I met Sam on a day in early spring outside a locked door. Other students lingered briefly, peeking like deer, but only she and I hung around, convinced that the door might open. Class must be cancelled, she suggested at the halfway point. We agreed on coffee and went to her house instead of the cafe. It was a block off campus if you crossed over a busted section of chain link fence. Her apartment was on the second floor of an old brick building, up a wooden exterior staircase.
We sat on the floor for an hour or two. Her black cat did circuits through the overpass of my knees. I asked Sam about the thing dangling by a piece of twine from a hook screwed into the ceiling in a corner of the room. She told me it was called a God’s Eye and that she’d made it in fourth grade. It seemed to wobble back and forth on an axis in the still room. She asked me if I wanted to make one, setting down her mug.
From some kind of cat basket in the corner she pulled a ball of black and white yarn then returned to her place on the floor and handed it to me. Here, she said. She made a cross with her arms, her left straight in the air, her right perpendicular. Tie a knot around the center, and then start weaving.
“Clockwise? “
“It doesn’t matter.”
I rolled the sleeves of her mauve sweater up past her little elbows and tied her forearms together. Be careful, she said, but taught, like a spider web, so the string doesn’t fall in on itself.
After a dozen or so weaves around and through her arms I saw the diamond beginning to form. Her forearms were small, this helped me work, and some time fell by before I realized how strong these little arms were. They, unsupported, did not waver– she seemed to find some relief by stretching her fingers and rotating her wrists in ways I was imagining the shadow puppets they might make.
The cat stared at us from the windowsill. I became lost in our work and was startled to find the end of the ball sliding through the thumb and forefinger of my left hand. The diamond had reached her wrists and the yarn, which alternated black and white every yard or so, had come together to make a God’s Eye that reminded me of static on an old TV. She shifted it ninety degrees to take a good look at it before sliding her wrists together and collapsing the thing into a loose pair of handcuffs.
***
I tried not to bother her too much. She kept quiet in class and missed more days than I preferred, but I could hardly blame her. Our professor, Rick, had slipped on the ice sometime over the winter break and hit his head and claimed to have laid there seizing for fifteen minutes, and also to have lost his sense of smell. The classroom was often a mess. Kids took advantage of the situation, of his looseness. He’d call off class for migraines. The class was on long poems.
In the middle of the course, after finishing Metamorphoses, I suggested to Sam that we meet up and trade off recitations of The Faerie Queene. She agreed and on the Monday that followed a lonesome, beerdrunk Easter, I picked her up and we drove to a little lake north of town. There was a little shelter there with a picnic table but we chose to sit on the dock.
From a roomy canvas bag adorned with primary colored horses, she pulled out a quilt, a carton of strawberries and a bottle of wine so cold it could’ve been dislodged from a snowdrift. The morning had been grey but as we were getting settled we got hit with the sun’s power. Spring had been whispering and trying to announce itself after a mild winter- a drought.
I opened my copy, an old hardcover I’d found at a library sale in Iowa City, and asked if she wanted me to read the introduction. She shook her head and ate a handful of small strawberries.
***
“A gentle knight was pricking on the plaine…”
***
I made my way through the first canto, during which she’d sat straight backed, taking notes in what looked like a handmade journal. My reading was ineloquent, as if my voice was stumbling through a hotel with the power off looking for an exit- I tried to read slowly and steadily to avoid tripping. Even so, she asked once or twice for me to pause so she could finish her thought before allowing me to continue with a small nod.
I was the voice, speaking, and she was the mind, the digestive system, thinking, processing. My mind emptied totally and I was surprised to find myself thirty pages in and with the start of the second canto waiting for me at the top of the page. She took the book and set it on her open knee and poured me a little jar of wine, impossibly cold and delicious and friendly alongside the taste and texture of the strawberries. After cracking her neck and wiggling her spine, she picked up the book and waited, smiling, for me to pick up a pen before she began to read.
***
“The important thing,” Rick had said, on a day in February, squinting past the class at the white winter light beaming through the windows, “is to engage with the material. Whatever that means for you. There are many doors into the poem’s world and you might not find one until years from now. It’s enough to make contact with the poem, to realize that, even if the doors are closed, they are there. What I do, when I can– and I can’t always, time gets in the way, neighbor mows his yard, bills, whatever– when I can, I get down to the line. I don’t move on to the next line until I understand the line before. I want you to try this, see how it works for you.”
***
I could’ve done with reading through her notes from the first canto, my understanding had been hazy. But I stopped worrying about it as she spoke, debuting a new voice, her tone not changed much, or pitch, rather, but it was almost as if she was using her mouth with total precision: crisp enunciation, collaboration between teeth and tongue, almost uncanny, like a computer dictating for the blind, yet always maintaining a natural rolling cadence in service of the poem’s rhythm. Even her breath was dialed in. She’d allow a small beat at the end of each line, a silent breath that I couldn’t hear but could see as my eyes wandered away from my notes, her shoulders would lift half an inch. All I wanted was to lay back with my eyes closed and listen, to lift a lazy eyelid now and then to spy on her, but from what I saw, her notes had been thorough and I owed her. I sucked strawberries dry to avoid drinking the wine too quickly.
Clouds and wind began rolling in. The day had changed, like tomorrow had overlapped it in a double exposure. She reached the end of the canto and I looked up to see her take a deep breath and close her eyes like she was wincing, clearing them of some sticky film. Then she filled our jars.
I complimented the wine rather than her reading. She drank back her jar, tilting her head back and then she told me that she had made it. The rest of the bottle went fast and low thunder growled on the yellowing horizon.
“The sky has other plans for us,” she said, gathering our books and containers into her bag. “I’ll make gnocchi for us back home, if you’d like to continue.”
She unrolled the sleeves of her sweater and pulled the thing over her head and then stood, touched her toes and stepped out of her shorts. I fumbled my way out of my jeans, distracted by a triangle of moles on her back that hypnotized me as she slipped off the dock and into the water.
The water’s depth and warmth surprised me, only frigid near my feet. I tread water and she swam like a loon. When she came up only the top of her head would peak above the water, her nostrils above the surface, her mouth below. I felt a small hand squeeze my big toe and I sent ripples to the grassy shore. She came up close to me and told me I could use some practice. Then the rain really started to fall and I followed her back to the dock.
***
We crawled back down Highway 1 into town through rain so thick I could barely see the brown clouds or lightning through the windshield. I wasn’t worried for us but I wondered if any of the satellite towns might get wrecked by a tornado. The town of Parsons seemed, by whatever special geography, to make it through the springtime generally unscathed. Downed trees, an occasional powerline, but towns ten, fifteen miles north or west of us would get destroyed, houses scraped off the prairie by razorblade.
Semis barreled past us in both directions on the highway. I asked loudly if she needed anything from the store, looking over to see her arms crossed over her translucent camisole. She was shivering. She said that she had everything we needed.
When we parked, I insisted upon carrying our soggy wad of clothing. She ran ahead, barefoot, to unlock the door. When I climbed the wooden stairs after her I was astounded that she hadn’t slipped. I waited, dripping in the dim kitchen and Sam’s naked silhouette darkened the doorway into the living room, where there was more light.
“I think the power’s gone out,” she said, approaching me. “Here. I’ll take those and hang them in the bathroom and find you a towel.”
Her damp feet padded quickly across the tile and around the corner and I saw the cat follow after like a tiny shadow.
“Come on in,” came her formless voice. In the living room she was waiting for me, wrapped in a towel. She pointed with her hairbrush to another towel on the coffee table.
“I’ll gather up some candles. And don’t worry, the stove uses gas.”
After drying off, I folded the towel and sat on it in front of the little table feeling like a little kid. The cat came out of Sam’s room and went right under the table. I held my hands out for it to inspect- it didn’t seem to be enjoying the storm. Maybe it’d been lonesome while Sam was away.
She came back into the living room, dressed, hair bundled behind her head, carrying candles and a navy blue crewneck that she dropped into my lap. I thanked her and asked how I could help with the meal.
“Read to me,” she said, “our books survived.”
The cat and I followed her into the kitchen. She placed tea candles intermittently around the kitchen and lit them all with a long Bic. Our books were already in a neat stack in the middle of the table. After cracking open the window, she left and came back with a thick hexagonal tower made of beeswax and lit it and closed her eyes and sniffed.
“That’s better,” she said. The kitchen turned honey colored. The rain had mellowed, still strong, but more consistent like white noise or static. She set a cutting board across from me and with a knife that looked bigger than her head she began slicing potatoes with silent grace and I began to read.
***
When I finished the third canto, she set a jar of water on the table and I drank while watching her strain most of the water out of the stockpot. Her nightgown could have been a tablecloth held up with a piece of twine.
“One more canto will get us close,” she said, “and you’ll be duly rewarded for your hard work.”
I pushed up the sleeves of her sweatshirt which brandished Cornell University’s emblem in red embroidered thread. It was too big for me and would have cleared her hips and a good part of her thighs.
I asked if she was following the poem and she nodded, tilting her head slightly to the left and right as she did.
“Are you?”
“More or less. It feels like when the characters are overwhelmed by emotion, the plot gets obscured and heady.”
Still nodding, she began ricing potatoes.
“Seems usually to happen at night,” I added. I listened to the rain and watched her knead the dough, the heel of her hands strong under the full length of her arms, which, from my perspective, seemed very long and strong. I snapped out of it and finished the glass and cleared my throat. She cracked an enormous egg into a Pyrex. To make sure I wasn’t losing it, I stated: “Big egg.”
“Duck egg,” she replied, sternly, whisking it with a blurry hand, “get back to work.”
***
Halfway through the next canto, the room was changing, aromatic spices and tangs and sounds came from the stove, the smell of something fishy. I noticed something clicking above my head. Convinced it was more than an old house sound, maybe a leak or a bug, I looked up and saw that the fan was spinning. The power must have come back on. It didn’t take long to forget and fall back into the comfortable, dim and increasingly warm past.
She set a plate on the table that crossed my eyes with delirious hunger, then a fork and a cloth napkin next to it. From the corner of my eye as I tried to focus on the page I could see cartoonish lines of heat warbling above the food. My body was all but paralyzed- like a dog with a treat on its nose I wondered if my mouth would become full of drool and be unable to speak without swallowing or spitting it into the sink. With one hand she refilled my glass from a pitcher adorned with indigo flowers. With the other, she set a bowl about half the size down and then took the book from my hands.
“I’ll finish,” she said.
Since Christmas, I’d subsisted mostly on ten pound bags of chicken quarters from Walmart, eggs, whatever cheap deals on ugly vegetables I could find at the farmer’s market at the town square, and a bowl a week of whatever they had at the soup kitchen in the basement of the old red brick church down the street from my place. Since Christmas, I hadn’t had a good, womanly homemade meal. I opened my eyes and stared into the food, the little tight shrimp mingling with the rolls of pasta that were glimmering in the multiple points of candle light, whose flames wobbled in the fan’s breeze. Bits of light green, lime, almost yellow, shreds and circles and spirals. Gently covering everything like a layer of non-consequential sleet, dark green basil and pieces of pistachio shining in oil.
I blushed up at her but she was well on her way through the rest of the canto. I ate the food and drank the water and after she finished, she closed the book and finally ate, slowly. I tried not to stare at her as she seemed to break every piece of food in half and then into fourths with the side of her fork. I looked at my hands, then up at the fan then through the lace curtain at the vague yellow shape of a flickering street lamp out in the night.
To speak seemed improper. She glanced at me, chewing. I stood and squeezed her shoulder and began washing dishes. The pot she’d boiled the potatoes in was full of scalding hot water with most of the utensils she’d used. As I washed her giant knife, she tapped my waist and slid her bowl and fork past me into the soapy water, then asked if I could reach up into the cupboard above the sink and bring down a box, which, after flicking water from my fingers, I did.
“I’ll be in the living room,” she said, after filling a glass with ice.
***
She’d thrown a mat on the floor near the table that was patterned with flowers. She’d lit a candle inside a lantern whose green, brown and clear glass made the shape of a turtle. A bottle was next to the lantern. She was reading by the lantern’s light what looked like a letter. She rubbed the mat next to her in a circle with her palm. I knelt and the cat shot out from under the table through my knees. She put the letter away in the box and pulled out a few tea cups.
“I wanted to share this with you,” she said, tapping the cork of the bottle, “if you’d like some.”
I picked up the bottle and rotated it in my hand. There was no label. I tried scrutinizing the liquid inside, peering through it at the lantern.
“It’s absinthe,” she said.
I gave it to her and she looked at me, waiting.
“Oh, yes, please. You made this too?”
“I helped, my aunt did. She’s taught me about this kind of stuff.”
She wrestled the cork out and filled the cups close to their brims.
“Are you close with her?”
“Yes, I spent a lot of summers with her. She’s not doing very well.”
I told her I was sorry and she nodded.
“Is she back east, too?” I reached for one of the cups and with two fingers she slapped my hand.
“It’s not done yet, I need your help.”
She took a box from within the box and shook a few sugarcubes into her palm.
“This is a crucial step,” she told me. “You’ve got to pinch them over the cups.”
I did, with my thumbs and pointers mudra-like. She shook ice into her hand from the glass then went around to the other side of the table and knelt and used her hands to melt the cubes over the sugar. I looked at her mouth, down her neck and along one wrist and sat up a little straighter to get a good look inside the cups. It didn’t take long for the cubes to disappear.
Sucking wet sugar from my fingers, I noticed something happening in the cups. Beneath the surface of the liquid, some kind of creature had formed, like a glowing, golden urchin, whose phalanges spread and receded and turned into loops and the center would disappear and reappear. She took one of the cups and sniffed it. I thanked her for her hospitality and she told me that she’d had a wonderful day and that she’d have no chance at making it through the poem without my help. We clinked cups and staring into each other’s eyes, we drank.
***
I dreamed about the poem. I dreamed about going into the cave and battling the serpentine woman, destroying her and her children while Sam and the horse waited outside in the shady grove. I woke up on the mat by the table, covered in sweat. When I sat up, I startled the cat, who’d been protecting my feet, and found my shirt folded neatly on the table. Sam, wearing nothing but the Cornell sweatshirt, brought in coffee and we found out that we’d shared the same dream. When I told her that I thought we should try again, she agreed.
***
I didn’t see her for a while. She stopped showing up to class. I daydreamed about her and barely slept, reprimanding myself for thinking too much about her. Walking past her house on the way to and from class, I thought about knocking, but as equal parts dog and hand holding the leash, I yanked my own throat.
I didn’t feel like reading The Faerie Queene without her. I read The Wasteland the night before the class’s final exam out loud, drunk in my house’s clawfoot tub. The next morning, she was waiting for me on the wooden stairs outside her house. She descended and kissed my cheek and asked me how I’d feel about taking care of her cat for the summer.
“My aunt needs my help,” she said. “I’ve got to leave tomorrow. I’ll miss you and would be happy to think about you keeping an eye on him.”
High on seeing her again, I immediately told her I’d do it. She took my hand and we walked to campus. When I asked when she’d be back, she said she couldn’t be sure.
“It depends on how things go. It’ll be worth it, though,” she told me as I held the door to the Arts building open for her. “I’m going to bring back something special for us, for our experiments.”
***
I ended up driving her to the train station the next morning. Summer swarmed upon the town in her absence- the cicadas came, the angry buzz of lawn machines and teenagers burning out and drag racing at any hour.
I spent days at my place and nights at hers, sleeping on the mat in her living room. I, of course, invaded her room but controlled myself from investigating too many of her secrets, with the cat’s help. I wasn’t built to commit crimes in front of an animal and valued his trust. Nobody’s perfect though. Once or twice he made a mess outside of his litterbox, and on a night in late June he caught me standing on a chair, sniffing the God’s Eye.
At my place, I worked the backyard, which had been long neglected. I used a machete to beat back scraggly trees and covered myself in dirt and sweat and chigger bites working roots out of the ground. A burn would have been ideal, but I thought the Slovenian couple living next to me might have a heart attack if I tried anything like that. Their chickens watched me work. Eventually I was able to get a mower through, and then I worked the dead soil with a pick ax and raked it clean.
***
Halfway through July, a package from Sam came. There was a letter inside saying that her aunt was dead. She was going to need more time but planned to make it back for fall semester. She thanked me for my help and promised she wasn’t going to abandon us. There was no return address on the package, which, aside from the letter, contained a few dozen handmade envelopes filled with seeds.
— Evan McConahay is a writer and artist living in New Orleans. He can be found on twitter and instagram @evanmcconahay.
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