This morning: Saskatchewan; this evening: Florida. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a little disoriented, as if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just folded a map, linking two distant places so improbably, so quickly together. I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t planned on seeing Chalice again, so soon after planting season, but she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d called me yesterday, asked if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d come and see her. Didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say why and I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ask.<\/p>\n
Chalice met me at Miami Dade airport, but she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d cut her hair, making her appear older than her twenty-four years, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d shaved off my goatee \u00e2\u20ac\u201c now I look younger than she is \u00e2\u20ac\u201c so it took us a while to find each other in the thinning crowd. First time we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d ever seen each other cleaned up. She smelled good, like mangoes and pepper. Her dark hair\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s short now, dyed incandescent white and spiked sharp. Makes her blue eyes fade to a winter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sky, her face look darker, less gaunt, less erased. Even her voice has changed, slipped into a low smoky drawl so thick I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand her at first.<\/p>\n
The heat and humidity nearly sidelined me when we stepped out of the airport \u00e2\u20ac\u201c explains why the pace seems slower here, as if everyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s moving through honey. Chalice didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to linger in the city, so she took Highway 41 across the Everglades through Big Cypress National Preserve, and drove so fast I thought we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d skid into the swamp. I kept expecting the road to sink or end abruptly \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as if we were on some kid\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s toy track spread over marshland that couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t possibly support our weight.<\/p>\n
Chalice drives a golden brown truck, rusted and banged up, windows rolled down as far as they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll go, or punched out, topless flatbed still crammed with her planting and camping gear. Front fender\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mangled from the tree she plowed into July second. Truck probably isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worth fixing. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m surprised Customs let her over the border.<\/p>\n
We didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t talk much through the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcGlades, mostly because we couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hear each other over the hot wind and the tapes Chalice kept jamming into the player. Jazz music filled the air as if the cool notes could beat down the hundred twenty degree heat. Only when we stopped for gas and groceries in Naples did Chalice turn to me, and really seem to see me. Reached over and smacked me on the shoulder, like we were back in the northern bush and she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d figured I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d slept enough and should wake up and keep her company.<\/p>\n
She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d latched onto me the third day of planting season \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we were on the same crew, but hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so much as exchanged glances yet. Fourth of May and winter decides to make a comeback north of the Superior. Around noon the snow started, big flakes that covered the mounds of dead trees and soil so fast, everything was transformed in a thick layer of white. Ten-foot high slash piles became albino dragons snaking towards the horizons. We kept planting, though. Our seedlings like afterthoughts of trees and so fragile in the snow, I knew they wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t survive.<\/p>\n
I could have been one of the crew bosses again this season, but I chose to plant instead. I earn more, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not so awkward with the other planters, since I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m one of them, not their boss. I prefer the isolation of planting to wandering through my crew\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lots. Focus on making enough money to carry me through the summer till hunting season in the fall and winter. Spring\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my chance to hibernate, get away from people for ten hours a day, although the hunters I guide in northern Saskatchewan are easy-going, fairly reticent folk.<\/p>\n
Chalice was a rookie, but you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never know it. She attacked those lots like she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been planting for years. Never had to re-plant even in the worst locations. That third day, though, I saw a side of her I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen since. Chalice was working in the lot next to mine, and our crew boss, Drew, kept swinging by to check on her, flagging random trees Chalice swears he pulled out by the roots, leaving the paper pods snug in the ground. Fifth time around, Chalice caught him watching her pee next to the slash. She yelled at him. Not a coherent threat to get away from her, but a deep-throated, guttural burst of anger that reverberated through the cold air and made me scale the fallen trees and detritus to go to her aid.<\/p>\n
When I arrived, Chalice was pushing Drew away from her, her army pants still around her ankles, her winter parka reaching to mid-thigh. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a chance to react. She swung wide and clipped Drew on the cheek. When he saw me, he dropped his arms. Stomped back to the flagged trees, started re-planting them himself.<\/p>\n
Chalice looked me over, her lips pursed, her eyes narrowed, then reached down and pulled up her pants. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcYou\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll do\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I think she muttered, though she later insisted she said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHow d\u00e2\u20ac\u2122you do?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 We sat together in our crew\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s van on the way back to camp, everyone huddled together for warmth and padding in the empty shell as we bounced and slid along the rutted road, Drew glaring occasionally into the rear view mirror like an angry parent, his left cheek the swollen colour of bruised fruit. As Chalice slept sporadically, her head lolling from my shoulder to the person on her right, I wanted to pull up her pant legs, touch her skin so cold it had looked dead and grey in the field. What had intrigued me even more were the markings on her legs \u00e2\u20ac\u201c raised pink lines, intricate symbols and shapes, interconnecting and entwining, like the borders in an illuminated manuscript\u00e2\u20ac\u201dnot tattoos, but scars.<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a7<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ian?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Chalice says, curling an orange rind around her left index finger like a ring. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re sitting in a Publix parking lot, paper bags of groceries with printed hurricane warnings on them, jammed at my feet.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yeah?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Marry me?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She laughs, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m blushing, choking on my orange. Then she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tossing the orange rind out the window and backing up the truck. Sheet lightning startles the night sky. Chalice\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nails tapping on the cracked steering wheel are pointed triangles, sharp like her hair, like her face. Only her voice is soft.<\/p>\n
The first time she touched me intimately, I was dozing in the sauna, lying naked under a towel. Nick and Jason were in the sauna with me. The plan had been to stay until we couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stand the heat any more, tear along the dock and cannonball into the lake still rimmed with ice, then sprint back to the sauna before anyone saw us. I woke up swatting the air when something touched my face. Still too cold outside for mosquitoes and black flies, but the sensation was the same. Chalice was bent over me, her long hair tickling my mouth. I sat up, groggy and disoriented. She was dressed in her winter clothes. Only her boots were at the door.<\/p>\n
She left before I had a chance to speak. Nick and Jason stared at me for an explanation, but I shrugged. Chalice, I was learning, was like that \u00e2\u20ac\u201c sporadic, unpredictable, impulsive. Everything I think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not. Later, as the guys and I charged out of the sauna into the pressing darkness, I think I saw Chalice standing at the forest\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s edge, watching.<\/p>\n
The planting was rough those first two weeks. Snow and rain kept the lots frozen or mired with mud, and twice we had to turn around and head back to camp because the makeshift roads were impassable. On those days, most people stayed in the mess tent, or sauna, but Chalice made me walk with her through the forest. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d found a hollow tree on one of her wanderings and we sat inside its trunk, feasting on sandwiches and cookies, swigging hot coffee from a thermos while the wind moaned, and snow enclosing the entrance deepened the air to twilight blue. Chalice liked to wear a multi-coloured Peruvian hat and would swirl the braids against her face, over her eyes, into the air, her hands constantly moving, seeking contact.<\/p>\n
She told me about growing up in southern Florida. How the rain would fill her backyard pool so full, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d overflow. How she and her older sister Faryn would catch frogs and salamanders when they washed into the water from the surrounding gardens. How the rain was so warm and heavy, it felt safe.<\/p>\n
She drew her knees up to her chest as she talked and rocked back and forth, and I could see her as a gap-toothed six-year-old, holding amphibians in cupped hands, dark hair dripping wet around her shoulders, small face turned to the sky, wanting more. I needed to hold her, protect her, like I used to protect my sister Faith when we were younger, but Chalice had retreated, her gaze reaching back to somewhere I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t completely follow. I knew she was selecting fragments, little pieces of herself she wanted me to see, keeping others tucked away. I knew they had something to do with her carvings.<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a7<\/p>\n
We pull up in front of a jungle, or a front yard so over-grown, the house is hidden. Chalice parks on the street, and I grab the bags of groceries and my duffle bag and follow her deep into the unlit foliage, lush with flowers that burst pollen against my skin like overripe perfume. We emerge not at the front of the house, but at a cracked fountain in the back. Another flash of lightning brightens the wild garden into sudden daylight, revealing plants so tangled, the hibiscus blossoms seem strangled. Chalice\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s place is more of a cottage than a house. Wooden, with a large screened-in porch, painted pink or maybe aqua\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to tell as I stand blinking in the returning dark. Conch shells stagger up the steps, line the path to the fountain.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that noise?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The ocean,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Chalice answers, shrugging her thin shoulders hidden under a long-sleeved cotton shirt. She climbs the steps in front of me, and I am surprised at how even summer fabric and shadows can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t soften her angles.<\/p>\n
On her porch, before she unlocks the door, she reaches up and hugs me, pulls me so close I can feel her ribs rising and falling. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Welcome.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Her mouth is a tickle against my ear. She lets me go and I feel dizzy. The air is cloying, like oil in my nose and throat.<\/p>\n
Heat explodes through the door, and Chalice walks around the cottage opening windows, until the house hums with the voices of cicadas and crickets and tree frogs. She pulls two beers from an ancient ice-box and we go back out to her porch, sit together on the wooden glider that barely moves.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153How\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Nick?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nick?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in B.C.?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yeah. I guess. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I take a swig of beer, blink as the cold liquid threads through my chest like a river splitting into tributaries. Nick would be in Salmon Arm by now. I hold the bottle against the blood rising in my face.<\/p>\n
Chalice blows across the top of her bottle, making it whistle like a Chilean pan flute. She leans against my chest and I wrap my arms around her, hold her in the heat as we drink our beer in silence. More lightning followed by thunder, and a spattering of rain drums on the tin roof. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve only been away from each other a week, but she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s changed. Florida\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in her blood, in her speech, her movements, as if she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s impersonating someone I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite recognize. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more fluid here, more natural. Not like she was when Nick and Jason were with us on our nights off. Then she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d sip a single beer all evening, watch the three of us make fools of ourselves as we finished a two-four, making oblique passes at her. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d shove us away, her eyes filmed over, opaque contact lenses deflecting desire.<\/p>\n
One late afternoon our crew was shipped over to Nick and Jason\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crew\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s site to help finish up a contract. The lot was ringed with untouched trees instead of slash, an oasis of budding leaves and returning birds in a torn land. Chalice and I worked with Nick to plant the rest of Jason\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lot before five o\u00e2\u20ac\u2122clock, each of us a row apart in symbiotic silence. The first butterflies appeared a few minutes before we planted our last trees. Yellow dabs like lemon peel against a wedge of blue sky. Chalice stood with her arms raised high and butterflies swirled around her body. Jason, Nick, and I followed Chalice and the butterflies through the remaining forest where other planters were gathering. No one spoke.<\/p>\n
Thousands of butterflies shimmered like broken sunlight, swelling in wave after wave around our out-stretched arms. They were attracted to Chalice the most, settling on her Peruvian toque, in her long dark hair, on her bare hands. Unlike everyone else, Chalice was still wearing long sleeves, but one had fallen back revealing markings that shone in the dappled light\u00e2\u20ac\u201dnew skin, still pink and raw. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been carving recently. A long blast from the van\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s horn in the distance scattered the butterflies, and Chalice emerged from a cloud of yellow dust, enraptured.<\/p>\n
Jason touched her then, smudging the powder on her face, and I could tell he was smitten with her. She turned from him, walked behind us to the vans, the smile gone.<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a7<\/p>\n
I awaken to heat and darkness. At first, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember where I am, then the sound of rain outside the open window, slapping and dripping on leaves, drumming the roof, clears my head. Chalice is asleep beside me, her long pyjamas sticking to her body, her breathing rough, erratic, as if she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s running in her dreams. I want to rub the sharp edge of her pelvic bone, the hollow of her stomach, peel back her shirt and read her skin, but I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. Acts so intimate would be a violation without her consent. I lay flat on my back, hands at my sides, and try not to move. The air is so moist, I feel as if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m drowning.<\/p>\n
I was surprised when Chalice gave me the tour of the cottage and there was only one bedroom. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lived here for a few years, but the place seems like she just happened upon it one day while wandering through the woods. Thick vines cover most of the windows; the walls are peeling and cracked; the furniture looks like garbage finds; the appliances are mismatched avocado and goldenrod. Not one looks like it could work. Chalice calls her home the tree cave. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153During the day,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she once told me as we sat in the hollow tree, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the light in my house is green, like being underwater, where only those who aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t afraid of swimming through the universe venture.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I asked her what she meant, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s when she kissed me\u00e2\u20ac\u201don the mouth. I was a little surprised. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think she felt that way about me. I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sure if I felt that way about her. Then she was kissing me again and I let her. There wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t much room for the two of us inside the tree trunk, but she straddled my hips, and we kissed for a long time. I tried to lift off her shirt, but she moved my hands away, wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let me under her clothes.<\/p>\n
I felt strange, awkward, kissing her, but I wanted so badly for it to feel natural that I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t try to stop. A memory of when I was at camp the summer I was ten, lurked like a shadow between Chalice and me, and I kept holding her tighter, trying to make the memory of the incident disappear. It was a simple act, one I could have forgotten, discarded, instead of letting it linger deep inside of me, awaiting possibilities. There were eight of us to a cabin at the camp, plus our counsellor, and when we had to change into our clothes, our pyjamas, or bathing suits, it was a chaotic scramble of naked limbs and flying clothes, as we rushed to get ready.<\/p>\n
Mid-way through the summer, on a humid day when we were all scurrying to get into our suits for an afternoon swim, one of the boys changing beside me reached over and stroked his hand against my stomach, then groped down to grab my penis, squeezing hard. I was startled at my body\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s response, at the erection jabbing the air as the rest of the boys pointed and jeered, calling us both fags. I raged against them all, flailing wildly at anyone in my way.. That night, though, all I could think of was how excited I felt being touched by another boy.<\/p>\n
I hid this feeling, worried about it, about my dad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and my brother Greg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reactions if they knew. Throughout high school I thought of telling Faith what had happened, how I felt, but she was never around. In her spare time she volunteered at the hospital or locked herself in her room. Throughout the years I went on dates with a few women, but I could never get past the fleshiness of their bodies. Kissing Chalice inside the hollow tree, I thought maybe I had been wrong, that I could feel the same way about a woman as I did about a man.<\/p>\n
That day was only our third full day off from planting in almost a month, and Chalice and I were tired. We fell asleep and I awoke to the hooting of an owl, to moonlight spilling onto the forest floor. Chalice was mumbling, and her hand reached out as if to pluck something from the air, her fingertips iron-burnt smooth when she was six, devoid of prints. Broken behind the Buddha. I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be sure, but I think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what she said. Then she was moaning, crying: I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean to find them. Her sudden child\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s voice staggered and muttered like a scolding adult: Bad girl. Bad girl. She awoke wanting to eat pomegranates and buttered grits, unaware she had been dreaming.<\/p>\n
I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand it\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthis fascination I have with her, with what she hides on her body, with the scraps of her past she feeds me, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m addicted. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the Rosetta Stone, the missing language carved into her skin, but she won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let me discover it, translate it into words I know. I think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s partially why I agreed to buy a one-way ticket to Florida.<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a7<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153My uncle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gay,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Chalice blurts out over a late drink on the porch the next evening. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d spent the day wandering through downtown Naples, eating ice cream and fudge, then calamari and scampi on a wharf overlooking the ocean. Anyone watching us might think we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re married, the way we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve settled into a comfortable routine of eating and barely talking, touch reduced to platonic comfort.<\/p>\n
I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t responded to her statement, but I wonder if she senses a quickening in my pulse, a ripening of my scent. What does she know about Nick and me?<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Know how I know?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Chalice continues. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sitting at the other end of the glider, her feet in my lap.<\/p>\n
I pat a sock-covered foot and shake my head no.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I exposed him.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was only six.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She pauses, takes a sip of beer. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Faryn and I were playing hide and go seek at our cousin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cabin\u00e2\u20ac\u201din the cypress forest. My cousin Willow was \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcit.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d hidden in Uncle Lance\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fishing closet.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s back there, inside the closet. I can see her, the same little girl who held salamanders in the rain, crouching behind rods and tackle, stumbling backwards into a stack of boxes. Glossy paper beneath her touch, the damp smell of ink, the torn look upon her face as she brings the magazines into the light.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153My aunt and mom were out on the deck, drinking rum and looking for gators. Faryn tried to take the magazines from me. We left a trail of ripped pages in the cabin. My Aunt Acacia threw the rest in the swamp. We canoed around the old man trees, no one speaking. Willow and her mom moved back home to Canada a few weeks later.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Chalice attempts a smile. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m half like you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m holding my breath. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing like me.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You know\u00e2\u20ac\u201dCanadian.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She tilts her head to the side, runs one foot over my chest as if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m covered in Braille and she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trying to read secret markings on my skin.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is that why you carve yourself\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbecause of your uncle?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve said it. Opened the wound. I have the sudden sense the ironing incident was not an accident.<\/p>\n
Chalice stands up so abruptly, the glider makes a cracking sound and drops several inches towards the porch floor. I follow her as she rushes down the stairs, past the fountain, pushes through thick leaves and vines where I catch her. I want to pull up her shirtsleeves, run my hands over scars like seals pressed into paper, but she wrenches away, stumbles through foliage onto the beach.<\/p>\n
I join her at the ocean\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s edge, sit down beside her, wishing I could unfold her curved body. I cannot touch her, can only sift sand, listen to the crash of waves, appearing like blackened silver in the moonlight. I found her like this once, the night after we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been planting in the burn. She hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t shown up for dinner, so I went immediately to the hollow tree, where she was arched into a ball and crying. She wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let me come in, had the entrance barred with her body.<\/p>\n
I stayed outside of the tree, eventually rubbing her back until she grew calmer. That day we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d planted on a rocky range of the Canadian Shield, the remnants of forest burned to soot that smudged our skin, stung our eyes, bled our noses, so that by four o\u00e2\u20ac\u2122clock Drew was calling an early day in favour of skinny dipping in the lake below our site.<\/p>\n
Everyone looked at Chalice, knowing she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never participate, but she trekked down the hill with the rest of us, sat on a boulder and stared out at the water while we peeled off our clothes and ran whooping and hollering into the lake. Drew was the first to splash her, taunt her into stripping. Several of our crew members joined in, but Chalice didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t move.<\/p>\n
I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t splash her, but I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stop the others. I wanted her to react, to stand up and yell at us, take off her clothes in defiance and acknowledge her secrets openly. Apparently, so did Drew. Back at camp, he followed her into the forest, ripped her shirt, but she broke away, hid in the tree. When she left the hollow trunk with me that evening, she pressed the torn fabric to her chest as if staunching a wound.<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a7<\/p>\n
I feel the rain before I hear it, and now Chalice is holding my hand, pulling me along the beach. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Swimming,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she answers, although I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t asked her anything.<\/p>\n
A gate in a stone wall opens onto a palm grove. I notice a tennis court and beyond the treetops, the roofline of a sprawling mansion. Chalice follows a second flagstone path to a wrought iron gate covered in a flowering vine.\u00c2\u00a0 Lush plants and towering cedars surround the darkened pool, and I wonder how often Chalice comes here to swim.<\/p>\n
She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s different here, like she was with the butterflies. She leaves me at the gate, walks slowly around the poolside, pulling layers of clothes from her body, until she is stripped bare, arms raised high to the soft rain falling. Her pale skin is phosphorescent, emitting a glow like a thousand fireflies, flickering with every turn, every step. From her clavicles to her ankle bones, she has carved her flesh. Her breasts are spiraled with what may be words; her arms and legs are covered in intricate layers of symbols only she could know.<\/p>\n
She stops in front of me, her sharp hair flattened against her skull, her expression a blank mask. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is what you wanted, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I feel face-slapped, stung. I want to turn around, find my way back through the Everglades to the airport, leave her standing unread in the rain. But I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.<\/p>\n
She backs away from me, steps off the deck edge and plunges out of sight. I search for her, but the water is a rippled surface of inky shadows. A sound like a freight train lumbers at me as rain torrents down hard, blurring my vision. Warm water from the pool laps over my feet, and something solid smacks into my heels from behind. Frogs are being washed out of the garden into the pool. Another frog lands on my head, and for a moment, I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s raining amphibians. Chalice surfaces, scoops several frogs from the gutter and slides them back along the deck towards the plants. Then she is gone, submerged once again.<\/p>\n
I strip down to my skivvies, slip into the water, feeling nauseous. The last time I went swimming was with Nick, five days before planting season ended. He and Jason and I always went for a swim in the lake before going to bed every night, but Jason had sprained his knee earlier that day and couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t walk.<\/p>\n
We usually swam out to the far dock and back, but this night, when we arrived at the dock, Nick and I hung onto the edge and started talking. Rising moon, but still I thought no one could see us. When I kissed him, he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t move away, but turned his face as if to kiss me back. Then he shoved me backwards and swung at my face, his knuckles just grazing my mouth. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Knew it all along,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he spat and swam away. A flash on shore; someone watching? I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t move. I waited a long time before swimming back to camp. The next morning Nick didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sit with Chalice, Jason, and me, and I pretended I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know why.<\/p>\n
Chalice emerges in the shallow end where she stands in waist-deep water, rain-blurred. I swim towards her.<\/p>\n
She takes my hand, traces my fingertips along her ribs. I detect spirals, like flowers bursting. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153First day of grade nine \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in Toronto.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d lived in Canada.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The day of the scented garden,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she whispers and I feel a half circle on one side of her belly button. She pulls me closer, and although I cannot see the scars upon her skin, I know they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re there, each a story. Her body is slight against mine, boyishly flat. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If anyone in my family knew,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she continues softly, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d do more than disown me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She lets go of me, brings her hands between us, palms up. Her fingertips are smooth and waxen against my face.<\/p>\n
The rain stops so suddenly, I feel deaf in the silence.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cypress Gardens, behind the Buddha statue. Grade seven field trip.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d On the other side of her belly button, the rest of the broken circle.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You saw me, with Nick?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I say when she grows quiet.<\/p>\n
She nods, moves my hand to her left arm, the one I saw exposed when she danced with the butterflies. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I wanted to touch her \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in the garden. I tried.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She kisses my face. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re born with them, these longings, stories we have yet to live.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She cups water, pours it over my shoulders. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Imprints, lines and shapes and symbols we can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t erase, no matter how hard we try.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She lifts herself out of the water, sits on the edge of the pool, her long thin legs wrapped around my waist, and bends over me, holds me close. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I carve to let them out.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m crying, but I hurt too much for the tears to come. Somewhere in the wet trees, a cicada begins to sing, a sound like the night sky ripping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Watermarks of the Body Lynn Cecil This morning: Saskatchewan; this evening: Florida. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a little disoriented, as if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just folded a map, linking two distant places so improbably, so quickly together. I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t planned on seeing Chalice again, so soon after planting season, but she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d called me yesterday, asked if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d come and see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":96,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"authorpage.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-183","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1197,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/183\/revisions\/1197"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/96"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}