Dawn Raffel - In the Year of Long Division

DOGS sniff.

A father shows a son how to see in the blind, in dusk. He teaches a son to shoot, to track, to memorize positions of the planets. “Look up,” a father says. A father says, “Junior.”

Junior says, “Boy.”

A chill seeps in through mitten and flannel, fur, through sacks for the storing of game, through matted, ruined down.

Nose to the quilts, the last-born trembles, snuffles, learning through the skin and from the air. She will master consonants, the hard hearts of words. Her curls will be shorn. “Papa?” she will say. Yearning is inbred. Longing for the missing will be mercilessly easy.

Patience is the mother. The name is assumed. Patience will clench the etched face of a stone, tread stately on the braids of fraying rugs. She will make the most of a morsel.

There will be salves and rags in the pocket of Patience’s apron, an anxious pleat.

There will be a bullet.

BONE, joint, tissue, flounce, dwindling larder — the kitchens throbbed.

“The walls have ears,” a woman said.

The days were clingy. Aprons hung. The windows were strange.

“Mind you,” a woman said.

“I am deep-down to the wrist,” a woman said.

In song and in fever, the women’s voices rose. They were not distinguished. The names were immaterial.

A gobbet on the counter was a live thing.

“Salt it down,” a woman said.

“Scratch a day off,” a woman said.

Ribs could be numbered.

The dogs were retrievers. Fluid stopped a bullet. A woman called for Prudence. No silky, glossy nap, the women said — surely the sons would have grown. “Fetch” was an order. A dog could suck a yolk. Junior was a son. The Third was a son.

The dogs were golden. The weather was something. The men were presumed to be expert in direction.

“Where are they now?” a woman said.

HOPE Hope loomed. Her fingers were cocked. Her nails would scratch. She was not so young, the women said. Was she not theirs, by blood and cycle, sex and will? Her names were carved, inscribed in dust. A rub of an eye, she was, the women said. She snooped. Miss Miss Hope Hope — ingenuous Patience’s — trespassed under the beds.

“Simple,” a woman said.

“Strip off the ears,” a woman said.

Copper was scoured. The Indian kernels were mightily cooked.

The moon was full.

The daughters smelt of tallow and of pointed disobedience. They had broken jars.

The men would have their version.

The power of report might burn in the eyes, the arms might grow past cuffs, the cold raise bumps, and might could the straps might bite, a woman said.

The cider was hazed.

Teeth marked a bullet.

Reunion was long past due.

“HUSH.”

The women bathed a forehead. They swabbed the dull lids of eyes, lips, the sexless neck, the hollow and the rattle of the throat.

Psalms were offered.

The women told stories, beginning with “Once,” beginning with rain, beginning with “In the beginning.”

They slipped off their rings and they stacked them on spikes, the women did. Clocks were set back, according to ordinance. Tapers could burn and burn by a bed.

The light was charged.

A story went about in which a roof had been lifted. “A roof could be lifted,” a woman said.

“Might could,” a woman said.

The walls were weak. The tables were preserved in perpetual chill. The shape of another could have settled in the ticking.

The daughters were swollen.

“Think of the steam,” a woman said.

Coins were warmed in palms for eyes, for the moment when the fluttering ceased.

ROW, tier, palm, branches of the tree of the begotten, rock-walled cities of the named and the dead — boundaries yield.

Mother and Father, the violence of Hope Hope Hope — always they are beckoning.

Always we are yearning to be borne.

WHAT the girl could see that morning were the shining northern lights. She could see her breath, drifting, and the moon, milky. The girl made a bowl with both hands for blowing into. She looked for Venus. Found it. She did not know the time.

The ground beneath her shoe boots had been hard, with hard snow. The girl’s steps were cautious. She was testing, toeing, slipping in inches from land. The river ice was thin and growing thinner. Just before the girl went under, she could hear it crack.

SHE would recall, the girl thought, that the place had had an echo. Tile. People. Someone brushing her hair, damp, back from her face, someone telling her she must take the liquid, which was warm in the glass, and thick. She would remember, too, the taste of something undissolved, and swallowing.

THERE was heat coming up from beneath the dash and the mother’s voice, raised, questioning the girl, the mother asking the girl why she had done such a thing as she had done, the mother driving with the girl past other people’s houses, nothing on the porches, wreaths on the doors, past fencing falling half down from too much weather, silos, nothing, cords of wood, the mother asking the girl, who was nosebleeding into a kerchief, why — yes, why — past beat-up metal boxes for the mail, flagged, rusted shut, or opened, dark inside; split trees, a squirrel in the road, the road, and the girl with her one hand free, drawing and drawing on the last wet left on the window: wavy shapeless shapes.

Then the mother was telling the girl some something, some story taking place when the mother was the age the girl was now, or close, and the girl just closed her eyes and made a sound, and the mother said, “Look,” said, “maybe we had better off go somewhere.”

“Like where?” the girl said.

“For the day,” the mother said.

And the girl said, “Right, what else?” She said, “I need another rag here.”

“Pinch,” the mother said.

“I can’t,” the girl said.

“Try again,” the mother said. “Keep an eye out for a station.”

“I’m thirsty,” the girl said.

“Don’t push your luck,” the mother said.

“Let me tell you a story,” the mother said.

The girl smeared the window with a sleeve, took a look out the sideview mirror. She tried to see through dried-on salt. “Back there,” the girl said.

“It was a hole,” the mother said. “In the earth. I was raised in this place.”

“You missed it,” the girl said.

“Didn’t you know? She was buried in the earth alive,” the mother said.

“Who was?” the girl said.

The mother said, “Eggs.”

THE booth was missing stuffing. There were chips in the dishes. The smell the girl smelled was of coffee and frying.

The girl had asked a question.

“Knock on wood,” the mother said. “How’s your nose?”

“In one piece,” the girl said.

“Eat your toast, then,” the mother said.

The girl said to tell her was it blood or by marriage. She watched the mother eat.

“I don’t like this,” the girl said.

The mother said, “Then leave it on your plate.”

SHE would recall, the girl thought, at the bottom of the drink, thinking that the light had played a trick.

“BUT it was only shoulder-high,” the girl was saying. She was standing in the doorway doing buttons.

“Not so,” the mother said. “And it was hollow — that was the trouble.”

“Push,” the girl said.

“I thought you had a hat,” the mother said. “Coming in. I could have sworn it.”

THE preserve where the mother and the girl were walking was dense with trees.

Breathing hurt.

There was underfoot crunching the girl could hear, and the small sounds of forage.

There was this for miles.

“She burned her flesh,” the mother said. “On the rope, which was frayed.”