Spine of Hard Bone

e. säfverblad nelson

They moved into the little house that stood quietly between two pine trees. Inside, they made small meals in a tiny kitchen. Inside, they slept fitfully in dark rooms. Inside, no one could tell the truth. 

Kavta had a spine of hard bone. She had thick armor under the skin across her back, plates of good sense and rotten marrow. To live in the little house with him she had learned to double joint her protective spine. She slid the armor plates near her shoulder blade to the side and revealed the gap where wet red muscle showed. 

     He took the curved metal hook and slid it into place. 

     When Kavta walked in the forest, metal clacked against bone. It was not painful, but she felt a dull twist of muscle with each step. She could not stand completely straight; she had to lean to one side. 

     It hurts, she told him. Before stepping through the doorway, she had been sure of what she wanted to say and been sure that her words were just, but once inside she could not remember what was true and was not sure what she would tell him. It hurts me to have the hook like this. Why did you put it there?

     He looked at her with sorrow. You showed me where to put it, he said. 

     This was the truth. She knelt in front of him and begged forgiveness. He touched her hair, he touched her shoulder, he reached around and gently touched the spine of metal protruding from her back. She sat up straighter. He forgave her. 

Sometimes he ignored her for days. He did not make her little meals, he did not touch her downy head, he did not tug the hook one way or another. She tried to be thankful, but she only felt adrift. 

     You have to be able to do things on your own, he said. 

     I can do things on my own, she said. But I live here with you, shouldn’t you help?

     I am helping, he said. Helping you to be independent.  

     I am independent, she said. I want help.

     He had things to do. He went to do them. 

     Kavta sat on the floor of the kitchen. Her mind was a clear garden of fully grown understanding blooming in certain solitude. But she knew that no words she said would convince him of what she knew, and that he would instead tell her how wrong she was and she would believe him. So she did not try. 

At night he told her about how he did not love her. Telling her this was kindness; she was not deceived. He meant to leave. He only kept returning because he could not resist her, as though she was a trick being played on him (this was a great compliment). 

     She faced away, lying on her side. She could not lay neutrally on her back and stare at the grateful blank of the ceiling. She had to lay with her rotting spine towards him, or she could lay facing him and meet his eyes. 

     He held the spine of the hook as he spoke. You are a trap.

     She said, I know, three times. 

     You know me so well, he said, and was gratified they understood one another. She watched the shadows overlap in the corners. 

Spring came. The snows melted. Kavta plucked new birch leaves and yarrow shoots before they bloomed large and bitter. They ate them in the sunshine. The next day he was gone. 

     She cleaned the floors of the empty little house. She tried to reach the hook in her back. She could just grasp its edge, but she could not get her fingers around it; they slipped and could not catch. When she tried to pull it out, she simply twisted it or pushed it sideways. She pushed it deeper, ripped the flesh, felt the grate and tear against the hard bone of her rib. Hot red blood ran down her back and leaked off her heels. The hook stayed where it was. 

     She cleaned the floors again.

She waited for a long time, but he did not return. Kavta left the little house and the woods around it. She took a boat to a distant land across a dazzling sea. 

     The scars from her attempts to remove the hook had swelled the skin of her back and covered the metal spine in thick tissue. No one could touch the metal, no one could make her sit straighter or bend over. No one could take it out. 

     The first man tried with scissors. This will hurt but it will help, he said as he pulled her shirt away. His hands around the scars were kind and gentle. Kavta screamed before the sharp blades touched her skin. 

     He told her she was safe, that the pain would pass. But Kavta fled regardless. 

The woman had sea-glass eyes that saw through people. She could see the metal hook behind Kavta’s lung and invited her to stay with her beside a babbling river. 

     It’s your work to see the thing removed, she said. You should have someone take a look.

     Who can remove it? Kavta asked.

     A doctor, or a nurse, or a gardener with shears, she said. The woman was kind. She let Kavta sleep beside her on a bed of pine boughs under the stars. Mornings, Otters deposited fish next to their heads. The scales glittered in the sunlight when they fell away to the ground. Kavta and the woman threw the intestines in the river for the otters and the salmon. They left the heads on a fallen log where the gulls screamed over them until they were splinters of bone. 

     I don’t know any doctors or nurses or gardeners with shears, Kavta said. 

     Those are the options for dealing with things like these, said the woman. You’ll have to go and find some. 

     But Kavta did not set out. She stayed by the river and tended the low fire. She collected stiff grasses and braided roots for rope. She tried to remember her own past, trimmed the wilted conclusions in her mind, and rearranged them into patterned bouquets. 

     This is what happened, she told the woman. Or,

     This is what happened. Or,

     This is what happened.

     After a time of saying nothing, the woman repeated, Find a doctor, or a nurse, or a gardener with shears. And she left the river, left Kavta there alone.

     Kavta lay on her back and leaned into the hook. She felt the twist and ache and tear, smelled the sponge rot of her spine as it slipped out of joint. 

     When her tears no longer tasted of salt she got to her feet.

Kavta sought refuge in a large safe house in the company of a man who asked nothing from her and gave nothing in return. She believed his assertions that he did not want anything from her. Yet while she stayed in the large house the hook began to give her new pain. 

     The skin was raw and slightly painful, scabbing easily if she wore anything coarse next to her skin. She spent her time out in the woods of ash and alder, the twist of the hook in her step was as familiar to her as her own gait had once been. She thought of the one who had put it there but found no meaning in doing so. 

     One night she awoke in the middle of the night to the sensation of soft sandpaper filing the skin around the hook. She turned quickly and lit the light, catching sight of the man who lived there as he tried to flee. 

     He maintained, I want to help you. 

     Do you mean to remove the hook or the skin that protects it? she asked. 

     He could not answer.

     He begged and pleaded with Kavta to stay. She left with the coming sunrise. 

The doctor explained that they would remove the burl of scar that covered her spine and leave a smooth, red wound in its place. They would use scalpels as sharp as lightning to open the thick tissue which formed the oblong lump. They would use sterile forceps to twist the hook out the way it went in, gently sliding it out from between the ribs where it was lodged. 

     It is unclear on the x-ray image if the tip has begun to fuse with the bone, said the doctor. If this is the case we will have to shave away the excess bone growth to release the metal. 

     Kavta nodded solemnly. 

     The skin will heal smoothly, but the musculature will remain altered. 

     It won’t return to how it was? Kavta asked. 

     Who’s to say? said the doctor. In time, with patience, care, and stretching it is likely that much of the lost mobility can be regained. But nothing returns to how it was. 

     Kavta nodded. She knew that, of course, but it is one thing to know something and another to have it confirmed by the expert. She looked out from the hut with the thatched roof, no walls, over the hills of sand studded with palms to the rolling swell of the sea. It glinted and shifted at the edge of eyesight, throwing distant spray and the thick smell of salt. 

     It is important that you are aware of everything we can do and not do for you, said the doctor. 

     Kavta looked back at them and at the single room hut with the table and the lights and the glinting instruments. 

     I’m ready, she said, and stood up. 

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