The Good Daughter

by Alexandra Burt

  When Dahlia sees the book on the kitchen table, she is taken aback, didn’t know I had kept it all along, maybe even thought it was just another figment of her imagination.

  I hear my own voice, unfamiliar and remarkably steady.

  “After Quinn found Nolan in the shed, she told Tain she’d take care of his body. She made her go back to the house, and later that night she went out and dug a grave by the cypress, next to the grave of Tain’s stillborn. She put the baby in a basket and it slept silently on the porch but when it woke and wanted to be fed, she took it to Tain and then continued digging Nolan’s grave. By the time the sun came up, her fingers were bloody and blistered, but she kept on. It took her all night but she managed to drag Nolan a few inches at a time, until she reached the hole in the ground.”

  I can smell the dankness of the dress; the dust and mold and decades of abandonment have taken their toll. The other day I saw her walking past with Bobby and the dog. They all paused, Dahlia and Bobby holding hands, the dog sniffing around. I’m glad the dog isn’t a digger. I watched them cross the meadow that used to be covered in buttercups. Over the years wildflowers have taken over and they are plenty now, bursting with colors and diversity, just as it should be. Dahlia will, from now on, throw a glance toward the cypress every single time she passes by.

  Dahlia must realize I’m telling her a story of consequences, not a mere figment of my imagination or fictional characters on some stage that I control. There is one more thing left I need her to know, and it is probably the hardest part of it all. I am aware that I will have to break her heart. She is strong, but even the strongest hearts have a breaking point, and I also know that if there’s any chance of Dahlia becoming who she was meant to be, this has to be done.

  I want to hold her hand as I tell her the rest of the story but I won’t be able to bear it when she pulls away from me so I don’t touch her at all.

  “There’s more,” I say. “About Tain and Quinn.”

  Dahlia looks puzzled, doesn’t know what to make of this. In her mind, the story seemed to have come to a conclusion. I wonder if it clicked, if she put two and two together.

  After all, there are three graves by the tree.

  Thirty-nine

  AELLA

  THE tinkers didn’t return to claim the girl as they’d promised. Others passed through but not the ones who had left her behind. Eventually Aella got word that on their way through Louisiana the group had been arrested for fraud. Aella told her of their fate yet the girl seemed oblivious.

  “When is the baby due?” Aella asked.

  “Another two months, maybe three,” the girl said.

  Aella realized now that she wasn’t nearly as far along as she had thought. Her elfin frame made her stomach poke out more than it would have on a taller and bigger girl. “Is it moving a lot? Have you been to a doctor?”

  “It kicks. We had a doctor at our camp. We don’t go to doctors in town,” she said and absentmindedly shredded sage leaves with her fingers.

  They’d be no good for smudging but they were abundant and easy to grow so Aella didn’t dwell on it. She also taught her about the herbs in the garden but wasn’t sure if Tain retained any information. She listened intently, or so it seemed, and was curious about palm reading, and Aella showed her a rudimentary way of foretelling the future. Three lines, their depth and continuity—folks around here were easy to fool.

  The girl’s attention span was short and she began roaming the woods, came back with flowers that grew nowhere near the trailer—the next field of bluebonnets was miles from here—and Aella hoped the spell she had performed on the girl’s behalf would keep her safe. There was no telling what she could get herself into.

  —

  September came and the storms remained mild—the rain was heavy but never lasted longer than one day and one night, and in the morning there was sunshine breaking through the clouds. Lightning flashed, yet it was a mere flicker and then it died, and when a bolt of light broke through the darkness, it was for the briefest of moments. Aella kept Tain occupied during those times. She gave her tea steeped with herbs that made her fall asleep and not wake until morning, when the storms had passed by.

  One day, Aella felt her skin tingling and her ears were more alert than usual. She knew there was a big one brewing. Most birds had migrated by then—for others it was still too early—but there weren’t any bees around, as if those winged creatures knew something the rest of the world wasn’t privy to quite yet.

  Everything Aella had taught Tain about the weather and its patterns came to fruition then. The girl questioned her obsessively about the coming storm and what was going to happen, went on and on about the roof flying off and cars being tossed around by the winds. Aella tried to calm her but when the storm approached and the wind began to howl and the room remained dark as night even though it was noon, the girl turned into pure adrenaline. When the willow in front of the trailer creaked and its limbs whipped against the windowpanes, she sat on the floor rocking back and forth. Aella led her back to the cot in the corner and by the light of a lightning flash she thought she saw red spots on the floor where Tain had cowered. She gave the girl another dose of laudanum and watched her nod off. Hours later Aella awoke to the front door open, and she rushed to scramble for the knob pounding against the wall. She caught a glimpse of the girl running down the steps, her hair whipping violently about her.

  “No! Come back!” Aella screamed but she couldn’t even hear her own voice above the battered structure. She stood on the threshold screaming and yelling and then the trailer creaked like the trees around her and the noise rose and Aella looked up to make sure the roof was still there. It was nothing like the storms that usually passed through this part of Texas—Aurora was too far off the coast and any storm was bound to lose its strength so far inland—this was much stronger, fiercer.

  After it was over, she kept an eye out for the girl, yet she was nowhere to be seen. Earlier that day, after the clouds cleared and the sun burst through, she had found blood on the floor where Tain had cowered in the corner and she knew that the red she had seen hadn’t been a illusion. The girl, worked up by the storm, had gone into labor and Aella had mistaken it for panic. There was no telling what had happened to her and the baby. No one could survive out there in such wrath, especially not a woman in labor.

  Two years went by—two years of guilt and blame she put on herself—until she saw the girl again. Aella had almost forgotten about the woman she had called Q. but one day she appeared on her property. Aella recognized the powder blue truck and when the door opened, she thought she was looking at a ghost.

  Q. emerged from the truck and then the passenger’s door opened. At first the woman following behind her, approaching the trailer, was no more than a chill in the air, a shimmer of mist, diffused, like a poorly taken photograph. It wasn’t until the woman came within a few feet of her that she congealed into a form; the girl that had run off during the storm over two years ago, Tain. In her arms she carried a small child with brilliant eyes and light, almost silver skin. Quinn told the girl with the baby to sit in the chair under the willow.

  Aella did the math and it didn’t add up; the baby in the girl’s arms wasn’t a day older than five months, if that. It couldn’t be that it was Tain’s baby. She wasn’t going to ask any questions, wasn’t going to dwell on it.

  “She must go,” was the first thing Q. said, out of earshot of Tain, and even though there were tears in her eyes, Aella knew she was serious. “I need you to take her back. You sent her to me and now she must go. I love her but I can’t allow her to stay.”

  Aella took a step backward. For a moment all was silent, then Aella understood. She was adept at recognizing people’s intentions by their manners and this had nothing to do with petty jealousy or distrust but sheer fear on the part of Q.

  “When the travelers come back through we can send her
with them,” Aella said and made sure to watch Q.’s face closely. It seemed wise to send her the same way she had come; the girl after all had appeared that way and sending her back wasn’t farfetched at all.

  “When will they be back? Soon?” Q.’s words were breathless and strained. She had a habit of constantly turning around as if she was checking on the woman with the baby.

  “They’ll be looking for work soon. I’ll contact you when—”

  “No, no, no. You don’t understand. She can’t be around the baby. Not another minute.”

  Aella felt for Q., always had. Broken she was, now more so than ever. “Bring her back tomorrow,” Aella said and added, “Money, bring money. They’ll take her all the way to South Carolina but I can’t guarantee she won’t come back. Know that. Unless . . .” Aella was going to offer a spell—in her mind she assembled the items needed, graveyard dirt, nails—

  She was interrupted by Q.

  “No more spells, just make sure she leaves.”

  “She might come back. Are you prepared for that?”

  “Let me worry about that,” Q. said.

  “I have a question.” Aella turned and watched Tain with the baby. The way she held her, then scooted her from one side of the hip to the other, leaving the baby’s hat crooked on her head, and her pants riding up, exposing her legs. “Does she know she’s leaving?”

  “I’ll tell her tonight,” Q. said, turning to leave. On her way to the truck she spoke one more time. “Tomorrow?” Q. asked, fear in her eyes, as if Aella was going to renege on her.

  “Yes, tomorrow. You can drop her off. She can wait until they pass through.”

  —

  Q. dropped the girl off the next morning. She got out of the truck and without another word Tain disappeared into the trailer.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “About what?”

  “Where she’s going? What did you tell her?”

  Q.’s eyes became big and glossy. “She’s going back where she came from. With her people, where she belongs.”

  “Listen. Don’t take this lightly.” Aella paused, searching for the right words. “I’m not looking forward to a big scene here. If there’s any trouble, I’ll send her back to your farm. Know that.”

  “Don’t worry,” Q. said and before she left, she turned around one more time. “I need to talk to someone. Recently departed.” She paused and when Aella remained silent, she added, “You must know how to do this.”

  “There are ways. Salves. Causing dreams. But they are poisonous—you have to be careful.”

  “There are ghosts. On the farm,” Q. added, unprompted.

  “People who used to live there? They crossed over?”

  “Yes.”

  “Spirits, you mean. Not ghosts.”

  “Whatever. I need to speak to them. I need them to go away.”

  Aella didn’t hesitate and opened a drawer. After rummaging for a while she handed Q. a small container of salve with a foot drawn on the lid. It was one of the strongest salves she made, mixed and prepared to remove the barriers between here and there, this world and the spirit world. Her grandmother used to call them a key to the other realm.

  A bit of yarrow to protect you on your flight,

  A bit of datura, to give you special sight.

  Monkswood, foxglove, belladonna, and henbane for a moonlit night.

  Aella had never sold the salve or given it away, just used it herself, and only in small portions and never on cut skin, but something in Q.’s eyes compelled her, and she handed her the metal container. “Here you go,” she said. “Apply to the top of your feet. But sparingly. It can kill you if you’re not careful.”

  “Doesn’t everything?” Q. said.

  Aella never saw her again after that. Q. was a strong woman; strong but damaged. Those are the dangerous ones.

  Tain stayed for a better part of the week. When the tinkers passed through, she packed her up and Aella watched as a young girl with a doll in her arms grabbed Tain’s hand, smiling at her. Tain seemed confused, looking around. “Where am I going?”

  “Didn’t someone tell you? Remember you came here with them?” Aella said and pointed at the tinkers as the trunks of the cars thudded shut. Aella could tell that she was overwhelmed and she cursed Q. under her breath, yet this was none of her business. “Don’t worry now. Remember before you came here? That’s where they are taking you.”

  “Where I came from?” Tain hesitantly followed the girl with the doll toward a car.

  Every step she took was light, making no sound at all. She paused, took another step, stopped again. Tain’s face was fearful, but Aella saw her bravery. Then her eyes lit up as if she remembered something. She mumbled a few words but Aella couldn’t make them out and she didn’t ask.

  Tain got into a vehicle and the caravan of tinkers took off. After the vehicles had departed, not so much as a fleeting image of them in the distance, Aella remembered that Tain’s footsteps had been soundless. That meant but one of two things: parts of her would always remain here or she’d return.

  Aella stood underneath the willow tree and stared up into the sky. It was as blue as an ocean. Infinite in its possibilities.

  Forty

  DAHLIA

  AFTER Tain left, Quinn thought it was all over, you know,” my mother says. “She thought they’d live on the farm. Be happy.”

  I remain silent. It’s hard for me to see her this upset and I look at Tallulah’s legs twitching in her sleep.

  “Do you understand now?” my mother asks.

  “What am I to understand?” is all I manage to get out. Suddenly I’m afraid of my own thoughts, the connections I make in the back of my mind.

  “This farm. This house. Everything.”

  Usually my mother remains silent to either punish or prove a point, but this is different. For the first time I see her struggling to get words out.

  “The deed, the farm, in Quinn’s name.” My mother is shaking, the tremor now surging through her entire body. She’s fearful; I can hear it in her voice.

  “Why is it in your name?”

  “Remember the day we came to Aurora? The sheriff and Bobby—you met Bobby that day.”

  “I remember.”

  “The sheriff. Ramón de la Vega.”

  “Mother, I know. What are you trying to say?”

  It hits me like a thousand bricks all at once. Yet I wait. I need to hear her say it.

  She falls apart. I’m sorry, she repeats, I’m sorry I’m sorry.

  I don’t dare ask what she’s sorry for. She talks about herself, then switches to Quinn and back to I.

  “I saw their faces in every man I passed on the street,” she says. “When I thought I had shaken it off, there it was again, as if it was a rubber band allowing me to go only a certain distance away, just to snap me back in. I had to fight it off, again and again.”

  There’s more rambling, more of the same, and then in a low haunting voice, she says: “The way the breath of a man goes from normal to panting, on top of you, how thick the air becomes, how it covers your body in disgust. How you wake up every morning and you think it was a bad dream but then it sinks in. It’s not going away. It’s your life and you are forced to live it and there’s nothing that can be done. It’s forever.”

  She goes back to the part of the story when Quinn wakes up in the woods, after Benito, her lover, leaves. And on and on she goes, every single detail is laid out elaborately, as if she’s gone over it a hundred, maybe even a thousand times, everything she’s put in a specific place, everything has been assigned a meaning. The moon watched the men rape Quinn, so every time Quinn looked at the moon, it threw the images back at her. The woods had swallowed Quinn and every time she went back into the woods, the images reappeared.

  I want to interrupt her, tell her I know
this already, know all about this. Something in her eyes demands my silence. And then she speaks of the hunter again, the scent of deer urine, the way he blocked my path, and how they dragged—

  “Dragged me like a deer carcass, over rocks and roots and brambles, like I was a dead animal, incapable of feeling anything.”

  Dragged me. I remain silent. And then it gets worse. Three words bring me to my knees. Three words I had feared but somehow convinced myself couldn’t be true. How could I have been so blind? I was preoccupied with missing women, with myself, Bobby, and Tallulah. I should have connected the dots sooner.

  “I am Quinn,” my mother says.

  As long as it takes to stir a cup of coffee, to fold a towel or tie a shoe, that’s how long it takes for me to grasp what’s been in front of me all along: Memphis is Quinn. Nolan was her husband.

  The air stagnates, I can’t breathe. This isn’t a story, this is her story.

  I’m sorry. Those words have no meaning at all. Until.

  “Tain was your mother.”

  —

  “Tain, honey, what was your mother’s name?” Quinn didn’t know where else to start. Any children of hers would have been named Nolan Jr. or Frances after her late mother.

  Tain just averted her eyes.

  “What was your father’s name?”

  “Peter,” Tain said.

  “Was he a good man?”

  “Good enough.”

  “Well, it’s a girl so you can’t name her Peter. I don’t know the female form of Peter, I don’t even know if there is one.”

  “Petra,” Tain said. “I like Petra.”

  “Petra.” Quinn allowed the name to dissolve on her tongue. It seemed strong and indestructible but she didn’t like it. It was harsh, didn’t have any softness to it.

  “If you like it, Petra it is.”

  “Okay. Petra. Her name is Petra.”

  —