoke briefly of things to be done the next day, and then Father took his coffee to the long couch, smacking his mouth at the tang it put there. I watched him settle back on the cushions, the muscles in his neck releasing, and went to bed.

  Father must’ve been catching some scent on me, some difference I hadn’t accounted for. How else could he have known? No one knew about me and Samson. We’d both been careful, knowing how certain Cures would chafe at our being together.

  Some would have wanted me burned at the stake, had they known. Others would have been jealous, thinking I was giving him some sort of elixir by lying with him – that he was getting a private, more effective kind of curing. Father had always said

  We give them any cause to get frightened and they’ll forget how much they need us. Like that. Overnight. They’ll want us gone.

  The next time I went to meet Samson I thought Father might pester me, but he didn’t.

  He was chopping in the kitchen and I waited a moment, closing the front door behind me, to see if he’d call, but all I heard was the knife striking the counter.

  Samson was at the usual place and we were quiet on the drive to the river. Neither of us mentioned his sister. Outside of the truck we stood close to one another and I felt his body warm beside me. After I took him inside his breath got so slow I thought he was sleeping. But then,

  –How long have we been spending time together?

  –Ha! Spending time!

  He was lying on his stomach in the grass by the riverbed. My dress was hiked up around my waist and my thighs were itching from the prickling weeds.

  –Maybe four months?

  –That all?

  His voice was thick. Dreams creeping in.

  –Feels like longer.

  –Does it?

  I lay back and fanned my stomach with my dress but it was wet from his sweat and sagged at the hem. I said

  –Must be the sneaking around. Makes time go slow.

  His face inside the cross of his arms. Eyes closed.

  –We could always go somewhere that doesn’t need sneaking.

  –Sure, but the drive getting there … be half a day.

  –No.

  Flipping onto his back.

  –No. I mean the two of us move somewhere. Live somewhere else.

  The sky was entirely smooth. Cloudless in a false kind of way.

  –You know I can’t leave.

  –He’d get over it in time.

  I let my knees fall together. The wet between my legs had yet to dry.

  –We’re not Cures.

  –So?

  –We don’t work the same way. He wouldn’t get over it.

  –I think you could do it if you wanted to.

  I clicked my tongue and sat up, stood up. Looked to the river: thick and still.

  –I’m going swimming.

  I stepped over him and felt his fingers on my ankle, on the bulge of bone. I took off my dress and dipped it in the water, hung it over a bush to dry, waded in and looked over my shoulder. He was back on his stomach, his face turned away.

  When we first started meeting he’d ask me

  –What do you do for fun?

  And I’d laugh and say

  –Never you mind.

  But what I was really thinking was Nothing. Not a thing aside from this.

  Later, he asked questions like

  –What happened when you were born?

  –I wasn’t born.

  –Fine – when you came out the ground.

  –Father carried me to the attic and nursed me.

  –What did you eat?

  –You don’t want to know.

  –All right. How’d you learn to speak?

  –Same as you. Father just spoke to me all the time and soon I’d words of my own.

  Only much, much sooner than an infant Cure.

  –Why the attic? Seems lonely.

  –Because it gets no light, and when I came up my skin still hadn’t quite set. Burned easy.

  Laughing on his side, on the bedding of our soiled clothes.

  –All grown up now, though.

  Pinching my arm, squinting and smiling.

  –Tough-tough-tough.

  When I was a child and Father grew tired of talking the days seemed like they’d go on and on.

  –Can’t I have a brother?

  –No.

  –A sister?

  –No.

  –Why not?

  –When you’re older you’ll have your own child. My time parenting is done.

  And so I climbed the trees and hurt the birds, not knowing it was hurt at the time.

  I stood on the lawn and watched the twitching progress of a long black feather, its edges uneven and prickling.

  Tousled and singed, it lay in the middle of the grass. I wondered if a raven had gotten caught in a chimney.

  Father’s footsteps sounded from the patio and the feather tumbled away, awkwardly falling over itself back toward the trees.

  A rough wind was coming.

  I pressed my palms on my thighs to keep my dress down.

  Father was standing on The Burial Patch with his shovel – we were there to bring up Mr Kault. It was still a little cool, being so early in the morning, and the grass kept close its dew.

  The Ground gave way softly to the shovel and the soft-gush sound blended with Mr Kault’s middle-born son coming up the driveway twenty minutes early. After a foot’s worth of digging Father shimmied The Ground aside. We saw his cheekbones first, then his nose and then the front-door width of his chest.

  Father got down on his knees to clear away the last bit of earth, scooping it around the sides of Mr Kault’s panted legs and sleeved arms. He squatted then, and said

  –Kault … Kault, you can wake up.

  Out came his pupils, a pair of deep wet holes, and the irises surrounding them swirling and brown. His hands grasped at the low walls of his soil-bed.

  He didn’t see me as he blinked his way around the garden – or what he could see of it, and Father asked him how he was feeling.

  There was no need for me to be there aside from the usual caution – a Cure resisting being above ground – but Mr Kault was fine. I went into the sitting room and sat in the window while Mr Kault got changed in the downstairs bathroom at the far end of the pantry. I’d left his things there. They’d smelled like outside.

  He spent a few minutes drinking water at the kitchen table while I watched his son kick dust around the drive. The scuffing noise he made seemed timed with the rise and fall of his father’s questions in the kitchen. He was being told we’d eased the symptoms but that they came from a problem rooted somewhere we couldn’t go. I tried hard not to hear the quiet space Mr Kault made around himself. Eventually, he said

  –How long, then? How long have I got?

  Once in the drive Mr Kault’s son grasped him by the arms. The son still had that jittering way of the very young and very strong, and hadn’t just then the presence of mind to note the slow horror of his father’s gait, the sad shape he made as he swung his bag into the truck.

  Father had turned melancholy in the kitchen. I asked if he’d found Mr Kault to be a tiring Cure. He looked at his hands and said

  –What is it you like about him, Ada?

  For a moment I thought he meant Mr Kault, and almost said His broad shoulders, so like your own. But I caught myself. I went to the pot on the stove and stirred it. There was little point in fighting him. If he knew, he knew.

  –Only the feeling he makes inside me.

  –It’s the Wyde boy? Yes?

  Stirring the pot. Squinting through the steam.

  –How’d you know it was him?

  –He only came by a few months ago. And it’s not like you’ve much choice.

&nb
sp; –Fine. I see him every so often and it pleases me.

  He sat rock-still. I felt him there. Unmoving.

  –There’s something not right about that boy.

  The steam beaded my chest. Turning back to fragrant water.

  –Ada.

  –What?

  –I said you know he’s not right.

  –Because he likes my company?

  –I smelled it on him. Soon as he came into the house.

  I dropped the spoon. Let the handle slide too low into the pot.

  –I’ve work to do.

  Mr Sharpe

  My wife loves Miss Ada like she’s kin but I’m not so sure. Says she saved our Tabatha, but God forgive me when our daughter started speaking she said the strangest things.

  I’m a hare tripping over its too-large feet.

  I’m a caterpillar dropped from a great height.

  They were some of the first things to come out her mouth.

  I’m ashamed for thinking it, used to make myself cry with thinking it, but maybe we weren’t meant to have her.

  All water is blood to her. Can you imagine that?

  Your life filled with that much blood?

  Upstairs, scrubbing our linens in the bath. The day steaming outside and an ache in my back. Trying to think straight through my anger with Father, wondering how I could distract him or trick him into leaving me be.

  And then a truck in the drive. I dropped the wet cloth and the dirty water splashed up at me.

  We’d no Cures coming, and nobody ever called around unannounced.

  My feet felt bruised on the stairs. I could hear Father coming in from the patio.

  I went to the front door.

  Mrs Claudette was landing on her feet with an effort, dropping the keys into her pocket. She called to me

  –Hi Miss Ada.

  I would have helped her up the steps, but there was a strangeness to her being there, and she looked tight around the eyes. Pulling herself up one step at a time, one hand on her stomach, breathing hard through her smile.

  –I’m sorry for just arriving, but I’m awful worried about the baby.

  Some Cures give off a scent when they’re lying. The glands get excited and make a liquid akin to sweat. Still, I told her to come inside.

  She’d gotten a lot bigger since I’d last seen her. Her feet had learned to bend into little canoes that she rocked the length of with every step, struggling to balance under her own weight.