Kathleen J. Woods
When You Are Thus Changed
Victorian lovers used Ouija boards as an excuse to touch fingertips and knees. Still naked, Ev and I kneel in bed and crouch over the board between us. It has been snowing for two days, and we haven’t left our room. We fucked and slept, untangling ourselves only to pee and collect champagne and trail mix from our shared duffel bag. At one point or another, one of us found the game in a box beneath the bed. Now, in the early afternoon, we keep the lights off and use the snowfall as our lamp. Ev wiggles the planchette under our fingers.
“We have to focus,” I say, staring at the black space magnified in the planchette’s plastic eye. “Focus. Spirit or ghost, if you are here, we want to talk to you.”
Ev giggles, her two front teeth pressed into her bottom lip, the enamel blotched with fluoride. She gestures to the room, to us. “Shannon. This is so stupid,” she says, and bursts into laughter again.
The bed and breakfast’s owner calls our room “The Celestial Forest.” The four-poster bed is draped in sheer white curtains. The blue quilt and blue sheets and blue throw pillows clash. Someone has painted an immense full moon on the wall to our right, and Ev thinks we are lucky it doesn’t have cartoon eyes or a dopey grin. Along the other walls, silver trees spray blue leaves and white stars over the floor. Shellacked and puffy against the hardwood, they are easy to mistake for beetles.
It is our third anniversary. We planned a weekend for just us, with no friends or jobs or chores, exploring a sleepy suburb that we know nothing about. But now the town is shuttered and our bodies are sore. The game is something to do.
In 1848, Maggie and Katy Fox decided to scare their mother. They were clever little girls. Young joints, they discovered, cracked – so loud, it might be someone knocking. And who would see toes and anklebones under those layers of skirt? The sisters trained their feet to twist and their faces to hold straight.
They yelled for their mother. They’d summoned spirits, they cried! Just listen to the ghost rapping on the floorboards!
Soon after, the girls played the same joke on their neighbors. They delighted at its success.
So harmless, such beginnings.
Ev takes a moment to catch her breath. I click my tongue.
“Sorry about that, ghost. We are very, very serious,” I say. “Very.”
“I want to meet you, ghost friend,” Ev says.
“You should ask the spirit a question, to show your good intentions.”
“Okay,” Ev says, grinning at me. “But it’s going to be a secret between the ghost and me.” She closes her eyes.
I hold my breath. I look at Ev’s narrow ribcage, her small breasts, her collarbones, the left tattooed with three blood orange poppies that trail into the crows and ribbons on her arm. She has chopped the bleach out of her hair, and the sharp kick of her jaw still surprises me. I watch the vertebrae roll in her throat. The planchette hiccups on the board. Ev’s eyes open, and something shrieks outside our room. We snap our heads to the sound. Another long, high note bounds down the hallway.
“It’s that fucking kid again,” I say.
Ev shakes out her hands. “I’m impressed by his stores of energy.”
“The owner could’ve mentioned that her son is Tarzan.”
“I’m not sure what she can do,” Ev says. The boy stomps down the hall, and the walls creak. “He’s snowed in, too.”
“That’s why video games were invented.”
“We should give him this thing. I don’t want it anymore. It somehow manages to be creepy and boring,” Ev says, swinging her legs off bed. “He can sled on it.”
“What did you ask?” I say.
She winks at me over her shoulder. I watch her walk to the bathroom, her flat ass and wide-set thighs, the pirate ship tattooed over her sacrum. Half-closed, the door blocks the toilet, but I can hear her pee.
When we arrived, the owner told us that we were the only guests. “I’m shocked you didn’t cancel,” she said, her eyes stuck on me. “Thrilled, of course. You girls enjoy the parlor, help yourself to the sherry, just be sure not to disturb the birds or try to light a fire. But you both look like nice girls, don’t you. Enjoy your starlight stay!”
She smelled like baby powder and spoiled strawberries. I thanked her while Ev poked our room key into my thumb. I wondered what she could have thought of us. Ev is my first girlfriend after a decade of men, and when I stand next to her in my dresses and mascara, I am always ready to be called an imposter.
Ev flushes, runs the sink, sings a line that I don’t catch. I look down at the planchette, surprised to discover my fingertips still in place, holding the plastic eye steady over the board’s bold NO.
In a daguerreotype, preserved for centuries, Maggie and Katy sit side-by-side. Katy’s hand rests on Maggie’s shoulder. They are teenagers, mediums to the spirit world, and the newspapers are writing about them now. Katy looks directly at the camera. Maggie, her hands folded in her lap, her neck stiff, stares somewhere beyond the frame. With her clear brown eyes and her sleek brown hair, she is becoming beautiful.
They are good, simple girls, the reporters say. They have no idea how their powers work. They have no control.
I wonder, sometimes, about the things I never tried to get away with. So many rules followed for so long.
Once, at nineteen, I cried at an airline check-in, and the clerk waived a fee for my obese luggage. Months later, on a commuter train, I searched in my purse for a ticket I knew I had never purchased. The conductor nodded, and I rode along, my skin buzzing.
Both times I sat, stared out my window, and wondered if that would be the tipping point. If that was the lie that would beckon a clog to the plane’s engine, a hitch to the train’s great iron wheels.
Ev has ventured outside for food, despite the persistent snow and our stockpile of snacks. She set off in her enormous boots and enormous coat with promises of red curry, medium hot. I lie in bed with my laptop on my chest, trying to ignore the yells from the boy upstairs while I research ghosts on the asthmatic Internet. This is where I find Maggie Fox. This is where I learn the language of spirits.
I choose a spell that calls for candles. The blogger swears I will meet friendly spirits, and she has over three thousand followers, so I swing out of bed and begin opening things. Ev never likes these small hotel expeditions, though I once found us a twenty-dollar bill and an unopened box of Oreos. I sweep my hands into the nightstand’s slim, empty drawers. A bookshelf leans against the wall, stacked with jars of dried wildflowers, glass paperweights, and notepads branded with the bed and breakfast’s booking information. In the bathroom, I find three distended bobby pins and a nub of fuchsia lipstick. And, under the sink, matches and two squat, white candles, shiny as false lilies.
I sit cross-legged on the floor and light the candle without wasting a match. On two pieces of paper, I sketch two shoddy pentagrams, two possible answers. YES sits to the right of the candle, NO to the left. The website’s instructions call for salt, so, still unwashed and giddy, I swipe my fingers under my breasts and rub them over the flame.
“Spirit, are you with me right now?” I ask.
The flame bobs in place.
“Is someone here with me, in this room?”
The flame flickers toward YES. Wax pools around the wick, odorless and clear.
“Are you the spirit of a woman?”
A gust blows the candle out. Ev has opened our door. She stands for a moment, cradling a paper bag, the visible slice of her cheeks bright red.
“What the hell are you doing?” she says, setting the bag on the floor beside me.
I shrug and point at the candle. “Making friends.”
Ev sighs. “My poor little medium.” Under her jacket, she wears a gray T-shirt, black jeans. I can’t remember watching her get dressed. I can’t remember how long she’s been gone. She kisses my head and sits down beside me, brushing my papers behind her back. We have no plates or bowls, only one plastic fork, and far too much rice. My coconut milk has cooled around the edges, but the center is hot and rich. Ev rubs my bare knee. She always lets her noodles slap sauce all over her chin. I spoon discs of carrot into my mouth and smile.
Ev and I met at a restaurant. I was a waitress, Ev a line cook. She slipped me free french fries and avocado slices.
One day, another waitress came to work crying. She’d backed over her dog in her driveway. He had been a small dog, a Shih Tzu, and she hadn’t seen him escape from the yard. She’d run the tires over the dog’s belly, his bottom legs. He’d yelped once, she said. She spent most of that shift in the back room, emptying a sleeve of paper towels against her face.
After Ev clocked out, she stayed for nearly an hour, holding the girl’s hand. She had a nice way of rounding her shoulders. I copied her number from the employee bulletin board and invited her for a drink.
At sixteen, Maggie tried to quit performing her ghosts. For all of twelve days, she refused. But her family needed her. They had attracted their largest crowd yet: four hundred people. This was their chance for fame, for wealth. Mourners clamored for pretty Maggie. They were in so much pain, and she could help. They never had to know.
I imagine standing on the auditorium stage. I don’t know how stage lights worked back then, but I think I must be squinting. There are too many faces to tell apart. Show them that you’re startled, sweetheart. When they whistle, give them a smile. Let them believe they’ve won you over. That’s how you earn their trust.
Maybe the private séances were different—the intimate parlors, the condensed grief, the hands lifted in a ring. But then I can feel the pit of another stranger’s palm, and I know that work wasn’t different at all.
Ev lounges in the jetted tub, clutching a bottle of champagne between her knees. The cork bobs by her shoulder. She splashes at the milky strip of bubbles floating under the faucet. I smell honeysuckle.
“I tried to put your bubbles in here, but they didn’t really work.”
“That’s okay,” I say, taking a wide step over the tub’s marble edge. The water is hotter than I like, and I march in place. Something thuds above our heads. “That kid was screaming again, while you were out.”
“Sorry I missed it,” Ev raises the bottle in a toast. “To our future.”
I lower into the water. I grit my teeth against the heat and hiss. Ev bats the undersides of my breasts.
“These look nice,” she says.
“They get in the way when I clip my toenails,” I say. Ev brings the bottle to my lips and tips it. I take three gulps then sputter. “Hey, okay.”
I lean back against the tub. The heat makes my forehead hollow. Ev switches on the jets, and air punches my kidneys. White bubbles break the surface of the water. They climb around my back, up to my chin, and I start to laugh. Ev cackles. Foam slops over the edges of the tub. She fumbles over the controls but only turns the jets up stronger. She’s laughing too hard to curse. I jump out of the tub and throw towels onto the floor. Bubbles dangle from my armpits, my nipples, my elbows. When the jets finally stop, the foam billows through the bathroom doorway into our bedroom. I scoop handfuls back into the tub, but perfume clogs my mouth and nostrils, and I lean against the sink, laughing and retching. Ev hoots, howls. The mountain of bubbles shakes with her as she gasps for air, a tumorous cocoon swelling over each inch of her skin, swallowing everything but her wide, red mouth.
No one likes other people’s kids. It’s different when they’re yours. That’s what everyone tells me. My mother, my coworkers, the old man on the bus. You can’t even imagine how much you will love them. You won’t know what hit you.
Maggie fell in love with Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, an arctic explorer and poet. A devout Catholic, he adored her and despised spiritualism, the godless scam. He bought Maggie a ring, a diamond set in black enamel. But, he refused to marry her until she stopped her séances and returned to school. “When you are thus changed, Maggie,” he wrote, “I shall be proud to make you my wife.”
When I wake up the next morning, Ev is already standing at the foot of the bed, blurred by the curtains. I listen to the zip of her coat.
“You’re going out again?”
“We need some more stuff.”
I drop back against my pillow and slap at my eyebrows. I remember my nakedness, the stick of my thighs. “Has it stopped snowing?”
“Still going.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s still early, love. You should keep sleeping.” I feel Ev pull my feet from the bedding and kiss my ankles. “I’ll bring back coffee.”
She shuts the door quietly. I rub my face against my pillow. Through a gap in the curtains, I can see that the edges of the room are sharp and bright. The painted leaves look like broken glass. I pull my toes back under the bedding, but I cannot manage to seal warmth in again. I doze, a tight fist in the center of the bed, dreaming of sitting with Ev under a tree. We talk for a long time.
Ev’s ovaries are empty. Insufficient, she says. That’s the medical term, the diagnosis in her files. She stopped menstruating at twenty-three, a year before we met. There’s no reason for it. Just bad luck and buried genes. I have learned not to complain about my period, which is light and regular. Reliable. Ev says I shouldn’t worry about it, never lets it stop her fingers or tongue. The blood is a good thing. A sign that my body is operating just as it should. A sign that everything is going just fine.
“I saw that you loved me, but not enough,” Elisha wrote. “Dear child, it was not in your nature. You would give me everything when near me, but forget me when away.”
I wake with a fading sense of relief. I am not sure what I have said out loud and what I have dreamt. There is running again, rattling in the walls. I hear the little boy laughing. The room has grown very cold, and Ev hasn’t returned. I push the curtains back from the windows and watch the snow fall. I have not spent so much time alone, without a to-do list, in a long time.
Someone has slipped a palm-sized card under the door. A witch’s hat winks on the cover. The owner’s handwriting is small and square as baby teeth. Missed you both at breakfast again, hope your stay is lovely! Coffee in the dining room. Didn’t want to disturb anything. Her smiley face is a rectangle. I imagine the owner frowning over plates of cantaloupe and toast, scrubbing wasted jam out of porcelain ramekins. But the little ink face finishes her note like a question mark. What could I catch you girls doing? I let the card drop to the floor.
I pull the Ouija board from under the bed and set it below the painted moon. I need lavender and sandalwood incense or a sprig of fresh mint. We left our takeout containers strewn over the floor, oily and splattered with rice. I find two cracked peppermints at the bottom of the paper bag. I sit and unwrap them, arranging the cellophane into bewildered bowls at the top of the board.
The planchette does not move. I text Ev to retrieve incense. It is nearly noon. I slip a chunk of mint into my mouth and use the heel of my phone to crush the rest. The moon’s craters look larger from below, like tunnels. I set my hands on the planchette and listen to the click of sugar against my teeth.
Maggie renounced the ghosts. She married Elisha in secret. She wrote, “I trust that by my kindness and denial of many pleasures, I can atone for my misery and ere long look upon myself as a free, happy girl.”
Hardly a year later, Elisha died abroad.
Ev brings coffee and incense wrapped in wax paper. She doesn’t take off her boots. She tells me to get dressed and come play outside. It is hardly storming now, and the boy from upstairs has started a snowball fight. He hit her square in the back, and she almost spilled my coffee in the snow. The cup is cold anyway. She leaves the door open as she speaks, and gusts of cold bite my inner thighs. Ev leans back into the main hallway and calls, “Coming!” She winks at me as her body drags her away. “Please come play. You need it.” The door slams after her.
When I stand, my knees crack. I dump dried flowers out of their jar and tilt two sticks of incense against the glass lip. I resume my seat carefully, blowing the flames down to hungry embers.
I close my eyes. I can almost hear Ev outside, shouting, laughing her vaulting, open laugh. She’ll get a good shot in a few times, then let the boy win. I imagine a sharp snowball in my palms, my shoulder winding back and back, my arm a lever. I imagine hitting the boy in that soft place between nostril and lip. The planchette swings across the board.
I often dream about pregnancy. I scoop my dream hands over my dream belly, and I feel full and content. But, somewhere in the dream, I remember the glasses of wine I have drunk, the bike I am riding, the trip I have planned. My blouses retract and swell, flatten and strain. I cannot keep track of this dream fetus.
Awake, I tell Ev about these dreams. I edit and omit. I say, “I think being pregnant might be fine.”
Sometimes, the dreams end in tentacles suctioning my womb, a beak chipping at my cervix, sheets soaked in ink.
Another card under the door. Winter wonderland! I hope it’s adding to the romance. Let me know how long you’ll need (or want!) to stay here.
Ev says the room smells awful. Why haven’t I cleaned up the takeout? My throat bursts with incense. Ev closes the bathroom door and runs the shower. I listen to her singing, sounds without lyrics, as I stack the takeout containers into each other and wrap them in the paper bag. I open a window and toss the bag outside. The storm has surged back, and the snow is climbing quickly, just a foot below the windowsill. The sky hangs furry and gray.
Snow puffs through the window. I watch the flakes swirl between my ribs and land in the trumpet of hair below my navel. Chill seeps into my belly.
I join Ev in the bathroom. She looks ridiculous standing in that huge tub, her legs poles holding up a sapling. She watches me step into the tub with pursed lips, so delicate on her slate jaw. The bathroom lights flicker, surge back. I kneel to suck the water caught between her thighs.
It will be years before we can afford it, Ev says. Probably two, maybe three. We could get a puppy now, for practice. It’s good for a child to grow up with a dog.
Maggie began to drink. The spirits would not stay away.
Ev has gone away and come back again, gone away and come back. She molts slush in the doorway, aligns bags on the floor. Our cell phone batteries beep and die. We need wine, she says. Bread. A wind-up lantern. A camping stove. This spell calls for a wand, but Ev sighs through her nostrils and turns away.
After nearly forty years of speaking for ghosts, Maggie published a confession.
“I have thought of it day and night. I loathe the thing I have been…. I was too honest to remain a ‘medium.’ I have seen so much miserable deception! Every morning of my life I have it before me. When I wake up I brood over it…. I want to see the day when it is entirely done away with.”
The snow keeps falling. It packs against the lowest windowpanes. The power has gone out, and the boy upstairs is sobbing. Down here, the snow projects a glow over my ceiling. I light my candles and place them at the top corners of the board. The flames warp and stretch across the craters and I see that Ev was wrong. The moon is grinning after all.
Foggy and poor, Maggie recanted her confession after just a year. She tried to swallow the secret back down her throat. The spirits were real, she swore. How could she deny them when they rapped against her skull?
The owner’s handwriting is different now, looser, riddled with cavities. There are no extra blankets. Do not remove the quilt from the birdcage. The canaries will freeze.
The card reeks of sherry. I touch it to my tongue.
Goodbye, the board sings. Again and again. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
Ev has stopped adding bags to the line. They stretch cross the room, each upright and unmarked. When was the last? In the candlelight, my fingers are the color of plums. I stand, clawing the air to release my knuckles. On the mattress, in the mass of bedding, I spot Ev’s brow. She is squeezing her eyes shut.
The ceiling grows dimmer. I hear Ev’s tight breaths. I take my tools to the bathroom, one by one.
I imagine Maggie in bed at night, levitating with gin, limbs outstretched, calling for Elisha’s spirit. Did she listen for his voice in the vibrations between her bones? Could she hear the difference between her words and his?
I kneel in the tub and spread the board over its ledge. The room is dark, save for the orange pulse of the candles. The plastic eye skates across the board’s alphabet. Something shakes the bathroom door, a sort of coughing. I push away the sound and speak each word as it comes.
Maggie wrote, “Like most perplexing things when made clear, it is astonishing how easily it is done.”
It was her trick and then it wasn’t.
When I leave the bathroom, the bed is empty, but Ev’s boots sit on the floor. I fumble for a cardigan and tug it down my thighs. Barefoot, I walk out into the main hallway. The carpet is wet, and the walls tilt into shadows.
Snow presses the parlor’s bay window, rising nearly to the roof. Someone has lit an imitation log in the fireplace, but it is hushing now. I see the back of Ev’s dark hair, her gray T-shirt, her jeans. She stands in front of an immense wrought-iron birdcage, wiggling her fingers at the canaries. As I step up behind her, they twitch and chatter.
I put my hand on the small of Ev’s back. She doesn’t look at me, but I can tell that her eyes are bloodshot. She speaks in a whisper.
“How are we going to get home?”
The birds fall quiet. The walls, too, are silent, and the ceiling, and the floors. I gaze past Ev’s face to the window. She asks again, louder this time, and as I watch the first crack bloom inside the glass, I almost know.