Annie Oakley's Girl Read online

  “What was that all about?” I smiled to see you so happy.

  “It was good. It was really, really good.” Your right hand was straight, the fingers together, chopping slightly in the air towards me on “good” and “really.”

  “The conversation?”

  Your head shook. “No, the concert. She said it was really good.”

  “Sure it was. I told you it was. It was beautiful.”

  “Yeah, yeah . . .” you said quickly. You lifted your head as if you were looking at something. You didn’t know how I was looking at you.

  “Didn’t I tell you it was beautiful? You heard me clapping and yelling.”

  “Of course, baby,” you said, more to pacify than to agree with me. You put your hand toward me. I took it and guided it to my stomach. I was lying down, you were leaning up on your side facing me. “Of course, baby, you loved it.”

  I reached up to your cheek.

  “Not the acoustics, not the piano. She said it was me — my work.”

  I wondered what you were looking at. Your skin shone with warmth. My hand slid down your cheek, cupping your chin, then down your neck.

  You leaned over me to flip off the light by the bed, but I grabbed your hand and put it on my ribs, pulling you down against me.

  “I have to see you,” I said.

  This was the first time we had done it since we’d done it.

  Your body eased up next to me. It was warm against my skin. Your left hand moved over my ribs. You had told me how you liked the leanness of my body, the way the ribs were hard and near the surface of my skin, and the spaces between them soft and giving. I ran my hand up your spine slowly, then onto your shoulders. You put your head on my neck. I felt the movement of your stomach and chest as you breathed. I looked up through your hair to the overhead light. Its two bulbs were hidden by a square, curved, milky-white shade. I saw the small black dots of dead bugs dropped in the shade, the plastic white button that screwed the shade to the fixture. I felt a film of moisture on the small of your back.

  That time you were quicker. I’d never noticed the way your skin changed color from your neck up. Your face got pink, then apricot. Your lips read out my name over and over. You put your lips together then dropped them, blowing out. Your tongue fell behind your bottom teeth. Then you inhaled with your mouth and I watched you say my name again and again, faster, until you didn’t say it anymore. Your eyelids shook. Then you sank like a rag. Your mouth was open. Your whole body was pink. I looked up at the ceiling. The light was still on. You hadn’t seen anything and nothing had happened to me.

  Our second excursion out, we went to the travelling exhibit of Turner’s work. We walked close, our arms around each others’ backs. I read the guide notes and described the paintings. Your fingers asked questions on my arm or hand.

  We stopped in front of the first painting.

  “You know, his later stuff is so different. You can see where he comes from, like that sky, but . . .”

  You squeezed my arm. Your fingers tapped, “What?”

  This was the first time I’d had to describe something new to you, something important. Everything else was around our house; you remembered.

  “Well, the light is nice, the canvas is sort of cluttered . . .”

  You pinched me, then tapped my hand, “Picture?”

  “Oh, boats, ships, I mean, and people . . .” I stuttered.

  You squeezed my hand. I hadn’t spoken loudly enough. This had been a problem with me lately. I said again, “Ships and people.”

  You pulled my hand. “Title.”

  I leaned forward to read the card at the side of the painting. I turned you to face the painting as if you could see it. I whispered, “It’s called “The Battle of Trafalgar as seen from the Mizen Starboard Shroud of the Victory, 1806–1808’.”

  I paused. I didn’t know what to say. “Well, it’s got lots of ships, a dozen or so, and a dock going out. Some people on the dock, a priest kneeling down, not really kneeling though, and six or eight soldiers, red uniforms with white stripes across their chests, a guy with a George Washington hat, and a bunch of yellow steam, gold really, morning light, and stays hanging down.”

  I stopped talking and just looked at it, then stepped back, pulling you with me, to see how it looked from three feet away.

  “I didn’t even notice that from up close.”

  You tugged my arm quickly, then released it, “What?”

  I whispered, “Some of those stays go exactly like this.” I dropped your hand to make a pyramid shape with my arms, but you snatched my arm back before I could gesture. I was surprised because always before, whenever you were afraid and needed to grab me, I would know it first. You would gasp a little and I would hold you before your fear had a chance to set in.

  “What?”

  You grabbed my palm and tapped frantically while you whispered in my ear. But I was so distracted by your mouth next to my ear that I couldn’t understand your fingers on my hand. I clasped your hand and moved my head away from yours.

  “Don’t let go of me.” Your teeth and lips were tight. I could barely read you.

  “I’m sorry, I just wanted to — ”

  Your fingers scratched my palm: “Don’t let go.”

  I looked at you. Your eyes were looking somewhere behind me.

  When we got to the next painting, I was thrilled. I inhaled through my teeth.

  You tugged my arm again.

  “Sorry. “Hannibal Crossing the Alps.” You know.”

  You shook your head.

  “Come on, of course you do. It’s really famous. You’d recognize it.”

  You slapped my stomach.

  “OK,” I sighed, “it’s black and orange. The sky going crazy and you — you just have to feel it.” I couldn’t imagine what you imagined this painting would look like.

  That night in bed you leaned over me to turn out the light, the way you always did before, but hadn’t since that first night after the concert when I asked you to leave it on because I needed to see you clearly and not be in the dark. I said, “What are you doing? Please don’t.”

  You were up on your elbow, one arm stretched over me towards the light. Your face was straight at me. You smiled as if to comfort me. Your lips moved, “It’s OK, baby, it’s OK.” Then it was dark and your palms were on my cheeks. You were lying down, pulling me down, too. I couldn’t hear or see anything. You pulled my right hand under your neck and up over your face. You put it on your mouth. I felt your lips move and the warmth and moisture of air coming out of your mouth; you were talking. You put my left hand on your stomach. I felt the smooth skin of your stomach and your stomach muscles tightening under my hand. I felt the loose skin on the back of your hand and the soft line of hair that ran from your chest to your crotch and the stiff curly hair of your crotch. You pressed my hand to your moving lips, talking. I touched your neck. I could tell you were speaking aloud.

  “What are you saying?” I tried to imagine what your lips looked like.

  I started up, but you pulled me down and rolled on top of me. You lay over me, putting your mouth by my ear. Your lips were moving near my ear and your tongue and breath, but I couldn’t hear anything. I imagined the sound of your voice saying my name out loud over and over and the sound the air made as you pulled it down into your throat with your mouth open when you came, which was the same sound as the last sound I heard, the gasp you gasped as I pushed out your eyes.

  We’re standing in the kitchen, arm’s distance apart, facing each other. I have two shiny silver teaspoons, and you, the two wood-burning pens we’d found in your old toy box at home. We raise our tools to face level. Your eyes are the color of sky. The light, cool spoons are against your cheeks. I hear the soft muffled rustle of your hands against my hair, the swish of your palms against my cheeks, the hum of the electric burning pens. I keep my eyes open, then press the round cold spoons into your eye sockets, push the sides of them in, perpendicular to your face. You tr
y to blink; I press them back. My head feels like coals. I can feel everything. I clench my eyes closed. Everything is hot again. You gasp.

  You gasped. I jolted up, screaming. I felt the movement in my throat and vibrations in my head and I couldn’t hear anything. You fell away from me but reached back to put your arms around me, your hand over my mouth. You sat up and held me.

  I fumbled for the light and switched it on. When I looked at you, your eyes were wide open. Your lips were saying, “It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK.”

  We kept the light on the rest of the night and every night after that.

  You learned Braille and I learned ASL. But we still didn’t want anyone to know. I borrowed Braille books from the library and made it obvious to everyone I could see. One day, on a bus on the way home from the library, we sat across from a boy with a hearing aid. I watched him as unobtrusively as I could. We sat next to each other, your hand on my arm, and I didn’t tell you. I watched his face to see if I could tell how much he could hear. He was travelling by himself. I sent off to the American Sign Language Association for information about teaching the deaf to speak. We had agreed to tell no one, but I knew you were becoming increasingly annoyed at my inability to control my voice. And I wanted to do something about it on my own. Besides, there was no way you could find out; I was in charge of the mail.

  But when I got the information I realized I was more interested in the articles about operations and treatments that cured some kinds of deafness. I read that in some cases there was scar tissue that could be removed. I tried to figure out a way of going to see an ear specialist and leaving you alone. I thought about it for weeks.

  You wrote me a note saying that the change in my voice was drastic. You wrote that it was not just a matter of tone or pitch anymore, it was my ability to form words, that sometimes I yelled and sometimes you could barely hear me, that I didn’t speak clearly and I needed to work on my enunciation. You wrote that maybe I’d better cool it on talking until I could talk better.

  Your note was sloppily written. The characters bumped into each other, the lines were crooked. Some of the words weren’t even written completely on the page.

  Our first big social occasion was the costume party. We even skipped the reception after my show at the Meyer Gallery. We went because we thought it would be safe because, if anything went wrong, we could plead drunk or “in character.” And, of course, we could always play up the “reclusive artist ill-at-ease in social situations” role. We went as two medieval saints: hair shirts, stigmati, crowns of thorns, the works. Any social shortcomings caused by our handicaps could be excused as part of our costumes.

  It was a huge party and everyone was there. I recognized some people by height and build, or if their costume was simple; you recognized their voice. But everyone was wearing masks and I couldn’t see anyone’s lips. Sometimes people came up and shook my hand or kissed me or gave me a pat on the back. I wanted to know what they were saying. I kept asking you, tapping your hand or whispering, “What are they saying? What’s going on?” But you didn’t want me to interrupt your conversations.

  Every time I leaned over to ask you or tap out something, I saw people chuckle and nudge each other. A courtier pinched me on the arm and winked, then mimicked our constant closeness by putting both arms around the troubador nearby and whispering. Later, I gave up talking with any of the faces I couldn’t see.

  You and I were sitting on a couch; you were talking to two people to our right, and had been for forty minutes. My hand was on your knee. You were gesturing wildly. I felt your body shake as you laughed. You slapped your hand down on mine, grabbed it tightly, then released it. Your hands went in the air again and you weren’t touching me. I thought about how familiar and common our bodies were with one another; your slapping my hand when you laughed was as natural as slapping your own thigh, as if there was no difference between them.

  Then a skeleton yanked me away from the couch and pulled me out to the dance floor. I think you must have shouted after my being pulled away from you: it felt like the slow, hard pull between two magnets, then the snap of release. I positioned myself facing you. You were shaking your head frantically right and left. You must have been shouting because the couple next to you put their arms around you to comfort you. I imagined them telling you to settle down, that it was OK, that of course I wasn’t upset with you.

  They looked at me and back at you, trying to figure us out. I waved and smiled, indicating there was nothing really wrong, that you were just the way you were sometimes, high strung.

  I tried to catch the rhythm of the dance from watching everyone else move. But I didn’t know if I was moving on the beat or on the half-beat. I hoped the music was loud enough so my partner wouldn’t try to talk to me. I felt the rhythm on the floor. I felt my blood go faster inside my temples and the moisture warming inside my clothes.

  When the dance was over I came back and sat down. You threw your arms around me and put your head under my chin and on my shoulder. You were trying to cry. I felt the warmth and wetness of the sweat and saliva through my costume. I felt the trembling of your body. I lifted your face up. Your eyes were closed. Your face was red but you couldn’t cry. I thought how you must have felt, trying to cry but not being able to, like trying to vomit and all you could do was the dry heaves. Your stomach was moving, short and quick. You were gasping. You were holding my hand with both of yours. You were squeezing it, “Home — home — home — ”

  We both smelled like cigarettes and sweat, but neither of us showered before we went to bed. You lay there shaking without crying. I imagined the sound of your sobbing. I wanted to say something, that I was sorry: for the dance, for the party, for everything, for what we’d done. But I didn’t. I didn’t open my mouth because I knew I couldn’t talk clearly anymore. And that, though you would probably understand me, the sound of my voice was horrible to you. I wanted to tap out “I’m sorry” on your skin. I put my hand on your naked stomach. I started to raise and lower my fingers, but I stopped. I hated talking this way, the only way we could communicate in the same way; I hated it because it was the only way.

  I didn’t tap out the words “I’m sorry” because I didn’t know what they meant. And because I didn’t really mean that. But I had to take the risk that you would know what I meant. That what I meant by not using our only way of communicating, our little, secret way, was that I wanted us to have a new one. That this new way was how I would tell you I would never leave you. Ever, even for an instant out in the world. That we would stay and watch out for each other.

  That was what I meant when I flattened my palm out straight and still on your stomach and put my head on your chest to sleep.

  But I don’t know if you knew what I meant; you were almost still; your sobbing had stopped. I think we slept.

  So we didn’t go out again. We stayed inside with one another. During the day you composed and I painted. At night we read or I watched TV and you listened to the radio in our room. It was nice because we fit each other like glove and hand. If I wanted to go to sleep early but you wanted to listen to the radio, the noise didn’t bother me. I could fall asleep in your arms while you listened to the 1812 Overture. Or if you wanted to sleep and I wanted to watch TV, I could keep it on and the flickering of the screen wouldn’t bother you.

  Our house was warm and peaceful. We shared everything. What was yours was mine; what was mine was yours. We had no ambitions and no fear.

  One night I wanted to stay up and do some studies for my new piece, Voices. It was a huge red-orange fiery roundish globe with lines of blue and white curling over it. It was an abstract piece about the sound the air made when you pulled it down into your throat with your mouth open.

  I was very taken with my work then. Sometimes I would stay up working very late. My canvases had grown huge. My work was very physical and massive. I knew I must have made lots of noise, so I worked downstairs where you couldn’t hear me.

  That night I work
ed till three. When I started upstairs to our room, something smelled wrong. As I reached the landing I saw the light in our room was off. I wondered if it had burnt out because we always kept it on for me. You would never have turned it off. But when I reached the top of the stairs I saw into our room.

  You were sprawled on the bed in a pool of blood. Your neck and stomach and crotch and hands and face and mouth were red. The sheets were red. I didn’t know you had so much blood. And there kept on being more.

  Then I heard the sound of the running blood and I heard the sound inside myself of mine. Inside of me it sounded like snow, like I was driving into a tunnel under snow. I hadn’t heard like that before. It was the first thing I had heard since we had done it.

  I walked to the bed and sat on the bed and sat beside your body and picked up the phone. I couldn’t hear the dial tone but I dialed 911. I couldn’t hear when they picked up the phone or if or when they answered, and I didn’t know and I couldn’t tell, if whoever it was could understand what I was trying to say. So I kept saying over again, “Hello? Hello? Something’s happened — Hello? There’s something wrong — Hello? There’s someone stabbed — I didn’t hear — I couldn’t hear — Hello?”

  I stayed on the phone and repeated this over and over because I didn’t know when someone would answer, or how long it would take to understand, or if somebody ever would, or why I couldn’t say right what had happened, why I couldn’t tell what we’d done.

  LOVE POEM

  It’s like art, making and unmaking. You’re attracted to misshapen blocks. You like to chisel and form them into something beautiful and show yourself that you can do it. And you can do it. You do it beautifully. Why, look at all the things you’ve made beautiful. You’ve had shows in internationally renowned galleries. Everyone loves your work. Everyone says what a miracle worker you are, and you are. Here are some of your works: Lazarus, The Woman Who Died, Spring in December, A Sunny Day in Chicago in November, Piña Colada in Salt Lake City, Love Among the Ruins, Blood From Stone, A Fine Shoot of Green in the Arctic, Love Among the Ruins II, Love Among the Ruins III. You’re acclaimed. Everyone clamors about you. Everyone loves you.