by Angie Abdou
I shake my head and try to smile, but I don’t think it comes out right. They both frown up at me.
“Sit down,” Gracie says again, and this time it is not a friendly request.
“We could play spin the bottle,” Quinn says, perking up for the first time. He fishes a dusty beer bottle out from under the bush.
“That’s stupid,” Gracie says, though not with any force. “I can’t kiss you because I’m your sister. You can’t kiss Eli because you’re both boys. Who’s going to kiss?”
“Well, you could kiss him.” Quinn nods his head in my direction. Now they both wear smiles that I don’t like. “Ever kiss anyone before, Eli? Ever kiss a girl?” Quinn’s voice has a taunting slur, which shows how little he knows about me. “Gracie has kissed boys, haven’t you, Gracer?”
She’s got a glint in her eye now too. “I’m not afraid to kiss boys.” She points her chin in my direction. “Not afraid at all.” She gets on her knees and begins to crawl toward the spot by the trees where I’ve finally sat. I have left a good solid space between them and me. The knees of her pants will be dirty by the time she gets to me. Patricia will be angry.
I don’t think that’s such a good idea, I want to say, about the kissing, but Quinn barely contains his laughter. The glee of it twists his face. If I warn Gracie off, Quinn will think I’m afraid. I don’t want him to laugh at me, even if he does have the wrong idea.
“Ever have a girlfriend, big E?” Quinn waits for an answer as Gracie makes her way slowly toward me, lips puckered. Have I ever had a girlfriend? Please. Gracie is a child.
Still, I say nothing.
When Gracie’s nose nearly touches mine, she stops. Her eyes no longer glint. Now that she’s come this far, she doesn’t know what to do. She thought I would run.
“Come on, Gracie. Kiss him!” Quinn sees her hesitation too.
My lips touch hers. I think I am the one who finally closes the distance between us. But she’s not Gracie anymore. She is Mary, and I am Elijah. I think of Mary as I push my lips harder into hers and scoop my hand around her lower back, lifting us both to our feet. Mary is who I think of as I pull her pelvis hard until it presses firmly into me. Oh, Mary, I think. Mary. I open my mouth wider and taste her—breathe her in. Finally. I slide my tongue past her teeth. Mary in her yellow dress. Mary with her golden brown legs. I kiss her deep.
That’s when she bites me. I step back startled, surprised to see Gracie, surprised to be in Eli’s body. I barely have time to register who is who before Quinn’s fist smashes into my nose. At first I can’t see, and then Gracie and Quinn come back, blurring together as one body. My brain rattles in my skull, and I can’t think clearly. Who am I? Where am I? I don’t know. I feel the blood running down my throat and swallow hard. More blood streams down my face. Nicholas says all my nose needs to bleed is a strong wind. This time, it feels like my nose will never quit bleeding. Can people drown in their own blood? I try to breathe, but the air gurgles in my wet throat. Quinn charges at me again, but I fall before his fist reaches me. My knee scrapes hard into the ground. More blood. Quinn bends down, reaching for my already defeated body, and I turn away, turtling beneath my arms. Tears run down my face, but I want to tell Gracie and Quinn the wet on my cheeks is only from the punch in the nose. I’m not crying.
Nicholas would be ashamed if he could see me now. He turtled, that’s what Nicholas would say, shaking his head and clicking his tongue, turning away from me.
I taste dirt. I won’t think of what’s in this dirt. I spit and spit again, but it doesn’t help. Dirt and blood and saliva mixed together. I swipe my hand across my face to clean it and gag when I see the mess I bring away.
Quinn sees me now too, the mess he’s made of my face. “I didn’t even hit you hard,” he says, but his voice comes out high-pitched, strangled with panic.
“You shouldn’t have kissed me like that,” Gracie says defiantly. “If you tell on Quinn, we’ll tell on you.”
My nose aches straight through to the back of my scalp, and piss-flavoured dirt fills my mouth. Some drunk’s pee—that’s what I have on my tongue, against my teeth.
I will never, ever learn to get along with other kids. I’m not normal. It’s more than my lungs. The unfairness of that hits me worse than the blood down my throat, worse than the flesh scraped from my knee, worse than the taste of dirt and urine filling my mouth. I start to cry. I know I shouldn’t. Once I begin, I won’t stop.
I’ve been here so many times. Close your mouth and open your eyes and you will get a big surprise. Poor, poor boy. I try to stop at a few tears on my face—if I let out a little of the pain, I think, I can contain the rest—but too quickly the tears turn to crying, and my sobs keep getting louder and uglier. Quinn’s concern turns to disgust.
I don’t know how I will get back to Patricia’s house. I don’t know how I will find my mother or what she will say when she sees me.
“I won’t tell,” I choke out. “Just take me back to Lucy, and I won’t tell.”
The sobs hurt my chest and head and throat. I want to be home, in Elijah’s living room, under my blanket. I want Mary.
With me and kids, it’s always the same. It always goes like this. I don’t belong here.
Why won’t Lucy learn?
MARY
“This is the last time,” he said. He wouldn’t look at her when he spoke, but she nodded anyway.
Yes, of course, it will be the last time, Elijah, like the last, last time. And the last time before that.
In the short time Mary had known Elijah, he had added words to her vocabulary. They were words for which she understood the plain meaning, of course. Mary had a good vocabulary, her father had made sure of that. But the words from Elijah were ones she had never before had occasion to use, not even in her own mind. Words like seduce, yearning, bereft.
“Are you going to be all right when ... it’s over?” Elijah held her chin and softly turned her face toward his. “Will you be? Tell me the truth.”
But how was she to know? Here in his arms she smiled: Yes, yes, I will always be all right! And perhaps she would be, if only one particular song reminded her of Elijah, or a certain kind of food, or a specific place. Then, perhaps, Mary would be all right. She could take the memory of him and contain it in one spot and store it away. But Mary’s very body reminded her of Elijah. Her waist: his hands. Her hips: his hands. Her calves: his hands. Her face: his hands. Her thighs: his hands. And: his eyes, his eyes, his eyes, his eyes.
No, Mary would not be all right, but she nodded. She made her face say Yes, Elijah, I will be fine. Besides, Elijah’s “last time” meant nothing to her anymore.
They had come back to the daisy field—their place—but without his wife’s food. On this trip, he brought nothing but his sorry eyes. If she looked upon them too long, she would drown.
“Your eyes are very blue,” Mary said, taking his hands and pressing them into her hips. “They seem to be getting bluer. They’re bluer today than they were yesterday.”
She told him once that someone with his tanned skin, someone from his part of the world, should not have blue eyes. “People from here know nothing of my part of the world,” was his reply. But when she mentioned the blueness of his eyes on this day, the worry fixed so hard in his face melted away and something else rolled in to take its place, something that reminded her of their happier meetings. Elijah and Mary looked at each other that way for a long time.
His coming and going reminded Mary of her mother. Her mother always said “This might be the last time” too. “Your father doesn’t want me here,” she said. “The white people don’t want me here. I need a pass to come, legal approval to see my own daughter. You will be better if I leave and you forget me. But don’t forget this,” she would say, singing the Ktunaxa ballads in Mary’s ear—mother’s cheek pressed into daughter’s—so quietly that Joseph, in the next room, would not hear. Mary had heard “last time” from her mother so many times. And then, one day no differ
ent than the others, it really was.
“Come here,” Elijah said, though her body was already as close to his as it could be without them both falling over. “You’ll be all right?”
“Yes, of course. I’ve nearly forgotten you already.” Mary knew how to put the joke of that in her eyes, but also its challenge. “You’re not all that special.” She knew how to make her face say something different than her words. She let her body be soft into his, her breath warm and her mouth wet against his ear.
And then his hands were on her face and in her hair and on her hips, and his breath came fast in time with hers. “It has to be the last time,” he said again, lowering her onto the grass, finding the hem of her skirt, his hands climbing her body. “We’re not the only ones to consider.”
“Yes, Elijah. Yes.” Lifting her hips hard against his. “God, yes.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Above Lucy’s computer where she usually posts inspirational sayings (like This too shall pass in the Old English) or pictures of women in medieval dresses riding unicycles, she has posted three new mantras:
Desire is the root of all suffering.
Let go or be dragged.
Fuck you, S. B.
I know S. B. means Samuel Browning. Fuck you, Samuel Browning. Lucy might as well have written it in full. She doesn’t worry about Nicholas; she thinks he would never notice such a small thing, his brain too full of the river’s selenium levels. Nothing ruins Nicholas’s day faster than a dead fish. Or bulged-out eyes, twisted spines, deformed gills. “Unviable” is what Nicholas and his scientists call those fish who’ve had too much selenium. He has no room in his mind for Lucy’s little notes.
I guessed S. B. right away because I heard Lucy tell Patricia: “That guy! He moved right in, took up permanent residence in my head. But I’m evicting him. It’s time. I’ve set up Sam-Alarms. As soon as he dares enter my mind, I chase him out. ‘Go away, Sam!’ I think the words quick and fast, like swatting flies.” Lucy pinched her lower lip. “I mean, I get crushes. I’ve been smitten before. But this is different. I hear his name, my body temperature rises.”
Patricia laughed. She finds everything funny. “Oh, sweetheart, it’s just the hormones. Your body wants one last hurrah before menopause sets in. It’s not real.”
“Tell that to my body!”
They talk this way around me now, taking no mind of where I am, whether tucked into my bed or curled under a blanket on the couch. I’m fading from this world.
“There’s Nicholas to think of too, I suppose.” Patricia tilts her head, her voice gentle. “Sam’s not exactly being the role-model neighbour to Nicholas.”
“Pfft. Nicholas. Nicholas should send Sam a thank-you card and a case of beer. Sam took the pressure off him for a bit, let me hitch my hopes of happiness to someone else for a change.” Patricia doesn’t say a thing, so Lucy keeps talking. “Sam and Nicholas are from different galaxies. Aren’t I allowed a man from each galaxy?”
“Lucy, they live on the same street. They’re next-door neighbours.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t.”
Lucy stares at her own fingernails. “Okay, okay. I know.” She slides the nail of her baby finger into her mouth, looks away from Patricia as she chews. Finally, she sits on her hands and meets Patricia’s eyes. “Okay, I said. I know.”
Sam must pick up on Lucy’s new signals. There’s no more of his hand steering her elbow, his fingers on her lower back. Eventually Sam comes to me, though. I remember how he believes in what he can’t see, and I hope he knows I’m fighting to stay, even while I lay mute and pliant, nearly disappearing into the couch. He sits at my feet and tells me stories, like the ones he used to tell me out in his backyard.
“Last week, I went up in the woods, Eli.” He says my name firmly, loudly, as if reminding me of who I am. “The trail you got lost on during that bad rain storm.” I nod so he knows I’m listening. “I didn’t take Mary with me. She’s not doing so well since you took to your room. She’s pretty much taken to hers too. Can’t ask her about it either, can I? She’s got nothing to say, that girl. Or she’s not ready to say it. So I went alone. About a kilometre from the house, I ran into a mama black bear with two cubs. Real beauties.”
Sam’s deep voice fills Elijah’s small house. Lucy left as soon as he came. She tries to stay away from him now. They skirt around each other, avoiding contact even in Elijah’s tight hallways. Sam keeps his hands in his pockets.
“I came around the corner, less than six feet away from those bears. I could smell the musky oil of their fur. The mama scooted her two cubs ahead into the bush and then turned around to face me, reared up on two legs for a moment before turning to follow them. Her aggressive gesture was half-hearted, a little bluff to make it clear who was boss. ‘Trust me, honey. It’s clear,’ I said, nice and even, no hint of a threat. ‘Crystal. Clear.’ I waited until she and her cubs were long gone and then I retreated on the trail, going backward the entire way, my body buzzing on high alert.”
His body pushed him from the bears the way my body pulls me to Mary. I close my eyes as Sam tells his story, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He waits awhile, until I think maybe he’s done, and then he adds, “But that buzz of fear is okay. That’s what I want to tell you. It’s one of the signs you’re alive. Don’t back away from the fear itself. Manage the situation, but face the fear.”
I think Sam will leave then, but he stays still and quiet for a long time. We listen to nothing but the hum of the refrigerator. I don’t open my eyes even though I want him to stay and tell me more.
Finally, he squeezes my foot. The touch, the heat of his body, gives me a small rush of energy, enough I can lift my eyelids and look at him. He comes into focus—dark skin, yellow ball cap, sad eyes.
“It’s your name, I think. My people believe when you’re named for an ancestor, you become that ancestor. Your life continues to tell his story.” Sam rubs my shin, as if to soften the blow of his sentence. “Some might call it a possession. I call it more like intuition about your ancestors. You need to finish Elijah’s business, Eli. To right some wrong. I don’t know what it has to do with my Mary, but maybe you do. You can talk to the old people.”
I don’t move. I want Sam to tell me more about talking to the old people. I need answers, not riddles. I’m angry, but still I cannot find my voice.
“Only you will know that business, how to right the wrong, Eli. It will come to you, if you face the fear. Then Elijah can rest, and you can get well. Once you finish Elijah’s story, you can start your own.”
Sam squeezes my foot again, his touch warm even through my blanket. I find the strength to nod. I hope Sam doesn’t see the liquid burn in my eyes. I want him to think me capable of facing the fear. I need Sam to believe in me so I can believe in myself. He stands slowly and makes his way to the back door, each step of his work boots too loud.
You need to finish Elijah’s business, Eli. To right some wrong. Only you will know that thing. Your life must tell his story. I let Sam’s words run through my mind, again and again. I can almost taste their meaning.
I don’t know what this all has to do with my Mary, but maybe you do. I think I know. I almost know. I feel the knowledge in my body. Soon, I hope, it will surface in my mind. The body always knows first.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Elijah, I want you to do something for me.” Ursula stands over the coal stove frying potatoes. Family breakfast is a Saturday morning luxury. During the week, I leave for the mine in the dark. Sundays, we eat a quick bite before church. But on Saturdays we give the boys a bowl of oatmeal and then push them out to play in the woods behind the house so we can stay in bed late.
I like this part, afterward, in the kitchen, almost as much as the part in the bed. Here, I lean back in my chair with my strong coffee while I watch Ursula at work. She looks out of place in the cramped and utilitarian kitchen. Ursula looks out of place most times in Coalton, especially when sh
e wears the expensive hair clips or off-the-shoulder dresses her mother sends from Europe, dressing just for me, as she has done this morning. Her heeled boots make her backside round and firm in the snug skirt. My mind disappears beneath the hem of her dress. I want to trace the palms of my hands up her strong legs and rid her of that dress.
Instead, I admire the way the fabric hugs her full hips, and I stay in my chair, sipping coffee.
“Elijah?” Ursula turns from the stove, a greasy spatula in her hand, and I drink in her broad shoulders, her full bosom.
“Mmm?” I raise my eyes to her face, but slowly.
“I want you to do something for me.” Ursula smiles and taps her spatula in my direction as if in reproach. She knows what I’ve been doing instead of listening to her. Ursula always knows.
“What’s that, love? I’d be happy to do any number of things for you.”
She gives me her tsk that means not now. It’s the sound she uses when James and Isaac are around. “I’d like you to go down to the Coalton Hotel this afternoon with some baking and fruit for that girl who lives upstairs there. The one always sitting out front on the bench.” Ursula turns back to the counter to scramble eggs. I smile at the perfect jiggle of her hips.
I try to think of the girl she means, but my wife’s hips can be so distracting. “What’s her name? Do I ask for her at the front desk if I can’t find her?” I don’t question Ursula’s plan to hand out our food to strangers. Ursula will have her reasons.
“No. Wait until she’s around. She’s always around. You’ll see her. She looks hungry. Not much older than Isaac.”
I stand and move in behind Ursula at the stove. I rest my hands on her hips and squeeze. Nobody would accuse my Ursula of looking hungry. I put my mouth where her shoulder meets her neck and rest my teeth against her fair skin. I know the exact pressure she likes. She presses back into me in response. “You know who’s hungry?” I say into her neck. “I am hungry.” I reach around her, my arm brushing her breasts, and move the pan off the heat. “Come with me. The boys will stay busy outside for another hour.”