fire, all mingled together.
I lined up Mason jars behind the garage. Each day I unscrewed another lid to collect that day’s rain. Each day I discovered the clouds brooded longer, and each day the water level was substantially higher — even though, as the week wore on, the rain fell with more and more force, splashing out of the jars and catching on the surrounding grass.
At the first low rumble, my forearms prickled. I kept time records and loudness records in the orange pocket notepads Sam brought home from gas stations. In the early evening’s hush after the storm subsided, I walked around Apple Ford, assessing the damage, looking for ugliness, for evidence of that great wrath: fragments of bone and animal ears and bits of cloth, tangible proof that the storm’s fury was real I sought out trees struck by lightning and cut the wood free with Sam’s hunting knife, smuggled out of the house because of its forbidden sharpness. I laid my hands on the shining burnt crevices where the limbs had been severed. Energy, perhaps electrical, perhaps more than that, surged into my hands and maybe into my veins. At home, I stored the bits of lightning wood in a box in my bedroom closet, checking them with the lights out to see if they glowed. Underneath, I was driven, certain as I was of my own flesh that something magical was to be gained from this knowledge, this accumulation, this seeing. I stayed quiet and paid attention. If I waited long enough, the secret of the storms’ temper would be my own.
Now that we were home from school, Sylvia sat in our kitchen all day and smoked. Her hair was limp with hurnidity but her stretchy headband matched her blouse. She stared at the yard, green now, the grass long and unmanageable. Mowing it was Sylvia’s job, but she no longer went outside and Sam wasn’t home long enough. Sylvia stacked her butts in a hefty black and green ceramic ashtray. I emptied it before Sam came home. The summer before, Sylvia had smoked a little, one or two a day, and usually only in the evenings if Sam was there. She had worn lipstick then, painted her lips a solid flat red that left filmy kiss marks on the cigarette. Sometimes she’d handed a butt to me, lighted, and let me smoke it. She got out her compact to show me the smear of red that remained on my lips and I walked around pushing my lips out, wishing for someone to kiss. This summer, Sylvia wasn’t wearing lipstick, her lips paler than her skin. This summer she was smoking the butts down until the white part was no longer visible. The kitchen was hazy with smoke and Nicky pretended to have choking fits whenever he came in.
Sometimes Sylvia spoke, her voice hoarse now, her words garbled. I winced, pretending to ignore it. Sylvia’s voice used to be the first thing I heard when I got in from school, calling from the kitchen and asking how my day had gone. She would beam when she saw me, hand me a plate of Ritz crackers spread with peanut butter and granny apple slices with a few drops of lemon squeezed on them so they wouldn’t brown, and sit down, eyebrows raised. I would pour everything into my mother who would smile and nod, seemingly overjoyed at her daughter’s very existence. Now I had my doubts.
I had to pass through the kitchen to get from my bedroom to outside. I ran in and out, grabbing Mason jars from the top of the basement stairs, rummaging around in the junk drawer for labels, glue and magic markers. I tried to be fast; keeping records was messy business. It didn’t fit any known rules. But the rules were starting to give, their seams weakened. There were ways of slipping through that went unnoticed.
The house with its dull brown rooms and green linoleum floors existed as a container for me, an endless source of supplies. I moved through it as I moved through the compartments of my night dreams, slowly but with purpose, sliding around the edges, wary of disturbing anyone.
On the third day, the rain caught me out in the carrots and weeds behind the garage, causing the round pen lines of my notes and charts to bleed into each other. That night by my window, greedily absorbing each breath of breeze that rustled the maple leaves, I traced the ridge marks my Bic pen had made on the pages underneath. Since I couldn’t copy the figures correctly, the tone was set for the next day’s collections. As the storms wore on, my figures became more and more fabulous; one day the water level was a foot high, the next it was three. I had no way to tell for sure.
The day after getting caught in the rain, I slipped into the kitchen to look through the drawers for a Baggie to carry my notebook in. I stood with my head cowed, my body angled away from Sylvia.
It didn’t work.
“Come here, Mercy.”
Sylvia’s monotone voice had a weary quality that threatened to swallow me. I shuddered.
“I said over here. In front of me. Where I can see you.”
I stood my ground.
“I’m in a hurry.” I almost called Sylvia “Mommy” but this name didn’t seem right anymore. I didn’t want to stay, but leaving would make me somehow responsible for her sitting by the window smoking.
Sylvia’s eyes moved. They lit on me for a second then flitted up to the cupboard where they rested.
“I want that hair cut. Come here.”
I pushed the drawer shut with the heel of my hand. The drawer was loose and jammed partway. I moved over to the table, standing out of habit to Sylvia’s left.
She raked her fingers through the tangles. She hadn’t combed my hair into ponytails for months and now my thick hair hung in snarls.
It felt good to have my hair pulled. I liked to have my mother’s hands in my hair, near my scalp. The pulls made my scalp tingle. I leaned into my mother. Sylvia tugged harder and the familiar sharp smell arose. I tilted my nose up. I liked to hold the hair to my nostrils and inhale. When it was wet I sucked on the ends. I hadn’t washed it since before the storms, when I’d skidded a bar of soap over my head and dunked it under the tub water. I glanced at my mother. The corners of her eyes looked pinched.
With ragged nails, Sylvia tugged and twisted, the pulls getting keener.
I breathed through my mouth, my eyes on her taut aqua headband. Sylvia moved her long hands down. She tweaked my collar, brushed my shoulders, licked a finger and rubbed my knee. Her eyes stayed fixed on the floor beyond my feet. I pressed even closer, my side against Sylvia’s, my knees against her thighs.
I stared at her, willing her to return the gaze. The hair tucked under Sylvia’s headband lay in lank, oily clumps, the ends resting on her collar. Her wrists were so skinny the bones dug out of her skin. Her smell was one of smoke and underarms and hair — much like my own, only with a sourness I couldn’t place. She no longer baked, read magazines, made clothes or talked on the phone. She didn’t go to pottery or rug hooking, had abandoned knotting macramé and crafting driftwood. She just sat in her chair, knees and elbows crossed, and smoked. There were no more rules for knowing her. Even broken rules didn’t alert her.
Sylvia grabbed a handful of hair and jerked it back.
“It should be off your face.” Her voice was low and clear. Her breath smelled like a dirty dishrag and I turned my head away.
Sylvia yanked harder. I forgot all about staying out of trouble.
“It’s my hair!” I yelled. “If you can keep your hair like that, I can do what I want with mine.”
Sylvia rose out of her seat, her head veiled by swirls of sunlit smoke, and cracked her hand across my jaw.
In that moment my mind formatted a new type of mother touch. Sylvia hadn’t touched me in I didn’t know how long. It was a trap: Sylvia’s fingers in my hair, Sylvia letting me lean up against her, luring me. My mother’s hands, the ones that used to be large safe places for me to hide my own fearful hands, now sprouted mean fingers out to destroy me. This mother made no sense. My mother’s palm against my cheek broke the rules. The ringing slap had set me free. There were no rules now for loving Sylvia. I shook, unable to open my eyes.
Sylvia sat back down and waved her long fingers.
“Leave me alone.”
Her hand fell back to her lap. She put a cigarette in her mouth and didn’t bother to light it.
I backed out of the room. Sounds of whimpers and sniffing followed me. I quickened