When We Were Animals(52)

The weeks went on. I hid my full-moon activities from my father, but I think he must have known. Once, there was a long scratch on my neck. He didn’t ask about it, but I know he saw.

We all have our fictions. It’s not for other people to expose them. And yet I wondered more and more about my mother. I wondered what fictions she might have had. What did she do indoors during the full moons? How did she occupy herself? What stories did she tell herself, all on her own, while the whole town went crazy around her?

*



In February everything was crystals. There were icicles on every eave. I, too, was a brittle stalactite. It seemed that I might not ever grow up, that I might not ever be fully alive. Wandering the mine shafts, I had buried myself. I had shrouded myself with death. I was a premature ghost.

That was also the month that Mr. Hunter asked me to tell him stories.

It was in the middle of a Hamlet test. The only sounds in the classroom were the hiss of pens on paper and the occasional creak of a desk as we repositioned ourselves in our seats. I was in the middle of an essay question on the significance of Ophelia’s suicide when he startled me by leaning down and whispering in my ear.

“I’m pressing you into service,” he said. “Meet me in the auditorium after school.”

I couldn’t tell you how I finished that test, my stomach tight, my face gone flush, my pen clutched too tight in my fist. I had always been wary of the man, and I was not the kind of girl who received whispered invitations. But I went because I did what I was told to do. Agreeableness was my secret pride.

The auditorium looked empty when I got there, with a high, echoey stillness like that of a church between services. I let the door close softly behind me and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dimness.

“Lumen,” he said, and I could make out his form sitting on the edge of the stage. “Come in.”

“It’s dark.”

“I don’t want to be bothered.”


I walked slowly down the sloping aisle between the empty seats, which always made me feel like a bride, and when I got to the stage he told me to sit, so I sat on the stage near him, but I kept my distance, my legs dangling over the edge, as his were.

He smiled a strange smile at me, and I didn’t know what it meant, and I waited for what would happen next.

“I want you to tell me about it,” he said. “The breaching.”

“Tell you?”

“Tell me what it’s like. You know I didn’t grow up here. I didn’t experience it myself.”

It felt like such a personal thing for him to be asking in such a direct and unapologetic fashion.

“I want to know,” he said simply.

“Why me?”

“Lots of reasons,” he said. “The main one is that you want to tell it.”

I didn’t enjoy being fathomed like that.

“I better go,” I said.

I stood and started to walk back up the aisle. I wondered what he would do. If he would demand for me to halt or seize me from behind. But he did nothing at all.

I was halfway up the aisle when I stopped and turned and saw him still sitting, unmoved, with a bemused look on his face.

“Where are you from?” I asked from my safe distance.

“East Saint Louis.”

“What’s Missouri like?”

“Actually, it’s Illinois—it’s across the river from Saint Louis.”

“Oh.”

“The mighty Mississippi. It runs brown with mud.”

“Oh.” Each word I said sounded smaller in the dark.

“Normal.”

“What?”

“You asked what Missouri’s like. It’s normal. Illinois, normal. Saint Louis, normal. East Saint Louis, normal. Partridge Street, with its kids riding bicycles before dinnertime—normal. So much normal you could choke on it.”

There was a roughness to him always, as though he were constantly chewing on some bitter root. He was someone who seemed to have little tolerance for things. His demeanor suggested I could stay or go as I pleased. So I stayed.

“It’s like a highway,” I said, feeling for a moment like I was standing alone, speaking to myself. “The breaching. It’s like a long highway in the desert, and you can’t see the end of it, and you can see everything for miles in every direction, and there’s nothing but you—and maybe that’s a good thing, or maybe that’s a bad thing, or maybe it’s both. But it’s just you and your guts in the middle of a desert.”

I waited for him to respond, but he said nothing at all. He just leaned forward a little and waited for me to continue.

And that’s how it started between him and me.

*



Sometimes I tell myself stories still. During the days, when my husband is at work and my son is at school, I walk through the house tidying things and listening to the tales my voice has to tell.

“There once was a man, just like you and me,” I say, “except that at night he liked to remove his head from his shoulders and keep it in a wicker basket beside his bed.”

I straighten the pile of coasters on the coffee table and am gone out far in my imagination.

Lola King, who has let herself in by my kitchen door, startles me.

“Who are you talking to, sweetie?”