Surfacing - Margaret Atwood [75]
“Here I am,” I call. “I’m here!” Voice rising and rising with the frustration and then the terror of hearing no answer, the time we were playing after supper and I hid too well, too far away and they couldn’t find me. The treetrunks are so much alike, the same size, the same colour, impossible to retrace the path, instead locate the sun, the direction, whichever way you go you’re bound to hit water. The dangerous thing is to panic, to walk in circles.
“I’m here!” But nothing happens. I wipe the salt off my face, my fingers earth-smeared.
If I will it, if I pray, I can bring them back. They’re here now, I can sense them waiting, beyond sight on the path or in the long grass outside the fence, they are pulling against me but I can make them come out, from wherever it is they are hiding.
I start a fire in the stove and cook the food in the darkening room. There’s no reason to set out plates; I eat from the pot and the frying pan with a spoon. I’ll save the dirty dishes till there are enough; when the dishwasher pail is full I will have to lower it through the window with a rope.
I climb out again and set the scraps from the tinned meat on the tray for the birds. Deep grey, the clouds descending, closing in; the puffs of wind have begun, they advance across the lake like shudders; to the south there’s a column of rain. Flickers of light but no thunder, gust of leaves.
I walk up the hill to the outhouse, forcing myself to go slowly, holding the panic at a distance, looking at it. Inside I hook the door shut, it’s doors I’m afraid of because I can’t see through them, it’s the door opening by itself in the wind I’m afraid of. I run back down the path, telling myself to stop it, I’m old enough, I’m old.
The power would have protected me but it’s gone, exhausted, no more use now than silver bullets or the sign of the cross. But the house will defend me, it’s the right shape. Back inside I put the window up again, hooking it to the frame, barricading myself in, wood bars. The four broken panes, how can I close them. I try stuffing them with pages torn from the magazines and crumpled, National Geographic, Macleans, but it doesn’t work, the holes are too big, the wads of paper fall to the floor. If only I had nails, a hammer.
I light the lamp but the air drafting in through the broken window makes it flutter and turn blue, and with the lamp on I can’t see what’s happening outside. I blow it out and sit in darkness, listening to the gush of the wind, but it doesn’t rain.
After a while I decide to go to bed. I’m not tired, I slept in the afternoon, but there’s nothing else to do. In my room I stand for a long time wondering why I’m afraid to take off my clothes: am I worried that they’ll come back for me, if they do I’ll have to get out quickly; but they wouldn’t try it in a storm, Evans knows better than that, the open lake is the worst place because of the electricity, flesh and water both conduct.
I tie back the curtain so there will be more light. My mother’s jacket is hanging on a nail beside the window, there’s nobody in it; I press my forehead against it. Leather smell, the smell of loss; irrecoverable. But I can’t think about that. I lie down on the bed in my clothes and in a moment the first rain hits the roof. It patters, changes to a steady drumming, sound of an avalanche, surrounding. I feel the lake rising, up over the shore and the hill, the trees toppling into it like sand collapsing, roots overturned, the house unmoored and floating like a boat, rocking and rocking.
In the middle of the night silence wakes me, the rain has stopped. Blank dark, I can see nothing, I try to move my hands but I can’t. The fear arrives like waves, like footfalls, it has no centre; it encloses me like armour, it’s my skin that is afraid, rigid. They want to get in, they want me to open the windows, the door, they can’t do it