Radiant Hunger

After the shootout, those of us who were still alive went in all directions, and though Claire was my favorite of the mothers, I had to go with Blanche who said I was hers, something I had sort of known all along. We changed our names–which was nothing new–and moved from town to town and sometimes she told me to call her not “mother” or “Mom” but “aunt.” Blanche always made friends and found some kind of work to do and she kissed me and hugged me before tucking me in at night so I knew I’d been lucky in the mother I ended up with, to make up for being so unlucky, my childhood disrupted and all. That’s why when the police caught up with us and put me in foster care, the only good to come of it in my view was I got to take back my first, original, or at least my favorite name. Leah. Even now, at almost thirty, I find myself writing it over and over on paper sometimes, like an adolescent, or tracing the four letters out on tabletops or even in the air. I know now about the people Ned killed. The man he shot–and not the only one, either, I know that now–and the wife who simply fell to her knees and took her husband’s hand and never uttered a cry. She knelt like a marble statue and Ned stepped up behind her and put a single bullet in the back of her head. But I didn’t see that happen. As far as I know, none of the children did. I read about all of it recently, through interlibrary microfilm loans, and how more bodies were found in a wooded area near the ranch. I remember my childhood vividly, so I truly doubt any terrible memories are lodged and moving slowly like soon-to-end-their-hibernation snakes. I seek reminiscence, not revelation. Leah. I’m Leah. My childhood was not traumatic. I was not abused. I loved the mothers and Ned and most of all Susannah, my more-than-sister, who I lost when we were nine years old and I went with Blanche and she went with Claire. ____________________ Ned took us out into the pasture one night, a cloudy night without moon. We took a flashlight just as far as the fence. He helped us out of our jackets and hung them on a fence post. Cold? he asked and I said Yes, thinking he would give the jacket back. He held apart the strands of barbed wire so that I could climb through and Susannah, and then he followed and took my hand in darkness. I guess he took hers, too. Can you see? he asked. No. I was a little scared. The ground was muddy but not sloppy, it was spring and in places there were solid islands clumped by matted grasses and frost. It’s not cold anymore, is it? he asked, and it wasn’t. Can you feel them? And suddenly I could. This is how blind people see, he told us. They see with their bodies. I could feel their shapes, large dark rectangles of warmth, radiating like the space heater in the bathroom we were allowed to use when sick, but gentler, friendlier and darker, no red glow, a sweet breathing density, exhalations of summer, of clover, grass and hay, the heat of a burrow, an encompassing drift, stronger here, like a game, you’re getting warm warm hot. You’re close, closer. He dropped my hand. Walk among them without bumping. You can sense them. Their breath, their bodies. During the daytime children weren’t allowed in the pasture alone. The cows seemed placid but look at the size of them, they could crush you without thinking. And the calves, babies, we wanted to grab the calves but Ned always warned us about the sharp hooves, a simple kick and you’ve a broken head. I knew where Susannah was because she was crying. And then I stopped hearing her. I could feel the cows swaying, the warmth coming in waves. I could tell where they were without seeing. I moved forward and wanted to kiss their mouths, the sweet breath coming from them, and the sweet warmth not like the smell of people when they sweat, but all perfume and summer and when I got very close the warmth was thicker, like a wall or fence or where the woods begin, and I would stop and turn and walk the other way. It was like touching without touching. I could tell the head from tail. I could tell–or thought I could–which cows had horns. You have to feel it. No one can tell you. I was standing on a little hummock, my arms outstretched, head tilted up to the dark sky, my eyes closed so that when the clouds parted and stars shone a moment through the aperture, I didn’t even see at first, until Ned whispered my name and I saw the pinpoint lights for just an instant before the curtains above closed and a cow nearby lowed and then all of them vanished again into the warm perfumed bath, the shifting shapes, walls of hide and flesh and body heat and breath.