When We Were Animals(36)

*



They were wrong, all of them. You do remember some things—fragments that gnaw at you—the sense of becoming another animal altogether. That Christmas Eve, I remember myself in the woods—a delicious kind of lostness that was dizzying and joyful. I was alone, I believe, the entire night. I felt large, bigger than the trees that towered over me. Wider than the sky at its widest. I was the center of all I observed. There was nowhere to get back to because I carried all of myself with me. I was my own home.

But I did return to the house. Somehow I did. I woke in the backyard at dawn. I was naked, curled at the base of a rhododendron shrub, the powdery snow melted into a fragile, concave nest around my body.

I was cold. I was starting to feel the cold again.

I crouched there, trying to assess the situation. My mind was still muddled, and part of me still felt bold and unapologetic. But that part was quickly diminishing.

It was still very early. No one was out. I sprinted across the lawn, around the side of the house, and in through the front door, which was still unlocked. Inside I stopped and pressed myself against the wall, breathing hard. I listened, but the house was still quiet. The heat ticked on, and the wall vents rattled faintly. My father had not woken up. I crept up the stairs to my room, where I got a robe out of my closet and wrapped it around my body.

Lying on the bed, I tried to sleep, but my muscles ached and my head was spinning—and I didn’t want to sleep, because I felt the opposite of tired.

So I took a bath in the bathroom down the hall. I made the water as hot as I could bear it, thinking to sweat out whatever was still in me from the night before. I was meticulous. I pried out all the dirt that had collected under the nails of my toes and fingers, I scrubbed the soles of my feet raw trying to get rid of all the yellowed mud caked in the creases. I picked pine needles from my hair, and they floated like miniature felled trees on the meniscus of the tub water. Sap knotted my hair in places, and I had to wash it three times in scalding water before I could dig out the coagulants with a plastic comb.

There was a knock on the door.

“Merry Christmas, little Lumen!”

“Merry Christmas,” I called back.

“You’re up bright and early. Ready for presents?”

“I’ll be down in a minute.”

I stood, dripping dry on the bathmat. Wiping the mirror clear of condensation, I looked at the girl I saw there. Judging by her looks, her scrubbed pinkness, you would never know where she’d been.

Back in my bedroom, I dressed in red and green, as was the tradition with my father and me. I avoided looking at the windows, because I did not want to think about the snow and the trees and the clear sky of morning. I wanted to be inside and think inside thoughts. I wanted to feel the comfort of walls around me—and to speak the delicate languages of family and society and tradition.

Downstairs, my father and I took turns opening presents. He was eager to see me excited, and so I was excited for him.

He took many pictures of me, but I vowed never to look at them.

It hurt too much to think how completely the girl in those pictures was not me.

*



The last gift I gave him was the map I had drawn for him.

Until this very moment, I have never told anyone about it—not even my husband. Sometimes you hide away a memory because it is so precious that you don’t want to dilute it with the attempt to recount it. Sometimes you hide a memory because the disclosure of it would reveal you to be a different person from the one others believe you to be. And sometimes you may hide a memory because it inhabits you in some physical way, because its meaning is inexpressible and dangerous. That is this memory—evidence, baleful proof—just the recollection of him opening my gift.

He unrolls it on the ground, kneeling before it like a supplicant, head bowed, prayerful and quiet.

What he says is, “You did this,” and his voice is full of wonder and admiration. He does not bother to thank me. It is a gift beyond thank yous.

Using his fingertip, he travels from one place to another on the map, and at each location he pauses to examine the detail. It is as though he lives, for the moment, in that map, as though he and I are travelers on a different plane.

That plane is a place where you can redraw yourself from scratch.

The pen lines are so perfect, so straight and lovely—who would ever want to cross them?

*



I had two visitors later that day. The first was Polly. We stood, shivering, on the sidewalk, because I did not want her in my house. The space inside those walls was suddenly precious to me.

“Are you having a good Christmas?” she asked.

“I guess.” I shrugged.

“Did you get good presents?”

Her face was still splotchy with bruises.

“Are you okay?” I said.

“Oh, this’ll go away. It happens.”

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s walk.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. It’s Christmas.”

“It’s cold.”

“It’s not so cold.”

In truth it was very cold indeed, but I liked the punishing feeling of the icy wind. So we walked slowly down the middle of the street. There were very few cars out, but when one came we stepped aside and let it pass.

We said nothing for a few minutes. She seemed to be waiting for me to confess something, but I didn’t feel like confessing.