Castles (15 page)

I believe the day he brought me flowers was the first time I admitted I was at fault.

I hadn't dreamed of the carousel of singing men or seen the dust eels in years. Even Grandma was noticeably missing. It was almost as if all the events of my life up to that point had been silly notions designed to teach me lessons, but what they had really done was confuse me. Who was I to question the tongue of a man? Who was I to believe the lies Grandma told me about how a tongue splits in two? It was all bullshit. So what if Steve had killed Dusty or called my mother a whore? Dusty was just a dog and Mama told me herself she once charged for sex.

It was this confusion, I think, that prompted my dream and the storm that came on the night Steve gave me flowers and I pushed his tongue between my legs. I loved the way his rubbery flesh felt against me, even more so than the days he pushed his hardened cock inside. My body erupted with little earthquakes for a few minutes after he rolled over and closed his eyes. It was wonderful to engage with the man and try things I hadn't thought of with Michael.

I closed my eyes as my tremors settled down. Steve had already fallen asleep, his breath a quick pant that soon resolved into the slow rhythm of slumber. The lights inside my eyelids danced in chaotic patterns then in circles then steady again. Finally, they swirled as my hips quivered one last time.

One of the lights stopped in the center and flared bright. It was a shock at first then entertaining. I had read before about these lights, these retinal sprites and their alluring ballet. They were natural, and one of the better sleep methods was to try to focus on one; the concentrated effort would lull you to sleep.

I'm sure Grandma would have called them something else, but she wasn't around to teach me false lessons any more.

I watched the light, focused on it and allowed it to guide me into a slumber. My body filled with electric tingles, like the kind you get right before your arm has fallen asleep or after you move it to wake it up. The tingle rushed through my body in slow motion as the light grew brighter. Looking back, I suppose it was like a train bearing down on me as I stood in a tunnel and on the tracks, waiting, watching, wondering.

And then I was somewhere else. I looked down and found that I hovered above the trailer park on a gentle wind. I could see the tin and aluminum roofs, the gravel road that wound like a snake between yards, the dogs tied to posts inside chain link fences that surrounded the thin walls that housed people. The same people, I thought, that ignored the screams of Mama for years. The cowards of the world.

In the distance, I saw the sky like a dark indigo blanket that covered the lights of God. The sun had fallen from the sky and left a few wispy clouds bathed in brilliant orange. The heat the sun had generated during the day remained, and I felt it. I don't know how I felt it in a dream, but it was real and baked my ethereal skin like an oven.

I saw the Bus and in the growing darkness beyond it, I saw a thunderstorm grow tall. Its anvil turned from orange to red to blue as the sun continued unabated toward the other side of the world. Lightning flashed in chaotic patterns and stabbed at the desolate landscape. It illuminated a torrential rainfall that flooded the land below.

In one of those flashes, I saw myself pulled forward toward the cloud. The tumultuous vapor that fought against heat and humidity swallowed me like a giant dragon and spun me around in eddies of updrafts and downdrafts. Unfallen rain pelted my body as electric bursts from inside the cloud flashed around me one after the other so bright I had wanted to close my eyes, afraid to be blinded.

It was then I saw them—the dust eels. They were no larger than tadpoles, no longer than my finger. They gnashed their teeth at each other and gnashed their teeth at the rain and gnashed their teeth at the vapor surrounding them. As I watched, they grew longer, their heads more bulbous, their teeth sharper. They didn't touch me, but they enveloped me. They hissed, but not at me. They gathered in the storm like a swarm of bees might gather after their nest had been disturbed by an outsider.

I stared and I floated with them. I was no longer afraid of the lightning or the pelt of the unfallen rain on my body. The updrafts and downdrafts didn't push me around as much. The violence of nature had become a comfort, almost—and I still think this now—like Grandma's afghan wrapped tightly around me.

One of the eels who had been gnashing his tail turned to face me. Although I couldn't tell from its horrid face, I registered sadness inside me, almost like the sadness you feel when rejected by someone you love. I know I'd felt that sadness a thousand times—with Mama, with Grandma, with Michael, with Steve. All the pain you feel is like a heavy weight inside, pulling your heart down to your stomach.

The eel opened its mouth and screamed. It wasn't loud. It screamed more like a kitten might if you pulled its tail. It shrieked and wailed then turned back on itself and slashed into its tail, biting, tearing, grinding.

In another flash of lightning, I found myself falling, falling toward the desert below, toward the ground, the cactus, the Bus. I wasn't afraid. I looked around me and saw them, the eels. They were large, like my arm, and fell with me. They bit at the air and they screamed, screamed a banshee-like scream. I suddenly felt their anger, their mission.

And I knew.

It was Steve they were coming for.

It was my mess they wanted to clean up.

What God had wrought in my dream was no longer a dream I could wake up from. They were as real as the paper I now scribble this story on, as real as the gravel that crunched under Mr. Pulman's feet, as real as the tongue I suddenly remembered squirming around inside Steve's mouth.

In an instant, I fought the feeling as I fell toward the earth and my trailer. I fought against their hate and their mission. I fought against Grandma's words "
Watch the tongue!
" I fought and I fought and I fought . . .

I opened my eyes as the trailer shook. The wind pushed hard against the siding. Glass shattered in the kitchen, just like it did on the night I hid under the cabinet between the Comet and the Windex.

I turned to Steve. He was up on his elbows looking at the window. His tongue licked his lips. His eyes were groggy, wary, unsure of the violence that rocked the trailer.

"What is that?" he said.

I couldn't answer. I knew, but I couldn't say. Why did they want him? Why did they want to clean up my mess when I no longer believed it to be a mess at all?

The window in the bedroom shattered. Glass flew inward toward the bed and I spun my body around to shield Steve. He curled into a fetal position and pulled the covers over his head, letting loose a cry of shock and disbelief. The glass clinked on the floor and against the wall. One of the shards landed on the bed and I felt the sharpness dig into my leg. I screamed both in pain and frustration.

They weren't going to take him.

Through the shattering of the glass and the gush of the wind through the open window, I heard the eels. They hissed at me. "
He must be cleaned!
"

"
No!
" I screamed. My face was buried in Steve's neck as the assault continued. My words sounded muffled and distant. "
No!
"

"Cut out his tongue!"

"No!"

"You will pay for this!"

Fear the likes I have never felt before rushed through my body. My stomach tightened. My grip on the blanket over Steve's body became rigid steel. My head pounded. Tears streamed from my closed eyes.

"You will pay!"

The morning after the storm, I was left with a mess to clean. Steve and I had moved to the couch in the living room and he had fallen back to sleep within minutes. I, on the other hand, shook and cried.

I couldn't sleep, didn't want to sleep.

He left at the first light of morning without a glance in my direction. I don't know what he thought happened the night before—and I know he didn't hear the eels—but he was more distant from me than he'd ever been. He looked around the trailer at the broken glass and dust, grunted then headed for the door.

I cleaned all morning, cutting myself a few times and stopping to bandage my leg and my feet. The trash can was filled with glass shards—some small, some large. There was dust on everything and in everything.

I cried only once, though. I knew this was my fault and I deserved it. I didn't listen to the eels; I didn't do what they told me to do. I had ignored the storms, put Grandma out of my head and focused on making Steve happy.

Such a fool.

I'm sure my castle was in ruins. I could imagine the bricks I laid out toppled over, weeds swallowing them in vast green fields of decay.

When I stepped outside that afternoon to breathe in some fresh air, I half expected to see another storm in the distance, brewing and bubbling and boiling, getting ready to consume what its predecessor hadn't.

Instead of a storm, however, an image of Grandma sat in her chair on the porch, much like a mirage so common in the heat of the day. Her afghan was wrapped around her and she rocked back and forth. Her eyes were red and buried in the distance. She had been crying.

"Did your mother tell you what happened to your father?" she asked. She didn't look at me, thankfully. I was more ashamed at my lack of trust in the voices in the wind than I'd ever been before.

"No," I said. I sat down next to her and noticed the blood on my leg had soaked the bandage.

"She left you with me, you know. She was disgraced by herself and by your father."

"I thought Daddy died before I was born?"

Grandma let a slight smile cross her face, but it lasted only a second. "Your mother couldn't clean up her own messes."

"She said that." I let the memory of the last night I spoke with Mama flood over me. "She said she wasn't strong enough."

"Your father was nice, but he wouldn't marry your mother, even after you were seeded and began to grow inside her."

I swallowed. My throat was raspy with all the dust I must have inhaled cleaning up the trailer. From deep inside my memory, Mama spoke: "
We all have skeletons in our closet, Maggie. Your grandmother did just as much as me. Live with them and don't let them out.
"

"How did Daddy die?" I asked. I had to know, like you have to know a truth that may hurt or a truth you really didn't want to hear.

Instead of answering, Grandma's mirage faded and left me with questions.

In life, so she was in death.

I still don't know what happened to my father.

Steve returned late that night violently drunk. His excuse—as if he needed to provide me one—was something about a work buddy leaving and a party afterward.

I never had a reason to doubt Steve's faithfulness to me, but there were times I had to wonder. Was that the scent of another woman on his collar? Why was he distant at times and acted as if I wasn't there? If he really was cheating on me, did I even have the right to complain? After all, we weren't married and I don't even think I ever heard him say I was his "girlfriend." Looking back, I was likely someone he could fuck and chuck for all the emotion I dragged out of him.

I sat on the couch in the living room, dressed in one of Grandma's nightgowns—something Steve detested for its age and smell, but something I couldn't part with no matter how hard I tried. I had been distorting his return that late hour as a fling with another woman, and I really wanted to confront him about it.

I knew I wouldn't, though.

He struggled with the lock on the door, stumbled into the kitchen and managed to take out a beer from the refrigerator without tipping over the table in the process.

I could tell Steve wasn't his usual self. He once told me that one beer calmed him, two made him calmer and after three he would be at his calmest. The fourth, fifth and sixth beers were merely chasers and—unlike Alfie and Mr. Pulman—they didn't anger him that often. Steve was a quiet drunk and grew socially more distant the more he drank. I don't know if I liked that in him, but I do know he wasn't prone to violent outbursts like so many other men.

That night, with the broken windows mended with cardboard and duct tape and the dust almost gone throughout the house, the Steve I knew as quietly drunk was no more. Rather, the Steve that stumbled through the kitchen and grabbed another beer was in a rage, like he'd just been fired.

"Fucking Mike," he slurred. "Had to go and get another job. Now what am I'm supposed to do with all the work we divided between us?"

He pointed his finger at me. "Tell me, woman. What am I supposed to do?"

I didn't know what he was supposed to do, nor did I care. The fact he went to work at all was good enough for me. Money was there to pay for groceries and the few bills that were stacked on the countertop like a fallen deck of cards. I don't think I ever heard Steve talk about his job before that night. I really didn't like it.

"Piece of shit. Do you think I'm going to—" His words trailed off or were swallowed in mid-thought as he brought the beer bottle to his lips and whipped his head back. For a few seconds, his protruding Adam's apple bobbed up and down, his throat made sounds like a toilet makes when it's being plumbed, and before I could look away in disgust, the bottle was empty.

"—get a raise?" he finished. He wiped a stream of beer from his stubble. "No!"

Between my indiscretion when I cried over Mama, my days long refusal to apologize for my actions and the broken windows from the storm the night before, I don't think the man had said as much to me. Then again, it really wasn't to me, but
at
me. I felt a twinge of nervousness in my stomach, just enough to make me shift in my nightgown and sit up straighter.

"You should go lie down," I said. As the last word left my mouth, the background nervousness in my stomach leapt to the forefront of my body, and I cursed myself for even suggesting such a thing. A man needs to vent, does he not? Who am I to say he shouldn't?

Steve threw the empty beer bottle into the kitchen sink with a crack of glass against metal. He said something I couldn't hear then opened the refrigerator once more.