Fierce Little Thing Read online

  “It’s a Thing!” said Nora. “She’s Thinging!”

  “Enough.”

  Nora folded her hands behind her.

  “This was your brother’s?” Abraham said.

  Of course he knew about you.

  “All right,” he said, “all right.” He placed his hand upon my head, warming me there. “Sometimes, when a hole has been torn inside of us, a Thing can fill that hole.”

  Nora stepped forward boldly. “But you said that if we Thing—”

  “Am I the authority?” Abraham said. “Any more than you or Saskia or anyone else living on this land? Saskia teaches us something today.” He put his hand out, asking permission. With anyone else I would have refused, but I let the bunny leave my hands.

  Abraham handled him gently, as if he was a real, orphaned animal. He scratched behind Topsy’s ears. He stroked his nose. He smiled. “This belongs to Saskia,” he told Nora.

  “But no one can own—”

  “There are exceptions to every rule. This bunny is hers, because this bunny was Will’s”—my mouth grew dry—“and that means no one may take it from her. Do you understand?”

  Nora scowled, but she nodded. Xavier, I noticed, was nodding, too, looking more than a little alarmed.

  Abraham lifted the bunny up to his own face then, and whispered something into Topsy’s long, dangly ear. Then, slowly, carefully, he turned the bunny back to me. Somewhere downhill, a chorus of Homesteaders was singing.

  It was then that Abraham began to glow.

  I know. I know he wasn’t really glowing. But he seemed to be. That’s what I want to explain. It was not the first time I’d seen a glow like this; I recognized it because it was a trick I’d seen you perform. You’d cackle at a fart joke, or stand on one leg after begging me to watch, or hang upside down from the monkey bars—and you’d suddenly light up from within. It wasn’t a magic trick made only by you. I knew it came, at least a little, from inside me, too; the bliss of your you-ness and my me-ness meeting in the air together, in a place of delight that some people call Love.

  But how could I love Abraham? I didn’t even know him. I couldn’t have been brainwashed; I’d only just arrived. I was unsure and scared and truly, I’d been hoping, as much as Xavier had, for a fancy hotel with white porches overlooking the sea—and yet, I can’t deny it, Abraham glowed.

  21

  On the other side of the bedroom door, Xavier clears his voice. Good. He’s nervous. “Hey, I brought someone. I know, I know, you hate visitors, but I think you won’t mind.”

  “Saskia?” The voice is strong and familiar. “Can we talk, love?”

  I want to cry that it’s too much, that I can’t, I can’t, but the tears have come to choke me.

  22

  It was silly to have made such a big deal out of a stuffed animal. The thought of Abraham’s attention made me grin even as Nora darted up the path to the Main Lodge, and Abraham strode past the chicken coop to the goat enclosure, where Jim shoveled manure. Xavier moved down the path. I slipped the bunny into the waistband of my jeans, pulling my T-shirt over him. Probably Philip had packed him for me, thinking he was doing right. Or maybe Jane still offered surprises.

  Down the path, the singing was loud. “I’ll sing you seven, oh.”

  “Green grow the rushes, oh! What is your seven, oh?”

  Now that we were close, we could make out the particulars of who was singing and when. “Seven for the seven stars in the sky,” was warbled by a man’s voice, alone.

  “Six for the six proud walkers, five for the symbols at your door, four for the changing seasons”—but that single tenor was then joined by a group of voices sailing together up to the summer sky—“three, three, the sacred tree.” The song hovered, for a moment, at a contented rest in its middle. Then, together, the voices flowed back toward the end of the chorus: “Two, two, the lily-white boys, clothèd all in green, oh, one is one and all in love and evermore shall be so.”

  The original voice began again, with the same descending melody, all by himself: “I’ll sing you eight, oh,” and once again, the rest met him in the air, “Green grow the rushes, oh! What is your eight, oh?”

  Xavier and I came upon a greenhouse with a large garden set along its length. It was the gardeners who made up the chorus, led by old Amos, his singing voice surprisingly vigorous. They were busy on their knees, hands deep in the earth. Singing seemed to focus their agricultural tasks, none of which my city mind could name.

  Ben was there, too, crouched on his hands and knees beside one of the men with whom Xavier had dined the night before. Ben was working on a hose that ran up to a barrel. I pretended not to notice him, but I couldn’t shake Sarah’s odd description of me, nor how cold he’d been at its mention. I blushed, knowing I’d have to face what he thought of me all over again. His lips mumbled along to the lyrics—“Three, three, the sacred tree”—just as they had at dinner, as though the music was medicine he might as well just take.

  I had thought him ugly the night before, with his big head and pug nose. He had recoiled from me, so why did that make me want to go to him now? Sure enough, he frowned when he noticed me. But he came forward, and I flushed with a tentative hope until I saw he was coming for Xavier. “Can you help?”

  “We’re looking for our suitcases,” I said.

  “I’m no good at gardening,” Xavier said.

  Ben scratched his forehead, leaving a slice of dirt behind. “You’re from the city, so pardon me for asking, but how do you know?”

  I thought for sure that Xavier would hate him, too, now, but he leaned forward, ever so slightly.

  “What about finding Philip?” I said. But Xavier was already stepping away. A few of the gardeners lifted their eyes as he left me. He was punishing me for not caring about our bags, and for being weird about Topsy, and for priding under Abraham’s attention. I went back to the trail without him.

  Down the incline, nearer the water, there were nine more cabins. The smell of fresh sawdust lifted on the wind. On one of the roofs, two men in overalls hammered shingles. One of them was dressed old-fashioned: Sarah’s husband, Ben and Nora’s father. Ephraim, I think I’d heard him called. Ephraim drove in those nails with determination. I thought to ask if he’d seen Philip, but there was something in the unflinching power of his arms that meant “do not disturb.”

  White pines scraped the sky. The ground was slippery with their discarded, golden needles. Some of the cabins had porches with rotten floorboards, but the front window of one offered a surprise—a tightly made bed beside a bouquet of wildflowers.

  Wind ruffled the leaves and trees and ground cover relentlessly. I saw, now, that there was as much movement as in the city, only here it wasn’t cabs and bikes and buses; this was a living thrum in a language I didn’t yet speak. Birds with yellow bellies darted from branch to branch, worrying the bark, their euphoria in the breeze contagious. Could they smell life in the air? Did birds even smell? Or did they have some other, special bird sense that meant they could commune with light and wind?

  I made my way toward the sloshing lake. Some days, it would be still as glass, and others the wind-tossed waves would bring to mind the ocean, but that day, the first day, the lake moved constantly and yet showed no roughness.

  A chipmunk darted before me, lobbing off into the woods at my right. I caught a movement behind one of the pine trunks. Whoever was there was quick. I stood still. I thought of you: Topsy in my waistband, your name on Abraham’s tongue, and the feather, that feather just like yours, that he had plucked from the air. I waited, leaning left and right to find the culprit—really, what I wanted was to find you, even though it was impossible—but nothing was revealed. I pulled myself along. I made my way the last few steps to the lakefront. I stood on a small, rocky peninsula, water lapping on three sides.

  The lake was bigger than I’d imagined, stretching beyond the bounds of what I could see. On the opposite shore, at least a quarter mile away, lay a smattering of ca
bins, with white porches and long docks. Endless evergreens stood guard. In the center of the lake was an island topped in green bushes, close enough for a strong swimmer to reach on their own. I wondered what I’d look like from out there.

  Home’s shoreline was much the same as what I saw on the other side: trees and the small cabins I’d passed dusting the waterfront. A pair of ducks paddled in and out of a cove to my right. Back to my left, a gray, weathered dock stuck into the water. Abraham was standing on it. I shrunk back into the shadow of the trees. The Black woman I’d noticed the day before stepped forward along the shore. She had close-cropped hair. Her arms gestured as she spoke. She leaned toward him, offering a private word, although there was no one else near. Abraham closed his eyes, taking in whatever she had said. He opened his mouth to speak. She held up a hand to silence him, but that only made his need spill more freely toward her.

  “You know how to play Spit?” The voice, a girl’s, came from behind me. I almost fell into the drink.

  It was the girl I’d seen at dinner. Our eyes stood at the same height, but that was the only trait we shared. Her Afro was an exuberant corona; her breasts large and high; her legs pouring out from spectacular blue jean cutoffs. She was substance and I was air.

  “The card game?”

  Apparently my half nod was satisfactory. “How old are you?” she said.

  “Thirteen.”

  “Me too.” She pointed back toward the dock, where Abraham and the woman were still locked in conversation. “That’s my mother, Gabby. She’s in charge.”

  “I thought Abraham was in charge.”

  “Abraham’s in charge of spiritual matters. Gabby decides where we shit and who sleeps where. More important. They’re probably talking about you.”

  Gabby reminded me of a marble; fast and efficient. It was hard to imagine her kissing Abraham, but only people who kissed each other—or had kissed each other once upon a time—spoke as intimately as they were. They reached some kind of agreement. Gabby turned and walked back into the woods. Abraham trailed after her.

  “I’m Issy.” The girl had waited for me to turn back around. Her smile was a disco ball.

  “I’m looking for our suitcases.”

  “I think Nora destroyed them. Nora the Destroya.” From up the hill came the clang of a bell. Issy made her way to the path, then turned. “But I’ll help you look after lunch, if you play Spit. Come on.”

  23

  Knocking. Knocking. Another whisper, one that rises to full voice when she declares: “We don’t know what she’s doing in there.”

  “Give her a chance to come out.”

  “Xavier, we tried it your way.” The knocking becomes banging, wallop wallop, and the door shudders, again again, and then there’s a splintering racket and Mother’s trusty brass latch flings across the floor in a tinny cry and the door stands open, and Issy stands where the door once was.

  24

  Issy cleared her plate before I managed one bite. I didn’t like hummus; she gladly took my share. So it went with the curried cabbage, and the sautéed onions and dandelion greens. Across the room, at the table of gardeners, Ben and Xavier were locked in conversation.

  Issy hadn’t been born at Home, but it was the only home she could remember. The story went that Gabby—whom Issy called by name—was holding Issy on her lap on the T, “without a friend in the universe or a penny to her life,” when Abraham walked up and handed her a roast beef sandwich. “She didn’t know if he was one of those white hippies with a Jesus complex. She refused to eat the sandwich in case it was spread with roofies, but then he sat down next to her and asked about her dreams—not the dreams you have at night, but her dreams for me, and for our life together—and she says it just hit her in the heart, you know? No one had asked her what she wanted in so fucking long and she aspired to so much”—Issy pointed to the glistening pile of coleslaw on my plate—“you going to eat that?” I shook my head. She swallowed it in a few bites, then tore a second piece off the boule at the center of the table and ripped it in half, handing the larger piece to me.

  The bread was still warm. My mouth watered. The smell was yeasty and sour, but as I put it to my lips, I thought of Daddy on the edge of your bed, telling us of Persephone and the six pomegranate seeds she ate in the land of the dead, which trapped her there for half the year. Home had shown me glimmers of the same kind of enchantment, and I wondered with amusement, as I bit, if this bread held the same trickery. But I soon forgot; the first morsel landed on my tongue and filled my nostrils with the alchemy of a newly baked loaf. You loved bread with a slab of butter so thick that it made your lips greasy, and now I knew why; I couldn’t get the bread in fast enough. I hadn’t gobbled down anything in so long—but here, now, with Topsy hidden at my side, it was impossible not to. My stomach rumbled. I took another bite. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d loved being filled up.

  “So good, right?” Issy said. “Sarah makes it. She’s, like, the queen of bread. She’ll teach you, if you want.”

  “Really?”

  Issy cackled at my full-mouthed enthusiasm. “The ladies are going to love you. Bread with Sarah. Foraging with Marta.”

  “Marta—is that the old lady you came in with last night? The one who put the plant in Abraham’s glass?”

  “Don’t call her old to her face—she’ll kill you.” Issy was joking, but she lowered her voice as she said this.

  “Where is she?”

  “Oh, she’s not a Homesteader. She just comes by, you know?”

  I didn’t, but I didn’t know how long I’d have Issy’s attention, and I had to know about Abraham. “On the T, when you were little—is that when your mom and Abraham got together?”

  “Yeah, that’s when Gabby and Abraham started making plans. They’re peas in a pod. He’s an heir. You know what that is?”

  “Like, he inherited something?”

  “Exactly. His father died so he got his money and was looking to invest it in something that stood against every single thing that old devil stood for, and he and Gabby were talking a lot about intentionality, you know? And, of course, Unthinging, and one day she said, ‘Hey, Abraham, how about you put your money where your mouth is?’ and he found this place for cheap, with the buildings and the pots and pans and canoes and everything, and he just plunked down cash money and bought it.”

  Jim wandered up to Sarah and asked for more food. Teresa waved from the far end of the Main Lodge to let Sarah know it was meant for her, but Sarah eyed Jim before nodding. When she turned into the kitchen, he stuck out his tongue at the back of her head.

  Issy prattled on. “First it was just Gabby and me and Abraham. I barely remember it. But Gabby says this place was a wreck. The lodge was packed with garbage and spiders and broken furniture. But also, you know, they found a lot to work with—one person’s trash is another’s treasure—and little by little they figured out how to repair first one cabin, then another. And they learned to grow things. Well, Gabby did. Then Amos showed up. He’s old and grumpy but he’s a real horticulturalist with a degree and—”

  “Isn’t he Abraham’s dad?”

  Issy cracked up. “I told you, Abraham’s dad is dead as a doornail.” She pressed on. “Ephraim is the carpenter, but don’t bug him while he’s working. Sarah runs the kitchen and she loves help, so watch out coming in here unless you don’t have something better to do. Jim and Teresa are in charge of the goats and the chickens, but she also helps with all the stuff the men do, and honestly, Jim’s kind of useless. I mean, he’s good if you have a job you can give him, but he isn’t exactly a self-starter. Gabby oversees all the other stuff, like repairing chimneys and digging latrines. She got tips from the guy at the survivalist shop in New Hampshire, although I hope to Goddess she never screwed him. He smells like fish guts and—”

  “So Abraham’s like your stepdad?”

  She looked at me like I had three heads. “I don’t have a father.”

  “But he and Gab
by…?”

  Issy giggled. “Gabby is Unthinged from the patriarchy. And Abraham doesn’t engage in physical validation as a pathway to happiness. He says sexual attachment is the basest form of human need, even if it’s sometimes unavoidable.”

  I didn’t know if I should feel relieved. I definitely felt confused. “So that’s what the Homesteaders believe? No”—I lowered my voice, even though this was the kind of place you didn’t have to—“sex?”

  “Home is where we discover our Unthinged selves.” Issy slowed down, as if she was talking to a little kid. “I’m not a sexual being yet, even though I’ve started menstruating. When I’m grown, maybe sexuality will be a Thing for me, or maybe it’ll just be a form of Unthinged self-expression. Whether I should engage in it or not will depend on whether it Unthings me.”

  Jim’s laugh cut through the noise. Amos was whittling again. Nora ran a pile of dirty dishes into the kitchen. The room was hotter and louder by the second, rattling with the clatter of humans, and Issy was throwing around terms I didn’t understand. “Gabby and Abraham and I woke Home up. Then word spread across the Thinged World. These people heard its call. Just like Philip heard its call. More people started showing up, like you showed up, sometimes in families, sometimes alone. We’re all learning, every day, to be Unthinged.”

  “But what does that mean—being Unthinged?”

  “Well, it means feeding ourselves, which is a lot of work. Planting, watering, weeding, picking, milking, shit-shoveling, egg-hunting, food prep, cooking, washing up.”

  “So, then, why doesn’t Sarah want Marta teaching you to forage? Isn’t that that the whole point of foraging—feeding yourself?”

  Issy lifted her eyebrows, impressed I’d picked up on this detail. She screwed up her mouth as she tried to explain it. “It’s like, Sarah thinks we should use our hands. All the time. Fold the dough. Cut the carrots. Stir the soup. And that’s good. It gets the job done. It Unthings us, the act of that work. But Marta says we should use our minds. She told me once that when a girl is clever, she must use her brain like a muscle or she’ll go crazy. I’m not smart like that, though.”