Marrow

I imagine my mother’s ghost walking into the kitchen, standing over my shoulder, trying to push my back into my seat. Stay in the Bone, stay in the Bone, stay in the Bone.

I feel like my lungs are constricting, like everyone who has ever lived in this house is ganging up on me, filling me with their fear. I walk backward to the front door, looking accusingly at the air around me. My hand reaches behind me for the doorknob. I can feel its grooves, its rust, its connection to the house. I try to turn it, but it jams, moving neither left nor right. I yank at it. The ghosts are moving in. If they reach me, they won’t let me leave. I am crying without tears, but then I hear my name on Judah’s voice. The knob is unstuck; I fling it open and stumble out into the night air. Judah is at the bottom of the three steps, calling my name. I run down to him and find myself kneeling at his chair, crying into his lap. He touches my head, warm hands and compassion, which only makes me cry harder.

“What is it, blondie? People are going to think you’re giving me a blow job.” He makes no move to disturb me. I feel his fingers massaging my neck and scalp as he lets me cry. My hurt is compounded. I’m unsure from which direction to approach it. It feels like everyone is leaving me, like everyone always has, and yet I’m not sure I care. But, I do care, because I’m crying, and it hurts. I don’t blame them, that’s the difference. I’ve grown to expect it.

“I’ll come back for you, Margo. I promise.”

I shake my head. No, he won’t, but that’s okay too. This is our goodbye.

“Judah,” I say, pulling my head back to look at him. “I’m only nineteen years old.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I kind of already know that.”

“I’ve only really known you for a few months.”

“If you want to think of it that way…”

I stare at him. The way he’s looking at me is causing me shame. But I’ll say it. I’ll say it all, despite the wrongness of my feelings.

“What are you saying?” he asks.

“That I love you. That I love you deeply. I’m in love with you.”

The smile falls from his face. For a moment, he’s exposed. Horrified. I pull back, but his hands are on my arms, holding me prisoner in his lap.

“Let me go,” I say.

He does. I step back, out of his reach.

“Don’t come back here. No matter what happens. Promise me.”

“Margo…?”

“Just promise me.”

“Why? Why would you make me promise that?”

“Because,” I say. “If you come back, I’ll come back.”

He stares at me for a long time.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally. “I’m sorry for all of this.”

I’m backing up again. It feels ironic, familiar. Back into the eating house I go, the word goodbye eating the flesh of my lips. Wanting to be said, wanting to never be said. Get it over with, I tell myself.

“Goodbye, Judah.” My voice is clear and strong.

“I can’t say it, Margo.”

“Don’t,” I tell him. “Just remember one thing. You left me.”

And then I’m back in the house, and I’ve closed the door on Judah, and on the small chance I thought I had at love. And what an idiot I was to think I had that chance.

“It’s just us now,” I say to the eating house. “You can have me.”

A REPORTER IS SPEAKING about a baby koala born at the zoo near Seattle. I focus my whole attention on that story—the birth of a koala on the day Judah leaves the Bone. It’s only after he leaves that I look out the window at the empty street, but all I can think about is the koala. I want to see it. I want to go to the zoo, just like Judah promised me we would. As I leave the room and walk up the stairs, the news story switches to the murder of Lyndee Anthony. The clear voice of the reporter travels with me for a while, and then my thoughts drown it out. “Police are still searching for—”

When you start life, you have high hopes. Even if you’re born in the Bone, with a mother who wears a red, silk robe all day long, and sells her body to men for a nice crisp hundred dollar bill. You believe in the unbelievable. You see fairies in your empty pantry where the cans are supposed to be, and the rats that scramble across your bedroom floor are messengers from the gods, or your own personal spirit animal. And, if you’re really creative, you romanticize the rags you’re wearing. You’re Cinderella, you’re Snow White, you’re…

You’re a dead girl walking. But, for a time, you’re blind to it, and that’s a good thing. And then it’s taken—slowly … slowly … slowly. The loss of innocence is the most severe of growing pains. One day you believe you’re Cinderella, and the next all your imaginary glimmer falls away, and you see yourself as just another poor fuck, sentenced to live out your days in the Bone. Your innocence leaves so violently. It hurts to understand that no one is going to rescue you. No one can give you freedom. No one can give you justice, or vengeance, or happiness, or anything. Anything. If you’re willing, and if you’re brave, you take it. I have to get out of here.

The day after Judah leaves, I take six thousand dollars of my mother’s money, and I buy a car from an ad I find in the paper. It’s the first time I’ve ever bought a paper, and it takes me ten minutes to find the section where used cars are sold. An impulse buy, but I trust it because it’s what I need right now. It’s an open top Jeep, black and older than I am, but in pretty good shape. The owner is Mr. Fimmes, a rickety old vet with arthritis and a set of dentures that he pops in and out of place with his tongue. The Jeep belonged to his son before he died in an accident climbing Rainier. He’s not the sentimental type, he tells me. He kept it around because his wife wouldn’t let him sell it.

“She died of cancer six months ago, so I figured now’s the time…”

I tell him I’m sorry for his loss as I poke around in the glove box. I find a moldy box of cigars and a pocketknife that looks expensive. I pull out the knife and offer it to him. “You might want to keep this.” He shakes his head. “Told you. Not the sentimental type.”

“Oh,” I say lamely, thinking of all the boxes of my mother’s things in the attic. Would I be able to give those away as easily?