Something for The Ground to gnaw on, I said to myself, watching it disappear into the hungry soil.
The next time we lay down together, Samson was not quite himself. His vest hung wide around his shoulders in a way that made me think he’d slept inside it. The sprawling hair of his armpits was snaky and wet, and his insides were all scented with liquor. I could taste it in the damp of his neck.
He was heavy on top of me, begging me turn over and put my belly in the dirt. He said he wanted to lick my back and I let him, my eyes on the thick bristle-brush.
When he started to sober I could tell his thoughts were full of Olivia, of her thin wrists and her pursing mouth. I said
–You mustn’t sicken yourself with worry for your sister.
He was squeezing the flesh on my hips. It hurt and I squirmed, his coarse palms chafing me.
–It’ll be an easy birth.
–I know you think the child is healthy.
Feeling the breath of his words where my buttocks met my spine, and then he was leaning back on his heels.
–It is. Healthy.
The bracken dug into my skin. A small spider distinguished itself from the black of the soil.
–You’re wrong sometimes.
–When?
He didn’t answer. The spider fell to one side, tripped up by a leaf.
–When have I ever been wrong?
I imagined the dim, idle speak of Cures; some insistence that No, the joint was still not quite right.
I twisted further to look at him and saw that his eyes, which had been all afternoon edged with a sore-looking red, had filled with a weak film of water.
–Samson, when have I been wrong?
He swallowed though his mouth was dry.
–With me.
He still held me tight, around my hips, and I thought, vaguely, of later hiding the bruises from Father.
–There’s something wrong with me.
–I listened to you closely, Samson. There’s nothing wrong.
–I wish that you’d look.
–I can’t, not without a reason.
My own pleasure not being reason enough.
–But I’ve asked you.
Which he had, thinking it simply a matter of permission.
His jaw tightened, and the sheen between his lids fractured and spilled.
–Samson, you are well.
Still locked between his legs I had rolled onto my back and reached up, laying a hand flat on his stomach.
–There’s no reason for me to lie.
He thought something slippery had gone wrong with him, I could tell that much. Something he knew by feeling but wasn’t sure how to say, something he felt certain would show up in the organs and muscles beneath his flesh.
He nodded and took a long breath. Lying down over me again and putting his face in my neck, sleeping.
It’s The Ground that brought Father here. There are only so many patches of earth like it. This is one of the reasons we couldn’t leave; we couldn’t work anywhere else. When I was young and the summer days felt long we’d sit outside and I’d ask him questions he’d already answered:
–Why’d The Burial Patch take so long to tame?
–Because The Ground here is so powerful.
–The Ground is where I came from?
–That’s right.
–But not you.
–No.
–And not your father?
–No. Though he is buried here.
And he’d nod to the far left corner, where every other summer a red mould took hold of the trees.
–But you weren’t worried making me? Though it’s dangerous?
–It was risky, but no. I wasn’t worried.
He’d tell me how he mixed my parts together and planted me inside of a sack. He tied it shut with a rope and then lowered me down during a thunderstorm, and kept the end of the rope tied to the knob on the patio door.
–Just in case.
–So you were worried?
–Not especially. I had a good feeling. And look! You turned out fine.
Though every now and then I caught him looking at me, and suspected I hadn’t gone quite to plan.
Carol-Ann Jean
It was for a bruise that kept coming up. It kept coming and fading, coming and fading, and then eventually it just sat on my thigh like a piece of bad fruit. Every time I got up in the night and bumped into my dresser, or every time I had to stand and lean across the kitchen table, it hurt me like a pinch.
Miss Ada said some rot had gotten into me, and that she’d take it out.
It was my father who came with me and talked to her father in the kitchen.
My father took the day off from the fields even though I told him I could drive there on my own, but he said no. No no no.
Said Miss Ada was a gentle enough sort but her father wasn’t quite right. Said her father had a lot of animal in him. Said one time my grandfather was out in the woods and saw Ada’s father naked and on all fours, hunting in the brush.
If he was quick to bicker it was because he’d been with Olivia, and she’d said or done something to rub him the wrong way.
–Is she much older than you?
He shook his head. Water ran out his hair and landed on his shoulders.
–How many years?
–Three.
I splashed the river onto my arms. Thought about ducking my head.
–What?
–It’s some hold she has on you, is all.
Looking into the sun and scrunching his face against it.
–Don’t think I don’t know it.
He dove under. Came up again.
–I let too much slide when we were young.
The water caught the light more where he was standing.
–I kept thinking things would be different. Once I got to be a man.
After Olivia our next Cure was Lilia Gedeo, who arrived with her mother in tow. We sat in the kitchen and Mrs Gedeo described the spasms that took hold of her daughter, that made her flip and coo like she’d a wind trapped inside.
Miss Gedeo was a frequent Cure, and though a grown woman she always came with her mother.
Once Mrs Gedeo was gone we took Lilia to the sitting room and opened her in the window seat where I’d seen to Olivia. We quickly found a growth. It had latched onto her ribcage where its roots had unspooled, thin as thread: partly mucus, partly bone. Saliva cradled in her mouth, as will sometimes happen with a Cure. I emptied it with a small tin cup, pressing its side down on her tongue and gently scooping. Careful not to scrape at the skin of her throat.
Now Father wrapped his hand around the growth and gripped it, sending small cracks throughout the ribs. Those few thin bones would take the longest to heal and so I knew he was still feeling some anger toward me, that he hadn’t asked me to reach inside her and save them the trouble of breaking.
He’d been humming for some time.
I emptied the tin cup into the bowl where he hoped to aim the growth, my ears twitching a little, anticipating the splash, and Miss Gedeo lay so still the bubbles in her spit slid around unbroken.
Father liked Miss Gedeo, I knew, because she was quiet and relenting, but it bothered me – how readily her body gave way. No wonder she was so often poorly, giving up of herself so easily. She’d worn herself down. Worn herself thin as an old sheet.
A splash: the bowl shook on the table and Father let out his breath. Over the rim I could see a fragment of the growth. It looked how I imagined pieces of coral looked when they came out of the sea.