Follow Me to Ground

by Sue Rainsford

  –How you feeling today, Lorraine?

  –Oh, I’m wonderful.

  Reaching for her handbag in the backseat.

  –Slept like a dream.

  –I see.

  Inside the house she made for the sitting room, but I said

  –Some tea, before we start?

  –Oh, how nice! Yes!

  She sat at the kitchen table and crossed her fleshy legs. Put her hands on the table and started to play with a bracelet, undoing the clasp.

  –So, you slept well?

  Kettle on the stove.

  –Yes! Well. Just the occasional strange dream.

  –What did you dream of?

  Taking the tea leaves from their tin.

  Though she was tired she kept her shoulders back, her breasts seemed to me a touch higher, a touch more pointed and firm. Whatever was happening to her, it agreed with her.

  –It really was strange … I was deep in a swamp, or something like it. But I couldn’t swim, and I didn’t drown …

  Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

  –Well, why don’t we just sit here a moment.

  Looking out at the garden, the lawn looking so harmless and smooth. Father with his back to us. Squatting, standing again.

  –I’m not keeping you today?

  –No Lorraine, you’re my only Cure.

  I brought the tea to the table. A teapot I had to wipe clean of dust and two porcelain cups. I poured her a cup and looked at her face, her sagging jaw, her pockmarked brow. She was twitching. The muscles in her throat shot up and down like little bolts of lightening and her lips pulled back from her teeth. I said

  –I’m afraid we don’t have milk … or sugar.

  She leaned forward and lashed the full cup toward me so it landed scalding in my lap. I felt it sizzle and burn while I looked at her, looked out the window. Father was still looking away, but Lorraine was leaned over the table now, her hands fisted up and knuckle-down on the wood. Wheezing, her shoulders forward. And then: she slumped back, nearly knocking the chair.

  –Oh Ada, little Ada – I am sorry, I don’t know what—

  –That’s all right Mrs Languid, why don’t we go inside.

  And she lay back on the couch and kept on rasping until I put my hand over her eyes.

  I didn’t open her, just let her sleep, putting my hand over her face and singing the song harder to make sure the slumber stayed deep. After a little while I lifted up my dress to remove the burnt skin where it was coming away in thin, papery layers. Shimmering where it caught the light. Lorraine kept sleeping, but even in her sleep I saw her muscles stutter and leap.

  Not my desire. Not any of my feelings at all.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  Gilda Flynn

  I haven’t thought about Samson Wyde in years. Him and his sister, we used to call them ‘rumour-rich’. He disappeared and then she was gone a month or two after.

  No doubt they’re off living in sin somewhere, thinking us all fools.

  From my bedroom I heard a car approaching. I assumed it was Lorraine, thinking she could call on us at her leisure. I was still thinking what to do with her, how to temper Samson in The Ground.

  But it was Olivia.

  I looked out my window and saw her in the drive, went quickly downstairs and met her on the porch, stopped her on the steps.

  She was shining across her collar and her eyes were twitching at their corners, where the soft lid ran into the sides of her face. Pretty, pretty woman.

  –Hi, Mrs Claudette. I’m afraid I can’t see you now. It really is better you make an appointment—

  –You seen my brother?

  Taking deep breaths through her nose like she’d been tracking his scent and it had lead her here.

  –No, I haven’t.

  Looking over my shoulder.

  –Your father here?

  –Yes.

  –Has he seen him?

  –He hasn’t been here, Mrs Claudette. Would be unusual if he had.

  –He’s gone. He’s gone and with no word left behind him.

  –Has he been gone a long time?

  –I’d like to ask your father if he’s seen him.

  –Father gets angry when people waste his time.

  She looked back to the truck, thinking, and I kept my face very still and hoped hard that Father wouldn’t hear anything she said, anything that would entice him to come outside. I said

  –I don’t know why you think he’d be here, Mrs Claudette. Your brother is nothing but healthy.

  She kept on looking at the truck, her lips came apart and let loose some unhappy laughter. I was pushing her now, making her angry enough to show it. I couldn’t help myself. I liked seeing her upset, liked knowing things she didn’t know. A warm shiver ran through me.

  –Besides, I thought you were afraid of him.

  Those soft lids, the blood inside them quickening.

  –Mrs Claudette? I thought you were afraid of your brother?

  She settled back into herself, into her heels. The whole of her lengthening. Still looking away from me. I could see her neck, tautening.

  –You just let me know if you see him.

  I was leaning forward on the porch. I made sure my shoulders looked soft, made sure my voice matched hers.

  –I surely will.

  Another deep breath and then she was turning on the step, but only halfway. Looking down at her belly, she said

  –It never felt wrong to me, you know.

  The wood under my elbows was itchy, suddenly. Itchy and hard.

  –I’d have stopped, if it felt wrong.

  –I don’t know what you mean.

  Slow smile. Still looking down at herself. The spit on her teeth shining.

  –I would have. I’d have stopped.

  Her smile like a slice in her face. As always, so pleased with herself. Nothing could stop her from feeling pleased with herself.

  –Sometimes our feelings aren’t the best indication of what we should be doing.

  I knew right away I’d made a mistake in speaking.

  She laughed, loud and fully, looked up at me smiling before turning to go.

  –So long, Miss Ada.

  The look on her face resounding clear as her laughter that carried on smarting my ears in the hot buzzing day.

  Pot kettle. Look who’s talking. Hypocrite.

  Liar.

  She knew enough to suspect he’d told me what she’d done.

  Enough to suspect he might be here.

  But she didn’t know everything. Not by half. Nothing was wrong. Nothing had come undone.

  Father came outside and started sniffing at the air,

  –Who was here?

  –Mrs Claudette.

  –Woman is highly strung. You said she was an easy Cure.

  –She was. Must be the baby doing things to her. Sending all the wrong sparks to her brain.

  Wiping his hands, moving up to his elbows.

  –She didn’t mention her brother?

  –No.

  Her smile as she looked down at herself, looked down at her belly. The way she looked at the high hard mound.

  –No, I said again. They don’t get along.

  Maria Claudette

  My son was a good man but he was an innocent.

  We begged him not to marry that girl.

  If ever there was a girl with a snake inside …

  Like I say; we begged him.

  And then he got sick, and he died.

  We couldn’t take his name away from her but we could take the house.

  One thing I could not abide was her staying on in that house.

  Chuckling and slithering around.

  The next day: more unexpected visitors.

  Another young boy Cure.

  Just as the sky started to colour with evening and the patio stones were turning cool.

  I was in bed, trying to stop thinking about Olivia, trying to think of a way to keep Lorraine out of the house. To stop he
r from wanting to come to the house. Wondering when it was Cure women started taking up so much of my time.

  So when I heard the car, I didn’t move. When I heard Father’s heavy steps in the hall, I didn’t move.

  When he called to me, it struck me that his voice was full of rattle.

  They were coming through the front door before I reached the bottom of the stairs; two men, one of them carrying a soft, yielding body. Behind them came a younger man holding a woman by her elbows. They were all of them dressed in grey and black, and this last man was wet and hiding his shivers.

  I didn’t know the boy’s name. I wouldn’t know until later, when it seemed likely not only his name but his face would come to haunt me later.

  Oliver James.

  They rested him against the cushions of that same lagging couch that had seen so many bodies gone to sleep. The woman had knelt and began to rearrange the boy’s hair so that it more evenly framed his face. She was looking at Father who was kneeling beside her, and with eyes on his face she touched her son’s small jacket, the lapels made heavy with water.

  Without preamble the men gathered themselves in an orderly line on the couch’s far side. I thought They might be at church, and then scolded myself for thinking in mocking terms.

  Mrs James had set to rocking now, gently bumping her forehead onto and off of her son’s sodden chest. Her hands were knotted and pressed into the midriff of her dress. From under her clothes I heard the creasing of soft, maternal flesh.

  He was not her only child, but he was the youngest.

  One of the older men was speaking: the boy had left the field where he was helping his uncles and brothers, and he had fallen into Sister Eel Lake. It was the wet man who had heard the splash of interrupted water. Of course, we knew without their saying what had happened; there was such a stench of the lake, and beneath their talk I could hear the wet smack of drowning.

  –Ada, come look at the boy.

  It was the first time I’d worked with family present. I knelt between the weeping Mrs James and Father with all of the men looking down at my hands, all of them milky-skinned. They must be from the valley, the valley which was on the far side of the fields and held some thirty people. They had a close way of living together, and the positioning of the hills put most of their days in the shade. Hence the churned look to their skin, rather than the scrubbed complexions of those who lived in town.

  I started right away as there was no need to put him to sleep.

  Pulling up his faded shirt I made an arrow of my hand and went inside him, which made Mrs James cry harder. I worked both of my hands beneath the skin and under his ribcage, and she cried harder still.

  The swallowed water starting to gather in my hands and I sang to send it away. Mrs James and the men, her other sons, took turns looking up as the ceiling darkened and dripped with heavy, gluttonous lake water drops.

  My thoughts did something they shouldn’t have done, which was wander. I couldn’t stop picturing the boy’s brother diving and surfacing, thrashing in the water until the lake was riddled with foam. I saw a stark image of Sister Eel wrapped some seven times around the small body, her snout near his face.

  I moved my hands and worked the water out of him, and once it was gone there was only stillness inside of him.

  He had died in the lake, and now he was here on our couch with his eyelashes clung together in bands of three or four.

  Still I kept my hands moving, hoping to feel in the fibrous lining a glimmer of breath I might fan into gasping and see him sputter, jolt inside his sodden clothes.

  I kept on, pushing water out of his lungs and into the ceiling, my hair and shoulders slick from the dripping water and Oliver James, his face held by his mother, made doubly wet again by its fall. I kept on until the quiet in the room was like a hand around my throat, and I realised my wrists were sore, which had never happened before.

  –He’s gone too far.

  I spoke loudly to cover the wet, sliding sound of my hands coming back to the air.

  Mrs James said nothing but rolled up her shoulders, slowly.

  I kept seeing things I didn’t want to see.

  The ringlets of hair on the side of his face were so slick and fine they might’ve been painted.

  Since he’d been laid out on the couch his eyes had turned a deeper shade of green.

  He’d a freckle near his mouth that would have been folded into his cheek whenever he smiled.

  A hum of confused muttering from the men as they remembered Tabatha Sharpe: a frail baby brought back from the bloody pool of her mother’s panicked womb – Surely, surely, I could fashion a means of revival for this small child? If I could pluck Tabatha out of thin air, and this boy was here in front of me, with everything about him intact … ?

  And Father only looked at me in a way that sent his thoughts clear into my head.

  This is the cost of your running around, Ada.

  Oliver James. Quiet little boy, bathed deep in the green of the lake. Already a body, instead of a boy. No more than a streak of light skin and dark hair between us. His cheeks still puffed as though with stubborn, petulant breath rather than the sickly bloat of Sister Eel’s lake, beaten from above by the rain. Cheeks his mother kept on stroking, thinking she might alleviate their swell and bring back her small, drowned son.

  Had I the will to touch him again I might have strummed a quick tune of feathers, with which to close his eyes.

  –You could have saved that boy.

  I sat down on the couch, still wet.

  This room will forever stink of the lake.

  That night, of course, I didn’t sleep.

  Father was irked with me; it had been a long time since we’d lost a Cure and he felt this one had been lost needlessly. I told him over and over that the boy was too far gone, was already dead, but as the sheets turned knotted and damp around me I wondered if indeed my strength was dripping away.

  If Samson trying to work his way into Lorraine was taking a toll on me I couldn’t yet fathom.

  My eyes grew heavy and I dreamt half-awake dreams of Oliver James climbing out of the lake or riding Sister Eel like a mare.

  And then I dreamt, briefly, of Olivia, who by this time must’ve given birth.

  I was in the kitchen with the back door and all the windows open so the smell of rain came in strong. Wet soil and spattered leaves. The heat from the stove was warming my belly and I fanned myself with my dress. I was still tired from Oliver James and my every movement seemed slow. I’d been stirring the pot so long I knew, even after I stopped, the motion would keep on in my shoulder.

  I heard Lorraine’s car in the drive. Early, as was her habit now. I thought, Must be the fact of her coming so often. He’s used to her – he can sniff her out, looking at the boiling pot and wanting to dip my hands inside. You need a plan.

  But what to do? Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t bring up Samson. Only Father could force anything in that part of The Ground – my putting him there had only worked because it chimed with the weather.

  And I didn’t want him to come up before he was ready.

  No matter how long it took.

  Lorraine was coming up the steps and, before I could put the spoon down, letting herself inside. She was the only Cure to ever do so, and despite myself it made me sad that she thought of us as her family. She’d come here looking for something we couldn’t give her, some kind of closeness she could draw on while she lay in bed. Lay in the dark, alone.

  All she’d gotten was Samson slipping inside her to catch a glimpse above ground.

  I called

  –Be right with you, Lorraine.

  –Ada.

  I knew right away: her voice that wasn’t her voice. Her voice with a hot tremor inside it. I turned around and there he was, a too-big hand in an ill-fitting glove. The shoulders rolling forward, the slight tilt to the hips.

  –What have you done to me?

  The dress she’d put on that morning was sodde
n, damply creased about the hips and breasts. Her hair was falling ’round her face, reddy-grey frame all tendril and wisp. Again,

  –What have you done to me?

  –I’m making us time. More time.

  He laughed and it was not Lorraine’s laugh but not his, either. Only a quick dislodging in the throat. A few steps toward me, uncertain and slow.

  –You bring me up.

  –You’ll come up as soon as you’re ready. The Ground’ll know.

  –Now.

  I leaned back on the counter. It was such a sad sight, his beautiful body kicking and squirming inside her. And Lorraine; disfigured, and perhaps the most alive she’d ever been.

  –Now, Ada.

  Close to me now and putting Lorraine’s hands on my waist, and the touch too familiar. The heat of the stove slicking up my back. Her lips so close I could see clearly their fine lines and whiskery corners. Cigarette-breath landing on my mouth. I said

  –The Ground will keep you safe. It’ll cure you of the hurt Olivia put in you.

  It was like he’d been poured inside her, hot and molten, and she was squirming so as not to get burned. Every time she moved he showed through a little, pushing at the seams.

  A wild dog snapping.

  –I can’t stay down there.

  –It’s not forever.

  Lorraine’s face wrinkling around her mouth and nose, dense centre of a rose.

  –Bring me up, Ada.

  –I can’t.

  –Your father—

  – The Ground will know. The Ground will be able to tell.

  Was Lorraine in there, still? While he spoke through her?

  The first sign I should have taken heed of: her knee giving out from under her. Jerking, spasming. He carried on talking. Couldn’t feel what he was doing to her.

  –What have you done? Why—

  –I’m fixing what Olivia did to you. Isn’t that what you wanted? Isn’t that why you kept on asking me to look inside?

  The second sign: the moisture coming through her shirt.

  Her body doing something it hadn’t done for years and, lacking milk, producing some other liquid long since spoiled inside her.

  –Dammit Ada! This is not what I wanted! No!

  Trying to make a fist but his will not quite making it down into Lorraine’s soft, slow fingers.