That was the beautiful, glorious thing about Andrew; he could take her so easily, lightly, make her stretch and flex like a cat beneath him, he could plant himself inside her—and then it was over, and he was wholly himself once again. Separate. Content in separation. He never had that feeling Eileen did, that secret desire she had to climb inside of his skin and sew up that last sliver of daylight. He didn’t know what it was like to wrap something up inside you and feel it pulsing into life, bit by bit, accreting in pulses, spreading outward in fierce kicks aimed at the ribcage or bladder. And then to see this thing tumbling out like spilled guts, and that dancing, twisting cord between you.
Eileen came out of somewhere, and she was still part of that very thing, just as Emma was part of her, just as Andrew would never be, because he couldn’t be, because he was a stone. He was a whole universe to himself, while Eileen had spread herself out through an infinite number of Russian dolls. . . .
Eileen knew it was not her bridal suite either, but it could have been. It could have been because she was deep beneath the earth, and the door was locked behind her, and were not all rooms the same room in the darkness? Could this not have been any room she wished it to be? Was there not some secret space she could unlock to make it so?
Something touched her face. Something like cobwebs. She wiped at it and her fingers tangled and would not come away.
She knew the feel of it. Thick, sweet-smelling and glossy. It twined around her fingers. It slipped around her like silk, as she pressed forward into the room. Thick as fog, thicker still the more she pressed into it. Like a pillow. Like a smothering blanket. But she pressed anyway because behind her was only the door, and on the other side, the strange half-men with their insides scooped out like melons.
Eileen walked with her hands in front of her like a blind person, and she held her breath so tight inside her. She kept herself perfectly sealed up, there in the darkness, there in the mess of it, there in the centre of the Ship House, in a room that could have been any room, except it was not any room because this was the place she had kept locked all her life, this was what she had trained her eye not to see, her foot not to find.
And in that way she pressed through until, creeping like a slug, she came on the hard nubbin at the centre of it all. The stone at the centre of the cherry. And she let her fingers crawl across the whatever-it-was that had been swaddled so carefully in the fine, silky hair until the tips of her fingers hooked in and her thumb found the knobbles of vertebrae sticking out like badly set cornice stones.
There it was. There.
The thing she knew she had been sent in to find.
And Eileen knew that she had always been looking for this whatever-it-was. Always. Since the day that Andrew had taken it from her so the doctors could do with it whatever it was they did with the unripe children that popped out like spat seeds.
And so she gathered up the little bones of the whatever-it-was and carried them back to the door to the grandfathers.
It was evening, and the moon lit up the bones of the mountain in a thin line of silver. Eileen left the swing and returned to the house, opened the door, let the electric light fall on her like a blessing.
She went in, and as she went the floorboards rolled under her feet, but they had begun to feel comfortable, rolling, yes, the way an ocean rolls the decks of a ship, but her feet had become good little sailors and they knew their way about it. They walked ever so quietly past her mother’s bedroom. Eileen didn’t open the door to check on her. Eileen was glad for the quiet. Her mother talked so much, and sometimes it was so hard to find her way through those words, find her way back to her true mother, the mother she remembered. Eileen wondered if it was that way for her mother too. Always trying to find her way back. Always trying to rediscover that thing she had lost.
So she walked past her mother’s room, the floorboards quiet beneath her, until she came to her own little room.
It had been Jacob’s room, once, and Rees’s too. Her mother’s brothers. The two of them.
She wanted to open the door. But then, all at once, she didn’t want to open the door. Was she tired? She wasn’t really tired. And perhaps she ought to call Andrew. It had been some time since she had spoken to Andrew and she missed the sound of his voice. She missed Emma gazing up at her from underneath that black fringe of hair. She didn’t understand her daughter—not the way she had when Emma had been younger, when Emma had run her little sausage-fingers through her hair and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Eileen had understood that little girl, but maybe that wasn’t enough. Maybe she ought to have brought her to Ship House.
Maybe she ought to have taught her the song about bobbejaan climbing the mountain.
The baboon climbs the mountain to torment the poor farmers. . . .
Eileen’s fingers rested on the doorknob. She almost pushed it open.
Then she remembered the beds. Jacob and Rees’s beds. Long and narrow and so close together. And—
She didn’t want to go into the room. She would call Andrew first.
Eileen went back into the sitting room. She picked up the receiver, and listened to the cool, crisp dial tone. So. The phone worked. Was she happy? Would it not have been so much better to hear the gnawing silence? To know that whatever else there was in this house, it was hers, and it was her alone.
She dialled.
“Hello?”
“Andrew,” she said. And she realized her heart was pounding, but here was Andrew, and so it was all right. It was Andrew. It was just Andrew. Who else would it be?
“Eileen.” His voice was quiet and rusty. A long way away. Distracted, but she was distracted too. There were footsteps. Inaudible, really. Noises that set your bones rattling, but left your tympanic membrane taut and still. “You got in safely then? You’ve settled in?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m here, Andrew. I’m in the house.”
“God, it must be late for you. I’ve just been getting Emma up for school. Is everything all right? You should be sleeping, hon. You’re tired. You must be very tired.”
Was she tired?
“I’m not tired, Andrew.”
“Yes, you are, hon. I can hear it in your voice. You sound very tired. Don’t you want to sleep?”
She didn’t want to sleep. Something would happen when she fell asleep. Something awful was going to happen when she fell asleep.
“Just go crawl into bed,” Andrew said. His voice was soft. It was reassuring, and kind. She loved the sound of his voice.
“I don’t want to go to bed, Andrew. I was outside. I was in the garden, and I thought—”
“Eileen, we talked about this. You said it was dangerous there, didn’t you? Why are you going outside alone?”
“Can I speak to Emma?”
“Just go to bed. Don’t you want to? You must want to. Just pretend that I’m next to you. Just pretend that I’m right beside you. In the bed. Next to you. Just pretend that my arms are around you, that I’m touching you, that I’ve crawled in beside you and you can feel the weight of me, you can feel my hands, my breath on your neck. That I’m winding my fingers through your hair. Just pretend that I’m with you and it will be okay.”
“There’s someone in the house, Andrew.”
“It’s just the sound of your mother breathing.” Andrew said. “And old houses. Old houses always sound like there are more people in them than there should be. It’s nothing. It’s the wind.”
“It’s not the wind,” Eileen said, and then she hung up the phone, trembling.
And trembling with their own fevered palsy, the grandfathers led Eileen out into the hallway.
The air felt plain and empty without the touch of silk against her cheeks now. It was like something had been taken out of the world. She felt like a fish gasping on dry land, and the breath rattled in and out of her chest, but the grandfathers didn’t care. The grandfathers smiled half smiles, and Eileen
could see their teeth set in their mouths like tiny, yellowed pearls.
“She’s come back—” the first one said.
“—she’s come back,” said the second. “And what has she brought with her?”
“An apple?”
“A pumpkin?”
“A cherry pit?”
“No,” said Eileen, “no.”
But they were smiling, one to another. The look flashing back and forth from half-man to half-man like the beacons they lit on mountaintops to send messages.
Eileen held the little bundle of bones close to her, each of them delicate as filigree, a tiny skeleton hand clutched in her own. It was hers. It was hers. They would not have it. They must not have it. It was hers. Even if it had died it was hers. It was of her body, and she would not let them touch it.
“It is ours, granddaughter. It is ours already.”
“It has always been ours.”
“It’s mine,” she said. The skull tiny as a teacup, the delicate column of the spine running like an umbilical cord, bones marbled the white-yellow of old teeth or the fat trimmed from cheap cuts of steak. But polished. Gleaming. They were beautiful. They were beautiful and they were hers.
“I know your name,” she whispered. “Baabajan,” she said. “Repelsteeltjie.”
“And we know yours, granddaughter,” said the one, the grinning one, his face taken apart with a peeling knife, split straight down the centre. “We sowed your seed, we spun your hair, we have chucked your chin and counted your fingers for so many years, my sweet little bird.”
“Names have no power when they are shared. Your name is our name. We command each other now, is that not so?”
“There is a bargain.” The grandfathers grinned horribly. “There is a bond. We shall have the first of them. You must give it to us!”
The smiles began to curve downward, the edges of the lips moving in horrible mimicry. It was the same mouth. The same mouth pulling down into a scowl. The same eyes rolling like marbles, but black, God, they were black but they were blue as hers, they were hers too. . . .
And in their strange hobbling shuffle, they moved closer until she could smell the rancid stench of them, could feel the hairs bristling against her own soft skin. She clutched the bundle closer to her. A shudder of revulsion shivered her flesh and set her own hair standing on end.
“She is already gone, granddaughter.”
“Let us have her.”
“Let us take her.”
“She must be given. You know that, dolly. You know it, my little dear.”
“And do not think because you did not bring your daughter to Ship House that we could not take her just the same!”
And the men drew close to her. They caressed her skin. They plucked at her hair. And Eileen wanted to scream, a wild animal howl, but she could not master her breath for it.
“Why?” Eileen cried. “Why must you take from us?”
“Once there was a ship,” said the first grandfather.
“Once there was a ship and it sailed and it sailed and it sailed alone in the ocean—”
“Once there was only one of us, but we tore ourselves in twain for the love of a woman,” the one half said. “We were so hungry for her. And our hunger was the best part of us—”
“The only part of us—”
“And we ate our worst parts—”
“Oh yes,” said the other half. “We ate the worse parts of ourselves as the worm eats the rotten apple.”
“And we were still hungry—”
“—so hungry.”
“And we were adrift for so long, until we came here—”
“—here where our best parts had so much to offer. Gifts fell from our fingers. We granted such blessings—”
“—we wove such fineries—”
“—cloth-of-gold—”
“—diamond rings—”
“And all we wanted was one small thing.”
“A small thing?” Eileen asked.
“The bargain was made, dearest. Lovey. Our darling best beloved.”
Although she loved her husband, although she always listened to him in times of crisis, Eileen did not go back to her room.
She stood by the phone, cradling the receiver in her hand. Eventually, she put it down.
She followed the rolling curves of the floorboards.
“Stay with us,” they whispered to her. “Never leave us.”
The light was dim and faltering, but she knew the way. She could hear the sound of her mother breathing. Faint through the door, but present. Eileen leaned against the door. She pushed her ear close so she could hear without seeing. She didn’t want to see her mother anymore. Not like this.
Sometimes she just wished it were over. That her mother could rest.
“Come home,” she had said. “You must come home.”
But it hadn’t always been like that, had it?
“You mustn’t leave me,” her mother had begged her.
“Please,” she had cried. “Don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me here. I know you must go, but please, my darling. Please, Ellie. Don’t leave me here.”
They wouldn’t leave her be.
The grandfathers.
Eileen tried to back away from them but the hallway was narrow as a coffin, and she could feel their breath hot against her.
“My mother?” she asked.
“Ja, my pretty. She made the bargain once—”
“—she crumbled—”
“—she caved—”
“—she broke all to pieces like an old teacup when she let you go.”
“And we ate, did we not? As we did the gift her mother made of her sister?”
“Oh yes, we ate and ate and ate all the best parts of her away.”
Eileen hated them. She hated them so much. But it was like a door opening in her mind. Their hands touching her, familiar, cradling her now as she had been cradled as a child. She remembered her mother. The mother she had forgotten. The woman plump on pain au chocolat and the love of her handsome crosswise husband, the woman who lived and laughed in old photographs, as young as she was, as beautiful as she was. Once.
“And what shall we do with her now, granddaughter?”
“Shall we lock her in a tower?”
“Shall we marry her off?”
“Shall we give her one of our good eyes and teach her to riddle with the best of them?”
“No,” Eileen said with a shudder. She thought of her mother in the darkness, all alone, endlessly washing her hair, stroking it, brushing it smooth with those long, curving strokes of hers. Her mother with the flesh scooped away, her body cut in two with all the best parts of her eaten away.
And Eileen thought of Andrew. The way he would stroke the smooth flesh of her breast. The way he would crawl in beside her, fit the length of his body against hers until she could feel the hard jut of his erection pressed against the base of her spine. Could feel the warmth of his breath against her neck and his strength as he pulled at her shoulder, gently at first, but then with an urgency.
“Let me give you a child,” he had said.
“Please, no.”
But then it wasn’t Andrew’s face she saw any longer, it was the face of the grandfathers, and it was their breath hot against her skin, and their fingers touching cupping stroking her shoulder blade. And it was Rees, her beloved uncle. It was Jacob, the less loved of the two of them, with his pretty, foreign wife. It was all the men. The men who loved without cost, who were not part of the bargain, who demanded so much of their women and then left them to pay such a terrible price.
. . . and wasn’t it the grandfathers’ child, already? Hadn’t they taken it from her already?
She felt the body loosening away from her, felt herself giving it up the way her body had given up the child once before, letting it fall slackly from between her leg
s, purple as a bruise, and the blood pooling all around her.
“Give us the child,” they said in that sly whisper of theirs—
“Let me take the child,” Andrew had said, pulling Emma away from her breast so he could chuck her under the chin, so that she could squeal in delight at father’s embrace.
“We can be kind,” they said. “You shall have the other one. We always leave one behind, don’t we? The first of a generation, the others untouched. One to pay and the other to pay again.”
“And again.”
“And again.”
“No,” she said, but her voice was weaker. Was it not worth it? Was it not worth the surrender of this bag of bones? After all, the little whatever-it-was had died, hadn’t she? She had died years ago and the pain of that, it had dulled, hadn’t it? With Emma? If she had Emma, could she not bear the loss? It was just a little sting, ja?
And the grandfathers were beside her.
And the grandfathers were chucking her chin.
And the grandfathers were counting her fingers with her.
And she was letting go of the bundle.
And they had it now.
She tried to turn away, but she could not, not from the grotesque, dancing look on their faces as they placed the tiny skeleton between them, the two halves of them open and bleeding like a blister.
But they were not two men any longer. No. As she watched the grandfathers began to dance their curious, half-hobbled dance, knees pumping furiously, half-chests rising and falling, lungs ballooning in the cavity, split apart like two halves of an apple. Not split apart. No. They were stitching themselves up. They were sealing themselves up, the two halves knitting and mending, mending and knitting, around the little skeleton child. The two halves of the grandfathers closed around it like the delicate petals of a Venus flytrap snapping shut.
Eileen moaned a single, deep-thrumming note. She felt an ache so deep and profound that it was like birthing pains, like her muscles locking together in orgasm as she watched the two men become a single wizened figure no bigger than a two-year-old. No bigger than a stepladder.
Gifts for the One Who Comes After Page 19