The Good Daughter

by Alexandra Burt

  “Why is your front tooth chipped? When did that happen?”

  “The day in the woods, when I feel into the creek. And I hit my head.”

  “You hit your head.” He looks worried, his brows raise higher than usual, he’s leaning forward as if not to miss anything I’m doing or saying. “You didn’t tell me you hit your head that day.”

  “I found . . .” I pause. I am not going to call her Jane again, especially not my Jane. “The woman in the woods. I fell in a creek, hit a rock or something. And I chipped my tooth.”

  “I am ordering an EEG and an MRI immediately. Dahlia, you might be having seizures. They can range from anything like an odor without origin, seeing colors or auras, to full-blown grand mal seizures. Let me see if they can fit you in right now. And I’ll call over to the hospital and check in on your mother.”

  “I think you are overreacting a bit. I’m fine.”

  You don’t understand, I want to say, I’ve been given a gift and I am onto my mother and her decades of secrets and variations of stories I know not to be true, she’s a con and I’m onto her and therefore she tried to get rid of evidence. She is not who she claims to be. And neither am I. I don’t even know who I am. I want to tell him all of this but I remain quiet.

  Something is hatching inside of me. Secrets. Why did she always demand that we be secretive about who we were, where we were going? Who were we running from? What is the secret she looks for at night on dark country roads? What are the secrets she attempted to reduce to ashes?

  Then I go a step further. Do I have a secret too? One unwillingly imposed onto me? I don’t have to ask another question: I felt it when I walked across the dirt road on that farm. It is in my mother’s breath, in her bones. In my bones.

  Something isn’t right.

  —

  The EEG technician measures my head and fits me with an elastic cap with electrodes. She studies the monitor. “During the first part of this test I will be asking you to open or close your eyes. At some point light will flash. The second part will just record the brainwaves while you relax. If you fall asleep, don’t worry. The machine is recording your brainwaves even if you’re not awake.”

  I follow her instructions, open and close my eyes when she prompts me to. A light flashes. I see greens, magentas, and yellows. I have the sensation of being a rocket that’s about to soar into the sky, but then the flashes seize and it’s all over—instead of taking off, I turn into a dud. There are more commands, more flashes.

  “You’re all set. Imaging is right next door.”

  The imaging nurse—a radiographer by the name of Brenda—pushes me into a large cylinder. She places some sort of helmet around my head—a head coil she calls it—and sticks a call button in my hand.

  “You can talk to me through the headphone system,” Brenda says. “I’ll be able to see and hear you throughout the entire study. Press the call button anytime to get my attention. Please remain completely still or the images are useless.”

  I close my eyes. I can’t move my head and the cradle-like helmet keeps me completely stationary. After an initial period of silence there’s a loud tapping noise. It increases in volume and then turns into a bleeping sound.

  “The machine has been calibrated and we are about to start. A brain scan takes about twenty minutes.”

  About ten minutes into it, I open my eyes. Even though the chute is stationary, it closes in on me, its walls a mere two inches away from me. With each breath I become tenser and the stagnant air is crushing me like bricks—I can feel the pressure in every bone of my body—I struggle to prevent the fear from escalating into an all-out panic. It rises like a bathtub filled to the brim and it’s about to overflow. My finger atop the call button jerks, I’m tempted to push it, abort it all, but I can’t bear starting again, all over, I’m almost done.

  I try to remember the first memory I’ve ever had. I mentally move backward on the timeline that is my life, want to recall the very first image that my eyes sent to my brain to write on the slate that is my memory. It must be stored somewhere. My first memory. I struggle but there it is.

  Warm skin. Itchy legs. Grass. Amber. Mustard. Saffron. Like paint splotches over a canvas, random and haphazard, flowers strewn across a meadow.

  Gold like butter.

  Buttercups.

  Sixteen

  QUINN

  QUINN had called ahead and told the branch manager she wanted to cash a check. She even mentioned the amount, and after a pause he advised her it would take a couple of days for the money to arrive. “It’s a rather large sum and it’s going to take some time,” he said in a nasal voice, coughing as he attempted to shield the receiver.

  Days later, Quinn entered the Texas Commerce Bank and made her way to the counter and slid the cashier’s check toward the teller. She instructed him to pay out half in cash; with the other half she wanted to open an account. After the paperwork was filled out, she watched the clerk count out the money. He creased the bills lengthwise down the middle so they remained almost flat on the shiny counter. She followed the movement of his hands, smooth as a cunning gambler he organized the piles; stacks of hundred-dollar bills, stacks of fifties, stacks of twenties.

  “Please sign here,” the clerk in the white dress shirt said and pointed at the dotted line on the withdrawal form. “I can get you the manager if you’re interested in investing the rest. Savings bonds maybe?”

  “Some other time. For now I’d like to keep it in an account.” Quinn draped the red scarf she had purchased at the Galvez Hotel around her neck. It was last remnant of a life she had thought possible, even if only for a short moment. “Can you put it in an envelope, please?”

  The man tapped the stack of bills on the counter, leveling the edges, then tucked them into a large white envelope with the Texas Commerce Bank logo. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  Quinn looked at him, wondering how her life would have turned out if she had married a man like him—dress shirt, slacks, shiny shoes, and not whiff of formaldehyde—so unlike Nolan, mucking about on his family farm with nothing to show for it.

  No. No no no no no. This was not one of those moments. This was a moment of joy; she had the money for the old woman, and since there would be a baby, Nolan would end his drab existence and start the life they were supposed to live, someplace else where young families belong. A life with a job besides the mediocre tasks he performed on the ranch—maybe he’d finally sell the farm and with the money they could afford a nice house in a subdivision in Dallas. She had left brochures around the house, of Ponderosa Forest and its houses with wall-to-wall carpeting, not those pesky screeching wooden floors scraped and dulled by decades of wear, pinching the bottoms of your feet when you walked on them barefoot. The new house would be drawn out on a piece of paper—they called it a master plan—there’d be architectural characteristics, stable, established, and upscale, just like the brochure said. There’d be a manicured lawn and a sprinkler sitting in the center keeping the grass green and lush during the summer. Quinn imagined making new friends, meeting neighbors, and maybe inviting them to dinner. Quinn had mentioned selling the farm before, on one of those days when Nolan was in a good mood—there hadn’t been too many good days lately—and she had waited for weeks to mention the subdivision to him, the master plan with a powder room and the carport, and he had just looked at her and had shaken his head in disbelief, as if he couldn’t believe she’d come up with such a crazy idea.

  “What for?” Nolan had said, inspecting his hands for splinters from the wood he had just carried into the house. “Why would I sell the farm? It’s been in my family for over two hundred years—and why would I move someplace where houses are so close you have no privacy whatsoever?” he said and threw the firewood on the floor where the logs scattered like they were about to play an angry game of pick-up-sticks. The baby would change him, she just knew it, would mak
e him less agitated and less easily maddened, would turn him back into a kinder and softer person, the way he used to be, years ago.

  This happened often now, Nolan losing his cool. Once in a fit of rage he had taken a bat to the clay pots on the back porch, smashed them to pieces right in front of her. Quinn could no longer remember what that was all about. Long past were the times when they’d sit on the front porch with their feet propped up, the nights when they’d go out to dinner and a movie. When they’d come home they’d sit in the truck and Nolan would put his arm around her and they’d kiss until their bodies were covered in a layer of sweat. No more picking paint colors and perfect spots for a swing and a sandbox as they listened to a dog bay in the distance.

  By now it was difficult to pinpoint a specific moment of happiness, that’s how long it had been, but eventually she uncovered the trail of a fleeting moment: the day Nolan gave her a yellow dress. Back then, Nolan still tried to make her happy. Still loved her.

  “Open your eyes,” Nolan had said and had looked at her with a grin from cheek to cheek.

  A square box with a silk ribbon tied around it sat atop the bed. Quinn gently slid the silky strip off and lifted the top of the box. Tissue paper crinkled and then settled down. She unfolded it—left, right, top, bottom—and there lay the dress, neatly pressed and folded. Gripping it by the shoulders, she lifted it out of its cardboard home and held it up. The dress, a floral print on cream pale yellow background, was nothing like the musky and flimsy dresses from the secondhand stores she owned.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. Nolan still loved her then, he still cared for her, baby or no baby.

  And there was a summer, it must have been the second summer on the farm, the year the frog population was out of control because the rain had continued far into the spring. Almost all the way through May it had rained and the frogs were singing and croaking and grunting as Nolan put his arms around Quinn every night and that’s how they’d fall asleep, holding each other, and everything was all right with the world. Nolan didn’t even rule out getting a dog or two for the children they were going to have, and as soon as fall came around, he’d start building a playhouse in the backyard, one with a door and window shutters and a small bench in front of it. And if it was a boy, he’d build a tree house in that cypress tree by the fence because Quinn could watch him from the kitchen window. But nothing had turned out the way it was supposed to, nothing was as Quinn expected it to be, nothing was as Sigrid had told her it was going to be. There was more to life than being taken care of.

  After she’d returned from Galveston, she had never told Nolan about the trip nor the baby, Holly, she had held at that beach, or how she had nestled into her arms. For that one moment she had completely forgotten about the darkest part of the forest where the hunters had done unspeakable things to her. It was as if by holding a baby the great forgetting had come over her, as if in the company of such innocence nothing evil could take hold, not even remotely materialize. A little baby was an antidote, so elfin and sweet, without sin. Quinn could only imagine how it must feel to have one of her own, but no, no, she had given up on having her own, but she could settle, could settle for less, for holding one that belonged to her. One that was all hers but not of her.

  —

  After Quinn left the bank, she tucked the envelope under the seat of the Ford truck. She felt giddy with excitement, her entire body seemed to hum, knowing she was going to see the old woman. There was no turning back—not after church last Sunday. Quinn had watched Nolan at the grocery store, how he’d stared at that girl who worked the register at the Market Basket, with her belly all swollen and her ankles unrecognizable. The way he had beheld her, the want written all over his face, his desperation coming off him like stink. It cut her—every single time Nolan stared at that cashier, it cut her.

  And Quinn felt gawked at by the people around her, felt pinned down under a microscope. When she felt well, her stomach was flat as a board, and they stared, pity in their eyes. Quinn knew what they were thinking, that she was barren. Desolate. Sterile. And then she’d bleed and her belly would swell, and they’d smile at her, and then she’d skip a Sunday because she could hardly stand upright, and the Sunday after that, her stomach descended again, they’d lower their eyes, and pity it was all over again.

  When Quinn reached the road leading into the woods, she expected to see a cottage tucked away, a line of trees around the house, vines trailing across porch rafters. She thought there’d be an herb garden with the scent of rosemary, pungent and pine-like, and sweet peas growing on homemade trellises made from willow branches. She had expected strange things hanging off trees, willow puppets and bottles filled with liquids and herbs, all the stuff locals talked about. Quinn was prepared, had money, and wasn’t going to be turned away. She’d wait for her, even if it took hours.

  Quinn stopped the car in front of a run-down trailer, warped and old, leaning into the wind in the middle of a clearing in a forest with mostly pines, juniper trees, and stunted shrubs by a tree line. She pondered if she should grab the envelope with the money but then decided to leave it tucked underneath the front seat. She hadn’t told Nolan about coming here but Seymour, the old neighbor, probably suspected it, maybe even knew. The more questions she’d asked him that day, the more he’d paused before he’d answered, as if he knew what she was up to and didn’t approve.

  Quinn’s heart beat in her chest like a feral animal as she approached the trailer. The garden to the right was nothing but chaotic shades of green dotted with pink and red and white, like a painting attempting to capture a mood rather than specific images. Hollyhocks were covered in an abundance of bees, and butterflies buzzed about, and most of the plants Quinn had never seen but some she recognized: spider flower and Rocky Mountain bee plant. St. John’s wort, a staple of European doctors for depression and anxiety—Sigrid had sworn by it—and an abundance of a plant with long oval leaves. The bell-shaped flowers were purple with green tinges.

  Quinn felt heat spread throughout her body. How do I ask for something that hurts when I even mention it? But this woman had done miracles and she could do one for her too. Holding the baby on the beach that day had been the antidote to all those demons chasing her—even the memory of the little body in her arms was almost as powerful as the moment itself had been, and if it had taught her nothing else, it taught her that there was hope. Nothing was ever lost; living her life with the constant memory of men violating her body, beating and humiliating her was not all she had left, it wasn’t the end of things. If she thought it were, she might as well just give up.

  “Who are you looking for?” The voice reached Quinn from below a willow bursting with leaves as if it was a giant drooping umbrella.

  She was middle-aged, white, with freckled skin so pale that she appeared luminous. Her hair was long and colorless, like the redheads who don’t turn gray but ashen as they age. Slipping her hand inside her jacket, the woman took out a pipe and a small satchel of tobacco. As if loading a gun, she pinched a batch of tobacco in the round opening, packing it evenly with her thumb, without so much as even looking down.

  “What’s your name?” was all Quinn could manage to get out. It sounded casual on the verge of being rude.

  “My name?” Clamping the pipe between her teeth, the woman struck a wooden match on the deck, giving it time to burn back on the wood. Then hovering the match over the packed tobacco, she pulled the flame inward. “You’ve got some nerve walking on my property asking me my name.”

  “I’m Quinn. I meant no disrespect.”

  “Quinn. That’s unusual.” She was lost in thought as if she pondered the name. “Are you as wise as your name suggests?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Quinn said as grand puffs of smoke curled around the woman’s head and she detected an unfamiliar aroma swelling around her. “What do you want me to call you?”

  “Aella.”

&
nbsp; “Is that Italian?”

  “Could be.”

  To Quinn’s right, a taut clothesline reached from the willow to the roof of the trailer. A rabbit hung on a hook off the line, head down, its legs covered in tiny nicks where the coat was cut to skin the hare. Blood, slow as molasses, dripped from its neck. Underneath, a litter of spattered kittens slurped the crimson blood out of a bowl.

  “What do you want?”

  Quinn had never thought about not being able to state her wish out loud. There was something about this woman, Aella, ashen hair and freckles like the Milky Way, strewn about haphazardly yet in perfect order that seemed to silence Quinn. There was no way she could just come out and tell her what she wanted.

  “A reading,” Quinn finally managed to get out. “I’ve heard you give readings. About the future. How much?”

  “It doesn’t cost anything. But you can give whatever you see fit. How much do you have?”

  “I’ll pay you ten dollars.”

  “Come closer.” They sat at a small table underneath the willow. On a piece of white silky fabric, Aella cut a deck of cards twice, then laid out three. They were larger than regular playing cards, colorful, not at all like the card decks Quinn had seen. There was a queen on a throne in the middle, upside down. To the left a man with swords sticking out of his torso, his face distorted. Before Quinn could look at the third card, Aella had collected them and had reshuffled the entire deck. “Tell me why you’re really here, Q.”

  “I can’t,” Quinn said before she even knew those words had come out of her mouth. “I just can’t. Maybe we should just do the reading?”

  “Sounds like it’s a matter of life or death. You want somebody dead? Is that what this is?”

  “No, no, I don’t.”