Acts of God

by Mary Morris

  I tried to imagine what it would be like to go into business with Vicky and decided it wouldn’t be so good. I loved to see her once or twice a year, talk about old times over a glass of wine. But a business was just something I knew I couldn’t do. “Well, let’s think about it.” Resting her hands on the table, Vicky gave me a nod as if to say, sure, we’d think about it. Then she pulled them into her lap.

  We had one more beer between us and I was pretty far gone by then. When we asked for our bill, we were told it had been taken care of, and we both started saying how nice that was of Patrick, how he shouldn’t have. Then we staggered arm in arm across the parking lot. It was a freezing winter’s night and the cold air stung our faces. When I breathed, my nostrils burned. We gazed up at the proliferation of stars. I’d forgotten how clear nights in Winonah can be. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Are you sure you can drive?”

  “Oh, I can drive.… Can you?”

  “If you stick to a straight line, I think I can follow you.”

  Vicky drove and somehow I stayed behind her on the way back to her house. Snowbanks were piled high along the road. My car slid a few times. I’d never been to her house before, but it was down Hazel, about a half a mile from the lake.

  The room she put me in smelled fresh and clean, though the bedspread was some kind of polyester. The sheets were a little scratchy but, thinking how it was the first night I’d slept in Winonah since I’d left for college, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  20

  Many nights I woke to the sound of pebbles tossed against my window. I tried to ignore it, but it would go on for a long time. When I opened the blinds, there she was. I didn’t know how she got out, how she slipped away from her house. But she did. She motioned for me and I slid down the drainpipe and we huddled on my porch, eating Eskimo Pies and giggling over boys. I liked Patrick and Margaret was starting to hint—as many girls did—that she liked my brother Jeb.

  Even I liked Jeb then. He had pale blue eyes, dark black curls, and he played basketball well. I thought Jeb liked her as well because sometimes he’d ask me why I didn’t bring Margaret over on Saturdays to hang out.

  She started following me home after school during the day. I didn’t want her to, but she just seemed to appear on my corner, near my house, and what choice did I have but to ask her in?

  Now she was below my window again, tossing pebbles. I slid down the drainpipe and she asked where my mother kept her sewing kit and I told her downstairs in the basement. We went down there and dug around until we found it. Then Margaret plucked a needle from the tomato-shaped pincushion. “Here,” she said, “this is what we need.”

  “What are we going to do with that?”

  “We’re going to be blood sisters.”

  I didn’t know if I wanted to exchange blood with her, but Margaret told me we should. “We’re closer than you think; we’re already like sisters, you know.” I told her I didn’t know. “Anyway, neither of us has a sister; now we’ll be sisters for life.” I didn’t want to. I didn’t want the feeling of Margaret sticking something into my flesh. I didn’t want her to inflict pain on me.

  But she reached for my hand, holding it tight. Slowly she opened my fingers. She massaged one finger, forcing the blood up to the tip as if she’d done this before. I pulled my hand away, but she grabbed it back.

  “Don’t do it,” I said. “It’s going to hurt.”

  “No, it won’t. I’ll do it very quickly.”

  “You won’t and it will hurt.”

  “If I hurt you, you can stab me with the needle.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “You can do whatever you want.”

  “I don’t want to do anything; I just don’t want it to hurt.”

  “Look, let me see your hand.” She unfolded my fingers once again, rubbed my hand with her finger, and then before I could pull away, she sank the needle in. It was quick and just a prick. Then my blood oozed.

  “Okay, now you do me.”

  She opened her hand, which I saw was fraught with many lines jutting this way and that. I glanced at my palm and saw it was cut only by a few lines, clear highways. But hers was like some incomprehensible street map of an old European city, a city with twists and turns and secret alleyways you get lost in if you walk down, and years later when I traveled to some of those cities and saw their maps, I thought how they reminded me of Margaret’s hands. “Do it,” she said, staring at her finger.

  I tried to sink the needle in, but I was surprised at the resistant flesh. I tried again and with a pop the needle sunk. Margaret jumped a little, bit her lip. The feeling of it going in made me cringe.

  Then we pressed our fingers together, smeared blood to blood. And our blood became one. “Now we are friends for life,” Margaret said, pressing her finger to mine. “From now on,” she said, “when you cut yourself, I will bleed.”

  My stomach felt queasy and I thought I might retch. Out of all the friends I had, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be her friend for life. I didn’t want to make this pact with her. I didn’t even like her that much, but now she’d done this and I had joined in; she’d made us one.

  Then she said she had to get going; she needed to head home. We went upstairs and Margaret walked outside. It was a warm, spring evening and I decided I’d walk her part way, until we came to the trestle. “Well, here we are, the great divide,” Margaret said.

  I knew what she meant, but I didn’t say anything. Then Margaret turned to me as she was leaving. “You know, my father, he’s going to come and get me soon. He wrote me just the other day and he was going to send for me in the next few weeks or so. I’m old enough to choose which parent I want to live with and I’d like to get away from my mom.”

  “She seems like a nice mother,” I said, thinking how Clarice Blair seemed to try so hard.

  “She drove him away. It was her fault,” she said under her breath, as if speaking to herself. I was surprised by the bitterness in her voice.

  “Well, it must be hard for her, being alone and all.”

  “Oh, she’s not that alone. Anyway, it won’t be that much longer. I’ll be gone before summer’s through.”

  I was slightly hurt that she said this. I didn’t even want to be blood sisters with her and now I was and she said she was leaving. She must have read my thoughts because she tapped me on the chest. “My blood goes through you and yours goes through me. So even when I do go away, you’ll be with me forever. From now on if I cut myself,” Margaret said, “you’ll bleed.”

  Shouldn’t this be the other way around? I thought to myself. If you cut yourself—but no, she said it this way. If I cut myself, you’ll bleed.

  Margaret walked toward the trestle. She waved good-bye in long, arching waves. When she disappeared under the dark shadows, I turned and headed home.

  21

  When I woke in the morning, it was late and Vicky was gone. It took me a while before I could move my head and then the rest of me to get out of bed, so I’m not sure how long I lay there before I got up. Vicky had left me a pot of coffee, fresh-squeezed juice, and a jar of aspirin. She’d also written a note, saying she’d had to head off to work at the travel agency; she’d see me later in the day, and I should make myself at home.

  Sitting in her kitchen, I sipped the juice. I ran my hand across her Formica tabletop, her pristine kitchen. A framed photo of her husband and kids was on the countertop, and on the icebox was a magnetic things-to-do pad, but other than that there wasn’t the smallest trace of clutter, a crumb anywhere, and it made me sad to think of how I couldn’t keep order in my own home, where Jade and Ted left their dishes in the sink, their sweatshirts draped across chairs.

  I could envision the unpaid bills that lay tucked between newspapers and mail-order catalogs, the laundry that never quite got folded. The den I’d never gotten around to fixing up. But Vicky had somehow mastered her domestic tasks. Even her dog, Liberty, a big blond mutt she’d picked up at
Orphans of the Storm, seemed somehow to eat neatly out of his bowl.

  I was famished and made myself a breakfast of bacon and eggs, buttered toast, and more coffee. I ate slowly, looking out the window as I sat at her kitchen table. A blue jay and a few winter sparrows fluttered at the bird feeder. I took my time, savoring every bite of breakfast. It seemed as if this was how I started my day every day. When I was done, I let Liberty lick the yolk off my plate. Then I washed my dishes, the frying pan, cleaned every crumb off the kitchen counter. Next I took a long hot shower, using her lavender soap, her herbal shampoos.

  I settled down to read some magazines—they were all lying in a big basket—after breakfast and the dog sat at my feet, staring at me. Every time I made a move, he followed me—upstairs, downstairs, into the bathroom.

  I tried to read an article about a toxic-waste site near Crestwood, but the dog kept looking at me, reminding me that here I was back in Winonah with nothing to do. “Do you want to go out, boy, is that it?” Liberty leaped to his feet and began racing back and forth from my chair to the door. I wondered if he’d need a leash or if he’d just follow. I searched for the leash and couldn’t find it. The dog was jumping circles in the air so I decided to let him follow me.

  It was a freezing-cold morning, as cold as it was hot when I’d first come home last August. The weather of my childhood was a study in contrasts and extremes, and it was perhaps the one thing I’d missed since I had been living in California, the seasonal change. Out there I know it is winter when the fog settles in. Mud, earthquake, drought. Those have become the seasons of my adult years.

  I wasn’t sure which way I wanted to walk. At first I thought I’d stick to the road and just follow the houses, and Liberty trotted along, tail drooping. The wind was frigid off the lake and I decided I wanted to see Lake Michigan, to see if there were ice floes. I cut down Mulberry and over to the lake where the Indian trails were. The trails were old blazed paths. You could follow them through Winonah, then dip into the ravines and wind up just about anywhere. The spirit of Winonah was said to wander these ravines. The Potawatomi gave Winonah its name. Winonah was a princess ravished four times by a manitou god named Ae-pungishimook and she gave birth to four sons. Through her mating with a god, Winonah acquired fertility and long life. When I told Jade about the spirit of Winonah, she chortled, “So you come from a place named after a date-raped single mother with a lot on her plate.”

  There wasn’t much trace of the Indians—except for the trails that wound their way down to the lake and the trees that they had bent and tied to mark those trails—because the Potawatomi were nomadic and lived in moveable lodges. It was less that they were wiped out than that they seemed to have just moved on, though some of their descendants live on a reservation in the Dells.

  The wind was fierce off the lake and already I felt the cold seep into my lips, my cheeks. The dog walked with his head cast down, fighting the freezing wind. As we approached the first ravine, I thought we could get away from the wind if we climbed down into them. I often did this as a child, navigated my way home along the ravines. They wended their way through the town like trenches dug out at a time of war, cut by glaciers during the last Ice Age, and the Potawatomi used them for traveling. Gazing down, the ravine didn’t seem that deep and its bottom was covered with snow. Liberty looked at me warily as I slipped down the embankment.

  It was steeper than I recalled and I was surprised at how far down I went. The embankment was icy and slick and I lost my footing once or twice on my way down and slid partway on my rear. The dog refused to follow me, standing on the lip of the ravine, howling. He looked small up there, pathetic in his howls, and I had to call to him several times before he’d come. Then he just rested on his paws and slid down.

  The bottom was icy with a layer of crusty snow, but at least we were shielded from the wind. In some places the snow had melted and I could see frozen leaves beneath the ice. It hadn’t snowed in a while or else the bottom of the ravines would have had thicker snow. I was a little disappointed to be walking on ice, though perhaps it would be easier on my feet.

  I hadn’t been down in one of the ravines since I was a girl, when I liked to roam them on my way home, sometimes with a friend or two, but mostly alone. The ravines contained all the mysteries of the place to me. I loved the way they turned and wound their way into one another, and there seemed to be a million ways to go when you wandered in them, but no right way, exactly, and no way to get lost. They weren’t that deep so you could always climb out, but they were deep enough so nobody could see you when you were inside. In this sense they were the perfect place to hide.

  Sometimes in the spring, water ran heavily through them and I’d clomp along in boots, sloshing through mud. Though they have never overflowed, it is dangerous to go into the ravines when there is the rush of melting snow. But during the winter and fall they were dry, except for the piles of wet leaves or snow that collected, and I could make my way along them as if they were canyons.

  As a girl, I’d found things down there. Arrowheads, or so I liked to believe of the polished stones I uncovered in the sandy slopes of the ravines beneath the underpasses, and bits of shard, which more likely than not were from broken beer bottles that boys flung down from their cars as they crossed the bridges on Saturday night. I pretended I was a pioneer girl or an Indian scout until I’d hear my father calling me to come home.

  It didn’t seem to matter which way we went so I let Liberty decide. He turned right and I followed him, taking the turns of the ravines. The air was fresh, but also freezing. My fingers and nose were already numb. Liberty lifted his leg by a pure white bank of snow. A yellow stream like a snake sizzled into the snow, leaving a yellow stain. I had to pee as well. I’d had too much coffee, but I couldn’t bring myself to pee there. I kept going, my bladder aching.

  I followed their twists and turns until we came to a small bridge with a culvert running under it. There were names graffitied to the walls of the bridge. There was also a condom and a crack vial. I never saw these when I was a girl and was wondering if it was a good idea to be down here when I heard the crunch of my boot on the ice. As soon as I stepped on the thin ice, my boot went through. It hadn’t occurred to me that where the water flowed out of the culvert under the bridge, the ice might not hold. Cold water surged around my shoes as I stumbled past the soft spot, and the chill of the icy water seeped into my boots.

  Liberty followed quickly behind me and he too stumbled into the shallow pool of freezing water. He yelped and jumped off to the side, licking his paws. Already my wet feet were starting to freeze. The dog whimpered and I decided we should climb out at the next place where the ravine was shallow. We walked on a little ways but in fact the ravine bed seemed to be deepening and I suspected we had turned northeast and were heading back along the lake. I remembered as a girl how this was the deepest part of the ravine, the part where the glaciers came off the lake.

  Now the dog began to cry in earnest and my toes were turning numb. I tried to wiggle them in my boots, but they were stiff and aching. I figured I had about half an hour to get them warm before I was in trouble. Hadn’t I grown up here? Didn’t I know what the freezing cold and wetness could do? I was like a caged animal that had lost its instinct for the wild. I felt foolish and mad as I decided to climb out wherever we were, go to a nearby house, and call Vicky to come and get us.

  The embankment was a sheet of ice. Icy and slick. It would be almost impossible for us to climb out. We wandered the ravine a little further until we came to a part where there was a clump of trees. I tried to claw my way up, holding on to the trunks of the saplings, and I got up a little ways before I realized that Liberty couldn’t make it. He sat in the depth of the ravines, trying to scramble after me but slipping back down. I called to him, “Come on, boy, come on,” two or three times but he just slipped back, howling at the bottom.

  Somehow I would have to drag or carry the dog. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do this sin
ce he must have weighed fifty or sixty pounds, but I knew that’s what I had to do. Unless I left him there and went for help. But what if he wandered off and got lost? Or froze to death? I decided not to leave the dog but figure out a way to pull him out.

  I slid back down the embankment and walked on a bit farther. Here the ravine evened out and I could see the tops of some houses. I knew we must be near the lake now and I thought I could hear its waves crashing against the icy shore. There were some clumps of trees I could hold on to. Once more I tried to coax the dog up the embankment, but he just sat back on his haunches and whimpered. Now I scooped my right arm beneath him. I would have to hold him in one arm as I pulled myself up the embankment with the other.

  With my first step I slid back and the dog tumbled into the hard, crusty snow. I took off my gloves and found I could get a better grip, though my hands were freezing and already the tips of my fingers were turning white. Stuffing my gloves into my pockets, I reached for the dog again.

  He was trembling now, shaking from head to toe and looked at me with pleading eyes. “I am so stupid,” I told him, “bringing us down here.” To think I had taken such a wrong turn, hadn’t planned for this eventuality. Had forgotten the rules of this place that I’d known by heart as a girl.

  Before my hands froze, I had to get us up that embankment. I looked for an easier place to climb and found one slightly ahead under another little bridge. It was less steep beneath the bridge and also there was some exposed ground. Sandy patches where I could get my footing. I called the dog to me, but he wouldn’t come. Then reluctantly he limped over, the pads of his feet half frozen now.