Samantha Hunt - Mr. Splitfoot

We pass a deer-crossing sign. The deer we’ve seen on this walk, and we’ve seen a lot of deer, are never standing near the deer-crossing signs.

“Hey, Ruth. You know how abducted people fall in love with their kidnappers?” The ends of Ruth’s hair sway with her walk, sweep of a pendulum. “Well,” I tell her. “Yup.”

We buy lunch from the shelves of the Mount and Morris Grocery Store. It hasn’t much to recommend it: a package of Ritz, some cheese, and a box of shelf milk. We sit out back on the curb beside a trash barrel that has leaked congealed yellow grease. There’s a sign in the window. FREE WIFE. We eat in silence. I mean, FREE WIFI. We always eat in silence. The sun is setting, and a few cars pull into the lot during our meal, quick stop for beer or bread. The shoppers think we turn tricks and do drugs. They think they are not like us. My baby makes them shudder. Maybe I’ll be the worst mother ever. Five of the shoppers won’t meet my gaze. Four of them want to help. One with a tattoo, “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep,” pulls a five-dollar bill from his pocket and gives it to me.

We’d be able to travel a lot faster if all these mountains weren’t in the way. Up we go. Down we go. Up to the sky again. This road follows a ridge through state land, and once we reach the top, the going is easier in the clouds. I expect bear or moose. I look for deer-crossing signs. There’s a closed ranger’s station and four or five shuttered hunting camps. No large mammals appear. Around one turn in the road, the sun is setting. It’s cold and it looks like we’ll be sleeping outside tonight. But then around the next turn, we see a large building up ahead, a series of stone shards cut into the cliff like the Wicked Witch’s castle. Its lights are coming on. There are diamond-shaped windows, some with blue glass, some with gold. We hear singing inside. Hymns, I think, until I recognize South Pacific. “I’m Gonna to Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair” and, as we get closer, “Willkommen” from Cabaret. Ruth rings the bell.

“Yes?” A voice greets us over the intercom.

Ruth says nothing. “Hi. It’s Cora.”

“I’ll send someone down.”

Ruth exhales in measured, forced breaths.

A nun opens the door.

“Good evening.” A squat toadstool in very comfortable shoes and suntan support hose. “I’m Sister Leah.” Dressed in a habit. Every synthetic fiber is made to stretch and shape. “What brings you here so late?”

“We were walking by.”

“You walked all the way up here? Hiking? A pregnant hiker? My.”

“Yes.”

“Come in.” Sister Leah pokes a finger under her wimple. She has papery cheeks. “Come in.” She takes the measure of my belly. The downy fur of her chin trembles. We have a seat on a bench in the foyer. It’s draped with two acrylic afghans. The inside of the building is as plain as the exterior is magnificent. “One moment, please. I need to notify Sister Kate of your arrival.” Leah disappears down a hallway.

I smell food and cooking gas. There’s a crucifix made of yellow pine. There’s beige paint, a vase of fake flowers on a wall pedestal, and a series of portraits, Mother after Mother. The song becomes unmistakable, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Two windows focus our attention on the dizzying view and its command, Look outside yourself, but I’m too tired to look anywhere. I lift my legs onto the bench, going back to back with Ruth. She stiffens so I can rest through “Happy Talk” and “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” a local favorite. “Some Enchanted Evening” gets interrupted. The convent falls silent except for the occasional door opening and closing down unseen hallways. Sister Leah does not return. No one shows up. It’s warm and dry. I have a hundred one-second dreams in between the roll and jerk of my sleeping neck. I wipe drool from my lips. Ruth stands, walks the hall twice. I lie down. She studies a piece of framed calligraphy. “To set the mind on flesh is death.” I roll my lumpy body to one hip. Ruth covers me with an afghan. She lies down on the bench across the hallway.

A bell tolls one, two, three times, followed by a rush of footsteps, people walking above. Then Sister Leah’s head. “Are you coming?”

“Where?”

“The bells for Compline. Come.”

“Compline?”

“Service.” The bells keep ringing. “Come.”

I can’t serve anyone right now. I look out the windows, rub my face awake. The nun leads us down another beige hallway set with heavy wooden chairs. She totters, side to side. I totter behind. The hallway darkens up to a door. Nuns pass into a chapel. The crucifix over the altar is carved from dark wood showing Jesus’s ribs and thick nails driven between the bones of his feet. On either side of the chapel, two pews are filled with robed monks. The nuns and a few laypeople find seats in the small nave facing the altar. It’s dark, smells of wax. Sister Leah passes me a breviary for Ruth and me to share. “Don’t try to sing along. And don’t talk when it’s done. Great Silence begins immediately afterward.”

“‘The Lord Almighty grant us a peaceful night and a perfect end.’” The monks sing in voices high as girls’, even two who require oxygen tanks. The girls don’t sing. The monks are round under their robes, minds clearly not set on flesh. They chant the Psalms in alternating voices, one team to the other, varying the amounts of silence between verses. The calculus of these sacraments could take a lifetime to decode back to twenty-six letters. “‘Render evil to those who spy on me.’” Brown Jesus is almost naked, slender and long, tortured. The wound carved into his side looks like a vagina.

On the road a few days back, a woman stopped me. “Your first?”

“Yes.”

“It’s awful. They cut you open right up the middle.” She gestured to her crotch. “You get what I’m saying?” Her finger points in my face. “They are going to use scissors on your twat. Got me?”

The monks sing, “‘Do I eat the flesh of bulls and drink the blood of goats?’”

She was the fourth mother to tell me about her episiotomy. A collection of scars. Or maybe it’s a hazing ritual. If Jesus is to move us beyond the flesh, why make him sexy? Because beyond the flesh is not the point.

The monks sing, “‘When you see thieves, you make them your friends.’”

I’m shushed by Sister Leah as we file out of the chapel, though I hadn’t said anything. No one speaks — the Great Silence — but I hear plenty: footsteps, clothing, carpeting, a cough. Upstairs the nun opens a door labeled ST. TITUS. One twin bed, a reading chair, a lamp, and a crucifix. Only one bed. Ruth doesn’t seem to care and no talking allowed. So. She takes a seat in the chair and shuts her eyes. She’s got no curiosity or cause for concern. I’m not like that. I can’t sleep until I try the lamp’s switch, look out the window, feel the weave of the blanket. I have to make sure I’m safe, make sure for the baby.

There are words in my throat like bits of gravel, questions about the monks and the strange songs they sing. Out of habit I almost loose these words on Ruth but stop myself. In the Great Silence, I hear my body like being underwater with the sounds of my heart, my breath, the baby’s rhythm. Silence is anything but, at least at first. If Ruth does this every day, I can do it for one night. I switch off the light and lie down, but it’s hard to sleep now that it would be easy. The baby moves a heel or elbow across my stomach.

Someone passes down the hallway. Night ticks by. Quiet as rocks that grow in layers and erode in too much sound. Does Ruth mind the silence? Is her brain still filled with words and thoughts that agitate her? Or did she give up all that when she gave up talking? In the air between us, her breath seems solid, a pill I can swallow and feel what it is to be Ruth, to be silent.