The Half-Life of Susan Marie Rabbitt

Frozen sand crunched under my yellow rain boots, gnawing like teeth on stale bread. The neon rubber bickered with snow slumbering in heaps, heavy on my eyes, aching. The sky burned in my lungs, crisp winter afternoon mingling with pine. It blinded me as it blended into the lake. Geese bent into letters across the coastline, mournful honks rippling. Stragglers.

Today is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday.

Alice stomped, splintering the frozen reservoirs pinned into pockets of sand. Snap, SNAP, snapped bones. I shuddered at the reverb, pressed open palms to my ears, tendons like untuned piano strings. Thrumming.

Alice shouted something I could not hear, beckoning me to race her, Whitt beside her, calling my name. Souris. Souris. He vibrated with giggles and grins, joking with Alice as she sauntered farther away from me.

Farther, farther, farther. Where only the sun can reach.

I stayed put, tracing Alice’s path, another dark goose in the gray light. I am always the watcher. The stationary center of a watch, dizzy as the hands revolve around me. Alice was the second hand, catapulting through living. Whitt was the hour hand. The minute hand was mine but I could not muster the courage to grasp it, firmly shake its fingers, a disorienting revolving door. What time did we read? We were never complete.

Alice trilled with the thrill of speed like a warbler’s call, bare feet marking the sand like slipstick-stained kisses, arms fluttering. Butterfly wings. Cold air chafed her skin goosebumps, aching for the coast she abandoned in the pickup. Her pale purple feet, dusty like eyeshadow, craved her shoes and her peeled-off socks. Her leather sketchbook convulsed with her footfalls in her overall pocket. An essential.

Today is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday. I was half their life behind them and they did not recall being eight.

Their sounds finally pealed distantly, citrus rind peeled away, pulp wedged under my fingernails. I uncovered my ears. Wind. Heart pounding. Honk, honkhonkhonkhonk.

Ice exhaling.

I returned to collecting stones, my raincoat pockets soaked with them, sieving through the sand like a sandpiper, sauntering with wild hands. Resting on a flaking log, I lined them up in front of me, divided by shape. Smooth to irregular. Horizontally, smallest to largest. Vertically, light to dark. I chewed on my sleeve, salty ribbed fabric darkening with my saliva, as I grazed the array of stones, fingertips tingling. Over and over. 

Again, again. Today is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday.

The dappled reflection of the sun on the ice ricocheted onto my collection, molten sunflower petals. The stones spoke differently now than the ones I pilfered in July, hollower when they chimed together in my pocket, paler, the film of gray crowding the sky descended onto the beach. In summer, the stones were iridescent, the plumage of a Grackle. I crashed with them into the clear tide, my own moon, courting the shallow end, lacking buoyancy. But it is December now, and Whitt cautioned me of the water’s edge. Ice and gravity and the cold schemed, unforgiving siblings.

Still, they allured me.

Today is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday. Their cake boasted sixteen candles, our mother’s eldest and my father’s dismay, my lovely curiosities. Soon they would leave me and molt into tangible creatures.

Whitt and Alice raced, starting at a boulder. I was their finish line. Whitt’s long muscular legs panted, his auburn waves burning against the soot sky. He cackled with triumph as he barreled past me first. 

But you did not win, I wanted to contradict.

“That’s not fair!” Alice whined. “I should have had a head start. You’ve had so much more practice than me.”

But neither of you won. You would have to pass through me. Cleave me in half.

Whitt shrugged, swaggering backward to face her. “Join track with me if you want practice.” A smug smile curled on his lips.

“You know I don’t have time! I…”

Fading. Their conversation drowned in the frozen lake. Thin threads of light flouted the gray clouds, reflecting in the mirrored surface of the ice. The sun, the sun, the sun. I stroked a stone in my palm, two-toned, red and black.

“Hey.” I jolted. Alice had perched beside me without my noticing. “I think I should use that canvas you gave me to paint the beach.” She nudged me with her elbow. “It’s even prettier than last year!” I smiled, eyes squinting, when she tapped my nose, the same way as always, in place of my name. Sou-ris. Sou-ris. Her finger danced from my face to vigorously flipping the pages of her sketchbook to a blank one, defacing it with charcoal scribbles, wringing out a scene. Rough, angular. Then flawless.

Today is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday. The beach breathed, more alive than me, serene and callous and beautiful. I gifted Alice a canvas taller than me. She would paint it with this afternoon scene, my acrylic figure inconsequent in the corner.

I became bored of watching her sketch, watchingwatchingwatching. I raced to the fringes of the ice, crouched down, and crumbled the coast like broken glass with my fingertips. Lacerating. I had no gloves.

Whitt photographed me when he thought I was not looking. The click captured my attention. Later he would have the film developed and leave the photograph in an envelope between pages of my bird-watching guide. Watchingwatchingwatching. I was camouflaged in the portrait, feathery blonde hair lost in the snow. A transparent girl in a neon coat.

He pivoted to photograph Alice sketching, absorbed in her charcoal-darkened fingers, a streak on her cheek stark against the monotone. She shivered, a child December who felt a kinship with August, reveling in her heat and vibrancy. Her exposed skin quivered in the daggered embrace of winter, arms lined with shrapnel-like ice.

“Come on,” Whitt huffed, replacing his camera in his backpack, and pulling her by the hand. “Be reasonable.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s not that cold.” Crossed her arms, adding, quietly, “Chris is probably home.” Bit her lip.

They glanced at each other. At me. My father. He scribbled his face all over mine, my crooked lips and clear eyes. I stared at myself in the rubber of my boots, my defaced face dissected between the two feet. Searching for all my organs that could be sorted.

I studied Whitt’s lips. Fuller than mine. He wet them nervously, tongue flitting like a lost feather. “Well, he’ll be angrier if we miss dinner.” He exhaled, turning to me. “Why don’t you come with us, Souris?” I shook my head, facing the ice again. “Fine,” he huffed. “I’ll be back for you in a minute.”

They climbed up the pined slope to the pickup and out of view.

Today is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday. I studied my reflection on the ice, my cheek leaking with melted snow. Snowflakes encased my fingers, lace patterned gloves. I studied them as they dissolved, numbing droplets racing down my arm. Which will win? There seemed to be no clear victory.

I removed my treasured rain jacket and the boots that hung loosely on my feet, shed my socks, and folded them neatly. My bare feet burned like cold skin submerged in a hot bath, feverish and frozen. Warmth’s wrath, existing precariously as Alice did.

Skirting the edge of the lake, I entertained venturing further. Forbidden territory. I skated out a little, ice creaking like floorboards in the night, a lonely sound whose only companion was the wind. And the sounds of me, my breaths, squeaking muscles, and feet skidding feet. Singular in this expanse of emptiness. Void. Extraordinary. The ice cradled me the way waves refuse to.

I was a May baby but Winter loved me.

I pirouetted, toes screaming, ice breathing with me as the vast emptiness funneled in on me. Like dancing in my socks in the living room. Whitt always snapped photos of my routines, concealing them for me sealed in envelopes, protecting me with his spit, a painless blood oath. He and Alice were only half mine, fathered by a shadow. Did Whitt bask in that cool silhouette each time he braided my hair? Entwining my youth into his.

My attention sharpened as a buzzing crescendoed above me. An airplane. I bounced with excitement, my toothy grin infecting my body, a seagull swooping for crumbs. I darted after the morsels of sound, soaring on the ice. Slipping into levitation, the same state of matter as a wandering umbrella and a dandelion seed. The ruddy face of the plane’s wings peeked through the cloud curtain.

The ice ruptured. Tore like stitches, jagged, submerging me to my waist. 

SEETHING. Seething seeds, sprouts that broke my skin like the earth. 

I gasped, paralyzed. My nails pet the ice, chipping away like rotten teeth. The lake floor squelched under my feet, my jeans slurping the lake. Heart oscillating. Do seagulls crash and drown? Do they freeze and forget their buoyancy? 

I finally took hold of a sturdy patch of ice and scrambled out of the water, crawling backward away from the glacial canyon. I peeled off my jeans, my thighs and calves blushing at the betrayal like blood and the rust on the pickup. My toenails blued the way the sky should have been, no sensation in my feet. 

I collapsed, a deflated birthday balloon, breaths labored. Stationary in time like the lake that solidified on the shore. Infinite like Alice’s footprints fearless with no waves. I close my eyes to the gray sky. The wind screams and I become the water, geese screaming above me. Blurred away. It is just the same as flying in my dreams. 

Arms gathered me like dried weeds, a wild flower’s corpse. 

Today is the same as every Alice and Whitt birthday. My limbs tangled into the December bouquet I always accumulated at the end of our escapades.

Whitt heaved me onto the beach, driftwood. I blinked, disoriented. His face pounded, taut. “Susan Marie, what the hell?!” No half-anger for his half-wet half-sister. No half-concern. Everything bulged full, vaster than the number of grains of sand on the beach. “Are you okay?” he panted.

I nodded. He rubbed my legs dry with my coat, sand encrusting my skin like lichens grasping onto tree limbs. Invading sandpaper on wooden planks. Crunchcrunchcrunching. I squirmed away, wincing as I pulled my legs to my chest. “What’s wrong?” 

A gash smarted on the back of my left knee. Skin mangled by ice, sand mingled with blood. I maneuvered my leg to show him the wound, which he delicately traced fingers returning red. He wiped my blood on his corduroy pants. Even my blood does not understand vividness. Cardinal feathers plucked into veins of brown. He tied one of my socks around my knee. “We’ll clean you up when we get home.”

My teeth chattered, accelerating into nervous laughter, unbridled as the cracked ice. He groaned, “Oh my god,” throwing up his hands, surrendering to my vexing nature. Weeds are notorious for their persistence. “I’m never taking you to the beach again.” 

He haphazardly stuffed my things into his elderly backpack, threadbare and graying, without offering my boots back, aware that I would refuse, sand burrowed between my toes. He paused, glancing over me, then approaching and gently clasping a chunk of my hair in his fist. One of my braids had frayed like a raw hem without my notice, missing elastic loose stitches. He rummaged through his backpack, muttering, “I should have another…” before his arm returned from the void of his bag, an extra elastic clenched in his palm. His fingers sang through my locks, unraveling my chest, a hot bath, heavy and enveloping. I stroked the silky bumps, mismatched from the other braid, plain instead of Dutch. Half. Half. “I’ll do it properly when we get home,” he promised, standing and extending a hand to me. “Here, I’ll help you up.”

I hobbled to my feet, wincing at my stinging leg, steadying on his forearm. “Now, come on,” he sighed, crouching down and waving me close. “I’ll give you a piggyback to the pickup.” I mounted, sucking on the end of the old braid like the spiral lollipop I begged for at the fair every fall.

Today is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday. I rode on Whitt’s back, a horse trotting through the wildness, pines painting my nostrils with their sweetness.

This year I was his rounded wound, the world Atlas bore. Silence governed us, his hand shaking as he pushed his bangs away from his golden eyes, a buzzing cicada wing. I gripped him tighter than muscle leeching onto bone. It did not occur to me that fear smothered the words from him. 

We arrived at the truck, Alice still barefoot and coatless. I smelled her joint before I saw her, musky smoke curling from her lips. I breathed into my sleeve. She smoked at the picnic table near where Whitt parked, glaring at the bright and absent sun, grinning broadly when I waved to her. I want to be her. She reveled untamed and lost. She is whole. Whole to a brother and mother, no fragments sunk in blood.

“Alice, put that out,” Whitt grunted as I slid off his back. She flicked it on the ground scowling and bent to pour sand over it. Buried. She then skipped into the truck, passenger side, scooting over to make room for me. I hobbled in behind her.

Her eyebrows furrowed when she noticed the bloody sock. “What happened? Are you okay?” She smoothed my hair. 

I did not respond, gazing out the frosted window, fingering the glass. I want to go back. To the place that sees me whole. The way the stars watch us above, silently. 

Whitt banged the driver-side door behind him, punctuating his sentence. “Idiot.” Idiot idiot idiot. “Fucking swam in the lake.” The ignition lit.

Alice chortled, leaning around me to press my nose, weed enveloping me. Sou-ris. “Sounds exciting,” she chuckled. I smiled with my teeth over my bottom lip.

Whitt backed the truck out onto the road, silently fuming. “Lighten up, Whittier.” She leaned into him and tousled his hair. “Just a bit of water.” Just a bit of water. Just a bit.

He slammed the brakes. “It’s not funny!” he shouted. Loud, ears ringing. Not funny, not funny.

I turned my eyes to the corroding metal bed of the truck. It heard the pound of my heartbeat through my bare feet. Buzzing. Buzzing. It listened to the storm in our bodies.

Whitt seethed. “You can’t be careless.” Idiot, idiot, idiot. My throat swelled with shame. “You prance around coatless, she’s going to copy you.” He is not speaking to me. His eyes melted down his face, cheeks chapped red. “She could have drowned.”

My voice quavered, barely audible. “Sorry.” He shook his head. Did not accept it. The word meaningless from the wrong mouth.

We suspended in silence, Whitt’s breaths the loudest. Inhale, exhale, INHALE, EXHALE. Finally, “No, I’m sorry.” He wiped his face with his shirt, a reset record.

Play it again. From the beginning. Maybe the story will speak differently. Maybe his sorrow will not sound the same.

Today is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday. Except it was not. Whitt drove legally for the first time, the road whirring past us, droning. For once he did not play the radio. For once Alice fidgeted without words.

I rested my head in Alice’s lap, sucking on the end of my braid, drifting into dreams, waking in a field of amber grass. Golden sun, speckled lake in the summer. My reflection was not my own, my hair dark and my eyes warm. Alice’s face. I blinked and the water froze, fading me back into myself. The grass animated, worms carving cursive patterns into the snow. They all spelled out half. Half. Half. HALF. 

I cupped my hand around one, allowed it to taste my flesh, a preview of my death, and demanded to know how many curies of radioactivity were calcified in my bones. What is my half-life? How long would I live inside you?

Would you pick me clean or leave me to rot? Decay is the worm’s love language after all.

Alice called out to me in the distance before I got an answer. Souris. We hit a bump and my eyes jolted open. Half-awake.

“Souris, wake up. We’re almost home.”

Today is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday. I rode Alice’s back into our home and I found a new photograph taped to my bedroom door. In it, I am at the playground, oozing up an oak like sap. In motion, a blur. Half in the frame. Half out.