The Lava in My Bones (20 page)

I tried everything to remove that dress, including using my father's chisels, handsaws, and wire cutters. Nothing worked. But when I arrived home from school one afternoon, I noticed a letter poking out like a tongue from the top of our mailbox. The envelope was an unsullied white as if every postal clerk that touched it had been wearing gloves. I slid the letter from the box's metal jaws. The address read: Sue Masonty, 27 Park Rd., Cartwright, Labrador. Our curtains were closed and the house door locked. Had Mother really gone out and missed this opportunity to snoop? Evidently. The envelope wasn't opened. Inside was a fax delivered to the Cartwright post-office. I saw “Sam” beside “Sender” and nearly fainted.

Stunned, I crept up to my room, lay down, crumpled the letter and stuffed it into my bosom. So I wasn't imagining things. I would see you again, brother. And you would help me. I would follow you out of Cartwright.

Yet the planned escape seemed too easy. Could this be a trick? By whom? No. I refused to believe it was false because there were no other options.

But then I had a horrific thought: I'll still be wearing this dress. I couldn't rip or burn it. Would I have to wear it forever? Time was of the essence. You would arrive in less than a month. I pulled a chisel out from under my bed, sat up straight, and started hacking at my dress.

Mother arrived in the early evening. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair a wind-blown mess. She placed a glass cylinder full of bright, yellow liquid on the mantel.

“What's that?” I asked, alarmed.

She only grinned.

At midnight I swore I could hear a distant pounding and a wheezing in the wind. That was you, Sam. You were heading toward Labrador, leaping over foam-spattered streams, scrabbling up rock-face, your every exhalation an explosion taking you one second closer to that splendid moment when we at last would meet. Run, brother, run, brother, run …

I began counting the days. I took daily walks by the spot where we'd meet. I studied the anchored ships and wondered what ours would look like. I tried to imagine our new life together, but only saw a blank space before me.

I spent all my free time wandering through Cartwright. I climbed up and down the roads that zigzagged violently right and left, curled voluptuously around wooded knolls, or elbowed toward the sea. I examined the rows of slat-wood houses, the lopsided fences, the sewer water that trickled through pebble-pocked ditches. I lingered by the port, ambled along the creaking wooden boards whose undersides were fringed with strands of seaweed undulating like orange beards. I would leave Cartwright. God, I would actually leave it. I always knew I'd leave at some point but had no idea it'd be so soon.

I watched the boats bobbing like corks on the sea, saw men haul nets of flapping fish onto the dockside, lingered by the women lined up before the foundry pay-office, bought another pack of bubblegum in Variety Plus. With each minute passing, I sensed the town was separating itself from me. A cage door was gradually opening.

I squinted up at the cracks in the General Store sign: “Open Till You Need Us.” I breathed onto the moss-covered tombs beside Mother's church. I knew each pothole in every road, each outgrowth of crabgrass in every ditch, which houses had five windows and which had two, which hilltops had grass and which were bald. I knew the best streams to catch frogs in, the seaside
boulders offering the greatest views, the ponds with the least flies, and the exact spot where the sun's rays strike the cliff side at dawn. I knew everything in this town as well as I'd known my body before its recent transformations. Yet I recognized that the town's sounds, smells, and sights would soon be replaced by other ones; I just didn't know where they would be or what form they'd take. I removed my shoes when I got to the beach and pressed my toenails into the sand. In the distance, whale backs rose like swelling hills in the sea that gasped out their frail sprays of silver water and disappeared.

Soon I'd be gone.

But how to get out of this dress?

That night in my bedroom, I was about to aim a blowtorch at my waistband when Mother knocked at the door. I slid my tools under the bed. She spoke excitedly. “Jimmy is here. I think he wants to invite you to the prom.” Normally she'd never want me to go out with a boy. I went downstairs. Jimmy stood on our porch, holding a handful of freshly picked dandelions.

Without lifting his head, he mumbled, “Will you goes with me to the formal dance?”

Who'd put him up to this? When I was in the hospital, a new story about him competed with Estelle's. In this version, Jimmy and I had made love beneath the bushes, and I became so enamoured that my honey flowed, but Jimmy, an independent man of the world, shunned me. When he later heard the disaster caused by his departure, he returned like a hero to expose me as an insect-witch and save the town from the bees.

Was Jimmy asking me out so he could become a superhero?
Jimmy saves the town and marries the reformed princess? Would dating me kill the myth about his penis vanishing into his body?

Shafts of hair stuck out like windmill blades on top of Jimmy's head. I remembered that he was a trapper and had the best metal-cutting equipment in town.

“Jimmy,” I said in a low voice, “are you able to get ahold of your father's tools?”

“Sure. I uses them all the time.”

I felt a flash of anger. Why did I have to always be dependant on other people for help? “I'll go to the prom with you on one condition.” I whispered in his ear. “Get me out of this dress.”

Jimmy grinned lustily. “Sure.” He repeated what he'd said before. “We can go back behind the bushes.”

“Fine. As you please.”

The next day Jimmy took me to his father's shed and showed me the rows of chainsaws, jackhammers, and vise-shaped wire-cutters. I was fondling a jigsaw when the door opened. Jimmy's father loomed in the half-light. He examined me from head to toe, touched my arm with his hand, and rubbed his fingers together. He grunted his approval, snatched his rifle from the wall, stepped out, and abruptly closed the door.

Jimmy picked up a stone chisel. “This here is the safest one. It takes longer but you won't get hurt. I'll tries it now.”

“No, not today. On prom night.” Sam would be at the beach then.

His eyes glistened. “Right,” he replied. “We can do it in the bushes.”

“Jimmy,” I said carefully, “you know I'll start sweating like last
time. You remember what happened?”

“Yeah, I loved it.”

“You loved going to the hospital?”

He smirked, embarrassed. “I just ate too much at once. Next time I'll goes slow 'n' sweet. When you was in my mouth,” he said, his eyes glowing, “it felt wonderful.”

He fingered the blunt edge of a saw, strummed it once like a guitar string. I saw my reflection distorted in the bent steel.

Sam, I knew that at that instant you were racing through canyons, leaping over fallen trees, charging beneath waterfalls. Run, brother, run …

The night before the prom, I could hardly sleep. My eyes were spring-loaded open and my body flipped as if on a raft at sea.

So much could go wrong. Jimmy might forget the tools or bring the wrong ones. Was the dress that easy to cut through? What if we were discovered while trying to remove it? Would Sam really arrive on time? And what on earth was happening to Mother? The day of my planned departure, she huddled silently on the sofa. She'd stopped ordering me around, and my door was no longer locked. At dinner she studied Father as if from a great distance and her eyes misted over. I worried that she was becoming sick and I wouldn't be there to look after her. She repeatedly went into the living room to touch her yellow liquid-filled cylinder. Many times she crossed herself before it.

I tried not to be alone with Mother because I feared she'd
notice I was distraught and try to wriggle my secret out of me. I ignored Father too—couldn't look him in the eye or a lump would form in my throat, I'd start crying, and all would be lost. I silently promised that once outside Labrador, I'd send a postcard so they'd know I was safe.

I'd just brushed my teeth when Mother entered the bathroom and motioned for me to sit by the mirror. “I'd like to do your hair.”

“You don't need to.”

“I want to.”

I felt the bristles of Mother's brush against my scalp.

“So nice to arrange your hair now that the sweat has gone.” She put a hand on each of my shoulders and looked in the mirror. “You were always a pretty girl, Sue, though I know you never thought so. Your face is symmetrical. And look here”—she ran one finger along my cheek—“such a lovely shape. Like the side of a heart. When I was your age and went on my first date with your father, I looked as pretty as you.” Why was she telling me this? “I wore a low-cut Flibberty dress that accentuated the hourglass figure I had then.” Mother let out an uncharacteristically girlish laugh that sounded like pennies falling on pavement. So rarely did she laugh that I felt concerned for her. She recommenced brushing my hair and then swirled it wave-like around my ears. “I know that you've become … distrustful of me over the years because, well, I won't blame anyone.” She was going to mention you, Sam. “I just want you to know that”—her voice softened—“you are my daughter. You have always been my daughter. God gave you to me, and I love you, not just because you are His but
because you are mine.” Swish-swish sang the brush. “I know you find me ridiculous, and I guess I am, but if I'm ridiculous, it's because love is ridiculous and that's what I feel.” She sighed and her eyes became moist.

I kept my head down like you told me to, Sam. I wouldn't let her invade me. I tried to think of you and of the swelling ocean waves we'll vanish into. Run, brother, run!

A harsh hiss and a rush of air. I opened my eyes and saw Mother hold a can of hairspray by my head; a million tiny transparent globules gleamed like dewdrops on the waves and crevice-lips of my coif.

Mother waved and her eyes gleamed like steel as I tottered along our street for the last time ever. I tried not to cry. Raising my head, I noticed the big dipper, the small dipper, Orion. I wondered how I'd feel the next time I saw them.

Jimmy stood smoking outside the school. He was wearing his hunting jacket, a white shirt, and a leather necktie tied too short. He glanced at me and threw his cigarette to the ground.

Immediately I asked, “Do you have the tools?”

“They's in the truck.”

“Let's do it right away. We'll go to the bushes now.”

He clicked his jaw and asked, “Why you hurrying?” He motioned toward the gym. Jimmy wanted to take me inside and show me off first.

“All right,” I sighed. This was part of the deal. “But let's not take too long.”