By now Father was standing in the hall, looking into the kitchen, looking at me over Lorraine’s frizzing hair. He’d been upstairs but Samson was shouting, his voice coming thick over Lorraine’s tongue,
–I thought we were leaving. Leaving together. I thought that was our plan.
I was found out, my scheming undone in the kitchen with its blackened pots and unwashed floor. Undone and suddenly unremarkable, with the breadth of Father’s shoulders in the doorway stealing the light from the room. Probably Samson mistook Father for clouds crowding the sun, because he kept talking to me – mewling, every few words his voice turned to squeak.
–What have you done, Ada? What have you done?
The stains on the front of her dress, pooling now. Sticking to her.
I hope she’s not awake.
Her jaw moving as though her tongue had swollen in her mouth and Samson’s words coming out of her with a strange, dull echo. A light bubbling on her lips making me think of the foam the river made when no rain had come to flush its innards clean. The flaccid flesh of her throat trembling, unable to keep up with her breath and, finally, her temples giving off a hard, buzzing sound. A bee trapped under a mug.
I don’t know if a younger woman would have managed better, or if there’s any way to survive such a thing.
In any case, something somewhere burst, and she fell.
When she fell she fell hard and her left knee, the knee she came down on, cracked.
The sound that came out her mouth could have been either of them.
Not quite low, not quite high.
A sweep of loam on the tiles: the track he’d made in leaving her.
And then it was Father’s talking.
A new voice, but the same questions.
–What have you done, Ada?
–Ada, what have you done?
It seemed a long time passed, and still we stood looking at Lorraine on the floor.
–Dammit, Ada.
–I know.
–He’s not a fox. He’s not a bird.
–I know.
–How long has he been down there?
–…Two weeks.
–No more?
–No.
–Why have you done this?
On the floor in front of me her body was leaking its last few dregs. Her mouth, her ears and her eyes. The slow, shiny spread come out beneath her skirt. And then: she kicked a little. The hem of her dress showed us more of her pale, damp thigh. I said
–Because it wasn’t enough.
If he’d been a Cure he might have sighed, rubbed at his eyes. But he only looked at me.
–Enough?
–The days going on and on. Dipping in and out of Cures. I need to keep him and if I’m going to keep him I need to fix him. Need to keep him safe from his sister for a time.
Father’s brow churning. I was giving too much away.
–You were right. He’s sick. But it’s her that put it there.
Looking at me hard, not willing to be distracted.
–How’d you do it? Get him down there?
–It was just the rain. When the storm came. I just …
And I made a motion with my hand.
–But this—?
Staring at Lorraine’s hurt body. Her mouth slack and an oily film escaping her eyes.
–That he’s done alone.
Her spittle tapping onto the floor.
–We can’t fix her?
–No. There’s too much here I haven’t seen.
His hands on his hips. His body so large.
–Besides. If she remembered any of this, ever said anything about any of this … they’d burn us down.
An ache shooting in quick red lines up my spine.
–So we carry her upstairs, let her die in her own time?
He snorted.
–Little late to be treating Lorraine kindly.
He was walking around her, looking at her from every side.
–All we can do is put her to ground and let her go quietly.
–After we put her to sleep?
–She is sleeping, Ada, look at her.
Lorraine’s eyes thick with water, neither open nor closed.
–Can’t we leave her in one of the rooms?
–No. The Ground.
Looking down, speaking into his chest,
–He’ll have been worked upon, you know. Down there.
I looked at him with my eyes, careful not to move my face.
–That’s the point.
Looking over my head and into the garden.
–You don’t know what you’ve done, Ada.
–I’m not all to blame.
–You ready to say something about him? A man so good and wholesome you had to sink him in The Ground?
–Not him.
My hands, where he couldn’t see them, inside of my pockets, pinching my thighs. I said
–You must’ve known I’d get lonely.
He looked at me and his whole face went soft, so soft he might have started laughing.
–Not likely what comes back up will give a damn if you’re lonely, Ada.
Lifting Lorraine up easily, muttering to himself
–Lonely. Lonely. Need to have a heart, to be lonely.
That night we buried Lorraine. Father came out of the house and the patio door whinnied shut behind him. His shoulders shone heavily, their smooth skin catching the white glare of the moon.
Lorraine: humming in her sleep.
I moved my toes against the side of her head which was silhouetted and obscured with the swinging light at the patio door. Father came closer and Lorraine began to move against my foot in the way a stray cat might scratch its back against the rough bark of a tree.
–Leave her be, Ada.
Sinking the shovel into The Ground. It smacked like a thirsty mouth, though we’d had much rain. I was surprised it didn’t give off steam.
I looked at her hard, sniffed at the air.
He started digging.
I squatted next to Lorraine and the mud licked up toward my knees. My dress dipped deeper into the wet dirt.
Clung to me.
Stocking.
Pouch.
Glove.
From Lorraine’s open mouth came a sound like a lone dove’s coo and then she tried to roll onto her side, making swivel the slack rings of fat around her belly.
I stood up and felt her face with my foot and pushed down on the flat expanse of cheek, where the hard bars of her jaw clenched under the skin.
Father said nothing but lifted her up and carried her to the hole he’d made, saying it would be a long time before we could make use of that piece of ground again. Lorraine sagged heavily, filling up the angles of his arms while the cloth of her nightdress crinkled at her elbows and knees.
Once she’d been covered and Father had patted smooth the soil it kept on moving, catching on her roving hips.
Back in the kitchen even the mismatched buttons of my dress seemed scalded by the heat as I brought them through their cat-eye holes. I let the patterned cloth hang from my fist and watched its slow twirl, sodden and limp, dropping it in the milky-watered basin. It made a thirsty, gulping sound, diminishing for a moment the soapy swirls that had formed so thickly over Father’s shirt and my smock from the day before. It would take hours for the chalk-coloured pattern to settle again and work on this fresh batch of stains.
I took the towel from its hook on the back of the kitchen door and rubbed it over my legs, but in bed I still felt the crumbling of dried soil run over my feet when I kicked at the sheets.
My cheek on the pillow, I closed my eyes and said I’m sorry Lorraine, you had a few more years, and that night and for two nights thereafter I heard her squirming around in the earth, her head rolling across her collar and the thin bones cracking in the tunnel of her neck.
Father, very pointedly, spent time only at the front of the house.
–You might say sorry, Ada, for the trouble you’ve caus
ed.
–Do you remember when I took you out of The Ground? How happy I was to meet you?
When, at last, Lorraine abated, I heard her chest lower and stay there. The Ground had seen her expire, and now our days would fall back to their old rhythm and I could plan for my time with Samson. That faraway time.
I did wonder how we’d the three of us live in the same house, but then I’d years and years to think of a way. I hoped once Father met Samson again, risen up and altered, he’d forget his dislike and his distrust. See that he’d become like us and didn’t have to be handled like a Cure.
It was unlikely, but still I hoped for it. And like I said, I’d years and years.
From the porch: watching Father heave Lorraine’s car down the drive, the buffered skin of his back gleaming. Long, long strides, moving the little tin car into whatever ditch was closest and deepest.
And that was all we had to do.
Nobody ever came looking for her.
It was not a kind place for a woman to live alone.
A few days went by and we’d no Cures. Father was highly strung and couldn’t sit still for long. The weather had turned dry so I’d sit out in the garden and sun my legs, lying on my belly and singing to Samson through The Ground. I was certain he could hear me and that he was forgiving me, that he was already feeling better for his time there. I thought
If this is how it’s to be, the waiting, maybe I can manage. Maybe it’s not so bad.
Clucking and stretching, rubbing by back in the grass. Telling him what everything looked like, the trees and the sun in the sky.
–Are you hot down there, Samson? Can you feel the midday heat?
A few times I caught Father looking at me from the kitchen window, and knew he thought me obscene.
And then one morning Father came in from the garden and ran the kitchen tap. He was smeared up to his elbows in dirt.
–All right, we’ve a storm due.
Splashing his forearms and wetting his rolled sleeves. He said
–If it lasts as long as it’s supposed to, I can manage.
I kept my eyes ahead, spied the angled limbs of a cricket on the lawn.
–You don’t know how to do it.
–Of course I do.
–Father—
–He’s coming up Ada. He’s a danger to us, down there. The Ground does what it pleases and nothing else besides.
–Isn’t that a good thing? The longer we leave him the more he’ll be like us—
–There’s no such thing as ‘like us’.
–You said I couldn’t keep him because he was sick. You said about Mr Kault—
–If we’d have tried to cure Mr Kault we’d have done all manner of things. You think you’re fixing him. You’re just leaving him to stew in what’s wrong with him.
–I don’t want him fixed, I only want him a little changed. Just enough so he’s not tortured by the sick Olivia put inside him.
Because if he was all the way fixed he mightn’t want me. Might take fright at me, choke at the thought of our being together.
Father was drying his hands now. His whole body waving me away, dismissing me.
–Next heavy rain he comes up.
A cold, slick tail flicking in my stomach. The sunshine bleaching everything. My whole world, faded.
–Can’t we just wait and see?
He squinted at the cloth he was holding.
–You keep on refusing and I’ll do it alone.
I was sitting at the table but felt like standing.
–Father—
–It’s not just about what you want Ada. A man like that could poison the earth for years.
A man like that.
A man.
–We’ll bring him up and start fixing the mess you’ve made.
–How can it be a mess when it’s exactly as I planned?
–Besides me finding out.
Biting into my cheek.
–Yes. Besides that.
–Storm tonight, and then we take him up tomorrow.
–No.
–Ada.
–You think you’ll let him loose and he’ll run for the hills and that’ll be the end of it? You think he won’t still want to be with me?
–…I think you overestimate your pull.
Cluck cluck cluck on my tongue.
–Besides, Ada, won’t be up to him where he goes.
–What do you mean?
–What you think I mean.
–I don’t know what you mean, ’s why I’m asking you to say it.
–You’ve become a lot of things, but I know you’ve not become a fool.
–No. I won’t do it.
Put him down like a dog too old, too blind. Take the life out of his fruit heart.
–You really think he’d ever look at you the same, Ada? What do you think is happening to him down there?
I put my hands flat on my lap. Pretended interest with the creases in my dress.
–It’ll have been torture for him, Ada. You can’t imagine. Torture.
We looked at each other and I thought about the changes I’d seen in him since I was a child: the thin, thin lines certain light showed up around his eyes. Otherwise he was the same.
When I was a child I’d sit on Father’s shoulders and he’d walk me ’round the lawn, pointing out the plants I was made of. I played with the hair on top of his head and he put me in trees, up in the branches so that I couldn’t get down. If I got frightened he’d say
–There’s no use in fear, Ada.
And watch as I squirmed my way to the grass.
There’s no use in lots of things, turns out.
Turns out once you find the thing you need everything else falls away sharp and fast.
I put a hand on his chest, and he looked at me.
Looked down at me, our shared breath growing thick between us.
His big hands like bells at his side.
It was a new kind of knowing in me, that I could hurt him. That my body was capable of damaging his. It was a new limb I’d grown for myself; to do him harm, to keep Samson safe.
Once I started it felt like lying down to sleep, or like stepping into cool water.
While it was happening one image came into my head and stayed there: a bird with one wing, flapping, convinced it could still take flight.
Behind my hand a wound opened in his chest, and then spread. Even when I took my hand away it kept on spreading, making the sound a fire makes when the rain makes it spit but it carries on burning.
I looked inside him, inside his chest and the organs he kept there.
Saw his makeshift lungs.
His false heart.
I looked inside him and saw what he wanted for me; a half-life. A body barely stimulated, its urges only ever partially fulfilled. I looked at his face but he was looking over my head, into the garden, maybe thinking I’d drag him outside. Maybe thinking I’d bury him next to his father.
When I realised he was falling I thought, Don’t fall toward me.
And he didn’t.
He fell to his side. His face on the tiles. Looking up at me from the same spot where Lorraine had lain and trembled.
Father had been surprised when he realised I needed to sleep. Been surprised that I dreamed.
Always asked me what I’d seen.
He’d presumed to know every part of me.
–When you were a child. The birds.
Olivia Wyde
You are the only precious thing.
Whatever she says to you, whatever she tries to make you believe, you laugh and look the other way.
You know the truth now.
Yes. The Ground is moving. Is ready to smack its tongue, to belch. The Ground is done with him, at last. Has moved through him and made him ready. Will he come up standing? Will he pull himself up with his honey-tan arms? I stand on the patio and try not to run to the part that’s turning in on itself, a toothless mouth, the gums bearing down on the lips, massaging.
&
nbsp; Such a long time to have waited and still I feel caught out. He will be the only thing to have changed. The house, the garden. The look and shape of my face.
All the same.
Such a long time.
But then: the time I’ve made.
With Father gone all these years and no Cures coming there are few habits that I keep, save tending to the sorrel leaves.
Turning over and over their slim, succulent bodies that carry their creases like much worn leather.
Coming into summer I always mutter a haze of warning to keep at bay the lustful blood-vein moth, but still most mornings I come outside and find the leaves are ravaged. The edges robbed of their svelte curves.
I speak to them, saying their name aloud, mostly for the pleasure of the first ‘r’ rippling into its twin.
Sorril,
Sorrelle,
Soreil.
Now that autumn is coming it’s garnered a reddish hue and it cheers me, to see it peering above the gurgling foliage. Once, Father melted down the leaves and fed them to a girl born too sweet. Brown-haired child with the heady centre of a sugar cane running thick in her veins. Father said only the sorrel’s broth would cleanse her.
Sorrel. Meaning sour.
Meaning heartbeat quickened.
Meaning puckering tang.
At first, I don’t understand the sound.
It might be a felled branch, the house rhythmically creaking.
I wait on the lawn, and it comes again.
It’s been so long since someone knocked on the door.
I’ve been outside all day and so the kitchen and the hallway feel almost too cool. It’s already evening, inside.
Through the screen: a youngish man, standing with his back to the house, showing me his muscled back. The vest he has on is worn thin and shows the taut flesh creasing together about the spine. Bundled together, muscles like ropes. His hair is the colour of wet sand, clinging thickly to itself. Like grit. When he shakes his head at some bug come too close and turns to me a wound inside me comes open.
It is Samson’s face.
Samson’s face, only not quite – there’s a closeness to the mouth and chin, a tightness between the eyes. Samson’s shoulders only not quite wide enough. Samson’s hair but not fair enough.
Squinting through the screen. Very tall, and so ducking his head.
–Miss Ada?
Follow Me to Ground Page 10