Jeff Jackson: Mira Corpora

She cuts both oranges into fat slices and takes a bite. I stuff an entire wedge in my mouth and slurp it down. It’s tart but juicy.

“Not bad,” she says. “Where’d you get them?”

“They gave them to me across the street.”

“Enjoy them,” she says. “You’re never going over there again.”

“Why not?”

My mother narrows her pupils and my blood chills. It’s clear that she’s contemplating throwing her glass of gin in my face. She raises her hand, but only takes another slice of orange.

“Because the man who lives there is a big fucking asshole,” my mother says. Her slate gray eyes keep me in their grip. “He’s a sex pervert. He just got out of prison and he’ll probably be arrested again soon.”

My mind races with this new information. All I can say is “okay.” I try to figure out whether the girl is the man’s daughter, or his niece, or something else entirely. I can’t decide if her expression held any clues. Before I only imagined her life in that window, but now a whole frame crashes into place around it. Maybe the girl wants to escape and doesn’t know how. As I take another bite, the fruit tastes different.

My mother turns back to her book of puzzles and hovers over a clue. I retrain my gaze on the girl’s window. We both reach for slices of orange and absently consume them, bite by bite. Neither of us speaks a word. There’s only the measured sound of our breathing. My mother tries out several letters, then sighs and erases them. The sun sinks low and I have to squint to see anything through the glare. It doesn’t matter because the black curtains remain closed. Soon the china plate is empty. A sweet and acid odor lingers. I ball the loose orange rinds into a roughly round shape. Something lodges itself under my nails and I carefully study those last flecks of iridescent pulp.

The house across the street is empty. The moon spills a faint light across its front lawn. The night before the man left town, I saw the girl sprinting across this stretch of grass. She was wearing a pale nightgown with a dark stain. She ran swiftly and silently past the orange trees and toward the woods. Then she seemed to vanish. I can’t stop thinking about her.

I lie in my darkened bedroom and stare out the window, fine-tuning my own plans to run away. This helps to keep my mind off the pain. It hurts every time I move. I’m lying on my stomach and can’t see how serious the injury is, but I can feel the blistered skin. Somewhere between my shoulder blades there’s a burn the shape of a clothing iron.

My mother enters the room with a jar of salve. She sits on the mattress and applies some to my bare back. It stings, so I grit my teeth and bury my face in the pillow. The wobbly swirl of her fingertips is a pretty good indication that she’s still shit-faced.

“Sometimes I think you ruin my things on purpose,” she says. “You have to learn how to do things for yourself. What are you going to do when I’m not around?”

There’s no point in answering, so I don’t.

She unrolls some gauze and lays it over the wound. She keeps adding layers, seemingly unsure how many are required. Her fingers poke and prod the sore while trying to fix tape to the edges. Once the bandage is secure, she turns on the bedside lamp to better examine her handiwork.

My mother starts to sob. She buries her face in her hands. Her entire body quakes. Wracking sounds. Uncontrollable. Normally I’d let the emotional storm blow over, but after a few minutes I reach out and rest my hand on her shoulder.

She slaps at me. “You little shit!” she shrieks. “Don’t touch me!” Her eyes are stretched wide and her teeth bared.

She stomps down the stairs. I remain in bed with eyes shut tight, not daring to stir. I map her movements downstairs through the unsteady clomp of her steps. It’s a radio play of stumbling sounds and muttered curses. She rustles from room to room, trying to remember her latest hiding place for the liquor. Rattling cabinets, unsticking drawers, scuffling across the wooden floor. Finally the jingling of a glass bottle and a loud belch.

My mother eventually lurches back up the staircase. The long pauses between steps are punctuated by the sound of swishing liquid. Her shadow briefly eclipses my doorway as she steers herself toward the master bedroom. Then there’s a loud thud, shaking the frame of the house. The familiar sound of her limp body hitting the ground. There are no further noises. She must be out cold.

I ease myself up from the bed. From the closet, I pull out the bag where I’ve packed my clothes, the edges padded with wads of bills that I’ve siphoned off my mother. Through my window, the empty house across the street gives off a haunted glow. The curtains have been stripped from the windows and a bald light bulb burns in a hallway somewhere, dimly illuminating the remaining nothingness.

There are a few things left to pack, including my cassettes of favorite songs taped off the radio. One cassette is still lodged in my walkman. I slip on the earphones and press play. My head floods with the sound of blown-out amps, drilling drums, and the faintest hint of a woozy melody. It gives me a dose of courage.

Still something is missing. I venture into the hallway and spot my mother’s feet sticking out from her bedroom. Her body is sprawled in a heap across the entrance, so I cautiously thread my steps through her arms and legs. It only takes me a second to find her nightgown, which is balled atop the dresser. It’s ruined with the imprint of a hot iron where I got lost in a daydream and let it sizzle into the fabric.

I slip the nightgown over my head. It fits surprisingly well. I inspect myself in the mirror. The unfamiliar reflection is an echo of the ghostly girl who lived across the street. It feels as if I’ve tapped into some of her mysterious spirit.

I grab my bag and ease down the staircase. The creak of each step feels like an earthquake, the recoil of the wood louder than any aftershock. Behind me, my mother murmurs a series of primordial groans. She starts to slur out my name. I bound down the last steps and hurtle out the front door.

I’m running across the lawn. I peer over my shoulder and spot the hunched silhouette of my mother at the upstairs window. I try to imagine the scene from her point of view, looking down at the pale specter in the nightgown streaking through the yard. Instinctively, I head for the woods at the end of the block. Tonight the sanctuary of trees resembles nothing more than an immense and yawning darkness.

I pull up the folds of the nightgown as I run. It feels light and flowing. The wind rushes up and blows against my legs, ballooning the fabric around me. I’m almost there. I can feel myself becoming swallowed by the darkness. I can feel the grass blades licking the soles of my feet. With every step, I’m waiting to disappear.

(12 years old)

“Suddenly he was saying under his breath, ‘We have a second home where everything we do is innocent.’”

— Robert Musil

I STALL AT THE EDGE OF THE CLEARING. FROM the shadow of the forest, I survey the scene. Plastic tents are ringed in the middle of a meadow. Along the perimeter, hammocks are strung between trees. The camp is mostly empty. Two girls race through the grass, waving lit sparklers. A couple of boys wrapped in wool blankets sit around a smoldering fire. Thin wisps of smoke rise in irregular puffs. I can’t believe I’m finally here.

I’d heard stories about a tribe of teenagers who set up their own society in a remote part of the woods. A kid claimed to know the way and for fifty bucks scrawled a map on the back of an old Chinese take-out menu. I hitched rides along logging roads, hiked through overgrown paths, climbed steadily higher into the mountains. It’s hard to remember exactly how I got here. And now that I’ve arrived, I’m not sure what to expect. I keep adjusting the pack on my shoulders. I wad the map into a tight ball. As I venture into the meadow, my entire body tingles.