When We Were Animals(84)

And that’s when I discovered my true mother.

*



The June moon was called the Lacuna, which the dictionary told me meant “pause.” Maybe because it was the halfway point in the year, a moment when time itself held its breath, waited to exhale the remainder of its months. I don’t know—but it’s true that there was always a kind of holy stillness about that particular moon. It’s in that stillness that my mother went away many years before.

There was no light at all—no light anywhere. I ran my fingers along the walls of the caves I knew so well. My dress dragged along packed dirt. I smelled my way.

And maybe, after all, that was growing up—learning to navigate deeper territories, learning how to see in the dark. Or learning not to care that you couldn’t see in the dark.

But that seemed wrong, too. The adults around me, they weren’t less afraid—they were more. They were afraid of things they couldn’t articulate. They had lost the power to utter themselves, and so they cowered in sheetrock houses.

Mr. Hunter. He remade himself but could never make himself unbroken. I felt guilty. I had left him behind, there on his tinny height, no one to say goodbye to.

My father, I loved him. He was a sad man, too. But my whole life he had lied to me.

Still, I didn’t blame him. I would sing a song of him. I would write him into a poem. He deserved magic words to keep him safe. Miss Simons was no curse. She was not strong enough to be a curse. She was simply common. But my father and I, we were better. We cultivated ourselves on higher ground.

Maybe he had grown too afraid even to see that.

The adults, they lived in another country—a populace of scrawny fear, as far away as morning is from midnight.

*



I remember the way your skin looked in the moonlight.

You.

Peter Meechum.

Blackhat Roy Ruggle.

Hondy Pilt.

Rose Lincoln.

Polly, pretty Polly.

I line you all up in my head, a beautiful processional, slow-motion and smiling. You are of my life.

When I point to you, stand up straight. Let me get a good look at you.

You were pale.

And you were dark.

Your ribs showed through your skin.

You were the one who always had leaves in your hair.

You wore your nakedness proudly—bathing in the moonlight as though your exposure were holy and dreadful.

You, on the other hand, always hid in bushes and behind trees. Was it shame or was it timidity?

You treated your skin before the moon came out. You were ridiculous, but you were lustrous.

You had freckled shoulders.

You had a birthmark on your right calf—I touched it once with my lips when you were sleeping.

I could draw maps of your skin—all of you. I have often, without your knowing it, traveled the topographies of your flesh.

You were brilliant in the moonlight, and I remember you all.

*



I went to visit my mother. Hay for hair, paper for skin. And still just a girl. Of course a girl. It had never occurred to me—when she died she had been just a few years older than I was now. I had thought of my mother as many things: as a queen, as a bride, as a wild woman, as a prophet—but I had never thought of her as simply a girl, like me. In just a handful of years, I would be older than my own mother.

It hurt to think about that.

I could not see her in the dark, so I nestled myself against her. I spoke to her.

I said, “Hello. It’s me. It’s Lumen, your daughter.”

Her silence was profound, mocking.

I said, “Did you wear orchid gloves at your wedding? My dad says you did, but I don’t know.”

She was preserved in time. I rested my head against her shoulder. Her hay hair tickled my cheek. I smelled her gray skin, and it smelled of nothing at all. Her skin was dusty.

“Did you get lost?” I said. “I got lost, too.”

*



Sometimes when you are looking for something, you find it.

You could call it magic.

If we name things, maybe they’ll never get away from us.

*



I slept, my head in my mother’s lap. It might have been five minutes. It might have been an hour. When I woke, I thought it was late. I thought about my father and my promise to be home by midnight. But when I made my way out of the mine, I found Blackhat Roy near the mouth, waiting for me. He said nothing. He looked miserable—tortured. But this boy’s wretchedness felt far away from where I was.

“My mother’s dead,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “My father’s gone, too.”

“I forgot that.”

“I know.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“People saw you. Running.”

“You went to the dance?”

“No. I was looking for you.”

I turned and went to my secret place, my cistern. He followed me there, but I didn’t care. I had stopped hearing the world. In my head were confused, inarticulate voices. They babbled and boiled, and I drowned in them. My mother was a dead girl. There was darkness and dust and Blackhat Roy. You sometimes go wild, and you sometimes want that wildness shackled.

We faced each other, and the wind whistled up from the pit. While he looked, I undid my prom dress and let it fall to the ground. Then I took off my underwear. We’re all of us naked one way or the other.