by Joy Williams
Judy also could not bear to think about Debevoise. It frightened her to think they might be caught. Everyone would think she was queer. The girls would laugh and the boys would take advantage of her whereas now they fought over her and loved her and were scared half to death of her. She was glad that Julep was sick and they didn’t have to sit around in the snow. She would never admit that she was being cautious or afraid, but she would tell Julep after she got well that she was bored and had learned everything she wanted to know about Debevoise.
Judy would come to visit Julep but didn’t like to look at her. Once, Judy said, “He asked about you, you know.”
Julep smiled politely and studied the hem of her sheet.
“He asked if you had moved and I said no, you were sick and then he said girls keep themselves too skinny these days as a fashion and they don’t eat the right foods and get sick.”
When Julep returned to school, everything was tiny, as in a dream, and moving with blinding speed. She could not keep up with it all, her muscles, having rested for so long, useless for anything. In the laboratory, she spilled potassium permanganate, staining her hands a deep brown. She watched her hands accompany her now like a dark disease, like a man’s hands, soaked and sordid.
She felt cold.
—
Julep now went out alone to watch Debevoise. Judy was surprised and she became defensive and intrigued, imagining that Julep was at last succeeding in something they had not been able to accomplish together.
“I can’t imagine anything going on that we haven’t already seen,” she said peevishly. “The only thing that could happen is if one of us got up right there in that room with him and we were looking out of that window instead of looking into it. You’re going to get sick out there and freeze and go unconscious.”
Julep looked at her wrecked hands and rubbed at them briefly with a piece of flannel she had started to carry around with her.
Judy was suspicious. She worried that something interesting had happened. “You’ve got to have somebody caring for you all the time,” she said. “I’m going to go with you one more time but then I’m never going again and I’m going to stop you from going there too.” How she would do this last thing, she didn’t know. She could tell on Julep, she supposed. That would stop it all dead. She looked at Julep righteously and Julep looked back.
The night was black, moonless and starless, with only the snow shining dully with its own light, and the ice hanging in webs from the trees. They walked with their hands strung out in front of their faces and their elbows sticking out, shuffling a little so they wouldn’t trip.
The ground was ice-buckled and had lots of hollows. Judy’s knees dipped and, jaw joggling, she bit her tongue. She had fallen out of practice, out of step with the land and her reason for being on it. Julep walked steadily ahead and Judy followed, somewhere in a movie, war, a lusted-after orphan, in full bloom and in danger all the time. If only Julep had imagination, she thought, she wouldn’t get so involved in things.
They settled down beside the tree, in a new and deeper ditch, with a stone base and the sides smooth ice, alarmingly, impossibly, like a home.
The second floor was in darkness.
“He’s not even here,” Judy said accusingly.
Julep’s grainy face stuck out of her wool wrappings. “He’s here,” she said.
“Well, what’s he doing in the dark!” Judy shouted. “Have you been watching him do something in the dark?” She was getting angry. They crouched in a cloud of her perfume. She felt like throttling Julep, who was tilted slightly toward her, in a trance and satisfied, dumb and patient. She looked toward the house, feeling Debevoise moving thunderously in the dark and making no sense to her. She was getting so angry she thought she would burst. She gave a little squeal and stamped her feet, then stood up and started back across the field. She was kicking her feet out in front of her, moving so fast that she thought when she felt her boots sliding away that she could still catch up with them before she fell, but her legs kept moving forward while the rest of her slid back and she tipped over with a crack.
She lay there whimpering. Unlike Julep, she had never hurt herself in her life. She had never been bruised or sick or burned and nothing had ever broken. She remained on her back, prodding herself gently, singing to herself in a little girl’s voice. She was suddenly pulled roughly to her feet and shaken hard. Debevoise had grabbed her by the coat front and was pushing her back and forth, pinching her breasts, pushing and pulling at her as though to a musical beat, his face riding from side to side only inches in front of her, almost like it was his head that was wagging and not her own. His face was raging. It seemed on the verge of flying apart. He was saying several simple words to her but she could not seem to understand them. He would propel her back as he said each word and then yank her toward him in the silence between the words and it was as though someone was turning a radio on and off.
Then she simply stopped rocking, and with his hands still on her coat he toppled toward her, turning her slightly to the left as he fell so that they both sank side by side in the snow. His head settled and then broke slowly through a crust of ice. One eye filled up with snow while the other continued to stare at her.
Julep, a rock in each hand, took several steps forward and knelt beside him. There were two wounds in the back of his well-shaped head. She raised her hands again, dropping them with a slow, hard force against his skull. They made almost no sound. The eye that was still staring at Judy seemed to shake. His mouth was closed tightly but there was blood coming from between his lips. Judy pushed herself away. His hands remained on her coat, but then dropped off as she crept backward to a tree and clung to it, whimpering.
Julep had lost her mittens. The backs of her hands were cold from the snow, but her mottled palms were hot from the man’s broken head. She lay down beside him, feeling white and glistening, turned inside out, scrubbed down and aired. She ran her hands over the thin shirt he wore, feeling his collarbone, his ribs, the tight muscles of his stomach. She unbuttoned his shirt and felt his nipples, which were hard, withered, much like her own. She pressed her lips against his chest and tasted salt, then lay her colorless famished head upon his shoulder, which was as warm as though he’d lived all his days in the sun.
Shorelines
I want to explain. There are only the two of us, the child and me. I sleep alone. Jace is gone. My hair is wavy, my posture good. I drink a little. Food bores me. It takes so long to eat. Being honest, I must say I drink. I drink, perhaps, more than moderately, but that is why there is so much milk. I have a terrible thirst. Rum and Coke. Grocery wine. Anything that cools. Gin and juices of all sorts. My breasts are always aching, particularly the left, the earnest one, which the baby refuses to favor. First comforts must be learned, I suppose. It’s a matter of exposure.
I have tried to be clean about my person since the child. I wash frequently, rinse my breasts before feeding, keep my hands away from my eyes and mouth…but it’s hard to keep oneself up. I have tried to think only harmonious thoughts since the child, but the sun on the water here, that extravagant white water, the sun brings such dishevelment and confusion.
I am tall. I have a mole by my lip. When I speak, the mole vanishes. I address myself to the child quite frequently. He is an infant, only a few months old.
I say things like, “What would you like for lunch? A marmalade crepe? A peanut-butter cupcake?”
Naturally, he does not answer. As for myself, I could seldom comply with his agreement. I keep forgetting to buy the ingredients. There was a time when I had everything on hand. I was quite the cook once. Pompano stuffed with pecans. Quiche Lorraine. And curry! I was wonderful with curries. I had such imaginative accompaniments. The whole thing no bigger than a saucer sometimes, yet perfect!
—
We live in the sun here, on the beach, in the south. It is so hot here. I will tell you exactly how hot it is. It is too hot for orange trees. People plant them but they
do not bear. I sleep alone now. I will be honest. Sometimes I wake in the night and realize that I have called upon my body. I am repelled but I do not become distraught. I remove my hands firmly. I raise and lower them to either side of the bed. It seems a little self-conscious, a little staged, to bring my hands away like that. But hands, what do they have to do with any of us?
The heat is the worst at night. I go damp with fever here at night, and I dream. Once I dreamed of baking a bat in the oven. I can’t imagine myself dreaming such a thing.
I try to keep the child cool at night. I give him ice to play with. He accepts everything I have to offer. He is always with me. He is in my care.
I knew when Jace had started the baby. It’s true what you’ve heard. A woman knows.
It has always been Jace only. We were children together. We lived in the same house. It was a big house on the water. Jace remembers it precisely. I remember it not as well. There were eleven people in that house and a dog beneath it, tied night and day to the pilings. Eleven of us and always a baby. It doesn’t seem reasonable now when I think of it, but there were always eleven of us and always a baby. The diapers and the tiny clothes, hanging out to dry, for years!
Jace was older than me by a year and a day and I went everywhere with him.
My momma tried to bring me around. She said, “One day you’re going to be a woman. There are ways you’ll have to behave.”
But we were just children. It was a place for children and we were using it up. The sharks would come up the inlet in the morning rains and they’d roll so it would seem the water was boiling. Our breath was wonderful. Everything was wonderful. We would box. Underneath the house, with the dog’s rope tangling around our legs, Jace and I would box, stripped to the waist. Red and yellow seaweed would stream from the rope. The beams above us were soft blue with mold. Even now, I can feel exactly what it felt like to be cool and out of the sun.
Jace’s fists were like flowers.
—
Jace is thin and quick. His jeans are white with my washing. I have always done my part. Wherever we went, I planted. If the soil was muck, I would plant vegetables; if dry, herbs; if sandy, strawberries. We always left before they could be harvested. We were always moving on, down the coast. But we always had bread to eat. I made good crusty bread. I had a sourdough starter that was seventy-one years old.
We have always lived on the water. Jace likes to hear it. We have been on all the kinds of water there are in the South. Once we lived in the swamp. The water there was a creamy pink. Air plants covered the trees like tufts of hair. All the life was in the trees, in the nests swinging from high branches.
I didn’t care for the swamp, although it’s true the sun was no problem there.
In Momma’s house, a lemon tree grew outside the window of the baby’s room. The fruit hung there for color mostly. Sometimes Momma made a soup. The tree was quite lovely and it flourished. It had been planted over the grease trap of the sink. I am always honest when I can be. It was swill that made it grow.
Here there is nothing of interest outside the child’s room. Just the sand and the dunes. The dunes cast no shadow and offer no relief from the sun. A small piece of the gulf is visible and it flickers like glass. It’s as though the water is signaling some message to my child in his crib.
—
We do not wait for Jace to come back. We do not wait for anything. We do not want anything. Jace, on the other hand, wants and wants. There is nothing he would not accept. He has many trades. Once he was a deep-sea diver. He dove for sponges out of Tarpon Springs. He dove every day, all of one spring and all of one summer. There was a red tide that year that drove people almost mad. Your eyes would swell, your throat would burn. Everything was choking. The water was like chewing gum. The birds went inland. All the fish and turtles died. I wouldn’t hear about it. I was always a sensitive woman. Jace would lie in bed, smoking, his brown arms on the white sheets, his pale hair on the pressed pillowcases. Yes, everything was spotless once, and in order.
He said, “The fastest fish can’t swim out of it. Not even the barracuda.”
I wouldn’t hear it. I did not like suffering.
“The bottom was covered with fish,” he said. “I couldn’t see the sponges for the acres of fish.”
I began to cry.
“Everything is all right,” he said. He held me. “No one cares,” he said. “Why are you crying?”
There were other jobs Jace had. He built and drove. He would be gone for a few weeks or a few months and then he would come back. There were some things he didn’t tell me.
—
The beach land here belongs to the Navy. It has belonged to them for many years, though its purpose has been forgotten. There are a few trees near the road, but they have no bark or green branches. I point this out to the child, directing his gaze to the blasted scenery. “The land is unwholesome,” I say. He refuses to agree. I insist, although I am not one for words.
“Horsetail beefwood can’t be tolerated here,” I tell him, “although horsetail beefwood is all the land naturally bears. Now if they had a decorative bent,” I tell him, “they would plant palms, but there are no palms.”
The baby’s head is a white globe beneath my heart. He exhausts me, even though his weight is little more than that of water on my hands. He is a frail child. So many precautions are necessary. My hands grow white from holding him.
I am so relieved that Jace is gone. He has a perfect memory. His mouth was so clean, resting on me, and I was so quiet. But then he’d start talking about Momma’s house.
“Wasn’t life nice then?” he’d say. “And couldn’t we see everything there was to see? And didn’t life just make the finest sense?”
Even without Jace, I sometimes feel uneasy. There is something I feel I have not done.
—
It was the third month I could feel the child best. They move, you know, to face their stars.
—
There is a small town not far from here. I loathe the town and its people. They are watchful country people. The town’s economy is dependent upon the prison. The prison is a good neighbor, they say. It is unobtrusive, quiet. When an execution is necessary, the executioner arrives in a white Cadillac and he is unobtrusive, too, for the Cadillac is an old one and there are a great many white cars here. The cars are white because of the terrible heat. The man in the Cadillac is called the engineer and no one claims to know his name.
The townspeople are all handy. They are all very willing to lend a helping hand. They hire prison boys to work in their yards. You can always tell the prison boys. They look so hungry and serene.
Martha is the only one of the townspeople who talks to me. The rest nod or smile. Martha is a comfy woman with a nice complexion, but her hair is the color of pork. She is always touching my arm, directing my attention to things she believes I might have overlooked, a sale on gin, for example, or frozen whipped puddings.
“You might could use a sweet or two,” she says. “Fill you out.”
Her face is big and friendly and her hands seem clean and dry. She is always talking to me. She talks about her daughter, who hasn’t lived with her for many years. The daughter lives in a special home in the next state. Martha says, “She had a bad fever and she stopped being good.”
Martha’s hand on my shoulder feels like a nurse’s hand, intimate and officious. She invites me to her home and I accept, over and over again. She is inviting me in for tea and conversation and I am always opening the door to her home. I am forever entering her rooms, walking endlessly across the shiny wooden floors.
“I don’t want to be rich,” Martha says. “I want only enough to have a friend over for a piece of pie or a highball. And I would like a frost-free refrigerator. Even in the winter, I have to defrost ours once a week. I have to take everything out and then spread the newspapers and get the bowl and sponge and then I have to put everything back.”
“Yes,” I say.
Martha’s hands are moving among the cheap teacups. “It seems a little senseless,” she says.
There are small table fans in the house, stirring the air. The rooms smell of drain cleaner and mold and mildew preventives. When the fans part the curtains to the west, an empty horse stall and a riding ring are visible. Martha crowns my tea with rum, like a friend.
“This is a fine town,” Martha says. “Everyone looks out for his neighbor. Even the prison boys are good boys, most of them up just for stealing copper wire or beating on their women’s fellows.”
I hold the child tight. You know a mother’s fears. He is fascinated by the chopping blades of the little fans, by the roach tablets behind the sofa cushions. Outside, as well, he puts his hands to everything.
“I imagine the wicked arrive at that prison only occasionally,” I say.
“Hardly ever,” Martha agrees.
—
I am trying to explain to you. I am always inside this woman’s house. I am always speaking reasonably with this Martha. I am so tired and so sad and I am lying on a bed drinking tea. It is not Martha’s bed. It is, I suppose, a bed for her guests. I am lying on a bedspread that is covered by a large embroidered peacock. Underneath the bed is a single medium-size mixing bowl. In the light socket is a night-light in the shape of a rose. I feel wonderful in this room in many ways. I feel like a column of air. I would like to audition for something. I am so clean inside.
“My husband worries about you,” Martha says. She takes the cup away. “We are all good people here,” she says. “We all lead good lives.”
“What does your husband do, then?” I say. I smile because I do not want her to think I am confused. Actually, I’ve met the man. He placed his long hands on my stomach, on my thighs.
“We are not unsubtle here,” Martha says, tapping her chest.
I met the man and when I met him in this house he was putting in new pine boards over the cement floors. When I arrived, he stopped, but that was what he was doing. He had a gun that shot nails into the concrete. Each nail cost a quarter. The expense distressed Martha and she mentioned it in my hearing. Men resume things, you know. He went back to it. As I lay on the bed, I could hear the gun being fired and I awoke quickly, frightened the noise might awaken the child. You know a mother’s presumptions. There was the smell of sawdust and smoke from the nail gun.