by Paula Guran
After the ceremony, when the body has been taken for cremation, the mother goes home and tears through the house in a frenzied haze, unearthing gold jewelry and gold bars and silver pots given as farewell gifts by well-meaning relatives in India. The daughter trails her mother from room to room, already composing another puzzle in her head about each object, its age, and its value. The mother loads their life savings into the car and drives, slowly and carefully, to the strip mall’s Cash for Gold store.
She goes inside, leaving the daughter in the car. The daughter patiently draws herself a grid, then writes clues about gold earrings worth hundreds and gold bars worth ten times that. The numbers don’t look quite right, lopsided and alien, so she erases the numbers and pencils in larger ones, smaller ones, for fun. The changes are nearly as unruly as the transmutations of her homeland, and a pang of longing shoots through her. The puzzle comes together quickly, so she covers her answers and re-solves it to stave off boredom. Her mother comes out after an hour of haggling with huge stacks of cash and a cashier’s check worth far more money than she has ever seen in her life.
The store owner had not wanted to give in, but against the onslaught of this intermittently crying brown woman citing prices and rates and sums in fractured English, he slowly caved. As they were nearing a final price, he found himself suddenly moved by her plight. He emptied his store of money, withdrew his store’s reserve accounts, and handed all of it over to her. He will remember this experience for the rest of his life, and after the store has shuttered due to that day’s catastrophic loss, he will rant to his friends about entitled immigrants stealing from honest, hardworking Americans. Not one friend will point out that he used to swindle old people out of their gold for a living.
They will laugh at him for being tricked by a woman, and he will never reveal the truth: she did not trick him.
The mother enters the car and her daughter does not acknowledge her. Her daughter has not cried this whole time, too absorbed in her games to care that her father is gone forever. She slams the door, shouts, You value those puzzles more than your father’s life!
The daughter ignores her, embarrassed by the outburst although nobody else can hear them. How much did her mother really value his life? Her father was eaten by a machine, a death he could have easily died in India. What was the point of coming to America? she wants to ask her mother. You are stupid. Father was stupid. Let’s leave now while we still can. I am going to die here. But her mother has extended her hours at the cleaning company, opened a bank account, and become ever more determined to maintain this life.
When they get home, the daughter sits at the kitchen table as her mother orders pizza, one American experience that even she finds it difficult to hate. She picks up her pencil, wondering what puzzle she will construct next. She moves to draw a grid, but instead her hand writes, Consider the mother, the father, and the daughter: one alive; one dead—
She hesitates, uncertain what her clue will be. A shiver passes through her. She knows what she wants to say, but she finally suspects the power in her puzzles and fear bubbles inside her. The puzzles demand absolute truth, and the words are dragged out of her before she can stop them. Her pencil scratches against paper.
Consider the mother, the father, and the daughter: one alive; one dead; one dying.
VAISHNAVI PATEL is a Chicago native attending Yale Law School. She spends most of her time reading casebooks and writes fiction to unwind.
A STRANGE UNCERTAIN LIGHT
G. V. ANDERSON
Anne twirled the thin, dull wedding band around her finger, quite loose. In their rush to be married, they’d failed to have it fitted properly. And there were scores layered in the metal, old scrapes and nicks from its previous owner that appeared when the light from the train window hit it just so. No one else sitting in the compartment noticed its poor quality, or they simply pretended not to. They hid behind the latest broadsheets instead, the front pages still reporting on the Munich Agreement despite it having been some weeks past.
“New bride, are you?” one middle-aged woman wreathed in shabby fur asked her, somewhere past Thirsk. “I can always tell.”
“Just yesterday,” Anne replied, swaying slightly as the train hit a switch track.
Opposite, beneath his trimmed graying mustache, the corner of Merritt’s mouth twitched. He still wore the same dark double-breasted suit he’d put on that last morning in Kent, rumpled now by almost two days’ travel, and there was a trace of liquor about him underneath the smell of bedsheets, cigarette smoke, and coffee. Anne knew she must fare no better: She’d had no time to pin her hair properly that morning, nor smear her usual scoop of talcum under her arms.
She caught the eye of the middle-aged woman again and saw now her knowing expression, the discerning brow. Her face grew hot.
“My husband and I honeymooned in the South of France,” the woman said wistfully. “Lovely place. I’m not sure what I’d have made of Yorkshire—it can be rather grim, this time of year.”
“I grew up in Yorkshire,” replied Merritt, watching the embankment alongside the train fall away. “The best of the season’s passed, it’s true, but we should catch the last of the heather.” He sat a little straighter and held out his hand to Anne. “Darling, look—”
Purple, Merritt had told her when she’d asked him about his home county, and what a poor preparation that was for the bristling mat of ling spread out before them. Anne sprang up and unhooked the catch on the window, sending the men’s newspapers flying.
“For Heaven’s sake, young lady—”
“My hair—!”
But Anne wouldn’t shut the window on that patchwork of heather and cotton grass, those banks of soft green bracken. She slung one arm out of the window and let the vibrations of the engine rattle her teeth. It hardly felt real that, until yesterday, she’d never set foot outside her little Kent town, let alone seen London. Her whole world had been contained within the walls of the schoolhouse, or her bedroom, or her father’s surgery. And now here she was, almost as far north as it seemed north could go.
“And there’s Rannings,” said Merritt, who’d caught her mood and stood with her, pointing across the moor to the elegant redbrick country house-turned-hotel. His body warmed her back.
“Oh,” Anne breathed, “it’s—”
She jerked away blinking—some grit in her eye, some spark of coal—and looked down in time to see the colorless shade of a man caught between the rails and the wheels, to be sliced through like brisket, splashing his blueish guts up the side of the train, and the window, and her face; and Anne’s own guts turned cold. Please, God, not here, too. The strength went out of her legs and she slumped against Merritt, who hadn’t seen a thing, of course, and who laughed a little as if she were a child who’d overexcited herself. Then he saw how pale she’d gone. “Darling, what’s the matter? Here, sit down, we’ll be arriving soon.”
All along the train, passengers were standing to check their bags stowed on the overhead racks, to put away a book or a bundle of knitting, to adjust their coats and fish gloves out of pockets. Amidst the hubbub, Anne shrank back into the badly sprung seat. Her eyes flicked to the red walls of Rannings before another embankment rose up and hid them from view.
These aberrations had been with her since late childhood. Silhouettes swinging in the orchards at night; shadows lurking solemnly around the churchyard on Sundays. “Brought on by stress,” her father had decided, after consulting the latest journals from London: A nervous disorder resulting from overstimulation, to be treated with ice baths and, later, shock therapy. How she could possibly be overstimulated in a town like Penshaw, miles from anywhere important, he never thought to ask. The intrusions had worsened, passing through London, but that was different. A sudden elopement and its subsequent wedding night would overstimulate anyone.
There was nothing to strain her nerves in Yorkshire, nothing to worry about now that she was free, was there? And yet, they’d followed her anyway
.
Merritt was smiling mildly at her. She couldn’t smile back. She’d never found the right moment to tell him, in the two weeks of their acquaintance and their whirlwind departure, and had hoped she’d never need to. He seemed a respectable sort of person. Respectable people, in her experience, recoiled from lunacy. He might wash his hands of her completely and leave her ruined. After all, she was quite mad, and—and this scraped at her in particular—how well did she know him, really?
She picked at the dry skin beneath her new wedding band. It calmed her.
I come upon the moor at dusk and quickly lose my way. A band of moormen point out the path of exposed shale ahead, clutches of auburn-breasted grouse swinging from their fists. They’re curious of me; it’s not often you see a girl in a fine dress traveling alone.
“You’re a long way from home,” one of them jokes.
“Liverpool’s not so far as you think, sir,” I say.
“You don’t sound like a Scouser.” His smile turns to scowl. “You sound right proper.”
The stays of my corset—and this twit—are chafing me raw. I turn away from them and allow myself a grimace.
“It’ll be dark soon and, beggin’ your pardon, you’re not from round ’ere,” another deep voice calls to me as I climb the loose shale. “These moors can be treacherous. You’ll come back with us and set out again when there’s light to see by, if you know what’s good for you.”
From my vantage point, I scan the way ahead. The shadows pool like pitch in the mossy hollows and it’s a cloudy night—there’ll be no moon, no stars. Already, my breath expels as mist and hoarfrost lends its sheen to my coat. It’s tempting to accept their offer. The grouse look plump, full of fat and flavor. But these men are strangers whose stares grow bolder the longer I stay, and I’ve tested my employer’s generosity far enough. I promised to return to Missus Whittock within the week or consider my position lost. I cannot spare even one night.
“Thank you for your concern, sir, but I’m in haste.”
“Then,” says the youngest, quietly but firmly, stepping forward and raising his lamp, “let me escort you.” He peels away from them and joins me atop the shale.
“See you’re back home before chime hours,” the deep-voiced moorman calls to him. The lad nods and leads the way to the path.
The lamplight drives away the shadows, exposing the frost-rimed bog asphodel pushing up through the rag-rug of sphagnum. Somewhere off to our right, a vole startles and darts away, too quick to catch. My guide doesn’t notice. He looks to the horizon, charting the contour of the darkening moors’ silhouette against the bloody sky like a seaman charts his stars. It looks featureless to me, but he must recognize some dale or other because he turns to me and says, “We’re some ways off yet. I’ve heard the house keeps early hours. They might not answer the door this late to someone like—I mean, unless you’re expected.” He hesitates, scanning the cut of my coat, the stitching of my boots. “Are you expected, miss?”
“No,” I admit.
A few steps, and then, “Where’s Liverpool, miss?”
He’s looking at me like I’ve come from another world. I suppose I have. On Liverpool’s docks, you can hardly hear yourself think. Ships laden with spoils from the West Indies bring free men and officers’ servants with them; and immigrants from Glasgow and Belfast, such as my parents, come looking for work. Lascars and Chinamen haul ashore crates stamped with the East India Company crest—crates heavy with silk, salt, and opium—and for all their labor, their captains often leave them behind.
Liverpool’s rough mixture of language and color and cloth may seem strange here, but it’s familiar to me. It’s this numbing quiet, this cold, the moormen’s slow burr that I will not forget.
But Yorkshire can’t be as cut off as all that. My guide’s coloring is dark and reddish, yet his lashes frame stark olive eyes. Even here, his face is poured from the melting pot of the world.
“It’s to the west,” I tell him. “At the mouth of the Mersey.”
We trudge on.
“Begging your pardon, miss, but what’s your business at Rannings? If you’re looking for a position, I should warn you—”
“It’s nothing like that,” I snap, and then twist my mouth; he’s only being kind. “An old friend of mine called on the doctor at Rannings last winter and hasn’t sent word home. I’ve come to fetch him. You haven’t seen him, have you? He’s tall, taller than you, and walks with a limp.” What a poor description for someone I’d know from the back of their head! God knows I fell asleep facing it often enough as a child.
He chews his lip. “I think I’d remember a stranger like that. But I hope you find him.” He hesitates now, his warm skin giving off vapor in the lamplight. “We hear talk, sometimes, from the groundsmen . . . about the doctor.”
I reach for his arm, grip the corded muscle there. He stops and looks at my hand in alarm. “What sort of talk?”
The lad squirms. “I don’t know, I don’t like to say.” I squeeze and he concedes, tightly, “That he’s unkind, and Godless. That he pays well for babies born during chime hours.”
“Chime hours—your companion said that, too. What does it mean?” He wrenches his arm away. “When the church bells ring at midnight, the door to Hell opens.”
I know instantly what he’s referring to, but Hell? What superstitious nonsense!
I don’t get a chance to correct him, though, because a blast of bitter wind hits my back like a swell smashing against a breakwater and throws us together. “Don’t!” a distant voice pleads. “Don’t go in there!” I push away from him and turn into the cold to see what the spirits have sent me: a young woman, pale as egg whites. She’s staring past me, as these apparitions often do—no. No, not past. At.
She’s staring at me, purposefully, with recognition. I’ve never known such a thing—I keep my mind and heart open to them like my father taught me, but the spirits have never truly made contact—and then she’s gone. The cold wind still stings, but there’s nothing chimerical about it.
My guide lifts the lamp high to better fix me with a stare that would melt wax. “You’re one of them. Why’d you ask about chime hours, then? What did you see?”
I twist around and hold up my palms. “I told the truth before: I want to find my friend. He’s like me. That is, he’s gifted, too, and now I worry he’s come to some harm.”
“What did you see?” he repeats more forcefully.
“Nothing that’ll hurt you. Just a woman on the moor. Some poor soul who died here, no doubt.”
He’s fighting to stay put, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. I expect him to run. I reach out my hand to ask for the lamp at least, but he grits his teeth and surprises me. “What’s your name?”
“Mary,” I reply. “Mary Wells. What’s yours?”
“James,” he says. Then he turns and continues along the path to Rannings.
Before I chase after him, I glance back to where the spirit appeared. Don’t! she’d said. Don’t go in there! With a stricken face, as if she knows what awaits me at the house. Easier said than done. As Missus Whittock’s paid companion, I’m little more than a doll. The old friend I’ve come to find, Benjamin, the boy from the docks—he represents everything about myself I’ve forgotten. The hard-won scran shared between our families; the pride in our own survival. Between the elocution lessons, carriage rides, and empty conversations, my past is the only part of me that still feels warm, like flesh. I can’t let it die.
The spirits wouldn’t possibly understand.
They disembarked near Middlesbrough where Merritt hired a motorcar. They had to double back a few dozen miles, following the railway south, but eventually he took a sharp left, plunging them into untamed moorland. Two follies and a gatehouse later, Rannings was rising before them in all its symmetrical beauty. Its front elevation measured fifteen sash windows across and three high, with four Palladian columns framing the twisting entrance steps leading to the door. Merritt kep
t checking Anne’s expression and smiling at what he found there.
An old porter hobbled forward as the motorcar crunched to a stop, to help with their luggage. “Poor chap,” Merritt muttered; such men were a common sight since the war. They followed him to reception, which was just as palatial as the exterior and gloriously warm. Limestone quarried from the moor paved the entrance hall. Behind the reception desk, a staircase unfurled into a mezzanine, and to the left and right Anne glimpsed parlors, dining rooms, gaming tables, all humming with lazy, aristocratic conversation.
“Mister and Missus John Merritt Keene,” Merritt told the receptionist, while the porter managed their bags. His hooded eyes lingered on Anne a fraction too long.
Her fingers worried at her wedding band. As a doctor’s daughter, her position in society—especially Kent society—was assuredly middle class; and hadn’t Merritt told her his father was a lecturer at York? The social season was winding down and their fellow guests might only be the dregs that remained, but nevertheless the porter’s attention made her feel uncomfortably out of place. At any moment, the manager might come along and refuse them, casting his eye over the uneven hem of Anne’s woolen skirt as if it affronted him and his guests personally.
As the receptionist checked them in, Merritt said, “We’ll freshen ourselves up and take a late lunch in the room, won’t we, darling?” Here, he looked at Anne. “I’m afraid we’re not fit to be seen about the place.” The receptionist smiled. She had a bit of lipstick on her teeth which made Anne feel better. “I’ll have something sent up.” She handed him a key. “Room thirty-two, on the second floor. It’s just been refurbished. We do hope you’ll enjoy your stay, Mister Keene. Missus Keene.”