The Carving Circle

by Gretchen Heffernan

  “Get a cat,” repeated the parrot.

  “This is Franklin. My baby,” she stroked the parrot nuzzling her neck.

  “Boom. Boom.”

  “Franklin here loves lightning, don’t you, baby?”

  “Boom. Boom.”

  “He knows when a storm is coming. Sit down. Now, we can’t talk when we’re thirsty, can we? You collect yourself and I’ll get the lemonade,” she said as she walked into a bright gold kitchen.

  Hope nodded. She didn’t think she had a choice in the matter. Everywhere she looked she saw large crystals, rocks, piles of books, trinkets and houseplants. Faded oriental rugs covered the floors. On the walls were three textured paintings of large blocks of color. Hope wondered if Birdie had painted them. She returned carrying two glasses and a jug of lemonade on a tray. She saw Hope looking at the paintings.

  “It’s called Modernism. Do you like them?” Birdie asked about the paintings, and Hope sensed that she’d know if she lied to her.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I feel the same. I don’t unlike them if you see what I mean. They were a gift from a client. It’s strange. Why three? I asked him. Because of their relationship, he answered. I didn’t understand it then, but now, having lived with them for a while, that’s the thing I admire. On their own, they aren’t worth a damn, but together they’re enhanced somehow, same with folks, don’t ya think? Some I only like in the company of others,” she poured Hope a glass, sat down in a purple velvet armchair. “Now then, I’ll begin, so we can escape the boredom of chitchat and rigmarole. Name’s Birdie, as you know. The name came before the obsession in case you’re fixing to ask. But you know what? We become the thing we’re most often called, which will be interesting for you. So. What can I do for you?”

  “Nothing for me really. I’m here for Elora, you know Elora Donnelly? She told me to come and give you a message.”

  13.

  Birdie put her glass down. Her eyes were bright pearls inside her pin tucked skin and her face was urgent.

  “Elora Donnelly? Really? You just saw her?”

  “Yes.”

  “How was she?”

  “Well, she was, she wasn’t very good. It was Arlo. He beat her up.”

  “That bastard. I ought to have him killed. If she’d let me, I’d do it myself,” Birdie said. “And the message?”

  “She told me to tell you that she was ready, that she’ll come tomorrow night.”

  “Oh! Bless her heart.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Change her mind,” Birdie’s pearls shone. “It’s my special skill. I will change her mind, once and for all.”

  “How will you change her? I mean, I’ve heard you were a, you know,” she said.

  “A witch?”

  “Yeah, sorry.”

  “Oh for goodness sake, don’t be sorry! I know they call me a witch, I also know they say it like they want to replace the W with a B and that’s fine by me. Absolutely fine. Personally, I prefer to think of myself as a symbolic psychologist, but witch bitch will do. I don’t believe in magic in a hocus pocus kind of way, that’s pure poppycock, but magic in the way that sharing a secret saves it from haunting you. It’s no magic really, people have made that word silly. It’s just an old knowledge that folks have forgotten. The mind simply works well with symbols and images. Think of Christ on the cross, wedding rings, the lotus flower, the Star of David and so on. I use them to move my clients out of the persona they’ve created from themselves. Symbols and ceremony, the two oldest tricks in the book. Like I said. It’s no miracle really, just the repositioning of power, just plugging the intellect into the emotion,” she took a drink of lemonade.

  “So you’ll just give Elora a symbol?”

  “Yes, indeed I will.”

  “Then what? She just decides to leave Arlo lickety-split?”

  “Well, not right away. Nothing but death is quick in life, honey. Even a long death is too quick in the end. It takes time and more time to build a person back from nothing. Think of her like an hourglass. The symbol just flips her over and lets my words, call ’em spells if you like, my words trickle into her like sand, and before you know it, a small mound of self-worth has piled up and begins building a new myth. Poor Elora. She needs a truckload. Hell, she needs a beach. The last time I saw her she was gouged the size of the Grand Canyon. Her body was just a fleck inside her loss. Nothing really, well you know, you’ve seen it. She was flitting around my garden like a hummingbird. Last winter it was, cold as a witch’s tit, pardon the pun, and I was at the window with my binoculars looking for owls and there she was, darting from tree to tree, skinny as a stick, I went and opened the door for her.”

  “Why had she come?”

  “I helped her daddy ease his pain, you see, and got to know her then. God bless her soul. She’d come asking for safety. The way she held her coat to her throat made her hand look like a delicate white brooch. I remember that. She sat by my fire and drank tea and never once removed her hand. It was only when she was leaving, and turned her head to say thank you, that I noticed the red marks she’d been trying to cover.”

  *

  Elora walked beside the stream, baked to a leather map with knife engravings across its bed, until she reached the river and sat down beside the bank. The late afternoon air sat in her mouth like a hot penny. The insects ruled. Their murmur was tidal and scavenging. Elora breathed deeply, she knew about thirst, about droughts of the internal, human kind. Ideas grew in her like seeds under concrete. She relished the dehydrated world around her, for it meant that she was not alone, that the earth seemed merely her body turned inside out and a kinship was formed.

  The dirt road that ran parallel to the stream unrolled like a parched tongue and soon Arlo would drive down it, but now she had the river. The current was too strong and low to produce a clear reflection, but it was comforting to see the shadows of her face change. The wind lifted off of the water and felt cool against her swollen eye, like a balm of soothing current.

  Behind her the windows of the house looked luminous and she imagined that the house was on fire. In her mind, she burned it to the ground, then stood, listening. I am not stuck, she thought, I refuse to be stuck. She thought about the ceremony Birdie would give her. She could do that.

  She could do it for herself. The idea of performing her own personal ceremony made her fate seem less random and suggested control. She could use her voice as a symbol and begin to break the glass.

  She stopped and listened. The dusk that was amniotic.

  She could hear the reeds slop alongside the mud bank, the locusts and the grasses brushing in the wind. She lowered into these sounds and hummed herself back to nothing.

  Her shadow disappeared into the field as though she’d spilled, she soaked and the days heat fell from her in layers, until she was soft. Imagine moss on bone. The last of the sun descended into the water like a retreating red ship.

  The night dropped its lump in her throat, it grew and filled her. She could feel her voice, tunneling from far away, yet moving closer, she imagined it shaking the water in glasses as it crunched through rock and soil, it began to burn, to push until it burst and shot up through her legs, her pelvis, stomach, diaphragm, and when she opened her mouth again it slid out, like a burning snake through a snowdrift, it cut and sizzled and entered the prairie.

  It hit Jacques in the stomach with the strength of a bullet through a melon.

  He watched her singing. He didn’t know the song, but it didn’t matter. She sang like releasing birds, like mining, like breaking the clutch of sea. He knew that kind of surrender.

  The music was her representation. The knife that could cut her away from her other self. This was the voice she had known all her life. It moved around her like salty waves, licked the inside of her shell, glossed her cupped belly to smooth. She reached low and collected its cool shape. She held it close to her ear and heard the world. This was her seashell voice.

  That
kind of surrender makes you do things just to blur the edges of reason. He dipped below the grass, got down on all fours and started slowly crawling towards her. She heard him, or rather; she heard everything hesitate around him and it stopped her, caught her on its hook. She turned and saw nothing.

  It made her run.

  14.

  “I’ve got to prepare for her Franklin and it’s a sensitive matter, sensitive as a tongue in a jar of burrs,” said Birdie.

  Trying to help an abused woman was like punching at shadows, thought Birdie. You’ve got to point your arrow at the beast. Slay the shadow maker. More than that, slay its reason for being. Elora needs ownership of her own downfall, yes indeed, she needs to hold her demise in her hands. It’s a reversal of power.

  “I hate to say it Franklin, but that woman needs her own penis. I’ll tell you what, witchcraft is certainly not for the prudish, but hell, Frankie, nobody is insinuating an operation here for Christ’s sake, just a symbol, just a physical thing that she can hold and bury. I know just the man to help,” she said as she put on her boots and jacket.

  The air was sickly with late blooming jasmine. She planted it when she was young, well, younger, before she recognized the scent as ‘old woman smell’. It annoys her now. It strangles everything as well as her olfactory glands. She sticks her middle finger up at the plant and walks on. The Bird. The private alternative meaning to her name.

  She found Jacques in the backyard. Dusk had set. His lady sculptures were everywhere. It had only been a few weeks but the house had been painted white and the door had new hinges. The maple tree in his backyard was full of a late summer evening. His garden looked fantastic and he stood in the middle of the rows, harvesting runner beans. She could see small bits of woodchip stuck on his scalp like curly bugs. He looked at her, smiled and stood smearing soil across his jeans.

  “Best time to harvest is in the evening,” he said and plucked a slug off of one of his plants. “It’s also the best time for pest control. How are you Miss Dubois?”

  “Never better Mr. Beaumont. You have a regular harem here Jacques. They are amazing,” she turned her palms to heaven and spun around.

  “Thanks. Only a few are finished, but yes, I’ve been busy,” he said.

  “I’ll say,” said Birdie as she followed him to the porch. “They have similar features,” she stopped to look at one of the carvings.

  “Most are of my mother,” Jacques said.

  Birdie didn’t know how to respond, so chose not to, grief was individual and he was an artist, after all. Crickets in the grass filled the silence and the rivers sway. They stood under the roof and stomped the mud from their boots.

  “Would you like a cup of mint tea?” Jacques held open the door to the kitchen.

  “If you’re making one,” Birdie stepped inside.

  “It’s already on its way,” he said and removed the singing percolator from the stovetop. He took mint leaves from his pocket, rinsed them under the tap and dropped them into two mugs. “Honey?”

  “No thanks,” she said as she took the mug and blew into it. “That’s nice. Thank you. So. You must be finding Callisto inspirational,” she said and nodded towards his sculptures on the lawn.

  “Yes,” he said. “She just wants to be out.”

  “Who?”

  “My maman,” he said.

  “Out of what?”

  “Her form.”

  “Right,” she took a drink. “Are they all of your maman?”

  “Mostly but, a few are of women I don’t know. Their faces just come to me and I sculpt them,” he said.

  “Well, they’re wonderful, whoever ‘they’ might be. So, what’s the deal, do you release them through your sculpture?

  “Yes,” he said and Birdie sensed that he didn’t want to explain it further.

  “Huh,” she thought for a second or two. “That’s an interesting idea and related to why I’m here actually. Listen, I need a favor and it’s a, how to put this discreetly, it’s an unusual one,” she cleared her throat and lowered her voice. “I need you to carve me a life-sized penis.”

  He laughed into his tea. “That’s the last thing I expected you to say.”

  “Don’t laugh. I know what you’re thinking. Lonely old woman, yada yada, but it’s for a client actually.”

  “No kidding? Exactly what kind of service do you provide now, Birdie?”

  “I’m using it as a symbol, like you use sculpture. It’s the oldest symbol in the world. The mind responds to an imagined event just the same as it responds to an actual event. Did you know that? The trick is to get the mind working beyond its reason. I have a few secrets of my own, you know.”

  “I never doubted that for a minute. When do you need it?”

  “Today. Can you do that?”

  “Sure. Any particular dimension?” He put his hands a foot apart as though he were describing the size of a fish.

  “Small, I want it as accurate as possible, no detail, just a thingy and balls.”

  “Poor man,” he said and shook his head.

  “Don’t say that, even as a joke, don’t think or say it for a minute. I don’t want any pity carved into this symbol. The man’s a beast, an animal, not even a man. Think of that when you are carving it. And when you’re finished, bury it under the maple tree out there, doesn’t have to be deep, bury it and wash your hands and touch something beautiful. I don’t want any part of you involved with this. I’ll dig it up tomorrow. And Jacques, tell no one, not a single soul, I’m serious. A life depends on it.”

  “I won’t, I promise, but tell me one thing: is it for that singing woman? The one with the broken face.”

  “What do you know about her?” Birdie was taken aback.

  “It was just a guess. I heard her singing beside the river and she seemed, well, tragic, I suppose. Impenetrably tragic.”

  “Let me give you some advice, you stay away from her, I don’t really care what you do with yourself, but I am the one and only person in this town that doesn’t. Elora is married to the Sheriff,” she said.

  “What kind of man beats his wife?” Jacques stared past the window to the breastplate hanging on the tree. Elora, he thought, that’s her name. It was too late to stay away from her. He had carved her face on the breastplate only yesterday. He couldn’t look at Birdie. She was living inside his garden, inside the wood and inside his mind.

  “The kind of man that will think nothing of killing you,” she put her cup in the sink.

  “Point taken. Is there anything else I can do for you Madam Dubois?” Jacques bowed extravagantly.

  “Come to think of it, yes. Could you also whittle me a small woman? About pinky finger size?”

  “I’ll make sure she’s singing,” he said and winked.

  15.

  At midnight, Birdie found the small woman and the tip of the penis poking through the soil like mushrooms. Birdie pulled them out with ease and put them in her pocket. The lightning bugs set off the locusts’ alarm. There were chimes on the breeze and the smell of dirt and split wood. His carvings waited in the soft apprehension of midnight and shadow, where the sky ensues evergreen and the moon lays broken across the river.

  Whatever is happening has already begun, she thought, so be it. She walked towards the river. But there was no harm in asking for guidance.

  “Help me,” she said to no one, to everyone, to everything.

  *

  The following evening, Elora poured the sleeping powders in the scotch and waited. Arlo came in through the back door and she could tell by the way he struggled with his boots that he’d already been drinking. He needed courage to see me, she thought, and she was right, for when he saw her sitting at the kitchen table he said, “Oh baby, just look at you.”

  He knelt down beside her. “I’m so sorry. I could just kill myself. This whole thing is crazy. This situation, you know, it damn near makes me crazy,” he put his hand on her knee.

  “That mine?” he nodded at the scotch.


  “Yeah,” she said and handed it to him.

  “I don’t know what I’ve done,” he said and took a swig, “to deserve a woman like you. I love you Elora, you know that don’t ya?”

  She nodded and stood. She’d heard it all before.

  “You hungry?”

  “Starving. I’m so sorry, baby,” he said and necked the rest of the glass. “What’s for dinner?”

  “Pot roast,” she said and took it out of the oven.

  “Smells good,” he sat down and she dished him up a big helping.

  They ate in silence and when he’d finished, he wiped his mouth with a napkin and said, “I think I’ll just go lie down on the sofa for a little bit. It’s been a long day.”

  She nodded and started tidying up the dinner plates.

  He was snoring within a few minutes. She went into the living room, stood over him and watched him until she was certain he wasn’t going to wake up, then she grabbed her coat and softly stepped out into the night.

  The land was spread like a palm before her, a hand waiting to snap shut and for once, she thought, she might be able to escape its grip. It was a matter of time, she told herself as she walked along the river towards Birdie’s. Time waited inside her like air in a bottle, invisible to the naked eye and heard only when breathed into, when turned into music.

  *

  There was a time when she’d been young, which was a laughable thought, because she was only twenty three now, but when circumstance fast-forwards the heart, the age of the body becomes irrelevant. When she had yet to be weather-beaten, had not yet found her place inside of peace or denial and believed that the order of things could change with little sacrifice. The want of youth is as merciless as the regret of age, both injuries, one the sharp stab of impatience and the other, a slow leak. When she was young, she spoke like diving.

  “Daddy, I can sing,” she said.

  “You get that from your mother. She can sing.”

  “I’d like to be a singer, Daddy.”

  “She can bring down the angels above with her voice, that woman, she can make you cry.”

  “I’d like to study music at college next year.”