OUTPOURING: Typhoon Yolanda Relief Anthology

by Dean Francis Alfar

  “You’ll be fine,” I assured Jennie. “I’ll speak to Eliza and see to it you have a position with Lord Hazeland as soon as possible.”

  “Mam—” The tears came then. “I don’t want to leave—”

  “Shhhhh,” I said. “Lord Campbell will be gone soon enough.” I wrapped myself around her and lay beside her through the night.

  Right after breakfast the next day, I went to Eliza and told her what happened. Luckily, Lord Hazeland needed a Cook’s Assistant and the Cook was a friend. As soon as I got the nod, I ran back to the Campbell estate and got Jennie packed and away.

  “Where’s the wee redhaired lass?”

  Lord Campbell’s bellow at sup the next night was loud enough to reach me in the kitchen. I flinched like I never had when I was struck and shot a hopeless glance at Grace.

  I didn’t hear Butler’s murmured reply.

  “Well, get her back!” Lord Campbell demanded.

  My heart sunk. Lord Hazeland was a young man who’d just inherited his peerage through his Grandfather. I was certain he wouldn’t want a fight with the spiteful Scot. I knew Jennie would be back here soon as word reached him.

  I was proud of my girl. She returned with her head held high and took up her duties as Cook’s Assistant again without a murmur of complaint.

  Try as I might, it wasn’t possible to keep Lord Campbell from the kitchen and my child from his private quarters. Within a fortnight, she’d missed her monthly. I thought about ridding her of the burden, but I knew if word ever got out I had, we’d be sunk.

  Oddly, Lord Campbell took no interest in my child after her belly began to swell. He returned his interests to the older maids—and me.

  I bore his attentions stoically; grateful he wasn’t as strong as he’d once been. His blows barely stung now. Oh I cried like it killed me, and he was more than glad to be done.

  Better yet, he couldn’t keep going at me long enough to sire a child. I had enough to do tending my job and Jennie. She was too young and too small to be bearing. The last bit, she spent in bed with me and the maids covering her duties for her.

  Soon, Jennie’s time came. The labor was hard and long and my child as pale as the linens by the time she was done. I was startled to see Butler at the door as soon as the baby’s cries resounded through the house.

  “He wants to see the child,” Butler said.

  “I’ll take her,” I insisted, pausing to promise my exhausted daughter. “I’ll see no harm comes to her.”

  I marched upstairs, bearing Jennie’s child in my arms. Already, I could tell she was going to be a beauty. Part of me wondered why Lord Campbell wanted to see this one. If I’d stopped and thought even a bit, I’d have figured it out, but I was too weary alternating preparing meals by day and sitting by poor Jennie’s bedside at nights during the last of her time.

  “Here’s Jennie’s baby,” I announced when Butler let me in to Lord Campbell’s chamber.

  “Well, what is it?”

  The demand startled me. I brought my grandchild closer so he could see. “A baby, Your Lordship.”

  “Is it a lad or a lass, you daftie!”

  Before I could respond, he snatched my grandchild away to lie on his desk, moved her swaddling and exposed her privates.

  “A lass,” he bellowed. His massive fist slammed down on my grandchild’s still soft head, crushing it before I could snatch her back.

  Was the sound I heard echoing in the chamber coming from me? I couldn’t stop screaming out the grief and anger. Butler and the Head Footman dragged the child and me away from Lord Campbell before he attempted to do me any harm for such gross misbehavior—or I decided for once to fight back.

  “Stop it!” Butler slapped me hard across my face. “I know you’ve lost the baby, but you have to be strong for Jennie.”

  Grace appeared in the doorway of Jennie’s room as we approached. From the grim set of her mouth, I knew then it was only me I had to be strong for.

  I nearly screamed again when I saw the bedding and the floor. The room smelled like a slaughterhouse. The soft linens I’d spent a pretty penny on were scarlet beneath my daughter’s corpse. I knew in my head I couldn’t have saved her, but my heart told me I should have been with her when her spirit left this world.

  “You see to Jennie’s laying out,” I said when I was finally able to speak. “I’ll tend the baby. I have to get the Lord’s dinner started.”

  Grace nodded.

  They gave me a wide berth as I headed downstairs toward the kitchen, child still in hand.

  Meat was meat. I set to work on the finest meal His Lordship ever ate. I harvested fresh herbs from the garden, plus used some of my dried store. Then I chopped and seasoned the meat and set it to roast. The scent had the whole household knocking at my door wondering just what I was preparing.

  Much love went into that meal and scrupulous care that the taste was perfect. Every ingredient balanced in a harmony like Westminster Abbey’s choir. I advised Butler I would serve the meal and the wine myself, but I denied anyone a taste of the main dish.

  Butler barely quirked a brow. I don’t know whether he pitied me or thought me mad. I didn’t care. No one asked me where my grandchild was and I was grateful for that kindness.

  At eight bells, I strode up the stairs with Lord Campbell’s repast on a silver tray he generally reserved for holidays. The scent of it filled the capacious manor house.

  “Your sup, Milord,” I presented the tray with a flourish.

  Lord Campbell’s wintry eyes widened at the sight of me, but his nostrils flared. I could hear his belly rumbling from across the room.

  “Shall I carve?” I inquired, meekly.

  Lord Campbell’s eyes narrowed. He looked at me, sniffed the meal and nodded.

  I set to my work gracefully, slicing the roast so my master could see the delicate rare flesh within.

  “Here,” I set the plate in front of him, then poured his wine.

  Lord Campbell took a bite, calculating to find fault. Then, his eyes closed and he sighed. Another bite. Then another. The old lord, whose appetite had waned of late, was relishing the repast.

  I smiled, pouring more wine as he finished the first carvings. I had my hand on the knife before he could ask for more, quickly carving his next serving with the same precision and care.

  “What is this?” Lord Campbell paused, neglecting to wipe the juice from his face and letting the blood stain his silvering beard ruddy once more.

  “From the finest stock…” I answered, teasing.

  “Shote?”

  “Gilt,” I answered. Definitely gilt.

  Once his belly was full, he managed to find fault.

  “And why haven’t I been served such a meal as this before?” He gestured to his fine lace shirt, which now had plenty of room to spare. “I wouldn’t be wasting away like I am…”

  “Because you hadn’t made that gilt yet.”

  Lord Campbell choked on his wine, his eyes widening.

  “My daughter—” he gasped.

  “Aye,” I answered mimicking him. “Twice over…”

  He reached for the bell to summon Butler, I got there first.

  “You…” His face was red as the rumps of those he’d walloped, heading into beet territory.

  “Waste not, want not,” I quoted his favorite phrase. And another. “Him that kills shalt partake.”

  Lord Campbell opened his mouth, but only a grating sound emerged.

  I watched as he struggled for breath, his face a mask of horror and disgust. He fell back in his chair and breathed no more.

  I dumped the last of the wine out the window, then tossed the leftovers in the fire and watched them turn to ash before I called for any of the servants. Just to be sure, I bared my own behind and hit it with his crop until I brought tears to my eyes.

  Butler and the staff were not surprised to see their employer deceased. The physician had said Lord Campbell was fading. It was only a matter of time.

&nbs
p; Pity he hadn’t keeled over before he managed to kill two of my children.

  Pity I had to kill him.

  I returned to my rooms and dressed my little granddaughter in the gown I’d sewn for her, setting a tiny bow in the few burnished strands of her hair that curled so easily at my touch.

  No, I hadn’t fed my grandchild to the old bastard. I’d hoped the horror, and the shock having his own rules flung in his face would stop his heart.

  If not, the foxglove spicing the lamb would.

  Unmaking

  by Julie C. Day

  The unmaking started with our car, a soft-top VW bug painted bright teal. It disappeared one afternoon while I was out, picking up some food and a carton of juice. The juice was for me. Raymond had stopped drinking it weeks ago, another item on his list.

  Too acidic, he said, as though the oranges would etch him away from the inside out.

  The local Fresh Plus was only three blocks away. I’d left the car parked in its usual spot outside our apartment and walked. Austin is a city of both music and sidewalks. Our neighborhood, Hyde Park, was alive with grassy verges, cedar trees and people like me, wandering the streets in their kakhi shorts, ponytails and sunglasses.

  Too much, thank God. There was just too much of everything. Raymond’s plan would never work.

  For the last six months, I’d been working a lot of overtime while Raymond had been focused on his so-called “research.” He’d left UT a few credits short of a degree in urban studies, citing health problems. MCS he called it. Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. Some days Raymond could barely make it out the door before angry islands of red spread out across his exposed flesh. Other days he complained about his tightening skull and a taste of metal on his tongue. Always, he spent long hours pouring over the same yellowing book, reading the lists of words. Tʉbooʔ, I’d hear him murmur long after I’d gone to bed. “Pencil. Hʉkiʔai. Umbrella. Narʉmʉʉʔ. Town.” These were the old words, words that came before the state of Texas, before smallpox and cholera, before steel and asphalt and streets festooned with black-coated wires.

  “The Comanche alphabet,” Raymond told me when he first acquired the book, “consists of six vowels and twelve consonants. Eighteen letters, not the English twenty-six,” he stated emphatically as though I were arguing the point. He ran his fork along his half-empty breakfast plate, then grimaced. “The vowels,” he continued, “have both voiced and voiceless manifestations.”

  We were eating eggs. Organic. Free range. Cooked in extra-virgin olive oil imported from Partanna, Italy. Even so Raymond, I knew, wouldn’t be able to handle another bite.

  “But Raymond, if you erase the present there’ll be nothing left,” I mumbled through yet another mouthful of buttered toast. I regretted the words almost immediately. A red welt rose like an infected mosquito bite along Raymond’s left eyelid. His right eye was riddled with red lines, yet another burst blood vessel. Blisters, like a pox of herpes sores, ringed his mouth. The present, it was clear, was tearing Raymond apart one small segment at a time, and I was the only witness to this personal carnage. Since the advent of his various illnesses, the rest of our world seemed to have disappeared entirely. Now it was only the two of us.

  Raymond’s work required precision. It required the glottal stop along with other specialized symbols for all those unspoken vowels. Most of all, it required Raymond’s belief in a seventy-year-old book he’d found at a University of Texas library sell-off. To purge the earth clean, he claimed, all he had to do was actualize each and every word of this pre-industrial language.

  “It’ll be better,” he promised. “So much better.”

  Of course, I knew it was all madness.

  #

  Raymond was nothing if not dedicated. It took months of effort.

  “Come walk the dog with me,” I’d say as I headed out with Gardner. “You haven’t had a breakout in weeks.”

  “Come play with me,” I’d say as I pressed my lips against his neck.

  Raymond, meanwhile, would shake his head and go back to his desk by the window and the worn, clothbound book.

  “How can anyone learn all these sounds when I can’t hold on to even one?” he asked me during one of those last weeks of spring.

  Under his words, I could hear the hum of the air purifier just beyond his desk. We looked at each, silent, and then the practicing began all over again.

  “Nʉmʉ,” he muttered. “Family. Potsukaa. Car. Tʉbanaaʔ. Wall.”

  #

  On the June day the unmaking began, I was the one bringing new words into our apartment: premium, whole-grain, Florida, squeezed. They spanned the alphabet with complete abandon, all of them packaged in a beige plastic bag that parachuted outward with each gust of wind. The sun was hot, despite the breeze. The people I passed on the sidewalk ducked their heads as though avoiding my eyes. I glanced along our street and paused, adjusting my grip on the grocery bag. Despite the sun and the summer day, something felt off. It wasn’t until I was half-way up the stairs that I realized what was missing. I reached the apartment and opened the door. As usual, Raymond sat at his desk by the window his head bent over the catalog of words. He hadn’t moved all morning. Of course, there was no greeting.

  Our dog, Gardner, noticed me though. He came shuffling out from his spot in the bedroom. The plastic shopping bag crinkled as he investigated its contents.

  I took the bag into the kitchen, took out a box, and poured Gardner’s food into his bowl.

  “The car’s gone,” I said.

  “I know. I watched it disappear.” Raymond replied. He sounded almost happy about the loss.

  I glanced in his direction.

  “Someone stole it?” I took a step toward Raymond and his book.

  “No. Disappeared. You know. An act of unmaking.”

  I could feel my cheeks flushing. I knew that tone, the one that reminded me of just how much I had failed to understand.

  “I don’t know,” I replied as I opened the orange juice carton and took a long, slow gulp, then I headed for the phone.

  Even with my report of the car theft and the loss of our sofa later that afternoon while I was out walking the dog, nothing really changed between us. Raymond stayed inside the apartment, practicing his words, while I wandered through our gradually emptying world. It was an unmaking by increments. The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema where we’d had our first date, the one I passed by every day on my way to work, was gone on Monday. In its place was a swath of nothingness like a strange, starless sky. On a trip to the Treasure City Thrift Store the week after, I found the post office, Blacksheer Elementary School and, in fact, the whole eastern side of Austin had all been unmade. Still, Raymond didn’t seem concerned. He sat bent at his desk, his eyes hidden, learning the words one letter at a time. Aakáaʔ. Devil’s horn. Animui. Housefly. Awomakotse. Dishwasher. He’d figured out a system. He’d laid out the world in alphabetical order, starting with the letter A.

  “Raymond.” I watched the movement of his lips as he slowly worked through the syllables of the next word. “Raymond, I went to pick up Sophie’s package. Damn it, Raymond, the post office is missing.” Despite his success, I just didn’t understand. What was the point of all these words? I liked second-run movies. I liked vintage clothes and dinner at Mandola’s. What was so bad about that?

  “Raymond,” I said more loudly. I was now standing just behind his desk.

  “Huh?” He still hadn’t turned around.

  “Raymond, look, I’ve known you for a long time.” I ran my hand across the back of my head, took a breath and finally spoke the truth. “Raymond, it makes no sense.”

  “Valerie, it makes all the sense in the world, or it will once I’m done.” He turned toward me and smiled. He glowed with triumph. His face was entirely clear of sores and blemishes. After months of failure, he had finally mastered the book.

  What a smile. I had a vague memory of other similar smiles from months or, perhaps, years ago, replaced, at some point, by sweat-soaked
fevers and swollen joints. Despite my tacit encouragement, leaving him alone with his “studies,” I had never expected Raymond to succeed. Not really. Yet here Raymond was, unmaking the world, reshaping it, one spoken word at a time. It felt empty already, and smaller. Even the word “no” seemed to have lost its power.

  #

  Raymond moved more quickly now. By mid-June, he was all the way through the Hs. That I could almost live with. After all Raymond had been miserable for so long. Now it was my turn.

  It was in July that our world finally imploded. I’d taken to shopping at the 7-Eleven on the corner. Our grocery store, Fresh Plus, in fact every grocery store, had disappeared earlier in the month. It was a Tuesday. The sun had barely risen. I was trying not to think about our elderly neighbor, Lucy, as I made my way down the hall to the bathroom. She hadn’t answered her door when I’d knocked last night. She hadn’t answered her door when I’d knocked two weeks ago. Grandmother, I thought. Huutsi. That’s when it occurred to me. Gardner hadn’t woken me up for his walk.

  “Raymond.” I ran back down the hallway. “Raymond.” I grabbed his shoulder beneath the covers and started shaking. “Raymond! Where’s Gardner?”

  “Kaʔamoorʉ,” he said with a slight smile. “Did you know the word for a dog drinking water is kaʔamoorʉ?” Then he blinked, the grogginess slipping from his eyes. “Oh,” he said. “Gardner.”

  “No more words, Raymond,” I said. My voice was rising. I could feel my nails digging into his shoulders. I was shaking him. “You’ve got to promise me there will be no more words.” I should use that pillow. Or the blanket. Smother him. That would stop the words. “What is the Comanche word for genocide, Raymond? Huh? Because I don’t think you’ve spoken that one.”

  “Valerie, I didn’t —”

  I cut across his words. “So you’re the world’s self-appointed exterminator? Is that it? Dogs and old ladies. All those strangers we’ll never meet.”

  Neither of us was smiling now.

  “Valerie, I don’t want to hurt you. Not ever. I don’t want anyone to feel pain.” He held out his hands and pulled me toward him. His arms, I noticed, didn’t have a single patch of red.