Drink for the Thirst to Come

by Lawrence Santoro

  Melissa Patricia Tozier stood three steps above the sidewalk. She looked back from where she had come. Wind whipped her hair, billowed around her face, whipped her eyes. A white ghost flickered in the breeze. Her. Her hair, body, an old, white presence in her own long-gone past.

  Melissa looked down. Her cousin had slept by her side, a spider on her cheek. She had risen from the bed to stare at the spook. Now, she stood alone and looked down where they had been. No. Where both had been alone. Separate. Along the street stood the back house where she’d caught the spider. She (almost) saw the place, transparent, as though in a lifting fog. She could not see cousin Barbary sleeping alone in the night dark but she knew she was there. Their ghosts.

  A cinder poked her eye. Melissa cocked her head, wiped her eyelid, blinked. She staggered painfully against the doorway. The ghost she now was felt solid. M’lissa Trish Tozier from the Land of Lincoln: a thing caught and captured, spelled by her own self, a spider-spell she’d spoken in another century. She felt the living thing scrabble on her hand, heard it in the can, tick, tick, tick.

  Now was the day that was supposed to be, the day poor stupid cousin Barbary Ann said to hope for, “a happy end to some happy, happy day.”

  The tale was winding down, not happy, not sad. It led from the back house beyond the Boy’s Room, ran a circle and back through her. Went nowhere. She reached to touch the face she’d once been, glowing below her in sunlight. She could not touch it. Could not see it clearly. Could not be it, call it back, could not live it. Not ever again. Not ever forever.

  LITTLE GIRL DOWN THE WAY

  Erin was dead; dead, and her little body buried in the narrow alley where the rainspout spilled dirty water over the new concrete. The burial hadn’t been a good job.

  Erin stayed in the basement, the same basement she’d lived in the last years of her life. Mommy loved her. That’s why Erin was here, because Mommy loved her, always loved her. Must have been her bad Dwarves, Erin knew, because day after day, all days alike, Erin slipped back into this small place in the basement. Day after day, all alike, she flopped face first into a growling rock grinder of lumpy pain; each day she fell, plop, into a sea of boiling do-do, got flushed, was snuffed and smothered, drowned in thick pee-pee, stinky diarrhea pumping up her nose. Every day she got tossed, heaved onto the broken cokebottle rocks of sharp light that caught, hooked and hung her, held her dangling, slipping by her gently tearing flesh, rip, rip, rrrrip, over the blazing hole of always.

  That was just eye-openers and she was already dead.

  She tried to cry. She couldn’t. The dead cannot. Every day, all days the same, her eyes had no wet for it, chest hurt too much to heave, crying.

  Even dead, she was hungry. Hunger made her stomach puff. Every now and then she caught something, something dead that scrambled across her face or arms in the cellar dark, scrabbled up her legs. Caught ’em, sucked ’em down, slurp, the dead things fed her. Good the dead could feed the dead. Mmm.

  Unless she puked, Mommy wouldn’t know.

  Right now, she had mice chunks and a hundred squirts of oozy bug in her belly. There was also most of a sock down there. There it had been, a long stretch outside her dog cage. It must have been from a time ago, something dropped in a corner, then, one day, kicked and left near enough for her to reach it.

  She’d reached and reached and reached then taken it. It was small, so very small. Oh, maybe it had been her brother’s oh, ohhh, ohhhhhhh, Baby’s. She held it for a while, loving it, touching her face with it. Finally, hunger took her and she took it, a few threads at a time soaked in her nose blood. She let the strands trickle down her throat until: allllll gone.

  That was long ago. And in truth she couldn’t remember if that was when she was alive or not. There were other things, a few dirty things, down inside her, but not a lot, not so much that Mommy’d care.

  What she fed on, she slurped. Jaw wouldn’t let her chew. When she’d been alive, Jaw wouldn’t let her cry, either. When she tried, Jaw made her feel like she was chewing sharp pieces of herself. Jaw was—she counted with her tongue—one, two, three, four—four places Jaw was broken. Tongue could touch and gently shift the broken ends, the bone beneath the skin; ear could hear it grate, grate, grate and make the shivering hot chill chatter all through her head. When she did, when she moved her bones like that, her shattered teeth bit, bit, bit, the swelling lips, shredded cheeks, and gnawed-on tongue.

  Jaw minded her for Mommy. Mommy had made Jaw from her mouth. Wham, wham, wham, wham and there was Jaw.

  That’ll show me, she’d say to herself as Jaw snapped gnyang, gnyang, gnyang, down hard and pointy on all the soft places in her mouth. That’ll show me, Mommy, she’d say as each bite slammed a hammerfall of agony against the back of her eyeballs! See, Mommy? she’d say very, very quietly and very, very fast. That’ll show me! That’ll show me! She whispered it aloud; maybe Mommy’d hear and like her more. She’d think it to herself, and maybe Mommy wouldn’t hear and wouldn’t hate her more. Jaw watched and minded for Mommy. Even when she died, Jaw watched Erin for Mommy.

  None of it—pain, fear, missing her Mommy—helped her cry, though. She was dead. The dead don’t cry.

  Except for not being able to cry, being dead wasn’t so bad. She’d hung on so to being alive! Mommy was right, she was a stupid bitch. And when it finally swallowed her, death was just the same as life. Same basement. Same Mommy. Same pain. What had she been so scared of? She was still safe down there. She just hadn’t known.

  When she’d been alive, she couldn’t eat. Not the last few weeks. Once, when the cellar window had been left open in a dark wind, just to air the stink out of the goddamned place for Jesus’s sake, and the rains had splashed down so hard, the mud had spattered and flowed thick dribbles down the wall, she’d caught some and sucked it down. The mud was cool on her lips, gritty. She could swallow it so smooth and it felt full and heavy in her tummy.

  Mommy didn’t like that! She found out and she didn’t like that!

  Today Erin puked a little snot and ooooo that hurt. The hundred Nasty Dwarves she knew were in her, inside her everywhere, started scraping, ruff, ruff, ruff, like that and got to kicking, kicking her with hard, sharp feet, wham, wham, wham, wham like that. They grabbed parts of her insides, her heart, her tummy, lungs, bones, and throat. They pulled and bent and hung, they stretched and bit and tore and made her hurt like she couldn’t believe. They jabbed with knives and touched with fire and ran electric all through her. She’d hated the numb chatters of electric, how it made her go loose and poopy when Mommy’d run it through her, hated the way it made her slam, go whack onto the floor or against the wall, her head going boom, boom, boom. The Dwarves that lived in her had it all—fire, knife, and electric pain.

  When Erin yelled, it was a tiny silent scream. She could hear it and that’s what counted. Her broken bits poked her here, there, everywhere, tore out her cheek, her side, her arm. Bloody stuff ran out her poopy hole, but she screeched it to herself. She knew how much Mommy hated, just hated, that—when the bones showed, sticking out. But she couldn’t, really, really couldn’t shove the bloodred pointy things back inside, not again, not and keep the screaming to her-Goddamn-self.

  So there she sat: forcing stillness, forcing her mouth to stop; Erin made it stop working against the jagged bony things that stuck out of her face the last couple of weeks, months, years.

  She was dead and still she sat still. She remembered: Mommy didn’t like a noise from her, mornings. She forced the silence of the grave over everything, willing herself to be dead again today as she had every day for days, weeks, months, years.

  Even dead, she needed to breathe. Short pants did it. Deep breath hurt too much, made funny cracking pains inside. Little breaths—a lot of them—worked almost as good and didn’t hurt as much. She took her first little sniffs of the day.

  That accomplished, morning was underway.

  Every now and then she knew a little light. Haze drifted through her lik
e white air. Light hurt different than memory of life and the reality of this place, this Heaven, was it?

  In the silent place she kept around her, she still stank. In the thank-the-Jesus dark, she still stank while she waited to be all the way dead again later, later—at night, maybe it was, when she was really dead. Like being asleep when she’d been alive. But when she was awake, she stank.

  She felt the stinky dress still on her. Aw, it was still there. She still wore the dress she’d worn for weeks, months, years. The dress Mommy’d given her. The same old new dress from Sears that she wore forever, that her body was buried in out where the dirty water washed the crumbling concrete.

  She remembered. Remembered the time when Mommy had come to see her and seen “what the fuck you done to that!” Mommy had seen the “Jesus Christ I paid good Goddamned money for and look what you done to it now” dress.

  Now and then a living person would come, come to the basement, would turn on the light from upstairs and Erin would squint against the screaming shards the hanging bulb sprayed through her like spitting grease from a hot stove. That hurt, light did, but different from the day-by-day whap, bam, bong Mommy’d bring by later.

  The person would move across the basement, do those things the living did. And when the person left, sometimes he’d leave the bulb on and the brightness would boil her away, day and night, until someone turned it off.

  Sometimes, the living person would sniff, as though he smelled her stinky self all the way from the grave down by the rainspout. When this happened, the live one would shiver, hug himself, move quickly, finish in a rush what had to be done, trot up the steps, slam the door, and leave a silent chill behind as the lamp swung back and forth in the dark.

  It was hard to see the living—they were little more than vapor—and even though their light and mist brought pain, Erin liked the times they came. Hard to see, impossible to touch. She could barely tell if these living ones were boys or girls, big people or kids. She had no idea what the living did, why they did it. Even when she’d been alive, she didn’t know. Now...?

  Every now and then, one of them walked right through her and dragged a little piece of her upstairs, stuck to their shoe maybe or soaked into the hem of a skirt or caught like a burr on a pants leg. That little piece of Erin would move with the living, up in the day and light. She’d feel the outside day, just a little, like a splendid single note of a really pretty song. Then the note faded, whitened, died, and then the missing part crawled back to her, dirty dark and stinky, while she slept. When she woke another day, that little piece of her was sticking out, just a morsel of that day’s pain.

  That’s how she thought of it anyway.

  Every now and then something would scream past the high narrow window that looked outside, something so alive, something with small legs and shrill voices. Kids. Like Baby brother had been. As with all the living, she could hardly see these children, but they made her basement vibrate. What they did... they made her remember.

  She remembered, back to before she’d come here, remembered when Baby So Sweet had first come home. Not like her. No. She’d seen Baby sleeping dearly, all the world quiet around him he slept so sweet. She went on tippytoes to Baby brother. She leaned over and kissed. Kissed his cheek. He smelled like milk. His cheek was warm and soft, something she wanted to taste, like something she’d remembered from long ago and she wanted now to taste him but all she did, all she ever did, was kiss his head and kiss his nose and kiss his cheek.

  Then Mommy grabbed her arm and swung her around and around and smacked her on the wall, picked her up and told her good thing she come before she’d dropped Baby, told her good thing or she’d go out with the trash.

  Even though Erin promised, promised Mommy never to come near Baby ever, never again, that was it, Mommy had had it with her. Mommy WAS planning to send her to school that year, Mommy said. But now? Not on her life. She WAS going to let her outside. But not now. She WAS going to let her have friends. But not not not not NOW. And she whomped her again on the wall and her arm bone, sharp and white, came through her skin and made a mess a Goddamned mess.

  Then she went to live in the basement.

  It was a long time till she saw Baby again. She almost didn’t know him. He was almost as big as she was and he flickered by the window. His little legs flew by, a flickered blur of bright and shadow, but somehow she felt him pass. She shoved as close to the light as the dog cage let her. Squeezing her face against the cold metal, she could see one piece of sky and part of the wall of the house next door. The day was bright. A puddle of light soaked the floor and caught the corner of her cage. The heat of the beam licked her face.

  Then the legs thudded past again and she almost felt the wind of their going. Like thunder. Like pounding pain, they ran.

  After a silence, and all of a sudden, there was a face. It flashed into a corner of the window, clipping off her measure of sky. Her brother’s face blocked most of the light and his shadow fell across her. She felt the cool of his shadow and could almost smell the memory of his cheek. But he was soooo big now. She stared at the giant Baby and his eyes, oh his eyes, were so black in his big round head, his eyes got sooooo wide and he shaded them with both his sweet little hands.

  She stunk.

  He yelled and yelled and in a moment he was whipped up and out of the frame.

  Then there was Mommy, and Erin skittered into the dark corner of the cage and no, no, no, no, she knew she’d hurt. She knew she wouldn’t know why fucking Jesus fucking Christ why was she so Goddamned bad? Why was she so...? She could feel it now...

  This was when she was still alive, when she was the rat in the basement. Mommy told her that was what she was. To her, to Baby: the big, bad rat in the basement. What Baby’d called her.

  Even after Mommy’d punished her for letting Baby see her, she’d remembered when Baby had first come home and she had touched him with her lips. She remembered the time when she had first, and for the only time, felt the cool life of his shadow across her eyes.

  Ever after, once a week maybe, just once a week, she’d touch her own hand to her lip and close her eye for a moment, trying to imagine it was Baby’s hand she kissed.

  A long, long time later, the door to the cellar opened and it wasn’t Mommy.

  She’d been sitting. That’s what she did most days. Then the cellar door opened and she scooted to the cagedoor so Mommy didn’t have to get down and crawl to catch hold of her for Jesus’s sake.

  The cellar door opened and nothing happened.

  A foot sounded on the stair but the light didn’t come. In a little while the foot stepped on the squeaky tread. It didn’t squeak like when Mommy stepped on it, no, it squeaked different.

  It was gray outside and the world didn’t make much light around her, but in the shadow on the stairs there was a small person. She had never seen a small person and she covered herself with her piece of blanket.

  “Come out,” the voice of the small person said. “I see you. You come out.”

  She peeked. The small person was near the cage. He was bigger than she was, but she knew he was Baby. Baby alone. She slipped her head out of the blanket and looked at him.

  A beam of yellow light smacked her dead on the eyeballs. It felt like toothache exploding in her face. She screamed and her own voice scared her. It was like nothing she’d ever heard. It was just her but it was a ghost, a monster, a rat, yes a rat in the basement, and she was screaming from fear of herself.

  Then Baby was screaming and the light fell from his hands and rolled on the floor. He ran. He clamored up the steps one at a time and the wooden door above slammed.

  She screamed for a few minutes. Through Baby banging on the door, above, and his screaming and crying. She screamed into the silence that followed. She screamed for a little, and then she was quiet again because she knew Mommy would come.

  Mommy came later that night. And that was the last day she lived. Before Mommy reached her Erin began whispering, tell
ing Mommy she was really bad and she would never make another sound ever again. She wouldn’t really, really wouldn’t. She didn’t sit by the door of the cage; she drew as far away from it as she could. She knew it was bad, but she was afraid.

  Mommy was quiet, coming. She wasn’t saying Jesus’s sake and fucking Christ and Goddamn rat. She walked down and picked up the flashlight that had gone dark on the floor in the hours since Baby’d been down to see where rat lived.

  She clicked the dead flashlight and put it on the bench behind her. She came to the cage and unlocked the gate. She got on her hands and knees and reached inside. Erin pressed against the farthest corner, saying, “no Mommy, no Mommy, no Mommy,” but Mommy squeezed further and further in, caught her leg, and drew Erin forth.

  Erin whimpered. She whispered no, no, no, no, no, no. She would never ever ever ever say anything again.

  Mommy picked her up. She looked at her. Mommy was so big, so much bigger every day. Now she was the biggest thing in all the world. And Mommy put her hands around Erin’s middle and pressed. Erin took a last breath and tasted Mommy’s perfume and said, no, no, no. Then Mommy pressed more and more and Erin felt herself break inside, felt herself crack, felt sharp things stab her and stab her. Then she couldn’t breathe, not even a little and in a short time, held close to Mommy, in Mommy’s hands, she died.

  That wasn’t too bad, Erin remembered. There had been worse. When she’d spilled on the new dress from the Sears. That’d been worse. That had been a day! A whap, whap, whap, picked by the feet and spun, day. A wheee, and her face went wham-bong against the metal pole that held up the house from down in the basement day. That day, Mommy’d dropped her, “little fucker,” Mommy’d called her, “crawl out of me, will you,” she said. Then she’d shoved a rolled up newspaper down her throat until she nearly choked.

  “You’ll wear that thing until you wear it out,” Mommy’d said, letting her go, letting her pull the paper out of her mouth.