by Joy Williams
The man reached for the radio and flung it, screeching the news. Joe ducked. He raised a callused, chestnut-colored foot, a foot so hard he could kick a rock like a football. Pearl saw the thick, deeply ridged nails. She saw him catch the man with one last, fast kick in the neck before he raced off.
The man lay belly up on the sand, one hand on his throat, the other on his wilted meat. The woman pulled up her bikini bottoms. She went over to the radio and picked it up. She jiggled it.
“Why didn’t you throw something else at him?” she said, clicking the dials of her radio disconsolately on and off.
“Crazy wild fucker,” the man gasped, “I’ll kill him.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” the woman said succinctly. And then in a rush, “He about killed you. We’re trespassing here, you know. Maybe they could shoot us, you know. First the rain and now this. Just because you’re too cheap to take us to a Quality Court.”
Pearl curled up in a ball. She heard the man panting and grunting and then she heard the beach grass whining against their legs as they moved through it and then she heard nothing but the stones moving in the waves again. She looked at the spot where they had been and where Joe had been. Beer cans were scattered everywhere. The sand was trampled and wet.
Pearl stood up cautiously, her shoulders hunched. She had just wanted to take a pleasant walk. She had just wanted to clear her head a bit before settling down to the evening’s drinking. Darkness was moving into her head like a tide, lapping gently, enveloping her. Perhaps she would die this moment here of a massive insult to the brain, the way that poets did.
She dropped over the dune to the harder sand of the beach. She walked in the direction from which Joe had come. She could still see a trace of his running feet. About a quarter of a mile up the beach there was a wider jeep trail that circled around to the house. She would take that way back.
Once when Pearl had been a child, she had bent over to pat a dog and another dog had leapt upon her back. She could not get the vision of those disreputable fornicating intruders out of her mind.
The children could not bear intruders here. They were really quite rude to them. Well, more than rude certainly, if half of what they intimated and half of what she saw was true.
And what had she seen actually? Joe was Joe but he had been something else as well.
Pearl walked, heels and toes sucking in the sand pools in which miniscule fish hung. Mussels gleamed on the dimming rocks.
“Pearl . . .” She heard her name flying from a child’s throat. “Puuuuurl . . .” It hung on the salty wind like a scrap of tune from a hymnal, a hymn about burdens that could not be laid down. To be human was to be homeless, furthest removed from the blessing of God. Pearl. Pearl the mad and homeless. Pearl the afraid.
“You’ve no need to be frightened, Pearl,” the children would call through the door when they heard her having a terrible dream, “there’s no one here but us.”
She would lie on her stomach. She would cover her head with a pillow. The nightmare was like a thing come to kiss and lick you. When you lay on your stomach and it realized it was not kissing your face, it would get mad and go away.
“Puuuuurl . . .” It was a child’s voice, calling her to supper. In a few more moments it would be dark.
She picked her way through the rocks and ribbons of sea weed. The sea slapped on the rocks. The night birds flew with open mouths. The sky was full of stars that cast no light. It was becoming increasingly difficult for her to distinguish things and she was just able to make out the trail that swept out of the woods to the beach. Her mouth tasted as though she were holding metal in it. When she got back to the house, she could get another drink. She hurried toward the line of stunted trees.
“Sweet,” she said, startled.
The girl was standing timidly in the shadows. Pearl felt an urgency to the night coming. It was charged with the sense of things, the hidden signals of things.
Pearl remembered the dread she’d felt at her own first menstruation, but she said:
“You mustn’t feel embarrassed. It’s a wonderful thing to become a woman.”
Pearl was lying to herself, afraid of herself. To become a woman was to become a question when as a child one was all swift and shining answer.
“Let’s go back to the house together,” Pearl said. She drew closer, about to put her arm around Sweet’s shoulders. She smelled it coming off her, the sad corporeal odor. The girl’s face was puffed and almost ugly. Her eyes were dry and burning in her head.
As Pearl approached, those eyes widened, then became fixed, the pupils dilating so that the irises filled the sockets’ orbits and sank back into her head. It seemed she wanted to run in the instant that she was still. And it was only for that instant that it seemed strange, before she was gone, before her form was gone. Her belly turned soft and swinging beneath her, holding her up. Her arms began to turn as long and tapered as her legs. Her face swung out flat and her nose turned black and became part of a soft, dark muzzle. And when that instant passed, and it seemed she wanted to speak, her tongue had then become a thick deer’s tongue and the hand she raised was a deer’s hoof, black and graceful, and her flanks were covered with tight, bright fur.
Pearl screamed. The deer bounded into the trees and vanished.
Sam was shining a light on her.
“Nooooo,” Pearl screamed.
“What is it Pearl?” His voice sounded frightened. She was heartened for a moment by that tone of fear, but then she realized she must make him know that she would not be deceived by him.
“Stop it!” she screamed.
He fumbled for the switch on the battery-powered lamp and turned it off.
“It’s me, Sam,” he said quickly. “I just came to get you for supper.”
It was not Sam. It was that child that had never been Sam. She felt him in the darkness before her with a sickening sense of foreboding, like an amputee might feel a missing limb.
“Did the deer scare you?” He came closer. “I saw it too.”
“It wasn’t a deer,” she said.
. . . and it wasn’t a horse she’d seen when she saw Joe . . .
“You’ve come to do this, haven’t you?” she said.
He was a changeling, the old woman’s child. He had used this place to grow in, to learn how to seem a child, but he would be leaving this place soon. He could not stay here forever. He would leave with the one who had taught him to do these things. And after he left, he would still want the children here to be a part of him. He wouldn’t want to leave them without leaving behind in them something which understood him.
“It’s all right, Pearl. Come up to the house. You need something to eat and then you can go to bed.”
He turned the lamp back on. It glowed beneath his unrecognizable face.
“Why are you doing this?” Pearl asked.
But she knew. Humans were changed into animals because of some sorrow, some punishment, or some mercy shown by the gods.
“Have you been sent here to save me?” she said, her voice trembling.
“Please, Pearl,” he said. “Everything is all right.”
He took her hand. She let him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
As a child, Pearl’s mother told her, “You must never look at the sun. Never, never, look at the sun . . .”
As a child, idly dialing her own number, she discovered that it spelled out FOREVER.
She wished that she could dial FOREVER on the telephone and hear it ring. It would ring and ring. She would probably give up just as the receiver was being lifted on the other end.
There was a smell of perfume in the room. Pearl smelled wonderful. Someone must have spilled a bottle all over her.
She opened her eyes. She was in bed, naked beneath the sheets. Franny stood by Pearl’s dressing table, making up her eyes with Pearl’s mascara. Her arms were shiny with perfume and her eyes were a painted black mask. A horizontal figure 8. The sign of life as an empty cord.
�
��What have you done with your face?” Pearl said.
The sun began to take the room apart, appropriating things one by one and exposing them to Pearl’s eyes.
“Pearl’s awake,” Franny cried delightedly. “Pearl’s awake!” She rushed to the bed and kissed her arm.
Some of the other children ran into the room.
“Pearl, I had this wonderful dream,” Ashbel shouted. “I had a dream about a horse that when I got on him he became a part of me and flew through the air faster than a plane. He had a little knob on his saddle like a little wheel and I could make him go anywhere.”
Franny looked at him disgustedly. “That’s Scheherazade. That’s from The Arabian Nights. You can’t say Scheherazade as though you’re saying your own.”
“Here, Pearl, I made you some tea.” Jane held out a child’s play teacup.
“No,” Pearl said. “Please.” She rubbed her face. Her cheeks ached. Her mouth felt like a bit of fruit wobbling in setting Jell-O.
Jane thrust out her lower lip. “I’ve been waiting hours for you to wake up,” she said. “I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting.”
Pearl took the cup and quickly tasted its rim.
“She drank it,” Timmy whispered in his little furry voice, full of dreams and hurts.
Pearl dropped the cup. It spilled on the sheet, making a lavender stain. “What was it?” Pearl cried.
“Just water,” Jane said. “With a crayon crunched up in it. Really, Pearl, that’s all.”
Pearl looked for the clock on her night table, tipped against the bottle of gin. She righted it. Half-past six. She groaned.
Tracker was standing by the bed eating bread and jelly. He made a snapping, smacking sound. Pearl struggled back against the pillows, drawing the sheets up to her chin.
“Where is Sam?” Pearl said.
“He’s right here, Pearl.”
“Did I say something terrible to you last night?” she asked. “I have a feeling I said something very terrible.”
“No,” he said. “You didn’t.”
“What was I doing?” she muttered. “What was I thinking?”
“Do you want some aspirin?” Ashbel asked.
“Yes.” To Franny she said, “Please wash that stuff off your face.” She had a terrible headache. Once Miriam had told her that she knew the moment when half her life was over.
“Death,” Miriam had said, “was born in me the seventeenth of March 1947.”
She said it felt like a headache.
“I’m going to die,” Pearl cried. “I’ve misunderstood it all. I’ve gotten it all wrong and still everything is going to be over with, everything is going to be gone.”
“You’re not going to die,” Timmy said. “We’ll take care of you.” He hugged her. He was wearing a pair of overalls that were very soft, almost like velvet. She petted his shoulder. Some memory stirred. She looked at his grave, sleek little face.
All the other children were naked to the waist. They all had funny-looking marks on their chests.
“What is that?” she demanded. “What have you done to yourselves now? Oh I’m so tired, I can’t bear this anymore. I can’t think.” And it was true. Her mind was like the troubled, whiskey-colored sea. “Please be nice to one another,” she begged.
“Wake up, Pearl, wake up,” Jane sang.
Jesse said, “It’s a sign we made for ourselves, Pearl. We’re a secret.”
“We’re not a secret,” Trip said. “Our society is secret.”
Pearl drew Jane closer to her and squinted at the red mark between her pale nipples.
“It looks as though someone stepped on you,” Pearl said.
“Oh no, we drawed it.” She puffed out her stomach proudly.
“Was it Sam’s idea?” Pearl asked suspiciously.
“Yes, Pearl, it was Sam’s idea,” the children yelled.
“Sam,” Pearl persisted. She plucked at the sheet. She stared at him. He held out his hand and patted her fist on the sheet. She grasped it, traced the birthmark on his hand with her fingers.
“Sam doesn’t have a mark on his chest,” Pearl said. The children hesitated at this. Jane squeezed up her little pansy face.
Ashbel said, “Shall I put the aspirin in your mouth, Pearl?”
Pearl did not want to let go of Sam’s hand. She looked at the dark, almond-shaped center of the two rough circles on his hand. It was so pronounced now. She had never seen it so clearly before.
“Sam’s your leader so he doesn’t have to have that mark, is that right?” Pearl asked. “But it’s ink, isn’t it? And you could hurt yourselves, you know. You could get blood poisoning. Didn’t Trip get blood poisoning once? I wish you wouldn’t draw on yourselves so much.”
“I never got blood poisoning, Pearl. Once I broke my finger in an oarlock is all.” Trip was using Pearl’s comb on his hair.
Ashbel was pushing the aspirin dutifully in Pearl’s mouth.
“No, no,” she protested. She tossed her head. “Owwwww,” she said. I need a drink, she thought. Hair of the dog that bit.
“Peter,” she said, “what are you doing by my bottles, come away . . .”
Peter jumped around, hands waggling by his face.
“Everything is dim,” he shrieked. “Everything is blackness!” The two bottle caps he had put over his eyes glinted whitely.
“Peter looks like Orphan Ornie,” Jane said seriously around her thumb.
Pearl managed a smile. She still held Sam’s hand.
“Did you even draw on poor Angie?” she asked sadly. “Poor little . . .”
The baby was crawling over the sheets, nibbling at its printed leaves. Pearl looked at her sorrowfully. “I will tell you one of the great secrets of life, Angie,” she said. “One of the great secrets of life is learning to live without being happy.” She stirred restlessly, impatient with herself. “Get out of here, now, all of you, I must get dressed. I must look awful. Franny, get me my mirror so I can see how awful I look.”
“I used it for my town, Pearl. I had to. It’s the lake in my town.”
“It’s just as well,” Pearl said. The thought rather enchanted her. No more mirrors. No more the witnessing of struggles between time and her selves.
Franny kissed her. “Thank you, Pearl.”
Tracker had finished eating. His hair was brindle in the early morning light. His nails were long and dirty.
Jesse said, “Franny’s lake is frozen. People can’t swim in it. Pearl,” he asked, “what do you call a man deer?”
“Pearl, remember when you found a bottle in the water with a message in it?” Tracker said.
“Yes,” Pearl said. It had said “Hello.” It hadn’t even wished her luck. Pearl’s mouth was sour and dry. Her stomach trembled. One drink right now would enable her to think better, she knew it would. One drink would make her feel better. But she had to stop drinking. She was a wicked woman, a terribly wicked woman and a drunk. She would stop drinking entirely. Perhaps a beer now and then. No, not even that. Nothing. Her mind lurched forward and she could feel Sam trying to slip his hand away.
What had happened last night? What had been said? Perhaps nothing had been said. Words are inadequate for anything other than human concerns. But what then had been thought? That was the important thing. She thought of the bottle floating. All the bottles emptied, gone. Goodbye.
Ashbel was saying something to her. It didn’t seem to be his words he was using. She couldn’t understand him. It was his teeth. They were so big and wide, really malformed.
“Pearl,” Timmy said, “I dreamed last night a black dog was chasing me. I was awful scared.”
“That’s a Devil dream,” Trip said. “You know Judas was possessed by the Devil and when the devil was cast out of him by Jesus, the Devil ran off in the shape of a black dog.”
“It didn’t do Jesus much good to get rid of the Devil in Judas,” Peter said. He was making a rapid jerking motion with his head.
“Don’t do that,” Pear
l said.
“Well Trip thinks he knows things but he doesn’t.”
“Don’t quarrel in here,” Pearl begged, “I have such a headache. Now, get out of here, all of you, please.” She dropped Sam’s hand. Angie crawled across her stomach. Her lame leg felt heavy and flat. “I have to think,” Pearl said, “I have to get up.”
“It’s our birthday day today, Pearl, you didn’t forget did you?” Timmy said.
Pearl’s heart pounded. She remembered writing something down. She remembered bending down to pat a dog and another dog leaping upon her back. The physicality of beasts. Their preposterous ways! Or had that been in a dream? She remembered now. She had had an amazing dream last night and she had written it down.
“Are you coming for breakfast, Pearl? Miriam’s making waffles. She’s making round ones.”
“Yes,” Pearl said, her stomach sickening at the thought. “Yes, yes, go away now.”
Pearl slowly got out of bed. On the bureau there were red hairs in her comb. By her glass and bottles there was a feather which Peter had left behind.
On the other side of the door, she could hear Tracker’s voice saying, “Mad people smell like the sea. You can tell. The smell comes right off them.”
Did she smell like the sea? Pearl went into the bathroom, where she filled the sink with cold water. She took a deep breath and pushed her face into the water. Movie stars did this, didn’t they? For their complexions? They used snorkels.
It didn’t make her feel any better. She mopped her head dry. She dressed moodily, looking at the empty spot on the wall where the mirror had hung. Moodily she went into the bedroom and looked out at the quilted hot sky. She heard one of the children singing:
“Once there were three fishermen
Once there were three fishermen
Fisher, Fisher
Men, Men, Men
Fisher, Fisher
Men, Men, Men
Once there were three fishermen.”