by Chuck Crabbe
Swing and spiral, swing and spiral, swing and spiral. The swing hung high in his grandfather's living room. It was night and a fire burned in the hearth across the room. The shadows from its flames licked the old hardwood floor. Across the top of the mantle lay a violin bow, perhaps six or seven times the size it should have been. All four (one, two, three, four) Mignon sisters sat together on the couch at the precise age they were in an old picture that hung in Elsie's kitchen. Even dreaming, he knew they were from the picture, and yet the picture was frozen and lost, and they were here and full of breath. Swept along on his swing Ezra called for his mother to look at him. The swing carried him away from her in its ebb, and toward her in its flow, and each time he came close to her he made another plea that fell on deaf ears. As her sisters sat back on the couch, Moira sat on its edge, leaning forward and intently looking down into something on the coffee table in front of them. As he swung forward he saw a glass of water that sat by itself on the unevenly stained wood. His swing stopped, and he too leaned forward. On the water's surface a strange white liquid moved, as if it were a cloud searching for its own shape.
Then Ezra moved as one moves in a dream, without cause or reason. His eyes took the place of hers and slipped down into the water. Serpentine and murky, the substance sunk into a white desert at the bottom of the glass, reached out with an alien hand, formed faces, trees, fish, and a future, too, as it let the slow force of its will dissolve into the water's permissive constitution.
Without an answer to what he had seen, he found himself on his swing again, and everything suddenly became common. An old black woman, whom Ezra immediately recognized as the maid he had often heard about, was tending to a pot that hung above the fire. She hummed to herself as she stirred, and the girls spoke quietly to each other on the couch, apparently waiting for whatever was cooking. The woman was heavy. Beneath the folds of her dress and apron her hips and butt stuck out prominently. Her plump wrists and hands strained against the cuffs of her blouse as she stirred, and heavy beads of perspiration ran down her dark forehead from the white bandana she wore to tie her graying hair back. Looking over her shoulder, she seemed to be asking his mother a casual question, but though her lips moved, as did his mother's to respond, he could not hear what was said.
Tituba (for suddenly he remembered her name) tapped the side of the pot a few times with a wooden spoon and then removed it from its hook above the fire. Taking care not to burn herself, she held the pot away from her body, carried it to a place beside the couch, and placed it on the wooden floor. Ezra was struck with great concern that the pot would immediately burn through the floor and called out to them to lift it up, but again his words were swallowed by the peculiar ether that belongs to dreams.
Leaving the pot where it was, the old woman walked directly over to Olyvia, who looked to be twelve or thirteen years old, took her by the hand, and led her over to it. Looking into the pot's contents together the woman seemed to be offering Olyvia instructions, at which point Olyvia reached under her skirt, pulled her underwear down, squatted over the pot, and urinated into it. Scooping the pot up from under the girl, Tituba quickly took it back to the fire, stirred again briefly, and returned seconds later with a completed cake sitting neatly inside it. Just as Ezra had warned them, in the spot where the pot had originally been placed, a black circle had been burned into the floor. Tituba now stood inside of this circle, which suddenly expanded, called a large dog into the room, laid down the cake in front of it, and quietly watched the dog devour it, pot and all.
Ezra found his hand under Tituba's. She ran it along the goat's head and neck as if she were teaching him how to pet it appropriately. Behind him he heard his mother's window rattle in the wind, stop briefly, then rattle again. Over and over again she ran his hand over the animal's black fur. Leaning closer to him she began to hum in his ear, and for the first time the element of sound entered the dream. The song she hummed was familiar, and perhaps he could have placed it had his efforts at recognition not been overwhelmed by the anxiety he felt at seeing his hand trapped by her hand against the animal. "Yes boy, ya see that is how," she whispered, her voice raspy with age. "Boy, Tituba be speakin' to ya now. She's askin' in plain language now. Do you see that is how?"
"I see," he answered meekly.
"Ya see, do ya? Whatcha see, boy? Tell Tituba then."
"That's the way to treat it."
She laughed at him. "Nah, boy," she went on, her voice filling with what felt like malice. "Ya can't have really come from her, boy; she was no fool in the way ye are." She directed his hand again. "Think again, stupid boy. Think now, if I say ya are to. That girl, ye mother, she lissen to Tituba deep inside. Feel now. Do ya see that is how?"
He shut his eyes. "That is how you pet it."
"Nah, boy. Feel down here, ya dummy boy." She moved his hand onto the goat's underside, then stopped suddenly. Under his hand he felt the animal's heart beating violently. "Ya feel the heart then? Ya feel it pushin?"
"I feel it."
"Ya know who be beatin' that heart, dontcha boy?"
"No... No, I don't," Ezra said, his voice beginning to fail him.
"Now, up here..." She pushed his hand onto the goat's throat. "Ya feel the breathin'? Now, do ya feel that is how?"
He tried not to let the tears that had begun running down his cheeks be heard in his voice. "How? How what? I don't...understand."
She shook her head sadly. Suddenly she grabbed his hand as tightly as she could and pinned it hard against the goat's throat. Ezra pulled back, but his muscles seized and turned against him. His desperation strangled his words, made him mute, and he now wished for the scream he had fought off moments before. Moving his hand in slow circles around the throat, she began to massage it. The beast pulled away from them, as if it too had suddenly become afraid of what was coming. But the old woman grabbed it quickly with her free arm, too quickly, and with strength not properly belonging to a woman her age, and still holding Ezra against her, she pulled the goat even closer to them and continued to move his hand in even circles across its fur. Unable to break free the goat started to struggle for breath, and then began gagging violently. It threw its head back and forth and made strange sounds, as if it were about to vomit. It trembled against his hand while the powerful arms of the black woman held it, and him, pressed against each other. And then, from some cavern hidden within the goat's stomach, the sound came again, as it had to his mother after she had blown out her candle that night he had seen her in his sleep. Up through the animal entrails, through the throat and out its mouth the river of sound poured into the air that surrounded them. There it stood still for a moment, then rose in pitch and began to quiver expectantly in waves and lines that enclosed them. The swollen song began to steal a pulse from the earth that drew a second set of liquid walls back in on them. The closing shape swayed slightly, like lines of water in a gentle wind. Sure that the ghost-music would surround and swallow him, Ezra pulled the goat closer. The old woman placed her mouth beside his ear. "Ya feel now boy?" She spoke quietly, calmly, and pressed his hand against the goat's throat again. "Now ya feel that heart, that breath, that sound? Ya feel that is how?"
"How? How what?" he asked desperately.
"That is the way something is consuming you, boy."
The bus was moving when he woke up. He was uncomfortably warm and could not make sense of where he was. The laughter and loud words on the bus crowded in on him while he struggled, in that curious transition between sleep and wakefulness, to discern whether or not what had happened in his dream had in fact "happened". Flustered, he ran his hand over his face, hot with embarrassment, and felt the imprint of the seat pressed into his skin.
"Finally woke up, eh?" K.J. Kalafati said, surprised to see the back of his friend's head in the seat in front of him. "You feel better?"
Right away Ezra was conscious of how painfully empty his stomach felt. "Yeah, a bit."
"You sure you're gonna be able to stay up all night?
"
"Yeah, I'll be okay."
As soon as they were all back in their hotel rooms, Ezra quickly left again to be on his own. That morning, just as they were leaving, he had seen a waiter from the hotel bring a platter full of bagels, fruit, and cookies into the lobby. First making sure that no teachers or students were still there, he walked as quickly as he could, without running, to the table opposite the check-in desk where the food had been placed that morning. But all that was on the table was a clean white tablecloth and some tourism flyers. He looked around hopefully—perhaps it had been moved.
One of the hotel clerks, a heavy woman with tightly curled, dark hair, noticed him searching for something. "Can I help you with something?" She adjusted her eyeglasses and looked over the frames at him.
"Uh, no. I'm okay," he responded nonchalantly, pretending to still be distracted by what he was searching for. She smiled politely and resumed whatever she was working on. "Actually," he said as he stepped back toward her, "there was a plate with some food on it on that table this morning, but I don't see it now and..."
"That's our continental breakfast. It ends at eleven." She said this, to his great surprise, in a manner that seemed to imply that what she had said was the absolute end of the matter, as if his empty, aching stomach was not going to be taken into account at all. Ezra trudged back to the elevator and then to his hotel room on the fourth floor. Gathering himself before he entered, he turned the doorknob and walked into an absolute wall of cologne, gel, hair spray and soap. The other boys were preparing for their last night in the hotel. Ezra fell face first onto the bed.
"Hurry up. We're going up to the girls' floor."
"You guys go ahead. I'll catch up in a few minutes."
"Okay, we'll see you up there."
Pushing each other out the door, the three friends left to go upstairs. The door slammed shut behind them and Ezra sank deeper into the mattress.
The hall was crowded with kids. A stereo was playing a Beastie Boys tape, and Mr. Fell, the art teacher, walked forcefully past him and down the hall to turn the volume down. Stepping over each pair of legs as he made his way down the corridor, Ezra exchanged words with some of his friends as they tried to trip him up, and the manner in which everyone was sitting put him in a predicament for which he was not prepared. Should he immediately presume to sit beside her, or should he wait to be invited? He decided that the gift he had given her today had paved the way for a more direct approach. Those pajamas! That shirt! Ezra tried desperately to hide his rapture. But it was too late. Lisa Penny, sitting beside her, laughed out loud at him.
"Put your eyes back inside your head! Why do you always stare at her like that?"
"Like what?" Ezra answered in a tone that was more defensive than he had intended.
"Like you don't know what I mean, Ezra!"
He saw it before he had been able to recover from Lisa's insult. Louise's feet were pressed playfully against Todd Booker's, their heels together and pushing back and forth, first one then the other, she pretending powerlessness against Booker's youthful masculine strength. She drew her feet back quickly and then stuck them out again as if she had only been stretching. Ezra stepped over her legs and walked toward the large window a few feet beyond them.
"Hey!" He felt a pull at the back of his pants. "Come sit with us."
Pulling her legs safely back she continued to laugh with her friends. Todd Booker stood up and walked away without a word, or even a backwards glance. Her eyes followed his easy swagger down the hall. Then she looked back at Ezra and began to flirt with him.
It started in mock violence as they pushed each other back and forth with their forearms, each trying (but not really) to knock the other over on his side. Ezra thought about the way those beautiful pajama-clad legs had sprung free from underneath her oversized t-shirt, about the way they now clung to her body. He pulled playfully at the little blue cotton balls on the back of her socks, and she wrestled and whined helplessly and seductively as she tried to fend him off. Finally, he grabbed one of the little blue balls too hard and ripped it off. Pretending to be offended, Louise looked down at her damaged sock, and opened her mouth in mock astonishment.
"Give that back!" she commanded.
He held it away from her and grinned. Both of them laughing now, she jumped onto his back and tried to get the little blue ball back. Ezra rolled quickly onto his stomach and held his prize underneath him. Her body now lying on top of his, she squirmed as she tried to pull his arms away. Seeing that it was hopeless, she tightened her grip and pulled herself up so that her mouth was beside his ear. "Give it back to me, Ezra," she whispered. Pleasure shot through the whole of his body as her warm breath caressed his ear.
"No." He was barely able to speak. She slid off him and sat back breathlessly against the wall.
"You're mean!" Her chest heaved as she spoke.
"I know," he said, smiling at her.
"You ripped my sock!"
He laughed as she smacked him playfully on the arm. And as he rolled the little cotton ball in his hand he was certain now that on their last night in Boston she would kiss him.
Their last stop before heading home was Cheers. He walked down the steps to the bar, steps that looked identical to the ones he had so often seen on the show's introduction. Inside, however, the real Cheers looked completely different, perhaps a sixth the size that it was on television. The students crowded inside and were given a short talk on the bar's history and why it had been chosen as the setting for the show. Each was given a complimentary key chain and a few minutes to make purchases at the overpriced gift shop. Feeling light-headed from hunger, Ezra noticed that two men sitting at the bar watching baseball were the only patrons, and he hung back as the other students filtered out.
Beside the door, on a high, round table that had not yet been cleared, he saw a piece of garlic bread that someone had left uneaten, as well as a half full glass of wine with a red lipstick stain on the rim. He looked quickly towards the bar. Both men, along with the bartender, were watching the game and had their backs turned toward him. He knelt down, pretending to tie his shoe, and waited for the last of his classmates to exit the bar. Once they had gone, Ezra forced the garlic bread into his mouth and drank the entire glass of wine in one committed act of thirst. Then he left Boston.
That spring, as everyone in her family had expected, Elsie spent more time than usual tending her vines. Looking slightly discontent, she spent evenings trimming the canvas back to clear a path for the light that blessed Walpurgis on some days and left it cold and shadow-split on others. This attention to detail was more than just concern for the plants themselves; a deeper fear was at work here—the fear that her own health was somehow connected to the health of the vines, and that if she were not able to care for them properly, then the child she had been unable to care for would return to haunt her. She had always lived down the road from his grave, and the relief she felt at leaving it behind, at creating a distance from the stone and words that marked her loss, tore at her sense of maternal loyalty.
All summer long Olyvia seemed to make "extra" appearances, always accompanied by Ted, who kept his distance as the sisters worked the rows of vines. Ted Willains was only the second decent man Olyvia had dated. It had taken a long time before she'd finally agreed to see him because Olyvia could see the kind of man she was used to dating a mile off, and it was obvious to her that Ted was not like them. But of course she believed that she had changed, that she had grown into her own skin after painfully shedding it again and again over futile and destructive relationships. She was thirty-seven now, and age had brought a certain calm with it. The years, particularly her twenties, had been hard on her and left their mark, and she had left her mark on them, and in ways she was not particularly proud of. But she was tired of that life, tired of wanting men that did not want her, tired of being the constant victim of her own insecurities, tired of playing out the same predictable story, and she was tired of ending up alone. Eve
ntually a question so simple as to appear stupid had emerged from the unfamiliar rooms in which she had awakened, from the basements she had used in, and from the faith in herself that she had lost: "What do I want for myself?" she'd finally asked herself. A man like Ted, she had thought, was part of the answer.
Following Elsie from plant to plant, Olyvia asked questions to which she already knew the answers, then listened deferentially to Elsie's opinions, asked further questions, and put into practice whatever action was suggested to her. Although this was not because Olyvia revered her younger sister's knowledge or practices over her own. As the oldest sister of four it was to her, during her teenage years, that their father, an artist in this area alone, had passed on most of his wisdom and thoughts on viticulture. But Olyvia sensed and felt what the rest of their family did not: that Elsie's connection to, and perhaps her dependence upon her plants was continuous and not a mere stepping-stone or temporary medicine that had aided in her initial recovery. The roots that Elsie had laid deep in the ground all around the old schoolhouse were the ones that she held to when the terrible tempests of her son's death threatened to carry her away. Everyone else, Gord included, recognized that making wine was important to Elsie, but none of them went so far as to bind her well-being to that of the grapes, or to connect her stability to the changes in the liquid they drew from the fruit. Of course Olyvia could have shared this knowledge, but she held perceptions of this kind to be private, as if she had somehow been initiated into them through her own struggles and trials. How would Olyvia do with the vines? How would the three or four vintages that she would nurture and harvest turn out? Dependability and consistency were not Olyvia's strong points. But creative work was her secret discipline. She had the ability to focus on tasks, at least those that appealed to her as an artist, and see them through to an end that she was proud of. When she was a girl she had seen the pieces of music she had meticulously composed and mastered as having a life of their own, and now, as a woman, she saw the costumes she made for the theatre in the same way. Once these things had evolved as she felt they needed to evolve, once they had reached their aesthetic end through her hand and eye, she would set them apart from the rest of her chaotic existence, and from a distance take a pride in them that no misery or fault could compromise. And when some new pain or trial seemed to be surrounding her, Olyiva would bring these works before her mind's eye and draw security from them and say: I did that, and it is good and beautiful, and my creation cannot be taken from me, not even by God Himself.