Lonely in the Heart of the World

by Mindi Meltz

  “Neither do I,” says Lonely.

  That night, Lonely sleeps in Chelya’s bed, while Chelya sleeps outside somewhere. Chelya asked her to join her but Lonely prefers, for once, to sleep indoors. She wants to feel the comfort of indoors, that arch cradling her, pretending that for the first time she has a home. Over the years Chelya has stuffed her bed painstakingly with feathers, one by one collected from the chickens and other birds who dropped theirs from the sky, like pieces of a dream, mythical remnants of flight. Lonely seems to sleep on a cloud, the dream of a young girl awakening to fantasies of womanhood. In the morning she stands and walks slowly around the chimney that rises through the loft, that great channel for the spirit of fire to grow like a tree into the sky.

  Indoors there is shadow and stillness, close people and the bright substance of words. Outdoors there is the familiar freedom, where voices get lost in the wind. Lonely climbs down the ladder and walks out to the fields. She goes first to her horse, who does not rest like the other two horses they keep there, but always stands by himself between the house and the high mountain, holding private conference with the grasses and sky. She walks out to him, and she thanks him again for staying with her, and then she walks back to the house.

  She discovers the great gift of hunger. Over and over that day, and for countless days afterward, she will experience hunger, and thereby will get to experience over and over again the pleasure of being filled. The pleasure is not even in the satisfaction itself, perhaps, for that is only an ending, but in the full-body experience where hunger and food mingle, where each part of her body awakens with the fire of eating, like each part of her has something unique to say about spiciness, grains, juicy meats, cream, the crunchiness of green things full of sweet water. Her taste buds, like a rainbow. Her throat like the long precious moment between desire and fulfillment, powerfully swallowing and releasing. The space inside her stomach collapses into substance, warm and real and rich with process.

  Now she understands the day. Now the day—which was once a ghost, a spirit with no skeleton—has a structure with beginning, middle, and ending, and that structure is built of meals and the spaces between them. Hunger is a clear, grounding entity that breaks up her day, a reason to stop or to continue. Food fills her in, brighter and brighter. Her own womanhood overcomes her. It splashes her hips from side to side as she walks, as if she is fleshy like Chelya and Fawn, and her body seems to change, rounding a little more over her bones, as if she changes from bird to mammal. Her own lips taste sweet to her, soft under her tongue.

  Everything is delicious. And here is Chelya’s buoyant touch, drawing her here and there through the stations of life: the animals, the gardens, the river, the house. Lonely has so many questions. She wants to know where everything comes from and what makes it what it is. The clay of the round plates and the colors painted on them. The smooth floor of the house. The cloth bow that ties back Chelya’s hair. But when Chelya asks her questions back, she avoids them.

  “I come from nowhere,” Lonely tells her, for she remembers Delilah’s reaction to the story of the tower, and she senses that the words to describe her past in the lonely sea will not be made from the language of this land, where buildings are made of trees and straw and a little mud, crouching low to the earth. And Chelya, who is wild with joy at the realization that all of being human is new to Lonely, is so busy showing her the world that she doesn’t press too hard yet for answers.

  Lonely meets the grandmother on the first evening at dinnertime. Now there is a fourth woman at the table, and all three besides Lonely are connected by this important word: mother. No one introduces Eva to Lonely, but her presence is everywhere as soon as she sits at the table, and the soft but silent reverence that seems to surround her calls Lonely’s attention as strictly as if she had been ordered to do so. At first, Lonely cannot look her in the eye. She doesn’t know who she is, but she remembers the first old one she knew, who still waits for her on the island of her childhood, ready to greet her in every nightmare with that long-suffering face.

  Then, when Eva doesn’t speak to her, Lonely at last looks up, steeling her eyes. Eva is sitting directly across from her, and she nods. Lonely’s heart relaxes and Eva smiles. No one speaks that night, except for Chelya making nervous comments about what she’s shown to Lonely, and what the plants and animals are doing.

  On the second day, the rains have begun again and do not stop. The old woman is nowhere to be seen, which is a relief to Lonely, for she still frightens her. Chelya and her mother spend all day in rows of plants with strange, lively characters, plants whose hands and heads and feet become the food they will eat for dinner. Both women’s faces are tight and focused today; they say nothing as they dig deeper trenches around the rows to let the water flow in rivers away, and as they mound up the muddy soil, and as they cover long rows of earth with what looks to Lonely like blankets. Lonely, accustomed to being outdoors in any weather, lets the rain run over her face like she is part of the field. She watches them helplessly for a while, then tries to follow what they do. Distractedly, Chelya hands her some tool, which Lonely tries and fails to use as they do. She waits for Chelya to help her, but even the girl is so urgent now, so intent on her task as the rain washes the soil from the roots of these precious, speaking, nearly human plants, that she has no time to notice Lonely standing there, waiting. Chelya’s hands are muddy and smart and quick.

  Lonely sits on a stone and watches the women, and thinks idly, habitually, of longing.

  At dinner that night, she is ravenous. She dives into the joy of hunger and fulfillment, not minding the silence at the table, unable to imagine the conversation that is usually there. Even Chelya seems too tired to talk. But out of the corner of her eye, Lonely sees Eva’s hand stroke Fawn’s hair once, and hears Fawn sigh, and hears herself sigh, too, though she did not mean to. Suddenly the food is no longer quite enough. What is wrong?

  “We’ll be all right,” Eva nods softly to her daughter.

  Fawn shakes her head ever so slightly. “Last year the drought—now this.”

  “We always make it, Ma,” says Chelya. “Don’t worry.” Her voice sounds smaller and sadder than Lonely has ever heard it, and yet in these few spoken words which she doesn’t understand, Lonely hears the deep assumption of teamwork, of mutual knowing, that holds a family together. Like the network of trees in the forest. Like the birds that know each other through song.

  “The boys will be home,” says Eva now, “by the time we finish cleaning up. I can feel them coming.” Lonely feels almost surprised that she gave this information to Fawn, so great is her own longing and expectation—so clear is her own body’s memory of the man’s arms.

  True to Eva’s prediction, she sees Rye for the first time a little later that night with his son at his side. The two men enter the house soaked with the rain, bringing a gentle thrust of dark, weary masculinity into the round stillness. Eva has now retired for the night, and Lonely still feels the weight of the old woman’s gaze, which followed her all evening and seems to know something that Lonely does not. After Eva was gone, Lonely watched Fawn put down her mending and rest her eyes on the door. Love and hope changed her face so slightly that Lonely could barely detect them—her mouth still set in its wide, full line, but her jaw relaxing a little, her cheeks falling, her chest rising. The yellow light of the candle played a dramatic theater of shadows over her modest profile, like a piece of the sun’s great soul had come to sit intimately among humans, shrinking itself into a small but powerful glow that made a circle of wonder in the room. Chelya and Lonely are sitting on the floor when the man and the boy walk in; Chelya has lain out her jewelry for Lonely to see, asking if she would like a necklace or a bracelet for her own.

  Now Lonely’s whole body vibrates, and if she were a cricket the very friction of her trembling would make a song, as Fawn goes to her husband and son and kisses them both. As if she were standing before him he
rself, Lonely feels Rye’s helpless bigness, his tender, naked aliveness falling with relief into Fawn’s breast, and how their bodies complete each other with a quiet, delirious sizzle, even from across the room. The boy—not a man at all yet but a poignant approximation of one—stands gaping at Lonely, his hair light and messy around his ears, his T-shirt so old it’s as soft as skin, his pants hanging loose, his feet smooth and finely contoured in their frayed sandals. He is slimmer and paler than anyone in the family, and tall like his father and like Lonely.

  “Dad,” Chelya starts. “The girl you brought home—”

  “My name is Lonely,” says Lonely, rising suddenly, full of shame but wanting the men to know her, wanting them to look at her and keep looking, feeding her with their deep brown eyes.

  Rye turns to her, and she sees his bearded, weather-darkened face tense with a kind of perceptive thoughtfulness that he seems accustomed to keeping silent. He nods his head, raindrops falling from his hair, unconscious of his sturdy grace. When he looks at her, her whole body changes. All that it has learned in the past two days of eating and drinking and being led by a small eager hand—all that it has learned of humanness—rises in her throat, her body waking again as if looking at itself, replicating again and again inside itself. The blood emerges beneath her skin, coloring her in. Her own beauty dizzies her. She can feel it. She needs him to help her carry the weight of it. She needs to pour it over his dense, muscular form, to make it real.

  You saved me. You made me real. She stands there boldly, willing Rye to look at her, and he complies, his gaze smooth and contained.

  “Hello, Lonely,” he says, the two words separated stiffly from each other, but firm. Lonely realizes that both Chelya and Fawn have avoided speaking her name since she arrived. She breathes out, and her breath sounds loud in the quiet. Rye’s face barely changes but she imagines a hint of a smile there, and to her that smile holds a sad, knowing weight and an infinite capacity for goodness. She realizes it again: he is the first person to speak her name. That must mean something. It must.

  But he goes with Fawn then, almost right away, without eating, and Kite, after a mumble that serves as his hurried introduction, talks with Chelya briefly, drinks a cup of milk, and rolls himself up into a blanket in the corner. And there is no answer that night, about whether or not she—Lonely—will stay.

  Instead there is only another question for Lonely: what secret space—what paradise, what dream—do Rye and Fawn rush off to, when they so quickly leave together, when they so quickly mount the ladder into the attic where Lonely last night slept? She does not sleep there tonight. Tonight the rain continues, and Chelya and Lonely sleep on the floor below, Lonely pretending to sleep as soon as Chelya lies down beside her, to avoid Chelya’s questions and her dauntless joy that Lonely cannot share.

  There is no answer. Yet the next day, Lonely is given breakfast again, and is not asked to leave. And the next, and the next. Every day there is hunger and eating. Every day there is this love to witness all around her, painful to watch and yet impossible not to. Every day there is work, and at times this work is given to her also, and Lonely discovers the happiness of feeling necessary in small, occasional ways.

  There is the fleeting passage of the men, their thrilling presence in and out of her day as they pass from field to forest, from house to horses, from kitchen to shed. At the table she waits, with the luxury of food turning in her mouth, for Rye to speak, so that she can rest with relief in the slow, deep nest of his voice. When she walks through the fields with Chelya or finds only Fawn at the house when she returns, she tries not to show her disappointment or to mention Rye’s name.

  “Why can I still stay?” she whispers to Chelya one evening as they wash dishes together. “Is it all right?”

  Chelya shrugs. “Why not? More of the crop survived the rains than we expected, so we have plenty of food. You can help out.”

  But Lonely wants something more. She wants to hear that she is wanted by at least one person in the family—and not just by Chelya, who, she fears, would rejoice in any companionship, and who looks at her with questions that Lonely cannot answer. Chelya’s kindness is so frequent and warm, and the luxuries of food and soft bedding and the circle of family at the table in the embrace of the house are so wonderful. Yet Fawn still avoids her eyes, and Kite acts like she isn’t there, unless they find themselves alone together, and then he bolts so fast that Lonely looks around her, wondering what could have frightened him. Sometimes she convinces herself that Rye feels something for her, for his glances remake her body every time, the knowing in them so penetrating and tenderly confident that one of them can claim her for an entire day, but those glances are few. Eva watches her but says nothing. Lonely realizes that though everyone seems to allow her, though she feels no malice from anyone, with the exception of Chelya no one is speaking to her more than a word here or there. And maybe, Lonely thinks in confusion, there is nothing strange about that at all. Perhaps it is she who is strange. She thinks of the birds as they called to each other in the desert brush. She thinks of the sound of her name. She tries to remember the few brief conversations of her life. What is it that people talk about? Sometimes these people talk, but she doesn’t understand them. They speak of leaks in the barn, and of too much rain. They speak of people whose names she does not know. They speak of the way the house is made and the way things grow, but she does not know these things. And she has her own questions but is afraid to ask them, because she doesn’t know the rules.

  What is that wetness in my body and in your eyes, deep down, when you look at me? she would ask Rye.

  What does it feel like, to make love to him? she would ask Fawn. And what do you think of me? What are you thinking about, when your face changes like that?

  Where are the secret places you go in the afternoon, and why? she would ask Kite.

  Am I doing something wrong? Do you curse me too? What do you see, and what does it mean? she would ask Eva desperately, when Eva follows her with her eyes and does not mind that Lonely knows it.

  But these do not seem to be the kinds of questions that people ask each other.

  So she stays quiet for now.

  3rd MOON

  Delilah isn’t skilled with sorrow, which feels to her sneakier and more deadly than anger. When it comes—which happens whenever Moon goes—she does her best to sleep through it. Besides, she is always careful with herself on the dark moon. It’s a quiet, murky time, with no light to focus the darkness, no syrupy white orb to guide one’s dreams. The sky abandons itself to a chaos of blackness.

  Tonight, walking makes the new-moon cramps less acute. So she walks, feeling that her body is held together by strings of pain. She allows a fantasy, sometimes, of the strings breaking—all her joints disconnecting from her limbs, her vertebrate floating apart, relaxing and scattering over the desert floor and dissolving into dust and sunlight.

  She walks toward the mountains, and wonders fleetingly if Dragon’s girl left by this route. For a moment, she tries to imagine that leaving. What it would feel like to walk away and start all over—again. Maybe she feels a little wistful at the thought, which has not crossed her mind in years.

  The air is fresh and cold, and her breath energizes her. She walks with a determined stride, as if she knows where she’s going. It’s surprising how much light the desert, with its face as ugly and pockmarked as the moon itself, can reflect. The stars, and an hour’s worth of walking and adjusting to the darkness, are enough for Delilah to see her way by. Following the lighter glow of the cliff beside her, she begins, for no particular reason, to run.

  She stops when she sees smoke rising from around the next bend, from one of the caves where old legends say that dragons once lived. Instinctively, she crouches into a corner of stone. Already the thought of men quickens her body, but she is bleeding, and besides she doesn’t like to be caught off guard. She is a hunter and will not be h
unted. But when she scans the darkness, she sees no movement, no sign of a vehicle, no sign of disturbance. She presses against the rock wall and climbs, following a shadow path up and over, and peers down to the place where the smoke rises.

  It isn’t smoke. It’s steam.

  She has never seen such a thing—not in the desert, not anywhere. Thick, luscious balloons of steam rise from what seems to be a pit of boiling water in caverns of earth at the base of a cave. She can’t see anything below the white puffs, but she can hear the writhing water like magic in a cauldron. The vapor melts open her pores, unpeels tension from her face that she didn’t even know was there. The sound is delicious, the stench—like something fermented and rotten—somehow intoxicating. She feels that tearful, child-like joy that she never used to believe could be hers, the joy that she felt during her first days in the desert, to know that for the first time in her life the universe had given her a gift—her alone, as if she deserved it. She feels the joy of realizing that there is still something more to be discovered.

  But before she can slide down the rock, before she can lose herself in this luxurious secret of earth, the shape of a man materializes in the haze below her. As he looks up, she knows it is Dragon, though his face never comes entirely clear. She is crouched like an insect on a thin ridge of stone, damp and exposed, and cannot move. She feels something in the blackness of her own stomach that should be fury or disappointment but is neither.

  “Dragon,” she says, without meaning to, simply because he rises here from this place of dragons, and it is his name, and there is nothing else to say. She can see the rusty darkness of one human shoulder rounding out of the steam into the invisible light of the desert night, and if it were not for that, she wouldn’t know for sure that he is real. In his shroud of mist, he seems to lurch drunkenly toward her, the posture of his body so familiar to her now: a pillar of desire and will. She thinks, absurdly: He really is a god. He is the god of something. I just don’t know what.