Pew(16)

This Saturday, you may have heard, is the festival. It’s a very important time of year and it’s very important to us that everyone in town participates and understands how important their participation is.
It’s really very beautiful, Hilda said, her voice spilling and loose, very meaningful—
Yes, and we expect that you’ll participate with the rest of us, even if you might not fully understand what it means. Hilda had begun to cry a little. She wiped lightly at one eye, then the other, the first again, and on like that. Steven wrapped a hand around one of her wrists, which seemed to end something in her.
People will be curious about having a new person in the community, Steven continued. It’s only natural. So we just need to make sure that all is well with you, and you’re suited to join us in this important event that we know outsiders don’t always understand.
We were all quiet for a moment. Some appliance in the kitchen grumbled.
Oh, Hilda said, there is one more thing. I just thought you might be more comfortable if you had a bath. You hadn’t had one since you got here, and I thought, well, you might like to have one. I’ve got one running in the washroom at the bottom of the stairs.
We all stood and walked toward the washroom and Hilda went in to turn off the tap in the nearly full tub.
And if you’d like, Steven said, Hilda could wash your clothes for you.
I shook my head.
Are you sure now? Hilda asked. It’s no trouble.
It’s no trouble at all. She’ll have them all pressed and ready for you in the morning.
I don’t ever sleep, Hilda added.
She doesn’t—she doesn’t sleep hardly at all, not with all the laundry there is to do.
That’s right.
Again I shook my head. They left me with the bath and shut the door. I took off my clothes. Steam wafted from the water and the water moved below, exerting the steam. I looked over at the water, then down at this body. Did everyone feel this vacillating, animal loneliness after removing clothes? How could I still be in this thing, answering to its endless needs and betrayals? The room was all white and gray and the air was warm and the air hung on me and I hung in this flesh that all those unknown centuries of blood that had brought into being. I had to tend to this flesh as if it were an honest gift, as if it had all been worth it. Why did living feel so invisibly brief and unbearably long at once?
I eased into the hot water and sat there for some time—seconds, minutes, I didn’t know—then got out again, dried myself with a thick towel, put my trousers and shirt on, and went back into the hall. Hilda and Steven were still there, still in the dark, leaning together as if they’d just been whispering.
Good night, they said, first one of them, then the other. I nodded as I held one hand out to trace the hallway wall, making my way back up to the attic.
In the attic I lay down and could see the moon through that round window, full and pure white, so bright it almost seemed to be making a sound. Even through shut eyelids I could feel the moon’s glare, so I lay there in that light, coming near something like but not entirely sleep, a stream of images or feelings going by, telling me nothing.
I was buried by night. The body is already dead, I thought. I was still smiling. The body is your tomb.
After some time, I got up, went down the stairs lightly so I didn’t wake anyone, went through the blue-black house and out into the yard to see the moon more clearly. How lucky we are to have the moon. It seemed that hardly anyone ever saw the sky anymore. Had we all forgotten it was there? All this time below it, we forget. Maybe the sky will leave us someday, then we will be able to realize what it was.
I heard a door slam at the house and Jack came out. The air between us like a pool of warm water. Hesitating on the porch, he looked up at the moon, then at me. I half-sensed he wanted to frighten me, but I was not afraid—after all the moon was here, calm night, warm and easy air, and all of it was ours.
From the porch stairs he began to somehow yell and whisper at once—We don’t even know if you’re a girl or a boy or where you came from or nothing and you’re sleeping in my bed. In my bed. It’s disgusting. You ought to go back to wherever you came from, go back there and leave us alone.
Across the street a trash can was knocked over and a light outside a house turned on and a dog went running into the street, barking, chasing something. Then a car alarm went off, another car alarm began, and a cat hissed, screamed.
Jack kept walking toward me, still speaking in that yell-whisper. I moved out farther into the yard and saw an old woman standing in the window of the house next door, gripping her housecoat at the neck. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, my body and I didn’t know where it was allowed to go if there was anywhere I could go and not be seen, and when I looked back at him, Jack was facing the porch again, his father there now, saying a few firm, low words the way owners call back their dogs. Jack retreated, disappeared inside the house. Steven stood there in the porch light, staring at me for a while before I, too, went back inside.
Stay in your room, he said.
Halfway up the attic stairs I heard the door shut and lock.



WEDNESDAY




HILDA WAS DRIVING, her hair held up in curlers. We passed a green street sign—Stark Street. Maybe there was nothing else to say of that street. The sky was fading into a gray-blue. The moon hung like a ghost in the sky. I watched the light posts flick past the window, cows in wet grass.
I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, Hilda said. Thin yellow light was beginning to flood into the car. I think about it … I think about how easy my childhood was, and now my whole life is still right here in my hometown—the boys, Steven. My mother passed away when I was little, but I was never lacking a family. I had my father, my brother. And Mrs. Gladstone, the one you met the other day, she was my stepmother. Still is, I guess, and even though she never really got along with me, at least she never hated me, not completely, but anyway, I know everyone in town. Same church all my life. Everyone there knows me and I don’t have to explain anything. Even had the same hairdresser for just about as long as I’ve had hair. This place, I know it’s not much, but it’s not really what some people think it is. It hurts me that everyone gets the wrong idea about it all the time, it really does.