Noy Holland - The Spectacle of the Body

Let the sun so top the trees, it sits on a boy’s head like a cap he has long since lost the thought of, thinking, Pitchfork, Moon Pie, tarpaulin, Lipton’s —a boy to count and count and count again the worn heads of the silver coins singing in his pockets.

It may be that you know him, knowing enough at all events to conjure a name to call him by when the road from out of the hollow climbs to widen in the shut-down, dead heart of Oneida. Or maybe it is not Oneida. Maybe you know some farther town his daddy drove through in a two-dollar truck to find what who could guess at, what would only ever anyway be but a name Orbit guessed at, spelled out, this boy — the names with his momma’s knitting needle scrawled across his sister’s skin they could get the clothes pushed off of, Cissie’s back bared and arms, her legs, her girl’s skin given to rash and welt — so that riding back in the back of the truck with their momma’s hair pulled back to them, a boy could dig down far enough for the names of the towns to welt enough for a careful tongue — for his boy’s tongue — to follow.

It takes so little to please me.

I think of Orbit in the back of the truck thinking, Slow , I think to his daddy, but saying only to his sister, Cissie, faster , saying, Make it go faster —as though she, as though a person might so surely will the body as to will the letters of the towns gone through to sink from the unsunned white of her skin too long to Orbit’s mind lasting — with the towns coming on, and dusk coming on, and with the saltiness if his sister’s skin, the first faint taste of blood.

I think of them in the bed of the truck with the spare wheels and empty cans, the crap their daddy took with them that leaves a left boy thinking — leaves Orbit, thinking on the stone-kicked road that splits the long hollow how small, how truly stowable, a boy like him might prove to be to be among the what all a man with an eye to head for town might have picked and taken.

In time, his daddy will come. They will mend in time the broken place by now so long gone by lost dogs, mule deer, and so on, so long by now worked through that the greased hairs even of the whistle pigs fly from the fence curled back to a wire-toothed snarl.

All day, the porch light burns, all night, and of late by now, room by room, in the windowed rooms the lights of the house come up also, so there is light throughout also — a tall house, storied — light enough that, driving by, you are apt to let your window down to listen for dancing, a glimmer of voices, some bit coming across the field of some familiar song.

But, quick now. Drive on. They have already seen you passing.

As soon as Momma goes to sleep, I go back to Momma’s room to light the light back burning. Momma dreams. The wind creaks the pin oak tree grown up in our yard at night and you can hear the dogs at night and sometimes someone’s car goes by unlighted, with its engine off if I am in the garden.

My bike is in the garden. Nights when the wind and the moon come up, its spoked wheels turn.

I am growing tadpoles.

There are three-hundred and sixty-five different kinds of tadpoles. I keep a trough filled up for them to grow up in the garden.

Cissie sits out in the garden. Soup pots, she sits with, and wooden spoons, lipsticks, purses, the lipped ends of cigarettes snubbed out in the corner drawer, the drawer — she takes even it to the garden, the scarves in it and soft-skinned gloves that, by and by, Bingo will find and bury again in the garden. Cissie drags our beds to the garden, her bed and my bed, so at night I sleep under Momma’s bed and sit by day at the foot of her bed to see myself what the day will bring for Cissie to take to the garden.

She wears one hat one day and leaves it out the next day to come inside for another.

Some are feathered.

On some of them, the brims are wide the wind bends up.

The snubbed ends of the cigarettes Momma keeps in her corner drawer, Cissie takes in her corner drawer to smoke on in our garden. But they are still our momma’s. I sat to Momma, “Nome.”

I know Momma sees out. But I say, “Nome.”

I say it is not the pearly crown our momma bought to marry in when Cissie crowns the fence with it, it winded in the garden where the hung veil blows.

Plus also dresses — jewely, gowny things hanging in the pin oak tree Cissie picks from in the morning, picking for days the black cape hung with the black flapping threads Momma used to dance in to dance in. But she does not dance like Momma. When Cissie starts some loopy jig for a boy with half a head for it to chance a leg to look at, even our birding Bingo stops to watch like me instead.

But there is also Momma to watch. Cissie puts the music on and Momma lifts the bedsheets up for foot room and room enough for knees to twitch and rocking hips left gownless in the drifty light the lifted sheet has let in. I do not say, Did not . I do not say, Nome .

I pull away her sheets from her, from her feet turned out at the foot of her bed — but she does not say, Orbit . Cissie does not say, Orbit .

The filly hangs from the pin oak tree with still the show of Momma’s gowns until there is just the one gown to pick from in the morning. I go out in the morning. Some strange bird sings. I go out with goldenrod poked into my buttonholes to walk beneath the trees with her, the bright sun high by then, with only still the filly hung to ornament to pin oak tree Cissie picked clean in the morning.

It is a yellow morning.

The hems of the drapes in Momma’s room blow where we can see outside the house across our yard.

Cissie says, “Say it’s when you want to sleep and I’m your bad dream, see.”

Cissie’s hands are hard and dry and running down my neck I dream. She says, “Hold still, Orbit.”

She says, “Say I am the shadow that you walk on down the road at night, but it is yet so dark at night, you will not think to think of me. You will not remember me. But there will be some dream. Say I am in the garden. Say I am some old yellow sleep come climbing up the stairs at night to walk you to the garden. Come. I walk you to the garden.”

I can smell the rain clouds building out above our lake, the long, chuffing thunder come swift to drive us home. I think how we rode home. Sometimes Cissie’s skirt rose up and sometimes Cissie’s hair rose up and caught between my teeth and in my mouth where I had breathed it. Still no rain fell. Cissie had said when the rain would fall, then there would be no nests of the bones the kingbirds make, then there would be no sister, calling from a rocking skiff to swim to her across the lake. I swam to her to: Orbit .

We do not turn back.

We go on walking until we cannot see the garden, until I cannot see the lean-to showing blue between the creaking trees I have not shown to Cissie.

The bird we saw in the garden comes scrawing out its strange song it sings for us to follow, so we follow, seeing the bird wait in the trees when we stop to lift the heavy gown to leave the weight of fallen leaves and needled dust we walk through, that Momma’s gown gathers up, dragging, as we walk. We walk to a ledge where a brook runs through, where the sun drops sudden through the leaves of the trees like something we have asked for, something we would shy away to make a noise to ask for.

Cissie lies down. When Cissie lies down, through the pearly crown’s fishnet veil, I can see the bird shadow sweep across her face.

“I want to fall asleep so long the kingfishers steal my hair,” she says.

“My hair is so long,” she says.

Cissie spreads her hair beside her for a pillow for my head. She makes a bed of Momma’s gown along her I can lie on. Now is no bird nor shadow now, no mark where we have named the trees to see to find our way by — no tailing dog, no broken fence, no way for us to know now if Momma howls nor sings.