To lie among the mushrooms
Pinecone | Sienna Green |
To Lie Among the Mushrooms by Elisabeth Schmeissner
The anatomy of a mushroom goes as follows: scales, cap, gills, ring, stalk, base and mycelial threads. We start at the scales – rough patches on the surface of the cap that give mushrooms their characteristic warty pattern. I.e.: decoration.
Names are like decoration. We wear them so others can identify us, but they really are a bad system if you think about it. Sometimes too many people share the same name, or you hate the name you were given. Sometimes names have functions – they ward away bad luck and determine what a child will grow up to be. My first name doesn’t mean anything, but my last name does. I wear it like an ugly sweater, something that was forced upon me and I have to keep because it is glued to my skin. Lada doesn’t care about my name, in fact, she never calls me by anything at all. This suits both of us, because I hate sound and Lada hates speaking. Lada takes my hand and we walk through the forest in complete silence. I bend down to pick wild red currants and deadly dapperling, put them in my pants pockets for later. I notice that Lada’s hands are stained bright red.
* * *
Next follows the cap. It acts as an umbrella: protection from the weather and other unsavory things.
Lada and I head deeper into the woods, following a trail of chanterelles that I had found last time. I pick one occasionally, pop the stem into my mouth and suck. They are the color of sunshine and egg yolks, and I can’t help but think of the days before the blossoming chanterelles, when it felt like no color would ever return to the world. Lada found me one day, cowering behind a hollow tree trunk with my hands over my ears and my eyes squeezed shut. She gently tapped me on the back, waited until I opened my eyes, and formed her mouth in the shape of a word – my name – the first time she had ever done so. Her waifish arms then wrapped around me and she held me until the sun went down and the night creatures emerged.
Now we walk past the tree trunk and we keep our eyes straight ahead, ignoring the reminder in our peripheral vision. Lada’s fingers uncurl from my hand, shaking me out of my reverie, and she points to a patch of small mushrooms off the trail. They have formed a ring and are growing in earnest, fed by the lush dead matter in the ground. My guess is another victim, probably left here three to four weeks ago. My mouth suddenly goes dry. Lada looks at me serenely and nods, then walks forwards to do what I am too scared to. She plucks the mushrooms off the unmarked grave, pockets them, and closes her eyes to pray and thank them for the food. This person likely did not receive a funeral, so we give one to them now.
* * *
Now we approach the gills. These are the most important part of the mushroom, as they hold the key to the survival of the species: spores. Spores are dispensed from the slits of the gills to find new areas to populate – preferably areas with lots of decomposing things.
The sun dips lower on the horizon, so dinner must be in a few hours. I still need to get ready; I promised papa that I would look my best for all his important colleagues. My pockets are filled to the brim with all sorts of berries and mushrooms, and Lada carries a handful too. Papa has never gone hungry, and neither do I now, but thriftiness is not something I can easily forget. I slip into the kitchen after Lada departs and inhale the scent of pork stew, garlic, and pepper. I take handfuls of mushrooms from my pockets and chop them up, then sprinkle them around the stew as if it were Carthage, and the contents of my pockets were salt. Next I take the berries and arrange them prettily on a plate, placing holly leaves around the edges. I hope the guests are as gluttonous as they are greedy. When dinner time comes, I am beautifully made up, and have plastered my sweetest, most radiant smile onto my face. I do it for survival. The first important man I shake hands with compliments my hair.
* * *
We have reached the ring. It is a remnant from the veil of the mushroom that has burst to expose the gills and spores to the world. The memory of the beginning.
I sit in a grand hall that is luxuriously decorated, with gold accents on the walls and soft rugs underfoot. This place is as alien to me as Mars – I did not grow up here, it means nothing to me. Papa bought this manor with nonexistent money. Money that he said he didn’t have enough of to pay for hospital bills and nice looking clothes. When I asked him about this, he said it was better for us to look poor for the time being, and then warned me to never ask about his money or job again. Papa is not the kind of man you can disagree with. He has an aura that both pulls you in and warns you to never betray him or you will suffer the consequences. He swallows people, chews them up and spits them out just so he can taste what wealth and paradise are like. Some might call him a monster.
The thing about monsters is that they appear to be human. They have wishes and emotions; they eat, sleep, and die like the rest of us. When people started whispering about his wealth and power, his vicious climb to the top, he lost his sense of humanity. He needed to appear human, so he did what he thought would gain him the most sympathy: make his only daughter appear sick. I did not fit the part of a sick daughter. I was still young, chubby and rosy, so he started skipping my meals. Lunch stopped, then breakfast, and soon I had nothing. I was thin and weak, barely able to move my limbs. The milkman’s daughter saw me one day peeking out of my window, and dragged me out to the forest when papa was away at an important dinner. She was thin herself and looked hungry. By this time, most people were. She showed me all the edible mushrooms and berries she knew, and made sure I knew which ones were poisonous so I would never touch them. That night we gorged on mushrooms, and afterwards, I had made my first friend. Her name was Lada, and she saved my life.
* * *
Here is the mushroom stalk: it holds the mushroom above the dead ground and into the air. It must withstand the toughest of burdens, and keep the mushroom upright.
I’m sorry that I have to tell this story. I’m sorry it came to this. But I must do it, so that I will never forget.
Lada hated the world we live in – the world that subjected her and I to hunger and scavenging in the woods. She hated the bodies in the woods that makes mushrooms grow, hated the fact that we must eat their mushroom gifts in order to survive. She hated my father for what he did to me. She wrote about her hatred, spoke it to anyone who will listen. I begged her to stop, think about what she’s doing: if hunger won’t kill us, this surely will. One Saturday, her voice did stop. Lada, who was so talkative and outspoken, who banged on my front door and risked her life for me, stopped coming. Days passed and I worried that somehow, someone had found out about her hatred and had punished her. The waiting became unbearable.
A few days later, in the middle of a moonless night, the front door was flung open and a girl was dragged in, kicking and screaming. I am ashamed to admit it, but this was not the first time something like this had happened. Before, I had covered myself in blankets to drown out the screams of the dying. Now, those screams sounded all too familiar. I crept out of bed to the top of the stairs, and witnessed Lada lying on the rug, thrashing. The man who shared my last name, who gave me my first, stood over her with a pistol. I wish I could reverse time, could jump in front of him, could save my guardian angel. But I cannot. Instead, I covered my ears and watched in horror as a bullet pierced her stomach, staining the carpet red. She placed her hands over the wound as if she were preparing to be buried, fell back, and didn’t move again.
The next week, a new patch of mushrooms sprouted in a ring near a hollow tree trunk.
* * *
Lastly, the base and mycelial threads. These anchor the mushroom to the ground, suck up nutrients, and keep the mushroom alive.
The men around me now are fat and wear tailored suits that still manage to look like they’re bursting at the seams. Their hair is oily and slicked back, and their shoes are the kind you find in London or New York or some other exotic place. Their wrists sport watches studded with diamonds, and they smell like money – acrid and rusty. They spoon heaps of stew onto their plates, guzzle wine with astonishing speed, and laugh forcefully. I sit at one end of the table, serene and empty. The man who is no longer my father sits at the other end, looking the opposite. He surveys the table like it is his kingdom, his eyes darting around to catch every movement. I think of how I will never need to hear my last name again.
Then, the man next to me laughs far too loudly. His eyes look manic and his hands twitch involuntarily. The man next to him begins breathing rapidly, sweat dripping from his forehead. The temperature rises, the energy in the room boils. A man projectile vomits onto the table. I silently stand up and walk to the door. Through the hallway. Out to the yard. Into the forest. Lada is waiting by a tree, smiling. I nod at her, indicating that it is over. She holds out a flower – a lily – beautifully yellow and unfurled like rays of sunshine. She is thanking me. I take her hand, and we walk into the forest together.
