Animikiiwidikom

“Shut up,” Pale fingers clamp my mouth, rough. I taste salt and cannot breathe; I know the smell is bad. Pain opens bright in my body, splitting me in half. It puts a sickness in me that I cannot escape and even though I want to fight, I hang with death on my shoulder.

There is nothing to see. This is a kind of blackness that soaks your eyes in ink and drops you into the soot, a midnight river bottom. I know my hands are wild, windmills in the freezing air and that I am sliding back and forth, feet dangerous and dancing on ice but I cannot stop. Mary, floating like an empty faceless cloud ahead, won’t let me.

"Do up your jacket!" Her voice is wind, and it screams at me, "you can make it! Do up your jacket". My fingers are tiny bricks, bitten with frost, stiff as sticks as I fumble for my tiny broken buttons, "light a match! It will keep you warm!" But my fingers are stuck, folded together like bent roots.

One hand in a pocket and my foot kicks out on a slick; my back, shouting with a jerk gives away, body thrown out into the nothing. For a moment, I am hanging in the air. Empty. Stomach into my throat. I tumble forewords into what I cannot see. My face meets hard cold. There is light, ringing clear and bright in my mind. Then, I am gone.

“To do good to mankind is a chivalrous plan, and is always nobly requited; then battle for freedom whenever you can, and, if not shot or hang’d, you’ll be knighted,”

I read the words in the bad light of the room, tiny book a bug between my fingers. The moon, halved with dark, gives nothing to see by, mildew in the high frosty window. A slicing shadow cuts across, sweeping gone before I finish seeing it. My heart jumps ragged beats, breath a cloud out into the icy room. Mother had said halfmoons are a time for ghosts and my toes curl, stomach jumping soft wings to think it.

Blinking eyes away from the thin glass above, I stare out into the wide room. Spread out ahead, the hard white beds with their thin blankets and stone pillows pale as bone, shiver with the breaths of cold dreaming. But they are not dreams, there are only nightmares here. I used to be out there, sleeping in the middle of the room but when Mary died, I took her spot against the wall. My stomach screams loud and twisting. There is no supper here either. The yawning sound is sharp and ugly in my belly, and it puts my eyes back to the little page.

“Then battle for freedom whenever you can,” the whisper comes out of my mouth, dry and sticking as the words burn deep into my hands.

I am set on fire with meaning. I am warm with it. Freedom? The word hits hard against my chest. My swallow is thick, the gulp swollen and mean as I stare down at the small sentence, my eyes aching with strain. There is nothing like that here.

They would kill me for even having a book, let alone ones with lies like freedom. Still, the hot truth of it crackles in my body like hope. Who will fight for me? The question is stupid and something in me shrivels. I know the answer and it snaps hard like a rod against my back.

No one.

It is late now, and my eyes are closing. My mind jumps with melted dreams, coming and going as I shatter back and forth between worlds. I want to put the little book away. Tuck it back into its seam where it will be safe. But somewhere in my mind, the sound of creaking rope groans. I hear it, hanging off the old rafter; lulling me and then, I am asleep.

I hear a sound, ugly. Coming from my mouth, animal. I see myself there, flat out on the ground, a broken doll. My hands are shovels, hooves on the ice, digging. There is a seesaw in my feet, but it doesn’t matter. Mary, hanging like an old ripped up coat, eyes like black wells ahead, won’t let me stay down.

"Get up!" Her voice is the sound of old snow breaking with each step, "you can make it!"

When I look, I see myself, head spinning, dizzy in the night. The moon, hiding where it is safe, bruises the world blue and black. Half rotted like an old, molded apple, it sifts gray and empty in the sky. It goes behind the clouds again sour and selfish, even though it sees what is happening.

I find my pocket, hand stiff as it clumps down into the ripped and bottomless hole; thunking past seam and tear into the rough wool of my coat’s shabby guts. Searching, clawing for that edged paper shape. When I pull it out, it is a tiny coffin in my hand. Box open, my broken nails peck inside like hungry beaks at the seedy match tips. I take a sliver, hard to the rough strip, but it snaps and falls away. Again, I find one. Again, I push a shaking strike to the rough stripe, but it breaks. Breaks and falls away. Even if I want to give up, she won’t let me.

I am shaking with cold. My hands jumping so that the sticks rattle like bones inside, but I manage one more and, icy lashes shut tight over my chattering teeth. Now. Now it lights the flame and turns bright. A thousand suns glowing at the tips of my fingers, but it does not matter, there is no time for beauty. There has never been time for it. Not for me.

I stare into the light, seeing how it shakes in my hand, holding fingers and cheek close to that glistening heat, pulling and drinking in every moment of its warmth. I hold there until it eats itself up and bites at my skin, winking out the world so that I am swallowed up by the dark night.

Now, Mary’s face hangs open to the air, jaw loose and broken as she hovers like old rags above me, Run.

“The matches,” the sound is wet and sloppy, horrible and grinding in my ear.

My eyes open wide, peeling back like potatoes carved white from beneath their brown skins. I am stuck melted to the hard mattress, springs digging as I stare over the black pillar at the bed end. I see the pale face, all sockets and teeth grinning big and dead, and I know, it is Mary.

“Take the matches,” the words are a coughed-up choke, barking and rough.

“Mary?” rubbing eyes, my vision clears of nightmares and my heart cracks into a sprint.

No. No. Not Mary. Not Mary at all I realize as the shape, tall and looming, moves to the side of my bed, pushes me down into my pillow. I can not breath. I do not dare move as it snaps off my blankets. I am shivering. Gone. Into an empty place where there is no time and I remember nothing.

I can see myself down there, Tiny and flying, gray and tattered, my coat flapped out behind me like old wings. Little matches at my chest, tiny flames burning at my heart. For every one that goes, blowing away into smoke, I remember someone who never came back. But I do not remember their names. Except for Mary, because she was mine.

And suddenly I am falling. Falling down out of the empty place in my mind. Back into my body, jumping at the feeling as I slam down into the here and now, locked back into the deep freeze of winter. My breath is a fog, shivering as I shiver. I have never been this cold. Where my hands or my face are, I do not know but I touch them together and when I pull them apart again, I see that my hands are black.

Crystals in my eyelashes, I see down through the sparkle. The ripped edge of my clothes, hang like broken wings, frozen stiff with ink. My legs are running black streams down into my skinny, open boots. I see now that they are not mine. I took the wrong ones, and the deep wet inside is the skin gone off my heels and soles. The pain in my body is as bright as all the matches burned together. But it doesn’t matter. Mary says I can make it.

“Mary,” I say it like a prayer. Her name breaks open the sky, summoning the moon.

Silver light spills over the world, everything washed blue and white. Even though dim and terrible, it is brighter than my match light and I can see now at my sides, the snaggle of thick trees below. Blown short and twisted by the screaming wind, they are stunted. Unfulfilled in their potential and held back by their harsh, barren surroundings. Not a forest. This is what my father called, bush. Dense and curling at the bottom of the slopes, the distorted branches smack wet against the dark sky like veins threaded out of a corpse and flung at the wall, sticking.

I stand alone, small and insignificant above. At my feet, rusted tracks shoot on ahead, shinning in places where the trains have buffed it clean and I can only think of rough brushes, scrubbing away at my skin. Cold water slapping at my back as bucket after bucket are tossed down hard over my shoulders. Still, they tell me I stink but I can only smell the dusty peeling paint and concrete, my eyes glued to the corner. The wind hisses up shadow from the sea of brush below, following at my ankles.

I push the hurt away, watching the steel of the tracks disappear into the craggily dark ahead. The trees at my sides, creaking threats and pity, offer no sanctuary. I will do what Mary says while there is still enough bad light. I will do what Mary did. I run.

“Animikiiwidikom,” the word sways up, singing, “Animikiiwidikom. My little moth ” but I ignore it.

Instead, I lay there, looking. The sky is blue. The ocean of it stretches over the drum of Earth as I breathe deep into the high, sweet-smelling grass and wonder at the color. Yellow is already streaking the blades and even though today is hot, the morning will carry with it the iced touch of frost. Fall has come so quickly this year and with it, I will go back to school like the rest of them. I turn my face into the ground, inhaling the smell of warm dirt. Beneath it, there is the deep rot of decay and when I touch my face, my fingers come away wet. It doesn’t matter.

The book in my hand is soft but the letters are still good, and I know them. No matter what anyone says. I can read them, just like Mother read them to me, a long time ago. And now I can write my own. I do not have paper, but it does not matter, there are empty pages in the back of this old story, enough for me to say something at least.

But my Father’s pen is ancient. It jumps, faded and gone. Like him. When I try to write with it, my back up against hard bark, it skips, and scratches outlines instead of words. Now, when I look at that old tree, that broken oak at the field end, I think of him. He used to tell me of the old owl that lived in the trunk when he was a boy. How those round eyes would shine, gold from the hollow at dusk.

“Owls bring death,” my Mother always told him, "they open the door between worlds-" even when he would flap calloused hands at her, waving off her superstitions. But, in the end, I guess she was right. Just like him, the owl stopped coming back. Dead somewhere else.

I used to pretend his grave was here, but he is not buried there, or anywhere. No one ever found him, not even his brothers. Not even me. I looked until my legs gave out and sometimes, in the summers I still wander the woods picking for his bones in the shade. When I’m tired from it, I sit and think of him under the ground with his eyes open and white. He hangs his mouth to speak but all that comes is the sound of roots pushing through his ribs, growing black through his veins in the dirt.

“Animikiiwidikom,”

It snaps my back like wood, hard against my bones. I must stop my fingers from reaching out to pinch her tongue so hard she screams. Stop myself from slapping the dirty, beautiful words back down her throat. Her lips move but I hear nothing.

She is ancient, bent like a broken reed, black cattails of hair struck up with gray knots. Her leather skin cracked and brown. Knuckles waving over wildflowers and sleeping bees. She picks grass and I can see the sweat beneath the arms of her plain dress. The used to be pink turned sow brown with all its old, dirty pattern and bunched hem. I am ashamed. She is ugly. But her eyes shine like black glass, and I remember the dough she has rolled for me. I see that she is also, perfect.

“Don’t call me that! That’s not my name, you stupid pig!” I run away, up to the cabin. Gone.

Flying through frame, the storm door swings back, banging on the wall. Trying to claw out of my chest, my heart is pumping against my ears. Inside, I wipe sweat away. I never come through the front. My stomach twists with guilt. It gnaws a cave into my belly. I did not want those to be my last words with her. I should not have spoken to my Grandmother like that.

And I should have gone through the back. This room is flooded with sickness and hate. A deep knot gathers in me with longing; to see my room one last time. To read one last page of a book and breath in deep the scent of my Mother’s pillow. But there is no time, even though, I do not want to go.

I hear a muffled patting. Soft and creeping. Eyes to the rotten kitchen and bucket sink under the old broken window, I see movement. A creature, all creamy silk and broken wings drops in, unwanted. It falls to the floor, twitching in the dusty beam of light as it dies over the stain on the floor.

I try not to look, but my eyes drag down in the muggy silence, even the flies shutting up for once. I cannot look away, sucked into that burgundy black soaked down into the cracks. No matter how hard we cleaned, the color stayed. And now, deeply polished by scrubbing and shuffling feet, it was as much a part of the floor as the wood itself.

Unable to think, I am rooted to my spot, underarms and back sticking to my clothes. I am caught, staring with an open mouth as my eyes blink water. The heavy support beam above, stretched from one end of our small home to the other, is as exposed and solid as the day it was laid down by my Grandfather fifty years before. It vibrates in my mind as it upholds the house with quiet strength. Even though, it holds no scratch, innocent at a glance, it’s marks are invisible. Unlike the floor, it keeps its secrets. But I know them. I was the one who had to climb the chair to cut the rope and take her down. I guess she got tired of looking too.

“You’re almost out,” a voice cracks with silence, breaking me out of myself, “take this with you. For winter.”

My Brother is there with a fist at his side. On his arm, his old coat. I will need it soon with summer nearly gone and mine long since outgrown and thin. He opens a long, dirty hand to me. The old grime in his palm caked beneath the tiny thing sitting there, black and shiny. It is the smallest book I have ever seen, and I know, he stole it, somewhere.

I am frowning, and the unfamiliar expression hurts my face. It is better to show no feeling but, in this moment, I am more excited than I can remember in a long time. He pushes it into my grip, watching as I open it, squinting down at the tiny words. They speak to me, and I am undone by them.

“Battle for freedom whenever you can”.

They strike me across the face and the sting puts hot tears into my eyes. I look away and that ugly faded moth, not quite white but also not brown either, is not as dead as I thought. It thumps at the broken window where the sun shines through.

Outside, a truck, white as milk, slows to a stop. Door open. Door closed. My brother is tearing down into the corner of the coats pocket, pulling the bottom apart and pressing a finger into that fresh, ripped spot, poking the little book down, deep into the lining.

His eyes are hard and for a moment he seems alive again, as if he will tell me something, something important and real. Maybe about Mary. About how he found her half picked apart just an hour away from the field, on the tracks. I hold my breath, hoping he will say something that will explain to me why our lives are like this, why there is so much pain but a knock at the screen shuts his mouth. My back is stiff with the sound, the deep voice cold ice down my spine as I watch my Brothers’ black eyes turn hollow, his cheeks going limp.

“Time to go,” I can hear dry words stick to the back of my neck, “now.”

My eyes jump to the window. But my ugly moth, closed up and gray on the sill. Is dead this time. At the car, I am back inside myself; alone. Grandmother, Brother, gathered into slumps on the porch, ghosts in the door. They hang onto goodbye blank eyed.

“Stop crying,” his hand moves tight on my knee, and I squeeze at my coat.

My legs are like scribbles on a page. The moon laughs at me, at the edge of a cloud. Leaving. Darkness sweeping up beside me as the light evaporates. I take a match and hit the rough patch. Nothing. And then, the moon is completely gone, and the shadows are the only things that are free. Free to eat up my eyes so that I am blind.

Bang!

It lights up with hot glowing fire. Steam and old pipes hiss, and I know, this is hell.

“What is this?”

“I don’t know,” I am being shaken. Next to the old boilers and coal stove. I can see that the black on my face is blood.

“A filthy little book,” even though I am far away, I feel that something in me is breaking apart. Great hands pulling down my clothes. I hear the rip and know that tomorrow they will beat me for ruining another pair.

“You are stupid. You cannot read this. It is Satan’s word. You only need the word of God!? You stupid little pig, Now,” the door to the old stove opens, the deep guts orange, “burn it.”

“No.”

“What!”

“NO,” Back in my body I scream, tearing at his hands to grab it back, “and I am not stupid! I can read it! I can read anything! I can write anything!” my voice is a siren, higher and higher, “and I will battle for my freedom!”

“Shut your mouth!” he is yelling, his fists heavy on my head.

“NO,” my scream pitches a curdle into the room and even though I cannot remember how I came, cannot remember being dragged from my cold bed, I remember the words. They fly out of my mouth,

“To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan and is always nobly requited! You do no good for anyone!”

“Dirty little Indian,” the meanest sound I have ever heard comes from him and his hands turn to thunder on my back until I think I am dead. Hair ripped from scalp, blood down my mouth, I hang, an old doll in his hand at the hot black of the stove. It is too hot, and it burns my face, the smell is crisp and fat and my stomach, aching, sings out. Away from it, his cheek is on my cheek, hands rough through me. It is the sound of monsters as he tells me I am nothing. Nothing.

My fingers, blistered, hold at the match. I can see the ground in a little patch, but this darkness is everywhere. Somewhere, in the great behind; the bark of the dogs. Mary says He, is with them .

“Shut up,” pale fingers clamp over my mouth, callouses rough on my lips. I can taste the salt and even though I cannot breathe, I know the smell is bad, pain opens bright in my body, splitting me in half. It puts a sickness in me that I cannot escape and even though I want to fight, I hang with death on my shoulder, watching my tiny book, burn in the back of the fire.

“Father!” It is a scream, “Father! Come quickly!”

And he is off. Hands off my body. I am leaking and shivering near the heat of the stove.

“Go back to bed, do you hear?” his voice shakes.

Ripped clothes to my chest, my feet scrape dust behind him, following the shouts of the nuns. When I look down, I see that my footprints on the floor are wet and dark, my feet streaming little black rivers. The smell of copper makes me sick and my eyes swim as I shuffle ahead to the step.

And then, I feel it. A dragging whisper at my back. Turning, I see her. Hanging at the bottom of the stair with her loose face, eyes down at the table. There. A box of matches. Staring up at me from the illustration on the smooth paper top, a pair of round golden eyes, wise and knowing.

I take them, tucked beneath the tear in my clothes as I begin to run back. He is already moving down the hall, half running towards the screams of the Nuns and for a moment I am alone. The hall stretches on black ahead of me, sucking down forever and away to the door at the far end. The moon hanging half her face in the tiny window there. I am suspended for a single, lingering moment, unable to breathe or move. Stuck to the floor as tiny puddles gather there, the sound of dripping faint and quiet.

There, like spirit made of fog, I see it. It moves like a cloud, misted and soft as its wings stretch and tuck down at its sides, sharp feet gripping tightly at the branch beneath it. Even though I am away, inside and down the hall, looking out through the far window of the heavy door, it turns those luminous shinning eyes, brilliant discs of glowing starshine down through the distance, piercing into my soul. My Father’s owl.

A shift in moonlight, broken through a cloud, opens the view for a gray moment and something smooth glides ahead of me, cutting off my path as it sweeps through the air into the trees. My heart crawls out of my chest at the sight and, startled thoughtless, I fumble for the matches. My arms have turned to stone, legs like boards and when I try for my pocket, my balance is untipped and my feet, raw and shredded in borrowed boots, flail and kick out, striking at the rail and snow.

For a moment, I am weightless. Flying and soaring until it all comes apart. I am coming apart. Hips, knees, shoulders. Rolling and tumbling, end over end in the dark I meet the cold ground in so many places I forget where my body begins or ends. And then, it is over. Breath wet and sharp. Up or down. It doesn’t matter. I have fallen. Laying or sitting I do not know but still, I am hungry. Mary at my side, bends to dig in my pocket.

“Light all the matches. Stay warm,” Mary’s voice come rough through the hole in her neck as she hangs all teeth and bone beneath the black clumps of her hair, eyes sunken down into their sockets.

Clutching at the tear in my clothes, I watch as the bird turns its head slowly around, eyes disappeared as it twists impossibly to show me the back of its skull. A high whistle chimes outside, ringing clear into the night and the owl, taken aback by the sound, drops from the tree and is gone.

“Battle for freedom whenever you can,” the words come from my mouth and then, I am moving.

My feet are like wind on the cold floor, even when I slip, I do not stop. To the door, snatching my coat down from where it hangs on its hook, smashing feet into boots I am jumping to the door. Someone has already thrown the bolt off the lock, already escaped. Escaped behind the sound of the train. The Nuns and Preist have not noticed, still searching cold rooms and under the beds for them. But I know, they are already out. Free.

I can hear it now, chunking and grinding as it passes outside. The train, slamming at the tracks and behind that, I hear the sounds of angry feet. They are coming to check the door. It doesn’t matter. I am gone. Slipping through into the searing air, following the cold half light into the freezing night, into the shadows of the yard; if not free. Then almost.

Mary is right. She was always right. Deep in my pocket, the box is still there, hiding down in the lining of my busted coat. My fingers are stiff, broken in places but Mary. She helps me. Mary has always helped me.

“That is what sisters are for,” Mary’s tongue is loose and swollen.

Her kiss is all teeth on my face, skin gone. Nothing holds her together. Her hands are bones, striking fire. They are all burning. Burning suns in my eyes. Suns in my hands. The old wool of my sleeves bright as day. I am warm. Warm with light. Mary is smiling. This unfamiliar expression hurts my face but, I am smiling too.

As the floating begins, I am moved away into the place outside myself, watching again without feeling, drifting between worlds with Mary’s ghost at my side. I see now, in the bright light of my burning coat, that I am sitting. My back pressed against some ancient hollow tree. When I study the rough bark, I see that it is an oak, like the one at home, at the fields end. And there, balanced on the topmost branch, perched with half the moon opening the worlds at its back, it sits as if it were made of vapor. Waiting to return into the dark hollow within.

Glistening down, its head twists to look into the fire, flames reflecting shimmering hues into the back of its eyes, throwing the color out in white spheres. It waits patient and unafraid, giving a haunting and mournful song. The sound is low and gentle and together with the crackling of heat, I feel myself ready for sleep.

Somewhere I can hear the faraway howl of dogs and above, the rustling of wings. But it doesn’t matter. Because I am going to Mary. I am going to my Parents, dead in time. And a tree, great and green, will grow roots through my ribs and push through my veins. I will be gone, just like them. This will be my grave and even if no one knows it, even if I never had the chance to write it. It is mine. And I am free. I am gone already. Gone into light.