We Contain Multitudes

by Sarah Henstra

  So the train came past and it was shorter than we thought, only about ten or fifteen tankers. We all tossed our lights but only mine stuck. It lit up right near the top of the very last car.

  Bron said it would look like a flare going up, but this was better than any flare. This was a blind throw and then a sudden red sword cutting its way through the night. This was the muscles of my arm, my ribs, my guts, my groin, all flung out of my body at once so that only space was left inside. It was like watching Prince onstage that time. Like empty space filling me up to bursting. Filling up the moment with now, right now.

  I gave a sort of whoop. A laugh, and then I couldn’t stop. Laughing and shouting and running along the tracks after the disappearing train with its red beacon. The rest of you came running and yelling too, up and down the slope, and none of us stopped until the train was completely out of sight and it was quiet. Then we went back and searched without much hope for the three lights that had missed the mark, until Shayna said, “Fuck it’s cold, let’s get out of here.”

  Nearly at the car I said I had to piss. I yanked at your sleeve until you caught on and said, “Me too.”

  I pulled you behind some bushes. I looked all around to make sure, even down at the ground and then up. There was nothing but shadows and pockmarked snow and a flat black sky.

  You yelped at my cold hands down your pants but then you did the same to me. We rocked and swayed, swore and laughed. Touching you was like finding myself in the dark, Jo. That one moment stretching itself out again like now now now, like steel wheels on tracks. I mean the train was long gone but I swear I could still hear it when I came. Me first and then you right after me, shuddering, leaning into each other, your nose pressed hard into my neck and both of us laughing and gasping in the freezing dark. We could hear Bron yelling for us to hurry up. We wiped our hands with snow and found our dropped gloves and ran.

  In the car Bron asked what took us so long, and weren’t we aware how brutal the Escalade’s idling was, in terms of emissions?

  Emissions. I didn’t even look at you, Jo, for fear of laughing. We laughed anyhow, both of us helpless with it. That swift secret. That joy.

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Wednesday, January 20

  Dear Little Jo,

  A quick note that I’ll give to you directly since you’re likely not checking Khang’s box anymore. I have to say I always have a tiny fumble of disappointment walking into her classroom and seeing the mailbox. It takes me a second to remember that the letter-writing assignment is officially over and there won’t be anything from you waiting for me. Half the time I still check. I mean it’s not like we don’t see each other pretty much every day. It’s just reflex.

  So at lunchtime I was studying math in the art room with Bron. The art teacher, Rhoda, said if we ever want to use the room when she’s not there, we can get the key from her ahead of time. Did you know there’s also a little art-supply room with a lock? I saw Rhoda put the key in the drawer of her desk.

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Thursday, January 21

  Dear Kurl,

  Lyle asked me last night about the butcherboys. He noticed that the collar point of my rough-spun linen shirt had been snipped off and guessed, correctly, that it hadn’t been a slip of my scissors.

  He said Bron had mentioned that maybe it was worse for me this year at school than last. “Are you suffering?” he asked.

  I told him it was indeed worse, actually, but that I didn’t feel I was suffering, exactly. I couldn’t tell him about you, of course—about how your presence at school more than compensates for the presence of the butcherboys. It’s been months now since I last left for school carrying dread like stones in all my pockets.

  “And what about your sister?” he said. “Do you have any thoughts on what’s up with her lately?”

  I shrugged. “She seems okay to me.”

  “Okay? She’s been cutting school almost every day. They leave automated messages on my phone, you know.”

  I did know. I also know that Shayna and Lyle argue constantly these days. When she dyed her hair jet-black on New Year’s Day, they yelled at each other for nearly an hour. Lyle has worlds to say about Shayna’s clothes, her hair and makeup, her attitude, her habits; Shayna has nothing to say in return but “Get off my case” and “Leave me alone, Lyle.”

  I said, “I thought you were asking me whether she’s happy.”

  “Well, does she seem happy to you?”

  “Happy enough,” I said. Happy being Axel’s newest rising star at the Ace, I meant. But I kept that tidbit to myself.

  As you know, Kurl, Lincoln High is supposed to be a place of learning. What I learned today at lunchtime, in the art-supply closet: There is a three-inch section of skin over your spine, just above your shoulder blades, where the fine hair forms an almost-invisible furrow. Brushing my lips along it generates the softest, most delicate sensation any part of my body has ever experienced.

  Yours,

  Jo

  PS: I’m going to put this letter in Ms. Khang’s box regardless of the fact that I’ll (hopefully!) see you today after school. Now that the assignment is finished, Ms. Khang will give you the combination so you can access the mailbox whenever you want. I don’t want you to feel disappointed when you check the mail, Kurl! I don’t want you to experience any disappointment, in any context, even for one second. And anyhow I’m still exchanging letters with Abigail Cuttler from time to time. She and I enjoy some interesting philosophical debates, so we’ve agreed to keep corresponding.

  Thursday, January 21, 10 p.m.

  Dear Kurl,

  A good reason to write a letter: to tell a story.

  Once upon a time, Christopher Dowell and I used to be friends. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I never told you our story. For several months in the spring of fifth grade, we would walk home together after school once or twice a week and play video games or jump on his trampoline. He was roughly twice my weight back then, too, but the only practical result of the size difference was that Dowell liked to give me piggybacks. He was terrible at reading and writing, so I used to read aloud to him often—school handouts, comic books, even the onscreen scripts from Pokémon while we played. He was called “Christopher” by everyone back then. Never “Chris,” only “Christopher.”

  For some reason Dowell always had about twenty or thirty golf balls lying around his backyard, and once we made up a hilarious game in which we’d stuff all the golf balls into our shorts and jump off his shed roof, over the edge of the safety net, and onto the trampoline. We would film each other’s jumps on his sister Laurie’s phone. On impact the balls would fly out the cuffs of our shorts and bounce violently up into our faces and come raining down onto our skulls. Sometimes they’d ricochet right back into our crotches or leave bruises on the undersides of our arms.

  Recounting this to you, I’m finding the pseudo-sexual nature of the game glaringly obvious. But at the time it was simply fun. Normal.

  Dowell went to a different junior high than me, so we didn’t cross paths again until last year, by which time I was wearing my Walt Whitman garb and he was a butcherboy. I suppose fond memories weren’t enough to overcome the social gulf between us. Or maybe it’s more directly correlated than that: Maybe remembering the piggyback rides and the golf-ball game fills Dowell with retrospective loathing and intensifies his will to violence.

  Yours,

  Jo

  Monday, January 25

  Dear Little Jo,

  Khang caught my attention on my way out of English class and sort of nodded in the direction of the box so I’d know you’d left me a letter. You can tell she gets a kick out of the fact that we’re hopelessly addicted to mail.

  I know I’ll see you in Rhoda’s room today—at least I hope I will—but this note is to formally thank you for all your help with the SAT prep. I did okay I think. I mean there were lots of questions I had to skip but I managed to stick to
the strategy and everything.

  Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jonathan Hopkirk. A couple of letters ago you mentioned that I make school easier for you. Well you make it easier for me too. I mean everything, all of it. You make everything easier. You make me feel like I can do pretty much anything.

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Tuesday, January 26, 9 p.m.

  Dear Kurl,

  I meant to tell you today that when Shayna arrived home Saturday from taking the SAT, hours before I expected any of you, she stomped straight up to her room and slammed the door. At first she wouldn’t even answer when I knocked. Then she said, “Now we know why you were so interested in that goddamn test. You were prepping Kurl, weren’t you?”

  “Can I come in?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “What happened? Why are you home so soon?”

  “I should never even have registered,” she said. “There was no way in hell I was going to score high enough to bother.”

  I rested my forehead against her door. It was exactly what Bron had been afraid of: Shayna giving up and not even taking the test.

  “Kurl seemed to be killing it,” she said. “He was filling stuff in like a demon. Didn’t look up from the page once.”

  “Are you mad we kept it a secret?”

  “No, Jojo, I’m not mad. God. Why would I even care?”

  “Do we really have to conduct this entire conversation through the door?” I asked.

  “There is no conversation,” she said. “Go away.”

  Go away. Leave me alone. I’ve been getting a lot of that from my sister lately, on the rare occasions she’s been in the house. Lyle found a pack of matches from the Ace in her bag the other day and hit the roof. She confessed to him she and Bron had been to that open mic night before Christmas, which is technically true, but she did not divulge that she’s been spending most of her time there ever since.

  Lyle tried to say that she’s not to go there again, ever, or else. She kept asking him why not: What is his problem with that place in particular, why does he get so worked up about it, why can’t he give her a single logical reason she shouldn’t go there? “Because you’re underage” is clearly not holding water with her.

  Yours,

  Jo

  Friday, February 19

  Dear Little Jo,

  Well that wasn’t exactly how we planned it. I hope you’re not mad. I mean I didn’t plan on it at all. Sylvan and Julia were coming for dinner, so I’d promised Mom I’d help her cook. I only had half an hour left after we came downstairs from your room.

  By the way I didn’t mean to make it sound like I thought you should have let me come into your tent with you. Not with everybody downstairs like that and the girls likely to barge in any second. At least standing behind your bedroom door we could do what we liked, or some of what we liked, and still not get caught if we heard someone in the hall outside.

  Well not getting caught was the theory, anyway. I guess we didn’t account for my big mouth. Everyone was sitting around in your living room: Bron, Shayna, Lyle, Rich, and me. You were only out of the room for two or three minutes, Jo. Somehow the conversation had drifted to the topic of body smells. Rich said his father’s hat still smells like his hair, even though he’s been dead for twenty years. Bron swore she could tell Isaiah and Ezra apart by smelling their necks.

  Lyle and Rich were already getting their coats on. They were just about to leave for rehearsal. I mean the conversation was basically over.

  Then Shayna said, “Jojo’s feet smell like peanut butter.”

  And without thinking at all I said, “Hazelnut.”

  “What?” she said, and I repeated it: “They smell like hazelnuts.”

  There was total silence, but it wasn’t too late. I mean there were so many things I could have said. “He told me himself, in a letter,” or “He shoved his feet in my face one time,” or even “It’s his vintage shoes.” There were so many simple things that could have explained it away, or at least made it seem sort of logical that a teenaged boy would say a thing like that about the scent of another teenaged boy’s feet.

  But none of those things came into my head. Or at least not fast enough to dodge Bronwyn Otulah-Tierney.

  And of course it was Bron. She knew instantly. She said, “How is it that you’ve become the authority on the smell of Jonathan’s feet, Kurl?” Her voice all chirpy. Her head sort of tilted to one side, her lashes fluttering. Letting me know she’d figured it out.

  I sat there, dead silent. Speechless. Heat crawling up my neck to my face. I mean I could feel the heat burning behind my eyelids, even.

  Bron looked at Shayna, and Shayna’s eyebrows disappeared under her bangs. “No way,” she said. “You and Jonathan? No way. Since when?”

  “Are we talking about what I think we’re talking about?” Lyle said.

  “I wasn’t supposed to…” I stuttered. “I mean, he didn’t want to…”

  And then you walked into the room. You looked around at the gaping faces, and asked, “What’s up?” And then at me, with my hot face: “What’s the matter?”

  Everyone cracked up. You have this way of smiling, Jo, when other people are laughing and you don’t know why. Your eyes crease at the corners and your mouth turns up, but only for a second. Then it flips into a half frown, and then back to smiling again. Like you’re testing which one might be the right answer. It’s one of those things about you that pumps adrenaline straight through my guts. Makes me want to punch anyone not sharing the joke with you.

  “I told them,” I said, before anyone else could say it, “about us. It was an accident.”

  Bron leaped up and hugged you. It was kindness, I think. Holding you in case you fainted or something.

  “Well, no wonder you’re such a good cook,” Rich said.

  Shayna punched him. “Rich!”

  You sank into Bron’s chair, and Shayna sat next to me on the couch. “So, how long? Weeks? Months?”

  “A couple months,” you said. A bit teary from the shock.

  Lyle and Rich gave us a big round of congratulations on their way out the door.

  “You’re not mad, are you?” you asked Shayna. “Lying by omission?”

  “No. I mean I wish you could have told me sooner. But no.” Shayna laughed. “Hazelnuts! Oh my God, Kurl.”

  So I had to explain it to you, about your feet smelling like hazelnuts. It was the first time I was talking about our universe, our secret dream universe, out loud. It was still a dream but suddenly also real life. This realness made everything so much sharper. Honed the edges of everything.

  You laughed at my stupidity and dragged my hand to your lap and lifted it and bit my fingers, hard. I snatched my hand back and dug my knuckles under your ribs until you yelped and squirmed. It was the first time we’d touched in public. The first time people were watching us. Seeing us. It felt like something striking sparks in my chest. The sharpness of it! Grinning. Both of us grinning like idiots, and Bron saying, “Oh my God, stop it. Stop, I can’t take it; my brain is exploding.”

  I had to go. You walked me to the door and we kissed as quickly and quietly as possible. You whispered, “Don’t leave me to this pack of jackals.”

  I brushed the side of my face against your face: mine rough, yours smooth. “I won’t sleep,” I promised, for no reason at all.

  But you understood whatever I was trying to say. “I won’t either,” you vowed.

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Wednesday, February 24

  Dear Kurl,

  I’m writing to formally request a do-over of something I botched yesterday in the art closet. In the heat of the moment you said, “Ask me for anything, Jo; the answer is yes.” I was light-headed, laughing, but itchy with sweat, so I asked you to scratch the back of my thigh for me. I was just like the old woman in the fairy tale who squanders her three wishes by sticking a sausage to the end of her husband’s nose and then wishing it off again.
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br />   Yours,

  Jo

  Thursday, February 25

  Dear Little Jo,

  It wasn’t just the heat of the moment. Ask me for anything. The answer is yes.

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Tuesday, March 8

  Dear Kurl,

  It’s an amazing phenomenon: Every time I reread your letter that says “Ask me for anything,” I find there is nothing more I need or want.

  Yours,

  Jo

  Tuesday, March 15

  Dear Little Jo,

  I came down the path by the railway tracks after school today. My Outer Sanctum. On the asphalt right before the gap in the fence, someone has spray-painted the word BREATHE. Probably a coincidence, but I have to say it felt like some kind of sign. I found a lawn chair someone tossed down here beside the tracks, and I’m sitting in it writing this letter.

  So in the art closet today I found my jeans, pulled your last letter out of my pocket, and waved it in your face. “Come on,” I said. “There must be something you want from me.”

  You dug your chin into my belly. “What would you want?” you asked.

  I was ready: “A house with lions in front of it. A pair of life-sized lions. Made out of marble.”

  “I’ve seen your front lawn.” You laughed. “I don’t think there’s room.”

  “No, I want the house too. My own house.”

  “Okay. Those lions are going to be hideous. But okay.”

  “Ask me now,” I said, reaching down, wrapping my arms around your shoulders, and dragging you up so that your cheek was on my collarbone.

  “I want the Stanley Brothers to sing ‘White Dove’ for me,” you said.

  “Isn’t one of them dead?”

  “Yes, and the other is terminally ill. But if I can get you a house, you can bring a couple of singers back from the dead to sing for me.”