bed Violet turned on her side to face her sister. Having been shaken
from sleep by the power of the experience with the hawk, Verbina came
into Violet’s arms. Naked, pelvis pelvis, belly to belly, breasts to
breasts, the twins held each other and shuddered uncontrollably. Violet
gasped against Verbina’s tender throat, and through her link with
Verbina’s mind, she felt that hot flood of her own breath and the warmth
it brought to her sister’s skin. They made wordless sounds a clung to
each other, and their frantic breathing did not beg to subside until the
hawk tore the last red sliver of nourishing meat from the mouse’s hide
and, with a flurry of wings, threw itself into the sky again.
Below was the Pollard property: the Eugenia hedge; the grey blued,
slate-roofed, weathered-looking house; the twenty-year-‘ old Buick that
had belonged to their mother and that Candy sometimes drove; clusters of
primrose burning with red and yellow and purple blooms in a narrow and
untended flower bed that extended the length of the decrepit back porch.
Violet also saw Candy far below, at the northeast corner of the
sprawling property.
Still holding fast to her sister, gracing Verbina’s throat and cheek and
temple with a lace of gentle kisses, Violet simultaneously directed the
hawk to circle above her brother. Through the bird, she watched him as
he stood, head bowed, at their mother’s grave, mourning her as he had
mourned her every day, without exception, since her death those many
years ago.
Violet did not mourn. Her mother had been as much a stranger to her as
anyone in the world, and she had felt nothing special at the woman’s
passing. Indeed, because Candy was gifted, too, Violet felt closer to
him than she had to her mother, which was not saying much because she
did not really know him or care a great deal about him. How could she
be close to anyone if she could not enter his mind and live with him,
through him? That incredible intimacy was what welded her to Verbina,
and it marked the myriad relationships she enjoyed with all the fowl and
fauna that populated nature’s world. She simply did not know how to
relate to anyone without that intense, innermost connection, and if she
could not love, she could not mourn.
Far below the wheeling hawk, Candy dropped to his knees beside the
grave.
MONDAY AFTERNOON. Thomas sat at his work table. Making a picture poem.
Derek helped. Or thought he did. He sorted through some magazine
clippings. He chose pictures, gave them to Thomas. If the picture was
right, Thomas trimmed it, pasted it on the page. Most of the time it
wasn’t right, so he put it waside and asked for another picture and
another until he gave him something he could use.
He didn’t tell Derek the awful truth. The awful truth that he wanted to
make the poem by himself. But he could hurt Derek’s feelings. Derek
was hurt enough. Being dumb really hurt, and Derek was dumber than
Thomas. Though Derek was dumber-looking, too, which was more hurtful.
His forehead sloped more than Thomas’s. His nose was flatter, his head
had a squashy shape. Awful truth.
Later, tired of making the picture poem, Thomas and Derek went to the
wreck room, and that was where it happen Derek got hurt. He got hurt so
much he cried. A girl did it. Mary. In the wreck room.
Some people were playing a game of marbles in one corner. Some were
watching TV. Thomas and Derek were sitting on a couch near some
windows, Being Sociable when any came around. The aides always wanted
people at The home to Be Sociable. It was good for you to Be Sociable.
When one came around to Be Sociable with them, Thomas and Derek were
watching hummingbirds at a feeder that hung outside windows.
Hummingbirds didn’t really hum, but they zip around and were a lot of
fun to watch. Mary, who was at The Home, didn’t zip around and wasn’t
fun to watch, she hummed a lot. No, she buzzed. Buzz, buzz, buzz, all
the time.
Mary knew about eye cues. She said they really mattered, eye cues, and