As my mother scrubs the dishes, I dig myself a grave. It isn’t clean work. My fingers tremble around the shovel, and my knuckles are licked with dull fire. Steam from the boiling water snakes through the mesh screen window, leaving the molten night hotter. I wipe the moisture from my brow; maybe it’s the steam making me sweat. Maybe it’s only nerves.
“What’re you doing with that shovel, Frankie?” my father asks as he emerges from the house, snapping on the porchlight.
I blink the harsh gold out of my eyes. “Planting flowers.”
“In the dark?”
I plant my spade into the soil, red with iron and the blood of buried things. These days, it’s come to know the taste of the earth even better than my tongue knows the vinegar of dissolving pills, of spitting out pretty lies.
“It’s gonna rain tonight,” I explain. “The last time in a while.”
My father heaves a sigh and sinks into his lawn chair. No words pierce the still, grieving night. My fingers curl back around the handle.
Let him believe in the flowers, I pray, shoulders heaving. Tomorrow, when I’m dead, daffodils will bloom from the crack between each rotting rib, and he will have that. At least he will have that.
#
My sheets are unmade, all my clothes strewn like entrails around the room. Sitting cross-legged on my bed, I dust off my biology textbook, the corner of one page frayed from being pressed down night after night. I figure I’ll finish up some homework before the morning comes. I’ll light a candle, put on an old record, and wait. When day breaks, I’ll lay myself down to sleep in a burial pit.
“Dad,” I call down the stairs, “which elements make up all living things?”
The walls of our house are thin enough to hear every flicker of movement, the whisper of shuffled paper. My father, a doctor, answers simply, “Oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus. Occasionally sulfur.”
I write until the graphite in my pencil whittles down to nothing.
#
My mother’s smile is made of starlight. The rock of her chair against the creaking hardwood is as sweet and hypnotic as a lullabye. Watching her, I feel my eyes growing heavy, my cheek sinking deeper into my open palm. Everything goes still after dinner. Our plates have all been cleaned, our leftovers tucked into the back of the pantry.
“We’re out of onions,” my mother says to me, turning the page of her book. “You mind going down to Drug Mart and getting some? I’m making lentil soup tomorrow. I know you like yours with fried onions on top.”
“Sure, Mom.”
We just sit here, silent, as the rocker hums and my eyes drift closed. I’m verging on sleep when her voice comes softly through the dark, “Lord, how you used to sing, Frankie. You weren’t always this quiet, you know. Had a pair of lungs on you.”
My eyes snap open. I wonder if they’re still selling onions a dollar per pound, or if even the bitter roots cost more now, like gas and plane tickets and a good night’s sleep.
“Where’d those lungs go?” Another page turns.
“I am made of chemicals,” I say, “lungs and all. My biology teacher says that all things break down, eventually, until they’re gone. Only pure substances remain.”
“Yes.” My mother presses her fingers up to her smiling lips. Maybe it’s just the candlelight flickering over her, but she seems to tremble. “I guess you’re right.”
#
I offer the undertaker tea when he comes by in the early morning. It is still dark, and everything is washed the faint blue of a smothered man’s skin. The sun peers curiously over the horizon.
“Who will deliver the eulogy?” the undertaker asks, setting his cup down on the coaster.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“Have you written your will?”
“Yes. I’m leaving everything to the cat.”
“What will we tell them?” He gestures to the house, where, through the thin walls, I can hear my father’s breath slurring with sleep.
My painted-on smile rusts my jaw. “Whatever you’d like. Tell them I swallowed the tumor eating my heart. I breathed in the infection that smothers my lungs. Wild dogs scented the blood on my blistered knuckles. A betrayed lover axed me between the eyes. Anything, but the truth. Don’t tell them that grave was dug for me long before I picked up the shovel.”
The undertaker sighs. Mildew crawls up the black leather of his bible, lounging on the table between us. “You can wait another day.”
“I’d hate to bother you again.”
“I have time,” he insists. “Graveyard shift’s never busy.”
Studying me through his glasses, I hope the undertaker doesn’t notice the tears in my eyes that exist only when the moon catches them. Every inch of my anatomy decays, but gently.
“I guess––” I begin. “Well, it’s silly. My mother’s making lentil soup. She needs me to buy onions in the morning.”
The undertaker leans forward, almost eager. “Same time tomorrow?”
“Okay.”
#
After the undertaker leaves and all the drowsy night-animals inch back into their burrows, I pat the rusting dirt over my grave. I have emptied and filled this earth so many times, I’m certain the grass will never find its roots here again.
My mother’s starlight smile is forever fixed in place. Unchanging, and always small. She watches as I toe off my boots in the doorway, heaving the plastic Drug Mart bag onto the counter. I wonder if she knows just how deep the dirt is wedged into the creases of my palms, how I have scrubbed my skin down to the nerve, but no amount of soap and hot water can wash me clean.
“Are you hungry?” she asks.
“Very,” I sigh.
Tomorrow, when I’m dead, the drawer will still be stocked with onions, and she will have that; but for the time being, I am here, in gentle decay, beside her.