Lemonade.

Bruises heal faster if you keep them iced. Always whisper sweet nothings into your gravy if you want it to taste right. Cut skin can pull itself together, but if it’s too deep you’re best to hold it in place with tape. Fruit tastes better when it’s over ripe. Don’t tell the neighbors the truth; else they might get too nosey.

Ms. Lilimain taught me a lot of little things. She lived three homes down at the end of the street in an old farm house covered in green vines and surrounded by flowers. She had fruit trees and a vegetable garden out back, and I would often spend my summer days lounging in the sun book in hand, plucking the occasional apple off the branches above me.

She made the best lemonade in all of Oklahoma, said the secret was to let the lemons soak in sugar water for a week before she used them. You can turn even the most sour of things sweet if you have the patience to wait.

Her husband was a big man with lines cut across his forearms from years of working the fields. Each day he would come home just before nightfall, his clothes covered in dirt and sweat. I never remember him ever kissing Ms. Lilimain when he walked through the door. He would simply sit down at the kitchen table, light a cigarette and wait for his food without a word in any direction.

For her part, she always had his plate ready and on time, no matter how busy her day may have been. Once he was content at the table, fork in hand and lemonade at the ready, she would bid me goodbye for the day on the porch and I would hug her my farewell until tomorrow.

He would never look up as I left.

Most afternoons were quiet at her home. When I walked through the door, she would be standing near the kitchen sink, her nimble fingers covered in flour or sugar with a voice as soft as fur she would hum and sing to her task as though it was a child, hair pulled loose in a braid at the nape of her neck.

Sometimes beneath her delicately coiled curls I would spot a color that didn’t belong. She would tisk me away with a flick of her tongue and a ‘never mind that love, would you please pass me the sugar,’ or ‘those who mind their own, end up with a lot less on their mind.’

So our summers would roll on, day after sweet summer day, warm baked bread, light kitchen smells, the cackle of chickens, the taste of apples, her smile as bright as the daylight.

Laying beside the creek that ran through the property, her eyes were locked somewhere on the horizon and hard as I looked I simply could not see when she said to me, “Did you hear about the Willards?”

“They were quiet but they seemed alright,” I said, the air around me suddenly thick.

“Funny how things can seem alright,” she said as her eyes remained fixed on that spot I still couldn’t put a shape to. “I heard she’s coming back.”

“The hell you did!” I replied and then quickly bit my tongue in youthful shame. “Sorry ma’am I didn’t mean to cuss. It’s just that aint no one heard from them in months, who told you she was coming back?”

“She did. She told me herself.”

I no longer was looking for whatever Ms. Lilimain was looking at in that distance, and instead stared slack jawed at her.

“Why would she tell you?”

“Well,” she started a small smile cutting the corners of her lips, “some questions are just the way they are, they don’t need an answer darlin’. Some questions stay questions no matter how many answers you give ‘em, it’s just their nature. But from what I understand, they decided to give up.”

“Huh,” I replied, her words too tall for my small mind to see over, wait, “what do you mean give up?”

At that she finally moved her gaze turning it downward to a loose strand on the end of her dress, then smoothing out the wrinkles before sighing and beginning to stand. “I best go check on dinner.” It struck me when she looked back to smile how pale her skin had suddenly gotten, the color it seemed had completely drained from her face.

The days continued on, one after the other, but things seemed; different.

Ms. Lillimain didn’t seem right. She hardly spoke to me anymore, and instead of spending her days in the kitchen or the garden she ran between her home and the shed near the woodpile outback, a place she never used to go, and a place that I could never seem to enter. When she would finally spring from its walls, her hands would be scrubbed raw and her eyes bloodshot and wide.

I would make it to the old wooden door, and feel my fingers press against the rough handle, the white paint that was left to peel in the sun pulling from the splinters to rest in my shaking palm. I just wanted to see what was inside, I wanted to know what kept her from me for hours and hours. I would open my eyes after but a blink and my entire day would be missing. The night air would hang loose around my shoulders and I would find myself leaning against the door looking out into the dark grass..

That’s when the noise started. I could hear it coming from the shed a thrumming like the sound of bees swarming their hive. I could hear it all day long no matter where I went on the property I could hear it. Like it was chasing me down, that vibrating noise texturing the air like rough cotton.

I would sit with my back against the shed, hours of memory missing from my mind the night would look like an endless wasteland of swaying stalks and receding horizon. I would listen to the sound like I used to listen to crickets, but the sounds drowned out everything else.

That’s why I never heard it coming, but I would always see it. It would come from the grass, crouched in the darkness, it’s hands at the level of its chin, and it would slink from left to right moving the vegetation around it. Sneaking with long tall strides, bringing its knees almost to its chest like a cartoonish nightmare hunting me down; it would stop at the edge of the grass.

Lifting its head from its chest it would be smiling with a mouth too large and breathing through a nose too long. Then as soon as it looked at me, as soon as my eyes connected with it, its eyes would grow and grow and widen. Pupils dilating, and through the wide smile it would sneer at me.

“Soon. You will come home soon.”

It would be gone by morning, but sometimes it would spend the entire night standing at the edge of the grass shoulders and chest lifting with each breath.

I would stare at it first in fear, keeping my eyes trained wide on it’s stare. It never blinked that I could tell, just sat there at the edge of the grass it’s mouth open into a Cheshire grin.

It never blinked.

The days became longer once that thing came around. Ms. Lillimain who had always been a well kempt and level headed woman, seemed suddenly to misplace most of her mind even on the best of days. Her hair began to hang in strangled heaps around her forehead and shoulders; moving back and forth through the kitchen as though she was searching for something. Sighing and mumbling about how she had just had it, how it had just been there.

We didn’t sit outside and talk anymore. The days vapid and the hours distancing themselves from time all together, I would spend my loneliness anchored by the shed waiting for the door to open. My fingers peeling at the paint until I noticed my nails coming loose, the tips reddened and oozing, only to be repaired by the morning.

I had forgotten how I got here.

Her husband still came home. I could hear them from my place by the shed door, looking over my right shoulder at the dimly lit house.

It was already dark again. Why was that?

“Lil, Lil please stop with all of this, stop!” His voice, it carried so far I was certain it would wake the neighbors. It would wake the sleeping babies in cribs all across the country the way he shouted it rested in your ear and burrowed into your mind. The way he shouted it hurt so much more than it should have.

“I can’t just stop now, Wayne, I can’t just stop now that I’m so close I’m so damn close. Look at it! Look at how far it’s come, look at it!”

They both turned in tandem, their arms forming a perfect wall of cotton as they looked out the white trimmed window at me. Or maybe it wasn’t at me, perhaps it was past me. But if they were looking past me, why did I suddenly feel so uneasy. It shouldn’t be like this.

I could hear the beast breathing at the edge of the grass.

“She’s coming back you know?” Ms. Lillimain sat so close to me the next morning I could almost taste her breath.

I looked up confused, my eyes watering from the sudden glaring light of midmorning.

“Who?” I asked.

“Ms. Willard.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“She told me herself.”

“Did she call?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know she’s coming back?”

We were sitting by the creek again. How long had it been since I’d been here? How long had it been? Hadn’t this already been?

I knew that the water would be cool to the touch. I had placed my fingers in its moving waves so many times before I knew what they would feel like. I just knew, inherently I knew it, so I didn’t reach out my hand to touch it, because I knew how it would feel.

The sun was hot, I think you would think it would be. That’s all the sun knows how to be, so you would think it would be as it was supposed to be.

But I realized I couldn’t feel the heat of it on my cheek.

“Ms. Lillimain, I-I don’t feel very good. I think something is wrong.” My tongue is heavy and dry. I changed my mind about the wet turning against the grassy slope beneath me and reached to take a sip from the creek.

“Did you hear about the Williards?”

“They ran off, I mean, uh- she ran off and left him.”

“Seems strange doesn’t it? A couple just leaving town without a trace, without a reason only a rumor. Who uproots their entire life over a rumor? Seems like there had to have been something else. And what about the child?”

My hands were shaking, I wanted to put them in the water, I felt like I needed a drink so badly, didn’t I? Wasn’t I thirsty? I thought I had been, I had a feeling in the back of my throat like I had been thirsty, wasn’t I still? Why couldn’t I touch the water?

“Pretty girl, She used to love coming here to see me. She would spend hours under that apple tree, the one right across this creek, that one, that one right there, her nose buried in a book and a glass of my lemonade beside her. She said she liked it better by the apple trees, she said it was a quiet spot, a place where she could think somewhere away from the fighting. I really liked that girl.”

“Huh?” My breath was slow, at least I think it was, wasn’t I breathing? Of course I was, the creek was cool, the sun was hot, and I was breathing, because that’s the way it was supposed to be. Things are the way they are, it’s just their nature.

“Did you hear about the Williards?”

I looked up at Ms. Lillimain. Her hair was neat again the way it used to be, the way I had always remembered it being. We were in her kitchen, the oven giving off the scent of something delicious baking. I sat across from her husband with his arms resting on the table and his eyes tired and creased.

“Yeah, I heard their girl’s gone missing.”

Ms. Lillimain wasn’t looking, she didn’t see the way he tightened his nails into his palm, or how the grip cracked his wrist, or the vein creeping up his neck.

“I do hope she’s alright, do you think the rumors are true? Do you really think she just took off with some random man? I’ve known her for such a long time, she’s been coming over here since the moment she could walk that trail down. She just didn’t seem the type to do something like that.”

He looked up at me from across the table, or at least it seemed that way. He looked me in the eyes but it seemed like he didn’t see me at all. What was he looking at? Why did they both keep looking past me, through me, how had I become so invisible to everyone?

I turned in my chair to look, and found that behind me was that white trimmed window. The shed was freshly painted, clean and crisp in the fading daylight, it sat looking out towards the tall grass.

When I turned back the kitchen was empty. It was dark outside and there was a small lamp lit at the edge of the sink, the only light with which I could see by.

Someone’s crying, their sobs unlike any I had heard before. The lungs that heaved the great roaring sound sputtered and stalled as they tried once again to catch the air around them. It was coming from the room at the end of the hall, I could see a light shining through the bottom of the door.

I waited at my chair poised above it, standing, looking, listening.

“How, could, you?” The words escaped so slowly, the words, they came in between wailing breaths. “How could you do this, how could you do this?”

He stood at the corner of the bedroom, his hands pushing through his hair, pacing slightly as he stared at the floor.

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know how it happened, it just happened! You gotta help me, you just gotta.” He hissed like he was afraid of being heard, like he was afraid of being seen or found. His voice reverberated like a rattlesnake in terror.

Ms. Lillimain sat on the edge of the bed with her arms wrapped around her middle, her upper body rocking back and forth, moans cascading from her frame. All of us waited in our chosen positions,; all of us held fast our parts.

When she finally was able to stop the sobs, her trembling limbs stiffened and she sat up with her back straight as a board. “Tell me what happened.”

“She was sittin’ by the creek, and her eyes, they just kept lookin’ for me, no matter where I went I could feel her lookin’ at me. I finally went over and you should have seen how much she wanted me Lil, she wanted me bad. So we- it meant nothin’ though, I swear it meant nothin’!”

I walked down the hall, my feet so light against the wood grain, it was as if I wasn’t walking at all.

“Things got out of hand, you know how things get out of hand sometimes? She started crying, I just wanted her to stop crying.”

Had I forgotten to breathe? Why could I suddenly not breathe? Isn’t that one of those things I should just remember how to do?

“We have to do something about the body.”

We all looked down the hall and out of the kitchen window to the shed. Turning my body towards the direction of our collective gaze, as soon as I began moving I could again hear their scornful words.

I left them to fight and walked through the kitchen and out the back door, and then down the three steps to the shed. The beast sat at the edge of the grass. The beast sat and panted smelling of death and rotting meat.

I reached my hand out to the door and noticed that nothing pulled away, not the slivers, not the paint, it was so new. It let me place my fingers around its handle, would I be able to open it?

When the door gave way I could smell the beast. That scent of decay and thickening copper. The shed was bigger inside than it had looked from the out and I could hear that buzzing coming from somewhere near the hay bales towards the back wall. My feet were heavy, weren’t they heavy? I felt like they should be carrying the weight of an unlived life beneath their soles but they glided like air to the end of the shed and the buzzing.

“You know what’s wrong with you, you drunken son of a bitch?”

Momma?

Where was I? I had just been there, I had just been there somewhere, where was I now?

“You’re lucky to have me! You’re lucky I stuck around you and that whelp of shit suckling off of me like I’m some kinda hog!”

Poppa?

“You fucking disgrace, you fucking filthy disgusting disgrace!”

Poppa struck his hand out before I could stop him and pulled Momma up against the wall, her face turning red then purple, her feet inches from the ground. When he dropped her, her body hit with the sound of small town emptiness, the music that only poverty can make and I closed my eyes and covered my ears in distaste.

“It’s alright baby, shh, shh, shh. It’s alright.”

When I opened my eyes there she sat. One hand in her lap, the other across my back, her eyes warm and pleading. Ms. Lillimain, she would never let anything bad happen to me. She loved me, she loved me and she said it all the time.

“What did you do!”

I could hear her, but I could no longer feel her. I was back in that hallway again, and her husband pressed his face against the door frame. His body seemed listless, his hands the only things that appeared to be keeping him upright as he pressed his blood shot eyes against the worn wood and took uneven breaths.

“I am so sorry Lil. I am so sorry.”

Ms. Lillimain lifted her head and stared at me, her eyes locking with mine, although I’m not sure she realized it.

“Why?” I breathed the question more than spoke it and it seemed as if the word so light, drifted above her head before her ears could hear it. So I tried again, and this time I shouted, clenching my fists and squeezing my eyes, “Why!”

The sound of the glass crashing against the old wood, shards clipping against the cabinets nearest to the floor; Ms. Lillimain turned towards the table at which I sat, her eyes wide, right hand clutching at her chest. She took a couple of deep breaths and then began to pray quietly as she turned away to continue the dishes. Her tears were as dirty as the water in which she washed.

"Why?" I said it again but I knew she would not answer.

Some things are the way the are, and once they are there's nothing much anyone can do about it.