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Show Moon - 71 Sometimes they just walked along, listening to the leaves swish under the horses' hooves like water. There was another baby now, another brother, Lee, who had beautiful hazel eyes like her mother's. He should have been a sister who would someday hunt for stones and whisper secrets and have long pretty hair she could brush and braid. Caleb was growing up too quiet, an indoor boy with serious green eyes and hair that curled the way hers should have. He built endless boring cities out of blocks. He was silent, so good, that around him Joy felt large and dark like a train that would scream and tear right through people if she weren't careful to keep herself slow. She would be none of them sitting dead and quiet in the house. She would be a forest girl, wild and free and untamed like a deer or a fox. She ran down the paths until she was bent double by the stitch in her side. Then, if no one was around, she threw off her clothes and swam in the lake, the water folding and unfolding around her nakedness like layers of silk. She leaped bushes and streams and swung herself up into trees. When the screaming was out of her, she worked on her hut, an odd little dome contrived out of willow branches, woven together at the top like a clumsy basket. She lined the floor with leaves and scraped holes in the dirt to store the best of her rocks. Sometimes she sat quietly inside the shelter and practiced praying: Father-Mother God. God of the angels hold up a candle high enough to light the darkest heart, my heart. Carry me home, God of the Indigo Bunting and the Golden Crowned Kinglet, the gypsy moth, the moons on my fingernails, the dirt underneath my fingernails, dogshit, nightcrawlers, ferns in the shadows that curl at the ends like violins. God of Everything, please help us be happy. |