The Ground is Wet and I am Light

The ground is wet and I am light and the holes I’ve dug and filled line the edge of the yard. Inside, I scrub the soil out from under my fingernails. A garden requires patience, so I wait.

The dog scratches at the door and whines. I do not let the dog into the backyard because of the holes I’ve dug and filled, so I pull a leash from the coat rack and we go for a walk. The dog is happy and I smile at her simple joy. She jumps and darts and sniffs.

We walk our usual route: out of the neighborhood, past the strip mall with the bakery and the hardware store, down to the streetlight, and then back into the neighborhood on the other side of the park. The park is usually empty but today there are children playing on the jungle gym. I get closer and see that a group of little boys are surrounding a girl. She’s yelling to let her go. One of the boys kisses her on the lips and laughs and runs away. Another does the same. When they notice me, they release the girl and sprint out of the park, cackling and yelling. The girl runs after them. They disappear onto a street that descends further into the neighborhood.

The sun is setting and the sky is getting wet.

When we get back to the house, the dog is tired and panting. She splays out on the tile and cools. It is summer and the monsoons are soaking the earth. It will not rain tonight but it might rain tomorrow and if it does I will have to be sure that the water does not pull up the dirt in the holes I’ve dug and filled. That it does not wash away all that I’ve planted.

When you lived here with me, you talked about planting a garden. You wanted to live off the land, to eat food grown in season. To dry your own herbs and spices and jar your own vegetables and pickle things other than just cucumbers. I wanted to learn how to bake bread. My mother always baked her own bread. She had a sourdough starter that was three generations old. It died when we moved to Arizona. After my father left and never returned, all she needed was to drink water and stay cool and sleep and rise and repeat.

Before I go to bed, I make sure all the doors and windows are locked. I look out into the yard and feel good about the holes I dug and the dirt I filled them with. All that I’ve planted. The bed is soft and I am light. I hardly remember the weight of your body next to mine. The dog curls up at the foot of the bed and I fall asleep to the sound of leaves brushing against the window.

In the morning there is lightning and I wake to the crying of the dog, pacing back and forth in front of the door to the yard, afraid of thunder.

I worry about the holes I’ve dug, but when I go outside to check on them, I notice a little sapling, a little sprout out of the one in the far end of the yard.

You grow fast, I say.

You were always so adaptable.

The yard is seeping and the dog is panting. Birds fly down from wherever they usually hide and pick at the puddles, all the little bugs that live in the ground. Everything flooding up. Sweet oils from the creosote fill the air. You used to pick creosote twigs and hide them in the sun visor of my car. So it will always smell like rain, you told me. Then, when the sun glared into my eyes, I’d pull the visor down and be showered with dried, cracking leaves.

But today your leaves are springing.

You are coming home.

I prepare by cleaning the house. I dust every shelf and scrub at the grout between the tile with a toothbrush. Perhaps it is yours. I will have to buy you a new one. I wash all the sheets and make the bed, folding up a blanket at the foot. You were always so much better at cleaning. Every room you touched glowed.

In the yard, your leaves are reaching up, heaven-bound.

That night, I see your glimmer above me, ringing like bells. Just for a second and it is gone. You’ve always been an accumulation of smaller pieces. You are coming back in fractions.

When we first met, you came over every night. We were building a mobile. You cut profiles of elk, of trees, of birds I couldn’t identify, of sprigs of shrubs, of foxes, of more trees, of humans with walking sticks and bags slumped over their shoulders—all cut out of cardboard so meticulously with exacto-knives, and you painted them white. You painted them white and hung them from sticks you also painted white. You hung them with white string. You said white is a reflection of everything. It is light.

We hung it in the corner of the living room. I drug a lamp from the bedroom and pointed it at the mobile. You lightly tapped the twigs so they spun in opposite rotations. The shadows grew and vibrated on the wall—a forest of absences.

You said, we’re home.

That was when I first loved you.

I check on you in the yard. You’re growing. I pour a ring of diatomaceous earth around you, to keep the bugs away. I want to protect you. I look around at all the other holes I’ve dug and filled—all the little graves, unsprouted. All that I’ve planted. I wonder what gives life to some and not to others. I wonder how much you will grow.

When my father died, they wrapped his bones in black silk. A man in a suit came to the door and rang the bell. He gave the bundle to my mother.

She said it was heavier than she expected. That she imagined someone would be so light after death—she’d have to keep them from floating away. But in reality, he weighed her arms down. Gravity pulled and pulled.

I helped her dig the holes in the yard and fill them in with dirt. Femur holes and scapula holes and carpal holes and holes for tibias and fibulas. Most importantly, a skull hole. She thought if he would germinate from anywhere it would be his mind.

He always had such great ideas, she said.

She watered them twice a day. Patted the dirt tight. Prayed. Watched from the window of her bedroom. Waited for her husband to return.

This was when we lived somewhere green.

The sky was gray and the earth was dark and my father never grew a sprout.

My mother wept and wept.

Sometimes I wonder if my father did eventually grow, after we left. If he joined the family that lives in our old house. If they brought him into their warmth. If he’s learned to play the piano or has taken up photography or glass etching or oil painting or singing in Latin or simply sitting with his new family by a fireplace and listening to the cracks and hums of the flames.

You come back to me while I am in bed. You are more than ringing, you are shape and form and body. You are bright and I am relieved and our bedroom is filled with your light beaming from over everything. You are floating above me.

My love, I whisper.

You say nothing. Slowly, you dim and darken and you are gone again.

The dog cries.

I do not fall back asleep until the sun starts to rise. My mind wanders with thoughts of your favorite teas and what kinds of things you will eat when you return forever and the ways you will braid your hair and if you’ll ever teach me to sew and what will be different about your touch and if I need to buy you new clothes, if your body has changed now that it’s new, and, as I lie in the dark, I think most about the ways I’ve missed you—in tears and dry heaving and falling asleep everywhere except where I am supposed to.

In the morning, I check on you in the garden. You are growing a bud. Between my fingers, it is strong. When I push on it, it does not give. The rain has let up and the ground is dry. The sun glares in my eyes and in an instant I am tired again.

I visit my mother in her trailer at the far end of the city. I bring the dog and she sticks her head out the window, the breeze flicking her ears up and down.

My mother is getting old and I’m not sure how to take care of her. I bought ingredients to make BLTs for lunch but I have to wash every dish first because everything in the cabinets is dirty. My mother tells me I am too high strung. A little dirt never killed anyone.

When the sandwiches are done, we sit in the small booth in the center of her trailer. Our knees bump into each other. My mother thinks I cannot see her sneak the bacon under the table, that I don’t notice her feeding it to the dog. She pulls her sandwich apart and sucks the mayonnaise off the iceberg lettuce. She eats only the crust of the bread, rotating it in her hands like a squirrel.

So fortunate, she says, so fortunate for your bounty.

She puts her palms together, over her heart.

To have a love grow back. Such a miracle.

She whispers a little prayer and then gets up to throw away all that remains on her plate. She drops the dish in the sink and lies down in her bed at the end of the trailer. She sobs and sobs. I sit next to her on the bed and pet her hair until she is asleep.

That night, I wake to the taste of yellow. Your lips push against mine and I open my eyes to see yours. They are gray though they used to be brown and I knew there would be differences when you came back, but you feel like a stranger. Your weight shifts in the bed. You are next to me and you are warm getting warmer. Your smell is sickly sweet—somewhere between decay and new growth—orange blossoms.

Your hand slides between my legs and your eyes are on my eyes and when I come the whole room fills with light and you curl your body into mine and the last thought I have before drifting off is that your breath smells wet like the earth.

In the morning, you are gone again.

Do you remember when you moved in with me? How you threw away everything that you owned because you said it was all haunted? Everything but an old recipe book from your great grandmother. You said you wanted to start over, to be made new. You wanted me to make you.

We cooked every recipe in that book—for three months we made plum pie, beef stew, white bean chili, chocolate mousse, almond loaf, buttermilk chicken with thyme and rosemary, turkey pot pie, potato salad with green beans and balsamic, sweet buns and buttery-crusted quiches and broccoli soup and loaded baked potatoes and cakes with red jam fillings and our own ice cream—lavender, chocolate, honey, caramel, coffee—dozens upon dozens of meals until we both were fat and tired and so oversaturated in the only thing in this house that was you. You said you wanted to start over. Instead, we dove in.

That first night, when you were gone, after I identified your body and was escorted home in a police car, I opened that book and read each recipe. When I got to the back I saw an old photograph of your great grandmother. You looked just like her. The same perpetual look of someone trying to figure something out.

A man in a suit brought your bones wrapped in black silk. You were heavy, like my father. When I buried you, I took the time to kiss each one of your bones. To beg each part of you to return.

In our bedroom, you tickle my skin with your fingernails. They are dried and cracked, dirt caked under them. Your newly gray eyes collect sleep in the corners. They bag above your cheekbones. You open your mouth to speak and no words come out. Instead, a deep, croaking sound.

The dog howls.

Your eyes widen, you breathe in quickly. You lean yourself into me. You kiss my lips and the skin of yours flake and scrape against mine. You are rough.

I push you off of me. I tell you to stop. Your smell, the smell of the ground and of grief, overwhelms me. I can’t breathe.

You put your hand between my legs and I push you away but you are rooted.

Your weight, like stones like anchors, on top of me and I can’t take a breath. I can’t gasp. I feel you between my legs and I feel you above me and I feel you around me and I feel only you, everywhere, and I wonder for a moment if I am even there anymore, perhaps it is just you now. And then there is a pain. A pain and a pain and a pain and then you are done and gone and I am alone again.

The sky is black and I am weak.

The sky is black and I am weak and the night is long and I hardly sleep for even a moment.

Outside in the sun’s morning glare, your bud bloomed into a deep, bloody mess of pedals. At their tips, there is something sharp like thorns or teeth. The entire thing looks like gnashing gums. I pick each one off, afraid of your bite. Loves me loves me not.

Your stem is strong and I pull at its roots. You resist, clinging to the earth. I look around at all the holes I’ve dug and the dirt I’ve filled them with and realize that you have surrounded me. It gets harder to breathe, like my mouth is filling with dirt and like my throat is filling with dirt and like my nose is filling with dirt and like there are worms sliding around inside of me. The sun is glaring and I am getting heavy. You are holding on. I tug and I tug and I push my fingers into the soil to reach for your roots, to feel your persistence. And then, you give. Just a little. One root at a time I pull and the pulling becomes easier and you come out of the ground in one mass ball of roots and pain and at the very base of the whole thing, cracked open and blooming, is a round, egg-like white bone—your knee.

_______

Leah Newsom holds an MFA from Arizona State University and is the founding editor of Spilled Milk Magazine.