Four Times Blessed, page 21
“Happy to see me?” He smiles down. He’s very pleased with himself.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“What’s with your brother?”
“I don’t know, he’s been getting weirder ever since your uncle got ahold of him. No offense.”
“None taken.” My family is weird.
“So, who’s the next livestock you plan to kill? I hope it’s a cow. I miss beef.”
My mouth pops open. Then closed. I have a mouthful of air.
I groan. Hide my face.
“At least they didn’t put you in the stocks.”
“Those stocks on the green aren’t real, you know. They’re a historically accurate reproduction,” I tell him miserably.
“Are they now?”
“Yes.”
“That’s too bad. I was planning on stuffing Hale in them later.”
I laugh, which is terrible.
“I would understand perfectly if a flock of chickens murdered me in my sleep tonight. And then cooked me on a spit.”
Because that’s what I feel like is happening right now. Maybe the chicken spirits have already started their plan of vengeance.
“I can always sleep with you. I’ll murder those chickens so bad they’d wish it was you doing it.”
“Um, that’s ok. My zizi would hear you.” The music’s started again, but all we really do is adjust so we can hear each other over it.
“She can hear that good?”
“Oh, yeah. She’s part bat.”
He’s not convinced.
“At some point, humans and bats had the same common ancestor, so whatever was used to make bats bats and humans humans came from the same critter. And my theory is, that whatever was used to make bat hearing got passed down to her, also. So yes. She really is part bat.”
“And what part are you, little Crus?”
“I don’t know. Hopefully not chicken.” At that point, I trip on my own two feet again. Which is awesome. I don’t know how I was ever able to place in figure skating. The other girls must have been awful.
Lium takes the opportunity to tip me into a nearby circle of dancers. I’m short of breath when the song ends. That last bit of running around was fun, actually. I forget what we were talking about. I’m about to tell Lium I really enjoyed the dance.
“Come eat dessert, people!” yells my zizi.
The musicians go running. We go sit on a windowsill. Even though their maws reach almost to the ceiling, their old lady lips fall low. Sills severe and blackened with mold. I heave myself far enough back so it’s touching my bare legs and not my shorts. I lean back against the screen, hoping the boys nailed it in good this spring.
It smells so nice. Dust and nighttime leaves.
“Sometimes I wish this whole island was just mine,” I sigh.
“What would you do with it, beautiful?” Lium plays along.
“Nothing. I’d live on it, all by myself. I’d be a crazy hermit, and you could come visit me and you’d find me running around all over the place. Fishing and napping like an old man. Would you like that?”
“I would,” he tells me. He puts an arm across my waist and rests against the window’s side. We stay like that for a while. Later, when Eleni and Cassie bounce up, people are clearing out. I say goodbye go upstairs with the girls.
I can’t sleep. I sit up, not even opening my eyes, and pad out onto the back porch.
It’s quiet and cool, and when I lay down the wood smells good. I guess I fall asleep, because I have to wake up to scratch the hundred mosquito bites I now have.
I hear people nearby, talking quietly in the clear night. I go still, straining to hear if it’s the people from the other side of the island come to kidnap me.
What can I say?
I fall into muscle memory. At the academy, all academics had to be deemed satisfactory in stealth. Sometimes, we did field simulations where we had to move around campus without getting caught, pretending we were on a non-M.S.A. holding and we needed to do some mission. I always paid attention in those classes. You don’t want to be the one bumbling scientist that gets an entire team of elite soldiers killed. Plus, it was more of an art than anything, which I liked.
I got Great Proficient in stealth every semester, but who knows. Maybe they just needed our grades to look good for fundraising.
I did pay attention, though. I’m pleased when it comes back to me, smooth, as I circle around the voices. My eyes have already adjusted, too. I never enjoyed the drills where they’d put flashlights in our faces and then send us into God-knows-where to meet God-knows-what. My least favorite time was when I walked into a quiet room, only to realize it was covered half a meter deep with dead snakes, when I reached down on the funny carpet to feel it. The worst part was when I went to walk. I got caught on a poisonous fang at one point. They cured me after the drill was over, but it stung like hell.
I wonder if I’m dreaming when I slink around to the front of the meetinghouse and find Eleni, Cassie, Hale, and Lium all standing there.
“What are you guys doing?” I walk up to them, really wishing I was wearing more than a sleeveless shift.
“Crusa,” Lium is the first of them to speak. He doesn’t sound happy.
“Crusa!” says Eleni. “Come here, I have some news for you.” She takes my arm and hums, “Hale and I are leaving the island tonight.”
“What?” I hesitate. Finish approaching, toes clenching in the damp tufts, ginger footfalls for unseen rocks.
“Yes, I’m glad you’re up so we can say goodbye. And also there was something we wanted to ask you,” she indicates the boys, standing as if poised for a boat’s lurch. It makes me wary.
“Why are you leaving?”
“Crusa, we’re together. Didn’t you know?”
“No,” I say, aghast. “You and Hale?”
“Obviously. I don’t know where you’ve been, but we’ve been together for a while. Now, zizi doesn’t want me to marry him, but if we go off together for a while, they’ll have to admit we’re married. It’ll be done, she won’t have a choice.”
“Eleni,” I gasp. How can she…? Grandmothers.
“And I thought, since I was going, you might want to go too. Think of it. We could get off this island, Crusa, and see things. You and me, we always planned on going somewhere together. You loved it.”
She pulls me closer, “It might be good timing for you, too. You won’t have to do the arrangement thing, unless you really want to. But I really want you to come with us. Please, I don’t want to go without you.”
She pouts, and gestures at Lium, “He said he’s coming. He said he already offered to go with you, Crusa. And Hale told me you two are perfect together. So, you and him could entertain each other while we’re out there,” she whispers, and giggles close. “So why won’t you come, then? Please please please most favoritest cousin ever? Don’t make me go alone. I won’t forgive you if you do.”
I’m stunned. Off kilter. And something else that comes from imagining them all going off without me.
I shake my head, “This is insane.” If they would stop being insane, then I wouldn’t have to keep telling them no. Which would be so much better.
Trying to be soothing, Lium speaks. “Don’t worry, honey, I’ll be there. I’ll look after you.”
And for a moment, he has my attention. He makes it sound good. But there’s something wrong with it, and I’m angry.
Flushing, I reply, “That’s generous, but I’m not some pet to be looked after.”
He stops. “I didn’t mean that,” he says.
“Sure.” I glare through the midsummer moonlight, then turn on Eleni, “So, you thought, because I told Lium I wouldn’t run away, and I told Hale tonight that I wouldn’t force his poor brother into marriage, that I’d tell you I would do both of those things, if you put them together?”
She fidgets, and I honestly think she’s going to ignore what I just said. But she has one more argument, her voice springy and silky as her curls, “It’ll be fun.”
My whole body scrunches. Because no. It won’t be fun.
Out there, fun is calc bonus problems. And field training that ends with the losers lined up and shot point blank with fake bullets. And barbed wire on the backs of mess hall chairs. And Problem Solving Tuesdays and nighttime search and poor weather rescue practice with a swab in the water and go! and then you take turns telling the family you failed and he’s dead and the coffee hour they put on after inspections that go on and on. I blink. Out there, fun is a trick. And I hate it when people try to trick me.
And tell me what to do. Which I already told Hale!
“No,” I say.
“Crus-”
“No. I won’t run. I have to do this, and I will. You can’t stop me. Nothing can stop me even if I wanted it to!” I scream at them. Eleni starts to cry, and somehow we end up tussling on the ground.
We’re not really trying to hurt each other. Smudged with dirt, grass and pebbles fall from me as I’m grabbed from behind. Eleni has my hair, though, so I kick her leg as it’s dragged in the opposite direction.
Being hauled off by an arm that’s shoved up under your ribs is not fun at all, so I grapple around until I hook Lium’s neck and pull myself up. I don’t care what he thinks, so I finish the childish pose and wrap my legs snuggly around his middle.
Somehow, he finds his way through the dark woods to the old graveyard. He pauses, and dumps me on the dilapidated wall. I slither down and drop my forehead to my knees.
Of all things, he says, “You don’t want to do it.”
“No.”
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
“Thank you for all your encouragement, but I think I do.”
“No,” he says harshly. I jump. We’re both quiet for a minute, myself completely thoughtless.
“You didn’t take me seriously, when I told you I’d take you.”
I pause, “I didn’t think you meant it.”
“I always mean what I say. You’re the one who doesn’t.”
He’s right about that, so I don’t say anything.
He tells me, “You’ve got a problem,” and he starts pacing. The third time he passes me, he says, “I don’t like it.”
In a burst of energy, I yell, “I don’t like it either! Do you think I enjoy this? I don’t. But it doesn’t matter what I like. What you like. What anyone likes! It makes absolutely no difference. I have to do it anyways.”
He does not like that. Just hulks over me in a giant shadow.
“There’s always another way out,” he says low. “You just have to find it.”
I gaze up. The way his eyes are glowing makes what I was planning on saying taste hysterical when it touches my lips, “Sometimes, the only way out is to stand it.” My own throat chokes me off.
“Huh. Well, you’re a genius, right? Think harder.”
Then he leaves me there, inside the walls with the graves and the trees and the moon.
The next morning is Sunday. I wake up and put on a bathing suit and a thin top that only touches my skin over the shoulders because forefathers, I don’t even know how hot it is because the humidity’s so awful. Even the bee on my windowsill just ambles around. I flick him out, accidentally dropping the screen onto my cousin Berto down on the front porch, oops, then twist up my hair into a bun and hear someone playing the water glasses downstairs. I smell incense in my head. No. It must be the twelfth Sunday since the last time Father Julian was here. Which means the downstairs is a church today.
And my marriage is in two weeks.
I don’t know how that can be. It doesn’t feel like September.
I can’t complain even in my head about having to sit through church because God will hear it and I shouldn’t make Him feel bad, so I turn around and think real hard at my closet. I figure Jesus won’t mind me wearing sleeveless if it’s the difference between me passing out or staying conscious for the mass so I just go ahead and keep the shirt and slip on a skirt that’s light but comes to my knees.
There.
I’m helping my zizi move all the benches and chairs into rows when the priest smiles a gentle smile and asks me to sit with him. He asks me about marriage, Andrew, and sacraments. I’ve thought of a thousand ways I could give him a bad answer, so five minutes later when he’s still smiling and blesses me, I ask him if that’s it. He grins and says yes, he’ll be pleased to see me again in two weeks.
The mass is short. I think Communion takes up half the time. I appreciate it because what with the questioning and the sitting stuffed shoulder to shoulder with my fidgety cousin, who I guess didn’t run away last night, which gives me more a lack of surprise than anything, and hot flashing zizi, I’ve doused myself five times over with sweat.
Finally, Father Julian tells us to go in peace and Eleni mumbles all over my ear with a breath that’s as humid as the day, “Thanks be to God,” and my zizi gives an Amen that sounds oddly like a reprimand, and we three give a quick kneel and sign of the cross and then head out right on the tail of the recessional to the sounds of the others shoving hymnals into the priest’s crates and Larissa’s warbling.
I’d let my hair down to cover my shoulders. Now, though, I pick it up off my neck and I decide it’s the most amazing sensation I’ve ever felt. I close my eyes and can’t help the heavy sigh as I flop down by the green. It’s a perfect spot to listen to my zizi talk with everyone coming out and be close enough to nod and smile at whoever if she needs me to.
Cassie comes over and grabs me and Eleni and we take a plodding walk around to the other side where there are some big trees with some shade. I’ve only just gotten the sweat to dry off my arms and legs when Eleni says, “Crusa.”
“What?”
“Someone wants you.”
I groan and lift my heavy head off the ground. Ugh. There is someone with a very serious face standing there.
“Good morning, Lium.”
“Good morning.”
I get up. This morning was the longest I’ve gone without seeing him, in the daytime. I wonder if he’s done with being my guard.
“I was just about to go back and help my aunt. We’re having a lot of people over for lunch today. I’ve got a minute before we start, but that’s really it. Did you want something?”
“I’ll walk with you.”
I shrug and start around the path. He comes up beside me, and I ignore him.
At the meetinghouse, I tell him goodbye and go through the open doors. I stop dead in my tracks, though, as he’s slipped through too and now he’s gotten in front of me. On purpose.
I know this was a church ten minutes ago, but I start thinking some un-churchly thoughts, clear and strong. I don’t know why, he’s just getting on my nerves.
“Hey, stop. I want to talk to you for a sec.” He trails after me when I sweep by. I think I should have paid better attention during the mass. But I didn’t. I do roll my eyes, although like I said he’s behind me so I guess he can’t see that.
At the base of the stairs, I turn around. He comes up short like he wasn’t ready for that. He runs a hand through his hair, crouching his head down.
“Yes?” I say.
“Listen, I’m sorry for last night.”
I keep my face composed. It’s not what I expected, but that in itself is becoming something expected with him.
“It’s fine.”
“I shouldn’t have left you in the woods. I waited for you, but you didn’t come in, I-”
“I said don’t worry about it. I like the graveyard. I just sat there for a little while, and then I cried, and then I went in the window.”
He looks like somebody just stuffed a snowball down the back of his shirt. I wish I had a snowball right now. I would rub it all over my arms and chest and face and even take a bite out of it, acid rain be damned.
“You cried?” he says like it upsets him.
“After you left. There were definitely tears, yes.” I mean to sound stiff but it just comes out stringy. He closes his eyes and opens them again.
“I’m sorry. I…” I stop whatever speech he was moving on to with my hand on his chest. I take a moment to close my own eyes. But his face is still there, still hanging on me when I open them, maybe even worse than before. Great. I feel too guilty goading him on like this.
“Stop. It’s fine, really.” I try out a smile for him. “I really do have a problem.” My voice cracks and I feel my lids fill with standing water. I close them, frustrated with all their crying lately.
“Excuse me, please. I need to go change.”
I turn with my eyes still closed and take the first step blindly but surely, and continue more or less that way into my room, through the low hobbit door, and into the crawlspace.
Heat itself is stifled in here, unable to do anything more than fidget around the water in the air. I can hardly breathe. Good.
I feel slick sweat behind my knees when I curl them up, and press the heels of my palms into my boiling eyesockets, everything too hot and wet.
There are some plunking noises from outside the almost closed door.
Lium’s head pokes through the opening and cranes around. As soon as he sees me, I turn straight ahead. Though it’s silly to pretend I haven’t noticed him. He shouldn’t have to see me like this. I despise myself even more when I realize I’m relieved. That he’s granted my silent wish and found me.
He crawls to my side. Then he pivots, and slouches against the wall. I stare absently. He puts an arm over my shoulders, and I feel his heat shake the air right before he nudges me back against him, bowing his head over my hanging neck.
He presses on my knees, but I know they’re covered in sweat so I jerk them down. He tenses, but I didn’t mean that, so I make up for it by pressing my face into his chest. Curl a fist up and rest it there as well, catch folds of his thin, moist shirt in between my fingers. After a moment where he is very still, his other arm comes around me, and he holds me.
