–It doesn’t agree with her.

–So … I’m to steady it?

He shook his head, standing now,

–Just hurry it along.

Women Cures did ask for this on occasion. The quicker to get back to work. No time for a chorus of rising flushes and leaning against the cool part of the wall. But Lorraine Languid had never worked in the fields.

–Why does she need it hurried, though?

But he was at the stove now, tired of me, tired of chatter.

Dim, blunt sound: the wooden spoon nudging the bottom of the pan.

For weeks afterwards, an animal followed me.

It was always next to me, just a little to one side.

An animal with four legs and a cropped tail and a wound for a mouth. I told myself it was only a heartsick dream but every time I looked I saw it big and clear and alive.

Eager to dip its muzzle in my open chest.

It wanted to eat my heart and sometimes I wanted to let it; I missed him like he were a limb.

I tried saying his name to myself, thinking I’d find some comfort or soothe in the soft coupling.

Sam-son

Sam-son

Son-Sam

The sound of it quickly lost on me, the hiss of the ‘s’ losing its lull and becoming as meaningless as any other name. And still, on and on the shuffling of the short-tailed creature beside me. His red mouth pointed at my heart.

I’d sit down on the back step, looking at the lawn.

Put a hand on my low-belly.

That place he’d been.

Bringing up Miss Gedeo was always slow-paced and tentative on account of her weight and size. Father once said she was built like a birdcage, and even her heart struck me as bird-like. A small bird. Watchful and hurried.

I watched Father clear away the earth and remembered the sight of his hand inside her, his fist the size of his own large heart up behind her ribs. The soft cloth of the gown we’d buried her in fell into the dips of her collarbone and crumpled there. Father leaned close and blew the dirt from her eyes.

–Miss Gedeo, you can wake up now.

When she didn’t stir I whistled the sound of her name. The wind had a cold bite and I pulled my cardigan tighter around me. We watched her come up to her elbows and smile. She opened her mouth to speak, and then her arms went from under her and her throat rolled upward in a taut, unnatural arc. Her breath was caught there, in the tight of her throat. She couldn’t breathe, and her eyes were set to fail her. She reached out for Father who stood looking down at her, clucking his tongue.

I got on my knees and put my mouth over hers and put a tunnel of breath between us. Her lips tasted of earth and I thought of Samson’s mouth, the loam thick on his lips.

Under my hand: her heart going wild.

When I took my mouth away her eyes were quick and watchful.

Father put down his shovel and squatted to give her his hand.

Her lips had tasted of The Ground.

–You all right, Miss Gedeo?

She nodded and looked to her soil-filled lap, wanting to clean it away though the whole of her was covered in dirt, and then she started on in her honeyed way, talking about how much better she felt, how well.

Back inside she changed in the downstairs toilet and from the pantry I heard her sighing and contentedly folding up her gown. A fresh one fell around her legs, the rush of its hem sounding like her own name drawn long at its narrowest points.

Liiliia.

Listening to her I wondered if maybe she had a fondness for The Ground, for the fact of our hands having been inside of her.

She opened the bathroom door and I went quickly into the kitchen.

–Thank you again, Miss Ada, I feel I could almost run.

–Not to worry Miss Gedeo, you’re hardly any work at all.

–I always feel so clean and right, after you’ve been inside me.

And then she laughed a little at herself, at the strangeness of her phrasing. Though her new dress was clean her face and throat and arms were still coloured grey from being underground.

–I mean, I always know once you’ve looked inside that everything’s as it should be.

I smiled at her and leaned back on the counter, wanting her to leave.

–It was Father that tended to you, mostly.

Her hands were at her chest and she squeezed them together now. In a flat voice she said

–Oh, is that right.

–That’s why your ribs are a touch cracked. Because there wasn’t enough room in you. For his hands.

A watery sheen came over her eyes.

–I … thought I remembered your mouth on me.

–You’d lost a little breath, so I gave you some of mine.

Squeezing and squeezing her small white hands.

–I see.

She started looking around the room, looking at the walls in the lightbulb-light.

–It’s just, there was such a softness to it.

–To which?

–Your mouth.

And then the sound of her mother in the drive outside. She stopped holding her hands and started holding her shoulders, rubbing her arms up and down.

–Miss Gedeo, you ever feel unwell, you come here. Don’t come here besides.

She turned away and picked up her bag and I knew she was crying.

Father had come in. He looked at miss Gedeo, looked at me, and I shrugged: Cures. I made myself some tea while he took her outside, and avoided my face in the black of the kitchen window.