Under Things

Part 4

The girl got used to the woman barging in on them and tried to tell herself that everything was all right because the boy felt so good to her and had such a musical, lulling voice.

But then, after a time, the girl fell ill. Something was wrong with her but the woman did not think it was necessary for her to see a doctor.

“The boy will take care of you,” the woman said.  “He could have been a doctor, that boy.  So intelligent and gifted. A natural healer.”

So the girl let the boy put cool washcloths on her head, feed her pills, sing her songs and touch her body with his healing hands.   

“He has shamanic abilities,” the woman said.

The girl felt better for a while. She liked the touch of the boy’s hands on her body and inside of it, and the sound of his songs that reminded her of the lullabies her mother used to sing to her before her father stopped letting her mother come. She believed the boy could cure her.

But the boy grew weary of caring for the girl. He wanted to be cared for by her; no, he longed for it. He began to feel ill himself. His stomach hurt, and his chest. He thought strange thoughts that went around and around in his head.  He was filled with a terrible desire to be sung to and kissed over and over again while he lay motionless, like a corpse.  The girl did not know that the boy was feeling all these things. She was still too ill to really notice and the boy pretended to be all right.

One day the woman opened the door of the room holding something in her hands.  Her face had a quizzical look the girl had never seen before.

“I have a present for you from a new girl,” the woman said.

The girl lifted her head from the hot pillow.  Her hair, that had grown out most of the way back to its natural brown, stuck to her cheek. “Who are all these people?” she said.

The woman pretended not to hear her and continued talking to the boy.  “It’s a handmade book for you to write in.”

When the woman left, the girl began to cry. “Who are all these fucking people?” she repeated.  “And why does she just come in here like that without knocking?”

The boy looked at her confusedly and tapped his finger to his lips.  “Please calm down,” he said. “We need it quiet.  You’ll make us ill.”

Later that night the girl woke to hear him speaking aloud to himself, crouched on the floor of his room in the dark.

The girl was alarmed and stumbled from the bed where she lay, and put her arms around the boy and kissed him.

“He’s not a good person,” the boy said. “He’s a bad, bad person. He doesn’t take care of us. He takes care of everyone else! We hate him!”

“Who?” the girl asked, bewildered, and the boy said his own name. This frightened the girl but she said, “He’s trying to help people.  He has a gift of helping people.” This is what the woman had told her so she repeated it to the boy, hoping he would feel better.

“He doesn’t take care of us!” the boy repeated

The girl said, “I’ll take care of you,” and held the boy’s rigid body as close as she could while he rocked back and forth.

“He shouldn’t have come here, to this world,” the boy said. “He should have stayed where he was. He had to come take care of all these people but he should have just stayed where he was.”

“I didn’t want you to take care of me!” the girl said.

The boy looked at the girl. His blue eyes, that could be warm as flame, were suddenly ice.  “You’re in general a good person,” he said coolly. “But you have something behind you. A shadow. I see it behind you.”