by Angie Abdou
If Nicholas were home, we would laugh. Nicholas would say “a grave mistake,” over and over again in his Hallowe’en voice, holding his hands up like claws, tensed to grab us. Bwa ha ha ha! Lucy and I might even scream and run away, but when Nicholas finally caught us, it’d only be for tickles. But Nicholas is away at the mine (like usual) and there’s Mary in the window (not like usual), so Lucy and I do not laugh at all, actually.
Again the camera lens focuses on the same woman, the one walking in the cemetery, but this time we zoom close on her face, so I know her for sure. I feel a familiar skintingle of fear when I see it’s Mrs Evanhart. “Where is he?” Mrs Evanhart looks truly perplexed, as if she’d like the person behind the camera to answer her question. “Where are they? If they died in Coalton and were put to rest in Coalton, where are they now?” She gazes into the camera without speaking, like she’s waiting for an answer. She gives up, finally, and continues into the silence. “Are they still at rest?” She enunciates each word and speaks slowly, like if she could only ask the question clearly enough, she would get her answer.
The camera pans out to a crow flying just above the tombstones, its persistent cawk cawk cawk echoing over the hills.
Then a man’s face fills the screen. “In the early days, the company left this land mostly alone, just built some houses along the woods. A few of them still stand. But then, later, with the boom and expansion in the ’70s, they needed this land. It wasn’t right, but they did it, and who could stop them?” He looks less confused than Mrs Evanhart, more angry. But even I, a ten-year-old, understand that men do this sometimes, make all of their emotions look like anger.
Again, the TV Voice, the one with no emotion, comes from somewhere off the screen. “The past can no longer be ignored.” I will not look to the window. I will not.
“I remember as a kid, six or eight years old,” the man on television says, “wooden pickets, metal pickets, everywhere, all around graves. All through this field, all through these yards.” The camera pans out over well-manicured lawns. “Where have they all gone? Is it greed for land?” He pushes his eyebrows together and looks away from camera. “Is that what’s done it? Greed? I don’t know if it’s right to say.”
A new man fills the screen, an older man, chubby around the middle. He says, “I have personally nothing to hide. I don’t believe I did anything wrong. We built those coal miner’s shacks. Pre-fabricated units, simple little things. One bedroom, one bathroom, a place to cook up a quick breakfast. Just somewhere for the men to sleep and eat when they weren’t working. As soon as we started digging, we hit remains. Human remains. What happened? I’ll tell you what happened. The whole building operation got shut down. The next time we hit bone, we knew better. We just pushed those graves aside. Out of sight, out of mind.” He looks at the palms of his large hands and then turns them over to look at the other side. “When you stop working, you lose a paycheque.” He lets his hands fall and shrugs. “What remains? I didn’t see any remains. That’s the line we took. We didn’t want to stop working.”
His face disappears, replaced with houses in our neighbourhood, the big fancy ones. Again, the hollow TV voice comes from nowhere. “Now those little coal miner’s shacks have been sold, and the memory of those buried here has come back. The lots have been bought up by a successful developer who’s begun a multi-million-dollar housing development, one that will disturb these souls again.”
The camera eventually finds Elijah’s old house. Our house. It and Sam’s place next door look like eyesores in an otherwise fancy, new neighbourhood. I’m embarrassed at the sight of our old rickety shack but also proud.
“I watched them remove the bones,” the first man says. “It was a man and a little baby.”
I wonder how he knows. Little bones for a baby and big bones for an adult, but how would he tell a man from a woman, just from the bones?
“We had to tell the buyers about those bones. Skeletons everywhere. There’s stories of kids playing in gopher holes and finding bones.”
I imagine the neighbourhood kids finding human arm and leg bones in gopher holes, scaring each other out of their minds. I imagine it’s the boys from our last place, the ones who put sand in my mouth. I know there will be boys just as mean here too. Mean boys live everywhere. Mean boys crying over dead old bones: that makes me smile.
Mrs Evanhart comes back on screen, looking more held together. “You see those skeletal remains, and it hits you—these were people; mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. Babies. And they’ve been forgotten. Lost in our backyards, under our houses. And we all know. We act like we don’t know, and we go on about our lives, but we know.” She wipes her hand quick across her face like she’s walking through a dust storm.
Sam! His face on the screen makes me sit up and lean forward. “Sure, there are all kinds of ghost stories around here,” he says as yellow letters scroll under his name: Samuel Browning, Local Biologist and Ktunaxa Spokesperson. “People report babies crying in the night, when all the living babies are sound asleep. Or they say they get glimpses of people in the woods, people who disappear at close range. I don’t have to see something to believe it. None of that ghost business here has ever bothered me. They’re just spirits who are unhappy. They don’t aim their anger at me.” I want to hear more from Sam, but he’s gone too fast.
A woman in a black suit walks across the screen and sits behind a big wooden desk. She clasps her hands and places them on the pile of papers in front of her, leaning forward at a peculiar angle. I can’t imagine her looking any less comfortable. Letters float across the screen underneath her: Mayor of Coalton.
“The city has been doing what it can,” the mayor says in a shaky voice, one too small for her dark suit and big desk. “I’m not sure what we can do to honour these people. At this point it falls outside our—” She looks down to her clasped hands as if they might know how to finish her sentence. “Outside our ... jurisdiction.”
“Whatever it is,” the TV Voice says, “whatever the people of Coalton and their leaders can do, it won’t be enough to right these wrongs. The dead have been denied the right to rest in peace. For eternity.”
The show has been going on for a long time. Coalton has never been on TV before, and I’ve almost forgotten Lucy and I are even watching TV. The story feels true and solid, taking up real space in our living room. When I hear Nicholas’s car pull into the gravel driveway, I’m glad the talk of Coalton must be almost over. Nicholas pounds his feet in the entrance even though it’s almost May and there’s no snow. It’s like he stomps only to tell us he’s coming.
I hear him take a glass from the kitchen shelves and set it down with a loud thump on the counter. I hold my breath as he opens the cupboard high above the stove, the one where he keeps the vodka. Lucy and I skip that breath together. Then Nicholas moves again, and we breathe. The tap runs and goes silent. His heavy footsteps come toward us until he stands in the doorway, a glass of water in his hand. I avoid looking at his face. Lucy doesn’t look either. She holds a finger to her lips and points to the television.
“It’s us,” I say, in my whisper, the one I’ve been using to try to slide out from under Mary’s attention. “I mean, it’s Coalton. On the television.”
Nicholas joins us on the couch, close to Lucy but not touching.
Mrs Evanhart speaks again, but this time she looks older and more tired. “I vow never to waiver in my pursuit to give voice to those beyond the grave, to help these families put their loved ones to rest.” She nods her head once, hard. “Respectfully to rest.”
I pretend I can’t see Mary, but I can, even without squinting. Her teeth show now. Not in a smile. Slowly, her shoulders begin to shake with laughter. I try not to look her way, but I can see her in my side vision as her shoulders move up and down, faster and faster until they’re a blur. This movement, this wild shaking that starts at her shoulders and moves down her whole body, makes my head fill with pounding blood. I want her to go away now. Please, Mar
y, please go away.
Music plays on the television and Mrs Evanhart fades. She’s swapped out for a commercial about that happy pill meant for healthy-looking old people. Nicholas turns the TV off. “Well,” he says, “this news will certainly get Coalton buzzing.” He moves his hand in quick circles so his ice cubes clink in his glass of water. “They won’t be shocked to know about the bodies. They know about the bodies. They’ll be shocked to hear it on the national news. People have been finding human remains here since shovel hit ground. That’s not news to us, not to the locals.”
Lucy nods and reaches to the coffee table for her knitting.
“Can I get you a drink?” Nicholas smiles as he asks, takes an exaggerated sip of water, and clinks the ice in his glass again. There’s a sort of contest in his words but also something kind, as if he’s sort of teasing. His funny wrinkles show at the corner of his eyes, laughter barely hiding in the upturn of his lips. It’s as if he thinks Lucy actually made a pretty good joke when she dumped his bottles.
“Sure,” Lucy says with a small smile that matches his. It puts a light in her eyes, one that I have not seen for a very long time. “I’ll have a water, please.” I don’t understand the laughter in her voice, in his eyes.
CHAPTER SIX
That night, I plan to stay awake to listen from my bedroom for the conversation Lucy and Nicholas might have when I’m not around. I wait for them to talk about the bottles, for Nicholas to ask why, for him to make Lucy say sorry. I want to know what they think about Coalton on the news, about the vodka down the drain. But I fall asleep quickly tonight—the dark day, the thick clouds, the loud wind, the weird rainbow-Mary in the window, Nicholas and Lucy’s goofy smiles, their fight that never happens, the heavy energy of a secret joke—all of it has made me very tired.
When I hear Mary calling from the bathroom, I tell myself not to worry. I tell myself I’m deep asleep, that this Mary exists only in my imagination.
“Elijah! Elijah! Come here, Elijah!” Her call has a far-away empty sound that makes it easy to believe I must still be sleeping. Even in my dreams, Mary has never come inside the house.
I want to tell her that I am not Elijah. That name belongs to my great-great-grandfather. I am only Eli.
“Elijah! Elijah!” Her call rings through the house, but as if maybe she’s only teasing, like maybe when I get there I will find a surprise. The covers sit heavy and warm against my body. I let myself sink, fitting snug into the perfect softness of my mattress.
But Mary won’t stop—“Elijah! Elijah!” rings out, half command, half tease—and finally I must swing my legs out from under the duvet onto the cold bedroom floor. I push myself to stand, my head dizzy with sleep, and step quietly past Lucy and Nicholas’s bedroom door. I want to shush Mary and her “Elijah! Elijah! Elijah!”
Just be quiet! I’m coming!
I gently nudge the bathroom door open, praying the old rusty hinges don’t creak and wake my parents.
The tile walls drip with red. At first I think Mary has drawn on the walls; the red is only marker. Or nail polish, it could be that. Lipstick, maybe, or berries. I pile one explanation on top of another. Then I see her. She lays in the bathtub in pink water, wet hair falling down over her naked shoulders. I can see her brown nipples and the black triangle of fur between her legs. I know I shouldn’t look, but I can’t take my eyes away. She tries to lift her hand to her face, to push her wet hair from her eyes, and leaves the skin of her forehead streaked red. The walls, the tiles, the bathtub, Mary—all drip with watery blood.
She meets my eyes and smiles. “Elijah.” Her arm falls to the rim of the claw foot tub. My eyes want to stay on her brown nipples, not on the blood that drips from her wrist down the porcelain and onto the tile floor. Lucy has left her white bathrobe balled up there, and I watch the stain seep into it.
I need to run.
No, I should help Mary. I should get her out of the cold water and bring her some towels, some bandages. I should wake Lucy to call an ambulance. But I want to run. I feel warm pee flow down the inside of my pyjama leg. I say nothing. I go nowhere.
“You came,” Mary says as if she loves me, as if I can fix this. “Don’t look sad, Elijah. You never looked sad when you came to me before.” Be brave, it’s just a dream. Be brave, it’s just a dream. Be brave, it’s just a dream. If I concentrate hard enough, those words will slow the racing of my heart, ease the painful thudding of pulse in my neck. Words can do things.
“Remember those visits, Elijah?”
Be brave, it’s just a dream.
But the wet pyjamas, heavy against my leg, don’t feel like a dream. The metallic scent of Mary’s blood does not smell like a dream. I watch her in the pink water, her wrist drip-drip-dripping on the tile floor, her smiling face wet with blood. My body spins and whirls. I hold onto the door frame to keep myself upright, but my vision blurs. I’m dizzy, and the hotdogs we had for dinner rise in my throat.
Be brave.
Mary laughs, and I wonder if I’ve spoken the words aloud. I am only a boy, I say to myself, but I feel an unfamiliar weight in my shoulders, a creakiness along my spine, an old ache in my fingers. This body belongs to Elijah, as she’s named me. I owe Mary something, even if I don’t understand. A man’s mistakes do not die with his body—the thought comes to me as if it’s my own—our forefathers’ misdeeds live on in us.
And then we’re not in the bathroom. There is no blood. We’re out in the woods behind the house. A normal day. I’ve found a sharp stick and am writing words in the dirt:
Mary
Lucy
Sam
ELIJAH
Mary gathers red berries and organizes them under the names I’ve written. Usually she uses the red of the berries on her lips—I know her routines by now—but this time she arranges them into a shape. At first, I don’t know what shape she’s making, and I stop writing to watch her work. I smell the dusty earth, feel the itch of it in my nose, and I’m glad I don’t yet smell the earthy rot of leaves that signal autumn and the coming end of our backyard days. My lungs do not like winter. The cold will force me inside. That’s what I’m thinking about as I watch Mary’s berry-heart take shape around my name: about the seasons, about missing Mary once our yards sit buried under deep snow, about the rotten luck of my bad lungs.
“Everyone knows the rule about not playing with fire,” Mary says in her everyday voice. She sounds like the fun, kind girl who plays with me next door. “But most people think the saying has to do with not getting burned. Play with fire, you’ll get burned.” Mary tilts her head, bites her bottom lip like she’s holding back a smile. “The rule is about more than that. The rule is also about containment. Once you light a spark, Elijah, you lose control.” There’s a meanness in the set of Mary’s jaw now. Her chin juts forward, her smirk gone. I don’t like what I see in her eyes. She looks away, keeps placing her berries one by one around my name.
I’m so mesmerized by her berry-heart, how slowly and methodically it takes shape, that I don’t notice at first that Mary holds something else in her palm, a small wooden stick with a bright red cap. It could be a toy soldier, one Sam made from twig. Such a small thing, almost no-thing, held so lightly in her hand. When I recognize it as a match, my pulse pounds so hard and loud that I want to hold my hands tight to my ears.
“Fire. It’s easy to start one, Elijah.” Mary puts down the last berry and holds the match between her forefinger and thumb. She shows the match to me this way as if there’s still something I could do, some act that would stop her and save us. I’m only a boy, I want to cry. Only Eli. But it’s too late, and those words won’t help.
“Easy to start, Elijah, but not so easy to stop.”
I want Sam. He would know what to do. Sam worries about the thirsty earth, the loud dry crunch of it underfoot. “We live in a rainforest with no rain,” he says, “and all people can worry about is their bad ski season. This dry ground will give us all bigger worries than that soon enough.” His
words come to me now, with my skin itchy and my lips parched, with the smell of dust heavy in the hot air, and with that match of Mary’s filling my vision.
I cannot let her light that match. I dive for her. I throw myself at her knees, hoping that I, weakling that I am, can knock her over. I need to surprise her enough to get the match from her grasp while she’s disoriented. But I’m too un-athletic, too slow. Before I can close the space between us, she strikes the match against the bark of a tall pine tree. I hear the sharp hiss, the sound of fire lit. The sound of defeat.
As my body makes contact with hers, Mary flings the match into the long grass between our yard and the forest.
The smell hits me first. Burnt toast? Burnt hair? My brain wants to make this smell all right. But then I hear the sound, the rush of fire as it races through the long grass, its crackle as it climbs the tall trees. My mind offers no alternatives for that sound. It can only be one thing.
The smoke builds too. I cough and wipe my teary eyes on my sleeve. I want my inhaler. I don’t care what Mary thinks; I would use it, right here in front of her, and take great big sucking breaths, but I pat where my pockets should be and remember I’m wearing pyjamas. All shall be well, I think, please, all shall be well. Even Lucy’s Julian of Norwich does not help. My chest burns, my eyes sting, and liquid streams down my face.
My boys! In the house!
The thought leaves me before I even try to make sense of it. I wipe my face again, squint against the sting in my eyes. The thick smoke does not bother Mary at all. She stares at me wide-eyed, her smile impossibly sad.