Madapple

by Christina Meldrum

  “Get your coat, Aslaug. We’re going out.”

  I remember hearing Mother’s voice and disentangling myself from the girls. And I remember seeing the snake had muted—that it was nearly indecipherable. Nearly. Not completely. Because Mother had finished early: it was only six-fifteen.

  “We’re going out?” We never went out in the evenings; I couldn’t imagine why we would.

  “Er du døv, barn? Kom nu for Satan. Are you deaf, child? Come on, for Satan.”

  “But—”

  Mother lifted her hand, tried to spread it before me to stop my speaking; her palm flattened, but her fingers curled into themselves.

  I rose to go for my coat but stopped to put away my books, knowing Mother might punish my slovenliness. I was fumbling with the books when Mother slammed her fist against the table. “Du ku braek en kniv i en lort. You could break a knife in shit. I said get your coat, Aslaug. How much more clear can I be?”

  “Yes. Yes, Mother.” I was afraid, suddenly. Not that I wasn’t accustomed to fear, but the fear I knew was contained, familiar. It was fear of disappointing Mother: fear of her words, or the switch. The fear I felt then: it was wild fear. Mother’s and my life was predictable. We were so accustomed to our routines—to our churning—that we passed each day as if sentenced. Sentenced to the clutter of waking, eating, cleaning, bathing, studying. Mother determined what and when we ate, what and when we studied, when we slept, and when, if ever, we left the house. Every aspect of my existence was foreordained: my every move; at times it seemed my every thought. But leaving the house at night didn’t fit the pattern of our life. Like with the hairstreak, the passionflower, the order of my world was shifting.

  I scrambled down the hallway and nearly tripped on the rug. I pulled my jacket from the hall closet, slipped it on, then followed Mother’s halting figure as it passed outside, across the blades of dying grass and mush of fallen leaves, into the driveway, where the car was parked. It had already snowed once, and melted. The sticky mud of the driveway clung to the soles of my shoes. I dropped to the seat of the car but hung my feet out the door. Then I beat my shoes against one another and felt the heavy clumps release.

  We drove in silence.

  Mother pulled into the local high school and turned immediately to the right, as if she knew where she was going, as if she’d been there before. But I knew she hadn’t, because I’d not.

  There were ten to fifteen cars in the lot, and scattered windows of the school emitted light. I could see through the main doors, into the main hall, where a stream of fluorescent lights spanned the ceiling, illuminating patches of orange and green and blue lockers. A man sat near the entrance, reading a thin pamphlet, his bald head refulgent in the fluorescent light.

  Mother parked the car, released her door; I released mine. She climbed out cussing, “Lort, lort.” Then paced around the car. I was garnering courage to question Mother, to ask her why we were at the school, whether we were there to see the man in the window; I wondered if the man was my father.

  “Get in,” Mother said.

  “Get in?” I’d just gotten out.

  “In the driver’s seat,” she said. “I’m going to teach you to drive.”

  And she did, in less than an hour. I didn’t have to ask Mother why she was teaching me. I knew. Mother’s limbs were failing her; it was not clear how much longer she would be able to drive.

  When Mother instructed me to drive out of the parking lot, into Bethan, it was nearly dark. “Turn right here,” she said. “And then here.” It seemed she was directing me someplace. And I sensed, even before we arrived, that what we were doing was significant. Rare. This was Mother’s small whorled pogonia, that orchid that lies dormant underground for ten years between bloomings: Mother was flowering, showing me part of herself—of her life—I’d never seen before.

  She instructed me to pull through a gate, part of which was obscured by a flowering witch hazel tree, its petals curled into buds to endure the night’s chill. We stopped in front of a stone building, its yard overgrown, its roof shingled in a sporadic array of brown and gray. Yet it had a dignity about it, a majesty; at one time it had been grand. I thought of the elderly women I’d seen when I’d been out with Mother in Bethan: their striking white hair, wound and piled on their heads; their diamonds polished; their matching purses and shoes, colored peach or beige. Yet their lipstick quivered above their lips in pinkish smears, and stains marked their blouses, having evaded their farsighted eyes.

  “Turn off the engine,” Mother said.

  We sat there, then, Mother and I. We sat in front of this place—a place I knew had some relevance to Mother’s life, to my life. Mother didn’t speak; she looked out the window for what seemed hours, although it may have been minutes. Her left eye was twitching, and she was biting her bottom lip. Her hands were tangled in the front of her skirt like she was hiding something there, finding it, hiding it again. In my memory her eyes were glistening, but I couldn’t have seen this in the dark. What I know I did see, as the darkness thickened and the interior of the building came more and more to life, were people moving about inside: a woman, maybe two; a man.

  It’s that building that beckons me now; it’s that man I know I must find.

  SOLOMON’S SEAL

  2007

  —Cross-examination?

  —Yes. Ms. Sture, what are you studying in graduate school?

  —Art history.

  —Art history?

  —Yes.

  —You said you worked as a social worker for the state of Maine for two and a half years, isn’t that right?

  —Yes, for the Department of Health and Human Services.

  —Where were you employed before that?

  —Before I worked as a social worker for the state? I wasn’t employed. I was in school.

  —So it sounds like you were sort of training on the job when you worked for the state, is that right?

  —Well, no. I mean, I had to do some clinical work while in school in order to get my degree.

  —Ms. Sture, you had been employed as a social worker for less than a year when you took on Aslaug’s case, isn’t that right?

  —Yes, I think that’s right.

  —And yet, you say Aslaug’s case was one of your less critical cases?

  —That’s right.

  —Isn’t it true, prior to Aslaug’s case, you had never dealt with a situation during your course of employment in which a teenage girl’s mother died?

  —Objection. Relevance.

  —Overruled.

  —I believe that’s true.

  —And you certainly hadn’t dealt with a situation in which the teenage girl who lost her mother had no siblings or known father, isn’t that right?

  —I hadn’t encountered that situation before meeting Aslaug.

  —So, it’s fair to say you were sort of learning on the job when it came to Aslaug’s situation?

  —I’d been trained to deal with all sorts of situations.

  —But you hadn’t dealt with this type of situation in the field, correct?

  —That’s right.

  —You yourself described Aslaug as standoffish. You had a difficult time relating to Aslaug, didn’t you?

  —She was standoffish.

  —With you?

  —Yes.

  —Did it ever cross your mind you failed Aslaug?

  —Objection. Vague. Relevance.

  —I’m going to allow the question.

  —I don’t understand.

  —Did it ever cross your mind Aslaug may have left because you frightened her?

  —Objection, Your Honor. Argumentative.

  —Sustained.

  —Ms. Sture, you threatened to send Aslaug away from the only house she’d ever known just hours after she watched her mother being buried, isn’t that right?

  —I told her we would try to find relatives to take her in.

  —But that would have been at another house, right?

  �
��Yes.

  —You were unable to locate any relatives, correct?

  —Like I said, Aslaug said she had some relatives. I knew there’d been an aunt.

  —But you weren’t able to locate any of Aslaug’s relatives, correct?

  —I hadn’t found any by that point in time.

  —So you weren’t able to assure Aslaug she would be placed with relatives, correct?

  —That’s right, but she misled me about her relatives—

  —Ms. Sture, you are aware, are you not, that Aslaug did in fact have relatives in Bethan?

  —I found that out because of the trial.

  —In fact, Aslaug had an aunt and cousins in Bethan, just like she said, and she went to live with them, right?

  —Obviously she had them…. But the actual people had different names than she said.

  —It’s possible, isn’t it, that you just got the relatives’ names wrong?

  —No. I wrote them down.

  —I have that piece of paper here, in fact. Is this the piece of paper on which you wrote down the names?

  —Yes.

  —I’d like to submit this as Exhibit N. This paper is not dated, is it, Ms. Sture?

  —No.

  —And it has no case file number on it, does it?

  —No.

  —In fact, it has no identifying information at all on it, does it, other than the names of the Asters?

  —It doesn’t, but—

  —Thank you, Ms. Sture. Now, without this paper, you would not have remembered the names Aslaug supposedly gave you, would you? Because this happened four years ago.

  —I wouldn’t have remembered.

  —So it’s possible that you’re mistaken about the names, isn’t it?

  —No. Like I said, I wrote them down.

  —But, Ms. Sture, there is absolutely no identifying information on this piece of paper that would connect it to Aslaug Hellig.

  —But I remember—

  —I thought you said you wouldn’t have remembered the names absent the paper?

  —Objection. Argumentative.

  —I’ll overrule the objection, but I think it’s time to move on, Counsel.

  —Okay, Your Honor. I’ll withdraw the question. Ms. Sture, you told Aslaug that all her family possessions would be controlled by the probate system, isn’t that correct?

  —I told her if her mother hadn’t made provisions prior to her death, probate would get involved, yes.

  —And you told her this just hours after Aslaug had attended her mother’s funeral?

  —I talked to Aslaug the evening of the funeral.

  —Is that a yes?

  —Yes.

  —But it hasn’t occurred to you that you might have scared Aslaug away? She was gone by the next morning, isn’t that right? You were her last memory at that house.

  —Objection. Compound and argumentative.

  —Sustained.

  —Ms. Sture, it was against regulation for you to leave Aslaug alone after her mother died, wasn’t it?

  —It was only supposed to be for one night.

  —Please answer my question. You were not supposed to leave Aslaug alone after she was released from jail, were you? Because she was under eighteen?

  —I wasn’t supposed to leave her.

  —And yet you went ahead and left her all alone anyway, didn’t you? Even though you described her as seeming overwhelmed and possibly intoxicated.

  —Yes, but—

  —You’re trying to cover up your own failings by blaming Aslaug, aren’t you, Ms. Sture?

  —Objection. Argumentative.

  —Sustained.

  —You have regrets about how you handled Aslaug’s case, don’t you, Ms. Sture?

  —I try to learn from every situation.

  —You have regrets related to your handling of Aslaug’s case, isn’t that true? Please answer with a yes or no.

  —Yes.

  —And you have regrets in part because you did not follow regulations in your handling of Aslaug’s case, isn’t that right?

  —I wanted what was best for Aslaug. I may have made mistakes, but I wanted what was best for her.

  —Is that why you’re blaming Aslaug for your own failings?

  —Objection. Argumentative.

  —Sustained.

  —Thank you, Ms. Sture. I have no further questions, Your Honor.

  LOW SWEET BLUEBERRY

  2003

  There is a hill behind our house that rises in a hump. From a distance it looks like a showy hat. The base is decorated in a splattering of trees, but quickly the ground stretches smooth and sparse. Standing on our back porch, I can’t see the blueberry bushes, their branches heavy now, kneeling low with plump fruit. But I know the bushes are there near the top of the hill, and the sweet berries are there, speckling the hat like sapphire suns. And I know the pink-edged sulphur is there, too, the yellow butterfly with the pink fringe that lays its pitcher-shaped eggs on the flat green of the blueberry plant’s leaves.

  The pink-edged sulphur will die soon. But its descendants will live on. The yellow-green caterpillars will cling to the blueberry bushes, gain nourishment from their leaves. And in the spring, each caterpillar will bind itself to the blueberry plant in a silk cradle. Only when the new butterflies emerge will they leave the blueberry plant, feeding instead on milkweed and knapweed, hawkweed and fireweed.

  I return inside the house to gather clothing, a hairbrush, a toothbrush, some books. And I wonder as I assemble these things, What do I have that is mine? My clothes are Mother’s; my books are Mother’s; even my hairbrush is one that we shared; my head is full of Mother’s ideas; my face is her face. I wish I knew if it was possible to emerge anew. Will the young sulphur know its past? Will it know at one time it couldn’t fly?

  After the young sulphur has visited the milkweed, after she’s tasted the sweet nectar of the knapweed, after she’s carried away pollen from the hawkweed and fireweed, she mates. Then she does return to the blueberry plant. It is there she lays her eggs, and the process of egg to caterpillar to chrysalis begins again, as if the sulphur does know, does sense, her history; instinctively she’s drawn to her blueberry home.

  I patch up the suitcase with masking tape. Fill a jug with water. I put all these things in the car. And I leave. I just drive away, looking back at the house only once, so I know I’ve seen it absent Mother’s eyes. The gravel beneath me is loose and loud. I turn onto the road; it seems too smooth, the dividing line too close. A car is approaching in the opposite lane. I veer right and nearly run off the road.

  I can’t see behind me without mirrors, but I hear the police car there. First the sirens, then, “Pull to the side of the road.” The sound vibrates around me. Grumset, I think; that mean old man called the police again. “Pull over to the side of the road.”

  By the time the officer walks up to the car, my hands are wet on the wheel. The car window is rolled down, and I look up to see the police officer who arrested me. The woman. She takes off her hat and rests it on the car roof; she bends to the window. Her hair is pulled tight to her scalp, her roots a dark halo. “Ass-log?” she says. She wipes the back of her hand across her brow, flips her hand, wipes again. Her fingernails are cardinal red and long, like tubular petals. Like the petals of scarlet lobelia. “It’s Ass-log, right?”

  I nod.

  “I’m one of the cops who came to your house when your mother died.”

  I nod again.

  “Where you going?”

  I pause, consider lying, but I can’t think where else to say. “Bethan.”

  “Why?”

  “Family. I have family there.”

  “You do?” she says. “Right.” She looks at the taped suitcase lying on the seat next to me. “What’s in there?” She doesn’t wait for a reply; she walks around to the passenger side and opens the door. “You’re driving with no rearview mirrors, Ass-log. That’s not safe. And it’s illegal.” She lifts the case and sets it on the g
round. She tries to open it, but it’s locked. “Where’s the key?”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “That why it’s taped like this? You cut it open?” She claws at the tape, snaps a nail. “Damn,” she says, and she sucks the nail. “You have no license?” But she knows I don’t. She claws at the tape again, frees it this time. Then she peels back the leather. “Holy Christ.” She looks up at me with her adder’s eyes. “What the hell you up to, Ass-log?”

  “I found it after Mother died. I think my father sent it for me. To take care of me.”

  “Your father, huh?” she says, and her lips stretch thin, as if she’s smiling, but she’s not smiling. “How come we didn’t find this when we searched the house?”

  “It wasn’t in the house. It was out back, in the outhouse.”

  “What outhouse?” she says. “There wasn’t any outhouse.”

  I try to explain, but she cuts me off. “I like you, Ass-log. I don’t want you to get in trouble. This doesn’t look good, though. I’m not saying you’ve done anything you shouldn’t have done. You’ve had some hard knocks for someone so damn young. But I can’t just let you run off like this, not with all this money.”

  “You can have the money,” I say. “I don’t care about the money.”

  She releases the leather and it flaps back down. “Goddamn, Ass-log,” she says, and she shakes her head. “You sure are a hard nut to crack. If you don’t care about the money, what the hell you running off for?”

  “I’m not running off,” I say, but she lifts her hand and fans it before me.

  “Don’t,” she says. “Don’t lie to me. I said I like you, but I could change my mind.” She motions toward the backseat. “I see your belongings back there.” Then she looks back down at the case. “How much?”

  “Money?” I say. “I don’t know—I didn’t count it.” The amount would have meant little to me.