Follow Me to Ground(26)

I don’t know how we were paid because I kept watching the boy, thinking he’d surely evidence some sign. But he only looked at the ground, at the pockmarked wood, his baby mouth a little way open. One over the other he laid his freckled hands across his stomach, which I knew now to be a whitewashed pale. I knew also that he’d wait until he was home and alone, to cry. And that of my witch’s hands rummaging around his gut he’d never say a word.

Never let you inside of me, no way.

Father’s idle words. Mrs Kent already inside the car. Already simpering at her son.

A few days later I was lying in the grass while the morning was still mild. Thinking of Samson beneath me and pressing my hips into The Ground, rolling my shoulders and turning my head side to side. I could feel him there, and it soothed me.

Father came out of the house behind me. I heard his steps: soft and slow. He stood beside me and I felt his shadow across my knees.

–Lorraine is here.

–Already?

I rolled away from him, onto my side. I’d decided Lorraine’s waking up was a sign she’d been put to sleep too many times, that she was growing a kind of callous toward it. But I couldn’t tell Father. Couldn’t tell him I’d left a Cure unattended. And I didn’t know what I’d do with her today, if I couldn’t make her sleep.

Behind my eyes I saw Samson’s thighs, their muscle-bulge.

–She’s been acting strangely.

I clenched a little. I knew he hadn’t seen her in the garden, and that he thought a tomcat had yellowed the grass. He’d poured a certain broth over the poisoned patch to help it regain its green.

I snorted, made myself sound disinterested – calm – and said

–She’s a Cure.

–She’s been saying things that don’t make sense. Like she’s had a fit and her brain’s misfiring.

–She’s just talking about her old life. It doesn’t make sense because she always starts in the middle.

–It’s not stories, just sentences.

–Like what?

–‘Long time in the desert’, ‘Not a bad man’.

I opened my eyes and looked up to Father’s face but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at The Ground. I kept very still.

–Must be going senile.

–Bit before her time.

–…Should I look inside her head today?

He rubbed at his scalp. The grey-blond hair flickering. Kept staring and staring at The Ground.

–No … no, maybe it is just her memory looping.

Still, his eyes on The Ground, crinkled – almost closed.

Then, eventually,

–Be careful out here, Ada. Even in sunshine. Everything’s feeling strange.

Lorraine was smoking and looking out the window, one knee rested on the couch.

–How are you feeling today, Lorraine?

She turned around quick, smiling.

–Morning Ada. Feeling fine, just fine.

–You want to lie down?

Which she did, stubbing the cigarette out gently so she could return to it again.

When I put her to sleep she twitched a little, which wasn’t unusual. Her lips made themselves thick and her eyelids shrivelled shut. I sat back on my knees and watched her. Waited.

It didn’t take long.

Her mouth came a little way open, and there was a rattling sound.

It sounded like her spine was shaking and the sound was coming up through her. I’d never heard such a sound, a body trying to ground some portion of itself to dust.

–Why are you trembling, Lorraine?

And then her head snapped back and her mouth opened fully. I could see the large teeth near the root of her tongue gleaming wet and silver where the air had not yet seen the spittle dried. She opened her eyes and they were wide, unseeing. She reached up to me, her square fingers carrying the lightest touch of yellow.

–Come down to me, Ada.

Her mouth moved with a roundness that didn’t match her words.

–Why will you not come down?

–Come down where, Lorraine? You’re right here.

For a terrible moment I thought she meant for me to kiss her, or embrace her in some way. I felt a simmering warmth in my loins that sickened me.

–What’s happening to you, Lorraine?

–You keep me waiting on you like a dog, Ada.

That swirling warmth in my groin. Sweet and thick. No, I thought, No.

My loins filling up with sweet wet hurt and that pincer heat inside me.

And then Lorraine spoke again but her voice was not quite her own.

–It’s been a long time, in the desert.

I went outside. I was shaking, I think.

I felt a stream inside me was quickening.

I meant to taste the hot dry air and wash out my mouth.

I’ve dreamed it, I’ve dreamed it. I’ve dreamed him too strong and called up some strangeness. Made the words take root like a growth inside her.

I stopped on the bottom of the stairs and hit at my groin. Made a fist and wedged my hand into the softness there, around the carmine muscle and bone.

My eyes and throat were hurting, but no wet came.

Maybe I’m crying.

Could be I was crying in that dry, soundless way I’d seen take over certain Cures – their mouths wide open but with little sound, their eyes shining but only giving up the thinnest tears.