Samantha Hunt - Mr. Splitfoot

Ruth didn’t want to dance with Nat. She shoved him when he got close, playing with him. She pulled me onto her lap and took cover behind my body when he tried to partner up with her. I was getting squished in between them and I loved it. Ruth was only six years older than me, but those six years were the difference between eleven and seventeen, a continent’s worth of distance. Ruth knew stuff.

El watched from the kitchen table, nodding like the mother of us all, pretending she didn’t feel bad doing nothing to look out for her little sister for twelve years. Nat danced and finally Ruth joined him on the linoleum. They started to move like this was the moment they’d practiced for since the dawn of time. I almost had to look away, look away or be ruined, wrecked, unsatisfied forever.

Nat cleaned out my mother’s gutters even though it was freezing. I watched him do the whole thing. Ruth and my mom were in the hall. “It’s not like that, El. It’s not like that between us. He’s my sister,” Ruth said, which must have hurt El, even if she deserved it.

I went through the things in Ruth’s bag, touching holy relics. Soft shirts and pajamas. I held them to my face. A silk purse with cheap gold jewelry inside and all of it brand-new. I stared at her comb, and my heart got seared by what she was. Her toothbrush and a small blue jar of hydrogen peroxide. I swallowed just the tiniest sip. It burned badly, but I knew I’d have her inside me now forever. Ruth was not my mother. I liked my mother fine, but Ruth was like being close to thunder. And then Nat. Lightning.

El cooked hamburgers that night as if we were a family. Things would be different with Ruth around. She’d be my auntie, and my life would be improved by her attentions. She would teach me how to do things El knew nothing about, enjoy music, attract boys. At dinner Ruth said, “So, El,” and she giggled. “I got myself emancipated.” Leaving unsaid that El never took custody of Ruth.

“How? You marry this guy?”—pointing to Nat.

“No. Nat’s too young. Someone else.”

El nodded, had a bite.

Ruth changed the subject. “I’ll tell you something else funny.”

“What?”

“Nat can talk to dead people.”

I started to think maybe Ruth was on drugs. Maybe that was what made her shine.

“What?” El looked at Ruth.

“Just like I said. Nat talks to dead people.”

El scowled. “How do you manage that?”

He smiled at me. Ruth buried her head in her arm on the table, lifting her eyes to El like she was flirting. El raised her burger to her mouth. “You talk to dead people? I’ve got an oceanfront lot in Missouri.”

“I could probably sell it for you.” Nat winked.

“Have you got any dead folks you want him to get in touch with?”

El pushed back from the table. “Sure. Sure.” She wiped her lips with a cloth. “You ever try to talk to our mom?”

Ruth sobered, all the light extinguished. “Our mom?”

“Yeah.”

“No.” Ruth wrinkled. “She’s dead?”

“She passed over a year back. I thought they would have told you.”

“Nope.”

“This is her house. Was her house.”

Ruth thumbed her lips. “Is that right? You inherit it?” Ruth looked around with new eyes. “You saw her after you got out?”

El nodded yes, slowly. “I lived with her. Here.”

“Then why’d she give us up in the first place?”

El dropped both her feet to the floor, exhaling hard. She shifted forward to stare at the ground. “She didn’t give us up, honey. We got taken away.” El raised her fingers to her lips as if she held a cigarette there.

“Why?”

Night chirped. Bodies digested.

“You weren’t, uh”—she made twinkling fingers around Ruth’s face—“born like that. Our mom did that to you.”

“My face?”

El nodded. “She splashed you with bleach, then left you there for a couple hours. You were a baby, and she was a bad drunk. I called the ambulance, they called the cops, and the cops called the State.”

Ruth lifted both hands to her face. “She gave me that?”

El nodded. “Barely missed your eyes.”

“Why?”

El shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

“Come on,” Nat says. “That’s not true. Your mom was CIA, FBI, KGB.”

But Ruth knows the truth when she finally hears it. “And you went back to her when you got out? You went to live with her? Guess that’s why you never came for me.”

El nods. “Where else was I supposed to go? I was eighteen and pregnant.”

“Yeah, I guess you were,” Ruth says. “But you haven’t been eighteen for a long time now.”

I crept downstairs that night to watch them sleep, hiding in the dark with the devotion of a zealot. They weren’t asleep. Nat took a cigarette lighter and kept it burning for a long time. It made their skin glow gold. The flame went out, and he touched the metal part of the lighter to Ruth’s back and arms. Her body tensed and shivered. She slurped as though drooling. He asked, “Is that better, Ru?”

“I feel it.”

When he was done, she thanked him. The room smelled like barbeque, like they had a secret way inside each other down a path no one else would ever know.

Ruth and Nat were gone in the morning, and it took me a long time, a week or two, to get back into my dull life. Took me a month to forgive El for scaring off Ruth.

But now Ruth is here again, fourteen years later, and she’s different. No Nat. No beauty. No power. No shine. Skinny as death and even older. Thirty-one years old around here usually means a mom with a dirty minivan and a bad job. Ruth’s nowhere near that. She’s hollowed out. Miles and miles of hard road. Someone sucked the life from her face and neck. It takes a minute to get my breath and understand that my aunt is back. “Ruth?”

She nods.

“God, you scared me.” I put a hand on my heart to show her. “How’ve you been?” I’ve only met her once, but I’ve wondered where she is so often, picturing her on a map of America in Delaware, Texas, California, Alaska. Here she is. I step forward to hug her, and she hugs me back like she’s forgotten how to and she’s following an instruction manual: open arms, wrap arms around other person, squeeze.

Something I’ve noticed about being pregnant is that scents land differently. Everything smells like old meat or vinegar or blood. But Ruth hugs me and my face is so close to her, resting on her shoulder, in her hair, and immediately I notice it. Ruth has no scent at all. That’s nice.

“El’s going to be happy to see you. I’m so glad you came back. Last time,” I start to explain. “I’m sorry. I know El has a lot of regrets, and I was so sad when you left. But here you are, and it’ll be better this time.” I smile.

She smiles back.

“El’s really going to be happy,” I say again.

But Ruth grabs my arm. She shakes her head no.

“Huh?”

She shakes her head no again.

“You don’t want to see her?”

More nos.

“Why’d you come?”

She points at me, right at my sternum.

“For me?”

Nods of yes.

“What’s going on?”

She points outside. She points to me. She points to her. She points outside. And it dawns on me that there’s something wrong with my aunt Ruth.

“Can’t you talk?”

No. Folds of skin around her eyes tighten like a person in pain, in labor.

“What happened to your voice?”

Ruth looks right at me, and there it is, the solid fact of silence.

She points outside again.

“You want us to leave?”

Yes.

“Where are we going?”

This time she points straight up.

I look up to the ceiling. “Up?”

No.

“North?”

Yes.