I have been carrying the body of my daughter for days. For days I have been carrying her body. Up and down steps, skipping over the one with the loose board. In and out of the laundry room, slung over an overflowing basket of towels. Through the yard, to water the flowers and trim the hedges; grass stains now streak her calves. Today the body hangs uneven, too much weight sunk into her hands and feet, the middle a soggy vacancy. Her bones creak and scrape against each other. I prop her up beside the kitchen sink; her shoulder clunks against the cabinet door.
Just as I turn on the water, she slides into the room. Hi! she says. When she smiles her lips curl, a sideways comma. She disappears with a bowl of cereal into the living room to watch cartoons. The colors on the screen blare red and orange and blue. Squares and circles with faces, careening. The sound pings against the walls like insects into an electric zapper, sudden and explosive. I close the oven, pull out the biscuits. They have burned on the bottom. Later I will scrape off the black with a knife.
I exit the kitchen, go into the hall to take off my shoes. They are crusted with thick mud, dried and flaking into shards around the edges. I pull her body by the feet and it clunks over the threshold. I try to be careful with her neck, but she’s grown heavier with time. Or maybe my arms have grown tired. This is what happens when one carries a person—first cradled, then slung over a shoulder, then dragged behind—a beloved sack of flour. I cannot leave her alone, poor thing. I like the way my daughter’s bright hair fans out across the wood floor. Her eyes sink deeper into their sockets each day. When will I lose them?
The cartoon dog barks and I can see the top of her head peeking out over the back of the couch. Ten more minutes, I tell her, walking into the room, pulling my daughter’s body behind me by the arm. I take out my sewing and arrange her on the floor beside my chair—seated, hands folded neatly, legs crossed. Her head flops down. I straighten her neck but instantly it sinks again. I hold one hand under her chin, widen her eyelids with the other. Lumps bubble under the surface of her grey and purple skin. I notice a protrusion on the back of her skull, perhaps from where it thudded over a threshold. Living room? Dining room? Bathroom? I can’t say. I scan the lump with my thumb. She does not flinch. Is the injury too old for any compress or poultice or prayer to make a difference? At some point her skin will open. She cannot be contained forever. How can I stanch it all?
Can I go outside now, mama? my daughter asks. She bounces on the balls of her feet. She cannot remain still. The needle pokes the tip of my finger and pulls a shard of skin up, away, but does not draw blood. Perhaps it has just caught on the top layer, before the vessels. I lean down and pat the head of her body, which sinks further towards the floor.
Sure, I tell her. But put on a hat and gloves and coat. She nods, impatient. Don’t go too far. I hear her feet scuttle out. Be careful, I call, but the door slams. She is always coming and going; still her body stays right here beside me.
I put the kettle on for tea, light a match to get the finicky pilot to ignite. I drag her body to the bedroom; her shirt catches on a loose nail in the floorboard; I free her, but her shirt has ripped, a small tear shaped like a tadpole’s tail in the purple cotton. It is small now, but it will grow and grow until there is more rip than fabric. I straighten the necklaces on my dresser. I rearrange the earrings. I take out the bottle of lotion from the drawer and pump some into my hands. The skin around my knuckles is always cracked. My daughter’s body lies in the corner by the window so it can soak in thick sunlight before dusk.
I sit on my bed and read one page of a book about a logger wandering in a wood. The tree canopy is too dense to let in light, and in the darkness he loses his way. I put the book down. I compose a letter. Dear F., I write, I have been carrying the body of my child for days. Do you know why? I forget what else I want to say. I start a new paragraph. Do you remember me? I ask him. Or has it been too long? Will I forget her? I want to write more, but my hand won’t make the letters. I glance out the window at my daughter, hurling snowballs into the empty street. She has taken off her gloves and they lie, lonely purple buds on the white expanse. The snowballs split upon impact and shatter white. Her hands glare red and raw. I want to run out to her but do not think I can manage her body, all flopping limbs and neck, down the front stoop. I cannot leave her behind. Silly little thing, I say, turning to the body. Silly little thing.
I look for more work to do in this creaky house of mine. I like to stay busy. I like to use my hands, my muscles and joints. I straighten the curtains in the kitchen, move into the living room to fluff the pillows, through the foyer to shake out the rugs, then into each of the bedrooms huddled at the end of the hall, to check the doors, make sure they don’t stick in their frames. I clean the doorknobs, the faucets. I dust the surfaces, the baseboards, the windowsills. Our house is an old body, with a long spine of hall connecting the living and the sleeping parts. I push my daughter in front of me like a toboggan, hands on her shoulders while she hunches forward. I am careful not to let her forehead graze the floor.
After I am done with the cleaning I go back into the hallway. I move the bones of my daughter’s body up and down, side to side, bending the knees and elbows, turning the head to look this way and that, curling the toes and fingers. I want to keep her body supple, but her skin slides through my palms, cold and slippery, and I know I am failing. Suddenly she appears in front of me, ready for dinner.
Your hands! I shout. She blinks. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry, I say, and take her hands in mine to warm them. It’s just that I worry. I take the hands of her body in my hands too. They are warmer than the others.
You always worry, she says. She looks far away, into the dining room, towards the cabinet where my mother’s china sits. I can tell that she does not want to see me. The china in the cabinet came from my mother, which came from her mother, which came from her mother. It is beige but browning with age, the rims etched with red vines. These are our bones, my mother said when she gave them to me: serving platter fissured up the middle, teacups bearing shards of handles. Our family came from somewhere far away. The name of the place forgotten. To reach the place required crossing mountains and sea, and sometimes my mother sang a song about the fishy smell of the lichen that tumbled across the rocks, though she had never been to the place and could not remember how she’d learned the song. A family is just a pile of bones, she used to say to me.
I pour red stew into a chipped bowl for my daughter and she slurps it up with a spoon too large for her red hands. Stew dribbles down her chin. Stew lands in her lap. I arrange my daughter’s body on the chair across the table. If I place the hands just so against the surface, stabilizing the trunk, the neck turned towards the door, it will stay upright. Aren’t you going to have some? my daughter wants to know. I look into the pot. I cannot see the bottom but know there is not enough to go around. There are too many mouths to feed.
I’m not hungry, I say. You eat up.
In between the two daughters I see gray shadows of their bodies flitting through the space across the table, movements stuttering as though flashed through with lightning.
I clear the table while my daughter changes into pajamas. Brush your teeth, I call. In the kitchen I try to untangle the matted hair on my daughter’s head, but too many teeth are missing from the comb and it gets stuck in the thick knots at the nape. I pull until the comb’s spine breaks. I start again with the larger half, jagged where the plastic split. I am careful because the body’s skin is thin as vellum, but still, somehow, I nick it, just along the vertebrae. A small drop of something oozes out but it isn’t quite red. Are you bleeding? I ask my daughter’s body. I press the pad of my thumb to the spot.
Don’t forget to wash your face, I call to my daughter down the hall. And take your vitamin.
I know, she shouts back. I know.
The neighbor is outside blowing leaves into the air. The sun has set but I can see his motion under the dusky cone cast by the streetlamp. The leaves do not seem to collect into piles, just rise, fall, rise, fall. I know, I tell my neighbor, I know how it is, though the window remains closed. I know how it is to do things over and over again. Because I have been carrying my daughter’s body for days. For days and days. One of the neighbor’s leaves leaps onto the window and clings like a person shouting for help.
Mama, my daughter calls from the bedroom. I’m ready.
I’m on my way, I yell back, down the hall, towards her.
We will read a book. I will hand her a glass of water to sip. I will tuck her in. I will turn out the light. I will close the door, but not all the way. I will walk down the hall, into my room. I will sit and wait until I hear no more noise. This is our bedtime routine. It is like this always.
Here are the ways she might leave me: in a fog of green mist; through the cellar door; during a long, slow fever; from the top of a tall building; in the road, under the bed of a truck; in sleep; on a slippery bathroom floor; while eating beef; in the heat of day or cold of night; while slurping soup; after taking too much cough syrup; snagged on a rock; over a cliff; pierced with a rusted nail; to a dog; of a toothache.
I’m waiting for you, she yells. Mama, she yells. Where are you? I scoop my daughter up and begin to walk towards her.
Acknowledgements: Brian Kiteley, The 4 A.M. Breakthrough (and Marc Gaba) for inspiration.