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You can’t ever remember being anything but this. Hiding under the blue curtain of the fruit vendor as a child. The wind feels sweet and warm down here. When you close your eyes it brushes your face gently. Like a parent would. A mother’s hand — you imagine the edge of a cave in summer, sucking in warm air, or the shell of a snail. Homely and too inconspicuous to be of interest to others. Feet rush past you. Feet without bodies. There’s that salt rot smell, worse in the heat. The sea.
A hand on the back of your neck, heavy and wet. The vendor pulls you up into the open. He has a gaunt face for a man with a strong grip. His apron is strained with fruit juice, so he looks mean but smells good. You feel each individual finger pinch beneath your collar. It’s hard to breath. You struggle, scratching his arms. The red slices down his arms make him angrier, he holds on tighter. Like a parent would. You kick his stomach, make your legs limp and heavy so you can jab lower. You hit him in the thigh. Slow blink, assessing what you are: girl or boy? Adult or child? When you have been hungry, the body changes. He sets you down and steps back. You are small for your age. You watch each other reproachfully. When you take off running, you half expect him to grab back. Right out of the air.
In the shade, down by the docks, you watch them load and unload ships. There is a boy, older than you, but still shy of being a man. Tall and big. You’ve seen him before, or else, boys that hold themselves the same way he does. You watch the way he lumbers from crate to crate. On the deck he wipes his brow with his hand.
The rot smell is inside your nose. It is best to eat here, so you don’t taste the food, so you don’t become accustomed to it and feel its absence. All you got for your watching and waiting was a handful of seeds and the pale cream wash of an egg. The seeds you pocket. You hold the egg out in front of you, in place of the sun, in place of the ships. The design of the world in its curve. You crack it on the stone step beside you and suck out the juice. A few pieces of shell dislodge and stick to your lips.
On the journey over you were sure you would die. The sky seemed very close and you thought between its great weight and the violence of the sea you would be crushed. You turn out your stomach and lay in the cabin with the other sailors. You miss the taste of stolen food, you miss the sun. You miss the smell of home. On land again you understand the nervous gait of the boys at the dock. Disbelieving, dreaming something steady. Thinking you’ll wake up back there, in the dark, in the water. You didn’t know how to swim until you learned, scared for your life, miles from shore when the ship capsized.
In the undergrowth of the frontier, made low and small by the wall of trees, you crouch, naked and alone, thinking about that egg. Then the sloppy smile of the cook through the leaves, the break of day, the hut in the glade, the cow.
*
You put your ear to his chest. He snuffed the candles too early, and now it feels dim in the little house. Grey light. The world blowing in under the door. He’s warm and he gives heat like no one else you ever took up with. He smells of cinnamon. Fragrant enough that it makes your mouth water.
‘You done this kind of thing before?’ Cookie says later, whilst you unbutton his shirt, slide off the belt.
You shrug.
‘I haven’t.’ He lays his head back, turning to rest his cheek against the blanket.
You stop and wait. Put a hand to his stomach.
‘Just feels wrong,’ he says, and you shift now, feeling that crack inside. He spent so long looking at you, thinking you couldn’t see. You thought this was what he wanted. Then he sighs and rubs his face. ’Stealing another man’s property.’
You laugh, and he flinches a little.
‘I thought you meant—’ Your voice sounds rough. You swallow, brush your fingers over his throat. He pulls you down and kisses you. Still that sweetened taste. The shadow of eggshell crusted on your lips.
Afterwards, he pulls you back up his body with the taste of him in your mouth. He laces your hand with his own. You look away. Something coaxing in his movements which make you feel seen. You close your eyes and let him hold you.
‘You’ve been at this a long time,’ he says, when you open your eyes. He looks sheepish. ‘Taking things.’
You shrug.
‘Are you good at it?’ He says, softly. ‘Does it make you happy?’
’I want to do more than just survive.’
He puts a finger under your chin and tilts your head upwards, so you can only see him. Warm eyes in the dark. Always full of something. Mist in the morning, dew in the cold. When he cooks over an open fire, they seem alert. Reminds you of a bird, sometimes, watching and waiting. There it is again. The cinnamon under your tongue.
‘Would you leave me?’
You don’t move. There’s a tremor in his lips, his eyes.
‘If it meant carrying on. Would you go without me?’
You imagine the sea rot, the egg, the scratch of hunger as you reach to kiss him. Trying not to remember the taste.
‘No,’ you say, so that he will sleep.
*
In San Francisco, you haul the water from the well and carry it back up the plot to the house. You’ve done it enough times to know that you’ll keep the grass dry but unbalance on the back porch. Some will slop from the bucket onto your shoes and the wood. But that’s okay. You know you sound too much like him, thinking: the doorstop needs a good clean. Here your mornings are more regimental than any time you spent as a sailor, as a soldier. You go to the pantry and take out what Cookie asked for. The list written up against the wall in chalk. You leave them out for him, space between each box and every one open. He finds it easier to remember the boarder’s breakfast when it is laid out for him.
Then you make the coffee and slip in a little honey - just for him, because he’d complain if he knew - and let the drinks cool for a moment. You look out over the plot. In the garden he’s growing vegetables, or thinks he is. He wouldn’t get so far without you.
You go out and water the flowers. You go out the front, too, along the dirt track road and feed the greenery that’s emerging by the building. Out here it wasn’t quiet, but in a different way to the woods. To anywhere you had lived. There were people, but they felt a great distance from you. You heard them down the track, and sometimes it would be a while before you saw them.
Setting feed down for the chickens, you try and talk to them as he does. Something about the tone you can’t get right. There are four brown and two white. There had been a ginger one, with white freckles around her beaded eyes, but she had passed before the Spring. He had cried when you buried her. He was like that with everything, felt a lot; you couldn’t tell if that was because things had come loose when he cracked his skull, or if he had always had a tendency towards it. Some nights, you supposed, he might have been a little scared of you, this man he found naked and starving in the woods. You remember waking sometimes, to find him watching you. Maybe he was scared to show you what was happening inside.
You empty the yellow sash of salts the doctor gave you into his water and bring that upstairs with coffee. He stirs under the blanket. It takes him a few minutes to wake. When he does, you set down his drinks and help him sit, prop his back against the wall. For a moment he doesn’t speak, but grunts low and long, cradling his head in his heads.
Eventually, when he uncurls himself from the covers, he drinks his coffee. His eyes flit around the room. The dull glaze clears. You think that maybe now, he sees things other than you, perhaps outside of you. But he sticks around, so you can’t complain.
‘What’s on your mind?’
He sets the mug down. Reaches over the blankets. You shuffle towards him, let him wrap his arms around you. You press your mouth to his forehead, his nose, his chin. Then his mouth, kissing him until he smiles, and pushes you away.
‘You—’ He has to try. You tell yourself to wait, to watch him. His words slur early in the morning. His cooking, his gardening, his cleaning - all of it is slow but assured. The physical work was never lost, the skill remained. Guests sometimes couldn’t tell at all. But speech dwindled, and sometimes he needed help.
‘You,’ he tries again, thinking, watching the space over your right shoulder. You squeeze his hand. The doctor had said it would be like this for the rest of his natural life - no better, but no worse.
‘You’ve got something,’ he says, reaching forward to brush your sleeve. From the lint and coarse fabric, he draws a feather.
The sun breaks through the curtains. He smiles at you in the thin yellow light, that Californian warmth, and lets it go. It settles on the bed between you.
‘What are you hungry for?’ Your voice doesn’t sound like your voice anymore.
He thinks about it, shrugs. ‘Whatever you are.’
The hens laid well. In the narrow kitchen, you crack two eggs in a pan and watch the twin yolks take shape. Bulbous and shining. The colour of something you lost in the woods and can’t remember now.
You eat in silence together. After, he stops you, and wipes the corner of your mouth.
*