The Lava in My Bones (15 page)

My hatred of the school increased daily. I hated Estelle more than anyone. I hated her face. I hated her hair. But most of all, I hated her dresses. I went insane on the days she got dolled up and drifted about in a cloud of gauze and lace, the hard angles of her elbows and knees camouflaged by a translucent sheen that softened every movement, making even a raised third finger seem elegant. She didn't walk but floated, fairy-like. From the distance she was a shimmering blur, a faint smudge in the air. Her friends started to emulate her. Her sister Esther got some new customers.

Mother said to me, “Why don't you dress nice, like your friends I saw on the street?”

“They're not my friends.”

Walking to the harbour, I discovered a dainty pink belt stuck between two rocks on the ground. I stamped on it, then picked it up and tried to tear it with my hands.

In the cafeteria the next day, Estelle scurried up and attempted to insert a mud-drenched sponge in the small of my back, but I spun around and screamed at her, “You stupid bitch. I may be dirty, but at least I'm not wearing a moronic fairy-dress. I'd rather choke on my own puke than look like you!” I pushed her against the wall, but she was thin, slipped out of my grasp, and ran away weeping.

I had to spend that afternoon at the principal's office. “Everybody's mean to me,” I complained. “I didn't ask to be the way I am.”

I noticed Estelle waiting in the parking lot. I stopped right before her and we stood face to face on the flat cement plain as if no one existed in the world but us.

“What's with you?” I asked. “What did I ever do to you, anyway?”

Estelle's face was blank. She opened her mouth. I never realized she had such large gaps between her teeth. “My sister talks about people like you. She has nothing else to talk about.” She closed her mouth, licked her lips. “When guys admire me, they're admiring her 'cause we're so much alike. She's happy as hell, now that things are going shitty for you. And that's made her dresses even prettier. She's started embroidering flowers into her designs.” Her voice became gentle. “When I'm mean, it's to make you change. I'm offering you a kindness. Someone has to
be at the bottom and someone at the top, and you've chosen the bottom.”

I looked into her large oval eyes that were the same blue as mine. Oddly, for a moment, I felt sorry for Estelle but didn't know why. Her lip quivered. She wanted to embrace me. And I wanted to hold her. Imagine our two bodies pressed together as we wept. She had the same fear as I, because her lips curled abruptly; she spat on the ground, snorted, “Glue piglet,” and marched across the parking lot.

On my way home I removed my armour of plastic, Styrofoam, and shit; if Mother saw me she'd start speaking in tongues and never stop. The constant buzzing had already completely unhinged her.

When I opened the door, Mother was sitting with her face in her hands. A fax lay on the kitchen table. I snatched it and read, Sam, that you'd again returned to the hospital with a rock in your throat. This time you swallowed it and almost died. You'd been committed to the York Psychiatric Institute.

“He's in an insane asylum,” Mother said. “I spoke with his psychiatrist on the phone. They don't know how long he'll have to stay there. But he's safe now. He can't hurt himself in such a place. The good news is that it's not my or your father's fault. They always blame the parents, but the doctor said a person he met in Switzerland, probably some floozy, inflamed his brain and caused him to eat rocks.”

Sam, you astonished me. Somebody you met caused this? You who are solitary were affected by someone else? That woman must be possessed of such force and power like that of the wind
that blows or the liquids that churn through my body. Potent forces exist in the universe and you'd been touched by one of them. But there was more to it than this. You'd read my last letter. You want to help me but don't know how. If you smash rock against rock, something has to give, so you went insane.

At that moment, the distant buzzing became louder. I noticed my honey was flowing faster. Two drops fell from my bent elbow and landed on the tablecloth.

When Father entered the kitchen, Mother shoved the note in his face and yelled, “See! I did nothing to Sam. I should've done more to keep him here safe and sound. Now he's in the hospital because someone, some slutty bitch in Europe, has ruined him. And you're the one who always said he should go on dates!”

Father was silent for only an instant. “If me son had a girl, I say good for 'im. Good for 'im.”

“He's completely shut down,” Mother murmured tearfully. “He won't speak or open his mouth but just looks out the window.”

Are you thinking about me, Sam? Are you broken because you see it was wrong to break our bond? You can still find some way to help me, Sam. I believe it!

The buzzing crescendoed.

After dinner Mother took my hand and dragged me up the winding path leading to the highest viewpoint on the tallest cliff, where the Virgin Mary stands with her hands outstretched, her lips shut, her pupil-less eyes staring across the sea. Mother only comes to this spot during crises. Mary thrusts into the sky, and here the heavens were the closest we could get to them.

Yet even here, we could hear the distant buzzing. Mother said, “Just stand here, sweetie,” then turned and spoke into the wind. “God, strengthen me! Solidify me! I bring my daughter with me now so she can see the truth and not be as difficult as Sam was.” She dropped my hand, totally forgetting me as she spoke alone to her Lord. “God, I know I cling to You to compensate for my faults, the desperation and incompleteness at my centre that has made me shrill and hysterical, but what can I do with this rage that's always within me? So many people in this town are losers. My husband ignores me and loves a stupid mermaid. What can I do about these forces that oppress? Sam is suffering; he eats rocks, and my dear daughter sweats honey. It's all disastrous and now”—she pointed at the distant droning—“Satan's minions are waiting on our doorstep.”

I concentrated on a crack in the earth by my feet. Sam, you always told me that to be outside the influence of Mother and her God, I should never raise my head. Whether the atmosphere was blue, black, or grey didn't matter. The Earth was an ever-spinning merry-go-round—and it was there that the true source of life lies. Long ago I decided that this brittle, contradiction-filled woman, who can be so difficult to love, was not my real mother but the stepmother in a fairy tale. I believe my true mother lives in the sky! One day, I will lift my head and see her. She'll be threading long, golden strings of solidified honey, surrounded by open jars and honey pots that are the same colour as her skin; her hair will flow in undulating waves over her neck and shoulders; her whole body will drip—mouth, breast, chin, knees—constantly flowing and being replenished by some
hidden spring. As she spins her spinning wheel, the skin on her face will change hue like the shifting shades on a burning candle. She will call me by my name. I will step forward and, when we embrace, our skins will merge. So different she'll be from this harsh woman beating her hands together beside me.

The wind stopped blowing. Mother took me in her arms and held me for a good while. “Everything will be fine.” She kissed me on the cheek. Then she stepped away and clenched her fists so tightly that the veins on her forearm bulged. “We'll do something to make things right. God said so. We won't screw up like with Sam. This time, we'll watch.”

That evening she made Father install a lock on the outside of my bedroom door. He shrugged, asked, “What's the point?” but obeyed. Mother explained, “It's for you, Sue, if you start having problems. Sam fled at night, and we don't want you to end up in his situation.” As she touched the new lock with one hand, she had a rare moment of insight. “Indeed, Sue, my religion didn't make me who I am. I made my religion who I am.”

The next day the buzzing was so overpowering, the fish wouldn't come near shore, and the men had to go farther out to sea in their boats. At school the buzzing made the fluorescent lights flicker, rattled the windows, vibrated my chair, and caused chalk dust to rise and fill the room with a pink fog. Estelle's hairdo trembled on her head like a blonde jelly salad. Students glanced toward the windows and shifted in their chairs. Several
times Mr Schmidt had to erase what he'd written on the board. “Excuse me,” he muttered.

My honey flow was especially heavy, yet no one tried to stick anything on me, distracted as they were by the deafening drone. The sound confused people and sapped their energy. I felt less visible.

As usual the final school bell rang at three-thirty. When I stepped out of the building, the buzzing abruptly ceased. Everyone on the street lifted their heads. The world hung suspended in an eerie silence. Girls clutched books like shields against their chests. A group of boys stood still as a basketball bounced once, twice, struck the curb, and scuttled away.

For the first time in weeks, we heard bushes rustle in the wind. A bird chirped. From a window, a transistor radio. The sky was extremely clear. However, the stillness did not feel like stasis. Nothing was resolved. The air seemed tense and forcibly contained like a breath held in.

I breathed quickly, my chest rising and falling. My honey flow was so rapid that drops hung in rows along my pant hems and the ends of my sleeves; with each step I took, honey splattered onto the sidewalk. I reached the empty field near my parents' house. I stepped into the open space. When I was exactly half-way across, suddenly the deafening buzzing started up like a stereo kicked on at full-blast. I looked up and saw that the sky was filled with a hundred gyrating inkblots. Each blot seemed to contain hordes of buzzing bees. I stood stock-still as the blots came together at the centre of the sky to form a giant axe-like shape. Its edges rippled, as if seen through water. The axe drifted slowly northward,
inched slightly to the east. The buzz-roar steadily crescendoed, then quickly stopped. In an uncanny silence, when it seemed the whole world was listening, the shape began to fall down toward the Earth, toward the empty plain, toward me standing in the field's centre like a bull's eye.

I screamed and ran toward the southern part of the field, but the form was falling there; I charged east, but saw the shape was falling there too. The axe was falling everywhere at once.

I searched the open field for a place to hide. There were no ditches, ruts, or gopher holes, just solid crabgrass-covered ground and a few scraggly anthills. Could I burrow underground? I scratched at the stony soil and foolishly pulled up rocks from the earth. The shadow on the earth grew darker. Gasping, I turned round to see the underside of the vast, black shape descending toward me. I cried out every formula I knew to save me. “Help, Mr Schmidt, help! Mother Mary, protect me! Sam, rescue me! Holy Spirit fill me! Ten plus ten equals twenty!” I screamed to every God that existed, but in the end could only fall backwards to the earth.

The back of my skull struck a protruding stone, my vision blurred, my eyelids closed. When I opened my eyes, for one split-second I saw a horrific, black cloud of writhing insects with glistening, armoured torsos, jointed pelvises, legs clawing like flailing multi-jointed fingers, silver wings twisting like twirling blades of cutlery, and jet-black stingers pointed straight down like diviner's rods.

The buzzing blanket of eyes, legs, and pelvises fell upon me and covered my body completely as my heart beat wildly like a
fist in a cage and honey flowed in torrents along all the surface of my skin. The bees swarmed along my arms, legs, neck, face; they slid under my T-shirt, flowed beneath the elastic in my training bra, streamed up through the bottom of my pants, along my legs, and crossed under the elasticized line on my panties. They lapped and leapt, snorted, buzzed, and spit.

Thump-thump,
went my heartbeat.
Thump-thump
went my heart. I shall listen to my heart and it shall save me. I shall listen to my heart and I'll be free.

Yet as the bees' black-armoured bodies frenetically writhed and shook, as they clambered in and out of my ears, leapt from my upper lip to my lower, crawled in scrabbling masses along my scalp and through the forest of my hair, lapping at the honey tears that flowed in rivulets down my cheeks, I realized I was not harmed. The bees had not touched me with their stingers. I only felt a million tongues licking the pores of my skin and creating a warmth in my navel, a tingling in the crevice behind my ears, a slight tickling on the pale flesh of my inner thigh, and a pleasant scratch-scratching about the follicles on my scalp. My breathing became regular, and though still frightened, I thought, soon they'll be finished; any moment now, they'll leave.