Read Online Degrees of Nakedness by Lisa Moore - Free Book Online Page B

baring the lacerations of their hearts, moaning at the loss of their breadwinners, their brothers, their fathers. Carmen has caused more than half of the spiritual carnage downtown.
    But no more. The cement trucks are charged. I can feel their power vibrating like jackhammers through my body. I walked home from the mall today, too exhilarated for public transport. I entered every street on the way home just in time to see a cement truck pulling around the distant corner. There must be a convoy a hundred strong. In the kitchen Eddie can’t understand why I’m in such a good mood. I chuck him under the chin. “Cha-cha-cha,” I say to him, enigmatically. Soon he will be asleep in front of the football game.
    I’m standing on Barter’s Hill. Carmen is just leaving the bar. We see her pass, beneath one streetlight after another. Then,there she is, outlined in the flashing lights of Lar’s Fruit Store. Carmen is silhouetted against a pyramid of delicately balanced bananas reaching from floor to ceiling. I have her where I want her. I let the red flag rip through the air and savour the cutting whisper it makes. This is for you, Eddie. This is for our marriage. The headlights of one hundred cement trucks come on at once. Carmen is stunned in the brilliant glare, her body pressed against the glass window. There is the deafening noise of one hundred cement truck engines. Even if she could reach for her castanets, nobody would hear anything over that noise. They are charging, charging cement trucks.
    Then another noise, unearthly, like lobsters dropped in boiling water, amplified a thousandfold. I cover my ears with my fists. The sound of one hundred cement trucks screeching their brakes. It is the sound of those same cement trucks stopping inches away from Carmen’s long legs. After a moment, the trucks roll over. They lie on their backs at Carmen’s feet, like playful puppies.

Surge
    G iselle is supposed to go with her mother for a picnic. She’s left messages on her mother’s answering machine, but her mother is working toward a deadline, and not answering the phone. We’re in the back seat of the car, at the Quik Stop parking lot. There’s no breeze. The picnic was supposed to be at two. It’s almost four. Giselle’s arm is damp against mine, the moistness of a pound cake. She is wearing a pair of taupe shorts belonging to me, stained with blood or raspberries, and a shirt of mine. The armhole of the shirt hangs too low and I can see her breast, white newness, barely a breast at all. She notices my glance and tucks the material under her arm. She has a fitting tonight for shoes and a dress for her uncle’s wedding.
    Giselle laughs for no reason, tilting her head back.
    I say, If that candy touches my shirt.
    Her eyes are brilliant, the darkest blue with splinters of a lighter blue. I find it dizzying to try and understand her bylooking into her eyes. Neither of her parents wears glasses and the colour of Giselle’s eyes seems to suggest she’s inherited sharp vision. I saw Giselle and her mom at a distance last weekend, at the park. Giselle held her body with a particular kind of grace, exactly like her mother’s. Anyone could tell they were mother and daughter without even seeing their faces.
    She’s with us for two weeks, then she’s with her mother. Everything changes in two weeks. Her clothes. A different shirt. Sometimes I realize she’s taller. Her face changes so fast. I’m trying to keep up with her. She glances out the window. Something has caught her attention.
    My mother is phoning right now, she says. I can hear it.
    For a second I think Giselle is hearing a ring from one of the houses down the street. Then I understand she means the phone is echoing through our empty house several blocks away.
    I can tell, she says. Whenever she’s calling, I can tell.
    Her moist face, new freckles, so close to me on the hot upholstery of the back seat. She and her mother love each other with something as hard