Mira Corpora. Jeff Jackson
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mother starts to sob. She buries her face in her hands. Her entire body quakes. Wracking sounds. Uncontrollable. Normally I’d let the emotional storm blow over, but after a few minutes I reach out and rest my hand on her shoulder.
She slaps at me. “You little shit!” she shrieks. “Don’t touch me!” Her eyes are stretched wide and her teeth bared.
She stomps down the stairs. I remain in bed with eyes shut tight, not daring to stir. I map her movements downstairs through the unsteady clomp of her steps. It’s a radio play of stumbling sounds and muttered curses. She rustles from room to room, trying to remember her latest hiding place for the liquor. Rattling cabinets, unsticking drawers, scuffling across the wooden floor. Finally the jingling of a glass bottle and a loud belch.
My mother eventually lurches back up the staircase. The long pauses between steps are punctuated by the sound of swishing liquid. Her shadow briefly eclipses my doorway as she steers herself toward the master bedroom. Then there’s a loud thud, shaking the frame of the house. The familiar sound of her limp body hitting the ground. There are no further noises. She must be out cold.
I ease myself up from the bed. From the closet, I pull out the bag where I’ve packed my clothes, the edges padded with wads of bills that I’ve siphoned off my mother. Through my window, the empty house across the street gives off a haunted glow. The curtains have been stripped from the windows and a bald light bulb burns in a hallway somewhere, dimly illuminating the remaining nothingness.
There are a few things left to pack, including my cassettes of favorite songs taped off the radio. One cassette is still lodged in my walkman. I slip on the earphones and press play. My head floods with the sound of blown-out amps, drilling drums, and the faintest hint of a woozy melody. It gives me a dose of courage.
Still something is missing. I venture into the hallway and spot my mother’s feet sticking out from her bedroom. Her body is sprawled in a heap across the entrance, so I cautiously thread my steps through her arms and legs. It only takes me a second to find her nightgown, which is balled atop the dresser. It’s ruined with the imprint of a hot iron where I got lost in a daydream and let it sizzle into the fabric.
I slip the nightgown over my head. It fits surprisingly well. I inspect myself in the mirror. The unfamiliar reflection is an echo of the ghostly girl who lived across the street. It feels as if I’ve tapped into some of her mysterious spirit.
I grab my bag and ease down the staircase. The creak of each step feels like an earthquake, the recoil of the wood louder than any aftershock. Behind me, my mother murmurs a series of primordial groans. She starts to slur out my name. I bound down the last steps and hurtle out the front door.
I’m running across the lawn. I peer over my shoulder and spot the hunched silhouette of my mother at the upstairs window. I try to imagine the scene from her point of view, looking down at the pale specter in the nightgown streaking through the yard. Instinctively, I head for the woods at the end of the block. Tonight the sanctuary of trees resembles nothing more than an immense and yawning darkness.
I pull up the folds of the nightgown as I run. It feels light and flowing. The wind rushes up and blows against my legs, ballooning the fabric around me. I’m almost there. I can feel myself becoming swallowed by the darkness. I can feel the grass blades licking the soles of my feet. With every step, I’m waiting to disappear.
“Suddenly he was saying under his breath, ‘We have a second home where everything we do is innocent.’”
–Robert Musil
I STALL AT THE EDGE OF THE CLEARING. FROM the shadow of the forest, I survey the scene. Plastic tents are ringed in the middle of a meadow. Along the perimeter, hammocks are strung between trees. The camp is mostly empty. Two girls race through the grass, waving lit sparklers. A couple of boys wrapped in wool blankets sit around a smoldering fire. Thin wisps of smoke rise in irregular puffs. I can’t believe I’m finally here.
I’d heard stories about a tribe of teenagers who set up their own society in a remote part of the woods. A kid claimed to know the way and for fifty bucks scrawled a map on the back of an old Chinese take-out menu. I hitched rides along logging roads, hiked through overgrown paths, climbed steadily higher into the mountains. It’s hard to remember exactly how I got here. And now that I’ve arrived, I’m not sure what to expect. I keep adjusting the pack on my shoulders. I wad the map into a tight ball. As I venture into the meadow, my entire body tingles.
The boys around the campfire greet me with easy smiles. The dogs sleeping in the grass bound up and lick my hands. Soon a few dozen teenagers emerge from the surrounding woods, returning from various chores and games. Everyone welcomes me to Liberia. We all gather firewood and share a dinner of lukewarm canned soup and petrified beef jerky. “You’ll get used to the food,” a girl with a ratty ponytail assures me. I find myself an empty woven hammock and fall asleep cocooned under a plastic garbage bag.
For the first week I’m there, it rains constantly. I help the kids with chores around the camp. The soles of my feet are perpetually soggy. The ghostly skin becomes so soft that I can scrape off ribbons of white flesh with my fingernail. Little mossy growths start to infest the scraggly hairs of my armpits. Even my cassettes begin to bloat with water and breed black spores. It’s the happiest I’ve ever been.
When the weather clears, I start to explore the woods. I tag along with several kids and hike out to an abandoned wild kingdom theme park. It closed decades ago, but nobody bothered to knock down the cement outbuildings, dismantle the cages, or even strip the rusted tilt-a-whirl for parts. We climb the fence and roam the grounds, trying to guess which animals were kept where. The kids say that after dark it’s popular to fuck in the cages. There’s a rumor the place is haunted. Not by ghosts, but gibbons.
They tell me how the park’s foreclosure dragged on so long nobody noticed when the monkeys escaped into the woods. They say the nearby towns have reports about the creatures attacking unsuspecting backpackers. Some kids believe these stories were invented to keep the truckers from bothering us. They say the truckers are worse than any gibbons. They brutally raped two girls who strayed too far from camp. Nobody could stop the bleeding.
Isaac swears the monkeys are out there. He’s spotted their shadows in the dark trees, darting limb to limb. He even saw one up close, crouched on the rusty Ferris wheel and chomping on a jagged leaf. It had a pink nose and inflamed ass. Lydia says they might really be out there, but she’s also been with kids who run through the forest and imitate the apes for a laugh. They scratch their pits and cling to low-hanging branches, whooping and yattering.
That night, I dream that I’m asleep in my hammock and awakened by a small white monkey. He perches on my chest and whispers stories to me, his furry mouth tickling my ear. He recites fantastical tales about his ancestors, the impregnable tree fortresses, the ornate weeklong banquets, the mysterious and coveted silver cup, the red poppy funeral garlands, the succession of betrayals that led to the tribe’s ruin. In my dream, I’m convinced these stories contain the secret of my own destiny. As he unfurls his saga, the creature observes me with its kind golden eyes.
I awake with a start and expect to see the outline of a tiny monkey scampering into the recesses of the forest. But there’s no evidence of any animal. The details of his stories have also evaporated from my memory. In the still of the night, I strain my ears for any sign but there’s no hooting or gibbering, not even the pinched chatter of kids playing at being wild.
The truckers come with guns. They’re drunk. Beefy