Celia's Song (14 page)

“Did you make it up?”

“I must have.”

“Have you done this before? Made stuff up?”

Jacob squirms.

“It's okay, Jacob, it's just us here. You've made stuff up before?”

“Yes.”

“You want to tell us about it?”

“I was small.” He wants his smallness to excuse him, but he knows it doesn't. It won't in the minds of these men, either. He bulldozes his way forward. “I made stuff up about the smaller kids, and then I did them. Tied them up, poked at them with
sticks — but not like the snake, not in places like he did, in those private places. Just in their bellies. When they cried, I laughed.”

Jacob throws up, shoulders heaving. No food comes up, just the sound of his heaving. Jim put his hand on Jacob's shoulder.

CELIA JERKS UP FROM
the painting she is showing Momma. She cocks her head to one side and half closes one eye. She's caught sight of Jacob for a split second, but now she is back in the room with Momma.

“What's the matter?” Momma asks.

“Nothing,” Celia answers. Now she sees Jacob heaving but chooses not to tell her mother. “You see,” she explains, “This one is about the river, how she wanders to the sea, bent on travelling in the same direction but unable to do so.” The river's rapids roil pale blue and mud grey. The banks are inundated with black lines, shifting its course. Momma sighs.

“
THROW IT OUT. DON'T
swallow, breathe out. Out.”

Jim bends Jacob's head in the direction of the ground so it will
be difficult for him to re-swallow his shame. The sun wraps itself around Jacob. Jim points out the traces of Jacob's illness on his shirt. Jacob takes his shirt off and swishes it in the river, feeling the water as he has never felt it before. It is crisp, clean, and cold; it shines a pastel blue at him. He returns to sit down and Ned finishes the moment off.

“Men sometimes have thoughts they aren't supposed to have. We are supposed to take them to our fathers, who will tell us where they come from and how to get rid of them.”

“You don't have a father, so you kept this secret, and then you acted on it,” Jim says. “Now you are afraid you might turn into the old snake. You could, if you don't go see your old grandpa here every time you have them thoughts. You got that?”

Jacob feels a lump in his throat. He remembers fantasizing about his father as a small boy in his dark room at night. He would lie in bed pretending his dad had played ball with him or taken him fishing. He was swinging outside on a swing he had made himself when he decided not to make up stuff about his dad anymore. “No use thinking about it,” he said as he swung back and forth. That summer he was nine and his meanness had come forward. He feels ashamed now. He looks at his uncle, amazed at the connection Jim has made for him between his meanness and his not having a father.

“What's the difference between having them thoughts and the snake doing them?”

“Plenty and hardly anything at all,” Ned answers. “Men don't act on their thoughts when they take that kind of a turn.” He tries to keep it simple, but he knows it isn't that simple. Men don't have thoughts like that after they become men. Boys don't act on their thoughts when they take that kind of a turn if they are raised right. Very few boys he knows had such thoughts. Jacob had acted on his thoughts. Now Ned wants to be sick. He shares an apprehensive look with his son.

Jim takes some tobacco out of a pouch and says, “Go talk to that river. There is a woman in that river. Ask her to watch over you.” When Jacob is out of earshot Jim says, “We better talk, Ned. Don't you go telling Momma or any of the women about this.” Ned nods; he does not want to keep this sickening secret to himself, but he knows his wife is overloaded, full up. One more shovel and she might cave in.

“Tonight,” is all Jim says.

THE LAST PICTURE IS
a sunset. No objects, just the sun setting on a thin line of black. Behind the sun, the light is nearly white; emanating from this ball of yellow is every possible hue of red, orange, pink, and pale yellow. The colours fill the page. Celia is about light, her mother thinks. She is about light and colour, and
these colours shaped her somehow. Momma closes the book.

“Let's go by Stacey's,” she says. “We'll all go to my house and I'll make some pie.” Celia smiles. All her paintings add up to some pie. Somehow she doesn't feel so strange. She might not know her mother well, but they share the same odd sense of logic and that makes her one of them.

THE MEN PACK UP
their fish and saunter home. All the way there, Jim keeps the three of them laughing with stories of cow shit, bear shit, and any other tale he can drum up that might help them forget about the scene by the river. By the time they arrive home, they are like any old clutch of men who have just had a very successful fishing trip.

XIII

THE WOMEN ARE IN
the kitchen making pie by the time the men return. The kids are running about the house, raising a ruckus; their laughter cuts the air into bouncing little pieces that seem to massage Ned's bones. Jacob has gone home to put his share of the catch in his mother's freezer. Jim is ready to talk. Ned and Jim go outside for a smoke.

“Spider is a storyteller. She weaves soft silk threads across human pathways. Be careful to unhook the web on the far side and clear the path. Her threads may otherwise get tangled up on you. In the fight to clear the thread you might swallow the spider. She is a predator too. You don't know what her story is about until after she has spun the tale inside, twisted you in all kinds of crazed directions.” Ned isn't sure why Jim has begun the conversation
this way, so he lights a smoke and waits for him to explain.

Celia hears the story as she sorts through the wild cherries they are turning into pies. Her brother's voice comes at her, sifted through the words young Alice gave her the night before, the ones she has been turning over in her mind. They disturb her. Stacey watches her sister; Celia looks distracted and Stacey feels suspicious about her because she knows she is daydreaming again. Stacey understands why children daydream, but Celia is too old. The lines of her face show her age. She joins Celia and sorts the cherries as quickly as she can, stewing over how in the world to approach her younger sister about her neurotic daydreaming. Momma rattles on about Celia's paintings. Rena jokes about who knows what. The kids are antsy by the time the pies are done and the men have gotten back.

Jacob returns in time to join them in eating the pies.

Celia sits in her momma's kitchen, wishing she were in her easy chair, the black night hanging over her, so she could smile at the memory of her gramma while reliving the lines of her cousin's poem. The candle in the kitchen dances. The room softens. Celia thinks she might get through another night without her son if she can just escape this kitchen.

Mink is merciless. Celia does not need escape, she needs to be part of this story. Mink is determined to prepare her for it. Nothing happens after this moment, no dreams, no fear, no suspicions — just a family eating pie, telling stories, and sharing laughter. Celia is relieved by the time she leaves for home.

AT HOME, BY CANDLELIGHT
, she retreats to her bedroom to recite her cousin's poetry. She fought all day against resenting the intrusion of family that kept her from her musing. The only way she managed to get through the day was to promise herself that tonight she would sit in the dark tasting Alice's words no matter who came. She has barely begun to roll Alice's words around in her mind when the knock comes. The last line Alice read drops into her mouth and she feels herself swallow it. She savours the texture,
the sound, and the taste of the words. Whoever is knocking is persistent. She ignores it. The tap becomes a rap then a bang. She clutches the arm of her chair. “Don't answer that door,” she tells herself. The banging persists and finally she gives in and gets up to answer. Her aunt Martha stands there, mouth agape, looking at her. What in the world has driven Martha out of bed this late?

“What is it, Martha?” Celia steps back to let Martha enter, but she doesn't.

“Celia, can you help me? I have to get my granddaughter.”

“How come? Where's her mom?”

Martha's face is ash white. Celia doubts she can solve whatever problem has turned Martha's face this ash white.

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?” This agitates Celia. She is not in the mood for riddles. “At home, I hope. Don't be pestering me with riddles without answers, Martha.”

“Celia, will you help me? My granddaughter called. All she could say was ‘Help me, Gramma.'” Martha is sweating. She is looking out over her shoulder at something — or maybe it is away from something.

Celia runs for her coat, wondering what in the world has made Martha think she could be helpful with anything that has got Martha
this upset. Alice's words have taken such a beating, first last night and now tonight. Celia's ritual of listening to them, then going home to the pleasantness of the dark to play with the words until sleep comes, has been interrupted by Jacob, then by the humming, then by her momma's paint viewing, then by the pie eating, and now by Martha. This means Celia will have to go Alice's again; she chuckles as she slips her bloated feet into a pair of worn-out shoes.

The gravel in front of Celia's yard crunches under their feet as she tries to keep up with Martha.

“C'mon, Martha, you know I gave up men so I could get fat. I can't run. Slow down.”

“We have to hurry. Shelley called me. She was barely whispering, saying, ‘Help me, Gramma, help me.' That girl would not dare phone unless something terrible happened. I can't face it alone, so I stopped to get you.” Martha keeps right on flying down the road. Celia finds the strength to heave her nearly two hundred pounds after her.

“Shelley called. She's only five years old. She knows to call.” Celia pauses. “I didn't know that girl of yours had a phone.” She tries to consider the shack Martha's daughter lives in and can't imagine it having a phone. A phone seems absurdly extravagant given the conditions of that shack.

“I got the phone for her,” Martha says.

Celia can't decide if this is funny or insane. Living in an old
shack with barely any electricity and no running water doesn't jive with a owning a phone.

“Slow down,” Celia urges. Until this moment, she had not thought her two hundred pounds were an inconvenience. In fact, she'd thought she deserved every tasty chocolate-filled ounce of them, but now she wishes she weren't so heavy.

“We have to hurry. I am afraid of what Stella might have done to her. I've always been afraid. I got her the cell phone just in case.”

Celia is fighting to keep up. Halfway down the road, the impact of what Martha has said dawns on Celia. Something terrible has happened to give that child the cheek to use her mother's phone. Shelley is a furtive and timid child. She doesn't misbehave. Panic settles in Celia's body as she catches a glimpse of what might have happened. Her legs move faster. She passes Martha. Something is so wrong in there. Martha struggles to catch up. Both women find it difficult to breathe.

Shelley lives with her mom and some guy down at one end of the reserve, not far from the old snake's shack, in an old house that had been deserted until someone desperate for something to call her own moved in. Celia fights for breath; she fights her legs for agility, for speed, for something to move herself along. Nausea
teases at her stomach. She is about to tell Martha to go on ahead when she sees the house. There are no lights on. She wants to tell herself that this is not unusual this late at night, but she knows that if Shelley were awake there would be a light on.

“Children don't sit willingly in the dark,” she says out loud.

Celia reaches the shack and pushes open the door. The blast of chill air that meets them indicates the wood stove is out. The child must be cold. Celia flips the only light switch in the cabin. The light does not go on. Celia goes back to open the door wide so that the moonlight might help them to see. They stand for a moment, letting their eyes adjust. They can see the child lying there; even in the dark her eyes are vacant as they stare into the black. She moans so softly, so gently, so quietly. It sounds like a muffled hum. “That hum,” Celia mutters to herself. Is this who she heard screaming the other night? Celia feels her blood chill as the picture of the limp child staring at nothing with the phone still in her tiny hands comes into focus. Off in the corner is a woman, her legs spread open, a bottle of beer in her hand, her lids half-closed, her mouth open, and an unlit cigarette hanging from her mouth. Celia fails to recognize Stella.

They move toward the child's body like two people carrying a coffin, slow and reverent. Both women pray the child is still breathing. Martha fishes in her pocket for a match and lights it. It bathes the room in pale light for a moment; when its fire shrinks Celia can see that Shelley's forearms have small, round purpled-red burns. There are bruises just about everywhere her skin is showing. Celia sees a small pool of blood near Shelley's private parts.

“Oh, no.” Martha drops the match. She hunts for a wad of paper, twists it up, lights another match, and sets fire to the paper.

“Oh, Martha.” Celia reaches for the phone.

“Who are you going to call?” Martha's voice has the quality of a threat.

“Nine-one-one.”

Martha grabs Celia's arm and stops her.

“They take so long. She'll die. Or they'll take her away and I'll never see her again,” Martha pleads with Celia as she reaches to take the phone away from her.

“We can't just leave her like this.” Celia snaps her hand back, clinging to the phone. “She looks like she's already dying. I'll call Momma. She saved that awful snake. Maybe she can save this child.”

Martha remembers the snake, that beast Momma so carefully tended. When she was young, she had hated her aunt for her devotion to reviving that old snake. Now she hates her daughter, who cannot tend to her grandchild, this sweet child who is much too obedient, much too grown-up to be just five, and now is much too innocent and much too small to be this tortured. The hate catches fire, hooks itself to Martha's voice, floods her arms with the need for revenge, and brings the worst sort of foulness
from the bottom of some well of decadence she had swallowed a long time ago. She screams the foulness out at Stella. “Wake up, you fucking bitch. Wake up!” She shakes Stella by the hair.

Her daughter comes to, mumbling, “What's up? Fuck off.”

Martha's arms pummel Stella's drunken body. Celia grabs her cousin as soon as she gets off the phone.

“Martha! What are you doing? The child, the child, she is still alive. Momma says we have to do things for her.” Stella tries to rise from her corner, remembers her cigarette, looks for a light. She catches sight of her daughter. She eases herself toward her; then, like a rabbit that has caught sight of a fox, she hunches, stands still, and collapses. Her eyelids, loaded with defeat, fall shut.