Where the Earth Grinds Together
Katie Moulton
Mother Theresa’s Home for the Sick and Dying: Kingston, JamaicaWhen I heard the wail, I was standing behind the chair, holding Miss Jones’ gray fuzzy skull in the palms of my hands. I was holding the little yellow comb, pulling her hair like dandelion strands, rough-soft tufts through the plastic teeth. Then—
What a pair of lungs! What an incredible gut! Something wailed like I imagine a dying dog would wail. The sound thrilled from my fingers to the back of my scalp.
Over Miss Jones’ head, I saw all the old brown women standing on their feet. I wondered why they had quit the chairs and benches they had occupied all morning. The orange vinyl chairs that lined the walls of the courtyard were empty now. I thought they looked like pots left without their shrubs, when the ceramic bakes and turns to dust in the sun on the patio by the back door.
The women were on the far end of what the Sisters called the veranda, standing almost frozen in all the positions of drama and warfare. Berty was sprawled on the floor, her violet scarf pushed down around her eyes. She was still screaming and howling and crying. She lay on the ground, chin lifted up, her mouth open wide, noise screeching through her and out, falling back into her throat. Her thin lips disappeared into the same color of her skin, and the aching hole and noise became its own creature, falling on us all. Miss Jones covered her ears, and I took my hands from her head.
I had taken Berty to the toilet that morning. The distance from her chair to the stall doors had stretched out in one long linoleum mile. She held my arm and the rail and kept her face to the ground as we shuffled along. My eyes locked on the entrance to the pots, and I was sure we weren’t going to make it. She smelled like diapers and dead skin— I vowed to never go in another hospital—and I saw myself lifting up her cotton dress to wash her skin with alcohol and smelling her, smelling her all the time. But we did make it, and Berty felt her way along the walls to the toilet and wiped herself. She was blind so she didn’t see me watching her. I wondered where else I would find this kind of success.
Now there was a monster standing over Berty. A little old woman with lighter skin, a long braid and a big pink bow stood with tiny clenched fists and didn’t look down. She watched the others and her folded-up lips curved in a smile like a scythe. She was grotesque like the witch from my old dreams and I couldn’t move.
The old women stood in packs and watched as one with black skin and meaty spread arms taunted another, “I fight cha now, I fight cha later!” Her opponent moved faster than I expected, rushing forward yelling with an empty water bottle brandished above her head. The two bodies came together, ramming against the concrete railing with an enormous clap—meaty arms flailed and pulled, bones knocked through skin and screams and the noise! The spectacular noise! The old women howled in the dark afternoon sun, the blind one wailed on the floor, and I wanted to run across the tile, I wanted to scream in the chorus, I wanted to feel the hurt swelling from my toes, through the great compression of my body and out! Out!
But I stood behind Miss Jones and stared across the courtyard and thought of nothing first, then again about the mountains on this island, how they surprised me, how before this morning I had imagined flatlands so low my feet would sink right into the sea. I saw the Sisters all dressed in white and blue running up the stairs, saw their mouths open so wide the sun glinted off their teeth like rows of mirrors. I saw their skin pulled so thick and tight like a tarp and thought of star apples in brown palms. I saw Miss Jones’ feet gnarled like wood carvings. I saw the line of sun creep higher on our bare legs and thought of how much I’d like to tell her about every bad thing I’ve ever done and every warm dark place I’ve ever loved.
Volume CXX, No.1