Carrion

My mother taught me how to let go of things. She would keep what she loved in storage units or in the back of her car. Whenever I asked her why she wouldn’t keep them in the house she used to say to me, “I like to keep things separate.”

I never asked her more than once every year or so growing up, and she never did put anything she loved within reach. We lived in a constant state of motion. Moving houses sometimes 3 or 4 times a year, I would have nice things and then lose nice things. As quickly as money came in, it went back out again.

She taught me how to lose things and not feel anyway about it. I lost things I loved more than once because we had to leave and I didn’t have time to pack it all before the tires screeched from the driveway.

When I would cry about leaving a precious doll or movie or blanket behind because I didn’t have time to find it she would always remind me, “If you had really loved it, you would have kept it separate.”

So I began to take her advice and I would leave things separate. As a child, it looked like having only one or two toys at a time. Instead of a toy box I would keep them in a bag I packed every night at the foot of my bed. As a teenager it looked like a library card instead of a bookshelf, I knew I wouldn’t be able to carry more than one book at a time and successfully make it out. As an adult it looked like only one piece of furniture I didn’t love, and a mattress on the floor. It looked like plastic silverware and paper plates. It looked like a cellphone with no numbers inside, because I needed it all to be separate.

Separate from what I never asked her. Did she want me to keep it separate from my life? As though what you love and how you live could never be able to touch. I didn’t understand I guess. But like most who are young and easy to control, I took what she taught me into the rest of my days.

I lived in a small one bedroom space that was kept tight and sparse. I was afraid of having more than I needed, I was afraid of getting too attached to anything that could just as quickly leave me or be taken. I kept my favorite small things in a small bag in the back of my car.

But the bigger things.

I worked in a small shop at the center of town that sold antiques and tarnished gold bracelets. It smelled like lavender and citrus and I loved it there, so I kept it very separate. I couldn’t fake my identity, so I told them I preferred to be called Sunny instead of my real name. It came after a time that no one there even remembered my real name other than the bookkeeper and only to write it on my checks.

I became Sunny.

Running my fingers down silk shirts, I would think about my mother. Her hair when it was smooth, her skin when it was glossy, her breath when it would catch in her throat to stop her from crying. The shiver of her nostrils when she watched our world light on fire around us.

“Don’t get attached to anything, even your life is temporary.”

I heard her words pour down on me through the scent of pine trees and burning wood. We stood above the small body of a kitten no bigger than the size of my fist as the fire burned behind it. The house to our left was lit by candle light alone, and due to the darkness the kitten had banged its fragile paw into a doorway or maybe on a table. The foot was bent sideways, and the little girl had cried and howled in pain.

I clutched at her tightly and tried my hardest not to touch her little paw bent at such an awkward angle. I loved her so much.

My mother had taken the kitten from my hands and brought her outside. I heard the small pleas and cries from the her soft lips become muffled and strained. I watched as my mother’s elbows bent at the crook of her arm, watched her shoulders shift in the firelight.

Her hair was down and still wild from sleep as her body moved tightly like a viper coiling around is prey.

The air was so cold outside I could see her breathing. In large gusts of effort, her body heaved and convulsed as she smothered the little one in her arms. I wanted to stop her but my feet were rooted to the door frame as I looked on towards her primal form. I could see the air leaving my lungs to dance with hers up into the heavens.

There is a stillness to the cold that can’t be explained to those who’ve never felt it. When the wind doesn’t blow, and the trees stand still. When the sky shakes ice from the air and it falls sparkling. If you have never touched an earth that cold, then you could never possibly understand what I mean when I try to tell you how it sounded as that small limp body slid from her hands and onto the hard packed dirt at her feet.

When she turned to look at me, I turned and looked away. The wild land had never been quieter than it was that night. As she walked into the trailer she did so without looking back at me. I walked out to the fire and the little body lying on the frozen ground. Its eyes were open, drool hanging from its mouth, her broken foot still dangling from the rest of the leg.

I wanted to cry then, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t have saved her. I knew that night she was right. Never keep close the things you love.

The nights I spent grown were long. I would use a lamp to read a library book, I played classical music when the nights grew so quiet I could hear my heart hammering in my ears. I kept a single drinking glass, and the only alcohol I would buy was wine that came in a box making it easy to travel with. I ate take out or not at all, and everything I had I would pack up at the end of the night into a black duffel bag kept at the end of my mattress on the floor; much like I would when I was a child.

The apartment building was green and grey and the carpets leading down the hallways were a mangled bowling alley pattern atop concrete. Each door should have had a number, however some had worn off through time. I lived in apartment 24, the only single bedroom on the first floor. It was tucked at the very end of the hall, my apartment door signaling a dead end; no one came this far back. The closest door to mine was nearly twelve feet away, and I was grateful for the privacy.

Although I have a car I prefer to walk to work. I like listening to people as they walk by; hearing them breathing, hearing them talking, feeling their arms or their backs as they bump into me. It filled a void inside, the connection that I was lacking with the rest of the world. It was the only sort of interaction I could have and remain anonymous.

I guess that’s how I met you isn’t it?

I was walking as people bumped past me, leaning in as they leaned away. No one really looked up anymore; they seemed to live their lives looking down at some sort of screen. No one would make eye contact as I gently pushed my way through.

But you did.

Your eyes caught my breath. Not because they were beautiful, but because they actually looked into mine. You smiled at me, you smiled and your hand reached out to grab me by the arm, as if you thought I would fall.

I remember the lake a few days after the death of my kitten. It was a frigid morning, and as the sun was rising there was a fine mist that crept along the waters surface. I couldn’t find any gloves, so I kept my fingers coiled into tight balls inside my jacket pockets.

My mother had watched me sulk through the house ever since that night. We never talked about the tiny body that we buried outback the next morning when the earth was warm enough to dig into. Momma told me to bury her deep if I didn’t want something to dig her up; but I hadn’t gone deep enough. The dawn after I buried her and placed a quiet wooden cross at the head of the mound of soil; there was only a gaping maw left behind.

Whatever it was had taken her body, leaving only a patch of fur behind. I reburied the patch of fur, and as tears streamed down my face I told my mother why I was once again covered in dirt.

"If you truly loved her, you would have buried her deeper.”

I spent the rest of that afternoon lying next to the grave and crying. Days afterward I wouldn’t talk to my mother.

The morning we drove up to the lake, we did so wordlessly. I still refused to speak and she seemed more than pleased with the silence. The old Chevy Blazer was a steady vehicle, and it paced the white line with a calm precision. The radio was playing old country music, the kind you can only find on an A.M station.

My mother looked tight. Her fists locked around the steering wheel, her eyes either pointed with determination on the road ahead of her or darting at the rear view mirror.

You could feel how cold the water was without even touching it, just hovering your hands above the frothing mist and you could feel the ice nipping at the tips of your fingers. Momma walked around the edge of the lake telling me to stay by the car, telling me to keep out of the water.

I stayed at the edge of the water as she walked out of sight. The sound of her boots hard packed and heavy on the pebble strewn sand, then suddenly the sounds of her footfalls were replaced by the constant echo of churning waves smacking against the shore.

I sat in the sand, and dug my chilled fingers into the tiny rocks, occasionally picking one up and tossing it with a satisfying plunk when it hit the water. I would watch the ripples reach out to me, a sirens call. It was so quiet if you tilted your head up to the sky you could almost hear the sun stretching over the expanse of darkness. I could hear birds calling out to each other singing along with the never-ending lapping of water.

The silence was so perfect it made her return sound almost ominous. Each step sounding an alarm through the quiet. She walked past me without a second glance and whistled at me to follow. Reluctantly, I raised to my feet and threw a handful of rocks, listening as they rained down to the bottom of the water.

I helped her pull at least a dozen bags from the back of the car. I had never seen the bags before that day. They were black, and they were heavy to me at that time. They smelled like bleach, and in each one I moved I could hear heavy plastic same as the sound butcher paper makes when you unwrap it. I moved the bags and noticed that when I moved them just right, I could smell something lifting up from the bleach. I could smell something sweet and something rancid.

After the bags were loaded into the wheelbarrow, we walked them down to an old boat just a short distance from the car; my mother heaving with the strain it took to push the burden through the sand. By the time we were done her face was red and beaded sweat despite the frost around us. As she dropped the handles with a thud of weight she sighed with relief, wiping her forehead with the back of her gloved hand.

Then one by one, we loaded the them into the boat. Each one we threw rocked the boat, creating ripples up to the shoreline just as the rocks had. The boat was silver, and the engine was old, and it took my mother more than one attempt to get it running.

For my part, I sat at the bottom with my head in my hands attempting to hide it from the cold. I had my back pressed against one of the two benches, my feet resting on the bags. Each time the boat lurched against the waves I could feel something rolling beneath my feet, I could feel something moving inch by inch under my boots. For reasons I couldn’t explain the moving orb inside of the bag made me queasy, so I tucked my feet underneath me instead.

The entire time I never took my eyes off the bags. I couldn’t stomach the way they moved, and swayed. Some would thump against the vibrations in unison with my cheeks, the same motion, the same texture.

At the center of the lake my mother cut the engine, the boat rocking as she came to the center of it, leaning over me reaching for the bags.

I could smell the campfire and cigarettes on her jacket and I inhaled deeply when she reached past me, trying to find comfort through a familiar scent in a moment that was so unnerving.

I remember feeling scared when I realized I never asked her what we were doing out here. It was only in the complete and utter silence that I realized how quiet we had been.

The first bag she dropped into the inky blackness shattered that quiet, splashing water onto the side of the boat. One by one, my mother threw the bags and watched as they dropped past sight and into the open void that laid just below out feet.

Water doesn’t seem terrifying until you realize it’s the only thing keeping you upright. As I watched the bags float downward I realized that if we were to fall even the slightest bit left or right, I would be joining them downward into the nothingness; and it would be nothingness that would keep me.

The final bag hit the water with a swoosh of motion and noise. Once the water settled and the boat steadied into a natural rocking rhythm, my mother finally looked at me.

Her eyes were feral and empty and red from exhaustion. As they stared I realized even at such a young age, that I didn’t know this woman. Though I called her mother and I could recall the softness of her hands as they stroked my face, there was still the realization that she was a stranger to me. The wind of a new day tugged her hair across her cheeks, and her head tilted with the breeze.

“Keep the things you love at a distance.,” is what she said.

'They can’t hurt what they can’t find,' is what she left unspoken.

When you grabbed my arm that day I felt the wind blow the hair across my cheeks, just like it had hers. When you looked at me I could only imagine my eyes looked as crazed as hers had; it was the only way I could explain why you didn’t break your gaze.

There is a certain gleam of fire that you can catch if you look at someone just the right way. Like a burning building or an effigy alight beneath the moon, it is a shade of power that you can’t look away from. My mother had that smoldering between her lashes, so I can understand why you held onto me the way you did.

We exchanged names, and numbers and soon shared the passing of moments together. It didn’t take you long to fall in love with Sunny, and to my horror I realized that I had begun to love you in return.

You lived in an apartment as small as mine and we would spend our nights drinking and laughing and talking. You would explain to me in great detail all of the things you intended to do once your life came together.

And I listened to you, because it seemed like the right thing to do. I would watch you pass out on your mattress made of soft white sheets, one lamp lit. I would listen to you breath and time my footsteps with your sleeping sighs, and wander around the space you had created. You walls had pictures of people you loved on them and the toilet paper was always on the roll.

You would keep your leftovers in sandwich bags instead of Tupperwear, and your clothes were far too many for me to keep count. I would stalk your bed like a satisfied predator, calmly pacing back and forth above your resting frame.

And one night when your eyes grew too heavy to hold open and your breath too shallow to be awake, I told you a story. I sat by your feet, near your mattress on the floor and I started the story like all tragedies start.

Once upon a time there was a little girl and she loved her father very much. She shouldn’t have, but she loved him with the innocence of childhood, the kind of love you feel before understand how damaging love can be.

Her father was a man just a few dollars shy; he always seemed to have money on the way but it never arrived. The father and his family lived in a land filled with lights and noise and ruled by an evil King.

The evil King made his money from the less fortunate, stealing from the poor to make himself rich. There wasn’t a single dollar in the whole kingdom without his fingerprints on it, just as there wasn’t a single man owning more than two pairs of shoes who didn't have an unpaid debt to the King.

The King was ruthless, and the father was scared. The father liked horses, he thought they spoke to him and swore he could hear them speaking from stables, calling out numbers, calling out wins.

Then one day he thought he heard the voice of God whispering to him that a steed with a coat made of copper and three white socks was his savior from spending the rest of his life toiling in the neon mines for the King.

The father was a proud man, the father was a loving man, but the father was also a secretive one, and he never spoke of the debts he owed. His family lived happily, the King giving to those who served him well as generously as he took from them.

The father thought he was safe from the evil King; he thought the work he did made him immune. Working in the Kings' great castle deep in the belly of the beast, he enforced corrupt laws. He broke bones at the table of the King instead of bread and he was as good at it as he was hollow.

When the horses sprung from the gate that afternoon it was the copper toned stallion that rushed from the pack first, while the father sat motionless in his seat breath caught in his throat. People around him screamed from their chairs, the smell of beer and desperation clung to the air like cigar smoke. The father watched the stallion sweating and frothing, the knight at his back whipping him harder.

For a split second as he locked eyes with the beast, everything stilled into silence. The peasants around him froze like stone. He could hear the animal whimper, brown eyes sparkling with adrenaline. He was so close to the finish line; he was so close.

The father looked down when the horse began its decent. Everything moved so fast then. The leg of the beast locked as the bone pushed its way through the copper fur. He took a breath before realizing what he'd done.

He ran to his home; ran to his wife. It was fear that coursed through him when he arrived at the steps of his home and heard the metallic thrumming of the Kings army standing guard. They paced in anticipation.

He agreed to come with them to the King and watched as his wife clutched his daughter from the window; her spine rigid and her jaw tense.

At the table of the King, the father threw himself on his Sire’s mercy. He begged for time, he begged for understanding, he begged for the lives of his wife and child.

“Please,” he pleaded through the taste of blood, “please leave them alone.”

The king was cruel, but he was also cunning and knew what the father was capable of. So with a gun to his head he offered him a deal.

The father and his family would be allowed to live. In exchange the King would take the fathers bride and his daughter and lock them away in the Kings castle. The father could win them back once his debt was paid.

For every dollar the father owed, a body would be disposed of in turn. The father knew the number was far too large, but the only other choice would be the death of them all.

So the King kept the family in his castle. The father’s wife, the Kings new consort, the little daughter, the Kings newest trinket.

Time and time again, the father would pick up black bags filled with the sound of butcher block paper, and the scent of something sweet and rancid wafting from each one. Then in the cover of darkness, he would bury the bags in the blackness of the lake. Watching as the water wrapped around them, keeping them forever within its nothingness.

Single handedly the father created a lake of lost souls. Bones sat like stones at the bottom of its depths.

All this time the daughter waited in the castle for her father to come and rescue her. She learned about guns, and she learned about knives, and she learned that her father was a foolish man to choose money over knowledge. Watching through the years as her mother learned to work the Kings court to her favor, the girl looked for a way out.

She found it in a black bag that smelled rancid and sweet; the head of her mother looking up at her from the zipper.

Her father had run and no one could find him. Her mother had grown old and the King no longer desired her company; she was easy to dispose of. But the daughter was still young, the daughter was smarter than her mother, the daughter was stronger than her mother, the daughter was raised by the King.

The King saw potential in the girl. No matter how hideous her treatment she didn’t break; and when she grew bigger, she turned into stone. The King gave her the black bag and watched as she slowly undid the zipper. He saw her looking at the eyes so blue, the skin so pale, the hair once white now coppered like a dry scab.

The King waited to hear her scream; the King waited to hear her cry.

The daughter looked her mother in the eyes and leaned her face towards her chin. Then she bringing the head up to her lips, she kissed her goodbye.

Without zipping the bag, she tossed it back at the Kings feet.

“I loved my father,” she spoke proudly, “and I loved my mother too. But if they wanted to live this way, then they should have kept this life separate.”

The King looked at the girl, a weird sense of pride shining in his eyes. Even though he would ever admit it, for the smallest of moments he wished the girl had come from him.

But she hadn’t.

So, he did the next best thing and he made the little girl his Queen.

But the Queen wasn't happy, and if the queen isn't happy, then all must watch as she burns the kingdom to the ground.

With a single match she lit the castle on fire and sealed the doors shut.

The queen burned every ounce of royal blood until it was no more.

Then she rebuilt the kingdom from the ground up.

And when the daughter now a Queen had a child of her own, she taught the child her most precious lesson.

If you love it, keep it separate.

That's why I’m looking over you now and why it breaks my heart to think of how much I loved you, even if it wasn’t for long.

You put your money on the wrong horse. I wish I would have known when we bumped into one another that day that this would be our fate.

I am so sorry.

But the Queen is as cruel as her dead King. I was not born to be coddled, and you were not born to survive as I was; and if the Queen smells that I'm creeping too close to you, she'll kill you herself in a way much crueler than the gentle sleep with which I laid you to rest.

I should have kept you further from me. Maybe then this wouldn’t hurt as much as it does.

I cut up the limbs myself. It’s sad to think about what could have been so I don’t.

Instead I burn the engine of that old silver boat, bags shifting at my feet sending waves of sweet and rancid meat up to my nostrils.

When the quiet consumes me in the morning light; so quiet I can hear the sun stretching out above us, I think of what I could be and what we could have been. I think of the kitten.

I think of you.

As I watch the pieces of you drop from my fists in the form of black bags, I make a silent promise. The water will be deep enough that nothing will ever dig you up.

I am so sorry I couldn’t keep you separate.