Joy Williams - Breaking and Entering

Their motions seemed slow and insubstantial to her, as though they had been interchanged with wavering holographs and as she watched, a shiver moved slowly like a hand with outstretched fingers up her skull. Everything would not be all right, not all right at all. She had lived in this house like a child, like a daughter, for years. And now, wrapped in her towel, watching, she felt like a thief, but what was it she had stolen? She felt like a thief in a large coat, a coat with many pockets. But what was it that was missing from others, exactly, that she had so artlessly taken? Oh, but of course it was their love, and their trust, misplaced. In her. She strained forward a little, watching them eat. They seemed a circle, but there was her place, not set, but her place, empty. They were her family. Doris and Calvin were like Lucile and Lamon, but of course they were not, and Willie was like a twin to her, but he was not. He was not her brother, he was her lover, her first and only lover …

She didn’t belong to any of them anymore. She belonged to something else. She watched them, her mind turning slowly, falling. Willie was thin, as thin as she, they were both tall and skinny, as though the life they led that others did not see or know was wearing them away, the real life feeding on the merely visible one, the real life being secretive and inward and hidden. Their real life was exhilarating and artful and treacherous. It was invisible, but it was growing, growing away from them, and they could not be left behind, they would not be. They would have to follow it, leave with it. They would be driven out, they would not be fine, they would be led now by this life that others could see, and what kind of life was that?

Liberty’s mind turned and turned, hearing herself again, her own voice saying Don’t give yourself away, don’t give yourself away . The night sounds of insects were beginning, gently pulling in the dark.

Willie walked from the house toward her. He was not wearing swimming trunks but black trousers and a T-shirt that was very white. She pulled the towel more tightly around her shoulders. He was her first and last and only lover, she thought, and felt a thrill of sadness.

“I’ve got a job starting tomorrow,” Willie said. “Roofing. Tar and gravel. It’s going to be miserable.” He seemed pleased with himself. “In this heat it’s going to be murder. I’ll be working with four boys from Blossum.”

Blossum was the black part of town. Mercury lived there, all the blacks did. Blossum had a sewer winding through it that once had been a creek. The blacks didn’t want to make a fuss about it. The town was proud of the fine way they got along with their blacks, they were good blacks. On occasion, someone would get upset over there and kill some people, but they were usually his own people. They were his to kill was more or less the opinion when something like this happened. The boys who made good in Blossum played professional basketball. Some of the investments they made went right back onto the streets there. Anything you wanted you could find in Blossum. If you knew what you wanted, you could find it there. You could buy a machine gun or a child. And it had some of the finest gospel singing in the state. “Bread of Heaven,” sung almost every Wednesday night at The Church of the God of Prophecy on Marigold Street, had long been known to cause even the merciless to weep.

“I’ve got to tell you something,” Liberty said.

Don’t give yourself away the voice still said to her. Don’t give yourself away , which meant everything and nothing in a comforting and hopeless way. Liberty said the other words, the words that were not the real words, without even thinking she was about to.

“I saw a pelican in the garden today, one of the maimed ones, one that’s had part of its bill sawed off. It was so close … it was … I can’t get it out of my mind.”

“Birds are thoughts,” Willie said.

“Oh,” Liberty exclaimed, hurt. “Don’t be so indifferent. ‘Birds are thoughts.’ They’re not thoughts.”

“Why, sure they are,” Willie said. “You didn’t think that birds were all they were.”

His words, his presence, so familiar and yet so distant, had a peculiar effect on her. She thought that perhaps she had been the one stolen, after all.

“It was a real thing,” she said sadly.

“That’s a very old notion, you can’t blame it on me,” Willie said. “There’s a second part too which follows logically enough. If birds are thoughts, the mind is a birdcage.” He shook his head and made twittering sounds. Then he said, “You shouldn’t see such birds, Liberty. Poor Liberty.”

“Why would people do anything like that, why would they … I know you don’t know, it’s just I can’t imagine how they could do something like that, and do it over and over again.”

“They hate,” Willie said. “They’re good haters. They want to finish up things before they’re finished up.”

“Do you ever think about the future?” Liberty asked.

“How can you think about it?”

“Imagine it then.”

“Did you ever kiss a picture?” Willie asked. “Like a photograph or something in a magazine?”

“I guess,” Liberty said.

“The future’s like that. You’d be crazy to think it was real.”

“That’s not all craziness,” Liberty said. “I mean, it’s more deliberate. You let yourself go a little.” She was embarrassed about the photograph. She couldn’t even remember doing it exactly. But it was the sort of thing she might do.

“I’m ready for something though,” Willie said. “I’m ready.”

The summer night pulled and whined around them with its sounds and Liberty looked at him, thinking, why he knows this, he knows what there is next for us.

“I’m going to have a baby,” she said.

He said nothing. She fixed her eyes on his shirt, white as an egg in the darkness. Nothing. She pushed the towel from her shoulders and slipped into the water. It was cooler now, and dark. Her own voice said you’ve given yourself away … She let her head slide back and let the water hold her. Her body, floating, felt draped as though over a stone, and she felt peaceful, as those, she imagined, about to be sacrificed, felt peaceful. She floated, looking upward, a little breathless as though she had climbed many, many steps, and the terrible but peaceful image came to her of her beating heart being seized from her breast, being plucked like a carp from a pond, wriggling and rising into the night, becoming a star.

In the house, Doris and Calvin were listening to hymns on the record player. Calvin was dozing. Somewhere, in his dream, a toilet was overflowing. Money, he thought. Half awake, he rattled his newspaper.

And He walks with me,

And He talks with me,

And He tells me I am his own …

“I’ve always worried about this hymn,” Doris said. “It sounds so flirtatious.”

“Good night,” Liberty called to them from the hall.

“Good night,” Calvin said hoarsely. He cleared his throat. “Good night.”

Doris blew her a kiss on her fingertips.

Willie was waiting for her in her bedroom. She opened the door and he said in the dark, “We’re so happy. We’ll never be this happy again.” She turned the light on because she didn’t want to hear the words he was saying in the dark. The light fell between them. “We’ll never be this happy again,” Willie said, “that’s what you don’t understand.”

“I don’t.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I don’t want to.”

Liberty took off her bathing suit and got into bed, raising the sheets to her throat. Willie went to her bureau, pulled a red scarf from the drawer and draped it over the little lampshade by her bed.