The Water Cure

by Sophie Mackintosh

  I have a theory that pregnancy ramps up your ability to intuit a threat. Extra-sensory. Mother has a theory that pregnancy makes you histrionic. I am milky, hormonal, prone to sticking cold teaspoons in my mouth so I can taste the metal.

  I have tried to discuss the border with Mother, but either she doesn’t want to know or she doesn’t want to talk about it with me.

  It causes me a lot of stress to think about pushing the wet lump of my baby out into a compromised world.

  Lia

  There are some things I thought had died with our father, but I am wrong. Mother tells us over breakfast that we will be heading down to the shore for a love therapy, and I have to put down my spoon. Suddenly I am not hungry. The slick orbs of tinned fruit, anaemic, swim in their juice. A prune like a dark yolk next to them. Grace continues to spoon mandarin segments into her mouth, unperturbed. The therapies are never as bad for her. Her hands never tremble when she puts them in the sack, when she moves to draw an iron out.

  As we approach the beach I see two small cardboard boxes with air holes in the lid and a large bucket next to them, several gallons’ capacity, already full of water. Also a smaller bucket, a box of matches, a pile of twigs and leaves, and two pairs of thick gardening gloves. Sky grasps for Grace’s hand and I twist my own behind my back.

  ‘My girls,’ Mother says. Her face is speckled from the season, from the heat, her eyes like two pale chips of glass against the skin, her lips cracked. She always loves this, seeing us being brave. She gestures for me and Sky to come forward.

  ‘Lia, you first,’ she tells me. The one with the least love always starts it. I pull on the thick gloves. She ducks to the floor and picks up both boxes. ‘Choose.’

  I take one from her and hold it in my hands. Something inside runs around, the box’s centre of gravity moving. I place it on the sand next to me, and take the other. Something is in this one too, but it is slower. Dank woodland smells from both of them. I put it down.

  ‘I choose the first one,’ I tell her. Get it over with. She nods.

  ‘It’s a mouse,’ she says. ‘I found it this morning in the traps.’ She looks from me to Sky. ‘Sky, take the box.’

  Sky picks up the first box. The movements become quicker, a scuffling at the edge of the box. Her hands are shaking.

  ‘You can let Sky drown the mouse,’ Mother tells me. ‘Or you can do it for her.’

  Sky looks at me imploringly, but she doesn’t need to. I am already reaching for the box even though the idea of the small velvet body makes me want to cry, the thought of it moving in my hands. My sisters watch me mutely as I lift the lid.

  ‘Don’t let it get out,’ Mother tells me, but in one motion I cup it under the stomach, lift it out and drop it into the bucket of water. It flails valiantly but it is already exhausted. Soon it sinks and lies motionless, suspended. I feel the tears gather at the back of my throat. Sky mouths Thank you to me, water in her own eyes.

  The next box holds a toad, leathery and stunned. I know Sky would be terrified of holding it but I have no such problems, stroking its squat body with one gloved finger, hoping that might be it. Mice are pests, spreaders of disease, enemies of our survival. Toads are not. But Mother gestures to what I now realize is kindling, next to the box of matches on the sand.

  ‘Mother, no,’ says Grace. ‘That’s too cruel.’

  ‘Life is cruel,’ Mother tells her. ‘If you girls can’t make difficult decisions for each other now, you’ll never be able to.’

  I look down at the toad, its ugly skin. Its movements are slow, as if the warmth of my hands is comforting.

  ‘Mother,’ I say too. My mouth is dry.

  ‘If you won’t do it, your sister has to,’ Mother says.

  ‘Please, Mother, no!’ Sky says, on the verge of tears again. ‘Please don’t make either of us do it.’

  ‘I’ll touch it with my bare hands,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll drown it.’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t want you getting sick. And it can swim. I wasn’t born yesterday.’ She looks to my sisters. ‘Get the fire lit, then.’

  When the bonfire is ready, I crouch next to its small flames. Mother is looking at me, seeing if I will go through with it. I could let the toad go, hurl it down the beach. It might die then too, its body smashed and useless. My breathing is ragged.

  ‘If you can’t do it, give it to Sky,’ Mother says one last time. But I will not make my sister do this, and she knows it. I drop the toad into the fire and move back.

  Almost instantly, Mother throws a bucket of water over the flames. The toad hops out, barely blackened.

  ‘You passed,’ Mother tells me. ‘Well done.’

  Sky looks up at me, stricken with gratefulness. Our feelings pass between us like an electric charge. I accept them, absorb them, and then the weeping comes over me in a wave and I pull off the dirty gloves, put my hands to my face.

  Grace, Lia, Sky

  There are still days when Mother doesn’t get out of bed, though they are further apart now. On those days we know she is thinking of King, and we know that she is suffering from a thing called heartbreak that we have no comprehension of and probably never will. She tells us this not-knowing is a gift, like the life she managed to breathe into us, the life she has always protected so fiercely.

  ‘Can you not be grateful for that? Can you not thank me for that?’ she asks us from the bed, her blankets a smudge in the darkness as we stand in the doorway.

  We say, ‘Yes, Mother. Thank you, Mother.’

  Grace

  ‘Draw pictures of what the men have done to you,’ Mother told the damaged women. Lia, Sky and I were allowed to sit in on this kind of session, occasionally. ‘So you don’t have to let the words out.’ The mystery of it. I wanted to look at every page, but the women shielded their pads with their bodies as if the information were deadly.

  They hunched over their paper, pencil and pens moving in wide arcs. It was a busy season. Seven or eight of the women were staying with us at that time, looking at us daughters with watery eyes across the breakfast table, or standing out at the edge of the forest with you and Mother, holding hands loosely, staring into the dark.

  ‘You can keep it abstract, if you want,’ Mother told them, benevolent. The varnish on her nails was chipped. She looked tired. She went from woman to woman as they drew, tapping their shoulder before she looked.

  ‘May I?’ she asked them, and then studied each page in turn.

  Putting the things down on the paper was better than letting the words into the air, which would be tantamount to bringing the contamination with them. We didn’t see the pictures. One woman wept, tore a hole at the centre of the page. Another drew something in great detail and spent the rest of the afternoon rubbing it out carefully, centimetre by centimetre.

  Later we were allowed to join them on the shore as the drawings were all burned, the women throwing matches and salt on the bonfire. You always kept your distance, surveying from the back. You must have wanted to look. The drawings were not things you had done, but the actions belonged to you the way the pain of the women belonged to us. Your body made you a traitor, despite everything. We stayed there until the tide came up and reached the ashes, turned them into sludge.

  Lia

  After years of them, I am used to sudden awakenings, to Mother’s hand clamped against my mouth. Always a drill for some unspecified event, the worst ever yet to come, always her dank vegetable breath and the white space of her eyes, blinking too fast. I go with her every time, even when my sisters refuse, feign too-deep sleep, charm her into letting them stay put. Being asked is enough for me, let alone the possibility that this time it could be real. Fear roiling in my stomach, and something else too, something close to hope. Every year the seasons become warmer and it is the earth telling me that change is coming, it is the air whispering, It will not always be so, and in the meantime this intimacy as I follow Mother down the stairs when nobody else will, the cool torchlight, for to be good i
s to be loved, I do believe this, and I have been good, I am always being good.

  There is a storm the night that it finally happens. Mother wakes us up, will not take no for an answer, and leads us into her bathroom. It is cramped, too hot, blankets and pillows on the floor for us to use as bedding, but the only window is small and has a wooden blind that shuts out all the light. King made that blind himself so he could develop photographs in the pitch-dark, dripping paper over the bath. Mother floats tea-lights in the sink. We try and make a bed for Grace in the tub but she is too large now to fit in, bulbous like an insect with her skinny legs, so in the end Sky is the one who lies down in the porcelain with a folded towel beneath her head. Grace stretches out on the floor, my hands hovering above Grace’s stomach. My need thrums uncomfortably loud. ‘Don’t,’ Grace says. She does not say it gently.

  Water from the tap, our mouths kissing the metal directly. Water scattered with our fingers at each other, cooling. Mother stands and tries to see what she can from the window. When the wind catches the blind extra hard she makes the same shushing noises that King had developed for his trips, her lips pursed, as if she can out-blow it. To the noise of the rain, the noise of the protections of our mother, we fall into curled-body sleep.

  In the morning the storm is over and Mother is gone. The three of us wake each other, move slow through the door into her bedroom, where she stands by the window, looking down at something on the beach. She is shaking, and I start to shake too. I cannot help it.

  ‘Stay there,’ she tells us without looking around. ‘Don’t move.’

  We ignore her, walk to the window. ‘No,’ she says again, but it’s too late.

  There are three people lying on the shore, high up on the sand past the breakers. As we watch, one of them sits up and retches ungracefully into the sand. They remain sitting up.

  ‘They’re men,’ Mother says, putting her arms out to push us back, though they are far below us, though we are safe for now. ‘Men have come to us.’

  II

  * * *

  MEN

  Thank you for opening your home to me. It is very difficult to feel that there is no hope, that all there will ever be is pain and no cure. I should have known that sisterhood would be the answer. I look forward to getting to know the others.

  Lia

  Emergency has always been with us, if not present emergency then always the idea that it is coming. The ringing in the air after a loud sound has passed. The count before the thunder hits. And here, finally, is the emergency we have been waiting for our whole lives.

  We gather lengths of muslin and our knives and we move down to the shore while the men are still weak. By the time we arrive, they are sitting up. Two grown men and one boy, all of them tracked with salt and sand. The small one is crying hard. We stand in a semicircle a safe distance away from them, fabric bunched in our hands, ready.

  One of the men gets to his feet. His body is elongated, dark hair across his chin and head, cropped close. The other man is older, shorter, his hair fair or grey or both, pale eyes that he shares with the first man. A blue rucksack, soaking wet, lies on the ground between them.

  ‘Please don’t be afraid,’ says the man who is standing up. His words come out differently from ours. He extends a hand though we are too far away to take it, though we wouldn’t take it anyway.

  ‘Stop,’ says Mother. He withdraws the gesture immediately.

  ‘We had an accident,’ he says, swaying slightly. ‘Our boat went down.’ He gestures to the sea, but there is no wreckage.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here at all,’ Mother tells him. ‘This is private property.’

  ‘We’re looking for sanctuary,’ he says. ‘We know of your husband, King. Can we speak to him?’

  Mother’s face looks uncertain.

  ‘Girls, go further up the beach,’ she tells us. ‘Move back.’

  We do as we are told, until she raises her hand.

  ‘Men,’ we whisper to each other, our heads almost touching. ‘Men men men.’ We are appalled. My legs shake. I turn to see whether I can make out teeth, claws, weapon, but there’s nothing to suggest their danger.

  After some time speaking, she gestures for us to return.

  The strangers are standing now and Mother displays the knife casually, as if it’s just another part of her, a part she knows extremely well.

  ‘Why shouldn’t we drown you?’ she demands.

  ‘Would you drown a child?’ the dark-haired one asks in return. He pushes the boy forward. My sisters and I clutch at each other. The boy is sweet. His eyes are pink, rabbit-like.

  ‘I would do anything for my girls,’ Mother says, stoic.

  The men look at the water. It is calm, but there are currents that would take you under in a second.

  ‘We can be of use,’ the older one says. ‘We can protect you.’

  ‘We don’t need protecting,’ Mother says.

  ‘You might do soon,’ the dark-haired man says. ‘This isn’t a threat from us, understand. But a lot of things are happening out there. People worse than us could be coming for you.’

  Mother seems to consider this.

  ‘Perhaps this is fortuitous,’ he continues. ‘We are fathers, we are husbands, like he was.’ So she has told them. A quick stab of grief passes through me. He looks at us. ‘We know something of how to keep people safe.’

  The boy sits down abruptly on the sand, as if his legs have given way. The older one places a hand on his soft head.

  In the time since King, we have not rigged a single trap. In the time since King, we have let the patrols slip. We have not killed the animals that could be harbouring toxins. We have become softer already, worn by the burden of vigilance. But Mother is not hasty. She knows all about the lies and exhortations of men.

  ‘We need time,’ she tells them. ‘Until then, you stay here. Where we can see you.’

  The dark-haired one stares at her. ‘Where will we shelter?’

  Mother shrugs. ‘The storm is over.’

  ‘Could we please have some water?’ asks the older man.

  Mother gestures at the sea. ‘Knock yourself out.’

  ‘Are we going to let them die, then?’ Grace asks with rare interest when we are back in the house, sitting at the table for breakfast as if nothing has happened. Mother locks the dining-room doors, and the kitchen door, normally open at all times. We’ll see them if they walk towards the moorings, but neither boat is big enough to hold three men. The remaining motorboat, gleaming white and red, will carry two at most. The rowing boat takes on water and is for short journeys only.

  ‘Let me think, Grace,’ Mother says.

  ‘Maybe they are friends of King,’ Grace continues, ignoring her. ‘Maybe they have come to pay their respects.’

  Mother puts her hand to her head; the stress of it all has given her a migraine. The sick voltage of the pain drifts from her left eye over the entire side of her body, and though she would usually want to be alone she insists now that we all stay together until it leaves her. We sit in her room for hours with the curtains closed, checking periodically on the men from the window, holding our breath throughout the plush mid-afternoon dark. Grace puts a wet cloth on Mother’s forehead. When she has passed out for good, the three of us watch the men from her bathroom window, together. The dark-haired one is knee-deep in the water, shirtless, his back to us. It must be very hot now. The small one is lying on the sand like something that has been spat out. The older one has his knees to his chest, and like the child he is not moving.

  We stand guard in shifts through the night. When it is my turn I walk from room to room on the ground floor, exhilarated. My mouth is dry. In the kitchen I am sitting on the tiles, black diamonds against terracotta, when the knocking starts, the shadow of a man at the door leading into the garden.

  It is the dark-haired one and the child. They watch me, blurred, through the glass. The boy is crying again, his face alien and liquid, and the man mouths a word at me, which I
realize is Please. I am not used to being offered this word. It is a spell, a weakness. I am moved; I let them in.

  It is just a step over the threshold, the matter of a few inches, outside versus in. The man doesn’t hesitate, pushing the child in one fluid motion as if afraid I will change my mind, which I could, which I should, and then both of them straighten up and look at me, making direct, unprotected eye contact with me for the first time, and their eyes are shadowed holes in their heads, containing something that I cannot comprehend.

  ‘We just want water,’ the dark-haired man says, quietly and urgently. ‘Maybe some food, if you have it. Then we’ll go.’

  I turn my back to them and fill one glass, then another, at the sink. The proximity of their forbidden bodies has a gravitational pull. They drain the glasses and I fill them again. I find a milk bottle and fill that too. The dried fruit I was going to eat – figs from the garden, splitting hearts laid out on trays in the attic to shrivel and crystallize – I hand out without touching their skin. And then they do go, they are out of the door without looking back, and I step out after them, I am watching, I am still standing guard.

  Mother is renewed in the morning, post-migraine. Everything smells better; she asks for bread and butter, for apples and tea. A vision came to her in the night. It was King, and he told her to show deep kindness for now and for always. They were swimming in the pool, meeting underwater in the middle of it. Mother woke up before they could touch. She cries a little as she tells us about it, a dab of water under her eye.

  ‘You mean you had a dream,’ Grace says.

  ‘You can’t swim,’ adds Sky.