Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [34]
Later, when the sun pounded the earth from the center of the sky, I found a tree with a branch flung straight out to its side, and I leapt up and grabbed it, then dropped until I was hanging down the way I had hung in the kitchen window, from my palms. As I pulled myself up into a knee-hang position, I didn’t even care that the bark scraped my skin and tore it off. I pulled myself up and over that branch until my muscles shook and burned.
I wished, suddenly, that I had a rig of my own to set up somewhere. The idea seized me: that the trapeze was the only thing that could save me. That it could burn through my body and make me pure again. Those three clean lines cutting through space, the cold metal of the bar. I longed to go back to it, but every time I turned my head toward town my feet started walking in the other direction, carrying me so far away I would start to get lost.
The next day I had an idea. I had dreamt the night before of my body hurtling through space, and then I’d seen an image from one of Mary’s brochures: a woman hanging from a long, braided rope. Twisting her body up to the side. Just one long body and a rope, moving into each other, creating a line from earth to sky.
As soon as the dawn came, I snuck into the barn and grabbed some of the rope my mother hung clothes on. I ran out into the fields, past the corn and carrots and radishes and into the wild land that bordered one side of Riley Farm, where the river ran through. Right there, surrounded by crazy weeds and flowers, a tall cragged tree rose from the ground and draped its branches everywhere. I had often visited that spot when I was younger; even on the hottest days there was so much shade and wetness there that you could burrow into the cool dirt and rest. Acorns and leaves littered the ground, and the smell was deep, like musk.
I inhaled the rich scent and stretched out my arms. Scrambling up the tree, I leaned out from the trunk and looped the rope around the strongest branch, three times to be sure the knot would hold. This was a huge task for me; I had to lean out so far to reach the right spot that I nearly fell twice. When I was finally done, I threw the rope down and watched it tap the earth. I dropped to the ground after it.
Slipping off my shoes, I dug my bare feet into the earth. I placed my palms on the rope and fingered it for a minute, getting used to its feel. I flung myself up then, and out, so that my hands were the only point of contact and the rest of my body darted out to the side. Every muscle in my body strained and pulled, but I felt clean in a way I couldn’t on the ground.
I closed my eyes and let myself go: I swung from side to side, wrapped the rope around my waist and fell into it, twisting it further around. The rope cut right into the wounds the bark had made, but I kept going, wrapping my knees over the rope, pressing so tight I could release my arms and stretch them into the air behind me. The world was reduced to the feel of that rope underneath my palm, the sound of its creaking and my own breath. The sense of my body carving lines and shapes into pure space. I hung from one arm and tried to swing myself up, but that was when my body gave out, and—trembling, exhausted—I dropped to the ground and collapsed.
I lay there catching my breath and letting my muscles ease back down. Then I dragged myself to my feet and stumbled down to the river, which stretched behind our farm the way it did behind Mercy Library. I dunked myself in the cool water, let it rush into my cuts and bruises. Every part of me hurt. I closed my eyes and ran my fingers along the scabs that were beginning to form. Everything else wound down and stopped until it was just me, the water, the burning everywhere, and the dark, dank smell of the wet woods.
My body had no end or beginning, I thought then.
Then a strange thing happened: in the middle of