—What do you need?
If I could find a piece of him that I don’t want to run from, then I could talk. There are ducks in my room, teeny ducks, so sweet and stupid they don’t know how to drink water, with funny black eye markings and little squawk voices and wants. The man has square nails like my granddad’s.
—Starter crumbs.
There is blood under one nail, growing out, a slammed nail, I guess.
—Why? he says.
All the true things in the world taught me to turn away from evil. But meanness is an impulse in me that I can’t burn out. I look at his slammed nail and think, deserved it, I look at the frayed collar of his T-shirt and think, trash, I look at his hands and imagine all of the dark things I’ve been warned about that a man like him may have done to girls in hallways, girls at dances, girls at parties. I feel my evil and swallow it, feel it and swallow it when I see these people.
—The crumbs are for baby ducks, I say.
—Ducklings?
—Ducklings.
Does he think he’s taught me a new word? And then I cut the meanness in me again, two red slashes over the thought.
I follow him to the back aisle. He walks stiff, like he’s been sitting at the counter since the morning talk radio ran into music and then back into talk. He shows me a yellow bag with drawings of chicks on the front. A thank-you comes out of me and floats in the air on a string that follows me on the walk back up to the counter.
—Where are the ducklings at? he asks at the counter.
I don’t answer.
I give him my money.
Back in the car I think, there is no corner of me that is good enough for men or God. If I could turn away from evil I’d have to leave myself in the car with my thoughts on him, this poor person trying to sell me a bag of old crumbled bread.
This morning I had taken a duckling out of the box and watched it not be sorry for itself. It took no effort. I watched it flop-walk up and down the bed, then on me. I lay flat and let it wander and peck at my body, fleet feet, walking me, understanding my body in a way I would never know.
The roads are gray with dirty snow this time of year and when I turn corners my tires flip up little gritty waves and I feel like I’m doing a job, moving the water from one spot to another. There are half-melted fields. Every other car is faster than me. Every bumper has a sticker with an opinion.
In the driveway of the house, I step in slush and leave a single wet footprint stamped down the hall. I knock even though it’s my room, and the door is opened to me though I can’t even remember my hand on the knob. But years later, I will remember the feathers before the blood. Tracy is Indian-style on the carpet and their down is fanned around her, a perfect half-circle halo, with each quill toward her, and she is still plucking when I come in. She is still plucking when I come in. She is still plucking when I. When I.
Here is what I remember with eyes closed.
A stop it, a Stop it and a pull at her hands. The bodies of two, naked and stacked one on top of another, head to toe, still warm under the towel I used to dry them with. The blood is sticky. When I pick one up and rub at it I know it’s gone, eyes open and black and dry. Tracy’s bandanna is around her neck, the front of her scalp is raw, and if she had eyelashes they would catch her tears and she is saying, why, why am I doing this. I recognize Satan in her eyes and I slap him so hard spit comes out and slides sideways down her chin. In the box, three babies chirp, seeing and forgetting the wrong over and over.
—I didn’t know they would bleed, she says. She puts her hands over her mouth and her body stutters on itself, tee tee, tee tee, tee tee.
Ask, and it will be given to you. But even years later I will know that the why is unimportant because it will never satisfy. All I will know is that some things want so badly to be good. Some things want so badly to be good that they can’t possibly be at all.
9
The Short Game
-DEIRDRE, MARGOT-
March 2007
Before Margot there had been two boys.
The first was on a living room couch while his parents were at Wednesday night Bible Study, and he was disappointed that I didn’t bleed on the Superman towel he’d conscientiously spread underneath me.
—I thought you were a virgin, he said.
—I am.
—Then how’d you lose your cherry?
How did I lose it? Was it supposed to burst for him like a piñata? And he’d hurt me, of course he’d hurt me, but without the blood there was no proof of purchase. Later, I stood in his parents’ shower for ten minutes, waiting for the remainder of him to slip out between my thighs. But even the following morning, I could still feel him seeping from me. No one had warned me of this.
I thought I was defective.
• • •
The second one I’d fucked on a chair and while I moved he kept angling his mouth for my right nipple like a lamb angling for a bottle. How I didn’t give him a concussion I don’t know. At one point he’d slid a hand under my skirt, dry fingered and clueless, and although I appreciated the effort I couldn’t tell him he was hurting me.
I was gutless with men.
Margot took away the work of explanation.
It is still difficult for me to know if this is because women have better instincts with each other, or if it was just her.
We went slow. Gay men seem to have definitive out moments and women just don’t. With Margot it moved in a sequential order, a nice steady drop into minidykedom.
1. Fun night of drinking. In the foyer, we were babbling about first dates. To kiss, not to kiss. Then kisses, and their strangeness. How they should be revolting but are not. That was her segue. She leaned for me, kissed me, full stop, teeth grabbing at my top lip, her thin cold hand slipped around my waist, other hand on my neck, beneath my hair. A sister could have found us at any minute. She tasted like whiskey. A tiny woman, her core so warm I didn’t care.
2. Back in our room, undressing for bed, she did not turn her back while she changed. I fought eye contact the whole time.
3. Two nights later, she was cold and asked if she could stay in my bed and I didn’t tell her no. She was smaller than I was, her eyes keener, hair darker, shoulders thinner, feet colder. She was shrewder, more decisive, funnier, at some hours cloudier. I couldn’t keep up and didn’t try.
4. In capable hands, standard-issue seduction works every time. See steps 5–8.
5, 6, 7, 8. The mouth the straddle the foreheads touching the fingers interpreting words like graze and brush and trail. Wild words, animal words, put in action on a body in the half-dark terrain of a twin bed, and I wasn’t sure if I loved her, but my body did. Every tendon in me shortened by an inch and then slackened by two. She put a hand over my mouth and this time I bit back.
9. The streetlight outside our window cast her in pale yellow. She sat on her heels and wiped her mouth.
—I don’t know how to do that for you, I said. She was beaming.
—If that’s the first thing you worry about I’m sure you’ll do fine, she said.
All through grade school I’d felt faulty and done everything I could to blend in so others wouldn’t find out that I was a fraud. But belonging to the house had fixed the fear. Every time I wrote a check to the sisterhood, or rubbed the Hestia statue, or told a pledge to shut up, I felt a little safer. Now I had impulses and I followed them, quickly, before I lost the momentum or the bravery to do so. I thought of my older brothers, both in finance, both careful, both wearing creased slacks to Thanksgiving, and of my mom, who panicked if she couldn’t mow the lawn on a rainy Sunday because she might get a notice from the homeowners’ association. The claustrophobia of their lives: how dare they consider dragging me with them! Margot was my best impulse, my most destructive choice.
10. It came out later she’d always wanted me. I did not ask if there were others.
—Why’d you want to be a sushi model? she asked.
—Nyotaimori.
—It wasn’t that I wanted to, I said. It’s good money.
She was on top, her hands massaging my breasts. Her thighs dug into my hip bones, and I worried about bruising her, thought about eating more to dull my edges for her. I was too bony.
—You wanted to, she said. Don’t lie. You wanted to.
—I wanted to, I agreed.
—Why?
She brought her hands to my neck and squeezed. One second. A reminder of what could be undone.
—I wanted them to see me and not touch. I was tired of being touched and seen at the same time.
—Does it get you off?
—Not anymore.
—It’s boring now?
—It’s boring now.
—Tell me why.
—You know why.
She didn’t squeeze this time. Instead she bit my neck, left side, hard.
—Say it anyway, she said.
—Because (and now I inhaled, hard enough to lift her just a little bit) now I know I’m what they want.
—The game is over, she prompted.
—It’s a short game, I said.
—So you’ll quit then?
But I would not leave for her. Being bored in my new life was better than being bored in my old one.
In a later day, she truly found me out:
—Is there anything you’re not disdainful about?
—You, I said. You make me humble.
—Good answer, she said, and she crawled over me, pinning me, tickling me, until I was consumed by her black hair in my mouth, her laughter in my ear.
10
A Founder’s Account
August 1863
In those days it was rare for me to go into town, but when it became unbearable I would steal away to check the P.O. for a letter from Nash, returning either in secret triumph or terror. As time went on Joanna’s disapproval grew, and it got harder to leave. I had to hide my trips during her afternoon naps, or when she was busy in the springhouse, and eventually, as his letters dwindled, I terminated my trips altogether. I did not for one moment think that Nash was dead. I did, however, find it possible that he would not want to return to me when it was all over.
But Lucinda craved town. She countered the furtiveness of my trips with a boisterousness that became progressively harder to grasp. She seemed to believe that if she carried on as if the world were unchanged then perhaps it would start to behave accordingly. Now, deep in August, she wore her plum dress, fiddling with the streaming ribbon on her hat. She’d seen a comparable hat in Godey’s book and was prideful about her predictive stylistic abilities. Her face was overstretched and spot-scarred, but she knew how to put on style.
—If you don’t make the effort then you may as well lie down and die where you stand, she said.
—Joanna won’t like it, I said to her. She’ll be cross and supper will be a discomfort for all of us.
—Staying here is intolerable, she said breezily. If I don’t see a new countenance today I’ll lose my wits altogether.
—Your father needs you.
—Father is not going anywhere, she said.
She saw me recoil at her callousness. I never had a good face for hiding my thoughts. She crossed the sitting room and let her skirts gasp around her when she kneeled beside me.
—Virginia, my dear one, I am so sorry, she said. I do not have the compassion that he requires. I am ill equipped.
—I know you are, I said.
It had been intended as an insult, but Lucinda was impervious.
—I’m going to the market, she said with finality. I will buy you a new hairnet.
As we grew, she struck me as increasingly inauthentic, even when she made a thoughtful gesture. She patted my knee and rose and kissed the statue on the mantel ten times.
—I am not in need of a hairnet, I said.
So many other things were needed then, and none of them could be found on shelves, but it was not my nature to say such things in those days. Instead I was sullen.
After she left I washed Uncle’s face and resettled him in bed and then I went down to the garden and found Joanna rooting at her potatoes.
—I must look played out, she said.
I said I didn’t think it was so, even though Joanna wasn’t especially fine-looking, even on cleaner days.
She smoothed her hair and retied her apron.
—Lucinda’s gone down again.
Joanna had hair that was nearly red, especially in the sun. She looked to the road.
—She left already?
—She did, I said.
—That’s a pity, she said.
—If there were any men left I’d think it was a beau, I said.
—There are none, she said, and she yanked a tuber from the ground with a grim little smile.
• • •
When Lucinda returned at dusk she brought me a hairnet, chenille, of all things. Joanna puckered her mouth. Puckering the mouth was an old woman’s habit and yet there it was on Joanna’s face, not yet twenty. We sat down to supper with admonishment in the atmosphere. There was a great deal of uninspiring talk about the garden. I spoke little and ate quickly. When I finished, I took the blackberry brandy from the sideboard and brought it up to Uncle’s room. He did not turn his head when I opened the door.
—I’ve come with something sweet, I said.
He was staring upward like he was waiting for a god. During the day he would watch the light that pushed through the curtains and swept across the ceiling. At night he would stare at the shadows from the lantern.
I pulled him up and held the back of his damp neck and tilted the brandy into his mouth. Some of it slipped down his chin and I had to wipe at it so it wouldn’t stain him. He swallowed but did not speak. He smelled of all the bodily odors that we try so hard to dampen.
—It’s a nice pick-me-up for the evenings, I said.
I had taken on a strange tonality with him, as if he were somehow younger in his illness. I spoke brightly and would leave the room extinguished of a resource that I did not know I had possessed. He leaned forward like he was about to spit and a tooth slipped out of his mouth onto the quilt, the root already blackened.
—It’s all right, I told him.
I scooped the foul thing into my hand. He looked at me and mouthed but didn’t speak, his lips in a crumple, then a hiss, then slack-jawed. He wanted Lucinda.
—I’ll send her up, I said.
At the top of the stairs I heard Joanna saying,
—no need for it anymore. It looks poorly on us—
—But who is there to look? Lucinda asked. If they’re alive to see me, then they’re just as miser—
—It’s all distraction, Joanna urged. It’s all idleness and it takes us from our purpose.
—Lucinda, I said. Your father’s wanting you.
—Yes, Lucinda said. I expect he is.
But she did not rise from the table.
• • •
We retired to the sitting room and performed our rites. They’d begun as superstition, when we first heard a rumor that the rebels were just twenty miles away. I could remember the first night with the ashes but could not recall the season or the hour, only their placement on my tongue.
Joanna stood at the fireplace and recited in her best poetic voice:
O! my sister of patience,
Too demure for a throne,
Please tend to my fire,
And I will tend to your own.
We kissed the statue of Hestia on the mantel, five times at the head and five times at the feet. It had been Lucinda’s mother’s, given to her by a beau when he had seen her reading a book on the Greeks. Of course, this was Lucinda’s origin story, and Aunt Bernice had never been one to trifle, so I am uncertain if this was an exact telling. I couldn’t imagine men were that thoughtful.
The three of us kneeled at the hearth and dropped our foreheads to the
ground like the Moslems in India. The stone was warm on my forehead. Finally, Lucinda rose and took a spoonful of ash from under the andiron. She put it in her mouth without waiting to see if it was hot before she swallowed. Joanna did the same. Long before, when we had first begun the ritual, I had made the mistake of taking a spoonful too near a coal and burned my tongue. I never told my cousins. Instead I learned quickly the tricks of swallowing ash. The mouth must be full of saliva, so one must use the tip of their tongue to tickle the root of the mouth before they take the spoonful. Otherwise the fine powder will trickle into the lungs and cause a horrible choking that will break the custom. Joanna had indicated this bodily rebellion might occur because the lungs are masculine by nature and they want to rebel against the femininity of Hestia’s sacrifice.
Nothing was impossible in those days.
That evening Lucinda retired early after her long day at the market while Joanna and I went into her father’s room and cleaned parts of him that were shameful to all of us. His thighs were so absent of muscle that I could see his bones. We dressed him in fresh clothing. Tears leaked out of the corners of his eyes and oozed onto the pillowcase.
—There now, Joanna said. She wiped at his withered face and kissed him sweetly on the cheek. He fixed his eyes on her.
—The last good man on this earth, she said.
He smacked his mouth wetly, trying to shake loose the cogs that worked his tongue. He took her hand.
—With much regret, he began, barely audible, but Joanna hushed him and smoothed the quilt, pressing his chest with ferocity. His eyes were shining with a surge of zeal that I had not seen in weeks.
—Your father shouldn’t have—he began again.
—There now, Joanna said urgently.
She looked to me and then back to him again.
The clarity left him, his face slackened.
—Lucinda will be with you directly, I said to him.
A residue of ash was thickening in my mouth.
The shadows on the ceiling wavered in unison while Uncle May watched, his feeble hands gripping hard at the quilt, as if something could descend from above and take him.
• • •
When I study my memories I find myself wanting to track the date. Perhaps I do this because if I can name the span I can justify the actions. It must have been summer. It was likely August, unless my memory is failing me and Joanna hadn’t been rooting at potatoes at all. What if it had been asparagus? But I do not recall a chill in those final days. I have to rummage for other clues. Lucinda’s dress. The acrid smell in Uncle May’s room. Joanna’s hair, lightened by the sun. And how I woke that night thinking I heard cannon fire and thought of Nash. His last letters to me had fresh turns of phrase that I couldn’t fully understand. He wrote of soldiers being bucked and gagged. He wrote of his druthers. His sentences swaggered over the page. I thought I heard cannon fire again. So perhaps it truly was August, the loudest month, and I had been sleeping with the sashes thrown to let the air in, when the cicadas and frogs were cricking at one another outside in a way so deafening that I couldn’t sleep.
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