The ground is wet and so am I.
I dress myself like an onion that's been taken apart and put back together again, piece by piece. You can't have too many layers this time of year, when a wind could come and chill you to the core (though they say an onion doesn't have a center), or the sun could push through and bring your pale arms out for a while. Besides, since the change, I can't always tell hot from cold, and there's no regulating the difference. I lift each long breast into place, not as heavy as they used to be, and slither into a flimsy slip that’s holey from time and transparent as my skin. Over this, a good spring dress, easy to bend in, with fat pockets to fill as I walk. Then the sweater that used to be hers, dark chartreuse and scratchy, middle button a mismatch that I sewed on when she lost the original. Olive would putter around the house, feeding the animals and tidying while I sewed, looking over at me now and then with a funny kind of pride. I'd pretend not to notice, but I could feel her eyes right down to my center, blushing my insides.
How long have I had this scarf. Olive gave it to me when she came back from that trip, said it reminded her of me. Of course, I said, it's so much like the one I already have. But it wasn't, isn’t, because this is the one she chose. Flowers so fluorescent they make your heart ache, tangling into paisley and spilling out over the black weave. I shake it out, let the square rise and fall, the air of the room shifting beneath until it feels like it's levitating, and snatch the corners into a tight, broad triangle. It holds back the wiry hairs along my temple and knots below my chin, Olive’s touch folded into it.
***
I used to mind the ride out to the woods, two buses and half the morning lost staring out the window. Now I'm grateful that it forces me to sit, something I've never been very good at but need more these days. The bus turns around a half mile away from the parking lot at the edge of the woods, an old cruising ground where you can spot a blowjob in every other car, no matter the time of day. I glance through the car windows as I make my way to the oak and lichen of the interior.
The scraggly edges where men lean and eye one another give way to denser layers of fallen trees, humus and narrow rivulets that come and go with the rainfall. Heat rises within me as I walk, cool air hitting my face and breaking over beads of sweat.
Tender growth pushes through last year’s leaves, macerated by snow, food for jack-in-the-pulpit and skunk cabbage. I cruise the ground and let my eyes make contact with soft lilac ripples of blewits, unnoticeable until I see them, and soon scattered everywhere on the ground around me as my vision comes into focus. I brush the soil and crumbled leaves from their stems with my fingers as I drop them into my net bag, dreaming of the dumplings I'll make at home when I've exhausted myself here. There's dough resting in the fridge.
I'm too in love with the sunshine breaking through the trees to notice how long I've been walking. I only realize it when I feel my hips start to creak beneath me, and I circle back on the path toward the bus stop. As I turn around, a creamy bouquet of oyster mushrooms leans out above my head, at least eight feet up. I hoist my exhausted body onto a dead trunk leaning against the tree, and stretch as high as my spine will take me, nearly toppling over.
A low voice comes after me—I'm enjoying the view and all, but I already tried, and I've got a few inches on you.
I climb down and wipe my hands on my skirt. That's okay, I've got more blewits than I can eat.
Don't be greedy, she says with a smirk, like she wants more than anything for me to be greedy.
Yeah you're right, I should've headed to the bus an hour ago. I can feel a lopsided, nervous smile cross my face as I mumble. Fuck. When did I forget how to do this.
My truck is in the lot. She pulls off the brown scarf knotted over her gray hair, wipes the sweat off her neck, and shoves it into her back pocket, flagging dirt witch. Want a lift?
Vern wears bright red lipstick that clashes with her leathery face. Her forearms are thick and covered in freckles, peeking out from a loose misshapen sweater, rolled up to the elbows. Her thighs are sturdy and wild, none of the fragility I'm used to seeing in women my age. There's a bag of sorrel and wild onions tied to one of her beltloops, riding up and down against her as she walks.
She saunters over to her pickup truck with her hand in her pocket, a kind of femme stud walk like Eileen Myles tangled up in a frilly nightgown and stomping her way loose.
When we close the doors of the pickup, all her smells hit me at once. The wool of her sweater must have a whole winter's sweat layered into it, all the underground animal smells of her body, too personal to wash away. We're just sitting there in the parking lot, surrounded by this air that she's completely taken over. I feel my breath move lower, letting all of her come in through my nose until I can feel her smell between my legs. I barely notice my body move, but I find myself out of the truck, opening her door, kneeling on the ground and pulling her legs toward me until my face is buried against her cunt. I tug her jeans off and she shoves herself tighter to my face. Her cunt is musky and faintly tannic, like dandelion wine. I hold back pressure, brushing her lips with mine, until I let my tongue reach her buoyant, seething clit. I ebb and flow, giving her everything and then pulling back for just long enough to bring her higher.
I spit on my fingers, glide my forefinger into her open asshole and my thumb into her cunt, clutching her hips with my free hand, grasping her body from the inside. She writhes against my mouth, growling and shivering. Her face is contorted, cheeks flushed, eyes glowing wet and fierce with sensation. Her body convulses and she floods my face with cum.
***
We get into the truck and drive. She's smiling, looking straight ahead at the road until we pull up in front of my house.
My goat went dry, she tells me half-joking, half-bitter. How are you on butter.
Plenty. Help me make dumplings and I'll send you home with some.
We fill the house with rich, eager smells, her onions and my mushrooms swimming together in pools of butter on the stove.
Her hands are small, with long fingers ending in short smooth nails that arch roundly, mirroring the lunulae. They're dusted in flour but I can still see the dirt caked under the thin white lines where they end. As she cups a circle of dough in her left hand, the fingers of her right ease into it, stretching the dough lightly under her fingertips to make a hollow for stuffing. Then everything becomes speedy, breathless, as she grasps mounds of buttery mushrooms firmly between her fingers, forces the mixture into the hollow of dough, wets the edges, and crimps them together with her dry hand to form a tight half-moon.
You're staring, says Vern, pulling me onto her lap.
She slips her fingers into my mouth, holds my face against her thumb and shoves her fingers in and out. I taste butter and dirt, and gag with pleasure. I squirm desperately, grinding myself against her thigh. She pulls her hands away from me and leans back.
Vern looks at me with wide eyes, stern and focused. Undress yourself.
I unpeel myself in front of her, each layer dropping to the linoleum as she sits there fully dressed, hand dangling between her thighs, not taking her eyes off mine.
She nods at a jar of goose fat on the pantry shelf. Bring me that.
Schmaltzy the goose, Olive named her. She died a year before Olive did. I rendered her fat down to cook with, but she mostly just sat there on the pantry shelf, a memory of them both. I bring the jar to the table.
Vern moves the plate of dumplings to the counter and lifts my ass onto the kitchen table. She spreads my thighs and grazes my introitus with her fingertips, watching my eyes beg. She pulls away again and scoops fat onto her fingers, smearing it down her hand, and slips two fingers inside of me. She fucks me with long, reaching movements, each thrust sending me deeper into my body. I'm flushed from my face to my chest, vibrating and groaning.
She brings her greasy fingertips tight against each other and asks my body for more. I open my cunt around her, stretching and hollowing, making room for her inside me.
Look at me, she says. I give her my eyes.
She eases her hand into me, slowly at first, then firmly moving her knuckles past my opening so my body can swallow her whole. I’m flooded with heat and light. Her fingers pull together into a fist, sending aching waves through me as my body envelopes her, begging and greedy. Hungry for more and impossibly full.