Dark
Matters
6. Sculptor

by Donna Lamb

 
I got dressed in the same clothes I’d been wearing. My pants fit differently. My waist was pinched in by the girdle, and I had nothing between my legs—plus the silkiness of the stockings I was wearing all added up to strangeness. A thrilling strangeness in a very odd way.

My shirt didn’t hang right either, the bra made bulges that pulled on my buttons and the band seemed to have pushed flesh up into my armpit. Maybe I wasn’t wearing it right. I tried tugging and pushing at things, but nothing moved that much.

I put on socks over the stockings and then my shoes, but it felt as if my feet had shrunk. That wasn’t possible, was it?

I added a windbreaker to hide the lumps on my chest, October in White River is mild but it can get chilly at night and lots of people wore sweaters or jackets, even in the daytime.

I checked how I looked in the mirror again. Different somehow. Maybe it was just my expression, excited, worried, distracted. Something. My eyes seemed too bright, shining in my face like I was expecting Christmas.

The ring I wore seemed to shine, too. I stared at the rose-colored stone for as much as a minute. It seemed almost hypnotic, and I felt calmer and more certain of myself afterwards.

Before I left the bathroom, I messed with my hair a bit using Hayley’s brush she had left there. It probably didn’t make much difference but I felt better about how I looked after arranging the loose curls around my face.

I headed out the back door to Mom’s studio. The night smelled of dust and plants and animals, like it always did, with a hint of hot clay. The big kiln sitting on a pad away from the buildings, with its pipes and vents sticking out in all directions, loomed in the corner of the yard but Mom had not fired it up in several days.

Lights were on in the converted standalone garage and I knew Jon and Mom were in there because I could hear their voices. When I got closer, I could see them through the window in the door, standing around the small kiln, peering inside.

It took a lot less time and gas to fire the 0.8 cu.ft. one than the 4 cu.ft. hog in the back yard which usually got used only when Mom had a contract for a lot of pieces or something too big to fit in the small one. She had names for both kilns, some of them not printable, but the little one was usually called Kitty and the big one, Klyde.

I paused for a moment to take in the colors of the evening. It wasn’t quite dark yet, the western sky burning gold and purple and red. Whatever else you could say about our Kern County dust, it made for spectacular sunsets.

Luchador, the old, nearly blind Labrador retriever that almost always lay across the doorway of whatever room Mom was in thumped his tail as I stepped over him. When I opened the door, Mom and Jon both looked around.

“Hayley?” said Mom. “Oh, no, it’s Walker. I was just showing Jonathon here the little dragon babies you designed and I made and fired.”

“This is really cute,” said Jon, holding up one of them. He glanced at me sideways; his expression meant something different and he looked away quickly.

“They’re not dragons, Mom, they’re gargoyles,” I said. My voice came out sounding a bit high and I cleared my throat. “That one’s Binky,” I added.

“Gargoyles? Is that why it seems to be looking down at something?” asked Jon, holding Binky up above his head. The little figure was about four inches tall and six long, including his tail. He sat there in Jon’s hand, holding one foot in his paw, with the thumb on the other fist in his mouth, and peering at something clearly below and a distance away. Mom’s sculpting gave all her figurines even more character than I designed into my drawings.

“Here’s another from the latest batch I fired,” said Mom.

“That’s Shelly,” I said, still sounding more soprano than usual. I cleared my throat again.

Jon laughed. “It’s hatching out of an egg!”

“Uh-huh,” I said, pulling the other two in the set out. “This is Oopsie,” head on floor, face frowning sideways with tail in air. “And this is Snookum,” lying on its back, eyes half closed, hands and feet waving, tail curled to one side.

Jon laughed again. “You just want to give that one a tummy rub!” He glanced at me again. Did he blush? Did I?

“Mom fires up two or three sets when we have orders for them,” I squeaked then coughed.

“Get a drink of water,” Mom pointed at the cooler in the corner opposite the little kiln. “I sell to gift shops and stationery stores all over the state. I call them ‘Dragonets’ and people buy the heck out of them. If I say ‘Gargoyles’ they look at me funny.” She laughed.

I took a paper cup and filled it from the dispenser. “I’ve got two new designs,” I said, still squeaky. “But I haven’t got names for them. One is holding a rattle behind its back and smiling like it’s up to something and the other is playing peek-a-boo.”

Jon grinned. “I want to see them. Have you got the drawings here?”

“Uh, they’re in my room.” My heart thumped. It sounded so loud, I was surprised that no one looked to see where the noise was coming from.

Mom waved at us. “Go ahead kids; there’s stuff I want to do to start another burn tomorrow night. Glaze these and some bowls. Kitty needs to cool for another day.” Meaning the small kiln. “Oh, have you eaten?”

I nodded on my way out. “Have you?”

She looked thoughtful. “You know, I don’t think I have.” Her stomach growled as punctuation.

Jon and I stepped over Luchador. The dog raised his head to look at Jon, wagged once and lay back down. I turned to warn Mom, “If you’re not inside eating in fifteen minutes, I’m going to bring you a sandwich.”

“Give me half an hour to get something done, will you?” she complained. “Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Your mom is a hoot,” said Jon as we walked back to the house.

“Like I said before, she’ll forget to eat if you don’t remind her. Sleep, too, I’ll have to be sure she goes to bed instead of working in the shop all night.”

It seemed natural as anything to pause and let Jon open the heavy glass door for me. It made me tingle, though.

The house had that quiet that meant no one was home. On a fall evening, as it gets darker earlier and earlier, there’s no more empty sound. “Hayley won’t be home for at least another hour,” I said. “Hf,” I added, trying to clear my throat and sound normal.

He closed the door behind us. “That’s good. And stop that hacking and sniffing, I like how your voice sounds. I was thinking about telling you to practice sounding more like a girl and you came in talking like that and it’s really cute.”

“I sound like a little girl,” I complained, turning on the light in the kitchen. I could see Jon grinning at me. “You were just thinking at me?” Scary thought, he could influence what I did by just thinking about me? Did I want him thinking about me?

“Uh huh.” He glanced at his ring. “You’re wearing the stuff you bought under your clothes?”

I nodded, noticing that there suddenly seemed to be less oxygen in the air.

“Let’s go to your room and you can show me,” he said, reaching out and taking my hand.

I thought for a moment that I couldn’t breathe, he hadn’t really touched me before except to give me the ring and when he helped me out of the car. I got my breath back with a sigh as he led me to my room.

Once inside, he closed the door behind us and sat on the tall chair in front of my drawing table. “What—,” he began, but I pulled off my windbreaker and half-turned so he could see the shape of my bra under my shirt. He gulped and said, “Take off all of your boy clothes.”

I did so. Slowly, watching his face. First I kicked off my shoes and toed off my socks and held my feet up to show him I was wearing stockings. He made a noise, a funny little sound like “urk.” I smiled.

My shirt had buttons down the front and I undid them one at a time then pulled the tail out of my jeans. I stopped for a moment before opening the shirt so he could see my bra and the bare skin of my tummy. I closed the shirt then opened it again, wider. Then I put my arms back and let my shirt fall on the floor behind me. The top of my girdle showed above the waistband of my jeans.

I felt dreamlike, as if I were floating in some misty world. Jon looked like he had forgotten to breathe, too. I undid the snaps of my pants and slowly pushed them down over my hips. I let them fall around my ankles and stepped out of them, moving closer to him. I put my arms up, hands near my chin, elbows at my waist. I looked up at him wearing only my bra and girdle with stockings attached to the built-in garters.

“Wuh,” he said.

“Uh-huh?” I answered.

He looked as if he were about to do something else but instead, he took a step backward. “I can’t call you that name anymore,” he said.

I blinked. Did he mean Wally?

“I know your middle name.” He’d mentioned that before. Normally I didn’t like anyone to know but just then I waited for him to say it.

“Evelyn,” he whispered. It’s pronounced EEV-lin for a boy in England where my father was born but Jon said it like a girl’s name, EHV-uh-luhn.

I shivered. I turned partly away from him, arching my back.

“Evie,” he said, making it EEV-ee.

He reached out and touched my face with a fingertip. “Your name is Evelyn.” The ring he wore on that hand gleamed, the white stone catching my eye. “I’m going to call you Evie.”

I nodded. I had a girl’s name now. I leaned toward him, I wanted something more but he pulled his hand back and stepped away.

“I can’t….” he began but he didn’t finish that. “You don’t want anyone to call you that other name, anymore. You want to be called Evelyn. Or Evie when I say it.”

I felt something change inside me. I had never liked the name Wally and now, I hated it.