I began counting the days. I took daily walks by the spot where we’d meet. I studied the anchored ships and wondered what ours would look like. I tried to imagine our new life together, but only saw a blank space before me.
I spent all my free time wandering through Cartwright. I climbed up and down the roads that zigzagged violently right and left, curled voluptuously around wooded knolls, or elbowed toward the sea. I examined the rows of slat-wood houses, the lopsided fences, the sewer water that trickled through pebble-pocked ditches. I lingered by the port, ambled along the creaking wooden boards whose undersides were fringed with strands of seaweed undulating like orange beards. I would leave Cartwright. God, I would actually leave it. I always knew I’d leave at some point but had no idea it’d be so soon.
I watched the boats bobbing like corks on the sea, saw men haul nets of flapping fish onto the dockside, lingered by the women lined up before the foundry pay-office, bought another pack of bubblegum in Variety Plus. With each minute passing, I sensed the town was separating itself from me. A cage door was gradually opening.
I squinted up at the cracks in the General Store sign: “Open Till You Need Us.” I breathed onto the moss-covered tombs beside Mother’s church. I knew each pothole in every road, each outgrowth of crabgrass in every ditch, which houses had five windows and which had two, which hilltops had grass and which were bald. I knew the best streams to catch frogs in, the seaside boulders offering the greatest views, the ponds with the least flies, and the exact spot where the sun’s rays strike the cliff side at dawn. I knew everything in this town as well as I’d known my body before its recent transformations. Yet I recognized that the town’s sounds, smells, and sights would soon be replaced by other ones; I just didn’t know where they would be or what form they’d take. I removed my shoes when I got to the beach and pressed my toenails into the sand. In the distance, whale backs rose like swelling hills in the sea that gasped out their frail sprays of silver water and disappeared.
Soon I’d be gone.
But how to get out of this dress?
That night in my bedroom, I was about to aim a blowtorch at my waistband when Mother knocked at the door. I slid my tools under the bed. She spoke excitedly. “Jimmy is here. I think he wants to invite you to the prom.” Normally she’d never want me to go out with a boy. I went downstairs. Jimmy stood on our porch, holding a handful of freshly picked dandelions.
Without lifting his head, he mumbled, “Will you goes with me to the formal dance?”
Who’d put him up to this? When I was in the hospital, a new story about him competed with Estelle’s. In this version, Jimmy and I had made love beneath the bushes, and I became so enamoured that my honey flowed, but Jimmy, an independent man of the world, shunned me. When he later heard the disaster caused by his departure, he returned like a hero to expose me as an insect-witch and save the town from the bees.
Was Jimmy asking me out so he could become a superhero? Jimmy saves the town and marries the reformed princess? Would dating me kill the myth about his penis vanishing into his body?
Shafts of hair stuck out like windmill blades on top of Jimmy’s head. I remembered that he was a trapper and had the best metal-cutting equipment in town.
“Jimmy,” I said in a low voice, “are you able to get ahold of your father’s tools?”
“Sure. I uses them all the time.”
I felt a flash of anger. Why did I have to always be dependant on other people for help? “I’ll go to the prom with you on one condition.” I whispered in his ear. “Get me out of this dress.”
Jimmy grinned lustily. “Sure.” He repeated what he’d said before. “We can go back behind the bushes.”
“Fine. As you please.”
The next day Jimmy took me to his father’s shed and showed me the rows of chainsaws, jackhammers, and vise-shaped wire-cutters. I was fondling a jigsaw when the door opened. Jimmy’s father loomed in the half-light. He examined me from head to toe, touched my arm with his hand, and rubbed his fingers together. He grunted his approval, snatched his rifle from the wall, stepped out, and abruptly closed the door.
Jimmy picked up a stone chisel. “This here is the safest one. It takes longer but you won’t get hurt. I’ll tries it now.”
“No, not today. On prom night.” Sam would be at the beach then.
His eyes glistened. “Right,” he replied. “We can do it in the bushes.”
“Jimmy,” I said carefully, “you know I’ll start sweating like last time. You remember what happened?”
“Yeah, I loved it.”
“You loved going to the hospital?”
He smirked, embarrassed. “I just ate too much at once. Next time I’ll goes slow ’n’ sweet. When you was in my mouth,” he said, his eyes glowing, “it felt wonderful.”
He fingered the blunt edge of a saw, strummed it once like a guitar string. I saw my reflection distorted in the bent steel.
Sam, I knew that at that instant you were racing through canyons, leaping over fallen trees, charging beneath waterfalls. Run, brother, run …
The night before the prom, I could hardly sleep. My eyes were spring-loaded open and my body flipped as if on a raft at sea.
So much could go wrong. Jimmy might forget the tools or bring the wrong ones. Was the dress that easy to cut through? What if we were discovered while trying to remove it? Would Sam really arrive on time? And what on earth was happening to Mother? The day of my planned departure, she huddled silently on the sofa. She’d stopped ordering me around, and my door was no longer locked. At dinner she studied Father as if from a great distance and her eyes misted over. I worried that she was becoming sick and I wouldn’t be there to look after her. She repeatedly went into the living room to touch her yellow liquid-filled cylinder. Many times she crossed herself before it.
I tried not to be alone with Mother because I feared she’d notice I was distraught and try to wriggle my secret out of me. I ignored Father too—couldn’t look him in the eye or a lump would form in my throat, I’d start crying, and all would be lost. I silently promised that once outside Labrador, I’d send a postcard so they’d know I was safe.
I’d just brushed my teeth when Mother entered the bathroom and motioned for me to sit by the mirror. “I’d like to do your hair.”
“You don’t need to.”
“I want to.”
I felt the bristles of Mother’s brush against my scalp.
“So nice to arrange your hair now that the sweat has gone.” She put a hand on each of my shoulders and looked in the mirror. “You were always a pretty girl, Sue, though I know you never thought so. Your face is symmetrical. And look here”—she ran one finger along my cheek—“such a lovely shape. Like the side of a heart. When I was your age and went on my first date with your father, I looked as pretty as you.” Why was she telling me this? “I wore a low-cut Flibberty dress that accentuated the hourglass figure I had then.” Mother let out an uncharacteristically girlish laugh that sounded like pennies falling on pavement. So rarely did she laugh that I felt concerned for her. She recommenced brushing my hair and then swirled it wave-like around my ears. “I know that you’ve become … distrustful of me over the years because, well, I won’t blame anyone.” She was going to mention you, Sam. “I just want you to know that”—her voice softened—“you are my daughter. You have always been my daughter. God gave you to me, and I love you, not just because you are His but because you are mine.” Swish-swish sang the brush. “I know you find me ridiculous, and I guess I am, but if I’m ridiculous, it’s because love is ridiculous and that’s what I feel.” She sighed and her eyes became moist.
I kept my head down like you told me to, Sam. I wouldn’t let her invade me. I tried to think of you and of the swelling ocean waves we’ll vanish into. Run, brother, run!
A harsh hiss and a rush of air. I opened my eyes and saw Mother hold a can of hairspray by my head; a million tiny transparent globules gleamed like dewdrops on the waves and crevice-lips
of my coif.
Mother waved and her eyes gleamed like steel as I tottered along our street for the last time ever. I tried not to cry. Raising my head, I noticed the big dipper, the small dipper, Orion. I wondered how I’d feel the next time I saw them.
Jimmy stood smoking outside the school. He was wearing his hunting jacket, a white shirt, and a leather necktie tied too short. He glanced at me and threw his cigarette to the ground.
Immediately I asked, “Do you have the tools?”
“They’s in the truck.”
“Let’s do it right away. We’ll go to the bushes now.”
He clicked his jaw and asked, “Why you hurrying?” He motioned toward the gym. Jimmy wanted to take me inside and show me off first.
“All right,” I sighed. This was part of the deal. “But let’s not take too long.”
From the gym ceiling hung pink and orange streamers undulating in rollercoaster waves. Music thumped as girls in low-cut chiffon wiggled their hips and boys in misshapen suits stepped rigidly back and forth.
“Without you, babe,
I can’t go on, on, on …”
Jimmy and I faced each other in the centre of the dance floor. I’d never danced, but didn’t care how I appeared now. In the half-darkness, arms thrust and dove, heads bobbed like buoys at sea, and pelvises spun. I was so pumped full of adrenalin, I felt myself exploding into the flood of bodies and sound. I stamped loudly, threw my head forwards, spun my arms like propeller blades. I ceased to notice Jimmy and became a part of the gyrating mass. In my peripheral vision the crowd dissolved into disjointed body parts; shoulders thrust toward walls, red-lit fingers pointed upwards, hair thrashed to and fro. The bodies fragmented, jostled, and disintegrated into each other.
This is how it feels to be happy, I thought. This is what other people feel all the time.
The song ended and a ballad began. The small sea of dancers coagulated into dozens of swaying couples.
“Let’s leave,” I said.
Jimmy shrugged and nodded. We headed to the bushes. The smokers on the football stands saw us enter the underbrush, which is what Jimmy wanted. We crouched in the light-dappled darkness beneath the overarching tree branches. I peered out onto the lit-up football field. Throngs of students milled around on the distant parking lot.
Behind the gnarled tree trunk we’d stashed our tools and my pack of provisions, including a T-shirt, pants, sandwich, and twenty dollars. Jimmy didn’t ask me about my pack, but assembled his instruments: a wire cutter, a razor-edged chisel, a mallet, and a handsaw. We both put on work gloves.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get cutting.”
I sat down, and Jimmy commenced filing one dress strap with the chisel tip. I attacked the other with the cutters. Beneath the cotton-covered strap ran dozens of intertwined metal filaments that were shiny and taut. I discovered it was most efficient to snap the filaments one at a time. They broke with a loud twang. Every so often I pulled at the cut ends with my gloved fingers to unravel the cord. I came upon nodules where the wires were knotted together. I concentrated so hard that I didn’t notice time passing.
Goink! At last one strap broke free of my shoulder. A minute later—goink!—Jimmy chiselled through the other strap. He sat down on the ground, exhaled loudly, and wiped a hand across his forehead.
“Jimmy, there’s no time for breaks.”
He examined the dress’s wide iron belt ringing my waist. Jimmy placed a sharp steel rod against the side of my waist and struck it with an iron-headed mallet. The bang echoed about the field; all the smokers in the stands turned their heads in our direction.
“Can you be quieter?” I said.
“Do you wants it off or not?”
Bang, bang.
With each hammer blow, I felt a sharp painful jab into the side of my stomach. Was my skin bruising? My organs being shaken apart? I became terrified that Jimmy might accidentally drive the steel rod right into my torso.
“Be careful! The dress is made of steel, but I’m not.”
We heard people leave the gym and join the smokers in the parking lot. The music had stopped. Was it eleven o’clock already?
“Hurry up, Jimmy!”
“It’s hard to get through; it’s really thick.”
Bang, went the mallet, bang, bang, bang.
The guys in tuxes had noticed the sound. Some drifted onto the field.
Bang, bang.
Five boys climbed down from the bleachers.
“When are you gonna be finished?”
“Do you wants it to stay on or do you wants it to come off?”
Bang!
People stood in groups near the bush where we hid.
I heard voices. “Somebody’s hunting gophers.”
“It’s a knife-fight, steel against steel.”
I panicked. Surely you were in the vicinity, Sam. You were waiting at the beach right then.
A larger crowd formed in a choir-like half-circle around our quivering bush. How was I going to make a run for it with everyone there? I wished I’d tried to convince Jimmy to go farther from the school. For the first time I wondered what would happen to him if he were caught helping me.
“Somebody should go in and check things out.”
Bang, bang, bang, bang.
The choir parted as Estelle strutted across the field like a queen, her headdress of hair like a multi-tiered wedding cake. On one side was a silver barrette with the word Lovely.
“Finished?!” I hissed.
“Almost done.”
Estelle asked, “What is that awful noise?”
I counted the final blows.
With a crackling sound, the belt around my waist snapped and the whole dress fell to the ground with a thump. I gazed down at my exposed stomach, hips, the V of my pubic hair. Jimmy’s eyes widened in the shadow-shuddering moonlight.
Suddenly, honey gushed from my skin. It shot in waves from the pores in my scalp, filled my eyebrows, and flowed so thickly across my open eyes that the edges of Jimmy’s body wavered as if seen through the window of a car in a car wash. The honey had been damned up for so long that it now poured forth in quantities I’d never experienced. It streamed from the crease below my jaw, cascaded in sheets over my breasts, hung in rippling curtains from my forearms, and was like a waterfall tumbling from my vagina. The parched ground below became a foam-dappled honey quicksand that splattered onto my ankles and calves and stuck to the soles and sides of my feet.
Jimmy whispered, “My God.” Torch lights burned in his eyes. His mouth hung open. I towered above him gleaming like a goddess in the moonlight. My body was no longer a body but a rushing river. Why had I feared he could conquer me? How could I ever believe that anyone was greater than I? With my untrammelled honey flow, I felt, just for a moment, that the world was mine.
Then—in the sky—a deafening buzzing. The bees had not gone so far away after all.
I looked up through the open space over my head and saw an oozing dark blotch spreading across the sky. It covered half the stars and was slowly filling in the half-moon. The ground trembled. People screamed and began to run back and forth across the field.
As the clouds of buzzing bodies descended, the shrieking crowds swarmed over the parking lot and banged their fists on doors and school walls. “Let us in! Help!” Girls in floral dresses had fainted by the goalposts. Boys grabbed protesting females and tried to use them as shields. Some students piled into the few parked cars and drove off, tires screeching.
I was about to make a run for it when Jimmy lunged forward and threw himself on me; I fell backwards onto the ground. He pressed his open lips over the stream of honey at my waist and sucked loudly, swallowed, belched, sucked.
“Stop it!” I screamed. “Jimmy!”
With all my strength I forced him off me.
He sat dumbly on the earth, his nose, lips, chin, and nostrils shining with honey. His tongue lolled, his gleaming lips formed a perfect O. The O collapsed and Jimmy smiled so
wide that every inch of skin on his face wrinkled and his eyes became two crescent moons. His chest had stopped moving. His whole body became as still as a boulder.
“Jimmy!” I cried. “Jimmy!”
He fell sideways like a rock to the earth and lay grinning as the colour drained from his face. His arms and legs twitched and stopped moving completely. His open eyes leered, still lit. I began crying. I ran one hand through his hair, which felt as dry and wispy as a field of wheat.
I repeated, “Jimmy … Jimmy.”
Should I cry out for help? Could anyone save him? I looked at his still face, then down at my body, and felt a deeper shame than any I’d ever felt.
In the football field, mayhem reigned. As the bee-cloud neared the earth, people flailed their bodies and shouted, boys wept in each other’s arms, others ran insanely along the field’s one-kilometre lap, while girls rammed their bodies into the crowded space beneath the bleachers or stood wailing and shaking the goal-posts hoping that would ward the bees off.
When the bottom of the bee-cloud touched the top seat in the bleachers, I knew I had to run. Yet I did not want to be seen as who I was. I did not want the school to know my body bred tragedy. I would not run out naked and exposed with my bee friends, in front of nearly every person in the world that I’d ever known.
So I made a huge mistake. I pulled the severed dress up and over my body and held the broken hinge together at my side with one hand. Honey gushed over the pink rayon.
I closed Jimmy’s eyelids with the fingers of my free hand, took a deep breath, pushed through the wall of branches, and ran onto the field. The soles of my feet pounded into the lawn as I charged in the direction of the basketball court. Once there, I’d run down the street to the harbour.
I was half-way across the field when the bees descended on me. I knew they’d alight on my forehead first and lick my flowing honey drops, then slide down my nose, neck, breasts—if I could just make it out of the schoolyard before I was covered—but as the first bee touched the space above my eyebrow, I didn’t feel his soft tongue but a sharp, hot needle piercing my skin. The bees landed on me, their torrid stingers shoving into my cheeks, forearms, collar-bone, hips, earlobes, thighs, armpits, tongue, and the space behind my knees. I screamed and tumbled writhing onto the ground. Their stingers were poker-hot or ice-cold; some shot straight in or entered diagonally, others grazed the underside of my skin or twisted like knife blades. They sliced the twitching expanse of my stomach, the tender crescents of my lips, the creased cartilage gullies in my ears; they drove into the undersides of my stunned-open eyelids as my pierced skin reddened and swelled, my heart raced, and my whole body became a fire-lit forest where flames swept northward, southward, over, and across. Needles clung in quivering necklaces, in quilled tufts on my knees, in bull’s-eye circles on my forehead, in lassoes around my nipples, and formed lines of artillery in the spaces between toes. My arms flailed, and only when my swollen fingers clutched and pulled the dress down and off my body did the needles stop thrusting. The bees now lapped and whinnied, scooping honey from my seared flesh.
The Lava in My Bones Page 13