“You were old enough to know that murder is bad, weren’t you?”
Ben turns to us. “I’m good with killing him. Can I do it right now?”
“Why does it have to be us?” Xavier says. “You could take sleeping pills. You could shoot yourself with Tomas’s stupid gun. Heck, I’m sure Tomas would be thrilled to shoot you himself.”
“Because you’re good at it.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. He’s looking right at me. They all see.
“Because you knew Saskia wouldn’t come if we didn’t come, too.” That’s Ben. “It’s about her. It’s always about her.”
“You mean,” Cornelia says, sounding more than a little relieved, “you want Saskia to kill you?”
“It will be all five of you,” Abraham says. “You’ll plan it and carry it out together. If it’s a gun, you all touch the gun. Doesn’t matter who pulls the trigger, because it’s all five of you deciding together. If it’s not all of you in on it, I know you’ll turn on one another. To know this tears you apart will hurt me so. Think of this as coming full circle.”
“You’re a psychopath,” Cornelia says, the word carrying both horror and amazement.
“A sociopath, I think? Or at least that’s how my mother diagnosed me.” He yawns. “Oh goodness, I’m tired. I get tired so quickly these days.”
“No,” says Ben, “you don’t get to go to sleep. Not until we’re done talking.”
Abraham waves his hand in a vague gesture of dismissal. “I’ll call for you again. After some shut-eye.”
Ben barrels out of the house. We follow, down into the woods. Tomas is out here somewhere, watching us. We move down to the water. We try to keep our voices down.
“Fuck it,” Ben says. “Let’s shoot him.”
“Shoot him with what?” Cornelia’s eyes scan the horizon. “I don’t think Tomas would easily—”
“Ben brought a gun,” I say.
“You did what?”
Ben touches the spot at his waistband. Xavier and Issy sigh in exasperation. “No,” Cornelia says. “We are not shooting anyone.”
“I say we sit it out and let him send the letters,” Issy says. Ben whips his head toward her. “Maybe paying our due wouldn’t be the worst thing. Maybe it would feel good to answer for what we’ve done.”
“What about Sekou?” Cornelia’s really asking about her own girls.
“I say we leave.” Xavier. “Act like we’re considering his proposal. Then one of us sneaks out in the night. Someone fakes an illness or something. Creates a diversion.”
“You’ve watched one too many Law and Orders,” Cornelia says.
“Get to town, contact the police. Tell them we’re being held hostage up here. You think they’d believe that lunatic over the five of us?”
“Then he sends the letters,” Cornelia says. “Then Billy finds out. And Eric. And Jenny. My girls. Everyone we know.”
“You folks need something?” It’s Tomas, coming out from behind one of the great pines. Who knows how long he’s been here.
“Have you called my son?” Issy asks.
“I tried the number.”
“You leave a message?”
“No.”
“That’s not acceptable, Tomas. You need to call back.”
“I tried.”
“I told you, she’s going to send the cops. That’ll be complicated for you.”
“It’ll be complicated for you, too.” It’s clear he’s got a chip on his shoulder. An early childhood spent nipping at our heels. He’s heard stories about us, even remembers some things. He knows we forgot him.
“Tell you what,” Xavier says, “let’s go up to the Main Lodge and call Jenny. We just want to make sure Issy’s boy is okay, you understand that, right, Tomas?” Xavier looks to Ben. “You’d probably like to know how she’s doing, too.”
“If it’s all right with everyone, I’ll stay down here,” Cornelia says.
The others look to me. I can’t imagine the anxiety of the phone call, Teresa’s body pressing toward mine, the smell of pea soup bubbling on the open fire. Out here lies the world Marta taught me to see. Out here, there’s the chance to see you flitting.
122
The ghost-white trunks of the Batula papyrifera groaned. White crystals whipped into my eyes and my breath clouded the air. In the biting chill, away from the others, I tossed the hatchet, my eye on a knot. It hit its mark without a shred of doubt.
The feather, whatever its specific meaning—why it was raven black, why it had chosen Abraham—meant, at least, that you were still out there in the woods. I thought I might be crying—the cold could mix me up—but I was laughing, really, or laughing as I cried. My heart was buzzing like a hornet, but I would hold still. I would be little Sammy Weaver, lying in wait. You had been testing me. I would not let you down.
My knuckles rapped the prearranged triple knock. There was a thunder of furniture inside the cabin before Ben opened the door. His breath nipped at my cheek as I pushed past him into the small cabin.
“Gabby coming back?” he asked, putting the chairs back into place as a barricade.
That’s right; I had told them I was going outside to make sure Gabby wasn’t lurking, so that Issy could slip out to pee. Day and night, Gabby had been knocking, then going away, then coming back to beg at the blocked door. Issy had insisted on keeping her locked out.
Now Issy sobbed as she paced, still in her slippers. Xavier shot me a look; Issy was not, by nature, a sobber. Finally, Cornelia got her calm enough to sit before the fire. She stroked her arm. “Why don’t you come up to the Main Lodge for supper? I’ll sit with you the whole time, and after, we can come back and play Spit.”
Issy sniffed hopefully at the mention of cards.
“And maybe it wouldn’t the worst thing to at least hear what she has to say, you know? Maybe you could tell her how you—”
“I’m never speaking to my mother again,” Issy said.
“But she’s sorry,” Cornelia said, trying not to cry. “She’s so sorry. Can’t you forgive her? She’s your mother, Iss.”
Issy’s jaw tightened. She shook her head. “Jim is a monster.” She looked to me. She blinked once, twice, like you used to, when you needed me to be in charge. “Right?”
Jim was weak and pathetic and drunk. He was lost, confused, unhappy. To call him a monster was to make things too easy.
“Yeah,” I said. Because if Issy forgave Gabby, they would reconcile and leave Home, and I couldn’t live at Home without Issy, and I needed to stay, because I needed to see you. Really, Jim was just a man like most men, who want what they want and believe they can take it, and don’t we let them? Don’t we just.
123
“We could sneak off while they’re gone. Call our lawyers.” Cornelia’s voice is crisp. Wind fringes the surface of the lake. Off Blueberry Island, a pair of Gavia immer, common loons, dive down long past the count of fifty, then pop again far off, their black heads distinctive against the shoreline. Maybe you’re out there on that island, awaiting my next move, or watching from the tip of a pine high above us. Certainly you’re laughing at how incompetently I’m handling this. I stormed in with my troops and now I’m just … stalled. Maybe this was your lesson. Maybe you showed me the wing to get me back, only to disappear again so I’m reminded of all the ways I’ve let you down.
Cornelia’s right; it wouldn’t be easy to walk off the land, but we could manage it. Beat our way through the bush, clamber over the stone walls that separate one plot from the next. Happen upon a cabin with a fisherman inside, frying up his bacon. We’d beg to use his phone. We might call the police, or sure, lawyers, although I’m not quite sure how that would help us, but Cornelia does, and she’s better equipped for the Thinged World.
But then Abraham would send the letters, and I’m not sure even lawyers could fix that. Maybe Cornelia knows this. Maybe that’s why she stays where she is, perched on a rock at the lip of the lake, arms around he
r legs.
“I keep thinking about how Tomas used to shit everywhere.”
A vague memory surfaces: little Tomas lifting up his shirt to squat in the middle of the path. Cornelia wiping him with a maple leaf.
“It was this joke we all had. We used to laugh about it. ‘Watch out for mines!’ We thought it was so funny.” She shakes her head. “Poor kid.”
“We were kids, too.”
“Does that really make you feel better?”
Point taken.
“And then Gabby. The way we treated her. She was the only one who saw the truth.”
“Jim knew the truth, too. To be fair.”
“You don’t have to be fair to him.” She narrows her eyes. “Why do you think he attacked you?”
At the time, I thought I was lying, that he had only grabbed my arm but done nothing more. But now that I am older, I know I wasn’t lying, not exactly. “I think he was heartbroken about, you know, Butterfly moving on to Philip.”
“Everyone seems to forget she’s my mother. Everyone seems to forget she abandoned me. Everyone’s like, oh, poor Ben, he lost Ephraim; what a slut that Butterfly was, good riddance. But I lost my whole family the day she walked off the land.” She watches the loons.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not sorry.”
“I am. I know exactly how that feels.”
She looks at me for a moment, then nods. “Jim tried to rape me.”
“When?”
“The summer he attacked you. After my mother dumped him. He tried to crawl into my bed.” She throws a rock into the lake.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
Another rock. “I wasn’t going to let anyone call me slutty.”
“We wouldn’t have called you slutty.”
“Really, Saskia? Seems like you’re always looking for reasons your friends shouldn’t like me.” Her mouth forms a wry knot. “Anyway, I fought him off. I wasn’t going to be like my mother.”
I flush with shame. “You shouldn’t have had to bear that alone.”
She keeps quiet while the loons dive. “Whenever I’m around you, I hide myself. I’m so afraid of what you’ll say. I didn’t even let myself pray in front of you until the other night.” She reaches up to fiddle with that invisible chain at her neck—a crucifix, must be. “I’ve spent thousands of dollars in therapy, but it still comes down to that dumb part of me that wants to measure up.”
“To what?”
“To you, Saskia. To how Ben looked at you—looks at you. Yes, he does, you know it. To how special Abraham believed you were. You were always the special one.” She clears her throat. “You’re sure Abraham never touched you? Sexually?”
“No.” Why does it feel so important to defend him against that accusation, when what he did to us was terrible in a different way? “Did he touch you?”
“No.” She decides to believe me. “But you know it’s because of Abraham that there were no rules. And it’s because there were no rules that Jim attacked us.”
“There were lots of rules.”
“You thought there were rules because they were built for you. Built to make you know you were powerful. Important. Special. Rules to teach you to Unthing, so that you’d feel holy while you walked up and down these paths. It’s because of those rules that Abraham brought you right where he wanted you, so that when he was ready to use you as the weapon he kept telling you you were, you were at his beck and call.”
“That’s not fair,” I say.
“Isn’t it?”
“You were there, too.”
“I certainly was.” She dusts off her pants as she rises to her feet. “And for that, I’ll never forgive myself.” She looks off along the bank. “We have to try to fix it, right? Even if there’s no way to fix it?”
“Yes.”
A gust comes off the water. She narrows her eyes as it tumbles my hair. “If I didn’t know, I’d never guess you’d been shut inside your house for sixteen years.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re so … happy.”
“I’m not happy.”
Cornelia goes up the path without me. I listen for you, but you’re hiding.
124
Come the end of March, the snow thinned. The air, though not yet warm, promised something besides cold. Abraham’s radio droned theories about the fed’s tactical maneuvers, about what David Koresh must be planning. But that particular morning, a keening cut through the radio’s clatter and carried down the hill, sending us running to the driveway to discover who had died—all but Issy, who stuck to the cabin, avoiding Gabby.
Sarah was on her knees before the Main Lodge, tearing at her clothes. I didn’t think people actually did that.
Ben skidded toward her. “What is it, Ma?” He turned, frantic, for news from someone, anyone. But the only sign of another adult was Abraham’s door, closed, the radio droning from the other side.
Nora darted from behind a tree and pointed to the twinned footprints leading down off the driveway. “Daddy took his tools.”
Amos appeared then, and spat on the ground. “Your dad ran off with that whore.”
“Butterfly is not a whore!” Nora screamed, as if she’d had to say it a dozen times already. She tore away from us, into the woods.
Ben was back to his mother. “He left? He left with Butterfly?”
Cornelia was backing away now. Xavier lifted his eyes toward her, and then to me, before following Cornelia into the woods, which meant I didn’t have to.
“I knew,” Sarah said, looking out at the driveway. “I knew he had eyes for that woman but I wouldn’t let myself believe it. He’s a good man. He’s a good man.”
Ben tried to gather his mother into his arms, but she pushed him off. Her sound had become a bleating. “He’ll come back, Ma.” But Ephraim taking his red toolbox off the land made his departure more certain than anything else. I knew he should say something to ease her further, to bring her back to reason. But he was struck dumb.
“Your bread,” I said. The first thing that came to mind. “The Mother.” I meant, your bread will call them back. I meant, put your hands back into it, expend your sorrow into its making. I meant, feed us.
Sarah lifted her head as though my words had carried past her on the wind. She followed them into the Main Lodge, swiping at her wet cheeks. It wasn’t long before we heard the slam of the kitchen door, at the other end of the lodge. From inside, someone shouted: “She took the Mother.”
We started down the trail to the latrines, but by the time we reached Sarah, she had already dumped the Mother into the reeking black hole. Ben lifted his arms in surrender and jogged down the hill. I followed him, past the closed chicken coop, and the snow-sleeping garden, and the cluster of cabins. Issy was still in ours, locked away. I thought to tell her what had happened, but Ben was ten yards offshore, standing on the ice.
The smooth sheet crackled under my feet. Every step, a pop. “We shouldn’t be out here. It’s not frozen over yet.” The sun was blinding. White hillocks offered shadows here and there. Blueberry Island was a snowdrift.
“You think she’ll start using again?” His question was simple. He thought I knew a secret that I didn’t. But without the facts, I knew that he meant Sarah. “She did something really bad, Saskia. I don’t know what, not all the way, but I think she might have killed someone? I know she was selling drugs. Transporting them for her father. I guess my grandpa is some kind of big drug dealer or something? My dad told me he saved her. He said he likes fixing things and he knew he could fix her, too. He heard about this place and he knew she’d be safe, without anything to tempt her. He said we could never leave.” Ben shielded his eyes against the endless white. “But maybe I should take Mother and Nora and go.” His chin wobbled. “If the sheriff’s really going to come up here and shoot us up.”
I reached my hand out. I traced the length of his arm. “She’s safer here than anywhere else. We all are. Anyway, where woul
d you go? We have nowhere else to go.”
“Yeah,” he said, after a minute. Then he took my hand.
125
Lunch is of the old school—lentils and rice. When Sarah cooked the same recipe there was a velvety secret embedded in its flavors, but in Teresa’s hands, the meal tastes, at best, like lentils and rice.
Teresa watches me choke it down. Cornelia and Issy are busy in some worried conversation about their children, so I take the chance to ask, “How’s Jim?”
“You think I spoke another word to that man? After what he did to you?”
“He was your husband, Teresa.”
She shrugs. “Marriage counts a lot less than friendship, far as I’m concerned.”
Is that what we are—friends? “So why are you blackmailing us?”
“And just so you know, I didn’t lie to you. You asked if Abraham was here, and I said he wasn’t on the land. He isn’t. He’s on Marta’s land. I’m not a liar.”
“Why are you helping him?”
She sighs. “Tomas talked about coming back ever since we left. He was so little, and the dog attack was awful. You’d think he’d have blocked it all out. But having to leave the way he did only made the place more special to him. He grew up feeling like he missed out on the best time in the world. So when Abraham found us, and offered the chance to return, well, I couldn’t say no.”
“But it wasn’t the best time in the world. Abraham used us. He’s using you, Teresa.”
“Oh, I know.” She’s looking at her boy. “But I wanted to give Tomas his time here. He deserves it, after the price he paid.” She flashes me a quick smile. “I guess you could say I’m using Abraham back.”
If a stranger stumbled upon us, they’d think we were exactly what Teresa called us, friends. Tomas shovels in food. Ben’s eyes dart from face to face. Xavier tries to keep up the conversation. Issy’s brow sits heavy over her worried eyes. Cornelia’s fingers fiddle, near constantly, with the phantom crucifix. And me? I look out the window every chance I get. You, you, you.
Fierce Little Thing Page 25