by Karen Lord
But the magazines said that fire made food better. The images of fried meats and fish flashed across her mind’s eye but she blinked them away, turned back to making her corned beef sandwich. For lunch she would do something really special. She picked up a bit of the meat on her finger, eased it into her mouth. It tasted like cardboard, but didn’t everything?
When she had plated the meal as nicely as she could, she placed it on a tray and headed back to the study. The sun rose towards midday in the world beyond the shutters. Yes, she was a little late and that was happening more and more often, but Father wouldn’t mind. His eyes, barely open, seemed to follow her movements. Shadows deepened the creases on his forehead.
“Here you go!” Lia said.
He remained still.
“Um . . . doan smell so good, nuh?” She frowned and held the plate up to her nose but again smelled nothing. “You ain’t gine give it a try?”
He had one hand over his chest, gripping his cotton shirt, the other splayed across the chair handle, almost touching one of half a dozen glasses of water on the table close by. The sparkle of his eyes dimmed in the shadow between the steadily shifting bars of light.
Lia moved to shake him but hesitated. “He fall ’sleep,” she told herself in a whisper. “He does sleep fuh so long these days.”
“I’ll rest this here fuh when yuh wake up, a’ight?” she said to him, resting the tray on his lap. “I gine down to the workshop now. I need to fix the lights in the kitchen. I also gotta find some grease for these joints–yuh did hear them, right?” She moved her squeaking arm. “Please doan worry, I ain’t gine be very long.”
Outside the door, she waited a bit to see if he would take a bite when he thought she wasn’t looking. He didn’t move. Maybe he could still see her from the corner of his eye and was smiling to himself, slowly shaking his head. He’d always been fond of her little games.
Down the wooden steps that creaked as loudly as her knees, Lia pushed through the stone door into the workshop. A single bulb hung on a wire from the roof, its light bleaching the upturned tables and chairs and the slab of concrete upon which she had been birthed. Against the far wall was a mirror nearly the wall’s width and as high as the roof. The floors and walls were featureless save for the wriggling crack in one corner. About the crack were the green-brown stains of algae and moss. Moisture glistened like eyes.
She hurried to the crack, rested a piece of the corned-beef-on-biscuit by it. She sat on the ground and watched until a centipede peered out, tasting at the air with its huge feelers. Slipping out towards the biscuit, he (she assumed it was a he) caught it, forced the meat into his hidden mouth with his pincers. He moved slower than usual. He was so skittish, usually. Maybe he was finally growing to like her, to feel more at ease when she was around. She’d watched him grow from a small, threadlike thing to now about eight inches long and just under an inch wide. All large reddish-brown segments and golden, pointed legs. Over the minutes and hours and days the moss around his hole had become thicker, joined by tiny brown mushrooms and thin-leafed plants like black hairs.
“How you?” Lia asked.
The centipede twitched from the meat, seeming to glance at her, trying to taste her scent on the air.
“You’d eat anything I cook, nuh?”
He lifted his head off the ground for a moment. Twisted it to the left and the right. Turned and slipped back into the dankness inside the wall.
She went to the tools laid in rows beside the slab. Light glinted off their polished surfaces–as well they should since she cleaned them every day at 0600 hours. The oil can was on a nearby shelf. She poured a few drops onto each finger joint on her left hand, then on her elbows and knees. She pivoted each joint until the squeaks faded. She replaced the can, saw that there wasn’t very much left. It probably wouldn’t last the week.
With a screwdriver, Lia tightened the bolts in her legs and arms. Used the cheesecloth to buff her breasts and stomach. She felt less depressed when she finished, even if she still probably didn’t look too much like the girls in the magazines. She checked the clock. Two hours later. God! That was thirty minutes more than she should have taken but . . . who cared? Who cared? Father cared, right? He meant her to operate on a fixed schedule. She had to account for each second. But who cared, nuh? She wondered at the strange thought.
From a shelf at the back of the workshop, she took a fresh fluorescent bulb.
Back upstairs, Father’s meal lay undisturbed. Only a film of dust and sand now covered the plate. His hands were in the same positions. Mouth still drawn into a loose grimace, lips slightly open as if to speak. His head angled back, nostrils wide.
“Um did really bad, nuh? I sorry. I gine do something different now.”
She took the tray and hurried to the kitchen. He shouldn’t have missed breakfast like that and it was all her fault. It wasn’t healthy to miss the first meal of the day, especially since it’d been so late. She’d have to cook something bigger, more filling, tastier. Something he couldn’t resist.
As she changed the bulb in the kitchen, her mind raced: He tell muh he love flying-fish, but never let muh cook it. Chicken too. Lamb. Cou-cou and steam’ veg and sea-egg. But he say there ain’t nuh more sheep, nuh more chicken, nuh fish. Nuh nothing.
The light outside the window seemed darker under the flare of the new bulb. Thunder rumbled through the roof. Cups and bowls clinked together behind the cupboards’ glass panes.
She placed a pot and frying pan on the stove, opened a small bag of rice, a can of beans and Spam from a drawer. In there she had stashed a cooking magazine, folded open to a recipe she had always imagined preparing. It looked easy:
INGREDIENTS
2 cups water
1 cup long grain rice
1 ½ cup kidney beans
1 container Spam
1 tbsp sunflower oil
DIRECTIONS
Bring water to a boil in a pot, then add rice. When fluffy, remove from flame.
Add oil in a frying pan. Heat until hot but not smoking.
Add beans to frying pan. Wait 5 minutes then add the Spam. Stir. Allow to cook for 10 more minutes.
Her freshly oiled hands moved quickly, noiselessly. But as she turned to get the matches out of the cupboard she hesitated. She’d be disobeying Father. Something resisted the notion, made it feel wrong. Her joints felt rusted in the new oil. Her eyes widened, each breath a wheeze, each moment a closing vice about her limbs.
She needed to stop. To turn away from the cupboard. Away from the stove. Back to the simple, easy meals Father didn’t seem to like anymore.
No, no! I gine through with this!
Lia pushed against the stiffness, forced her hands to move to the cupboard.
“He need to eat!” she said through gritted teeth. “Three meals a day. Lots of water. Keep him looking decent. Talk and talk and talk to him, in the dialect of his old Barbadian homeland. Keep the place clean. Look like the girls in his magazines. These are the things he needs.”
She had the matches before she realised that she’d overcome the resistance. Quickly now, before it returned! She grabbed the little piece of wood, her hands sweaty with oil. She struck it. Watched it spark then die. Another one. Another. Finally a little flame, steady as a thin knife’s blade.
She opened the gas for the burner below the pot of water. Heard it hiss but smelled nothing–had all of that gone too?–held the match near.
Fire ignited about her fingers.
Lia rushed to the sink as the fire engulfed both her arms, fed on her sweat. She spun the faucet open. It coughed, trembled before spitting a stream of bilgy water that slowly cleared. She thrust both hands into it. Cupped water up onto her arms. Sparks and grey smoke filled the sink, swirled past her eyes.
When the fire was out she closed the faucet. She stared at her burnt arms, so dark. Her fingernails melted and scuffed. Oh God! Oh GodohGodohGod! Father would know she’d disobeyed. He’d be angry. But what choice did she have
? He was hungry! She looked back to the food. That would have to be her apology.
On the stove, fire licked the pot’s bottom. She poured in the rice but couldn’t bring herself to light the other burner. So she waited until the rice swelled, white and puffy, before lifting the pot off and sliding the frying pan into its place. The oil sizzled as she emptied the beans and Spam into the pan. She thought it should smell great, but there was nothing.
She turned off the gas and watched the flame die. She laid out the food on a big plate, just like in the cooking magazine. Her rice was browner, the Spam a bit darker, but overall a good job. She put the big plate on a tray with a knife and fork. Pulling on some gloves to hide her burns, she then hurried to the study.
“Look! Look! I get through. Nice and hot too! Come, tek um before um get cold.” She held the tray out to Father. “Wha’ you waiting fuh?”
Her hands tightened around the tray’s edges, her teeth grinding against each other with a slow, metallic, filing sound.
“I put um together real nice. I use the fire . . . um . . . um didn’t so bad. And um smell real good, so wha’ wrong wid um? Tell me, nuh?”
Silence.
“Tell muh! Yuh . . . yuh fucking, rassgate poppit!”
That was a phrase that should have made him angry, but there was no reaction.
Was this the silent treatment they wrote about in the relationship magazines? But how could she have made him so angry that he wouldn’t eat anything she brought him? I ain’t do all he want me to do?
Oily tears greased her cheeks, dripping onto the tray, oozing over the cutlery. She blinked them away. She needed to look prettier, that was all. Her arms were really too fat. The dark knots in her brown skin unsightly. He’d always said so. None of the women in the magazines had these things. No steel joints punctured their unblemished flesh. Once, he had tried to fix all that, but had lost interest and gone still. Like a stopped clock.
So be it then.
Lia ate the food in the workshop. She tried luring the centipede back out, but he wouldn’t come. She left a few forkfuls of the Spam by his hole.
After, she studied her imperfections in the mirror. And with a magazine beside her, opened to a two-page spread of a naked woman with chocolate skin, she set to work.
* * *
She shaved her arms and legs with the plane, counting each strip of wood-flesh as it curled to the floor. She stopped when they were as thin as she could get without cutting into her circuit veins. Paint now, to cover up the joints, and a dark varnish to hide the knots and rings, making her complexion more radiant. Her breasts she rounded more, tapered them to the nipples, for added perkiness. Her hair was curly; the ones in the magazine were straight, but she had no idea how to get it like that.
She turned in the mirror, smiling and raising her hands above her head like the ballerina on Page 57.
Almost there. Almost.
Now for the details. What first–freckles? She applied these with the thin nose of a soldering iron pressed quickly and gently against her hands, feet and face. Now what about . . . ? As she turned, she saw the centipede outside his hole, lying beside the food she’d left for him.
“I know yuh did hear muh,” she said, kneeling before him.
He lay on his back, feelers stiff, each leg spasming. Lia bent over him. She’d never seen him do this before.
“Yuh know, Father done talk to muh. I ain’t sure wha’ I do he.” She crossed her arms and pouted for emphasis, but the centipede didn’t seem to notice.
“Yuh ignoring muh too?” She poked it and it jerked away, flicking its tail at her, barely missing. “Boy! You near scratch me, yuh! Wha’ I do you now?”
The centipede’s twisting slowed, his body curling into a red-and-black half-circle.
Lia ran a finger along his back, but he didn’t jerk away this time. Maybe that’s how he liked it–a smooth touch, not a poke in the belly.
“Well, sorry. Yuh could’a say somet’ing. Look, try and eat wha’ I leff yuh. Seem like you’s the only body dah does appreciate muh food.”
The workshop’s light blinked and went off. The darkness stretched for longer than before. Lia nibbled her thumbs as she waited for it to come back on. She had to check the wires. She’d been putting that off for far too long. Picking up the toolbox, a lamp and a roll of copper wire from the top shelf, she walked toward the workshop door.
“I coming back jes’ now,” she said to the centipede.
Outside the workshop, she pushed open the door opposite it. There was another stairway, leading steeply down below flickering bulbs. She made sure to close the door and wait for the hiss of air from its sides and the quiet droning beep that indicated it had sealed properly. She switched on the lamp when the bulbs failed to come back on. Beneath its red blaze she came to another door, circular, with a small oval panel in its face. To her right was a table covered with backpacks of every size, on her left a rack of weathered beige suits. Father had worn these when he went outside (to shop and for some fresh air, he used to say), but they were much too bulky for her. Most had been damaged. Tears and scuffs in the nylon. Broken faceplates, half-melted air tubes. But she’d fixed them. Found all the parts in the workshop on that night when Father had stumbled through the door, his suit burned, boots eaten-away. Her name upon his ragged lips. Lia blinked away the memory of him lying on the floor, scratching at his skin through the holes in the suit’s arms.
She shrugged into a suit. Zipped it up, fitted the helmet. Stuffed the roll of wire and toolbox into a backpack she slipped over both shoulders. She went to the panel.
“Hey, Door.”
“Lia,” the Door droned. “Power failure imminent. Emergency stores critical. Multiple breaches detected. Atmospheric–”
“I know dah! You always sayin’ the same t’ing. You ain’t even ask me how I doing.”
A pause. Static. “Are you having a good day, Lia?”
“Nah. Not like yuh care, though. Open fuh me, please.”
The door shuddered. With a terrible groan it rolled two feet to her right then stopped.
“Yuh couldn’t ease some more out the way? Is a good t’ing I small,” she said, squeezing out into a narrow tunnel.
Along the wall to her right ran a thick wire–the house’s power cable. She followed its length, making sure there wasn’t any damage to it, until it vanished behind a sheet of paling that used to seal the tunnel’s mouth. Now it slammed against the walls, opening and being thrown quickly back. The world beyond it seemed bright enough, so she left the lamp on the ground.
Lia went to the paling. Rough iron and exposed nails were scoring tracks in the concrete with each gust of wind. She’d have to time her move exactly. Moving as closely as she dared, she counted the seconds between the slams. Three. Four. Two. Three point five. The paling opened and she flung herself through. Slipping past just as it was hurled back against the wall. Nails scraping her faceplate.
She ran her fingers about it and her suit frantically, looking for damage. Apart from the scratch across her vision, everything else seemed fine. She sighed, looked out across the landscape through the orange light of late evening sinking into nighttime murk.
Wind-blasted sand raked her suit as the sky barked thunder. Nothing up there but churning red clouds and pink sheet lightning. Against the sky, buildings caved like melted candles. Blackened spires. Concrete-iron ribs open to the elements. Gutted.
Checking every inch of the wire, she moved slowly until she saw the wind turbine. Its head turned in the gale but its blades–made of lashed-together corrugated iron, plastic and steel–weren’t moving. A sudden fear held her rusted to the ground. Um . . . like um gone bad or somet’ing? She couldn’t tell. She’d never climbed it–Father did that. But he had shown her his wind turbine magazine once, the one with the white paper pages and pencil diagrams and his name in the bottom left-hand corner of the covers.
She made for it, up a hill sprinkled with the bones of hands and feet and skulls worn alm
ost to shapeless forms in the sand. Quaka-hadja material, Father had called them once. Sisters and brothers waiting to be set to a new schedule. They snapped and forced her feet from under her many times. She got up, each step slower than the last, raising her hand above her forehead to fend off the worst of the sand so she could see.
At its base, finally. The wind turbine shivered and groaned, pulled against its supports buried deep beneath the ground of collapsed superstructures. Its head vanished for a moment within a cloud of sand and ash. Remembering the map from Father’s magazine, Lia found and pulled a lever nearby to lock the blades in place so they wouldn’t cut her arms off when she got the turbine working.
She started up the rungs set into the wind turbine’s sides. All seemed quiet. Just the thunder and her breath hissing through set teeth. Wind curled around her arms and back, tugging her so, as if to say, “Let go, nuh?” Looking down, she could no longer see the ground. But around her lightning lanced the air and flicked from one concrete-iron rib to the next.
Lia huddled against the rungs. Eyes closed. “I gotta do um!” she told herself. “I gotta do um. Cahn let he live in the dark.” Opening her eyes she glanced up. She was almost there.
At the top of the rungs the wind turbine’s head appeared vast and alone. She moved towards its back and found that sand had built up in the motor controls, jamming the blades. Some of the wires were exposed, their casings sheared off.
She crouched and took out her toolbox. Pulled Father’s diagrams into her mind’s eye. Scrolled through them until one matched the motor controls. Following the annotations, she cleared the machinery as best she could, duct-taped the exposed wires. Greased what joints she could get at with the oil as the wind grew stronger. Between it and her naked circuitry nothing but re-stitched fabric.
“Dah’s it,” she whispered to herself. “Leh we see if um gine work.”