I sat up in bed, listening.
“Moses!”
I turned off my fan and waited.
“Moses!”
I ran to the window and looked down to see Georgia in shorts and a tank top, a towel wrapped around her neck and a big, striped pool bag on her shoulder, standing below my window.
She waved merrily, as if her being there in beach wear made total sense.
“I was going to sneak into your house and up the stairs to your room, but I thought maybe you slept naked and I might embarrass you.”
I stared down at her, dumbfounded. She didn’t try to whisper or disguise her voice in any way. I looked toward Gi’s room. The hallway between our rooms was dark and there was no light beneath her door. Still, I put my finger over my lips and shook my head. I had no idea how she even knew which room was mine.
“I’m going to the water tower. Come with me. It’s too damn hot to sleep,” she said, not softening her voice at all.
“Quiet!” I hissed down at her. Georgia just smiled and shook her head.
“The sooner you get down here in some shorts with the keys to your Jeep, the sooner we can go, and the sooner I’ll shut up. We can’t take Myrtle. She’d wake the neighborhood.”
A laugh escaped my nose in an unattractive snort, and Georgia smirked, obviously well aware that if anyone was in danger of waking the neighborhood, or at least my grandma, it was her.
“What the hell. It is too hot to sleep,” I sighed, and her smile widened considerably.
“Meet you out front,” she whispered. Oh, now she was being quiet. Now that she got her way.
I’d never been to the water tower, but Georgia directed me to a little paved road, south of town, that wound its way through the fields and crossed a set of railroad tracks before running past a large metal silo with a ladder running up the side. A sign warned that trespassers would be prosecuted, and a chain link fence with a lock on the gate further discouraged what we were about to do, but Georgia wasn’t the slightest bit fazed.
“It’s easy to climb the fence. I’ve done it a bunch of times. The water tower beats the pond up the canyon, where I usually swim when I’m desperate, but I can’t swim here during the day because I’ll get caught and prosecuted to the ‘full extent of the law,’” Georgia mocked the sign, “but last summer I came here once a week—always around this time, and nobody ever knew. It’s like my own private pool.”
The thought of Georgia coming to a dark water tower late at night, all alone, nobody the wiser, made the gooseflesh rise on my arms. I just shook my head and followed her out of the Jeep, glad I’d worn my sneakers if I was climbing chain link. She handed me her pool bag and scrambled up the gate and over as if she truly had done it a hundred times. I slung the bag over my shoulder and was up and over without a hitch. She didn’t slow, but climbed the silo ladder with confidence, babbling all the way, filling the darkness with cheerful conversation.
A little door opened inward onto a narrow ledge that circled the inside of the water tower. Georgia slid inside and I followed, leaving the door wide open behind us. Thoughts of being locked in the water tower for days had me propping it with my shoes and testing the knob repeatedly.
“It locks from the outside, silly. And the lock is broken, which is why we have this all to ourselves.” Georgia pulled a big LED lantern out of her striped pool bag that still hung over my shoulder, and turned it on, illuminating the interior of the water tower, making it feel like a cavern, complete with hidden pools.
“Now shut the door so no one sees the light.”
I obeyed immediately.
“Cool, huh?”
It was kind of cool, I had to admit. The light threw our shadows across the wall, and Georgia danced in front of it for a second, making us both laugh.
“You’re gonna fall,” I warned as she broke into a segment of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” choreography, the part everyone knows with the zombie arms and the side toe taps. The ledge was not wide enough for dancing, but Georgia apparently didn’t agree. I yanked my shirt over my head, set it on our towels, and stared down at the black, glass-smooth surface, waiting for further instruction. I wasn’t jumping in first.
Georgia pulled off her T-shirt and tossed her shorts to the side, baring everything but the little that was covered by a baby blue bikini, and I forgot about the water or the fact that there was probably a creature living beneath the surface who liked dark meat. Georgia could save me. I would gladly let Georgia save me if she wore that suit. Her body was long and lean, with surprising curves and swells where a girl should curve and swell. But the best part was the way she seemed unconcerned and unbothered by it all, as if she was absolutely fine with the way her body looked and had no need to strut or pose or seek my approval.
She reached for my hand, and I jerked away, not wanting her to pull me in before I was good and ready.
“We’ll go together. The first jump is always the best. The water feels amazing, you’ll see.” I didn’t yield, and she kept her hand out-stretched, waiting.
“Come on, Moses. I’ll let you lead,” she said, her voice bouncing silkily off the metal walls, the sound more alluring than any singer on any mic in any nightclub across the country. Suddenly, I needed to get in the water or I was going to embarrass myself in my thin shorts. I grabbed her hand and without warning, plunged us both into the inky depths. Georgia’s squeal was muffled as the water covered my head, and I released her hand so I could fight my way to the surface.
We both came up sputtering, me from fear, Georgia from laughter, and it didn’t take me long until I had abandoned the fear and was laughing with her. She spurred me on, splashing and talking and playing in the flickering shadows that danced on the walls. We swam for a long time, unconcerned with the lateness of the hour, unafraid of discovery, strangely at ease with one another.
It wasn’t until I braced my arms on the ledge, my legs kicking out behind me in the water, resting momentarily, that I noticed the light bouncing off the water gave the wall in front of me an iridescent sheen. I reached my hand out to touch it, tracing the watery reflection with my finger, wondering how I could recreate the sheen with paint. Georgia moved to my side, holding onto the ledge, watching my finger as it painted invisible lines.
“When you paint . . . do you know what you’re going to paint before you start . . . or do you just let your heart take over?” she asked softly. It was a good question—a sweet question—and her sweetness unlocked something in me that I kept guarded most of the time. Still, I chose my words carefully, not wanting her to know everything about me, not wanting to ruin the moment with ugly truths, yet not wanting to lie and ruin the memory when the moment had passed.
“There are so many things that I see . . . that I don’t want to see. Images that come into my mind that I would rather not think about. Hallucinations, visions, or maybe just an overly vivid imagination. My brain might be cracked, but it’s not just my brain. The sky is cracked too, and I can sometimes see what’s on the other side.”
I sneaked a look at Georgia, wondering if I’d scared her with that last confession. But she didn’t look scared. She looked intrigued, fascinated. Beautiful. So I kept talking, encouraged.
“When I was younger I was scared a lot. When I would visit Gi, she would try to tell me stories to calm me down. Bible stories. She even told me about a baby named Moses. A baby found in a basket just like me. That’s how I got my name, you know.”
Georgia nodded. She knew. Everybody did.
“Gigi would tell me the stories to fill my head with better things. But it wasn’t until she started showing me artwork that things started to change. She had a book with religious art in it. Someone had donated it to the church and Gi brought it home so that nobody at church would see all those paintings of naked white people and get offended. She colored all the naked parts in with a black Sharpie.”
Georgia laughed, and I felt the air lodge in my throat. Her laugh was throaty and soft, and it made my
heart swell like a balloon in my chest, fuller and fuller until I had to sneak breaths around its increased size.
“So you liked the pictures?” Georgia prodded after I stayed frozen and silent too long.
“Yes.”Georgia laughed again.
“Not the naked people.” I felt ridiculous and actually felt my face get hot. “I liked the beauty. The color. The anguish.”
“The anguish?” Georgia’s voice rose in question.
“It was an anguish that had nothing to do with me. An anguish everyone could see. Not just me. And I wasn’t expected to make it all go away.”
Georgia’s gaze touched on my face like a whisper and drifted away almost immediately, drawn to my tracing fingers.
“Have you ever seen the face of the Pieta?” I wanted her eyes on me again and I got what I wanted.
“What’s the Pieta?” she asked.
“It’s a sculpture by Michelangelo. A sculpture of Mary holding Jesus. Her son. After he died,” I paused, wondering why I was telling her this. I seriously doubted she cared. But I found myself continuing anyway.
“Her face, Mary’s face . . . it’s so beautiful. So peaceful. I don’t like the rest of the sculpture as much. But Mary’s face is exquisite. When I can’t take the stuff in my head, I think about her face. And I fill my mind with other things too. I think about the color and light of a Manet, the details of a Vermeer—Vermeer includes the tiniest things in his paintings, little cracks in the walls, a stain on a collar, a single nail, and there is such beauty in those little things, in the perfect ordinariness of them. I think about those things and I push out the images I can’t control, the things I don’t want to see, but am forced to see . . . all the time.” I stopped talking. I was almost panting. My mouth felt strange, numb, like I’d surpassed my daily word limit, and my lips and tongue were weak from overuse. I didn’t remember the last time I’d talked so much all at once.
“The perfect ordinariness . . .” Georgia breathed, and she lifted her hand and followed the wet path my finger made, as if she, too, could paint. Then she looked at me solemnly.
“I’m a very ordinary girl, Moses. I know that I am. And I always will be. I can’t paint. I don’t know who Vermeer is, or Manet for that matter. But if you think ordinary can be beautiful, that gives me hope. And maybe sometime you’ll think about me when you need an escape from the hurt in your head.”
Her brown eyes looked black in the shadowed light, the same color as the water we were immersed in, and I reached blindly for something to hold onto, something to keep me from falling into them. Georgia’s right hand was still pressed to the wall beside mine, and I found myself tracing her fingers, like a child traces their hand with a crayon, up and down and around until I paused at the base of her thumb. And then I continued on, letting my fingers dance up her arm, feather light, until I reached her shoulder. I traced the fine bones at her collar as my fingers glided to the opposite side and back down her other arm. When I found her fingers, I slid mine in-between, interlocking them tightly. I waited for her to lean in, to press her mouth to mine, to lead, as she was prone to do. But she stayed still, holding my hand beneath the surface of the water, watching me. And I gave in. Anxiously.
Her lips were wet and cool against mine, and I imagine mine felt the same. But the heat inside her mouth welcomed me like a warm embrace, and I sank into the softness with a sigh that would have embarrassed me had she not matched it with one of her own.
Georgia
MOSES AND I WATCHED as my parents conducted a therapy session with a small group of addicts from a rehab center in Richfield, about an hour south of Levan. Every other week, the van would pull up and the young people would pile out—kids ranging from my age to their early twenties—and for two hours, my parents would bring them out to the round corral and let them interact with the horses in a series of activities designed to help the kids make connections to their own lives.
I helped with the sessions with autistic kids and the kids who rode horses for physical rehab, but when the clients were my age or older, my parents didn’t like me involved in the counseling, even if it was just to work with the horses. So I’d wandered over to Kathleen’s, knowing Moses should be done with work, and coaxed him to the backyard with a couple of Cokes and two pieces of lemon meringue pie Kathleen had been happy to part with. She liked me, and I knew it, and she was incredibly helpful in maneuvering Moses when he pretended to not want my company or lemon meringue pie when we both knew darn well he wanted both.
Moses and I couldn’t hear what was being said from where we sat, stretched out on Kathleen’s back lawn, but we had a decent view, and I knew we weren’t close enough to attract the attention of my parents, even though we could still see the class being conducted. Being my normal nosy self, I was trying to make out which kids were still hanging around and which ones had either graduated from the ninety day program or been released. I made a mental catalogue of the ones who looked like they were miserable and the ones who were making progress.
“What do you call them . . . the different colors? Aren’t there different names?” Moses asked suddenly, his eyes trained on the horses milling about the enclosure. He held a paint brush in his hands as if he’d grabbed it out of habit, and he wove it between his fingers like a drummer of a rock band twirls his drumsticks.
“There are so many colors and kinds. I mean, they’re all horses, obviously, but each color combination has a different name.” I pointed to a reddish horse in the corner. “That red one there? Merle? He’s a Sorrel, and Sackett is a Palomino. Dolly is a Bay, and Lucky is a Black.”
“A Black?”
“Yes. He’s solid black,” I answered easily.
“Well, that one’s easy enough.” Moses laughed a little.
“Yep. There are greys, blacks, browns, whites. Reba’s an Appaloosa, the greyish one with spots on her rump. We don’t like to label them by their colors in equine therapy though. And we don’t call the horses by their names. We don’t even tell the clients if the horses are male or female.”
“Why? Not politically correct?” Moses quipped. He laughed again, and I poked at him, liking that he seemed interested, even relaxed. Now if I could only get him inside the corral.
“Because you want the client to identify with the horse. You want the client to put their own labels on the horse. If a horse is exhibiting a certain behavior that you want the client to identify with, you don’t want the client to have any preconceived ideas about who or what that horse is. That horse needs to be whoever the client needs it to be.” I sounded just like my mother, and mentally patted myself on my back for being able to explain something that I’d grown up hearing but never had to put into words until now.
“That doesn’t really make any sense.”
“Okay. For instance, let’s say you have mother issues.”
Moses shot me a look that said, “Don’t go there!” So of course I did.
“Let’s say you are in a therapy session where you are discussing your feelings about your mother. And the horse starts exhibiting certain behaviors that suddenly clarify your behavior . . . or your mother’s behavior. If we’ve already labeled that horse as Gordie and said he’s a boy, you might not be able to identify your mother with that horse. In a therapy session, the only labels the horses get are the ones the client gives them.”
“So you wouldn’t want me to notice that the Palomino horse, the one with the white mane and the tan body, looks like you and that she’s always making a nuisance of herself?”
“Sackett?” I was outraged on Sackett’s behalf more than my own. “Sackett isn’t annoying! And Sackett’s a he, which just proves my point about pre-conceived ideas. If you knew he was a he and not a she, you wouldn’t be able to label him as Georgia and say mean things. Sackett is wise! Whenever things get really deep, you can always count on Sackett being right in the thick of things.” I heard the affront in my voice and I glowered at Moses for a moment before launching my own attack.
&
nbsp; “And Lucky is just like you!” I said.
Moses just stared at me blandly, but I could tell he was enjoying himself. “Because he’s black?”
“No, stupid. Because he’s in love with me, and he tries to pretend every day like he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,” I shot back.
Moses choked, and I punched him hard in the stomach, making him gasp and grab for my hands.
“So you want the clients to not pay any attention to the color of the horse. That’s not even human nature, you know.” Moses pinned my hands over my head and stared down into my flushed face. When he could see I wasn’t going to continue punching he relaxed his hold, but he looked back toward the horses and continued talking.
“Everyone always talks about being color blind. And I get that. I do. But maybe instead of being color blind, we should celebrate color, in all its shades. It kind of bugs me that we’re supposed to ignore our differences like we don’t see them, when seeing them doesn’t have to be a negative.”
I could only stare. I didn’t want to look anywhere but at him. He was so beautiful, and I loved it when he talked to me, when he suddenly became philosophical like this. I loved it so much I didn’t want to say anything. I just wanted to wait to see if he would say more. After several long minutes of silence he looked down at me and found me staring at him.
“I like your skin. I love the color of your eyes. Am I supposed to just ignore that?” he whispered, and my heart galloped to the round corral, cleared the fence, and raced back to me in giddy delight.
“You like my skin?” I breathed, stupefied.
“Yes. I do,” he admitted, and looked back at the horses. It was by far the nicest thing he’d ever said to me. And I just laid there in happy silence.
“If you had to paint me, what colors would you use?” I had to know.
“Brown, white, gold, pink, peach,” he sighed. “I’d have to experiment.”