In the Earth Beneath

This is a piece from the Are.na Annual 2025, which is now available.

BLOOD: lay your non-dominant hand on your heart; using your dominant hand, flutter your fingers over it. This sign can, in some places, also be used for family. 

It was a tradition in my hometown to first be driven, then drive, around town to all the haunted spots and tell stories that were a blend of local history and the supernatural. It was called “spooking” and it was something of a rite of passage: you were about 12-13 as a passenger, 16-17 as a driver. My son was never spooked before we moved away in 2019, and it seems to be a dying art anyway; the thrill of a car dying in the woods is somewhat lessened in the smartphone era, even if said era took an extra decade to reach my town. I revisited my hometown a few years ago, and while I successfully avoided a great number of people, I found I could not avoid my own ghosts, or my own history, and I spooked my son. I took him everywhere I could think of and talked until I couldn’t: About the moonshine my sisters and I discovered buried in the cellar we weren’t supposed to be exploring. About reading the dictionary with my mom to study for Scripps, signing Prince songs instead of hymns, how she made me the same echinacea tea she makes for him when he’s sick. About bowhunting with my dad and why he calls me Wolf and what it’s like to hold a chick so gently in your hands in spring, then grip it by the neck in fall when it’s time to raise the knife. There are certain things you never learn to put down, and maybe you never should. Lord knows where I come from is hardly a kind place to land. (The difference between grace and grave is that only one was ever available to me.) You have to grow through what you go through, as they say, although there’s little patience for those of us who grew thorns. But I do believe a sentence can be kind, no matter how much blood it takes to write it.  

FIRE: with both hands over the chest, flutter the fingers like tongues of flame. This sign is highly contextual; it can be moved in any direction, and can increase or decrease in size. 

‘Way I tell it is this: 

Once there was a house that made strange sounds. Every night there was the sound of a woman screaming, and then a thud, and then nothing. So they asked the preacher —  █████ ’s great granddad, supposedly — to sit in the house for a night, to see what he could  do about it. He sat in the house for a few hours and didn’t hear anything, but the minute he started a fire, the sounds started. So he walked to the cellar, where it sounded like the sounds were coming from, and asked who was there. Nobody answered, but he felt cold. So he sat with his bible, fixed up the fire, and after a while he heard the sounds again. This time he asked who it was in the name of god, and he heard steps coming up the cellar, and then nothing again, and it got even colder. So he sat with his bible again, fixed up the fire again, and waited again, and this time, he opened the cellar door, asked who it was in the name of the trinity, and he saw a woman, or something like it, because now she was only embers in the shape of a woman. It’s time to move on, sister, he said, and she told him she couldn’t because her bones were not here; they were in another man’s fireplace, the one who had killed her. If he managed to bring her bones back here, she would find rest. How will I know where to find your bones? he asked, and she told him: take this piece of my finger, put it in the collection plate, and you will know. So he did as she asked, and when the collection plate came around to a certain man, the finger stuck to him, until he was hung for the murder. 

And the preacher brought her bones back to her home, and the woman was flesh and blood again, just for a moment; just long enough to lay her hand on his arm, like she was saying goodbye. And he was burned where she touched him, and he walked out with his coat smoking, and he could never wash her fingerprints away. 

VAPOR: with both hands spread out, begin at chest level and allow them to rise as high as necessary. 

When our house was heated by woodstove, the least favorite chore for all eight of us kids was carrying firewood. Someone always ended up with poison ivy or a bug bite or a splinter, no matter how carefully the wood was chopped and chosen. Various avoidance strategies were employed, including temporarily losing our shoes or coats, claiming a sudden illness, bribery, and blackmail. But in the cold heart of winter, we fed the fire with knees touching and glowed in the dark. The woodpile at my old home is still there, although it is surely not the same wood, and will never warm me anyway. I did not anticipate how badly it would hurt to drive past it. Most of the homes I lived in were condemned, then torn down. This one is continually improved, adored by the family who lives there now. I no longer want to live there but I want to feel the way I did when I did, senior year and pregnant with my buzzing boy: like I was being called to rise, like I could not touch the ground for all the love I was carrying. Does the house remember me? Do the woods dream of what I left in them? Does anyone but me remember my son, on our last day there, whispering goodbye, I love you, with his hands on the window? Did anything say it back? They loved me until they didn’t, back home, and even my godmother turned away, despite the hours I spent in her arms. But the people who spit when they say my name are still saying my name; for a moment I’m real, heavy on their tongue, and not one of them has the power to take back the love they gave me. 

My son tells it back like this: 

Once there was a house haunted by sounds. It sounded like a scream, and then it sounded like a loud thud. A preacher stayed the night to see if he could find out why. He heard the sounds and went to investigate, but saw nothing. He started a fire and heard the sounds again; this time he asked who was there, but he didn't get an answer. Then he opened his bible, heard the sounds and asked who was there, and this time he got an answer. It was a woman made of fire, because her bones were gone. She told the preacher he could find them in the house of the man who had murdered her. How will I know who murdered you? he asked. And she told him: You will know because he killed me for my money. When the preacher passed around the collection plate, a man who usually didn't donate gave a lot of money, and the preacher knew it was him. So he took the money and her bones back to her,  and she said the church could have the money, and she shook his hand. And his hand was never right again, and she was gone. 

Some wants never die, despite your attempts to bury or outrun them. The book on finding love asks: What does true love look like to you? (Moonlight.) What does it smell like? (Burning.) What does it taste like? (Hard rain.) What does it feel like? (Losing an arrow.)  What does it sound like? This is where I get stuck, and maybe why I cannot find love, or it  cannot find me: I don’t know what to listen for. Does it call? Does it sing? Or does it wait for my call, my song, my careless foot on a branch?  

If soulmates exist, if I have one, if they read this: I imagine you must be a little battle-worn yourself. That you have need of a rest only I can offer you. That you want or even crave a  woman who has fed herself to the flame of her own desire and come out hungry, long after the ashes have died and gone wherever ashes go, left to the mercy of their gods. What’s mercy to a thing like me? The difference between haunted and hunted is that there isn’t one; whatever wants you, hunts you, and where I step I do not make a sound.  

SMOKE: cup the non-dominant hand in front of the chest, and move the dominant hand away from it in spirals, as if releasing the smoke.  

Lately I have practiced my draw so often I wake up holding a phantom bow, knuckles resting  on my jaw. What does the night know that I do not? What empties my quiver? To aim your bow, you cannot remain fully still. There is a certain amount of tension you must maintain in your back, until you feel a stretch inside your chest called an expansion. Only after you have  expanded can you release. You must be empty of everything but the desire to free the arrow,  and then you must empty yourself further; it will go where you send it, not where you ask it to. Sometimes holding on means letting go, means stepping back into yourself, and I beg your forgiveness for forgetting the love I am made of. I wear my mother’s watch and sign her language. I bear my father’s nickname for me. In dreams I smell my grandfather’s smoke, his faded books. I look in my grandmother’s mirror and I see a face she gave me. My son hums from one activity to the next, never tired. I hear so many things I couldn’t begin to separate them from each other, not all of them sounds: Life is a song I’m helplessly singing, tapping out the melody with my hands. The difference between hallow and hollow is whether you are holding or held, and I am both. When you tell stories with your hands, you are always holding a story. When you tell stories with your heart, you are always being held by one. What do you think happened to the woman after she left? Bee asks, and I make two cups with my hands, slide one across the other: new.