The wall was still there in the evening and the next morning into noon. I felt it even with the windows covered; with my head hid beneath the bed. It seemed projected in my pelvis — one more disruption in my flesh. So long without eating had made me mushy, my organs on display through sickly skin. I could hear it whisper to me, mostly nonsense, ingrained in brain in lines of Braille: SLIBBITZ NOESSDUM VIKUD KLIMMER, OHST IFTS BEED BOD YAKCLISSO OYT VU EIEE. It refused to quiet during sleeping; often even louder, aimed. The words vibrated my vertebrae. My stomach curled and bubbled. Sometimes I’d get stuck on the ground. I spent several days dizzy like that, my insides runny, upside-down. I tried to remember the way my father focused during those weeks of losing hair. How despite the fact his teeth went loose and his eyes stung and he lost his nails and strips of skin, he still sat up and tried to listen and kissed our faces for goodnight. I clung to live in each every inch of him. Of what we’d had. Of where I’d been. No one would say where he’d been taken. When I gave his name aloud they said Who? The wall’s words got louder. I could taste them. I could read them in my teeth. They overran all other. They wanted my attention. In slow increments I learned the rhythm. I held the syllables in my cerebrum until with study they formed sense: COME TO ME. COME TO ME SOON. COME IN HERE. COME. COME. I punched my head, refused to listen. I tied myself down to the bed. I tried to speak over the interruption but my words became another echo: COME NOW. BRING THE GIFT. I touched the window. I could see it. It was waiting. I could see.
After they’d taken my mom and father I’d tried to be a mother to those boys. I’d tried to establish something, to brush all thoughts of hell out from their minds. In the evenings, when the skies fell, when the water beat the brick, it was so hard not to shake. I coached them with unsure words. I tried to move the way our mom had. I tried to speak in her sweet voice. I couldn’t do it. I knew beforehand. I saw it in my sleep. If they hadn’t crumbled on their own I would have left them another way. On the porch I’d lashed a tin tub with ribbon to girder in case of need for quick escape — i.e. crumbling, i.e. disease, i.e. some unclean presence like this wall. I stepped in with both feet, buoyant, bumbling, my small frame barely making the basin bob. I took the soup spoon — the same my mother had turned our broth with, spanked our butts — and dipped it into the liquid, birthing a short ripple on the lip. A breed of mosquitoes zipped and clustered. One burrowed in my ear. Where they got their blood these days I couldn’t figure. I’d once cut myself and felt no drip. I pulled my mother’s dress over my muzzle and stirred the basin outward. Over my shoulder my porch grew smaller. The trees hung waterlogged and bending, hugging around me in bouquet. I floated through them with each grunting stroke until I felt a current and slid in. The water hadn’t moved in months. I’d seen faces in the film. Now I seemed to spur on toward the high wall, sucked in by magic, magnet. The lake had spread more wide than I’d imagined. The tip of the capitol building’s gold dome, several miles off, glinted in recognition, drowning. Hardly half of the high cathedral sat above the water. I thought of Grandma, of her hovel. Her brittle body sandwiched under leagues, nipped and bloated six times her size. Perhaps I should be so lucky. Further out the air sunk cooler. My breath began to plume. The metal basin stuck to my feet and fingers, frost etched on my face. It was getting dark. Hard to tell if temporary or the beginning of the night — the sun would lose itself so often, light might shine five minutes and be gone for weeks. My stomach somersaulted. I bumped through a layer of dead geese. I felt a panic rumbling; my stomach itched full of mice. Coming closer I could see the wall was less blue than black and made of perfect polished stone. It had symbols of some strange language writ embedded. The more I looked they became numbers. The more I looked they became names — ones I knew I knew by syllable but couldn’t connect to any eyes. So many gone. Had I forgotten? Already lost inside me deep? As I thought each word it appeared before me, somehow transcribed on the surface, slightly off: SO MANY GONE. YOU’LL HAVE FORGOTTEN. LOST INSIDE YOU. DEEP. Overhead the face of the wall stretched forever. It cut the cold, a clean protection. I spread both hands flat against it. My fingers tingled in the heat. Felt something open in me, ringing — a wound wide as the sky.
Back at home, locked in my bedroom, my stomach began to swell. At first the water simply pooching, then bobbing outward, more rotund. The grinding turned to stretching. My abdomen ballooned. I wiggled with the heft of it, learning to negotiate the rooms. What rooms were left now, anyhow — the kitchen was ceiling-high with crap; the den buried in some kind of fluid; the basement full of worms. Soon I couldn’t stand. My gut weighed twice as much as me. I spread-eagled on the floor. I stuck sewing needles in my belly button. I begged god to make it end. In the mirror my face was licked with burns and incisions that formed another face, one the wall had drawn. Three hours later my baby brother came out screaming in a flood of sludge. My father’s spitting image — full blonde hair, mustache and teeth. For days after I could feel the bleeding, the scumming over, the slow seal. So long the house had sat dead silent and now it swam with squeal. The baby babbled at all hours. He had the same voice as the wall, all gob. He got tangled in my webbing and refused to let me help him loose. When I tried to touch him, he’d cringe and wriggle. He came to the foot of the bed and bit my feet. We spent several days like that, at odd ends, learning where and who and how. He did not need me to teach him. On his second day he was toddling around the room. On his third he spoke the language of the wall. He said: EICHJUN LIBBVUT PEM. PIZZIT SVIMMY-NARGER IEH UNT SNAH. He collected nits and sucked their fluid. I couldn’t make him stop. His small eyes seemed to want to puncture. If I played dead, he’d pet my face and kiss my ears — when I opened my eyes he went away. Still I couldn’t help but feel some great swelling for him, in a place I’d once felt something else. Outside the wall was growing. Its size displaced the water. It lapped the window higher every hour. I prayed aloud for the cod, but it did not come. Sediment ground our house’s frame. I thought of my grandmother elsewhere, already finished. Grandmother — I could not recall her name. I could not recall the lines of her face on those days when she’d held me — days when she’d — when she’d — what? On the bed my backbone tensed trying to remember. I stretched into my mind and felt nothing. No small indenture of where I’d come from. In my memory, where even moments earlier my father’s face had sat, I felt nothing but flat black blank. Just the wall. It was growing. I could hear it. It was forcing water through the window seams. Divots had opened in the ceiling. The pressure shook the walls. I grabbed the child and moved into the hall. It was raining there. The carpet sloshed thick at my feet. I climbed the stairs up to the attic where for years we’d stored our photo albums, birthday letters, Christmas ornaments, baby blankets. The worms had eaten through them. I put the remnants to my face and sniffed, after something clean inside. I dragged the moth-holed blanket, now a napkin, across my brother’s head to keep it dry. I could feel the wall expanding in my chest now. I could feel it want me at the window. At the small pane I rubbed the glass till I could see. The wall had reached the front yard, still moving, becoming huge, becoming all. This wall of nothing. This smudge of black. My strum, my love, my humble. My brother squeamed in my lap beneath me. He screamed for recognition. He didn’t have a name yet. I would give him mine, so I could remember. My name. My name. The wall was buzzing. My name I hadn’t heard aloud in years. Was it even mine now? Would I want it if it was? My brother spoke: YOU HAVE A NEW NAME. YOU WILL WANT IT. YOUR NAME IS AKVUNDTBLASSEN. YOUR NAME IS XICTYHIAY BLODDUM YAHF. YOU ARE HERE. THE NAME IS MINE. As he spoke, the wall spoke with him, becoming one voice, pronged together. I found myself echoed aloud and repeating, spreading my new name into my head. I drooled. My head was bright warm. I couldn’t feel my legs. I covered my lips with one hand, humming. I put my other thumb in Brother’s mouth. While he bit the blood out of my soft skin, I turned to the window and pressed my forehead flat and prayed into my palm.