Family (16 page)

swallow the poison back down again.

40.

inside.

now.

beyond the flimsy screen door,

beyond the separation of world and womb.

i am inside, now,

standing in the center of the living room

of the singer’s house.

<
breathe.
>

41.

the man on the sofa shakes his head, pushes himself up on one elbow. sleep crusts the corners of his eyes.

he blinks, shakes his free wrist, peers at his watch. his hair is flattened, pressed against his skull from where he dozed off on the sofa.

he looks small, disoriented. confused.

“what time is it?” he asks. “was i—?”

then he stops. takes in junior:

six feet tall, clad in shadow, cheek spattered, caked with mud.

junior, bearing down on him.

“who are you?” the man on the sofa asks.

he is still uncertain. still not quite concerned, not too terribly worried about the turn that this evening has taken.

he should be.

42.

“Henry has a message for you,” junior says.

“Henry wants you to know:

you’re late.

you were s’posed to come by weeks ago.”

he smirks.

“you were s’posed to come hear him. to
listen.

“you made a mistake, disrespecting Henry that way.

but it’s all right,

we can fix this.

make it right.

we got a message that you’ll hear

loud and

clear.”

43.

i breathe.

reel.

realize:

this is the blank,

important man.

this is
his
house.

this is where the man who rejected Henry lives.

that

—
that—

is why we are

here.

that
is the spark

that spurred
helter-skelter
.

i reel.

and the undertow threatens

to overtake me

yet again.

44.

junior draws himself farther, higher,

until he is tall as a tree,

a tower,

a tornado.

he slides his pistol from his waistband,

cocks it.

the cold, empty clang

of metal against metal.

and i feel

my
self

<
no ego no i no before>

begin to break

the surface of the water.

45.

click.

i hear a moan: shelly, or possibly the singer,

possibly contemplating what has become of her
now.

the singer, who is bound.

the man on the couch, confused, semiconscious,

still struggling to pierce the eggshell-thin veil

between sleep and wake.

still trying to rise.

my stomach clenches, a swarm of hornets struggle from deep within, fluttering wings locked in beat.

the ocean swells beneath me.

<
breathe.>

46.

the man on the couch seems to realize.

his eyes dart from junior’s face to leila’s,

then to shelly’s, and finally, to

mine.

i look away.

paddle furiously, inside my mind’s eye.

try to stay afloat.

i have been
chosen
for this,

after all.

cast away.

nearly drowned

swept up

and into

the

current.

this—

the
now—

helter-skelter—

this is what it means to be a

messenger.

this is what it means

to spread

Henry’s

word.

47.

another wave.

i waver.

<
breathe
.>

i am a cipher.

i am a whisper.

i am diaphanous, negative

space.

i am the opposite of solid.

i am antimatter. a black hole.

a chasm.

a network of fault lines,

fractured beyond repair.

i am a member of this
family
:

sister, wife,

daughter.

i am the undertow, the tide at midnight.

i am adrift, awash, pulled in every direction.

choking on swallows of seaweed and salt water.

floating toward the edges of the horizon.

i am:

a message

a spark,

a groundswell of

trash and

terror.

and

i cannot help this man

any more than i can

quench the fever

dim the fire

douse the flame

that we have—

that my
family
has—

set

to

burn.

48.

the man on the couch purses his lips, tries to contain his fear.

“who are you?” he asks again.

i think:

we

are the high tide.

and you

are going

to

drown.

49.

“i’m the devil,” junior says.

“and i’m here to do the devil’s business.”

50.

then:

then:

a shriek

a shudder

a plea.

“i don’t—”

the man begins:

“why—?”

i am rooted to the ground,

rotting from the inside.

bloodstream, brain,

poisoned.

i am an outline,

a suggestion of some former self,

some long-ago daughter,

some solid,

sturdy girl

who once knew

how

to

swim.

i have been carried to this place,

this
now,

on a current

treading water

furiously

foolishly.

and i

am

sinking.

51.

the man’s eyes widen, sharpen, focus on the afterlife as it bears down.

“no,” he starts, holding out an arm, then changing course to bury his face

in the crook of his elbow.

the singer thrashes, convulses,

twists and contorts as horror dawns

with gruesome certainty.

junior nods. smiles.

aims the gun.

“yes,”

he says.

“yes.”

he pulls the trigger.

52.

junior pulls the trigger.

the room ignites.

i am pulled into a vortex, the relentless, unyielding pressure of death.

a meteor shower unfolds, angry chunks of blazing, boiling rock, raining nuclear fire,

rocketing through the atmosphere and crushing down.

singeing us, scorching us, flaying the flesh from our charred, stripped-down bones.

burying us alive.

53.

sounds.

they are inescapable.

they come to me, unbidden.

a gunshot, clapping like a sonic boom.

a muffled cry through the oily cloth of the singer’s gag.

the deep, desperate drowning of the man on the couch as blood seeps down his shirtfront.

leila’s laughter.

from somewhere deep, someplace far, buried within the fault lines of the house,

a scream, a shriek, pierces the air, punctuates the explosion, the bottomless blast, the burst of death, blood

.

it howls,

stirs,

strains

formlessly,

wordlessly,

against the

spark

that junior has

ignited.

it takes a beat,

a breath,

a split-second,

razor’s-edge moment

before i realize:

the sound

the shriek

the scream

the unfathomable,

infinite

terror

is

mine.

54.

<
breathe.
>

i wait.

i waver.

i collect myself again,

curl inward.

glance toward shelly,

toward my
sister
.

her eyes are a vacant mask.

but her lips—

her lips—

are upturned.

and she does not meet my gaze.

i wait.

i waver.

i collect myself again.

curl inward.

fight against the

thick, sour tangle

of seaweed,

sand

of sunken spoils

rising,

crawling,

clawing their way up my throat

drowning me

choking me

off.

55.

i want to go away

again.

want to

and be less than

nothing,

a trace element of

a long-ago landmass.

i want to be empty.

to be absence.

to be a yawning, gaping

vortex.

i want to be the evening

tide.

i want to be carried out

by the

undertow.

56.

the smoky stench of gunpowder,

the blooms of life that spread beneath the man on the couch,

the sound of aftermath,

of half-life, of

terror—

they ring, vibrate,

radiate.

the shrieks, the screams, the splintering cries, they

envelop me.

clutch me.

cloak me

like a hangman’s hood.

leila laughs.

shelly grins.

and junior cocks the trigger on his pistol once again.

i swoon.

57.

shelly gestures to junior,

whispers a secret code,

somehow persuades him to set aside the gun

for now.

she steps beside me, places a firm hand on the narrow curve at the small of my back.

steadies me. turns her grin in my direction, as a loved one would.

she knows, of course.

my sister.

knows
. just what i need.

her eyes are round.

open.

i reel.

i realize:

she glows.

she
shines.

joyful tears trace footpaths

down her cheeks,

a baptism

amidst a bloodbath.

she runs a pink tongue along the fragile skin of her upper lip

,

hungry.

58.

she leans forward, reaches out a steady arm. pokes at the man on the couch

<—the
dying
man; that is what he is, right now,
dying
—>

so that his body shifts.

i buckle.

she pulls her hand back, considers it. takes in the bright patch of blood—rich, rust colored, and thick—now tattooed into the fat, fleshy point of her fingertip. licks her lips again.

i sway.

<
breathe.
>

she grabs at my wrist. i feel the sticky underside of her finger, know that when we pull apart, she will have left a smudgy red imprint in her wake.

<
breathe.
>

“let’s go,” she says, eyebrows aloft. she juts her chin toward junior, toward his dangling gun. raises her knife, gleaming deadly, her meaning starkly clear.

“let’s go.

we still have to do the other one.”

59.

shelly turns to leila, who smiles.

behind her darting, downcast eyes,

leila smiles.

leila knows, has always known,

how best to make a person bleed.

leila is a coil,

a live wire,

a potent cache of

wicked intent.

leila is love

and terror.

whereas shelly is

—suddenly—

chaos.

shelly is

charged

and churning.

she is a black hole,

a bottomless pit.

she is sinister,

she is danger.

she is
so much.

shelly.

is.

all of her fractures—

her fault lines—

they have split.

her damage—

her past-life—

it collapses,

rushes through the

open spaces of her

pores.

leila is quiet cunning.

junior is a dark foot soldier.

but shelly is

damage.

her eyes dance,

her skin thrums,

the corners of her mouth

twitch.

the

man’s blood stains her face,

her forehead,

her cheeks

so that she is alive,

even
more

than before.

so that she blossoms from his pain,

feeds from it,

as she scurries

back and forth

through the shrieking space,

testing knots,

turning chairs and tables over,

frenzied.

clearing a space

for death,

for darkness,

for pain.

for the call of

helter-skelter.

she is

more.

alive.

but.

she is not

my sister.

not

now.

not

anymore.

60.

shelly is impatient.

she wants to fill her hollow spaces in sharp, swift order.

wants to spread Henry’s word. wants to make dangerous music.

she writhes and wriggles, alive with the anticipation.