Nether Regions

by Nat Burns

  Sophie tried to see the shelves with new eyes. She had built the shelves herself all in one afternoon. It had been the week the black-checkered loon had visited. He’d stayed three days, floating on the water just outside the door of Salamander House. He’d watched Sophie with his red, mocking eyes, head feathers high with death’s victory over life.

  His low, mournful cry each evening had told them three times again about the death of Sophie’s daddy while he was working in Canton, Mississippi. Each shelf on the front room wall bore part of her daddy in it. The horizontal grain of the pale green locust told of his love for the railroad. The widely spaced knots were the cars of the toy trains he used to run every evening before going to bed. Each bracket was a harsh thought she’d brought to him when he punished her. The satiny finish of the boards, rubbed there by Sophie’s patience and spit, were the hopes and dreams he’d harbored for his Sophie.

  “See, I had this accident a few years ago and was in the hospital for a while. It was all healed up, then this week I fell and it busted open again.”

  Sophie moved across the room to set fire to a handful of candles. They had electric, but she preferred candlelight.

  “Show me,” Beulah demanded.

  Delora glanced briefly at Sophie, then loosened her blue jeans. She dropped them, then stepped aside and fetched them from the floor looking around for a ready spot to store them. She quickly chose Sophie’s easy chair, draping the garment across the padded arm. Then, surprising her hosts, she slid from her panties as well. She stood waiting, her face flushed with embarrassment yet her demeanor defensive.

  No, thought Sophie with dismay. This gal’s had it done and done good. Was it just for the healing you sent her to us, Lord? Selfish thoughts rattled inside her head, but she tried to shake them off before they became full-blown. Loneliness had a way of eating at a person until need instinctively ground out charitable thought.

  Delora was waiting, stirring uncomfortably.

  “Was it rape, child?” Beulah asked gently.

  Delora shook her head.

  Taking a deep breath, Sophie pulled one of the worn dining chairs closer to Beulah’s chair, then beckoned the woman to them. Delora moved forward reluctantly, her thin sandals scuffing against the floorboards.

  Beulah lifted the T-shirt, and her hands began to tremble. Only steel will prevented the loud cry of anguish that threatened to escape Sophie. Delora had been burned. The entire lower half of her abdomen was puckered and ribbed, satiny in some places, coarse in others. The surgeons had tried to repair it—laying on flaps of skin taken from her outer thighs—but the mess reminded Sophie of pig stomach she’d seen lying under plastic at Biggen’s Grocery in Goshen. The immediate problem was a laceration at the edge of one of the grafts. The red rim was broken and festered, angry-looking.

  “You musta done too much, child. You need to take it easy still. It may be healed, but this here skin is thin as your eyelid.” Beulah’s voice was steady but low.

  “Yeah, I know. I fell, though,” Delora muttered, her face averted from the examination. Sophie stood and moved to the center of the room.

  Sophie’s mind whirled with curiosity. This was no old burn—no toddler pulling hot water off the stove. This was recent. A car accident perhaps? What had the girl said—“I had an accident?” House fire? Delora was plain lucky she hadn’t been burned this way all over; it would have taken her life.

  Shaking her head, Beulah motioned for Delora to sit. She seemed impressed when the young woman placed her jeans on the seat so her bare bottom wouldn’t rest on Sophie’s old chair. Not many would have been polite enough to care.

  Beulah picked up her work from the end table and resumed spinning the fine threads, each count of nine working into the amulet and increasing the vibratory power.

  Standing at a tall worktable, a wooden surface worn to a friendly patina, Sophie studied Delora as she mixed thyme and comfrey with a little calendula and some honey.

  Delora was delicate and small, but her compact body appeared sturdy. Her face was agreeable: large eyes and mouth above a pointed chin. Long blond bangs shadowed the blue of her eyes, battling her eyelashes with every blink. The ends of her hair looked as if they’d been damaged and the top bleached naturally pale by the sun. The head of hair as a whole, though cut short and blunt, appeared stressed, as if it had been growing a long time.

  “What’s the tattoo?” Sophie asked suddenly, her eyes fetching up on the ink staining Delora’s knee.

  Delora turned in subdued surprise as if wondering if Sophie could be talking to her. “Tattoo?”

  She followed Sophie’s gaze and looked at her knee, poking it gently. “Just a reminder.”

  She fell silent again, her attention drifting.

  Beulah grunted, and Sophie knew not to pry too deeply. Yet. There’d be time enough.

  Sophie stirred, heating the pot on the orange spiral of the electric ring. The spicy tang of thyme and heating honey permeated the room. She wondered what she could mix in to build the girl’s tissues. Alum? Too temporary. The jars on the shelves glinted at her like beckoning children. She moved toward them through candlelight. Dried cherries caught her eye first so she cradled the jar in her palm. Walnut bark, tree of evil, signaled it was another good choice so she lifted that one down as well.

  Returning to the worktable, she opened the jars, pausing to acknowledge the unique scent wafting from each. She crumbled a handful of stringy tree bark, then tossed cherries into the brew. The cherries looked up at her, their little faces nestled in a pillow of hairy tree fiber. She cooed at them a little, her imagination conjuring them in little sickbeds. Soon they would rise and move on into a life far from this mist of healing steam.

  Sophie’s eyes found the girl and she sent her the healing force from the cauldron. Delora sat silent and still, unaware of the energy flowing across her. She was so still she might have been dead, but Sophie chased that thought away before it could root and grow.

  “It’s almost ready,” she stated softly just to see if the girl would respond.

  Delora didn’t lift her head, staring at the hands clasped in her lap. She did nod briefly, so Sophie knew she’d heard.

  “Is the pain bad?” Beulah asked as Sophie lifted the hot pan from the ring.

  Delora sighed, her small chest heaving. “Sometimes,” she said, glancing briefly at Sophie. “Sometimes, it’s bad.”

  Using a metal colander, Sophie strained the thick potion from the hot pan into a stoneware bowl. Steam inundated her, and she licked lips tasting of fruit and spice. She filled a teakettle with cool tap water and set it on the ring.

  “Best you come in on the bed.” She indicated a back room. “This has to set up a while before you get up.”

  Delora followed Sophie into the bedroom. The double bed lay centered on the west wall, piled high with more comforters and pillows than an unsealed, un-air-conditioned house in the Alabama bayou would warrant. Books, their jacket colors forming muted rainbows, lay in crooked stacks on every available surface. Delora studied them curiously. Many were about medicine or herbs; others appeared to be fiction.

  “What about Mrs. Cofe?” Delora asked, unfamiliar with the proper protocol.

  “Grandam’s been slowing down for a while, her leg’s numb from a stroke last year.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”

  Sophie smiled at Delora, and Delora’s heart jumped up and ran away in her chest. “It’s okay. She’s been teaching me since I was a kid. She says I have it all now so I do most everything. Go on, lay there.” Sophie nudged Delora toward the bed. “Stretch out, so I can put this mess on you.”

  Delora eyed the bed doubtfully. “Don’t we need something under, so we won’t ruin these covers?”

  Sophie studied Delora and nodded toward a stack of folded towels on the bureau. Delora shook one out and spread it with careful precision atop the counterpane, then scooted her bottom into the center.

  The glimpse Sophie had of the wound
as Delora shifted made water well in her eyes. It could have been the steam from the pungent potion or it just might have been the twisted skin around the small pink gash of Delora’s sex. The lack of hair there furthered the illusion that she was a child, though the frank blue eyes judging Sophie’s reactions were old as the bayou’s interior. Sophie allowed her gaze to meet those eyes and felt her stomach plummet into a separate dimension where time stood still.

  “So this is it, Lord,” she almost muttered aloud. “This is what it feels like. Why’d you wait so long?”

  Breath caught in her throat, and she wondered if she had said it aloud. Delora’s expression had not changed, however, and she seemed to be as enthralled as Sophie. Sophie felt a weird panic underlying her usual calm. She could sense the shift in energies as the two of them touched without touching. Delora was affected as well; her shallow breathing had deepened.

  Sophie moved forward, finally pulling her gaze from Delora’s. Hands shaking, she moved next to the bed. Delora had dropped her chin to her chest and seemed to have gone away again. As Sophie moved close, Delora reclined farther until she rested, flat and defenseless, awaiting Sophie’s ministration. Pulling up the T-shirt, Sophie studied the area, trying to determine how best to apply the ointment. Absently, her hand dipped into the heat of the healing salve, and her mind slammed back to dipping her hand into Kinsey Phelps, her first lover. They’d been so young then, mere babies, although they thought themselves so wise in the ways of mystery and life. Their stolen kisses behind the huge cypress below Wichita’s Store had been the finest in Sophie’s life.

  Delora gasped when the heated material met her skin, then exhaled with deliberation.

  “Just relax,” Sophie soothed. Her hands were large and powerful, and she used all the magic she knew slathering on the ointment. She spread it thick and made sure she layered it past the edges of the burned skin. Her hand sought more from the bowl, then slipped fearlessly between Delora’s thighs.

  “This may sting a little, but it’s for the healing,” Sophie whispered. Slowly she pressed her laden fingers part of the way inside Delora’s body. Delora’s eyes, which had been screwed shut in denial, finally flew open and her mouth fell into a grim line.

  “Am I hurting you?”

  Delora looked away, toward the window that framed a view of Spanish moss twining into Spanish moss. “No, I—I don’t think so. It feels hot.”

  “Good. That’s what we want.” Sophie withdrew her hand and spread the remainder of the concoction along Delora’s groin and upper thighs.

  Rearing back, she took a deep breath and transferred the empty bowl to her right hand. With her left, she pulled down the shirt partway and flipped the edge of the towel across Delora’s nakedness.

  “You just stay here now. Rest. I’ll be right in the next room.”

  She avoided Grandam’s eyes as she made her way to the kitchen. At the sink, washing her hands, Sophie found herself filled with song. She tried to burden it down but ended up humming praises of joy. She could feel change nibbling at the edges of her life and the nibbles felt just that good.

  Chapter Eighteen

  She dialed the number from memory. Strange how quickly she memorized each new long distance phone card. He answered almost immediately.

  “Delora, is that you?”

  He sounded half asleep, and alarm jangled through Delora. She didn’t want to abuse their friendship. Sleep was a precious commodity for both of them and stealing it was a dire infringement.

  “My gosh, I’m so sorry. I woke you, didn’t I?”

  “S’okay,” he replied, stifling a yawn. “Sleep is boring.”

  “Maybe. But you don’t sleep too well, like me, and I hate to wake you.”

  “It’s good to hear your voice, anytime. You sound wide-awake. What’s going on?”

  “I’m confused.”

  “How so?”

  “There’s this woman I met. Well, two women really. An older healer woman and her granddaughter.”

  “Where did you meet them?”

  “At their house, on Bayou Lisse. I fell and tore one of the skin grafts at the greenhouse yesterday and I needed some help with it. All the people around here talk about how good they are as healers.”

  He laughed dryly. “Couldn’t bear the thought of going back to the hospital, huh?”

  Delora smiled and looked around. Her cell phone battery had gone down, so she was at the phone booth attached outside Manning’s Grocery off Front Street. It was creepy there at night. One weak incandescent bulb was all that lit the front sidewalk. A soft glow emanated from the nightlights inside, but Delora still felt vulnerable to the wide expanse of darkness around her. “No, I don’t want to do that. I’ll get all that crap about applying for disability again.”

  They fell companionably silent. Delora pulled chewing gum from her mouth, stretching it like saltwater taffy a few times before tucking it back in.

  “The one woman, her name is Sophie. There’s something about her…”

  “How do you mean? What kind of something?”

  “It’s like I have a hard time looking away from her face. She’s really beautiful with long blond hair and it’s not that thin hair either; it’s like all these fuzzy curls. She braids it up so it kind of curls all around her face. Like…like a halo.”

  “So, are you thinking she’s pretty and you’d like to look like her?” He was struggling to make sense of her words.

  “Well, yeah, but I’m hypnotized by her, when our eyes meet and…”

  “What color are her eyes?” he interrupted.

  “Deep brown, but like an otter.”

  “An otter? What the hell’s an otter?”

  Del laughed. “Like a seal but littler than a beaver. They live here in the bayou. They have shiny brown fur and the color and shine is like Sophie’s eyes.”

  “So what do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think? I can’t stop thinking about her. There’s some weird magnet thing going on like she’s pulling me into her. How strange is that?”

  “Maybe you’re attracted to her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How do you feel when you’re with her?”

  “I told you. Excited, real excited. I don’t want to go, to leave her, even though I know it’s time to. I let her touch me there, too, where I’m burned.”

  “It’s like a crush,” he surmised.

  Delora could hear him nodding, having solved her dilemma in his own mind.

  “What?” She suddenly had a hard time understanding what he meant.

  “Like you’re in love with her. Infatuated.”

  Infatuated. The word hung between them.

  “Do you think that’s possible?”

  “Babe, in the world you and I live in, everything’s possible. Have you ever been attracted to a woman before?”

  Delora had to pause and think a few moments, Bucky Clyde’s breath regular in her ear. “I used to like this little girl, Tabitha, in fourth grade. I used to pack extra stuff in my lunch for her and stayed with her as much as I could. Then Mom and Dad died and everything changed.”

  “Maybe you’re a latent lesbian. Have you ever wondered?”

  “It’s such an ugly word,” she sighed. “‘Lesbian.’”

  “Why?”

  “I hate labels, that’s all.” She paused. “Look, go back to sleep. I gotta go.”

  “Wait. So what are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. I’m gonna go home and go to bed myself, and tomorrow I’ll go to work just like I always do.”

  Bucky Clyde sighed deeply. “All right. I understand. Love you, though. Please be careful. There’s so much changing for you right now. You gotta find yourself somewhere in the middle of it all, okay?”

  “Okay, I will. Sleep. Have a good day tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She hung up and studied the night. Lightning bugs waltzed off in the trees and moths fluttered around the li
ght bulb overhead. She could hear the distant sound of traffic farther into Redstar. Her mind rebelled and envisioned her body entwined with Sophie’s. Then she thought of beautiful Sophie leaning to kiss the scarred skin of her abdomen, and blistering tears stung both eyes. Sadness filled her and the pain of it made her suicidal.

  After a moment of deep thought, she laid her left hand against the brick wall of the store, spreading the fingers wide. Without further thought, she held the phone handset like a hammer and slammed it into her little finger. Harsh, throbbing pain raced all the way to her shoulder and, gritting her teeth, she calmly replaced the handset and held the wounded hand delicately in her other palm. She walked to her car, ready, finally, to go home.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “So. What do you think of her?”

  Sophie had directed the question to Grandam, but Clary looked up from the magazine she was studying. “Who?”

  “Little gal from town,” answered Beulah. “Had a burn that needed work.”

  “Hmmm,” Clary said. “What was she like, Sophie?”

  Sophie shrugged, a little embarrassed. “Little, like Ellie St. John’s people. And a blonde, like me.”

  “Cute?”

  Sophie smiled and felt a strange rush of emotion rise up.

  “Well, isn’t this news,” Clary said.

  “Mmm,” began Beulah with a chuckle. “You should have seen them, Clary. Made my heart warm.”

  “So she came to the house here?” Clary repeatedly looked from Beulah to Sophie, trying to become part of this new facet of the Cofe’s life.

  Sophie rose and placed her empty coffee mug into the sink, ready at last to share Delora. By doing so, she knew the doors of the Universe would open and the little blond woman would be fully imprinted and made a part of their reality.

  “She came by late last night. She’d been in a fire some time ago, all across her lower body…”

  “From just about her waist all the way to her thighs. It was strange how it was only there. I didn’t see any scars anywhere else, except where the surgeons had taken some skin,” added Beulah. “I like her, by the way,” she directed toward Sophie.