I Was Trying to Describe What it Feels Like

by Noy Holland

  It takes so little to please me.

  I think of Orbit in the back of the truck thinking, Slow, I think, to his daddy, but saying only to his sister, Cissie, faster, saying, Make it go faster—as though she might so surely will the body as to will the letters of the towns gone through to sink from the unsunned white of her skin too long, to Orbit’s mind, lasting—with town coming on, and dusk coming on, and with the saltiness of his sister’s skin, the first faint taste of blood.

  I think of them in the bed of the truck with the spare wheels and empty cans, the crap their daddy took with him that leaves a left boy thinking how small, how truly stowable, a boy like him might prove to be to be among the whatall a man with an eye to head for town might have picked and taken.

  IN TIME, HIS daddy will come. They will mend, in time, the broken place by now so long by lost dogs, mule deer, and so on, so long by now worked through that the greased hairs even of the whistle pigs fly from the fence curled back to a wire-toothed snarl.

  All day, the porch light burns, all night, and of late by now, room by room, in the windowed rooms the lights of the house come up also, so there is light throughout also—a tall house, storied—light enough that, driving by, you are apt to let your window down to listen out for dancing, a glimmer of voices, some bit coming across the field of familiar song.

  But, quick now. Drive on. They have already seen you passing.

  AS SOON AS Momma goes to sleep, I go back to Momma’s room to light the light back burning. Momma dreams. The wind creaks the pin oak tree grown up in our yard at night and you can hear the dogs at night and sometimes someone’s car goes by unlighted, with its engine off, if I am in the garden.

  My bike is in the garden. Nights when the wind and moon come up, its spoked wheels turn.

  I am growing tadpoles.

  There are three-hundred and sixty-five different kinds of tadpoles. I keep a trough filled up for them to grow up in in the garden.

  Cissie sits out in the garden. Soup pots, she sits with, and wooden spoons, lipsticks, purses, the lipped ends of cigarettes snubbed out in the corner drawer—she takes even the drawer to the garden—the scarves in it and soft-skinned gloves that Bingo will find and, by and by, dig a hole to bury. Cissie drags our beds to the garden, her bed and my bed, so at night I sleep under Momma’s bed and sit by day at the foot of her bed to see myself what the day will bring for Cissie to take to the garden.

  She wears one hat one day and leaves it out the next day to come inside for another.

  Some are feathered. On some of them, the brims are wide the wind bends up.

  The snubbed ends of cigarettes Momma keeps in her corner drawer, Cissie takes in her corner drawer to smoke on in our garden. But they are still our momma’s.

  I say to Momma, “Nome.”

  I know Momma sees out but I say, “Nome.”

  I say it is not the pearly crown our momma bought to marry in when Cissie crowns the fence with it, windy in the garden where the hung veil blows.

  Plus also dresses—jewely, gowny things hanging in the pin oak tree Cissie picks from in the morning, picking for days the black cape hung with black flapping threads that Momma used to dance in—to dance in. But she does not dance like Momma. When Cissie starts some loopy jig for a boy with half a head for it to chance a leg to look at, even our birding Bingo stops to watch like me instead.

  But also there is Momma. Cissie puts the music on and Momma lifts the bedsheets up for foot room and room enough for her knees to twitch, her rocking hips left gownless in the drifty light the lifted sheet lets in.

  I do not say, Did not. I do not say, Nome.

  I pull her sheets away from her, from her feet turned out at the foot of her bed—but she does not say, Orbit. Cissie does not say, Orbit.

  The filly hangs from the pin oak tree with still the show of Momma’s gowns until there is just the one gown to pick from in the morning.

  I go out in the morning. Some strange bird sings. I go out with goldenrod poked into my buttonholes to walk beneath the trees with her, the bright sun high by then, with only still the filly hung to ornament the pin oak tree Cissie picked clean.

  It is a yellow morning. The hems of the curtains in Momma’s room blow where we can see outside the house across our yard.

  Cissie says, “Say it is when you want to sleep and I’m your bad dream, see.”

  Cissie’s hands are hard and dry and running down my neck I dream.

  She says, “Hold still, Orbit.”

  She says, “Say I am the shadow that you walk on down the road at night, but it is yet so dark at night you do not think of me. You do not remember me. But there will be some dream. Say I am in the garden. Say I am some old yellow sleep come climbing up the stairs at night to walk you to the garden. Come. I walk you to the garden.”

  I can smell the rain clouds building out above our lake, the long, chuffing thunder come swift to drive us home. I think how we rode home. Sometimes Cissie’s skirt rose up and sometimes Cissie’s hair rose up and caught between my teeth and in my mouth where I had breathed it. Still no rain fell. Cissie had said when the rain would fall, then there would be no nests of bone the kingbirds make, then there would be no sister, calling from a rocking skiff to swim across the lake to her. I swam to her to: Orbit.

  We do not turn back.

  We go on walking until we cannot see the garden, until I cannot see the lean-to showing blue between the creaking trees I have not shown to Cissie.

  The bird we saw in the garden comes scrawing out its strange song it sings for us to follow, so we follow, seeing the bird wait in the trees for us when we stop to lift the heavy gown to leave the weight of fallen leaves and needled dust we walk through, that Momma’s gown gathers up, dragging, as we walk. We walk to a ledge where a brook runs through, where the sun drops sudden through the leaves of the trees like something we have asked for, something we would shy away to make a noise to ask for.

  Cissie lies down. When Cissie lies down, through the pearly crown’s fishnet veil, I can see the bird shadow sweep across her face.

  “I want to fall asleep so long the kingfishers steal my hair,” she says.

  “My hair is so long,” she says.

  Cissie spreads her hair beside her for a pillow for my head. She makes a bed of Momma’s gown beside her I can lie on. Now is no bird nor shadow now, no mark where we have named the trees to see to find our way by—no tailing dog, no broken fence, no way for us to know now if Momma howls nor sings.

  “Do you think I’m pretty, Orbit?”

  “Yes and no. Sure,” I say.

  “I think we better go,” I say.

  “Oh, shut up, Orbit. You could hang yourself at the foot of her bed and Mother wouldn’t think twice of it.”

  Cissie has a beaded purse and in the purse a plastic bottle. She unscrews the top from the bottle and puts the bottle in my hand.

  “Try some of this,” she says. “It’s good for scrapes and bruises.”

  Inside is as blue as the lean-to’s blue, bluer than a blue sea I have not swum in.

  “What’s it for, Cissie?”

  “To make you want nothing. More of it—you want that. But otherwise nothing.”

  “But why should I want nothing?”

  “Oh, never mind, Orbit.”

  So I take a big sip from it, another sip like Cissie says.

  She says to lie here. We have to lie here. The kingfishers, if we are still, will steal our hair to knit the bones to nest upon the water.

  Today is not a wind at all even on the water. I know today our lake is bright, so you can see your shadow gone to pieces in the water. Still if ever you swim, your shadow swims with you.

  Once a bright leaf falls. Once I saw a silver fish trail me in the water. Even if I swam hard, even if I did not quit, when I quit, I saw the fish beneath me silvering my shadow gone to pieces in the water.

  The fish was as quick as my tongue. It was small enough
to swallow—small enough to swim inside my mouth if I had let it.

  I wish I had let it.

  Momma says that, in her mouth, spiders have spun a web and webbed her toes and fingers.

  Maybe you also feel it. If it is bright you see a shadow, even if your eyes are closed, fall across your face. But I think you can feel it. I feel Cissie’s shadow, I think, fall across my face. Then I feel Cissie’s heart start to pound against my face.

  “Open your mouth, Orbit.”

  IN MOON LAKE, catfish grow as big as boys and dogs.

  The lake was once a bend in the river.

  There is a lake nearby where our father grew up that goes by the name of Reelfoot. Beneath it is a fault called New Madrid, the stress falling on the first syllable, the open a, the plea: New Madrid. At the time of the earthquake that formed the lake, the waters of the Mississippi ran backward.

  LET ME SAY I stood in our stand of corn, seeing the wind move the drapes out past Mother’s window. I heard them—they have those little weights in them that beat a slow, tapping sort of sound against the clapboard. When the wind stopped, the drapes hung flat against our house.

  IT GOT TO be needles.

  She was begging me for it. The morphine we had, the bottle the doctors had given us, was enough to kill off the whole house of us and the swaybacked mare, too. Mother ranted to get up out of her bed to get up into the closet to it where she had seen me keep it.

  I gave her enough to sleep through it, is all, so that she would quit begging me for it.

  That was all.

  It got to be she quit begging me for it, quit begging or sleeping or eating at all or wanting at all like she used to want to have something cleaned or moved in the room like she used to want, or to be touched. Mother lies there, her sheets to her chin, drawn flat the way Mother lies now.

  I SAID, “HOLD still. You lie here, Orbit.”

  I held him.

  I could see the way we took, the curved mounds the gown had left when we lifted the flounce from the dust and leaves.

  I said, “Now we have a secret. Now you know what I am glad of most: Mother doesn’t speak my name.”

  WHEN I HAVE raked the glass and nails across our yellow road at night, when I have washed our momma’s feet and filled the trough where the tadpoles swim and, with the cast-off hangers Cissie strew beneath the pin oak tree, mended the place in the wire fence the wiry coats of the dogs snag on, I ask her.

  “Can’t we go now?” I ask her. “Haven’t I stayed?”

  Cissie is with the rabbits down squatting in the yellow dirt. She has dirty knees.

  “You know we can’t,” she says. “What about your mother? We can’t just pick up and waltz off to the fair.”

  But I say, “Cissie.”

  I had not meant Cissie—not thought of her, that she would go.

  I say, “I thought me and Bingo might would go down to the fair.”

  TONIGHT IS JUST the slough to cross, the stubbled stretch of dusty field I bent my spokes and, days ago, punctured both my tires on. Now is no thrum nor rattle, no swoop I keep my breathing from.

  I go by foot, by flattened path. I leave my bike in the garden.

  I take my pail, my hollow pole, my chicken necks and fishy eggs the whiskered fish are wise to. The list Cissie makes of things to buy, I take—but I leave Bingo.

  There is no sign of Bingo.

  At the lake is a new moon, shining. It is best on a night when the moon is thin to lie alone in your metal skiff to listen for your skiff to tick and slur with the swim of the snakes’ thick bodies. They are in the deep part you dive into with stones to ride, or sometimes, by some skinny chance, you find them in the shallows. I pole out from the shallows—past pale frogs squat in the laps of trees I since have grown and done with. Such frogs—some harmless, yippy, simple-sighted house gyp’s easy prey.

  It is a hard row open-handed out to reach the deeper water, a clever eye that catches sight, by thin moon, of their mouths. It is the best a boy can hope to see is see inside their mouths. Else there is a place to look where you can see the water welt, which you have got to watch for.

  Then you have got to lie down.

  Then you have got to listen.

  Listen: I know it is cold down there at night against the water.

  Because also, it is August. Also I was dressing, thinking only of the haze of heat that lies on us in August. Still I wait here; you have to wait here. Maybe there is fog here, the thin moon down.

  I don’t think they hear me.

  I have got my chicken neck poked onto my hook I strung from my pole our daddy gave me. Maybe they can smell it. They smell with their tongues.

  DO YOU KNOW there is a good chance that tadpoles see a simpler world than we humans do?

  We can see their legs inside them, their pinpricks behind their toes of their tiny ears. Their ears are not like our ears.

  A boy can hear the frogs. But frogs hear only frogs, I hear.

  The frogs cannot hear Momma. The frogs cannot hear Cissie out singing in the wind at night to lost dogs if they come.

  But maybe they won’t come. Maybe since I fixed the fence, then it will be just snakes tonight to come into the garden, and garden snakes are garden snakes. They are not like water snakes, which rob the nests the kingbirds make if ever there are calm days and no wind on the water.

  Now is not a wind at all to move you on the water.

  DO YOU KNOW where the Pacific is? Because there is a frog I heard of there which lives on some island there, which I would like to look at. It is not like our frogs here. It is very rare, I hear. But I would like to look at it.

  I CAN SEE the water welt starboard past my metal skiff I kneel up in to paddle. So I cast out, I think to cast out. I have my stone to stone them with if I miss my pail. I have my pail, my good stout lid on it, which Daddy says you have to have if you are ever going to make a nickel at the fair.

  But first you have to cast out.

  Come on, Orbit.

  I BET SOME egg-sucking snake lives there, where the frogs live out on that island there, and this is why they do it—the little ones.

  They are not like our frogs.

  They are not like turtles. Their eggs are not thin eggs like Doll’s that she leaves out by the road some night for snakes maybe to find some night while we are in the garden.

  And they are not like tadpoles. They do not swim. Their legs grow up outside them, growing in their mother’s back—her back as smooth as Doll’s smooth back they squat on so the weight of them pocks themselves a place in her that she will have to carry.

  I HAVE GOT to cast out.

  They are so near.

  But Bingo is not with me. If Bingo does not look for me and Cissie does not look for me, since I have said to Cissie we are going to the fair?

  I have got to paddle. But to paddle since I saw them near?

  So I have got to lie here.

  Maybe they are under here. I am not a scaredy.

  I am going to lie here. It is safe to lie here. I am sure to lie here that it is safe to lie here, that it is safe to listen at the skiff for the tick, for the slur they make, the barbed fast boil of the cottonmouths’ thick bodies.

  IN THE MORNING, I see raincrows cawing in the trees.

  I have seven quarters, fourteen dimes, so many nickels yet to count and dog’s tail in my pocket, pool to play in my pockets, since it is just a rough road nobody ever comes on much to climb out on from the hollow.

  Sometimes if a car goes by, I think, Is that a car gone by, unlighted with its engine off, if I am in the garden?

  Is Bingo in the garden?

  I watch for her in trucks gone by until one truck is a pick-’em-up truck that the fellows in it turn around and turn back around again to drive it out ahead of me to wait for me to follow.

  The one fellow says, All be, and the other one goes, Shew.

  “All be,” the one says, “will you look at them
shoes?”

  “Damned if it ain’t that scoundrel’s boy,” the other goes. “Shew.”

  “Will you look at them goddamn shoes?”

  I have put my squeaky shoes to ride clean atop my pail until I near to town.

  “How far is it to town?” I ask.

  “Fur. Fur enough. Oh, fur.”

  “What ye got shut in that bucket, boy?”

  It is an old pick-’em-up truck with dents and rust and muddy clumps and cans thrown back in the back of it, rattling tools and antlers, shot shells, I see, and leafy wads and the misspat spray of tobacco juice but: true. It is a far piece, true, by road or wood for a body to get to town.

  “Cottonmouths,” I tell them.

  “Cottonmouths? Shew.”

  “Ain’t but two kind of snakes he’s afraid of. Live ones and dead ones.”

  “You git back in the back then, boy. Shew.”

  I put in my lidded pail, my stone for luck I have kicked from home, and before my legs are swung to clear the beaten-up sides of the bed of the truck, we are hell-bent howling down the road run to rut and ruin by the last good trough of rain.

  I keep my pail from tipping. I catch my cap. I dust my shoes.

  I am so lucky! By hoof bent and ailing truck, by day and dark, I’ll reach there.

  What boy is this?

  Buhl Parson’s boy!

  Pray, boy. A peek, boy. What have you got in that bucket?

  A hole, ma’am. A dancing toad. A six-legged armadillo.

  Come riding, else walking, they come, poor of shoe and pocket it is my good luck to fill—prayerful old disheartened hearts, one and all for music come, for dancing and the girly sweet of candy in the air. For Clem, come, always Clem, and for the carnies barking: A whale! A whale! The great white Clem! Harpooned in a covered truck they haul him fifty counties in.

  Forty-nine foot long of him!

  Nigh on seven tons of him!