Mr. Splitfoot (3 page)

When the Father’s done, he asks, “Ruth? You ready?” Once a week, as a senior student in his school, she’s allowed to teach the other children about birds.

Ruth straightens her dress. “Thank you.” In a quiet voice she tells the others, “This week, you might be interested in the Red-Eyed Vireo.” She flips through her
Peterson
Field Guide,
a present from the Father last Christmas, her only present and a generous one, as most books are not allowed at Love of Christ! “These birds build cup-shaped nests in the forks of trees and fall victim to brood parasitism at the hands of the cowbird. Does anyone know what that means?”

No volunteers.

“That’s when cowbirds slip their eggs into the vireo’s nest so they won’t have to raise their own babies.” Ruth moves through mating habits, habitat, diet, and migration patterns. “The good news is vireos spend their winters in South America.”

After class, more chores. The Father retires to his private quarters, bolting his door. Rumors say he’s got his liquor, an Internet connection, and the only phone in the house in there.

Outside the barn there’s a plastic playhouse partially melted by vandals with a roofing torch. The Father keeps it around as a metaphor. Ruth thinks of her melted face, her endangered soul.

Nat and Ruth wash clothes in the laundry room. She handles undershirts; he pairs the piles of socks. Alone with Nat, a perfect place can exist, their own terrarium. “Nat.” She lifts a clean shirt. He smiles. Her nose detects the alkylbenzene sulfonate surfactant in the laundry soap. She twitches. A sneeze mounts in her lower meatus. She swallows it.

They carry the damp bedclothes out to the drying line, the light of the long afternoon sun. In the yard behind the house, they hang blankets and sheets to dry. Nat makes a hidden place for them in the linens, away from the other kids. Ruth sweeps some dried leaves into a nest. He grabs her arm. “Pretend you’re my wife. Lie underneath me.”

She lies down. He takes his place on top of her. Two flat, straight, clothed bodies. Nat pins her to the earth, and Ruth doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even brush a hard stem or stick from her neck. They feel one another through their clothes, all the systems of their bodies—circulatory, respiratory, others whose names they can’t remember just then. They don’t kiss or grope. They’re sisters. Some time passes, some birds overhead. Nat stands, dust his knees, and returns to hanging laundry.

“Wait,” Ruth says. “Pretend I’m your wife still, but pretend I cheated on you with your boss. You have to punish me.”

“All right.”

Nat lashes her to the clothing line with imagined ropes. He lifts her dress over her head. He beats her bare back with a real stripped branch, gently at first. “Jezebel. Judas.” When he strikes, rainbows are released from her skin. Three, four, five. She feels it. He lets in the air. Nine, ten lashes until finally she says, “That’s good. Thanks.”

Six damp sheets make a house. The afternoon sun warms the small room. If this were a Father-approved Christian teen movie,
Chastity and Adam
or
In the Sheaves,
this would be the moment where the young sweethearts feel God’s love burning into them and the righteousness of their lives, imagining their wedding day. But Nat and Ruth—having just finished a tidy whipping—are not a Christian movie. “Sinners,” he says.

“Jesus doesn’t mind. He’s like us. He is us.”

“You’re Jesus?”

“Sure. And you. Your mom. Telephone poles, flowers.”

“Fried chicken?”

“Sure.”

They return to the house more twisted into one another than they’d been the day before.

After chores, the Mother, and thus dinner, cannot be found. This is not unusual.

The Father doles out three dollars and sixty-five cents per child. They pile into the pickup. He drives to town. The Father says, “Heavenly Deity, we are grateful for these gifts we are about to receive.” The Father waits while the children get supper at Hook’s Diner. Hamburgers cost two twenty-five. The waitresses scowl at the non-tipping orphans. The other diners stare at the children’s clothing, wondering if they are involved with a historical reenactment museum.

Nat and Ruth pool their funds for an open-faced roast turkey sandwich with gravy. Roberta eats a slice of apple pie, pocketing the rest of her cash so she’s got some savings. It’s risky. Things get stolen in the home. Underwear, food, toothbrushes, money, of course, photos of strangers. Many of these stolen items end up in Nat’s dresser drawers.

The Father storms through room check. “I will plow your fallow ground! I will plant the seeds of understanding! I will cut off the ugly head of self-centeredness in you like a venomous viper in a baby’s crib. Draw into a quiet shell and obey!” Spit flies. The Father crushes his fists together, wondering what Trojan den of iniquity his wife disappeared into today. He imagines her dancing on tabletops. He falls down to his knees and back up again, amazing feats of strength powered by jealousy. “Now let me hear you sing praises to God!” which confuses a number of the children. Draw into a quiet shell or sing? The Father passes out state-mandated anti-psychotics to some, Adderall to most. The Father starts a hymn. “And if the devil doesn’t like it, he can sit on a tack!” He claps his hands while Ruth, Nat, and the other children join in. A blessed day at Love of Christ! comes to an end.

I
NDEMNITY IS A SUM PAID
from A to B by way of compensation for a particular loss suffered by B. From eight-thirty until nine in the morning, I skim through claims. Three house fires. Seven no-fault car accidents. A flood. One act of vandalism. Who is responsible? That depends. I gulp cooling coffee. I don’t handle business claims or life insurance. I make phone calls. After lunch I have an inspection in the field. I check the battery on my camera. By nine-thirty I need a break. I fire up my computer and run a search on Lord’s wife, Janine. Nothing new. No obituary or anything. A couple of old records she broke in high school track and a picture from when she worked in real estate. Two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Hair on her head. There’s nothing special about Lord’s wife.

I click a link to a house in Budapest where the carpeting cost four hundred seven dollars a square foot. My coworker Monique comes by. I show her the carpeting. “What’s the big deal?” she asks, squeezing the bridge of her nose. Monique settles into her cubicle, sniffling mucus down her throat. “I’m oozing like a slug.” From a blister pack, Monique pops a capsule brewed with such lovely stuff as guaifenesin, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, sodium carboxymethyl, and magnesium stearate. A little something to get the chemical day started.

I compare prices on a couple pair of shoes, break off the corner of a nut-’n’-strawberry-flavored fruit breakfast bar. Overhead a fluorescent flickers. I order the more expensive pair and experience a feeling of euphoria. Having made the correct shoe choice, I now understand the nature of mystery in the universe. I now belong to a tribe of shod people. Waves of enthusiasm and moral righteousness inflate me straight up to heaven.

I click to check the weather. I read some news about Hollywood. The actor we thought was gay is gay, and this warms me, being part of a human crisis, tucked in with the rest of you who also knew he was gay, and Look! We were right. I search for a rice pudding recipe, my favorite. I cultivate a public persona based on my love of rice pudding. The girls in my college dormitory knew me as such, and now the people I work with share the same truth. I no longer wrestle with the challenges of identity. I am the woman who likes rice pudding, who wears fantastic shoes.

At ten I visit the ladies’ room, hoping it will be empty. It’s not. Denise is there. Denise handles life insurance, all the fraud and fun. Denise self-tans. She dabs her lipstick and glares at me. “Cora. Kind of rhymes with whore.” She smiles at herself in the mirror, tossing the brown paper towel with her purple lip impression into the trash before leaving. The door shuts.

“Denise,” I mutter. “Kind of rhymes with fucking twat.”

Back at my computer, I e-mail Kendra in sales: “Denise eats donkey dick.” I e-mail Joe in security: “Just saw Denise Clint stealing toilet paper from the ladies’ room. Again.”

Her boyfriend, Mike the claims inspector, flirts with me. B.F.D. We had lunch once, and he spent the whole time talking about her. He told me Denise likes it rough, as if that were something really special, as if she’s an angel come down from heaven because she likes her heinie paddled. Mike went starry-eyed thinking about slapping her orange thighs. “She likes it rough? Who doesn’t?” I asked. “Who, for Pete’s sake, doesn’t?”

I do a search for my name. Same as yesterday. Some flight attendant who got fired for throwing hot tea on a passenger; the mug shot of a woman arrested for obstructing justice; some teenage Mormon girl’s blog; an adjunct professor of environmental science; then me, insurance adjuster, one-time Daisy girl, one-time honor student, dean’s list, et cetera. I live far from the top of the search engine results. This is my cross to bear.

If I plotted a map of every person named Cora Sykes on planet Earth, what would the map look like? What secret history would be revealed? Maybe better not to know.

I check the headlines. I check the traffic. I check on Lord’s wife, Janine, again. No change, she’s still not dead according to the Internet. I leave for lunch.

Outside a bunch of starlings sit on a wire above the parking lot. I italicize them with my eyes. Copy and paste them right down the phone line. My computer and I spend a lot of time together. Like a dog and its master, I’m starting to look like it, act like it. I ask Google, “Why do I suck?” or “Should I break up with Lord?” I think I can edit/undo things with my mind, say, a cup of spilled coffee or an unintended pregnancy.

Lord is my boyfriend. Weird name, I know. Lord is married to Janine. Lord has romantic delusions about things like girls, hunting, marriage, honor, poetry, the ocean, America, facial hair. He used to be a Marine. Janine, Marine. I could write a poem. He once left a wild turkey on my doorstep, imagining I’d truss it up and serve it to him for dinner. I covered it with a black garbage bag and dragged it out to the curb. Lord grew a mustache to fool me into thinking he’s actually a man. Like a real, real man, as in a human male who takes care of someone besides himself. I am the child of a single mom. I don’t believe in real men. I also don’t believe in the lottery or God. They are stories we tell ourselves at night when we’re scared. I’m not scared of anything anymore. I know no one else is going to take care of me.

Lord’s in my driveway when I get home from work.

“You want to go camping tonight?”

“Is your wife coming?” I regret that I cannot stop myself from asking these types of questions.

He grips the wheel. “You want to go or not?”

I check with the sky. “All right,” I tell him. “All right.”

We drive over to the Finger Lakes. We fill his packs with food, clothes, beers, and start our hike as the sun sets. All the while Lord quizzes me about birdcalls, bird species.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know, Lord. I just don’t know.”

“Pileated.” His disappointment reeks. “Who doesn’t know the pileated woodpecker? Mercy. Were you raised by wolves?”

I shrug.

“No,” he says. “Even a wolf would know the pileated woodpecker.”

I was raised by Eleanor, my mom. She’s not a wolf, but she was pregnant, homeless, and alone at eighteen, so almost a wolf. She still works at least two jobs. She never trusted babysitters so I raised myself. Maybe I’m the wolf.

We hike a mile. It gets dark. Lord’s wearing a headlight. I follow along behind, stumbling some. I use the screen of my smartphone to see until the battery goes dead. We build a fire in the woods and eat stew dinner from a can with hunks of cheddar cheese melted on top. Then a few bites from a chocolate bar. Lord belches. “‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. O no. It is an ever-fixed—’”

“How’d you learn that?” I’ve got to tamp him down sometimes.

He coughs. Spits. “I read books. Ever heard of ’em?” Lord’s got a hateful streak here in the forest. At home too. But I’m trying to improve myself so I listen to him.

“Some.”

“What’s that mean, computer girl? What kind of books do you read?”

It takes me a second to say it. Not because I don’t know who I am but because Lord throws off a lot of interference. “I like ghost stories.”

“Ghost stories suck.”

“Why?”

“They aren’t real.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” He drinks his beer.

“All stories are ghost stories,” I tell him.

“Is that right?”

“Yup.” He’s making fun of me. I don’t care. “You want to hear one?”

“A ghost story?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine.”

“OK. Ready?”

“Sure.”

“Sure. Here we go.” But then I don’t start yet. I want it quiet, real scary and silent, before I say anything. Let Lord listen to the woods. OK. OK. OK. “You know West Lane, the twisty road that heads out to the highway?”