“Ta-da! Now give us those toes!” The pretty young woman, who was so impressed by the shoes in the first place, leans over you, smelling of jasmine perfume. She paints your five toes in a red identical to the silk at your legs. Then your fingernails as well. You shake your head at her beautiful long fingers holding your worn, mottled hands.
“Oh.” Wan smile. You’ll be game, of course you will, but more and more you sense their togetherness, their belonging. That you are a temporary occasion, an accessory added to the excitement of having the extended family brought together into this jungle, their Elysium, a place of perpetual day. You hear chattering as a host of people surround the house, lighting paper lanterns and putting up string lights. The family resists how dark the jungle truly is, throwing light into every corner, each room radiating fluorescence and exposing the festive hues of the buffet: stewed meat, cabbage salads with vinegar dressing, deep-fried shrimp, tangy sauces, sweet alcohols, and Coke. Pursing your cherry-tinted lips you almost feel good. Really good.
When everyone has gathered inside the house, Thule, the young man and the doctor come to get you. You hear their happiness in the jaunt of their movements, how they bump about the tiny house. The jumpsuit flutters red around you as you enter with your crutch, the hands of your friends on your shoulders. The red distracts all eyes from the white bulb that hangs below you. Or they are polite enough not to look. A few people clap in anticipation directed at your other, whole foot, wearing the strappy silver Versace heel.
“We’re thrilled to have you as our guest,” the young man whispers. They seat you in a big La-Z-Boy against the wall. First there are drinks and a round of cheers. You feel the alcohol going quickly to your head. The room is full of enormous smiles, arms clasping other arms, laughing conversations and sudden whoops of glee. After awhile you find yourself alone with brightly clad buttocks as your global view. Then everyone drifts away from the area of the coffee table and is standing, conversing, feeling the music as it brings on a dance party. No one has talked to you beyond the initial flourish, to say hello or to ask how you’ve been feeling. What more could they say?
Food streams in from the hatchbacks parked out front and is served in gushes, on overflowing plates. The more they refill your plate, the deeper the La-Z-Boy draws you into its taut brown acrylic folds. The young man comes to you, saying, “You gotta try the ribs, the mashed potatoes, the jellied lobster.” Licking his lips and looking skyward, far from you, he says, “It’s been so long.” Slapping his hand on his leg. “What do you say! Isn’t this a party?”
You nod, mouth full of creamy potato. Before you can swallow, the young man is gone. He’s left before you can ask him things you’ve been wondering about: how his wife is, how his land claim is coming along. Couldn’t you both laugh now about the night you so recently spent together? You wanted to reassure him that you weren’t attached and had no intentions of tying him to you now that you are . . . crippled. You shake your head and shiver, pushing the thought out.
You drift into a reverie that is as simple as staring at wallpaper. It has no content other than overlapping palm leaves blowing in a falling night, lanterns speckling the leaves with green, pink, red and blue.
Through a lacy yellow curtain that separates your room from the bright kitchen, you see Thule has gotten lost in the bliss of Campari. And you see a table full of rum, Jack Daniels and other bottles. Ordinarily you’d be right there with her, but you can’t imagine hobbling past the curtain, or having a free hand to rest on the shoulders of people that block the way. Everyone is in motion. Couples are dancing. A woman is dipped Lindy-Hop style. Men and women are doubling over from jokes.
As the music gets louder you feel a twinge of desire mixed with panic. You too once loved to dance. You say thank you to the young girl who remembers you sitting there, who brings you drink after drink, who bends down to stroke your foot and admire your shoe. The absence causes a pang, and yet, the alcohol makes you think it isn’t true. “It isn’t true,” you say out loud and the girl’s eyes flash wide. When she runs off, inspired, returning an instant later with the young man, you see how the family and their guests share that look. How a light goes on inside of them, creating a brilliance that is collective, propelling them towards each other – to drink, to laugh, to encircle one another in their arms, to drift off contented and alone, casually stumbling down the steps to smoke in the cool of the twilit jungle.
Already, from afar, you’ve watched him talking intensely with other men, one pointing at an opened map. Your longing, in part, is to be him, to have a wide circle of family and community that believes you deserve a chunk of this island land. You are aware of so many of these plots just sitting here for decades with the wind blowing though them. The young man is smiling, his face animated with the prospects before him.
Then, mouth downturned when he gets close to you. “Oh my dear,” he says, taking the drink from your hand and setting it down, lifting you forward so you feel his strength but also a slight unsteadiness in him. You want to trust him, to go fast into his arms and into the heat of the dancers. You forgive him for ignoring you for so long. As he lifts you off the La-Z-Boy, you feel a film of sweat that has made the jumpsuit stick to your back, and a gust of cool air sweeping against it. You put your entire weight onto the thin silver heel. Be a red flame cutting through the crowd, you think. At first you feel weightless and tingly. But your inner workings, your body’s memory of itself, hasn’t yet realized there is a major part missing. And the young man moves too fast, you have to remind him of your crutch, which makes him laugh so that he overcompensates. Finally he pushes you both through the throng, not as though floating like the others, but in some geriatric oscillation.
The young man enjoys the attention. The golden boy returned but now with the cumbersome flare of distress at his side. You feel him forgetting you as he plays hero, all teeth and glistening skin.
“Now we dance,” he says, as neither question nor statement.
You nod, searching his eyes to see if he’s truly still with you. But the crowd has conspired to approve of the young man’s gesture to make the limbless woman dance. He takes you in his arms with careless ferocity and no one but the young girl notices the crutch drop to the floor. Cheers and more drinks poured. Your name, his name are chanted. He asks that you trust him completely: he will hold you tight and safe.
At times, you turn easily on the instep of the slim leather sole. Your right leg is still strong, a steadfast partner to the other leg which is loose and floaty, a trail of red ribbons leading down to nothing. He spins you gently, then more wildly as the crowd makes way. He acts sensitive, as if aware that you might get tired; he supports you, becoming the fallen crutch for the side of your body that’s off-sync with itself and the room. From time to time he lifts you right off the floor, but the more he does this, the more he isn’t looking into your eyes. His eyes glaze over, closing completely to feel the pulse of the music. Until someone changes the tune and the speakers blare out something he recognizes that sends a wave of thrill through him. A song from his childhood? His eyes are awake and seeing again, but in a way that makes him seem suddenly possessed by you – and you see how he looks right through you.
The crowd squeezes back in on your show. Their heat is electric. Each one of them is overtaken by the rhythm, and the voice of a woman that is languid, driving towards something guttural. From the corner of your eye you see the young girl standing guard, holding your crutch.
She is staring at you, brow furrowed, still as a pin, her supernatural eyes locked on yours, as if knowing that if she acts as a focal point you won’t fall. Unable to hold her eyes any longer, you feel the swell of the family reunion lift you up, and the silver shoe lose the ground. He is gone. You have been passed to other hands, nudged along, so that you understand that each one wants a turn with you. Gentle, mostly smooth, first you are in the hands of those you recognize: Thule, then the doctor, who winks as he holds you, then the grandmother, who is surpr
isingly strong. Each time, your left arm is thrown around their arms, and your body hoisted in a small lift. But as you are relayed toward the kitchen, the crowd becomes younger, more raucous, less cautious. You feel the same mixture of trust and anxiety that you did with the dolphins, except this time in reverse order; the longer you float in this sea of bodies, the less nurtured and the more afraid you become.
A young woman misses her hold on you and you stumble into the arms of a drunk man in a suit. He wants to make a show of it. Roughly grabbed, you feel your foot skid away, and you lurch forward, caught just in time by the young man who turns up and disappears just as quickly. Your balance leaves you for good as you heave to the side. Instincts tell you you will catch yourself, you always have before, but you fall onto nothing, no foot, empty space wafting around the hump and the flutter of red lines. You slip further into the slow-motion pulse of the room as you crash to the floor, the young girl’s hand just missing yours – she’s been running towards you – and the last thing you feel is her touch instead of pain.
“Oh, my dear!” The second time you hear this tonight. The young girl gone, the doctor now peering at you. His large warm hand is holding yours at the wrist, trying to read your heart. You notice the music has stopped. The light has gone sickly yellow. The room smells caged and sweetly sour. Foreheads are mopped with handkerchiefs amid the din of concern.
Invisible muscular arms raise you to standing. Half of your dress has turned a wet brown, it clings to your thigh. The young girl puts her thin arm around your waist and positions the crutch so you can finally lean on something that isn’t someone, an object that will stand still under you. Your stump aches as you hobble your way back to the safety of the La-Z-Boy. There is talk of having “left it too late now.” Some members of the reunion speak of going home. Thule’s protesting voice: “But the other foot!” A squabbling as the young girl dabs at your thigh with a damp dishcloth, then takes the clean side and presses it against your temples. You feel a fever coming on. You drink water, hear apologies, promises about a foot on its way this very minute.
When the artisan finally shows, approaching you with solemn ceremony, carrying a shoebox in both hands, you hear a quiet respectful applause from the family now trying to sober up fast, an applause that drifts in and out of your consciousness so that you forget where you are. You imagine the claps to be the sound of waves slapping against the sea at night, and those waves sparkling with starlight and boat lights, and you see yourself swimming toward a tall white mast. On two able feet you step onto the ladder of the sailboat. The hoist of your voluptuous body out of the heavy waters, into the crisp night air, is really no more than the young girl having slipped the lever on the La-Z-Boy from upright to recline.
Day twelve dead
(The day a third foot is gifted.)
IN THE MORNING YOU WAKE to the sound of snoring, trumpet blares followed by soft retreats, like the flapping of elephant ears. You sense it coming from the row of rooms running one side of the house. For a moment you feel like something has shifted deep inside you. From the heat streaming in from outside you figure it must be deep into the morning. You feel unmoored from everything domestic, your body aches and feels sticky and you want nothing more than to douse yourself in the cool ocean water.
Off in the kitchen, the grandmother is silently moving bottles and glasses from one location to another. There is something eerie about her now, how her body hunches over. She is rocking from side to side but never getting very far.
Your eyes sweep over the dirtied hump. You won’t look again. Not now. But the content of the glance, how it looked, stays with you: a rounded spectre, strung with dangling medical tape, streaked yellow and brown from drink stains. Like something someone from the Dark Ages would use to beat up someone else with.
When you try to focus instead on your other, pretty foot, also filthy, but well shaped, with bright red toenails flashing in the sunlight, a scream erupts from the absent foot. The feeling is so visceral all you can do is stare.
The grandmother comes into the room carrying a tray. As she hovers near, you smell the twang of coffee on her breath and pours some of the thick black liquid and passes you both cup and a shiny beige bun. She smiles a wide grin full of blackened teeth that look as if filed around the edges. You sip the sugary liquid and bite into the even sweeter bun. The sting makes your teeth whine. She lets you eat but is eager that you finish.
Her back is oddly very straight now, she primly sits on the edge of a chair on the other side of the coffee table while her eyes flit continuously between you and the shoebox. The shoebox. You recall the face of the artisan: expectant, with lunatic eyes.
She wants you to open it. Without ceremony you pull off the cardboard top and plunge in, pulling out your gift: a stiff prosthetic other-foot.
It is grotesque and beautiful. Ancient and brand new at the same time.
The foot that puts you in the otherworld, the grandmother thinks with awe. You see it in her face. She gasps and claps her hands, golden light is sweeping across her wrinkled cheeks. But at the same time, something in her eye is contagious, and you are looking forward to the ceremony of this foot becoming part of you.
The grandmother swirls the air in front of her with both hands as if whipping something into being. She wants you to put it on.
How? She doesn’t say, “Here, let me help you,” but rushes toward you and the foot, undoing a system of leather buckles and brass clasps, a harness that reminds you of horse-riding gear. From it dangles an intricately carved wooden foot looking exactly like your own. The toenails are shaded with a hint of rouge. The foot is arched abnormally high, the grandmother already has the other silver Versace shoe on it.
It horrifies you, and also makes you want to laugh. Which you don’t dare do, given the look of reverence on the grandmother’s face. On some level you are grateful, but you have to pee and want to get up. Remaining silent, you let the grandmother start the process of unwinding your bandages. At that moment Thule stumbles out of a doorway. When she recognizes what’s going on she calls out, “Wait, wait !” and runs the hallway, knocking on each door. Moment by moment, as the bandage comes undone, the family members awaken and sleepily encircle you.
Oohs and ahs over the other foot. Blearily staring at it, you think of the doctor saying you were lucky. Now you see that he meant lucky to have lost your original foot, the one that by now would be completely digested by the shark. The one that now needs to merge with this sculpted object, this thing in front of you that the family is presently stroking and poking at. You have to admit, when the family finally leaves it standing there freely on the coffee table, that the foot does have a magical, yet incomplete quality.
In order not to see the skin of your stump, which the grandmother bathes with water from a bowl, you study the otherworldly foot: its milk-stained finish made to match your skin colour, its familiar shape around the toes. A mimicry of your toes locked in static repose. A mirror-image replica of your right foot. Did the foot that got eaten alive actually look exactly the same as the right one? It doesn’t matter. At a glance, and with the harness hidden under pants, the foot is deceptively real.
You heart leaps when you think: this foot will never age! And then crashes: how will I swim with this foot? A vast grin spreads across your face, imagining yourself kicking hard wearing the Versace heels. You get it now. No, no, the purpose of this wraithlike foot is to be worn to a party. Not the party of last night, but another party. The family has made you an otherworldly foot that will strut you into the bastard’s annual bash. A foot to face the man at last. Just that.
Out of the bedroom steps the young man. Alone and blinking at you. You smile back, as the grandmother presses the wooden foot into place against your stump. It’s a perfect fit.
Day thirteen dead
(In which Bunny blows up a
superyacht.)
“ARE YOU READY?”
“Ready.”
The young man takes your a
rm and you make your first steps. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. Thule and the girls have spent the last hours doing your makeup, pressing your red silk jumpsuit, placing both your feet into the strappy silver sandals. But it is only with the young man at your side that you stand up and feel the full sensation of walking on your otherworldly foot.
Your hips wobble at first. You can’t imagine letting your entire weight fall, even for an instant, onto the side where there is nothing but this garish, toy foot.
“Let it rest, let it rest there,” encourages Thule. You cling to the right side of your body, the grounded part of you, feeling immoveable, stuck. “Go on,” everyone seems to say at once, and as your weight comes forward onto the toe, you let your knee bend as it wants to do.
“Good, now kick it through,” says Thule.
“Don’t twist on the foot. Press your hips into it. That’s the lady doin’ it. Look at that.”
And you feel no pain. Kicking it through becomes easy with each step, with each repeated motion you are reminded of your body as it once was, fluid and calm, pushing through water on the way to the next sailboat. So distracted by your immediate success and the thrill of being free again, you don’t notice how your arm drifts out of the young man’s grasp, or how your velocity picks up. Up and down the hallway you go, greeting the orange ball of the Miami sun as you pass it. In a swivel action that you marvel at, you meet the door at the far end of the kitchen, the door you first entered while bleeding like a stuck pig, and realize how much you want to exit it. You’re rushing to get there.
“Whoa,” says the young man, but you ignore him, push his hands away. You feel yourself tipping forward too much, as if you might fall, but you are so hell bent on doing this you find a hold and catch your balance. The wood of the door is warm. You watch your silver-sandled alien foot lift itself as if disembodied from you. But still cooperating, it takes you over the threshold.
Bunny and Shark Page 9