by Louise Welsh
STIGMATA
Phyllis Alesia Perry
Phyllis Alesia Perry (b.1961) was born in Atlanta, Georgia. She grew up in Tuskegee, Alabama and graduated from the University of Alabama in 1982. Perry worked as an editor for the Alabama Journal and is a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. She lives in Atlanta and has published two novels, Stigmata – from which this is an extract – and A Sunday in June.
Ruth knows first.
We sit in the old apple tree behind Aunt Eva’s house in Johnson creek, having just delivered several basketfuls of apples to Aunt Eva. She watches us from the back porch where she peels some for canning.
My fantastic out-of-body story has my cousin sitting still as stone, her cheek against the rough bark of an upward-reaching branch. Funny, she doesn’t look the least bit shocked, and she presses for details.
“Damn,” she murmurs. “You did it again.”
“Again?”
“Ah, I remember it well,” she says, mockingly putting her hand to her chin and looking skyward. “Nineteen-seventy-seven, wasn’t it? You called me by someone else’s name, fell off the bed and stared in space for a couple of days. I wrote about it in my diary.”
“But I never told you…”
“You never told me what you saw, Lizzie. But you called me Joy. Ancestor of ours, right? So’s Grace. Why are these people trying to talk to you?”
“You make it sound like ordinary conversation.”
“Well, I know it ain’t that. But some kind of communication between then and now is going on here. I mean, is there funk after death?”
I roll my eyes.
“Was there something familiar about the house you were in, about the room?” she asks.
“Yeah, I told you. But I can’t tell you where I’d seen it.” I look off over the top of the house, the church, and towards the cemetery where Grace lay. “Maybe I was in Grace’s house, you know, that old empty place back up in the woods where we used to play. But it wasn’t anything like you’d remember, Ruth. It was… it was home, with furniture and rugs on the floor. It was like remembering, but more. I saw what she was seeing. I saw… man! I saw Mother as a little girl. When I woke up, or came to, or whatever, it didn’t feel like a dream. Felt like I’d stepped out of one room and into another.”
“You said you weren’t asleep. Both times you winked out and then back?”
“But I had to be asleep, Ruth, right?” She is taking me far too seriously, frightening me.
“I don’t know. Maybe Grace was trying to tell you something. And Bessie.”
“Damn, girl. This ain’t no Twilight Zone thing.”
“No, much better.” She grins. “The real stuff always is. So what else?”
“Well, I am kinda achy when I wink back in. Sore. Some places feel almost raw. But after a few hours I’m OK.”
“Ooooh. Physical manifestations. Did you do something in the other times that hurt you? That could be proof that you really went.”
“No.” I look down at Aunt Eva, who has stopped peeling and now stares at us, not moving. She can’t hear us, can she?
“Where are the pains?”
“My wrists and ankles and back. Stinging.”
“Lemme see.” She holds out her hands and I give her mine. Turning them over, she examines the wrists. “I don’t see anything,” she says, putting her fingers against my right arm. Then she is still. She puts her hands around my wrists and lets out a small gasp, dropping them as if they are hot.
“What? What?” I search her face, and her eyes are clouded.
“I felt something,” she whispers.
“No shit. What?”
“Pain.” Ruth closes her eyes. “Just for a second. Pain.”
“What kind of pain? I don’t feel anything, at least not now.”
“But… oh Jesus, it’s there! Just under your skin.”
“Ruth.” I touch her hand and she flinches. “What am I gonna do?”
“I don’t know. But Lizzie…”
“Yes?”
“There’s more coming. Coming fast.” She keeps her eyes closed. Her lips tremble.
“Ruth… you can feel that?”
She nods.
“How?”
Ruth opens her eyes and says, “How is it that you can step into the life of a woman who died before you were born?”
“There is no answer to that,” I say.
We stay at Aunt Eva’s that weekend. We had driven down from Tuskegee in Ruth’s new car after classes Friday to help with the apples and to taste the first pies, and had planned to go back that evening to catch a party on campus.
But after we climb down from the tree, we decide to stay. We call our mothers, who are playing cards with two other ladies at my house in Tuskegee. I imagine my father safety cocooned behind the door of his study, sipping and reading. Nothing can get me to go home and disturb such domesticity tonight.
“Can you touch me now?” I ask Ruth after dinner, after Aunt Eva is in bed and we sprawl on the front steps. She reaches out a hand and takes mine tensely, sliding her palms over the wrist and forearm. After a few seconds, I feel her relax.
“It’s OK,” she says, taking her hand back nevertheless.
We’re sick, I think, as Ruth swats a lightning bug. Very sick.
That night I wake because the night chill has crept into my heart. I open my eyes and I’m standing upright under the night sky. My bare toes dig little depressions into the dirt road just beyond Aunt Eva’s front porch, where I can sense, rather than see, Ruth standing, watching. Her long frame sways toward me.
Sleepwalking. That’s a new twist. Can’t remember the dream that brought me out here. Can’t move until I remember what I’m supposed to remember. It just feels so good to be out, but I can’t move to what waits for me.
Closing my eyes, I try to remember. That pain is back, especially along the wrists. I rub them. I’m being pulled, but I can’t go where they want me to go. Not there.
Ruth’s eerie pitter-patter follows me, down the road a bit past Son Jackson’s house, and then a turn right to the pasture that runs all the way down to the little river we call Johnson Creek. Our white nightgrowns fly out from our legs, making us winged spirits, and Son Jackson’s cows, standing still as stone a moment before, turn their long heads to look.
I stop and close my eyes. Salty air saps the moisture from my lips. Why am I here and why can’t I go home, when I know my mother waits for me?
The ground slowly rolls under my feet. I smell – taste – sweat and blood and months of misery. The scent knocks me dizzy for a moment and I stumble forward. Then I am pulled, jerked. I open my eyes, but there is a void in front of me. Light, gray and weak, filters in slowly from the left side of my vision, and I see the deck, the water beyond and the line of dark bodies going jerkily forward into the ghost-land. Each bent back ahead of me is familiar.
A gurgling sob reaches me. Mine. I’d been steadily shuffling forward, but I can’t go any farther.
The rail is under my palm, the weight of another person dangles from my wrist. The bottom of my foot scrapes the top of the rail; I try to ignore the sound of the chain dragging along the wooden deck. Trying to stand on the rail, I expect to be jerked back at any moment. I crouch there for what seems to be an eternity. The man attached to my wrist whispers to me urgently in some strange tongue. When I turn to look at him there is some slow-crackling fire in his stare. I am to go, his eyes say, and he’ll go with me.
So I throw my leg over the other side, but I feel myself being pulled….
I hit the water with a hard thud, rolling over and scraping my forehead on something – is it the side of the boat? I touch bottom and the water is pitch-dark; no sunlight. Where is the sun?
A hand grabs me and my head breaks the surface. But I’m not sure I want to open my mouth to breathe.
“Dammit!” Ruth says, her voice coming from far away, but her fingers biting into my arm. “Help me – at least a little here, Lizzie! You’re like a
damn rock!” she drags me through the water crossways to the current; it tugs gently but insistently on my limbs.
I drift into that now-familiar sensation of disorientation; my mind crawls down a long hallway. I now Ruth is there, but when I look into her face, I see someone else. A dark girl in African clothes, silent but with eyes that speak of horrible things. She and I seem to walk back and forth, holding on to each other.
Cold water slaps my face as I stumble and fall.
“Lizzie,” I hear Ruth half-growl, half-moan. “Lizzie, don’t blink out on me now!”
Hands in my armpits haul me upright again and I stand face-to-face with Ruth, chest-deep in the cold, tumbling flow of Johnson Creek. If Ruth looks that frightened, I wonder how I look. The African girl is gone. The ship deck is gone. Involuntarily, I touch my arms under the water, but I already know there are no chains.
“Lizzie…” Ruth strokes my forehead and then stares at the smear of blood and water on her fingers.
“Your head,” she says. “You’re bloody. Let’s get the hell outta this water!”
We wade through to the shallows. Ruth scolds. I can think of no response to her mumbling, frightened questions.
The creek isn’t very wide, but it’s sort of deep in the middle. If I had dived over in the shallows, where the rocks ruled, that likely would have been the end of my story.
Over my shoulder, I see the thin-railed small-plank bridge that spans the stream. Luckily, I’d gone over in the deepest part with water to cushion the fall. Still – I touch a hand to my head as Ruth drags me by the arm to the bank – I hit something. Is that why I feel so fuzzy?
Despite the warmth of the night, we shiver violently as we stumble to shore, and we don’t break stride until we are climbing Aunt Eva’s porch steps.
Inside, Ruth almost tears the soaking nightgown off me, still whispering urgent questions at me as I stand there naked, hair dripping and on its way back to wherever hair goes, back to damn Africa, I guess. She searches for something dry. I can’t answer her questions. I don’t know what to say. Cursing, she wraps me in a sheet and slips away down the hall.
OK, OK, OK, I think, clutching the sheet closer. Ayo-Bessie. Grace. Y’all just trying to confuse me. Grace always speaks loudly, her memories hissing insistently inside my head. And behind her are the dreamlike tangles of Ayo’s life. More distant but also more painful. I shiver, wanting it all to go away immediately, but I still see the burning eyes of the man on the ship’s deck, lit up with some fever.
“Lizzie,” says Ruth, slipping back into the room and closing the door, “you got to say something to me so that I know you’re doing all right here.” She is still soaking wet. She drops a dry gown, one of Aunt Eva’s, over my head.
“Lizzie?!” she grabs my arm, and we both gasp. A searing pain passes through my body, radiating from the wrist she has in her hand. Her eyes widen and she looks otherworldly, her body rigid with pain, her hair hanging limply against her chin, and the wet gown still glued to her body.
“Let go of me,” I manage to choke out. “Please. It hurts.”
But she hesitates, as if it is difficult to move. Finally she reaches up with her other hand and pries her own fingers from around my flesh. I slump, suddenly so tired, staring at the red, round marks on my wrists.
I watch her wearily take off the wet gown and put on another. She sits on the edge of the bed and begins drying her hair with a towel. She tosses me another dry towel and slips under the covers.
“Go to bed before you die shivering there, Lizzie,” she says. “But don’t touch me.”
I turn off the light. Ruth breathes heavily beside me in the bed we share, and I try to scoot my body as close to the wall as possible.
“Don’t tell the doctor,” she says.
“What?” I turn my head to look at her, trying to see her face in the dark. I only discern the faint outlines of her cheek, her nose, her ear.
“I wouldn’t tell your father or Sarah about what happened tonight if I were you,” Ruth says.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good idea.” Ruth turns her back towards me, and I sink down in the bed. I am afraid to sleep, since the line between dreaming and waking has become hard to see with the naked eye.
THE HANGING GIRL
Ali Smith
Novelist and short story writer, Ali Smith (b.1962) was born in Inverness. She graduated from the University of Aberdeen and studied for a PhD at the University of Cambridge. Smith lectured in English at the University of Strathclyde before becoming a full-time writer. Her awards include the Whitbread Novel Award, the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award and the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge with her partner Sarah Wood.
They’re going to hang me.
I don’t think they will blindfold me. The sun on the snow. What a day, a beautiful spring day. Smell of sawn wood. One of the men is holding the ropes. Not men, boys. Another hits at my feet with his gloves and shouts something over his shoulder. I think they think I am too near the edge. They don’t want me to hang myself. Clean wood underfoot. I think everyone from the house is already dead. They are doing this to other people too. I don’t recognize any of them. My wrists have made the ends of my sweater loose and round and the cold air gets in. I haven’t changed my clothes for six days. The rope round my wrists is hairy. Not too tight. Just tight enough. The boy who tied them was kind. They’ve made signs to hang round our necks. The signs have two languages on them. What I can read says we have been made an example of. Spring is coming. When they took me out there were chickens pecking in the snow where the snow is thinner, and there is a crow somewhere in the trees, the noise of a crow. The way crows build their nests, balanced on nothing, on the holes between branches.
A man is pulling pointed legs out from beneath a camera. I don’t know what type of camera it is. It’s a film camera. This will be filmed. People have sat down on the chairs to watch. Something is going to start soon. A man just got up and gave his chair to a lady. They are having a conversation. She’s looking at the sky and nodding. The man with the greatcoat has stopped in front of me. His head comes up to my stomach. He’s standing on something. I can’t see what it is. I can’t see his face. There’s snow on the brim of his hat. It hasn’t snowed for days. He must have come through trees. He is sliding the knot round away from my chin. The knot makes his hand in its glove look small. He has moved to the woman next to me. I think I can get myself to the edge again. The camera has started making a noise. Careful. Careful.
Here I go here I go here I go again the big number one more time ladies and gentlemen put your hands together please for this little lady a singer a swinger in the performance of a lifetime (music applause) start spreading the noose I’m leaving today slow slow build it build it up blast it out thank you thank you ladiesan-gentlemen I’m a little hoarse forgive me my throat’s a little tight for it today but a very warm welcome to the show I’m your (g)host for this evening morning afternoon evening morning afternoon and I just know we’re going to have a really great time together why did the chicken cross the road? well wouldn’t you if someone wanted to wring your neck? (groans of laughter) why couldn’t they hang the insolent girl? because she had such a – yes – brass neck (laughter and clapping) no no please no time for that a lot to get through no time to hang about (laughter) yes! please! madam! thank you! but to be serious just for a moment – only for a moment sir don’t look so worried! – in all seriousness remember (dim lights to spot and cue grave music) nothing that you will see tonight is faked nothing that will pass before your eyes here is fabricated in any way no tricks of the light no tricks of the lens this death is pure live entertainment and I swear it will really happen right before your eyes over and over and over again for over and over amen boys girls ladies gentlemen thank you I appreciate it I do and now (drumroll) the moment we’re waiting for… today’s victim on… This Is My Death – yes it’s you yes this time you now from nowhere you
get more much more than you bargained for me you get me scrawny broken albatross to hang round your neck in one lunge I’m off the scaffold and into your head surprise! and swinging gaudy bauble on a tree coo-ee hello it’s me hung by my thread first my face before the rope then my face tight pinched constipated those tight lines are my eyes and mouth halfway through the slow snap in two ah then my eyes rolled to heaven a blank thank you thank you ladies and gents ghastly I know so nice to meet you to make your acquaintance nice knowing you pity it was so short but no more time oh well never mind see you later alligator goodnight Irene I’ll see you in your dreams.
My head at its broken angle. My eyes gone. The creak of the rope on the beam above.
Please, you boys in the front row. Please. No filming up my skirt.
Anyone like to see it one more time? Push button one for yes, button two for no.
*
Pauline went to the doctor’s. I’ve got aches and pains all over, she said. I feel dizzy and light-headed. My stomach’s sore after I eat. My skin feels sensitive like I’ve got flu, and I’m having delusions.
Delusions, the doctor said.
I keep imagining there’s somebody behind me, but the thing is, there’s nobody there, Pauline said.
Somebody behind you, the doctor said. He clicked the mouse on his computer.
Following me, Pauline said. All the time. Wherever I go. But every time I look round, whoever it is is gone.
Mm, the doctor said. Interesting.
It’s very disconcerting, Pauline said. Actually it’s getting to be a bit of a pain in the neck.
Where exactly in the neck? the doctor asked.
Not just the neck, all over really, Pauline said. Can you give me an antibiotic?
The doctor printed out a prescription. Take the whole course, he said. I think the unspecific aches will clear up. It’s probably what we call a rota bug. You need some indigestion tablets for the stomach. You might find it cheaper to ask at Boots for their own name brand, they’re just as good. As for the other, I’ll refer you to our counsellor.