“What’s happening? Did I have a fit?” Earl finally wheezes. His eyes are bloodshot, one eyelid swollen just about shut.
“You had a seizure.”
“Don’t tell George.” Earl is still breathing in gurgle spurts. He sounds like he’s got a water fountain in his chest.
“Of course not.” I smile to reassure him. “George isn’t here. You’re safe.”
“I didn’t use to do this. Mom says I was born normal, but when I was a little kid George hit me too hard. I only ever remember being like this.”
“He caused them?” I’m aware of the volume of my voice but unwilling to let my anger drop. I feel it rising in my stomach, up to my chest and into my neck, tightening my hands into fists. I leap to my feet while Earl protests, wraps a thin hand around my ankle. He’s weak. I don’t even have to shake him off. The Jeep is on my right and the snow is piled high on the other side of the barn door. I pause with my palms on the wood. What now, Emma? What you gonna do, Emma? It’s Ray’s voice, teasing. Or it’s Lowell’s. What the hell were you gonna do with a baby anyway, Emma?
What am I going to do? Run through the snowstorm? Find George? Kill him?
I slam my fists into the door and then my boot. Beat at it until my foot breaks through the rotten wood and punches a small hole in the snow.
“Emma!” Earl twines his leg through mine and sends us both flying backward onto our butts. “You’re making yourself bleed!”
We are both breathing heavily. I look at my hand. He’s right. My knuckles are raw.
“I’m sorry, Earl,” I manage. His arms are around my neck. He is comforting me. Sick. I’m truly and completely ill in the head.
“He was drunk that time. Mom didn’t let him hit me again that hard. Not for years. Emma?”
“I hear you.” I take a deep breath and turn to face him. “She should have taken you from him the first time he hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”
“She did what she could,” he says, and I wonder how this sweet little kid can be so kind to a mother who stood by and watched her husband beat him while I can’t forgive my mother for moving on so easily after my father died.
“I’m not going to let him get you. Not ever again.”
I lift my arms as if to ask his permission, and when he nods, I touch his face. I inspect all the scars up close with my eyes and my injured hands. I know I should speak, tell him it doesn’t matter, that everything will be okay, but I can’t.
“The scars will heal some.” I smile.
“You think so?” Earl asks uncertainly, probably detecting my hesitancy.
“I know so,” I say, mustering conviction. “It’s gonna look manly.” I wonder then, but do not ask, if he thinks of his genitalia as a kind of scar or wound that will not heal.
We lead each other back to the woodstove, and I let him sag loosely to the floor again where I cover him with blankets. I sit beside him holding his hand. His eyes slide shut, then he forces them open quickly to make sure I’m still there. “Sleep,” I say.
“They make me tired.” I know he means the seizures. Before Earl lets his eyes slide shut a final time he whispers, “I’m sorry.”
I know the sound of that apology. He’s apologizing for his father, for the shitty way in which he’s been living, for the cold night, for his seizure, for his scars, for his girl body, for his entire life.
TWELVE
In the principal’s office, there is a wide metal desk the color of the olives my mom likes to toothpick into her martinis, and a wall clock that marks the minutes with an angry thonk. The black arm makes its rounds as if carrying the weight of the world, each minute followed by a hefty and disgruntled sigh.
Ms. Latson sits on one side of the desk and I sit on the other. She’s brought me in here before, although I’ve never done anything wrong. I am the type they like to keep a close watch on, alternating, I suspect, between fear I will stab someone and fear I will stab myself.
Rumor has it that no one other than Ms. Latson has ever been on the other side of that desk. Not even the janitorial staff is allowed back there and so students gossip endlessly about what might be in the five-foot space between her desk and the wall. Perhaps a bed with one sad blanket where she can curl up like a troll and sleep at night. Or that kid who never came back after freshman year, only hair, teeth, and fingernails left to reveal their identity.
There are photos on her desk, frames that carefully face her and only her so that delinquents like me cannot see who she is outside of this fucked-up place. Who is in those photos? Are they all photos of her? Are they her extended family? Photos of students from a long time ago when she liked her job?
The door to my left is clear glass. Mrs. Lowe and Scary Mary bustle around out there. They always look busy and annoyed but how hard can it be to take attendance and answer the phone? Students enter and leave the small space, shame heavy on their shoulders. None of this can be heard from where I sit. With the door closed, you enter a weird vacuum. An icebox of silence. The time bomb ticks, waiting for my story.
“What is it you need to tell me, Miss Powers? Take your time,” she says, and yet there is no patience in her voice. “You called this meeting.”
“Does one decide to be a high school principal or is it just something that happens to you?” I ask.
“Excuse me?” she asks. The clock quiets, skips a thonk.
“Did you always want to do this? Was it, like, your dream? Other kids were all ‘I want to be an astronaut, veterinarian, firefighter’ and you were like ‘I want to be a principal of a miserable high school.’”
“Oh,” she says. The question bores her. “My father was a principal. You’ll find that paths are often set for you before you realize. Not that my father told me I had to do this, but people tend to follow the paths they recognize.”
“So you’re saying I’m destined to be a drunk auto mechanic?”
“What? No.” She is flustered now. She knows my backstory. Everyone does. “You can be whatever you want to be. That’s why we are here, isn’t it? To get a good education. To go on to college. Have you spoken with Ms. Zee?”
Ms. Zee is the guidance counselor. She is young and glows with an optimism that makes me feel sad. Students call her Cornbread for the sticky, flaky way she comes after all of us. Her good cheer so clingy, so messy.
“She doesn’t like me,” I say, and it’s true. Cornbread has had no success breaking through my don’t-give-a-shit exterior and it has begun to bother her. She recently recommended community college and then stumbled all over herself when I accused her of underestimating me.
“Well now, that’s just not true. She likes everyone.”
“She pretends to like everyone. There is a difference.”
“Fine. It’s almost final bell, Emma. Why are we here?” She slips her glasses off her nose, the left side catches on her ear for a second before it falls to her breasts, hung there by a silver chain so that she will never, ever lose them. She has brown eyes, crow’s-feet at the corners.
“It’s about Coach Matt.”
“Okay,” she says, and I can see she knows what’s coming. Some version of it anyway. The bitch knows he’s not right and has done nothing about it. I’m doing the right thing.
“He…” I pause for the show of it.
“You can tell me, sweetie,” she says, but the affectionate nickname is not comfortable for her. “There are, of course, things I’d have to report. You understand that, right?”
“Like what?”
“Like if you tell me you are in danger or he is. If someone is a threat, it can’t be kept secret.”
I can see that she doesn’t fully believe this is what I’m going to say. Maybe she doesn’t know about the late-night, weed-riddled poker games or the rumors that he sleeps with all the girls. Maybe she isn’t worried about his pretty face. Maybe she doesn’t think I’m brave enough to speak truth and ruin a life.
“Is someone hurting you?” she asks.
“W
hat?” Her question is a non sequitur. The “someone” part disconnecting it from Coach Matt in a way that I don’t like. I’m about to say This isn’t about me but then I realize what I see on her face is dread. She doesn’t want to know. She wants me to keep it to myself.
I stare at her for a while and she lets me. There is still a chance I will say Little Johnny cheated on a test or I’ve decided not to go to college or I’ve been cutting myself. Any of these would be a brilliant alternative to what she worries is coming.
Her hands are folded on her lap where I can’t see them.
I flick my eyes to the back of one of her framed photos. My arm reaches out before I give it permission to do so and latches on to the biggest frame. I pull it to me. Flip it around.
It’s the beach. A stretch of it on either side of a boardwalk leading down to water so blue it doesn’t look real.
“What is this?”
“Florida,” she says.
I look at her and I can see she wants it back. That anything I tell her will slow down the time it takes for her to get out from behind that desk and into this photo.
She hates me. She hates all of us.
“Coach Matt touched me,” I say.
“What do you mean ‘touched’ you?”
“He makes out with all the girls and I was over there and we got high and…”
“Over where?”
“His house.”
“You were at his home?”
“I’m late,” I say. “Two weeks.”
This makes her stop breathing. The clock marks a minute, two before she takes a deep breath. She puts her glasses back on as if there is something to see.
“Well, if this is true, we will need to call your mother. Get you to a doctor.” It’s a test. Maybe I’ll back down.
“I don’t want him to get in trouble.”
“If what you are telling me is true, he is in trouble. He will be fired. Arrested, perhaps, if you want to press charges.”
“Okay,” I say quietly, as if I am sad for all of this. “No charges.”
“That will be up to your parents. This isn’t your fault, sweetie.” The endearment comes out more genuine this time. She is thinking of me now. “He’s young, but he’s the adult. The teacher. It’s his responsibility to know better.”
“Okay,” I say again.
“How many other girls?” she asks. The situation is unfolding before her now. She sees how bad this is going to be. “Will others come forward?”
“I don’t think so. Does anyone have to know it was me that talked? Besides my mother, I mean.”
“I should tell Ms. Zee. Can I get her? Yes, that would be the best next step. Let me get her in here and you two can talk it through.”
“Ms. Zee hates me,” I say.
“She does not.” Ms. Latson is already up and walking to her office door. Her relief about getting away from me is palpable.
The door shuts behind her. I am left alone in the icebox of an office. I wait a clock beat, two, and then three before I stand and move to her side of the desk. I sit in the office chair, feel the indent of her butt under mine. I pull myself up to the desk. She has five frames. Two are of a beach scene. One is old. Her and her parents, perhaps. The other two are empty. The frames are ornate, silver, one has a turquoise stone at the bottom. The black mat of the frame shows through. No picture. A sign of an empty life. Either that or she has already begun to slowly move out, disappearing her life one picture at a time.
I open the middle drawer, a single pencil rolls forward. Three paper clips sit rusting. How does one measure a life? Half empty? Half full?
I stare into the drawer and the sadness in me grows. Blooms huge in my heart, the lie I’m telling growing, stretching its blue veins through my body.
* * *
“What did you do, Emma?”
Ray is standing over me. He’s crying and I can’t remember what I’ve done right away, although I know I’ve done something. He’s woken me from a deep sleep. I was having a nightmare or what seemed to be a nightmare. I wasn’t scared. In it, I was a house. Tall windows for eyes, a spiral staircase up one leg through my torso into the attic of my heart. Inside someone is banging at me to get out. They have a hammer in their hand and it hurts, purple bruises spread with each hit and the sound is familiar. The hit thudding like a big black minute hand shifting into the future. Thonk. Thonk. Thonk.
“I’m sleeping, Ray,” I say. “Go away.”
“He’s gone.”
“He who?” I ask, and now I’m awake. It’s been a week since I reported Coach Matt. Since Cornbread got to do her best job ever, making me process the proper emotions. Calling my mother in so we could tell her together. When Ms. Zee left us alone, she said, “Jesus, Emma. I wanted better for you.”
“I don’t know that I’m pregnant.”
“Easy to find out.”
“I went to his house last night and everything was gone. Everything.”
“Who’s gone?” I ask, buying time.
“Coach Matt! You’re the only one who knew,” Ray says.
“He was hurting you,” I say.
“That’s not what you saw and you know it.”
“Oh, ick. Not that. He is your teacher. He was twenty-something. It’s against the law.”
“Did you tell them you caught us having sex? Is that what you told them?”
This is not what I told them, but I want to hurt Ray. Even as he sits in front of me hurting, I want to hurt him more so I lie.
“I told them he was molesting you. That he was gay and you were scared.”
“Jesus, Emma.”
“What? How is that not true?”
“Does my dad know?”
“Know what?”
“That I’m gay!”
“You’re not gay,” I say. It isn’t something I’ve even considered. Not really. Ray loves me. I love Ray. We will be together forever. “Please. I have gay friends. You are not gay.”
“Emma,” he whispers. His sadness is deeper than I realized. It is shrinking him. His chin to his chest. His arms curling into his torso. A little crippled thing. “You know me. You know this about me.”
“He made you think you’re gay.”
“Emma! Don’t be so fucking stupid! I loved him. I love him, and he’s gone!” Ray screams louder than I’ve ever heard him scream. He screams until his voice won’t let him scream anymore and his arms begin to scratch, rip at the soft skin on the insides of his arms.
“Ray! Stop it. I’m sorry.” I try to grab his wrists but he won’t let me get to him and then he is on top of me, holding me down so I can’t move.
“You are selfish like your mother. An addict like your father,” he says in a voice so calm that I believe him.
“I love you, Ray. You are my best friend.”
He smacks me then. Hits my face hard. My eyes blur with tears and I stare up through the haze into his face. Our eyes locked to each other and I see how much he hates me. I’ve never seen that look on his face before.
“Fine, you’re a fucking faggot.”
I’ve never said the f-word before and it startles us both.
“I’m not a faggot,” he says. His arms weaken and I flip him on his back.
I’m selfish. I’m psycho.
I kiss him and he kisses me back as if it is a dare. I know what we will do next to prove to ourselves what we are and what we are not, and even in the moments when I know I want to stop it, I don’t. I let it roll. The beasts of us both crawling out into the light.
THIRTEEN
“Whatcha doing?” a sleepy Earl asks from the top rung of the ladder. He’s climbed up to find me in the loft. The sky is clear, pink with the sunrise, and the wind stopped howling maybe an hour ago.
“Looking for footprints. I want to make sure we’re the only people here.”
Earl stands next to me. The wind has pushed the snow into waves that break thickly against the trunks of the pine trees. Earl’s crows have come. Gathered
in the top of one of the far trees. Their black bodies heavy against the white.
“George will be back soon,” he says. “Eat something.” Earl hands me a sleeve of saltines. They are stale, but the salt is welcome, and I eat several.
The crows begin to take off from the tree as we watch. Their caw-caw is only slightly louder than the noise of their wings against the frozen South Dakota air. They are large birds, but one is decidedly larger, its wingspan is quite grand, and it leads the flock, six of them circling before disappearing over the top of the barn, reappearing to complete their circle.
“The brain of a crow is exactly the size of a human thumb,” Earl says, and holds his thumb up as if to measure it against the crow. “If you look at it in relation to their head and body, it’s pretty big.”
“They are flying garbage eaters,” I say as I remain focused on the tree line. Where are you, George?
I’ve turned toward the ladder so my back is to Earl when he screams. I spin to see that a crow has come through the opening and landed on him. Its claws in his hair, its beak pecking at his face. The big black oil slick of a bird holds tight to Earl’s head and pushes his beak down over Earl’s face. Something splashes my cheek. I wipe it away. Blood.
“Hey!” I scream, waving my arms wildly and stepping into the fray. An outstretched wing hits me in the throat. The muscled strength of it staggers me.
“Drop the crackers!” I yell at Earl. Crows, Ray once told me, are highly intelligent, omnivorous, and adaptable. They will survive anywhere. Eat anything. I rip off my jacket and start swinging it at the bird. It squawks and launches itself into the sky.
Earl’s back is to the outside world, his heels teetering on the edge of the hayloft. For a second, Earl looks like he will find balance, but that moment is gone and Earl is falling backward.
“Earl!” I drop my jacket and run to peer over the edge. Earl is on his back in the snow. “Are you okay?”
Before he can answer the crows are dive-bombing him. Swooping down but not landing, working up their nerve to dig their claws in. I jump, landing in the snow next to Earl and then roll onto him so that my body is over his. I gather him up under me. Crows land on my back. They knead their claws into the cotton of my shirt, as if they imagine themselves cats. Their talons poking their needle marks into my skin. One takes off before the other. The remaining crow stands on my back. Its body heavy as a boulder. In the sky, a fellow crow calls for it, and eventually, it lifts off. I wait, counting to a hundred before I loosen my grip on Earl and look up to the sky.
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