I Was Trying to Describe What it Feels Like

by Noy Holland

  The redbird was a redbird before I touched the redbird. After, its neck was broken.

  I chopped the pin oak down.

  I should not have done it.

  A tadpole’s legs are dark inside, as small inside the skin to cut as when a fly is yellow. I did not want to see the flies. First a fly is yellow. Then are yet the legs to grow, the thin wings and eyes to grow, though first by night by Momma’s room I chopped the pin oak down. I know our momma saw me chop the pin oak down.

  Here is what I figure:

  But I cannot figure.

  Figure there are flies inside.

  I pulled the flap back. I had to light a light inside.

  Inside the filly are flies inside and in our house also. Also in Bingo worms inside and in our house also. Inside the snakes are fishy eggs and maybe frogs also, and in the fish also. Inside the frogs are flies inside and in the filly also, in maybe Bingo also. Maybe fishhooks also. In the whiskered fish are fishhooks and maybe ducks also. Maybe Vernon also.

  There could be a dog.

  Then if me and Cissie dove and held our stones and sank with them until we sank to the bottom of the lake and we lay on our backs on the bottom of the lake with our stones on top to hold us, we would hear our dog.

  Because I bet she is digging. We would hear our Bingo digging.

  Because she is just our dog.

  OUR OSCAR PUT his flap down and walked between my pockets. True.

  But I cannot figure true.

  The pin oak tree is down. The filly, I dragged to the lean-to. It is my lean-to, true. It is my vole I found. It is in my pocket.

  If the vole is my vole, is its head mine also?

  Is it my head also?

  Once it was the vole’s sharp head. But if the vole is not now, if it was and is not now, its head is only mine now, its feet, its tail mine also.

  My broken head,

  my feathered neck,

  my ropy tail my daddy cut—

  mine—

  my muzzle also,

  my long toes, mine,

  my yellow eyes,

  my bones of Momma’s fingers, mine.

  She will be mine also.

  ONE MISSISSIPPI, I count, two, to know the seconds by. I think she is not breathing. I try to keep from breathing. But sometimes we breathe.

  Her mouth is open. I thought Momma sings. But Momma does not sing, I know. There is no such song she sings that only she can hear, I know.

  I take my time some. I wash my finger. I put it in her mouth.

  One-five-zero, zero-zero-zero-zero—I cannot remember the zeros it should be—the toothless years the turtles pass. But a tongue, I know, our turtles have, a toothless frog a tongue, too, else it would not sing. Else you would not hear it sing.

  It is getting looser. I work it with my finger some—a sharp tooth, Momma’s dog tooth.

  A goose’s tooth, you cannot pull, though Gander knocks at the door come night, though maybe you could pull his tongue to quiet down the yard at night—if you broke his neck first. If you had a pliers.

  They are Daddy’s pliers.

  I work the gum up. I shut the curtains. I pull the window closed.

  Listen: between day and dark, you hear them. With my breath I breathed in Momma’s room between her breaths, you hear them.

  But the frogs are not calling me.

  “Open your mouth, Momma. Open your mouth, Momma.”

  I thought they were calling me.

  But they are not calling me.

  They are calling Momma.

  COME.

  The trees are green still. The cows can be heard feeding. I will keep quite near.

  Only come, if you will, from the dirt road that ends, if you wish, at the paved road. Where there is dirt, the path will have been worn smooth. Where saw grass, the blades are broken.

  Cross the slough, the levee. I will not be far from you. The way is perfectly clear.

  From the levee, you will see a high, red bank gouged by the flow of a river. True: perhaps there is no river.

  Perhaps the almanac is right: there will be no river this year.

  But the road—there will be the road, yes. The arroyo, yes. Some truck stop, some Sears. Some fair-grounded border town of tooled belts and Kewpie dolls, dirty-shirt dog shows, souvenir spoons.

  Remember he kept a rabbit’s foot saved frozen from the garden. Remember a vole in his pocket.

  I left the doors both open—Mother’s door and our door. There was something Orbit wanted to show me. He kept bumping around in the hall for me, to wait for me, to show me.

  I put my shoes on. The sun was dropping. Mud swallows sang in the eaves. We crossed the yard, the garden, stepping over the boughs of the pin oak tree.

  “What is it, Orbit?”

  We were marching. We crossed the hidden field. The geese flew so high above the field, I could hardly hear them. I could not see them. I looked away over the trees as we went, thinking that I would see them.

  We walked on. The path we walked, I could not see myself to follow. Still I followed. The shade was spotty when we reached the trees. I saw a swatch of something blue showing between the trees.

  “This is where I come to think,” Orbit said.

  I saw he had made a lean-to with a tarpaulin in the trees.

  “You brought me out here to tell me that? This is what you had to show me?”

  NO RAIN FALLS. No birds swift past. On the bank of the lake is a shallow skiff the river bend has come to. The river is quite near. The wide boats going slow to sea, you can see from Tuscaloosa.

  Tuscaloosa is a good town. There are doctors in Tuscaloosa. No guns, no books, no telephones. But a river—yes. A yellow house, a lake near Tuscaloosa.

  The lake is deep, the river. The door to the house is open. Inside the door is a woman’s purse. Inside the purse is a pair of gloves. The purse is open. The door is open.

  In my mind is an empty room Mother walks into when I speak.

  But this is silly.

  I sat on my hands in the parlor. I closed the window. I drew the curtains.

  Listen to me, Orbit. It was not the sea we heard. It was not Ohio.

  It is just a sound I like to hear, the name Ohio.

  HE SAID, “COME on, Cissie.”

  I saw the bird first—it was a redbird. It hung from its feet from a string from a limb the tarpaulin was lashed to.

  Orbit folded the flap of the tarpaulin back. There were rows. At the mouth were rabbits he had brought from the garden whose necks you can break with your thumb. We stepped over the rabbits to step inside—we had to light a light to see by. I was too tall to stand inside.

  He said, “Close your eyes, Cissie. Open your eyes, Cissie.”

  A blue wall hung with a gaggle of frogs—pinned, quartered. A yellow cat. A turtle—the beaked neck of a turtle, the dark shards of shell. Orbit had teeth in his pocket. He had a pitchfork, looped with snakes skinned from behind their angled heads, and mice—pink, puny, hairless things Orbit had driven the pitchfork through, that you could see the prongs of the pitchfork through.

  “This is where you come to think?” I said. “You brought me out here to tell me that?”

  There was a pin oak tree in our yard. In the tree was a crooked limb—

  What of it?

  She read limericks; she wore knee-highs.

  The yellow cat is a yellow cat.

  The blacktop runs beside the river, to sand against the sea.

  What of it?

  Orbit pulled away the filly’s hide, the slab of her rib with the toe of his shoe. He nudged her open.

  THE WAY IS easy to see—to see her, to word her, to be shut of her. I cannot get shut of her.

  Come. There will be a road, an airport. There are lights so bright at airports, you can hear them burning.

  Come. Forget about Ohio. The salt bluffs, the sea.

  The door is open.

  We may go
now.

  You may leave us.

  I drew the sheet back. Needles, implements, morphine, salve. It would have to be needles—the body seen, the witnessed skin. The light grayed, blanched her. Mother’s skin grew weak, and pulled away.

  Mother, please.

  I love you, Mother.

  A signal, a word. If she spoke, I did not hear her. Maybe she asked for water. Maybe a light was on.

  I drew the sheet back. Her gown was twisted.

  No rain came, no father.

  When the rain came, it stayed, the wind, the no-time of waiting through—the dry, disordered days, dog days, days of heat and of the wild cry of geese faintly above the fields and in the dusking garden.

  She is years dead. She is dying. I am in some airport.

  Everywhere, even where there are no paved roads, still there will be an airport—a strip to portage to, pebbled or clayed, what have you, beaten grass swept of light.

  The light is leaving our windows. The Naugahyde booths are dreams.

  I draw her gown back. Our mouths are open.

  No birdsong, Mother? No silver fish?

  Very well, then. Very well, then.

  I fixed the needle.

  No fathers then, no doctors, no dogs in Tuscaloosa.

  There was nothing I could do for her, nothing I could not do to her. I rouged her cheeks, teased her hair. I harvested beets from the garden.

  Go on. Go on. There is not a place in you I will not work into. I work apart bone.

  The bland root of me swam between her bones.

  The fields are planted. The door is open. The trees are green still.

  Go on.

  I cannot remember you.

  I unremember you.

  For years I do not dream of you.

  Go on. I give back nothing.

  THE WEEKS, THE months, they gave me something to do with myself. I had a sense I liked of myself—that I was needed, that there was a great givingness in me, a patient, damaged, holy sort of hardheaded love in me.

  Love. Say love.

  That I waited, say, since I waited—not to say or have it be said of me that what I did I did because there was not patience enough in me, enough faith, love, talk in me, that what I did I did because there was such a rush in me—there was a great hurry in me.

  Come. Quickly. Come.

  The lights are burning. You can hear the lights still burning. I can conjure up a dream for us, the Dopplered wheeze of an engine, a tire song on a paved road—

  But this is easy. To conjure a dream is easy.

  To upstage the dead is easy.

  I take—I give back nothing. I have had my children scraped from me—accidents of fucking. No wide swim, no brackish suck. But the reamed cunt, the scoured earth.

  The Buick in flames on the highway. The breakfasts, the tea.

  Love. Say love.

  Say something, anything more—that you are sick, or lonely, some wild boy gone to seed one night, some buckaroo I loved one night farmed apart on scag one night, one night when I was twenty. That you are oceans to cross from home, let us say.

  Or nothing. Let us say almost nothing.

  In my hands are the hands of your mother.

  Let us go now. She may leave us.

  Look, you. You, newborn.

  Has there been no dream we met in? No Naugahyde booth we met in in some tawdry airport bar?

  Here’s to you, love. And to you, my sweet.

  The fields are burning.

  So, go. Go on, go on. Run tell the doctor, the children, the schools. A signal, a word. Only whisper.

  Light out.

  Winter wheat, corn counties. Cave Hill, Carthage. Caspian, Ocoee, Reelfoot, Sargasso.

  There is always the next place to go to get to to light out of.

  The road lapses. Snow falls—schools close, dog tracks, airports.

  There will be some airport.

  From the soft palm, the girth of tumor in her—let me say, let it be said of us, of myself and of my mother said—in a Naugahyde booth, in a makeshift bar, in the shaking heat of an airport said—some lesser god from the greening rift—beaded, slicked, a pale sheen—a long cock broke to probe me.

  Newborn, adieu. Asante.

  To you, lad. And to you, my sweet. May we have a good long romp of it.

  For who will love what we love?

  What bright house?

  What reading tree?

  Who will love our dead for us, the wormy dog at our feet at night, the harpooned corpse of a baleen whale we walk a day to see?

  I COULD NOT hear her. I saw her talking. Mother for hours made sounds with her mouth in a voice not as loud as breathing. I leaned my head near. I felt her breathing.

  She was saying thank you. Mother was saying thank you.

  After all the months of it, the careful doses of morphine, the dressings, the scarves? The Popsicles and floating pears, swabbed teeth, open sores, bludgeoning heat, neighbors, neighbors—for this, she thanks me?

  The long box we build for her we break her bones to lie in.

  Mother kept a cot at the foot of her bed certain nights I slept in. I was sleeping. When I waked up, I found her dead.

  I pulled the drapes shut. I closed her mouth some. I knew to close her eyes.

  I left them open.

  I untied the scarf I had tied Mother’s foot for weeks to the post of her bed with. I had taped a needle to a vein in her foot. I took it out. I got the sheet off. I took the catheter out. She had bled from her mouth. I wet a washrag. I took her gown off. Her gown was bloodied. I took her pillow. The blood was dry. I wiped her mouth off. I rinsed the washrag. I wiped her neck some. I wiped her shoulder.

  We had a big barrel we burned in.

  I burned the gown, the pillow sack. I burned the washrag.

  I got her arms straight. I turned her feet in. I got her rings off.

  We put on lipstick. We put her rings on.

  Day came. Men came. Rain.

  We sat for the men with our hands in our laps with all that was ours in the parlor.

  BLOOD COUNTRY

  The wind came down from the mountains and drove the fire across the plains. The fire burned fast and bright now and everything living moved with it, the jackrabbit and the antelope, the coyotes flushed from their dens. The badgers dug in. He tried to think of it. He thought of his wife but he had lost her name.

  He rode with his back to the mountains going blue in the dark coming on. A light was burning. He needed to reach it. He rode holding to the horn of his saddle. He did not ride so much as hang there as in some shoddy western. He felt the heat of his face. His face was on wrong. The wind pressed against his back and made him cold.

  Her name was Prairie. Prairie was his girl, his wife was what? The wind parted his horse’s mane and blew it eastward. The pronghorn would outrun the fire but cattle would heap against fences until the fire burned them alive. The prairie was shortgrass prairie. Land of his youth. Blood country.

  His horse walked calmly and the flames moved off from them and ash made the going quiet. He slept he did not know how long before his horse spooked and started. A rabbit bounded through the burnt grasses, wind lifting and twisting its hair. Somewhere a bird dipped past. A clump of roots flared.

  HE DID NOT wake again until the ranch house. He had been in the mountains, he explained, pushing cattle. It was a young horse. He did not know anymore. He had a wife he knew, could he call her? He didn’t know how to call her. He had forgotten the number. Town was hours. He had parked his rig somewhere. Somebody else had been with him. He could not bring up her name, he meant his wife’s name. His head was breaking. He was vomiting between words.

  He said, I think my name is John. He tried a number. It was somebody else. He had lost his sons’ names, his mother’s. He tried a number. I think I am John, he repeated.

  AT LAST HE reached her. Elaine was her name. She came to him, a good woman, and nur
sed him the years in bed. He had been thrown, he supposed. Maybe his horse had reared up and hit him.

  He lay in bed for years and tried to think of it. He flew into rages. He had seizures. The doctors worked on him. His jaw had been thrust into his brain. His mind wasn’t right, it would not be right again. He could hear his eyes rolling in their sockets.

  He was dangerous, the doctors told his wife. His wife was thin and weak and her hair fell out. You need to do something, the doctors told her. She came at them with a rake.

  He heard mice half an acre away. The sound of opening a bag of potato chips knocked him to the floor. His boy dropped a horseshoe behind him; his face swelled as if struck.

  He went nowhere. Bed to kitchen to bathroom. He meant to take his life but something stopped him.

  HE WAS FORTY when the horse wreck happened. He was fifty when they brought him out again into the wind of that dry country. What was expected of him, who would recognize him, how was he to behave?

  The grass had come back. Sun had whitened the bones against the fences.

  He could not run right but he could stand. He could ride a horse, he discovered. That’s what saved him. He kept to the plains, to the coulees. He rode anything. He broke colts with his boys. He roped calves at the local rodeo.

  In the fall of that year he was thrown by a colt and dragged by his boot from the stirrup. His boy found him. He was living still. The wind tumbled his hat into a coulee. The boy studied his father—the mess of his face, the years ahead. He saw his life spent. He saw his mother with her robe hanging open.

  His name was Trinity. His father twitched in the grass. Jackrabbit, coyote—on anything else a man took mercy.

  Trinity, he repeated. Goddamn it, pop. I’m your boy, pop. I am your boy and you are John.

  MONOCOT

  He served a few years in the merchant marine and so named his sons Anchor, Hawser, and Rudder. The names amused him. The boys didn’t come to much. The eldest killed a girl he was in love with, a crime of passion, you likely recognize the arc of the story.

  The father grew water oaks strewn with epiphytes that looked like creatures of the sea. Bromeliads of many colors. The plants were bizarre and harmless. If you wanted to hurt the man, you hurt these.