Infandous (19 page)

Authors: Elana K. Arnold

Jordan is scrambling to right all the boards, and the girls leave without buying anything.

“You okay, Seph?” Jordan asks.

I shrug. I nod. I wipe my eyes and nose on the cuff of my sleeve. I picture Felix on the street, wandering aimlessly, seeing everything through this new filter, a haze he cannot clear away, that he thinks he will never be able to clear away. And I find myself hoping that he does find a way. Just not in my town. And not with my help.

Seventeen

As I walk home in the dark, both halves of the turquoise door fastened tight behind me, Persephone is on my mind. I think of how she tumbled through that crack in the earth and how she couldn’t know how far she would fall; she couldn’t know where she would land. She must have been so afraid to find herself in that dark place, far from her mother and the comforts of home. She must have missed the play of wind across the tall, bright grasses, the warmth of the sun on her face. And it’s true she ate the pomegranate seeds, and it’s true that we don’t know if they tasted sweet to her or bitter. But it’s true too that when the time came to leave, she emerged from the darkness into the light of day.

Some versions of her myth say that Hermes rescued her. That’s not how I like to imagine the story. I like to think that she climbed free, that she kicked off her sandals and bunched her skirts around her waist, that she grabbed tight to any handhold she could find, and that she freed herself by sheer force of will. I like to imagine that she dug her fingers into the walls of the earth and fought her way up, hand over hand, dark soil smearing her face, rocks bending and breaking her nails.

I like to believe that she made her way out of the dark pit where she had been trapped and that she emerged damaged but free, changed but still whole, and that she followed a path of light home to her mother.

***

There’s no moon tonight. The heat wave we’ve been having has overtaxed the electric system, and the power in our section of the city is out. The windows of the buildings around me are punched-out black eyes, and the day’s heat still hangs heavy like death in the air.

When I get to our apartment building, I look up to our door. It’s open, and a soft light glows from inside. The window is open too, and the long, silky scarves blow out, beckoning me, welcoming me home.

I’m silent on the stairs, taking each step slowly. My mother doesn’t hear me coming. I stand outside the door and look inside.

She’s lit the candles—all of them. The tall tapers that line the bookshelf, the funny beeswax ones on the beat-up old coffee table, the candles in jars anchored by sand and shells. A row of candles, evenly spaced, dots the kitchen counter.

The whole front room of our apartment glows and flickers, the flames alive.

There’s music on, coming from the tinny little speaker on her phone. It’s not reggae, for once; it’s the Rolling Stones, one of her favorites, “Anybody Seen My Baby.”

Mom sings along with Mick. Her eyes are closed and her head is back, hair waving down her back and shimmering in the candlelight. As she moves with her liquid grace, dressed in a white tank top and soft gray skirt, I see again her beauty, so sharp and bright that it hurts me.

When the song ends, her back is to the door and she stands very still, like she’s waiting for the next song, but when the music begins again, it’s the same song. Again. She’s listening to it on repeat, over and over again, a loop of sound and sorrow.

This time, when she spins around, I step forward and touch her hand. Her eyes pop open, and in the glow of the candles I see the shine of her unspilled tears.

“Baby,” she says. “You’re home.”

***

When you are loved by someone the way I am loved by my mom, you want them to save you. You want to be rescued and made whole again by their magic touch. But love like that—the kind that flows just one way—it’s for fairy tales and children. I am not a child.

I imagine Persephone. It cost her and it hurt her to find her way home, and as she forced herself from that slit in Mother Earth, it was like being born again, except this time, she would remember all of it—the pain, the breathlessness, the heartrending fear that the crevasse might be too tight, that she might be stuck there, and that her bones might turn to dust under the pressure upon her from all sides.

I could tell my mother. She would love me just the same. Instead, I sit with her in the candlelit dusk and listen to the echo of the waves. Our fingers are entwined. When she falls asleep, her head on my shoulder, I slip out from beneath her. I lay her down and cover her and make myself a bed on the floor nearby.

When I sleep, I dream of the handless maiden finding her home in the forest, far from the safety of the castle on the hill, among the creatures who love her. I dream of Philomela and her sister turning to birds and cutting across the sky.

***

When I wake at dawn, she is still asleep. My body is sore from my night on the carpet. The candles have all burned out, down to nubs.

On my quiet bare feet, I pad into the bedroom, taking with me the pack of matches from the table. I slip the photo from where I’ve hidden it, in the far back corner of my drawer.

Yes. There is a resemblance. In the curl of his hair, most of all, but also in the way he holds his chin and in the way he smiles. But there is more of
her
in me—more of my mother. I have her hands. Her coloring. Her straight nose. And more than that—she and I have things he will never have. Most of all, we have each other.

The picture tears easily, as if it’s wanted to for a long time, right down the crease. I tuck away the half of my mother and sit on the edge of the bed and look once more at Felix before I strike the match and feed the flame.

The photo smokes and smells terrible as it burns, which is as it should be. It curls and blackens, and then finally it is gone.

After a while, I get up and make coffee.

Outside the sky is already bright and blue.

The Mermaid and the Wolf

Once there was a mermaid who dared to love a wolf. Her love for him was so sudden and so fierce that it tore her tail into legs.

They met and mated on the sand of the beach. He had traveled from his den in the mountain, and she had swum fathoms from her undersea world. But when they had consummated their love, the mermaid found that the wolf was still a wolf, and she watched as he trotted away, home to his mountain, tail wagging behind him.

She was not alone when he left—not anymore. Months later, she birthed a child, by herself, and in the sea. Her daughter looked up at her with luminous brown eyes, soulful and wide. The mermaid raised her daughter with never a mention of the wolf who had sired her.

The girl was not a mermaid like her mother. She was not a wolf like her father. She was of the sea and of the shore, both—she was mammal and hunter, able to connive and sneak and lie like a wolf, things her mermaid mother could never do. She could create and dance and know the sea deeply and well, things her wolf father would find impossible.

She was a seal, the marriage between a land hunter and a sea dweller, and she was sleek and strong and swift.

Together the mermaid and the seal swam and dove and played in the sea. They slept with tangled limbs on a bed of seaweed. The seal girl watched with awe as her mother wove coral in her hair, as she decorated her body with shells.

But one day the seal girl left her mermaid mother and found her way to the beach—the same beach where years before the mermaid had met the wolf.

And when the wolf returned, the seal girl did not recognize him and he did not guess that she was of his flesh. So they fell together in the sand, and he knew her as he had known her mother.

When the seal girl learned what she had done, she swam far and alone, away from home, away from her mermaid mother. She feared what she had become, and perhaps even more, she feared who she might always have been, beneath the surface.

Away she swam until she found a shore she had never seen before. She lay in the shallows for a long time. She breathed in and out. She waited, and she mourned.

And at last she reached down to her chest and found that just above her heart there was an opening she had not known was there. She used her fins to peel it open, and though she feared she was stripping herself of her very life, she pushed the sealskin back. Her heart beat so quick, her breaths came so fast, she thought she might die.

But she did not die, and as she worked her way free of the sealskin she saw what she was—she saw her own long arms, her fingers, her shoulders, her breasts and hips. Her legs. The cleft between them.

Then she stood in the soft, caressing sea, and she stepped out of her sealskin—naked, exposed, but free.

She took first one tentative step, then another.

And leaving the skin behind her, crumpled on the edge of the ocean, she walked up the sandy shore.

She was a wolf and a mermaid, as well. She was all of that and more.

It occurred to her that she would like to know what she was and who. So she walked on, naked but no longer shamed.

Author’s Note

Sephora Golding steps into the tradition of storytellers, sculpting ancient tales in an effort to understand both her world and herself. I am grateful to the source material that informs
INFANDOUS
and encourage readers to seek out the various permutations of the myths, fairy tales, and legends I’ve incorporated into Sephora’s story.

Acknowledgments

This book reached its final manifestation because it crossed the desk of Andrew Karre. I remember the day (July 12, 2013) that I saw your tweet—“Jesus Christ, Humbert Humbert just walked into the manuscript I’m reading. Do that again!” I knew you must be talking about
INFANDOUS
. Your insight from that day forward has been a driving force behind this book. I am a better writer because of our work together.

I am grateful also to Rubin Pfeffer, who came to my house to make art with me and my kids and who sent me a one-of-a-kind INFANDOUS wolf head. Thank you, Rubin, for all of your support. Grateful thanks also to Howard Hornreich.

If not for Erin O’Shea, I wouldn’t have known about the shadow sculptures of Tim Noble and Sue Webster. Thank you, Erin, for pointing me in this direction.

Special thanks to Paige Davis Arrington, Melanie Sinclair, Laura Jane Carpenter, Sasha Kuczynski, and Mischa Kuczynski Erickson, who talked me through this book’s difficult gestation.

And again, thanks to my family of readers, who support all my ideas, no matter how weird they get. I love you all.

About the Author

Elana K. Arnold completed her MA in Creative Writing/Fiction at the University of California–Davis. She lives in Huntington Beach, California, with her husband, two children, and a menagerie of animals.
INFANDOUS
is her first book for Carolrhoda Lab™.