Once there was a big strong man. He got a girl pregnant and then he left and that’s normal. The girl had the baby, a big strong boy, and when it was born it hurt her and that’s normal too. But by and by the baby hurt other people. The baby was so strong, and always hurting people, and that was a problem.

It starts with a single shoe on the side of the highway. Tall trees behind the guardrail and some evocative litter. Now: zoom out to the empty road, sky that kind of cloudy that hurts your eyes. Then just when people wanna crank the volume—check if there’s any sound, a single car whooshes past, roars down the road, fades to a whine. Doppler effect. In the car’s wake, a hot chips bag stirs and settles. Dead silence. Single shoe still in frame; maybe it’s a baby shoe.

That’s how my movie opens. That’s what I play in my head while I fall asleep, on a loop that smooshes into my dreams.

…

When my two-year-old became obsessed with his shadow, his obsession took the shape of fear, a frantic fruitless running away. I was dismayed but not surprised; these things, they run in the blood. After many tears, he came to a place of peace, followed by transfixion. We walked down the sidewalk and he waved, Hello Tito shadow, he'd say. Tito is what he called himself. 

Our daily walk to the playground tripled in length because, depending on the angle of the sun, following the shadow meant walking into lawns and neighbors' driveways, crossing the street with eyes glued to asphalt. As the days cooled and shortened, I planned ahead, made sure we walked at midday, hoped he didn't notice his diminutive ghost. I found myself praying for clouds, for rain, for night. 

Doesn't it worry you? I said to my husband while I fixed my hair, trying to keep my voice light.

…

What wakes us? A simple thirst. 

Hurrying through the blacknight, we catch sight of each other, the flash of baby teeth in headlights and streetlights, desire in the smacking of lips. And the alligators, the green glint of their eyes, wet pebbled skin, we see them in the culverts and manmade lakes and finally in the river by which they made their way to our city—by which we tracked them. They pay us no mind, not at first. The alligators came from the east, flowing like runoff down the path of least resistance, gathering trash as they came. 

…

Step 1. 

One day, recognize your malformed loneliness like a tumor in your throat. Standing in the scabby patch of earth behind your home, sip coffee, and determine to resist via cultivation. Via flowering shrubs, water flowing louder than the pump that moves it, soil knitted to food that will nourish your body if only you remember to eat. Feel her growing in your throat. You hear her: fists beating a tattoo that confuses itself with your pulse, a tickle you can’t help but clear. Cover your mouth with the handkerchief from your sister’s wedding. Consider your options, strengthen your resolve.

…

Phoebe was practicing being blind. She was nine years old and alone in her hotel room. It was supposed to be fun, but it wasn’t. There was no under-the-bed in which to hide, in case of a knife-wielding intruder. The closet, too obvious. She squeezed her eyes closed and reached her arms in front of her, sweeping them to either side. If the lights blinked off, she’d remember this slope of chair-ridge, the whisper of the bedspread against her thigh. Here was the sharp edge of the wall where the room narrowed to what her mom would call a foyer, her dad a hall.

She wished her brother were there so he could tell her they wouldn’t be invaded. Mason couldn’t come with her and their dad to New York because of work, he said. Or maybe because of his friends with dark makeup and chains hanging from their pockets. Because of the thin fairy scratches of poetry he wrote for a girl named Emmy. Maybe he hadn’t come because he had better places to be.

…

In Vico there’s one bar and a herd of stray dogs that everybody knows. The old men play chess in the square and feed the dogs. The kids, they mostly grow up to take jobs with computers in towns that have more than one bar. On a hilltop there’s a restaurant that shares my name but is no relation; it’s open only in the summer.

From our apartment, you can jog twenty minutes past a field with two donkeys — perhaps brothers, perhaps mother and son — and beyond the field you reach a view of the sea, but you cannot reach the water. By the sea, beyond a stretch of swaying grass that might be wheat and is just as gold, there’s a tower that town kids sneak to in the evening. Drunk on salt and double dares, they seek edges.

One day, my brothers buy a jug of wine that is pink in a way that looks accidental.

We are not trying to drink this whole jug of wine, one of them says.

But we aren’t not trying to drink this whole jug of wine, says the other, and they fill each other’s glasses.

…

The house sat alone in a patch of swamp in a world her husband called Louisiana. When her son finally came to her there it wasn’t as she had expected. On the screened porch that looked out over the water, frogs called like poorly suited sirens under the midnight moon, and she crouched beside the camp bed like something hunted. A profound loosening, and the baby slid into her waiting hands. She leaned against the bed and clutched him to her, lay him, wet and wriggling, across her swollen middle. She watched, mesmerized, as he dragged himself toward her breasts like a fish out of water. She gathered him up and brought him to rest on her shoulder.

I know just how you feel, she told him.

Her husband clamped and cut the cord, snatched the baby up and held him high, whooping and hollering like he did when she led him to a spot of ocean where the shrimp exploded from the sea beds like confetti. The baby’s legs kicked, one two, they curled like parentheses. He swallowed a lungful of air like it was the most natural thing in the world.

(For the Record)
(On Tape)

It goes like this: 

It’s 2005 at the Summer Drive-in theater, and Emmy’s outside by herself. She arranges the staging area outside the lobby. It’s dark but she sees by the streetlights that dot the parking lot and by the glow through the lobby windows. The grimy white movie screens loom in a loose arc around—blind and distant eyes. She plugs a floodlight into the extension cord that trails through the lobby door, and a yellow beam pours over a card table. It illuminates a cookie sheet with a dark patina and a giant wine glass that catches the light and throws it back. There’s a bucket of baseballs on the sidewalk and a lumpy plastic bag beside it. Emmy walks around and grazes each of these things with the tips of her fingers and says to herself, This is how Ramona touches her hair before she leaves for a date, a charm to hold everything in place. Emmy’s stomach tightens in excitement. Behind Emmy’s set, a bare bulb flickers over the door to the women’s restroom and Emmy reaches up to unscrew it. She examines the shadows on the table and adjusts the angle of the floodlight. Perfect.

…

I. Things That Can Sting

My older brother Mason gets home tomorrow. That’s what this is all about. But it’s not about him, it’s about me and my world and him coming back to it. My name is Phoebe and I am twenty years old. But maybe that much you knew. Truly important things to know about me are these: first, I love the taste of words like phlebotomy, sphygmomanometer, and promontory. I roll them like marbles in my mouth then spit them out and line them up neatly. Second, I live close to my body. I live in the pores of my skin — they echo everything I hear, regular, scooped-out miniature caves. Last night I noticed these whispy white hairs down the sides of my boobs and I didn’t like them so I plucked them one by one, twisting to see in the mirror of my compact, watching how I changed shape, making room for echoes — it took me most of the night so I haven’t slept too much.

…

The ferry chugged away from the coast of San Juan, and the captain’s voice came over the PA system: they would arrive in forty-five minutes. Leslie and Alec were on their way to the island of Vieques.

Alec scooted back on the slick plastic chair, trying to ease the ache in his lower back. He edged away from Leslie and shrugged his shoulder. The ferry smelled faintly of gas. The chairs were bolted in a series of long blue rows that reminded Alec of his middle school cafeteria. Leslie clutched his arm, moaning complaints about her nausea. This was the moment Alec knew for sure: he did not love her.

…