Sheila.
— nail a Scripture above each door, then—
Sheila.
— change the direction of your bed.
These are babies, Sheila, not haints. Still, she took her sister’s advice. The babies drank the water — and on a few occasions peed in it — and crayon-scribbled on the Scriptures. One night, she woke to the spinning of her bed, a whirlpool’s suck. Another night, a spitball of Scripture woke her to dawn’s first light. She phoned Sheila.
Well, talk to Father Tower.
Sistah Jones, Reverend Tower said, have you spoken to John bout this?
No, sir. Well, not exactly, you know how he is wit religion.
Reverend Tower raised the arches of his thin eyebrows. He ripped four pages from his Bible — loud leather-ripping — choosing them seemingly at random (or maybe the finger saw what his mind directed). Funny because she had never seen him read the Good Book from the pulpit.
Sister Jones, he said, set these Scriptures before every door of your house.
Gracie took the pages. Yes, sir.
Now, I should warn you, the power of the Word can only be compelled with the necessary spiritual energy. That’s why I asked you about John.
Yes, sir.
Once home, she made floor mats of the pages, to wipe clean the souls of all who entered. The babies defecated on them.
Gracie went to see Reverend Tower.
Sister Jones, we’ll mission. I’ll bring the congregation by to pray.
No, Father. Her heart ran away from the words. Terrified, she saw what she could not speak. Face flapping in delight, the baby lunges, striking from near the ground with the sharpened bone of his hand. The reverend falls. I got my own prayers.
DAY IN AND DAY OUT, all around her come and go, turn and turn, trot along beside her, a snowflake variety of babies, old and young, small and large, fat and skinny, homely or cute. One rainy day, a baby came crashing through the front door, whirling its yellow-and-black spiral legs, bringing in wild rain like a whale spouting sea. That was as far as it got, dissolving into the wet wood fragments.
Shit! John was pissed about having to buy a new window. Lucifer, Dave, Dallas, and Spokesman spent spare moments helping him improve the house. Added more tile, and wood floors, cabinets, storm windows, stairways, a garage, a new fireplace, doors, rooms, stoops, and had even raised the roof for a third floor. All this while John struggled to meet the monthly mortgage. Fuck! You know how much this gon cost me?
It wasn’t my fault. A baby. She got the dustpan, he got a broom. He helped her sweep up the mess, the broom straws, a yellow blur.
EXCEPT FOR THE ODOR OF HER BEDCLOTHES, the house was absent of human presence. Sunlight swept across the room, wiping out the last of the morning shadows. Clean bare silence. John. Her voice carried in the small music of the morning. John. She liked this window, for it afforded her a full view of the city. Thousands of pigeons wavered in the fish belly-colored sky above a wide plain of rooftops. Stooped gargoyles guarded the streets. Pointed houses like tents in the distance. Yes, this place up North is not in God’s world. Checkerboard city, John calls it. You make yo move, then hop along to the next trick. Tar Lake. The waveless lake chose a direction and flowed like a great river from one end of the horizon to the other. She could watch wool-capped sailors grab her unborn, spear them, then anchor-toss them into the water, toss them to a time remote and dim. She could study each event moving across the surface of her life. God’s eye sees through all souls, Reverend Tower used to say. Can God see the ghosts of her unborn infants inside her, circling and circling, arms reaching out? See the infants outside, hidden there in the trees? John’s departure ten years ago — like his departure this very morning, moments earlier — held like a shipwreck in her memory where no thoughts could flow past. And this memory that was almost memory that was almost thought that was almost reality that was almost memory spilled over her days.
If she could pull language into her mind then the memories would follow. If she said everything twice, once to get it out, then the second time for remembering, she could draw it all back to her bosom. Reel in a half-century of words. But time refused to move, this stranded horizon ship, so far off that no details reached the eye. She tried to picture its features, but her imagination did not extend to the unseen.
She knew what she must do. Pin down its shape. Rediscover time with the pulsing of its own blood. Like the raw fact of the rocking chair that fit the curve of her body. It might be the horizon itself — each rock a shift, a change, chair, horizon, chair, horizon — or possibly the water. Wood, water, wood, water, rock, water. She liked the chair, its sound, its unpillowed hardness.
How could she tell him that the past she had put away, that the other thing remained, though no longer with the staying fragrance of flowers? That now she knew, Jesus, her womb’s second survivor, had ripped open the layers of petrified sorrow, that he — invisible to their knowledge of him, blind to sight and mind — had kept his fists tight on the reins of her umbilical cord, steering her destiny, that this son had fashioned them this new house, this bludgeon which had shattered their common life. But the old line could reach the new life. Their nights together formed memories underneath their pillows, Tooth Fairy’s gifts. Their breathing remained unbroken, dawn to dawn, sunset giving away to stars, and stars to morning clouds, wheeling across day and night. All the past pounding had forged, beneath the sheets, a place remote and calm as stars laid across night sky.
She locked her eyes on him and looked inside. She pulled the inside of him out, wiped it clean, and set it before the sun, where it would receive warmth and light. His sins were now the forgotten shadows of his past, as the moment of salvation is a blinding light.
Still sun grew on green water. In the vast spread of this house, she sometimes felt she cast breaths inside a live belly. A region without light. Walls of sensitive skin. The hum of ocean. The acrid fragrance of fish. And she spent her life waiting for the whale to cut the surface of green water — a cracking of trees in the front yard — and spit her writhing from its mouth onto the shore — a thud on the front lawn.
The swinging trees rustled in a shot of unexpected wind. The sun wet her face. Her breath went short. The ache in her throat ran deep into her chest. The air’s pure scent spoke of fresh rain to come. All the old will slip away like clothes shed after her deliveries. Life having been breathed into the lungs of the dead must be taken away again before death can be returned to. As the lightning cometh out of the east. Long-winged angels lift from the brow of God. She could see them from her perpetual rocking chair. Feel the wind to come.
She rose from the rocking chair and pushed her keys deep in her purse.
9
THE RECTANGULAR WINDOW afforded Hatch little to look at, the walls of the tunnel like two long black brushstrokes. The train took a curve with industrious roar. The ceiling bulbs buzzed and flickered, and the cab went from light to dark, dark to light.
The concert was a month old yet so ancient that it made him cough. The almost ancient feelings reinstated themselves. Sensation lingered on his fingers. He had never told anyone what had happened that night. And I never will. Concealed like his dogtags. He and Uncle John would share this secret to the grave.
The train fast-flowed, rushing water from a hose. The city blurred past. Hatch drifted. Think of Uncle John’s spectacles, two glass river rafts. Floating down some highway. Floating over your face. And the eyes themselves, round color. Brown balls of tobacco. Or two clean circles of fire when liquor had burned away the color. Think. Think.