She pulled herself up. Her thighs shook with the stress of opening and widening. But she was not a victim. This in her soul she knew. She had done what she had not as a victim but as a soldier. What she had done was not sex but spite, a defiant dare against a man who had tried to ruin her family. And she had won. She had used him with her body, his own weakness against her strength.
But victim or not, she had nothing left now. Her substance gone. She had given it all away in battle and now lay wounded and half-dead. She had won, but she was too bloodied to know victory.
Eveline stumbled forward, the sword in her gut, taking one step at a time. Forward. She saw the lights of her farm and she ran again. She ran with legs that wobbled toward those lights and the safety and the warmth of what was real. There, in her home, she would wash and scald the remnants of that man and those memories from her mind. She would hold her children and tell them that all would be all right. She would tell her nephew that he would not have to go back to a life underground. But part of her feared that she would not be able to say any of those words, that she might collapse into what she had done. By walking into her house, she might soil it forever.
Eveline turned into the Kiser lane. Her property. Her home. Andrew and the boys were in the yard holding a lantern, shining the light to see the woman coming toward them. She tried to fix her hair, tried to hide the selling of her soul to the devil.
Edgar, her little boy, ran up to meet her. She smiled ruefully at her innocent child who was going to hug her. And she wanted him to embrace her more than anything else in her life. She opened her arms out to receive him.
Instead, he barreled toward her in a fury of fists. “Where have you been?” he shouted, and feebly punched her skirt. Tears streamed down his face. “We had no dinner. You didn’t tell anyone where you were!”
She froze and her jaw dropped at the boy’s anger. He cried out, “You only think of yourself! You don’t think about us anymore since Papa died!” He shook with anger. “You don’t care about any of us!”
Her blinking quickened and everything dropped away. She pulled back and with a thrust of iron backhanded her son clean across the cheek, sending him flying into the dirt.
“How dare you!” she attacked him blindly. She hit him with fists against the ground. “How dare you!” she screamed.
“That’s enough!” Andrew seized her arm, met her eyes hard so she heard him through her haze. “That’s enough, I said!”
She pulled her arm away, saw her child on the ground bruised and crying, and the world blurred. She ran to the house, stumbled over roots and rocks. Dying. Running. Death. Running. She went behind the log pile and grabbed the ax, the weight making her drag it rather than carry it. She pulled the ax and her broken body to the apple tree, swung hard and like a maniac at the trunk.
“How could you!” Eveline wailed, slammed the ax into the trunk again, splaying only a chip of bark. “How could you leave me!” She swung the ax, screamed at every futile hack at the ancient bark. “How could you do this to me!”
This tree had fed them with its septic apples, lured them with its bounty, then held her husband as his neck broke. This tree mocked her, shaded living limbs over her dead babies and husband. She had loved this tree and it had poisoned her. She was Eve. She was tempted and now fallen. But she would not fall alone.
Eveline screamed and cursed and pummeled the tree with no thought or sight of anything else until her body fell into exhaustion and her arm could not lift the ax for another swing. She pulled at the wooden handle, had to take down the tree, had to erase what Wilhelm had done, what his death made her do. She was falling, but Andrew caught her, kicked the ax to the ground. He held her there under the moon and next to the barely maimed apple tree, and she sobbed into his shoulder, broke limply against his chest.
Andrew walked her into the house, brought her up to her room and helped her into bed, saw the scratches and tears along her dress. He smelled Frank’s cologne on her skin. A crumpled, signed deed dropped from her pocket. And the truth of what she had done sank in with each of her brutalized sobs. I’ll make this right, she had said. The words replayed, left him broken. He covered her with the blanket and left her to her grief.
He put the boys to bed, hugged them until they finally wept for their father and for their mother. He hugged them as they shook with events and a war and a terror that they did not understand. He hugged them until they cried themselves to sleep.
The old farmhouse was quiet now. Andrew sat on the edge of Will’s bed. He looked at his large hand sitting on his knee. He bent the fingers, then relaxed them again. He rose and stepped with purpose down the creaking steps, went outside.
With ax in hand, Andrew stared at the enormity of the ancient apple tree. The limbs, old, had witnessed too much suffering. And they seemed to ask to be relieved, to say good-bye. A wind blew and rustled the branches, the leaves waving in surrender.
Andrew touched the space in the bark that was engraved with the word “Lily.” She had cut them both. The young man patted the deep and wise bark, rested his forehead for a moment against the jagged skin before lifting the ax and swinging it hard into the tree.
The ding and reverberation nearly knocked him backwards. Andrew pulled the ax from the nick and hit hard again, the shudder to his good shoulder rough and painful. He took the ax to the same severed spot. Again and again and again. His arm ached and his fingers blistered against the smooth handle and he didn’t stop. Again. Again. Again.
The moon arched and moved on its journey and still Andrew hacked at the tree. His hand bled now and he only stopped to rub it clean on his trouser, the sting of stopping nearly worse than the sting of movement.
Andrew weakened and he called upon the fire. He called upon the fire that filled the breathing spaces and breathing bodies of the coal mine that took his father. He called upon the pain and fire of his shattered body, the fire that reminded his skin and bone and cells of what was once whole. He called upon the fire of Eveline’s sacrifice.
Andrew called upon the fire at the core of the earth. The molten lava that rose with his cry through his feet and through his veins. Up, up, up it moved and filled his muscles and made them crackle against the heat. And he glowed. And he took the ax and swung with the flames and he hit and he hit and he hit. The pain rattled across his nerves—a shattering, brittle pain like metal pans clanging, their harsh throbbing vibrating each rib and vertebra.
He found the fire, he gritted his teeth with its burn and still he swung. He swung until the burn became him. Until he became the fire and then the pain left. The fire now glowed white and strong and hot, but it did not singe, for he was the fire now and a fire does not shrink away from its own power; it lets it rise and ignite.
Lily. Andrew thought about the woman he had loved. She had moved on. She had never loved him. He hit harder and quicker. He had felt ashamed, worthless. He hit harder. But no more. No more.
Andrew thrust the ax blade deeper into the fissure of the tree. A crack, a wounded sigh from deep within sounded, and he hit again. He watched his one arm as he swung. Watched the deep lines of its muscles and he grew even as it weakened. He grew strong with each thrust. He had nothing to hide. He was complete and whole. He grunted as he worked through the fire of his hand and arm and shoulder. He would not hide or feel less than. He could take down this tree with one hand. He could do it. And he hacked harder and fiercer than before until just before dawn the tree bowed its head, cracked from its ancient depths and crashed to the ground.
* * *
Dawn broke. With the smell of smoke, the boys found the fallen apple tree in sparks. Andrew worked around the burning branches, pushing sticks to contain the fire. The boys broke off stray limbs and flung them into the centered heat of the fire. Through the haze, Eveline joined them, a gray wool sweater wrapped tightly around her shoulders. She watched the flames and the curling of wizened limbs and seemed to take power as all fell away into ash. When only the skeleton simmered with
glowing red veins among a black charred body, Andrew went up to Eveline. “I need to go to Pittsburgh.”
She nodded. Her eyes were calm, grateful, nearly at peace. He ignored his raw hand and numb arm, his hunger, the fatigue of being up all night, and walked to the Muellers’ to borrow their car. He would do it now while he had the strength. One tree was down; now he had to put to rest another standing in his way.
CHAPTER 51
Polish Hill hovered on a rise above the city, overlooking the burping, savage steel mills. The line of row houses and squat wood houses decayed in varying degrees of rot, no different from any of the other immigrant tenements inhabited by the steel and factory workers. The soot-stained buildings sagged under concave roofs, with windows of taped over broken glass and yellowed newspaper.
The restaurant owned the corner; a bleached poster for Heinz pickles hung upon the grime-covered brick. A handwritten sign in the window said simply: Pierogis. The building, perfectly square, a block with flat roof and the side closest to the chimney completely black. The smell of onions and potatoes and grease emanated from the homes, from the very sewers, but came strongest near the little eatery.
Now that he was here, Andrew couldn’t go in, couldn’t remember what he wanted to say. In the window, he did not see Lily among the customers. He tucked his hand in his front pocket and turned the corner to the back of the building, leaned against the back wall. His fingers found the ring in his pocket and he looked forward to throwing it in the river after this ordeal ended, another scrap of useless litter clogging the Pittsburgh waterways.
For a moment, he thought about leaving but resisted. He wouldn’t leave without an explanation. He wouldn’t leave until he put her behind him once and for all.
A line of steam rose from the bottom of the steel back door, carrying the smell of all that was being boiled inside. The sounds of the kitchen echoed against the walls, the sounds of large pots moving, the slurred voices in Polish and English, of shouted orders.
The steel door opened. A rush of warm air spilled out, magnifying the sounds within for a split second before the door clamped like a lid to a pot. Lily hoisted a garbage bag with two hands, her shoulders struggling with the weight. Andrew pushed his back against the wall, his insides cold and frantic.
Her hair was pulled back into one braid, the short strands hanging loose around her face. Her dress was spotted and smeared with grease. A blue sweater reached past her hips and the sleeves past her wrists, must have been given to her by a very large woman and made Lily look all the more tiny and fragile.
Lily opened the metal lid of the garbage can, releasing a torrent of flies that she did not seem to notice; then she lifted the bag and dropped it into the can with a bang. The young woman wiped her forehead with her sleeve, her eyes closed.
She looked so tired. A part of him wanted to run to her and pick her up in his arm, feel her head against his shoulder. He wanted to rub her hair and kiss her softly and tell her to rest, rest against him, he had her now. But then Lily put her hands to her lower back and stretched, the slight bulge of her pregnancy visible beneath the sweater.
The sight bruised and left him weak. Pieter had been right. Her growing abdomen plain to see left him queasy. And Andrew then realized that he had come in hopes that Pieter had been wrong. In the hopes that there had been some terrible mistake and she was still his, would still be his. He had come with hope and now there was none. There was nothing to do but say good-bye.
“Lily.”
The woman jumped and spun. Andrew emerged from the shadows. Her whole face dropped and her hands pulled the large sides of her sweater to her middle, clasped them closed with a tight embrace, her eyes wide as those of a hunted rabbit.
“What are you doing here?” The question barely had muscle to give it volume.
“I had to see for myself. To make sure.”
She shook her head frantically. “But how? How did you . . .”
“Pieter.” He stood straight without wavering. “He saw you working here.”
Lily tightened her grip upon her sweater, her eyes drawn to her feet. “I’m sorry.” A tear rounded and dripped off her downturned cheek.
Andrew nodded, his stomach cramped. “You could have told me, Lily.”
The outstretched sleeve flew to her mouth and she bent into it, covered her sobs, her shoulders shaking quietly. Andrew watched her, watched the woman he loved, for the last few seconds before he would never see her again. There was nothing else she could say. The lead weight of acceptance numbed. There was no anger or regret or hope, just the numbness and a readiness to go, to leave this all behind.
He turned to go. “I would have done anything for you, Lily. I’m sorry you didn’t think I was good enough for you.”
“Good enough?” she sputtered.
He met her tear-streaked eyes only briefly. “I just hope this man, whoever he is, treats you well. I hope he loves you even half as much as I did.”
“Love?” Her mouth opened and her face twisted in repulsion. “You think the man who did this to me loved me?”
But he couldn’t hear anymore. The numbness grew up his neck and closed his ears. “Good-bye, Lily.”
She came up from behind and grabbed his arm, twisted the material of his shirt in her hand. “You think I wanted this? You think I left you because you weren’t good enough?” Her crying melted into shouting, her eyes stretched and wild.
He was tired. “Let go,” he ordered wearily.
“How could you think that?” She beat against his arm with a weak fist. “How could you think I don’t love you! I’m the one not good enough. Don’t you see?”
He closed his eyes, just wanted to leave. She let go, her body shaking. “Don’t you know what I am?” She pounded on her chest. “Don’t you see? Look at me!”
The detachment shattered under her disgust, under the pain writhing the body in front of him. Her anger fled, left her unable to stand, and she collapsed onto her knees on the broken concrete. Her head lowered to her hands and she cried from the very depths of her small body. She turned her face upward, the way a flower leans higher to the sun. “Don’t you see? I’m the one not good enough for you. I never was.”
Andrew knelt in front of her, oblivious to the dirty concrete. “Why are you saying these things?”
Beneath the quivering chin were signs of exasperation. “You don’t want anything to do with me, Andrew. I’m no good.” She reached for his face, touched his cheek. “But now you see. Now you know who I am.”
He pulled her cold hand into his and it was without life, lay limp in his warm palm. “You’re not making any sense.”
The fight was gone. The tears were drying in clear lines and leaving pink edges along her soft face. Her eyes were sleepy and listless as she stared through him. “I didn’t want to do it. Be with that man. I swear to God, I didn’t want to do it.”
Andrew remembered the smug face of Dan Simpson. “Dan made you do this?”
“Dan?” She looked disoriented. “I haven’t seen Dan since I hit him with that rock. This has nothing to do with Dan.”
They stared at each other for a long while until Lily shook her head, long and low. “Don’t you see?”
“No.”
She started to cry again like he was hurting her, pinching her skin. “I gave my body to a man, Andrew.” Lily’s mouth stayed open with the sound. “I’m no more than a whore. It didn’t matter that I tried not to, that I fought and I cried. I did it.”
Suddenly, Lily’s face froze and her eyes went blank. “I didn’t want to do it.” The words siphoned of life, the tones muted. “Frank made me. Told me I had to do it. He was in a bad way. Got in a heap a debt from his gambling. Told me I had to clean it up. Said he’d make Claire do it if I didn’t. Said he’d beat her raw, if I didn’t do it.”
Her voice quieted and she spoke to herself. “I couldn’t let Claire get hurt. I couldn’t. She protected me all her life.”
Her hazel eyes turned to him
, glistening green pools with emerald depths. She placed her hands gently on her belly. “And now, I got a little one.” Her chin dimpled. “Got this little one to take care of. It isn’t her fault, being made the way she was.”
The young woman smiled now, a sad, rueful smile that cracked with sorrow. “I’m no good, Andrew. Never was. I’m sorry I hurt you. But you didn’t do anything wrong. You’re like an angel and I had no right bringing blackness to you and your family.”
She looked at him, her face so soft and tender in open despair. “Now you see. You see why I wasn’t good enough for you. That day we were going to be together I wanted nothing more in the whole world, but I kept seeing what I had done, how I had no right being with you after what I did with that man. How you deserved somebody smart and beautiful like those girls that always come to church with their white dresses and pretty shoes.
“At least you know now. You can go and move on and not give me a second thought. You can marry one of those pretty girls and pretend I was just a bad dream from long ago. And . . . I hope you’ll be happy,” she said in a soft voice. She pulled herself up, cradled her growing baby and looked toward the steel door of the restaurant. “I’m sorry I brought you pain. I—I just want you to have the very best in life. It’s what you deserve.”
Lily turned. The smoke from the crusted chimney swirled and blended with the poisoned sky, a mingling of grays that suffocated the forgotten blue. She stepped away from Andrew toward the clanging, filthy building, her body pulling without a fight.
The fire burned again. Not the flames that rippled through his arm to cut down the tree but a power just as strong, a white fury of knowing that flashed through the chest and under the skin.
Lily reached for the door of the kitchen.
“Lily.”
She squeezed her eyes closed and turned the handle.
Beneath the Apple Leaves Page 31