Read Online In This Light by Melanie Rae Thon - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Melanie Rae Thon
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kills you in the end.
On Brattle Street I saw this: tall man with thick legs, tiny child clutching his pants. Too beautiful, I thought, blue veins, fragile skull, her pulse flickering at the temple where I could touch it if I dared. The man needed a quarter for the meter. He asked me for change, held out three dimes.
A good trade
, I said. He stepped back toward the car, left the girl between us. I crouched to be her size, spoke soft words, nonsense, and she stared. When I moved, she moved with me. The man wasn’t watching. I wanted to shout to him,
Hold on to this hand.
I wanted to tell him,
There’s a boneyard in the woods, a hunter’s pile of refuse, jaw of a beaver, vertebrae of a deer.
I wanted to tell him how easily we disappear.
That night I found Emile sleeping in a doorway. Shrunken little man with a white beard. No blanket, no coat. He opened one eye.
Cover me
, he said.
I held out my hands, empty palms, to show him all I had.
With your body
, he said.
He held up his own hands, fingerless.
I froze once
, he said.
In the tunnel I found the Haitian man. Every time a train came, people tossed coins in his case and left him there. Still he sang, for me alone, left his ragged words flapping in my ribs.
Listen, the lungs float in water.
Listen, the lungs crackle in your hands.
Out of the body, the lungs simply collapse.
For my people
, he said.
His skin was darker than mine, dark as my father’s perhaps. His clothes grew bigger every day: he was singing himself sick. By February he’d be gone. By February I’d add the Haitian manchild to my list of the disappeared.
But that night I threw coins to him.
That night I believed in the miracles of wine and bread, how what we eat becomes our flesh.
It was almost Christmas. I put quarters in the phone to hear the words.
Come home if you want
, Adele said.
Clare made me remember the inside of the trailer. She made me count the beds.
Close the curtains—it’s a box
, she said.
Clare made me see Adele at the table the morning she told me she was going to marry Mick.
It’s my last chance
, my mother said. I wanted the plates to fly out of the cupboard. I wanted to shatter every glass.
I smoked a cigarette instead.
I was thirteen.
It was ten a.m.
I drank a beer.
I felt sorry for Adele, I swear. She was thirty-four, an old woman with red hair. She said,
Look at me
, and I did, at her too-pale freckled skin going slack.
I thought, How many men can pass through one woman? I thought, How many children can one woman have? I tried to count: Clare’s father and Clare, my father and me, two men between, two children never born whose tiny fingers still dug somewhere. She didn’t need to make the words,
I feel them;
didn’t need to touch her body,
here.
I knew everything. It was her hand reaching for the cigarettes. It was the way she had to keep striking the match to get it lit. It was the color of her nails—pink, chipped.
If she’d been anyone but my mother I would have forgiven her for what she said.
I can’t do it again.
She meant she had another one on the way. She meant she couldn’t make it end. So Mick was coming here, to live, bringing his already ten-year-old son, child of his dead first wife; the boy needed a mother, God knows, and I saw exactly how it would be with all of them, Mick and the boy and the baby—I could hear the wailing already, the unborn child weeping through my mother’s flesh.
Clare made me remember all this. Clare made me hang up before my mother said the words
come home
again.
Storm that night, snow blown to two-foot drifts; rain froze them hard.
Forever
, Clare said.
She didn’t know which needle, didn’t know whose blood made her like this. She didn’t know whose dangerous breath blew through her in the end. She told me she had a dream. We were alone in the trailer. Our little hands cast shadows on the wall: rabbit, bird, devil’s head. She said,
Someone’s hand passed over my lungs like that.
I wanted to go
On Brattle Street I saw this: tall man with thick legs, tiny child clutching his pants. Too beautiful, I thought, blue veins, fragile skull, her pulse flickering at the temple where I could touch it if I dared. The man needed a quarter for the meter. He asked me for change, held out three dimes.
A good trade
, I said. He stepped back toward the car, left the girl between us. I crouched to be her size, spoke soft words, nonsense, and she stared. When I moved, she moved with me. The man wasn’t watching. I wanted to shout to him,
Hold on to this hand.
I wanted to tell him,
There’s a boneyard in the woods, a hunter’s pile of refuse, jaw of a beaver, vertebrae of a deer.
I wanted to tell him how easily we disappear.
That night I found Emile sleeping in a doorway. Shrunken little man with a white beard. No blanket, no coat. He opened one eye.
Cover me
, he said.
I held out my hands, empty palms, to show him all I had.
With your body
, he said.
He held up his own hands, fingerless.
I froze once
, he said.
In the tunnel I found the Haitian man. Every time a train came, people tossed coins in his case and left him there. Still he sang, for me alone, left his ragged words flapping in my ribs.
Listen, the lungs float in water.
Listen, the lungs crackle in your hands.
Out of the body, the lungs simply collapse.
For my people
, he said.
His skin was darker than mine, dark as my father’s perhaps. His clothes grew bigger every day: he was singing himself sick. By February he’d be gone. By February I’d add the Haitian manchild to my list of the disappeared.
But that night I threw coins to him.
That night I believed in the miracles of wine and bread, how what we eat becomes our flesh.
It was almost Christmas. I put quarters in the phone to hear the words.
Come home if you want
, Adele said.
Clare made me remember the inside of the trailer. She made me count the beds.
Close the curtains—it’s a box
, she said.
Clare made me see Adele at the table the morning she told me she was going to marry Mick.
It’s my last chance
, my mother said. I wanted the plates to fly out of the cupboard. I wanted to shatter every glass.
I smoked a cigarette instead.
I was thirteen.
It was ten a.m.
I drank a beer.
I felt sorry for Adele, I swear. She was thirty-four, an old woman with red hair. She said,
Look at me
, and I did, at her too-pale freckled skin going slack.
I thought, How many men can pass through one woman? I thought, How many children can one woman have? I tried to count: Clare’s father and Clare, my father and me, two men between, two children never born whose tiny fingers still dug somewhere. She didn’t need to make the words,
I feel them;
didn’t need to touch her body,
here.
I knew everything. It was her hand reaching for the cigarettes. It was the way she had to keep striking the match to get it lit. It was the color of her nails—pink, chipped.
If she’d been anyone but my mother I would have forgiven her for what she said.
I can’t do it again.
She meant she had another one on the way. She meant she couldn’t make it end. So Mick was coming here, to live, bringing his already ten-year-old son, child of his dead first wife; the boy needed a mother, God knows, and I saw exactly how it would be with all of them, Mick and the boy and the baby—I could hear the wailing already, the unborn child weeping through my mother’s flesh.
Clare made me remember all this. Clare made me hang up before my mother said the words
come home
again.
Storm that night, snow blown to two-foot drifts; rain froze them hard.
Forever
, Clare said.
She didn’t know which needle, didn’t know whose blood made her like this. She didn’t know whose dangerous breath blew through her in the end. She told me she had a dream. We were alone in the trailer. Our little hands cast shadows on the wall: rabbit, bird, devil’s head. She said,
Someone’s hand passed over my lungs like that.
I wanted to go
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