Every Bone a Prayer

by Ashley Blooms

  Misty straightened her feet, but they kept sinking to the side, the toes curled slightly inward. She ran her finger bone along the thin scar on the sole of her foot from when she’d stepped on an old soup can in the creek. The tetanus shot had ached for a week afterward.

  She straightened her shorts over a dark patch of skin on the back of her thigh, discolored by an old burn her father promised would heal with time. She had taken to sleeping on the couch the first summer they lived in Earl’s trailer. There was something about their room that made her throat tight. Her father had kissed her on the cheek before he left for work one morning, and as he bent down, the lid on his thermos slipped off, and the hot coffee spilled all over the back of Misty’s leg.

  And just below the burn, a little hook of a scar on the side of her right knee from her last whipping. All the other marks from that evening had faded.

  There were so many hurts that hadn’t killed her. So much pain she had forgotten.

  And there were other things, too.

  A little mole on her ankle that was the exact size and shape and place of the mole on her mother’s ankle. It was proof, her mother said, that Misty was hers. Even if the Lord put a hundred Mistys on this earth, she would find her.

  The little dimple on her shoulder that her mother said came from her uncle, who died before Misty ever met him, but he was there, tied to her through their bodies. He had been a good man, her mother said, and Misty always wished she could have met him.

  Her legs were long for her age, and her father said she had baseball calves—strong and muscled—hill-climbing legs that let her scurry up mountains and across the creek, that ran her through the woods until she didn’t have to run anymore.

  But every place Misty touched had been touched before.

  William’s hands were needing, seeking things that dimpled her skin and gripped too hard and lingered long after he was gone. She’d had that tight-throat feeling every morning since he took her to the barn, struggling out of sleep to a body that was not her own, a body warped beneath his hands, reshaped until it was what he needed it to be for as long as he needed it, until she couldn’t bear the feeling of herself and she had to escape.

  Misty took one of her hands inside her own so that she was reversed—the bone cradling the skin. There was something smudged against her palm so she held it up to the light where her fading eyes could make out the shape.

  It was the drawing that Jerry and Jamie and Sam and Penny had made.

  It was Misty.

  She stood on the center of her palm. The ink was a little blurred from her sweat, but she could still see herself there, standing on what might have been a mountain. Jerry had drawn her smiling. He’d drawn her in the light of a pale-yellow sun that bled across her fingers. There were little dots of freckles on her face and Jamie must have added those, his pen tapping against her hand like Morse code. There was grass at her feet and flowers everywhere, and Sam had added those. And just off to the side was a crawdad. Its body was almost as big as Misty’s, its claws dark and lopsided, but it had a crooked smile drawn onto its face, too. Penny had left out most of its legs, but it was a crawdad all the same.

  That was what they saw when they looked at Misty.

  Not marks, not bruises, not pain. Just her, standing in the warm sunlight in a field of flowers. Just her, happy.

  Misty placed her hand gently on the ground. She brushed a line of dirt from her cheek and smoothed the hair away from her eyes. She lifted up her arm and fit herself into the crook of her own shoulder. She wrapped her bone arm around her own waist and rested her skull against her chest. Her body was cool and solid beneath her, her body a small, persistent weight, a pressure that hummed inside her bones.

  Misty lay beside herself for a long time.

  This was the kind of touch she’d wanted—a gentle, easy touch, a resting touch that didn’t ask for anything too much, and never asked without giving back. If she’d had her tongue, she would have told herself how sorry she was, not for what William had done to her, but for what she had done to herself.

  All the blame she’d taken into her skin.

  All the guilt and the hurt and the shame that she’d held inside her body until it couldn’t bear the weight of it anymore and she had to shed herself just to breathe.

  She’d been so afraid that her friends and family would abandon her if they found out what happened in the barn that she ended up abandoning herself. She hadn’t escaped their leaving at all. She’d done it for them.

  Misty thought back to the day when William had come down to the creek. Before spin the bottle, before the garden, before the green glass man grew and everything changed. She remembered herself lying by the creek with the crawdads crawling over her, and all she had wanted was for her family to be okay, for someone to talk to, to listen.

  It had never occurred to her that they might already be okay or that, after all she’d been through, she might still be okay, too.

  If she left now, she would never know. And she wouldn’t just be leaving herself. She’d be leaving her family, too.

  Misty pressed her jawbone to her cheek in a kiss.

  She sat up and pulled her mouth open gently. She apologized even though she couldn’t speak inside her bone body. She thought over and over again how she had been wrong to blame herself. Wrong to send her body away when she needed it so much.

  Misty pushed her leg bones over her tongue first, her toes curled as she slid them down her throat, her belly, her thigh. Her body adjusted, allowing the bones back into their old place. She expected the pain to be worse than before. She expected to break into her body like someone stealing, someone claiming, but her body remembered these bones.

  Her body recognized Misty and welcomed her back.

  And as she slipped into her skin, Misty had an idea. She wasn’t sure that she could fix everything that had gone wrong, but she knew a place to start.

  She pulled her body over her knee bones and slotted her hips back into place; she covered her spine with tissue and cloaked her arms with skin. She paused before she pulled her face over her skull again. She took one last dim look around the woods, gone almost to black now just before the sun rose. She could pick up only the faintest line of light above the trees before she slipped her skin over her head and joined herself again.

  Grow

  There is a brief window of time that exists between the

  shedding of the old shell and the hardening of the new shell.

  It’s the only chance for the crawdad to grow before its new body hardens once more.

  The only chance to become truly different from what it was before.

  Thirty-Nine

  It was still dark when Misty rounded the corner of the trailer, though the edges of the sky were beginning to lighten. She threaded between dozens of crawdad chimneys until she sunk her leg almost to the knee in a pit of water so cold that it took her breath away. She pulled herself free and stood shaking beside it. The yard was littered with holes and hollows. Most of the grass was submerged in clear water. Earl’s trailer had slipped from the blocks that held it aloft and sunk to one side of the yard. The windows on that side had shattered. Glass glittered in the grass, and a pale curtain drifted out to float in the wind.

  Penny watched the curtain flutter from the front porch. A can of warm Pepsi lay beside her feet along with a bag of Misty’s favorite half-and-half cookies.

  There were four cars parked in the driveway, but her father’s truck wasn’t one of them, and there were no noises coming from the trailer. Misty hesitated, not wanting to wake anyone just yet, not wanting the noise and questions that would follow. Then Penny turned her head.

  Her face didn’t change at first. She stared at Misty as if she didn’t quite recognize her. Then her eyebrows lifted a fraction of an inch. Her face crumpled. Penny heaved three great breaths before she pushed herself from the
porch. She wobbled, stiff, down the steps and across the grass. She didn’t seem to notice the water that splashed onto the hem of her nightgown or the way she teetered back and forth. She wrapped her arms around Misty’s shoulders and Misty hooked her arms underneath. There was still a flicker of terror in Misty’s throat at being touched. Even though this wasn’t the same as what had happened in the barn, the panic was the same, the need to push away, to run.

  Misty said, “Lord, you stink.”

  Penny hiccuped a laugh and pushed Misty away gently. “That’s because we’ve been rooting around all over the place looking for you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I hid.”

  “Where?”

  “The woods.”

  Penny crossed her arms over her chest. “Didn’t you hear us yelling for you?”

  “I need your help,” Misty said.

  Penny frowned. “What kind of help?”

  “I just need you to come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “To the garden.”

  “Oh. Well. Okay. There’s something I need to tell you first.”

  “What?”

  “William went missing, too. Right after you did.”

  Misty tried to swallow around the tightness in her throat, but the feeling wouldn’t budge. It lodged there, pressing and pressing, so her words had to fight their way free. “Has anybody found him yet?”

  “No. Earl’s still out looking. We have to call the police today. We was going to call them about you, but you’re here now. Have you seen William?”

  Misty shook her head. “What about Mom?”

  “I heard Aunt Jem and Dolly talking, and they said something about comas. Nobody’ll tell me what’s going on.”

  “But everyone’s still here?”

  “Yeah. Nobody wanted to leave in case you came back. We was up real late looking for you. We went to the school and to Jem and Dolly’s houses and their garden, all the way into town. Jem was convinced you was up at the pond, the one we went to last summer. She said you liked the water. You should have seen her face when you wasn’t there.” Penny shivered. “You’re lucky you didn’t have to. We should go tell them you’re back.”

  “Wait,” Misty said. “Can we do this first?”

  “I’ve been nice, Misty, but they need to know you’re all right. Jem cried. I ain’t never seen her cry. She punched a hole in the living room wall after, but still. She was crying there for a minute.”

  “I know.” Misty rubbed her hand across her face and the bones shifted beneath, trying to escape. Now that her bones knew they could slip free, they tried to leave of their own accord, chased away by her sadness, fear, or pain. “But we need to do this first. Please, Penny. I have to do this, and I don’t think I can do it by myself.”

  “Will you tell me what’s been going on then?”

  Misty nodded.

  “Okay,” Penny said. “Okay, but we have to hurry.”

  A faint mist clung to the barest tips of the trees, and it grew thinner with every step they took toward the garden. Any minute now, the sun would lift above the mountains and tear the mist apart, scatter it back to whatever it had been before. Earl’s trailer was empty and so was William’s. The creek trickled and cars passed by on the main road and birds chirped in the distance—the holler just as alive as it had ever been.

  Caroline knocked at the back of her mind and Misty answered.

  “I thought you were leaving,” Caroline said. “You ran off and shed your little skin again. I saw you bone-walking through the trees. I saw the home you dug for yourself by the creek.”

  “I changed my mind,” Misty said.

  “He didn’t.”

  “Who?”

  Caroline’s voice faded and Misty heard another sound beneath. Something small and humming, something full of static.

  It was William.

  She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she did. He had planted himself in the garden just like he’d planted everything else, just like he’d told her the night before. He planted himself so he might come back bigger and stronger, so all his cracks might be glossed over, so he might shine.

  “It won’t work,” Caroline said. “He’s almost gone.”

  Misty stopped when she reached the fence and turned to her sister. “He’s gone.”

  “Who?” Penny asked.

  “William. I think he planted himself here.”

  Misty hoisted herself over the fence and landed in the garden. The statues had always been cooler than everything else, and the air between them was like an early November morning. The garden soil had partially frozen so that every time Misty took a step, the dirt crunched beneath her bare feet, broke apart, and crumbled.

  “Wait. He planted himself? Like in the garden?”

  Misty nodded.

  Penny climbed onto the fence and sat on the top rail. “What’s going to happen to him? If he comes sprouting back out of this field, then I am done with this place. Honestly. I’m moving in with Aunt Jem.”

  Misty shook her head. “I don’t think he’s coming back. He thought he could. That it’d be just like the statues. He thought he’d come back and he wouldn’t feel bad anymore and his mom would be okay.”

  “What’d he feel bad for?”

  Misty toyed with the hem of her shirt. She’d gotten back into her body for this, to come here and help. But for a moment it seemed like a terrible idea. A small part of her wished that she’d stayed inside her bones instead so she wouldn’t have to answer Penny’s question. Then she wouldn’t have to tell the truth. The skin around her mouth loosened, wanting to leave her, but Misty grit her teeth. She took a deep breath and said, “Do you remember when we played spin the bottle?”

  “Yeah,” Penny said. “That feels like forever ago.”

  “Well—” Misty began, but a voice cut through her thoughts, stopping her.

  “What’re you doing?” Caroline asked. “You’re not going to tell her, are you?” Her voice filled Misty’s hands with shards of gravel, slicking her throat with the oil that leaked from Earl’s truck and onto the dry dirt.

  Misty ignored Caroline. “It didn’t start there. In the barn. Not for a while. I guess it started a long time ago, though, with me. With what I can do.”

  “You ain’t making any sense,” Penny said.

  “I don’t know how to tell you what I have to tell you.” Misty’s throat contracted and the sadness crested, pushing up and up until there was no place left to go. “I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why would you tell her?” Caroline whispered. “She doesn’t know about those hurts. She’s not like us.”

  “Will it help if I look away?” Penny asked. “I can turn around, like when the girls is changing in the locker room. I don’t have to see you to hear you.”

  Misty nodded and Penny swung her legs around until she was facing the trailer instead of the garden, and it did help somehow. It eased some of the pressure in Misty’s chest not to be seen. All this time she had hoped to find a way to talk to her family without words. It felt like the only chance she had of being heard. But she’d been wrong. No matter which way she did it, the truth was hard. It hurt.

  Caroline said, “If you tell her, then she’ll leave. That’s what they do. And then you’ll be like me.”

  Misty covered her eyes with her hands. “That’s not true.”

  “What isn’t?” Penny asked.

  “Nothing,” Misty said. “Just…the first thing I have to tell you is about me and the second thing is about William, but I’m going to start with him.” She slotted her fingers together and the bones wiggled beneath, begging to leave. She clenched her hands tight to hold herself in place. “It was after we played spin the bottle. I s
aw him outside that night, and we planted the bottle together. In the garden. It just looked so lonely, and we was both sad because of Mom and Dad and his mom and Harold. And then the green glass man grew. So William wanted to keep planting things. And then…” Misty pressed her fingers against her cheeks. “I don’t know which parts to tell you.”

  “None of them,” Caroline said. “You can stop now and she doesn’t have to know. You can come down under here, right here, with me and you won’t ever have to tell anyone again. You’ll be safe.”

  Misty’s mouth filled with the taste of dust, of green. Her arms laced with bone-white roots that pulled her down. Tears poured over her cheeks, and her breath hitched in her chest.

  “Hey,” Penny said. “It’s okay. You’re doing okay. William planted the bottle and the statue grew and…”

  “And he wanted them to keep growing,” Misty said. “So he got another bottle and he asked me to spin it and he planted that one, too. And another statue grew. And then we went back to the barn, but we didn’t… It wasn’t me and him. It was him. And he did things.” Misty’s chest heaved. The skin on her shoulder drooped and she held it back up with her hand, forced herself back into place. She wrapped her arms around her chest and squeezed and squeezed. “I didn’t like what he did, but I didn’t know what to do. And I didn’t want to tell nobody.”

  “He—” Penny paused. “Did he…hurt you?”

  Misty nodded and Penny knew it somehow without ever turning around. Penny’s shoulders slumped like her body wanted to leave, too.

  Caroline was silent, listening.

  “And it went on,” Misty said. “For a while, it went on. And things kept growing, and I thought it had something to do with what I am. What I can do.”

  “Wait, what can you do?”