Jac Jemc - A Different Bed Every Time

Louie dragged the crayons she was given across the paper tablecloth as she began to hum. Her father’s eyes leaned toward what she was drawing: a horse like the silver one she’d seen that afternoon. Soon the humming formed into words, like her father’s botched lyrics rewound. She sang their song slowly and mournfully. She was already to the second verse when her grandmother hushed her grandfather and nodded to Louie, who continued to draw as her voice grew. She knew she had their attention, but she thought if she looked up the fear might erase her voice. Her father watched her hands. Louie’s voice was soft, too small to silence a room, but it filled their booth and spilled over just a little bit to the tables beside. She finished like it was nothing. Her grandparents’ eyes brimmed. Their food arrived and everyone ate in silence.

It was Louie’s father who finally spoke, after their plates were cleared. He lit a cigarette. “If I might take the liberty to say it, your Chandra’s voice bent around corners better’n any slide guitar’s song. I remember one afternoon when she was pregnant with Lou, we were sittin’ in our kitchen and she started hummin’, soft, all edges she kept tight to.

“Through the window, her voice carried. We’d raised the storm glass so the breeze could skate in underneath. We sat at the table, drops of water gathering on our juice glasses.

“I remember she was singin’ ’bout stallions, but it was that voice that galloped at the first thunder crack. The rain started slow, sped up as her song did.

“Sometimes I wasn’t sure the sounds she was makin’ anyone else’d call singin’. It was more like talkin’, but there was this clarity to it that made me cool all over.

“I don’t know where she found those words. She’d come to me to learn earlier that year: saddles, bridles, gaits. She wanted it, so she learned quick. Now she was singin’ of the horses like she’d been born to’m.

“I was afraid to move. I didn’t want to spook’er into silence. The sound was risin’ out of her like heat. The rain was pourin’, bouncin’ off the windowsill onto our bare arms.

“Her body was heavy then and as she sang she grew more and more relaxed. Her legs splayed around Lou, still inside of her and ’bout ready to come out. Her shoulders dropped. Only her head shook ever so slowly as those notes came out.

“And I remember, all of a sudden, I just couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take how she could make me change just like that. Right away, I just got so sad and I told her to stop. Her eyes opened after her voice quit. She didn’t ask any questions. We just sat and listened to what was left.”

They were all quiet for a long time again. Everyone sipped their coffee.

“I think I need to leave Lou here with you for a while.”

Louie looked up at her father. She’d known as soon as he started talking about her mama, it wouldn’t be long. He could never stick around after he started thinking about her. Even if he stayed in the same place, he checked out until he knew her memory had cleared. Her grandparents nodded. Louie could tell they were torn. They were happy to have the last little bit of their daughter, but they were also thinking, “We were right; we knew he couldn’t handle her.” Everyone gathered their belongings and headed to the street. Louie and her grandmother walked slowly, peeking into shop windows. Her father and grandfather walked ahead a ways, talking quietly. While she looked at a dollhouse, full of its tiny perfections, she heard an engine start and looked back to see her father pull away. Neither waved. Louie certainly didn’t cry.

Her grandmother took her hand. “What do you say we walk on home?”

Louie nodded.

On that last day, on the long walk back to the farmhouse, she wondered if it wasn’t just the fact that she was made out of a lot of mind and he was a lot of world. She hummed a little as she scuffed her shoes, kicking rocks. She thought about how much more quickly she could move with a horse beneath her; she wondered when she would get to learn.

“You tell me,” Buzzard whispers in my ear. Buzzard and I made a baby, but that baby ain’t anything like we’d ever expected. Think of a doll the size of a boy. Think of a mannequin plucked from the children’s section: vague and featureless. Buzzard and I are small and soft, malleable and hand-powered. Where had this blank and stiff being come from?

“Buzzard,” I say, “you better pony up the cash to get this boy to the doctor. I don’t know how to care for a thing like this.”

Buzzard’s eyes sweat rhinestones as he stares at me. “We’ll love him,” Buzzard says, raising his hand and gesturing to the boy, making a toast to the con man of his sadness.

“Snap out of it, Buzzard!” I say. “I’m gonna need your help here. You can’t be glazed and spilling for all eternity. You can’t let your head circle round and round. You gotta land.” I slap him hard and he finally focuses.

The doll-child is hard to read — he makes no sound and moves not a muscle. It is hard to know if the doll-child is even alive. If he is living, he is an invalid, and he must be lonely inside himself.

Buzzard stutters around the room, watching the doll-child. I sneer and chase my own tail, trying to think what to do. I swaddle the doll-child in several of my tulle dresses. The child is already at least three times my size. I’m starving, but my needs aren’t the thing to think of anymore.

I look at Buzzard, but he’s not looking at anything. Then I look at the doll-child and think, “The first thing we’ll need is something to call him by.” He has a head of fine black hair all curling around itself. I look deep into the child’s eyes and wonder if there’s anything in them. I wonder where the key is to this iron box. I wonder when everything that he’s made of will well up and surprise us all. Finally, I say his name like I’m saying “thank you.”

Things don’t get easier. We call the doll-child Bluebird. When I try to talk to him, my mouth tangles like rosebushes. The thickness of my tongue dances slow, like pushing stones. I feel deaf and late. Bluebird lies listless. I never hear him laugh; his focus, control, stillness are constant. Even his breathing is just a measured ripple. I enter his room, burnt and swinging. I trumpet and crumple, trying to get a rise from him. I am collapsing-tired on the sidelines of him. He is daytime television. He is silly profanity. He is a white gardenia that blooms too long, brown on the edges and sweet in an uninvited way.

I ask my mother what I need to do, and she says his needs should attack me like a bear. When I smell him, I change him. I flush with the effort of rolling water and soap down his body. I grow used to the sound of the old sand through the hourglass and his silent refusal to sleep. I read him stories of countesses and counts dressed in rich, blue velvet. My mother visits and stares as she watches me care for him, declining her turn to speak. Buzzard does just what he said he’d do: loves him. And that’s about it.

I tell myself over and over that I don’t mind all that I give up for Bluebird and wonder, with my weak brain, if the Lord is sarcastic. Bluebird grows bigger, his skin stretches over new bones, the growing pains pulling him beautiful and awkward.

He smiles like an anchorman for a while, and I wonder what’s better: his blank slate or this horror.

I try to rouse him, but his fatigue is spotless. I try to drag him through the small knot of the doorway, out into the world. I gasp nervously when people ask about him. I seek advice in private, and everyone has a different thing to say. To let him ghost if that’s the stage he’s in. To try and light him like a cigarette. To pop my own laughter outside his door to lure him out.