The Girl from Charnelle (31 page)

She moved her face closer to the door. Her heart thumped in her chest and neck and temples. She felt paralyzed by their laboring. She thought of Fay when she was in heat, the male dogs panting, their tongues dripping. Laura's stomach dropped, but she pressed her face next to the cracked door. She closed one eye and with the other tried to see into the room. It was dark except for a faint light from the open-shuttered window, which cast a slatted splash of yellow over her father's bare, moving back and made a silhouette of the woman. The sheets and covers clung to the edges of the bed.

When her eyes adjusted, she saw the outline of her father's body pressing down onto the woman. The bed did seem to roll, though not with the sea wildness she had imagined. The springs continued to squeak. Their breathing increased in intensity. She could see the woman's white thighs spread wide, like phosphorescent wings perpendicular to his hips, but the rest of her body seemed trapped beneath his, swallowed in the sagging, lumpy mattress and under his long broad body. The woman's arm was slung back against the pillow, crooked over her face, her mouth pinched at the corners in a grimace as his shoulders rubbed against her cheeks. He moved forcefully over her, and his breathing turned to muffled groans. He rocked and pressed so that her body disappeared into the bed.

Is this why my mother disappeared?
The question caught in her mind like a hook.

The woman shook her head and let out what sounded like a painful moan, and Laura felt sickened by it and unsure if she should open the door and let
herself be seen. She wanted to stop this, wanted her father off this woman, wanted him to quit pressing and breathing in this way. But she could not bring herself to do it. She closed her eyes, but the sounds overwhelmed her. She heard the mocking drone of the cicadas outside.

When she opened her eyes again, her heart leapt into her throat because the woman's arm was no longer over her face, and she stared directly at Laura. Could the woman see her there? Surely not. But there the woman was; she just kept staring, her eyes distinct and luminous in the dark. Laura stared back and could see that the face was not womanish but girlish, with chubby white cheeks and a soft, puckerish mouth. She felt a panic billow inside her as her father made more noise, and the bed rocked against the wall, and the woman-girl let out a small groan, muffled by her father's shoulder.

She jerked back. She felt dizzy in the hall and closed her eyes, but all the noise—those crazy cicadas, her father's breathing, the bedsprings—thundered in her head. She felt as if she were being held upside down, and when she opened her eyes, she was surprised to find herself still sitting upright in the hall. She crawled toward her room, shut the door, and slipped into her bed. She put her face into the pillow and covered her ears so she couldn't hear anything except the rush of blood in her temples, which after a few minutes diminished to a steady throb.

She tried to sleep but couldn't. And then she heard a rustling in the hallway. The bathroom door opened and closed. Water ran. The toilet flushed. A minute later, the door opened again, and then there were footsteps outside her own door. It creaked. She kept her eyes closed, fearing what she would see when she opened them. She knew that someone was in the room—her father, certainly, though the presence seemed lighter—and she could also smell something sweet, like warmed buttermilk, so she didn't move. She held her breath and felt a slight pressure by the side of her bed, a rustle, and then the door closed. Feet padded to her father's room, and then his door shut.

She opened her eyes. Beside her on the small bed was the knife. It seemed puny and foolish there. She swallowed hard, her throat scratchy, raw. She reached out and grabbed the knife handle. It was moist. She opened it and pressed her finger against the dull blade. It did not cut her. She closed it again and slipped it between the mattress and box spring, and lay there in the dark listening. After a while, there was rustling in the other room, the click of her father's door, the sound of feet over the hardwood floor, her father whispering. Finally the front door creaked open and shut. Her father's truck rumbled to life.

She tiptoed to the window and watched the truck back out, crunching the gravel of the driveway, the beams from the headlights making small yellow circles in the dark street. She felt the hot summer air through the bug screen, could smell the dust from the road, the ragweed twitching her nostrils, could hear the cicadas still at it.

The night was barely lit now by the clouded moon. She waited until she no longer heard the truck. She didn't return to her own bed but checked on Gene and Rich in the beds beside hers. Even though Manny was gone for the night, Gene was huddled close to his edge, a habit of deferring to his older brother even in his absence. Though only six years older than Gene, she felt sorry for him and angry, too, that already life had taught him to expect so little. She reached out and stroked his head, but he didn't stir. Even his breathing was shallow, as if he were afraid to take too much air from the world. Rich, by contrast, was stretched out in the crib, a space hog, a thrasher, someone who demanded his due without even knowing it. It was just part of his nature.

And what was
her
nature? What did she look like when she slept? What would she think if she could see herself clearly? The fact that she could not know, that she remained partially blind to herself, bewildered her. Eyes always looking out and then in, but not
at.
She reached over the crib and straightened Rich, tugged the sheet from beneath him, covered him up. There was no real reason with the heat, but it was a habit of hers, this need to be covered and to cover others at night.

She glided out of the bedroom, into the hallway, and then into her father's room, where the windows were open. She pulled the lamp cord, and a harsh white glow splashed the room, forced her to squint. The covers and sheets lay tangled around the mattress. There was a pocket in the middle of the bed where the woman-girl had been. Laura placed one hand out and down, ran it just a few inches over the top of the sheets, feeling the heat still present from their bodies. She was hesitant at first to touch, to disturb. The heat radiated the entire length of the mattress, from the foot to the pillows, and she floated both hands above the bed and was surprised by the invisible warmth. She reached down to the center, where their hips met, and she touched the sheet. It was hot and slightly damp, but she pressed one palm down flat, her fingers spread, and ran her hand back and forth and then around in a circle. She reached out with her other hand and could imagine the two of them in here, not even a half hour ago, and the quiet stillness of the room was like the buzzing sound you hear in the silence after thunder.

She smelled them here, too, and took a calm pleasure in isolating the
scents. Her father's hair oil and Old Spice, the woman-girl's too-sweet perfume, like that buttermilk smell drifting into her room. There was a faint whiff of the rum her father liked and spearmint gum and something else, something sharp, pungent, the smell of sex, she figured, and lingering above and below and swirling through was the dank, tangy odor of sweat.

She searched for her mother's own particular smell, the talcum powder like a fine dust on her body, but it wasn't here anymore, not even a trace, and she felt saddened by that loss, a kind of betrayal, but Laura wasn't sure now who was being betrayed.

She opened her eyes, tugged on the lamp cord, and slid her feet purposefully over the hardwood floor so she could hear the callused
shwoosh
of her feet, out of her father's room, through the narrow hallway that seemed like a tunnel to her—she'd never noticed this before—and then to the living room. It, too, held the smell of her father and the woman-girl in it, and she followed slowly, could trace it to the door, which she opened. She stepped outside to the porch, and even there she could smell them, as if they'd left a vaporous trail. Then the odors dissipated and were gone.

She sat down on the porch, feeling very calm, very
awake.
She let the breeze brush through her nightgown. It was still hot. She then stood up on her tiptoes, pulled her gown over her head, and, reaching high, stretched out her body, which seemed dangerous, thrilling. She hadn't been outside with so little on since she was a child; she remembered the last time, running around naked in the summery yard, chasing Fay and some of her puppies before they gave them away.

It was dark out, not quite sunrise yet, and no cars, not even the faraway sound of trucks from the highway. She enjoyed this feeling, like a shedding, like an opening up. She thought of the way the rattlers and bull snakes sometimes left long, papery casings in the night for her brothers and her to find the next day. She imagined the snakes slipping away, the new skin wet and vulnerable and free.

She walked over the lawn, skirting the place where the old oak had been, and on out to the middle of the road, where she stood and stared down one end of the street and then the other. Both ends extended farther than she could see at night with only this thin moon and cloud-tangled stars. The ends of the road turned away, bent out of sight, away, away, away into darkness. She stood there and looked at the scattered houses on either side of the street and then at her own small house, where, inside, her brothers and father and she slept, ate, argued, sulked, laughed, dreamed. Where that woman-girl stared at her from her mother's bed. Where her mother was before she disappeared.

No, not
disappeared.
Before she
left.

It seemed so small, this place, too small to contain all their lives. She thought about the other houses with their own lives cramped too tightly inside. And the road extended into darkness, the black night high above, the cicadas buzzing.

She felt no fear, not even the cold threat of being caught.

Who cares?

She closed her eyes and, with her arms out, started to spin slowly, then faster and faster until she staggered and fell on the dusty road. It didn't hurt, and she just stayed there for a while, with the acrid taste of dust in her mouth. Then she stretched out on her back and felt the still-warm gravel beneath, sticking like shards into her body, but even that didn't hurt. She stared up at the black sky, traced the constellations with her fingers, and just as the first light of sunrise began its promise, she heard—or rather felt—a sound emanating from her body, a low, vibrating whistle that seemed in tune with the cicadas and the wind and the breathing of the night and the warm road.

She closed her eyes and listened, stayed calmly there as she heard and could almost taste a deep, pressured thrumming inside her head. A tingly heat spread through her neck and chest and stomach and arms and down through her thighs and calves and toes. It seemed as if a shade were slowly being lifted over her closed eyelids.

She opened her eyes and could see headlights, like two pale animals loping around the curve. It was her father's truck, she knew, and she wondered, without worry or fear, what he would do if she stayed right where she was.

Will he see me in time? Will he run over me?

It made her smile to think about it. She imagined that anxious twitch he got around the corners of his mouth when he was confused or worried or sad. She didn't feel afraid, just curious, as the truck zigzagged slowly down the street, still pretty far in the distance. She wished he was gone, would disappear himself for a while, maybe forever, let her stay here like this and let the sun rise fully on her, transforming the world and the house and everything she could smell and hear and see and feel and taste into light and blistering heat. She didn't want to share this feeling. She didn't want to have to explain herself to him or to anyone, just as now she didn't want explanations
from
him.

As the beams closed in, she rose quickly and felt again that she was gliding as she grabbed her gown. She slipped through the door, into bed, and pulled the sheet up and over her face so that it floated for a couple of seconds before
shrouding her. The dust from her body created a layer of fine grit on the bottom sheet.

She closed her eyes and tried to recall the thrumming, coax it back. She breathed slowly, listening to her breath, her heartbeat. She heard her father's truck crunch in the driveway, the rattle of the engine as it died, the front door creak open, then click shut.

Almost there, yes, close, just out of reach.

Her father opened her door. He paused before whispering, “Laura, honey, was that you?”

She didn't answer. She was far away now, far away. She could almost feel it again, the thrum and radiating heat, and she wanted to let it spread through her body. Was this what her mother had felt as she left, this buzz and heat, this pulsing in her own body? Was this what had pulled her, like a compulsion, from the house and to the bus station and away from them forever? Did she find a small, private part of herself where there wasn't room for anyone else? Laura could almost understand that. It seemed sad and mysterious—and even beautiful.

“Are you awake?” her father whispered worriedly, nudging her shoulder. “Why aren't you all at Mrs. Ambling's?”

She could smell the cigarettes and sweet rum on his breath. Her eyes blurred hotly. Still she didn't answer. That feeling, that thrumming, was slipping from her now, drifting too quickly away. She could almost see it, like a brightly colored balloon—rising, rising, and then riding on the wind, growing smaller and smaller until it was barely visible, merely a colored dot in the distance, insignificant.