May Twenty-First, 1908
The door snicked shut behind me, and then the hoarse, blood-curdling screams rose up from the depths of the wooden floor, washing over my toes and penetrating the soles of my feet, up and up, vibrating my bones like a dull, perpetual saw, splintering my tendons and making my teeth want to click together so that I had to drop the bouquet of wild roses, and clamp my hands over my ears in bewilderment. The wind had been sultry, the hour a profound midnight cerulean that turns back that curious dial in the human imagination that crunches time into bright, brittle numerics. Quentin roses roses the wing backed kimono arching forward nose touching Eden would have said that we had fallen out of time and into into the rabbit hole of Harvard they were talking about sending him away away to Jackson to basket weavers smiling twiddling their toes and thumbs thumbs and toes and Benjy… I waded through the sound until I found his face, each step feeling like I wading through thick molasses can sound be felt of course it can la-tee-da take another biscuit my darling isn't this droll you always had the best jokes except of course when you're a whore
Small hands, child hands really, pressed up against the hairless, dropsical cheeks, pressing lightly, insistently while the sound continued to roll out, thick and pulsing purple with sorrow. Whore like nigger women do in the pasture the ditches the dark woods hot hidden furious in the dark woods why won't you bring him inside? The night had been alive with the sighs of the tree's wind-born chameleon children, changing the color of the breeze, gumming up the streets and whispering against the walls of the house, crunching life underfoot with a cacophonous chorus lifted up to the sky, and I thought I had felt sick so sick clammy dull red heat stifling like blankets trapping your legs in the midst of a bad dream blistering searing stuffy air scorching the lungs breathe in breathe out something move inside and I knew there was no escape and somehow he knew he could smell it before I even walked in the door, could see the invisible fingerprints, the undeniable proof of furtive touches and hidden furious in the dark woods he pulled away from my searching grasp and swung at me, pushing, pulling, up the stairs, moaning and bellowing, in an animal-like frenzy, his sweet pale cornflower blues contorted in confusion and his boyish cheeks stained with the slow progress of his hot and furious tears. I opened my mouth whore twiddling their thumbs and toes in the pasture but no sound came out so I had to try again.
Benjy Benjy your Caddy is here-
It came out like a croak and he hollered insistent and terrible, refusing to be denied, pushing and pulling against the bathroom door and he knew, he could smell it, smell it inside me and I Benjy knew it when Damuddy died he cried for those country girls women must do things for women reasons and the twilight honeysuckle felt my belly head, head swelling, growing fat and round and hot and I could hear them coming to see the white rabbit see what was the matter, what the commotion was all about, and they would stare with their black, empty slate eyes, cold hard, chipped like the cup at the tea party sip a cup move down how many lumps would you like none for me please I had quite enough from the fall quite droll really and I knew I had to break the skin just the skin it'd be so easy away before they found me.
Out the screaming rust-cracked back door, a fistful of dress over the splinter-sunken pig fence and I was breathing on the sun speckled apple o'er Eden free, my bare feet pounding the dusty, hard-packed earth, the wildly rich smell of wet soil.
The twilight shadows had almost completely twitched away by the time he found me, and he stood upon the bank, mussing up his hair the way he does when he finally solves the absurdum of the human experience a puzzle. For a moment there was only silence while the mayflies buzzed, the crickets chirped a substance you could feel on the flesh then the honeysuckle got mixed in it and the cool water, capturing the gray setting light, eddying around my ears and making my skirt billow out and around like a bloated belly balloon in an imaginary breeze.
At last my tongue winked inward into the cogs meshing together hot and furious like nigger women and sound spilled over my cracked lips, my voice sounding muffled, bubbly, and far away to my ears. Is Benjy still crying?
I don't know yes…I don't know…
I listened to the grass stalks quivering, sighing their quiet, unheard song as Quentin lowered himself onto their backs. The time slurred on, unmarked by the dirty clickings of tiny greased wheels, and it was a swollen minute three days two hours a fortnight before Quentin said we're all mad down here how many lumps was it you said get out of that water are you crazy.
I pretended that I couldn't hear, imagined what it would be like if one day I woke up as a slippery silver ring do you take this woman no she has been tainted I object overruled jury please read your verdict to the fish, sliding through the slip streams of the world, untouched tainted by human flesh, just cold, chipped scales bright and dazzling would make someone dizzy just to look at that whore don't get near her do you know what she did I heard my face. And no one would know me, and no one would need me and I could be under the hot spot light light the light must weigh ten pounds I can feel it on my arms neck back pushing pressing stretching my flesh and no matter how hard I try to blink it's just the stifling light suffocating me and then I open my eyes and see it's only him holding me down and I'm sweating hot and humid and free.
Get out now.
Quentin's voice, tiny suds compared to the rhythm of the light captured around my face, and for a moment I imagined bubbles swimming upwards, titillating drunkenly from his lips he could be a fish he could come too Quentin would make a good fish and I can't help the mirthless, longing laugh from tip-toeing between the lines of my teeth and pulling apart my lips. He only looks at me as the water sucks and gurgles out of my clothes is the white rabbit in there and the ground is firm and whole and real again underneath me but I couldn't look him in the apple of my eye.
Why don't you wring it out do you want to catch cold.
Yes.
That won't stop it you know.
I know...
Silence.
Did you know he is in the navy he's crossed all the oceans in the world, some of them twice…he told me about Cairo and Milan, and Beijing, and Japan where the women crush their feet to try to make them smaller isn't that just awful what's so wrong with big feet I wonder who's to say what's the right size foot anyways and the markets in Cairo are operated by spices instead of money I thought that was kind of silly, but it must smell terrific I wish I could just see the jewels on the bodices of the harem women in Turkey as big as an apple in a grown man's fist he said-
Do you love him.
I…no…no.
Cold and slippery like my wedlock thought fish my hand closed around his. His was so much smaller but hard, warm and deliberate, the purpose flowing through his tendons like seed of Adam's apple bite lips bursting juice blood through his veins, and I knew they knew they opened their eyes and saw that they were naked and were ashamed he would be a wonderful man and woman God found them hiding in the dark woods the pasture ditches weaving baskets twiddling their thumbs and toes someday.
Did he make you then he made you do it made you let him he was stronger than you and tomorrow I'll kill him I swear I will father needn't know until after wedlock succulent bursting dawning anew do your breathing and I was afraid and then you and I nobody need ever know we can take my school money you and me and we can run hide in the woods and be ashamed-
No.
Caddy but you hate him don't you don't you Caddy.
I took his hand and then Eve handed Adam the apple and said how many lumps darling on the third day or was it the fifth he rested it over my pulsing lifeblood, feeling the warmth from his dry hands his hands so young and yet so old he will see so much pain so much hurt and the white rabbit won't even tell him the way palm seeping through my saturated blouse into my bones.
Poor Quentin.
Breathe in breathe out and the jabberwocky will show you the way to Neverland cast your lots start your engines cross your heart and hope to die stick a-
Yes I hate him, I guess I would die for him I've already died for him and I die for him over and over again each time he feeds the jabberwocky and sups from the gilded cup of the breast and the buzzing that never stops and the spot light that weighs and pulls the light the light is so heavy when he visits me. His hand, still pressed firmly against my collar bone, letting the beat the horses sound the alarms the woman has been tainted of my inner clock toil its way up his arm.
You've never done that have you.
What done what.
That what I have what I did.
Yes yes lots of time with lots of girls. His chin, defiant, quivering, his eyes flush open over the wings of the kimono unreadable, and we both knew he was a fish lying.
Then he was clutching me, pulling at my damp blouse, grasping my back with those deliberate, destined hands, and he began to cry into the curve of my neck, his face fitting perfectly, and I just let him taint me and now father will send me away who claims this woman not I said the white rabbit not I said the hatter not I said the Dalton Ames and the little red hen said-
Poor Quentin.
He opened his knife and held the steel blade against my throat while we lay on the backs of the green sighing children, and I looked past his head into the low gray sky.
Do you remember the day Damuddy died when you sat down in the water in your drawers.
Yes.
He turned the point of the cool edge against the hollow of my throat and I listened to his shallow breathing, could feel his warm sorrow spilling forth and seeping through my blouse.
It won't take but a second just a second then I can do mine I can do mine then.
All right can you do yours by yourself.
Yes the blade's long enough Benjy's in bed by now.
Yes.
It won't take but a second I'll try not to hurt the empty spaces between the apple and the sky the kimono and the leg you.
All right.
Will you close your eyes.
I closed them and I felt the wings of the silver fish blade cold and hard and dreamt of me and him as fish slipping twinkling dazzling through sun broached light captured along the banks the wind whispering sighing through the speckled green of the mid-day shadows the bubbles cool and laughing because we escaped because we were found hiding in the dark woods the pasture ditches weaving baskets twiddling our thumbs and toes but God rested on the seventh day, not the third or the fifth, and we were discovered before we could be free.