Body and Bread Read online

  “I swear they got a bead on my hook,” Kurt said, plopping his worm farther right.

  Sam and I watched for movement in our lines, while Kurt wiped his forehead, fidgeted. Sam signaled for me to look past our brother. A turtle, head wagging, floated on the murky surface then went under, small waves spreading, fading.

  “Hey, Kurt,” Sam called, “your fishing’s so bad, you got an audience,” and he jerked his head toward the turtle. Even though they occasionally wrestled, sometimes punching each other, today Sam’s smile was an arm around Kurt’s shoulder.

  “Man!” Kurt said, dropping his pole, scrambling toward the floating creature. He reached into the dirt near his feet, then tossed and skipped rocks one after another, plunking them near the bobbing target.

  The turtle had greenish skin and a shell covered in algae. It paddled its webbed feet and sometimes flipped a tail that bore scales like a crest.

  “Stupid!” Sam stifled a shout. “You’re scaring the fish.”

  “They’re spooked anyhow,” Kurt said, biting his lip, reaching a stick toward the turtle as it passed in front of him.

  He poked, and the creature gazed, stunned, then dipped its wobbly head. “Kurt, stop. I’ll call Mama,” I whined, running toward him. I shoved him and tried to grab the stick.

  Kurt raised his elbow, blocking my waving arm, a buzzing he barely noticed. He squinted, jabbed again. This time, the turtle yanked its head and snapped its jaws onto the stick, cracking it. Sam stood next to me, clasping his sides, laughing.

  “You’re hurting him. Leave him alone,” I shouted, almost crying.

  Kurt skipped a pebble off the animal’s shell, and Sam frowned, staring, his gaze like a cranky conscience.

  I turned to run, but a terrible thud made me stop. My grandfather had yanked the horse’s reins then made my father’s face go blank, and later he’d forced my mother to ride when she’d said she didn’t want to. Now Kurt and Sam were throwing rocks at a turtle. I pictured them cackling, leaning toward the water, the turtle belly-up, its legs flopping. Sam disappointed me most; I’d thought of him as a person who couldn’t hurt anything without a good reason.

  Somebody called my name, and when I turned, Sam stood by the cattle trail, motioning me over. As mad as I was, I couldn’t resist his singling me out; we left our poles on the bank and wandered upstream, hidden from the others by juniper, Arkansas cane, the creek’s curve. Stepping in time with him, his breaths whispery, even, I trusted that he’d explain his meanness.

  “Stay here,” he said and waded into the creek. He stopped and stared into the darkness. This time, his breathing hardly raised his chest. Only his eyes moved, following some creature below as it passed. Another turtle? The two middle fingers on his left hand twitched. Cicadas rattled like tambourines, the stream pattered across rocks, mosquitoes whirled.

  Sam’s hands pierced the surface and fell deep, the water above his elbows. I ran to the edge; the toes of my tennis shoes sank into silt. He lurched backward, then tossed the creature and a tunnel of water forward; drops fanned around his head, thumping as they splashed.

  Almost a foot long, the fish flopped, slithering in the muddy shallow. When I reached him, Sam held the fish while its mouth yawned then closed, and the tail curled like a tongue, the body all muscle as it jerked, flipping in my brother’s hands.

  I imagined the bass, with its green back, black side-stripes, and orange circles around popping eyes, flopping between my own fingers, wanting its cool home.

  “Daddy and Granddaddy cut open bodies so they can see the stuff inside,” Sam said. He crouched on the bank, reached into his pocket.

  I bent next to him but pressed my fists to my chest. The fish’s gills fluttered.

  “I saw you watching all them.” He motioned with his head back toward the others as he withdrew a knife, pulled out its blade with his teeth. “Don’t let it get to you. We’re not like that.” His eyes peered into mine. “I want you to see this. Can you take it?” When I nodded, he knelt as he slid the steel into the anus, then sliced forward through white belly, splintering ribs. The wafer-like flaps still puffed as he cut through them on either side. He laid the knife next to his knee and pulled back on the head, cracking bones, then yanked it off. He set the head next to his knife; one orange-haloed eye stared at sky.

  “Why’d you do that?” I asked, not letting myself turn away. My brother had killed it, killed it just so he could show me something. I had to watch.

  “Sometimes you got to do ugly things,” he said, but he didn’t look at me. Even though he was mangling the fish, I trusted him because he always took care of me.

  Sam stuck his hand inside the body, tugged at the gullet casing. He ripped the intestinal sac loose with a snap. He dropped the bass, holding its insides in the air, the torn end that had once connected to the head pointing at the ground. About the size of our father’s index finger, the sac was pear-shaped and gray with threads of red membrane, muscle. It tapered into something like a tail.

  Pinching what had been the bottom of the gullet, Sam squeezed, raking the casing in jerks. A larval insect with a crowd of legs popped out, landed on the ground, and thrashed its whip-shaped body back and forth, its head sprouting pincers that searched for a target. Then the sac spit out pill bugs and algae, snails, tiny clam-like animals, all dead. Alive, they’d been cramped inside what must’ve seemed like a cavernous pouch.

  Sam pressed again, and shells and plants oozed free until something larger neared the opening. It was brown and had a tiny curled paw. He punched at the casing, and the dark mass fell next to the wiggling grub. This new creature had a face and white eyelids, delicate in their tiny perfection. Hair covered its limp body, and the feet touched one another, while the head curved toward the tail as if to rest there. I rubbed the fuzz around the mouse’s ears. What had it been doing in the water, and why hadn’t it chewed its way out of the fish? When a green liquid squirted from the sac onto the pile of creatures and plants, Sam tossed the limp casing to the side.

  “Know what this is?” he asked as he picked up the writhing insect, allowing it to creep across his palm, fingers, back of his hand.

  I giggled nervously, imagining how it would feel to swallow something alive, hoping he wouldn’t expect me to hold the thing like he’d once dared me to touch a jumping crawdad. “Uh-uh, what?” I said.

  “Hellgrammite. Turns into a fly with a giant claw and only flies at night,” he whispered. “Looks a little like Granddaddy, don’t you think?”

  He rested the flat of his hand on the dirt, and the insect scuttled into the grass. He flipped open one of the clam-like shells; inside laid a soft animal, cupped.

  “Can you eat those?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “let’s see,” and he scraped one loose, rubbed it onto his tongue. He chewed twice, shrugged.

  “What’d it taste like?” I imagined salty flesh, slipperiness as I swallowed.

  “Too little,” he said, poking at the pile of small animals and debris. His hands were child-sized but muscled, meticulous as a surgeon’s.

  “Those could be you and me, Kurt and Hugh, right?”

  He smiled.

  “And the mouse has to be Mama,” I said.

  “Nope, that’s you,” he said. “And these,” he pointed at the shells, “are all your babies.”

  They were fluted, smaller than thumbtacks.

  “I was hoping to find a young bass. They’re cannibals, you know.”

  His eyes commanded an answer, so I shook my head, no. Did animals realize they were eating their own kind or did they gobble out of instinct? “Fish don’t feel stuff. I mean, they don’t hurt like us, right?”

  “No, not possible,” he said. “Their brains,” he made a tiny circle with his index finger and thumb, “are no bigger’n your fingernail.” The circle’s ratio to fish body was disturbing when compared to my brain/body proportions.

  He wiped his knife on his thigh, popped it closed, slid it into his pocket. �
��Help me pick this stuff up. We’d better get back.” He gathered bass parts in his hands.

  I scooped up the fish’s head and reached for the mouse—the orange-circled eye glared from one palm, the sleeping baby curled in the other. The fuzzy hair and scales, the delicate paw and loose gills were now familiar as my own skin. From then on, I decided, I’d be as devouring as a bass, a truth scavenger.

  Sam led me along the creek’s bank to a cluster of agarita bushes, and we left the animal pieces for raccoons. During our return walk, he tried to carry me at first, my body sliding down his back, my legs dangling. Near the picnic table, he tickled me and shouted for Kurt, who was climbing off the horse.

  My grandfather held the reins, calling, “Okay, Sarah.” He waved. “You think you can handle this animal as good as your mama?”

  “I’ll try,” I croaked. Determined to practice my new resolve, I joined him. But while I stood waiting as he bent to shorten a stirrup, yanking the strap’s buckles, an object glimmered in the grass. Leaning closer, I recognized his gold money clip, bills folded inside like handkerchiefs.

  “That ought to be about right,” he said, gauging my match-up with the readjusted stirrup. I muttered, “Yes, sir,” so he moved to the other side of the horse. Casually, I edged closer. While he raised the second stirrup, I crouched, sliding the clip into my pocket. Jittery but smug, I popped my knuckles. Maybe I was like my mother.

  Once in the saddle, my tongue-clicks and tug at the reins sent the horse trotting forward. Leaning, I loosened the reins, and the stallion cantered, his lumpy hooves whacking ground in a rhythm I controlled. A crisscross of branches and sagebrush expanded when I looked behind, so I stared ahead at patches of brown and blue. The wind pressed and whirled, while the horse, panting, waited for my command. Was Mother watching? I steered him under the train trestle, then back up the other side. His feet slid in gravel as he strained, heaving with jerking steps.

  Standing, wobbly, on the ground, I scooped a handful of those stones, and in a flat area close to the tracks, I stacked them in another pyramid, twenty-four rocks in all, with my grandfather’s clipped bills in the center. The stranger could come back and find my gift, his dirty fingers smudging the gold. Maybe I’d end up riding with him to New York or Mexico, nothing but rumbles and scattered light surrounding us.

  I turned toward the clearing below, looking for Sam, not finding him. Only flicks of color and constant stirring, the rest didn’t notice me:

  #1. not my grandfather as his white shirt reflected the sun;

  #2. not my father reaching into the basket of peaches;

  #3. not Kurt fishing at the creek;

  #4. not my grandmother;

  #5. not my mother bending close to the ground.

  I blocked the glare then shifted my arm, concealing my view of them with my open hand.

  CHAPTER 2

  SINCE I MISSED TEREZIE last month at my father’s funeral, I wouldn’t have recognized her but for having seen her eight years ago at my mother’s service. When she was a girl, her nonchalance had been key to seducing Sam. Now, standing on my porch in Austin, her housecoat hugging a sausage waist, this woman only hints at the sister-in-law I knew. Seeing her brings me one-step-removed from Sam.

  “I wouldn’t be here unless I had a good reason,” she says. “Sam would’ve wanted me to come. I’ve never asked you for anything before, but now I need to.”

  I let her in, of course, but mumble an apology that I’m meeting someone for lunch. It’s an obvious lie, rude, cruel even, but I can’t stop myself.

  “As you know, I have a daughter, Cornelia.”

  I don’t need to see the photo. Terezie introduced her while we stood together after my mother’s funeral. If the daughter had knocked on my door instead, I’d have known her immediately. She’s the Terezie I remember.

  “She’s a good girl, uncomplicated, hard working. Ma says she’s ‘old country.’” Terezie chuckles, thinking she’s made a joke. “Thing is, she needs a kidney transplant.”

  I hold up my hands. “I’m sorry, Terezie. Don’t you think you should talk to Kurt or Hugh about this?”

  She licks her lips, taking back her photo. “We don’t need your kidney, if that’s what you’re thinking. Cornelia’s father’s the donor, God bless him.” She zips her bag. “But her condition’s scary. She’s got polycystic kidney disease and blood pressure so high it’s really gotten her in trouble. On top of that, she’s had a delayed autoimmune reaction. She’s on dialysis and steroids to stabilize everything, but she’s got to have the transplant at Mayo.”

  “Oh, this is way out of my league.” I move toward the door, ready to usher her out. “Please, phone Kurt,” I say, tugging Terezie’s arm. “I’m sure he’ll want to help.”

  “I’ve already talked to him.” She shakes me loose. “Listen, since I teach part-time and my husband has his own business, we don’t have insurance. I know how stupid that is, but who thinks something like this will happen?

  “I’ve already told Hugh and Kurt everything, but they won’t give me an answer.” She winces; her jaw clamps. “Cornelia’s got to be operated on in the next six months, Sarah, or she’ll be in real trouble. If Sam were here, you know what he’d do.”

  After Terezie is gone, I reach for the phone, dial Hugh’s number.

  Hugh is driving over from Nugent, so I wake feeling pissy. I don’t want to talk about the farm. I love my memories of little boy Hugh, but our past is all we’ve got in common. I’ve agreed to meet with Hugh today in part because my hallucinations are coming more often. The Mixe shamans in southern Mexico see dreaming and waking states as the same, and although I understand this, it scares the hell out of me. I never know what will trigger one of my episodes, so I’m trying to hang onto whatever’s real.

  At four-thirty, I dress then grade student essays, an intentional distraction. At noon, I treat myself to the gastronomic beau ideal, cinnamon toast. I fix two slices of a bran loaf I baked, as usual, on Sunday. As lunch browns, bubbling under the broiler, I put the butter away. The door closes with a suctioned click, and I think, here, this appliance is now.

  The Frigidaire’s nearly empty shelves (my usual diet: bran loaf, Winesaps, camembert) are a relief, the porcelain and steel requiring no tending, the shell sturdy as a punching bag. Sometimes, deprivation can bring comfort, sanctification like the celebration of Xīpe Totec by the Aztec Triple Alliance. An effigy’s flayed-skin costume commemorated the body’s deterioration in a vegetable cycle of transformations. If the effigy was human, the worshipper emerged from the rotting skin after twenty days, signifying rebirth. A ghoulish ritual, to be sure, but so are enactments of Jesus’ crucifixion. In both cases, the sacrifice brings solace. This morning, of course, my little ritual is free of gruesome drama.

  When the first whiff of cinnamon, East Indian yet familiar as Pelton, turns to the stench of scorched sugar, it seems an omen. My brother, the farm sale papers tucked under his arm, might make fun of my unconventional life. But Terezie’s poor child needs emergency surgery. I stack my charred toast on a fluted Royal Dalton and carry it with a matching cup of hazelnut espresso to my captain’s chair, but the third mouthful gets me. I’ve bitten my tongue, and like most mature women at such moments, I have a tantrum. After that, I work on my book.

  I write for an hour about the metaphysics and social hierarchies of the Mexihca. For another hour, I write about īxīptla: richly dressed and accoutered stone images, elaborately constructed seed-dough figures, ecstatic priests in divine costumes, captives prepared for sacrifice. Rituals transformed these into vehicles for teōtl, the self-generating, transmuting energy. Each was carefully constructed, named for an aspect of the sacred, adorned with characteristic regalia, and destroyed.

  Īxīptla were part of Mexihcayōtl protocol designed to pacify the inscrutable, uncontrolled power called teōl. Rituals bombarded the senses. Drumming, jangling of shells, copper bells, cries from sacrificed victims, conch trumpets, flutes, and antiphonal chants merged
with the smells of flowers, incense, and blood as dancers twirled, their feathers brushing.

  Class divisions continued beyond the grave. Those who drowned went to the Southern Paradise. As I describe Tlāloc—his fangs, absent lower jaw, goggled eyes, elaborate headdress, with a lightning bolt in his hand, controlling rivers, thunderstorms, and crop-devastating hail—I think again: What kind of life is this, sitting alone, dissecting a pre-Columbian culture? I know the answer but have no idea how to change it.

  A spatula on the kitchen counter, its tip blackened with crumbs; student papers in ordained stacks next to my chair across the room; sunlight in amoeboid patches in the fanlight of my front door. Here. Now. Hugh is late.

  Hugh’s six-year-old daughter, Norine, Mother’s namesake, whines on the other side of my door: “She doesn’t even have a TV.”

  “I know,” Hugh’s wife Debbie says.

  Norine is first inside, and when she steps forward with her arm raised, I brace myself for a hug. Instead, she pokes my pant leg. “Aunt Sarah…Aunt Sarah…”

  “Hello, Hugh, Debbie,” I say. My rabbit-toothed little brother with hand-me-down t-shirt and exposed belly: now muscle, whiskers, sinew. His eyes: our father’s eyes: my eyes.

  “How come—” Norine continues, oblivious, “how come you’re here all by yourself?” Mother’s eyes, the same green. The same question.

  Debbie and Hugh believe in immediate response to their daughter no matter whom or what is interrupted. Throughout years of infertility treatments, Debbie had two miscarriages before producing, at thirty-eight, a premature Norine so small that she wore doll clothes. After that, Debbie’s sanctification of motherhood manifested in strange ways. Half porno-queen, half Virgin Mary, she wore tight, low-cut clothes while preaching La Leche philosophy and the carnal influence of Saturday morning cartoons and comic books.