Madapple
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“So I stayed here with Sanne and Rune. I made a life for us here. I began homeschooling the children. First Rune, then Sanne.” She lifts her face to the sky now, as if talking to this God she’s convinced is real. “When the children were old enough to be left alone, I went to seminary. I became a minister. And now I’m fulfilling God’s call on my life. But I never forgot you, Aslaug. I never forgot Maren. I’m the one who sent the money, not Mikkel. I found where you were living—I found your address—and I sent it.
“Fader had died a year after you were born, a year before you and Maren left us, and he’d willed the rest of Moder’s estate to Maren and me. Maren had received some of her inheritance by the time she left—I knew she had enough to settle somewhere, live for a while. But Fader had made me the executor of his will. Maren was to receive her inheritance over the course of fifteen years, because of her age. Month by month. And so I sent it to her month by month. I sent cash—I wasn’t sure Maren would cash a check. But I never tried to contact you beyond sending the money. I couldn’t, even after time passed—even after I’d come to blame Mikkel, not Maren. I’d moved on with my life. I’d formed my church. God was blessing people through me. It seemed I’d be going backward if I were to get involved with Maren again. It would have been a disservice to my children, my congregation.
“My children grew up knowing little about you and Maren. They certainly didn’t know Mikkel was your father. Sanne did remember Maren, and when she became a teenager, she started rummaging through Maren’s things as a way to be rebellious. She knew it made me uncomfortable. But, even then, I told her and Rune only what I thought they needed to know. I didn’t tell them about Mikkel. Until recently. Until we learned Maren died.” She looks at my face now, but the sun has nearly set and her eyes are shadows; I can’t make out her expression, and I know she can’t make out mine. “There was an article in the paper about her death, your birth. It referred to the earlier article about your birth. Sanne read it, told Rune. I didn’t have a choice, then—I had to tell them.”
I sense Mother’s rage in me. I’d never understood it before; I’d never understood the rage that would well up in her. But now I think: Of course Mother had rage. How could she not have? Of course her rage spilled into me.
“Rune pressed me to find you,” the preacher says. “He wanted to help you—he claims he remembers you, although I don’t know how he could. But Sanne, it shook her world. She’s had some contact with Mikkel over the years. Not a lot, but more so than Rune. She didn’t want to accept what Mikkel did. I don’t know that she has accepted it. She challenged me. Wanted to know how I could have known—claims I couldn’t have known. I stopped trying to convince her—I didn’t see the point—and we stopped talking about it. But now you’re here.”
The Latin name for the Canadian burnet is Sanguisorba, meaning “to drink up blood.” The plant is so rare in Maine, I’ve seen it only twice. Yet I think of the burnet now; I try to remember what it looks like, is like. I remember the burnet is dense, its flower white. That it stands erect, daring. I can’t remember its smell or the way it felt in my hands. But I remember Mother showing me its milky sap. “The burnet’s blood,” Mother said, referring to the plant’s sap, “is the coagulant. The plant is called Sanguisorba because of the sap. It is the sap that drinks up blood. Put the sap over a bleeding wound, and the wound dries up.” I wish I understood whether this story of my birth, my father, my mother’s life, is the sap that stops the blood, or the wound itself.
“How could you have abandoned us like that?” I say, still trying to sort out what I feel. “Do you have any idea what it was like for my mother? What it was like for me growing up, knowing nothing about my family or my father? How could you have turned on her? Rejected me?”
“It wasn’t like that,” the preacher says. She hadn’t expected this outburst, it seems. But how could she have not expected it? Did she think I would hear this account of Mother’s life—of my life—and feel nothing? “Your mother left on her own,” she says. “I didn’t ask her to leave.”
“But you blamed her. She was fifteen when she became pregnant.” I can feel the heat in my face I know she can’t see. “She was just a girl, younger than your Susanne.”
“Don’t bring Sanne into this,” the preacher says. “My children have nothing to do with this.”
“They have as much to do with this as I do.” I feel I’m losing control of my voice, my words. “They have as much to do with it as my mother did. None of us chose this, including her. You’re more culpable than any of us—you married the man.” I wouldn’t have spoken like this to Mother, but Mother spoke like this to me—and I realize I learned from the way she treated me: I learned fury. I expect the preacher to meet my fury; I expect her thin body to bulge in her power.
I don’t expect her to collapse into her lap. I don’t expect her to bury her head under her arms. At first I’m not sure what she’s doing—the noises she’s making sound barely human. Then I realize she’s crying.
She sits up and pulls me to her. My head is beneath her moist chin, and my cheek presses into her breasts. I feel myself being comforted—although I don’t want to be comforted by her.
“I’m sorry, Aslaug.” She tries to run her fingers through my hair, but they get tangled; her touch feels nothing like Mother’s. “I should have protected Maren. I should have…” She pushes my body back, looks at my face. “Let me make it up to you, Aslaug. Stay with us. Come live with us.”
SOLOMON’S SEAL
2007
—Please state your name.
—Detective Jordan Ignis.
—What’s your profession, Detective Ignis?
—I’m an investigator for the Bethan police and fire departments.
—Please take a moment to look at this photograph. Do you recognize the image in the photo?
—Yes. It shows the remains of the Charisma Pentecostal Church.
—The old monastery on Kettil Street?
—Yes, the monastery was most recently used as a church. The picture here shows the building after the fire that occurred there last year. I was the lead investigator on that fire.
—Okay. So you’d say the photo is a fair and accurate representation of the building after the fire?
—Yes.
—The photo is submitted as Exhibit U. Detective Ignis, at the conclusion of your investigation, were you able to determine what caused the fire?
—Yes.
—What did you conclude was the cause?
—Arson.
—You mean someone intentionally set fire to the building?
—Yes.
—How did you come to conclude the cause was arson?
—We found remnants of kerosene-soaked rags lining the interior eastern wall. It was pretty clear-cut. There’s no question those rags were the source of the fire.
—During the course of your investigation, did you determine whether anyone was hurt in the fire?
—We recovered the bodies of two women.
—What, if anything, did you find unusual about the women’s bodies?
—Well, the younger woman was unclothed. We found some clothing remnants lying near her. But how and when she became undressed, we don’t know. We do know she was not wearing clothing at the time of the fire.
—Thank you, Detective.
DEVIL’S-BITE
2003
The roots of the Indian poke plant, false hellebore, are poisonous, the foliage lethal. Devil’s-bite, Mother called the plant. “The person chosen as chief,” Mother had said when explaining how some Native tribes used the plant, “was the one who could swallow the juice of the root of the devil and tolerate its bite the longest.” I feel I’m being tested now, and I’m failing: the devil’s-bite is killing me. I’ve found my family, only to find they don’t want me. I’ve found my father, only to find I don’t want him. And I’ve found my mother—parts of her—only to find I knew her even less well than I thought. And I miss her more.
Darkness lies heavy across the yard now, and heavier inside; when the preacher swings open the door, I see only blackness. She takes the suitcase from me, walks in. I hesitate in the doorway, thinking of our house in Hartswell, dark even in the day, until Mother died, until the curtains came down. And for a moment I fear I’m stepping into another place like Mother’s place: another world within the world, but apart from the world, shielded from the world; another cocoon. I watch the preacher meld into the darkness; her light-colored clothes and hair transform into a subtle, pulsing gray.
“Sanne?” she says, then turns toward me; the porch light passes through the door and illuminates her face, but her eyes look hollow. “Sanne?” she says again.
I see a glowing point of orange floating to the left of the door, and Susanne’s face emerges.
“Put that out,” the preacher says, and the room lights up.
Susanne stands near the light switch, a newly rolled cigarette draped between her fingers, its ashes piled and hanging. She puts the cigarette in her mouth, pulls hard, then drops it onto the stone floor, grinds it with her heel. The preacher waves her hand through the air, swirling the scent, the smoke. She lifts the cigarette from the floor. “Not in God’s house,” she says, and she walks into the sanctuary, carrying the suitcase in one hand, the cigarette in the other.
I look around, past the pews and stage and projector and white screen, and I feel God, or at least the sense of something vast and unknowable. The building is magnificent in a way I thought only nature could be. The walls are smooth stone forming arched vaults along the nave, the ceiling stretches high, and the stone floor is patterned in geometric designs that seem elevating in a way, like the floor is rising, and lifting me.
“She was lying to you,” Susanne says. She’s standing behind me; I turn to see her arms crossed over her chest, one hip jutting to the side. Her potpourri hair is loose now, and it curls about her: a thousand of Mother’s hands. “I was listening through the door. Gudinden told you a boatload of lies.”
“She was lying?” I say.
“Her own father chose Maren, and then her heavenly father did, too.”
“I don’t understand—”
Susanne nods inward, and I see the preacher is heading back.
“We need to make a bed for Aslaug, Sanne,” the preacher says when she nears us; she no longer carries the suitcase or cigarette. “She’s going to stay with us tonight.”
“Great,” Susanne says, without exclamation. She grips my hand hard—hers is cold, and as clammy as mine—and she directs me through the nave, past the pews and screen and stage. She compresses my fingers too much. I waggle them, and the cage shrinks.
“What are you doing?” the preacher says. “I said we need to get a bed together.” The preacher walks up behind us and takes Susanne’s arm, but Susanne shakes her off like Mother might a blowfly or a flesh fly, or the caudal sucker of a leech. And unlike the flies, unlike the leech, the preacher falls away easily. And stays away. She follows us still, but at some distance now. And I’m fascinated: a daughter who patently defies, a mother who retreats, and the world does not end.
Susanne leads me inside one of the vaults and barricades the exit with her body. She releases my hand, and I feel my fingers swell into place.
The floor of the vault is peppered with rugs and mosaics. A thin table stands in the center, and behind it sit bookshelves jammed with books, binders, folders, stacks of paper. Some of the books and binders have titles in Hebrew, some in Greek, some in runes. One is entitled Chester Beatty Papyri. I don’t recognize the name. Several others are prefaced with the name Nag Hammadi, including the Gospel of Thomas and the Secret Book of James.
“This was where your mother worked,” Susanne says. She looks at my right hand as it massages my left.
I drop my hands. “My mother?” A rush of warmth moves through me. I feel the impulse to touch the table, the books. I try to imagine Mother as she would have been then: her bone-hair draped toward a notebook on the table; her lean back hunched; her water eyes hidden by the hair, the hunching; her hands still able; her written word still legible. “What was she working on?”
“A lot of these were hers.” Susanne motions toward the shelves. “Some of them are mine.” She removes a gray binder from the shelf, and I see Mother’s hand on the binder in my mind. But it is the preacher’s hand, not Mother’s. The preacher pulls at the binder; Susanne pulls back; the preacher does not fall away this time.
“What are you doing, Sanne?” the preacher says. “What the devil is this?” And I think of the writhing woman; I feel a tightening in my chest, expecting another barrage about demons and devils and hell.
The binder bridges Susanne and the preacher, and I remember Mother’s words: “There’s a bridge. The Cobwork Bridge. It connects Bailey and Orrs islands. It’s a humpbacked bridge of granite rocks held together only by cleverness, by the stacking. The tides come and go, and the bridge holds tight. Some things stay together because they fit, Aslaug. Not because they’re forced.” I wondered then whether we fit, Mother and I. Or whether we stayed from force. And I wonder now of these women: is it fit or force?
“Mor used to keep her stash in here,” Susanne says to me, as if the preacher were not at the other end of this paper bridge. “Told her parishioners this vault was off-limits. That it was the house of blasphemy. That the only reason she kept all these devil books was that they didn’t belong to her—she had no choice. She was able to slip in and out of here in a jiffy. Get a fix. Get back to damning others to hell. It’s no wonder she was pissed when I started spending time in here. She had to find a new hiding place, a new house of blasphemy.”
“I’d never damn anyone to hell,” the preacher says, and the bridge breaks.
Susanne looks down at the binder, now in only her hands. “Sorry, Mor,” she says. “I know that. I know you think Maren was making it all up. But you don’t know for sure. I just want to see…” She walks to the table, lays the binder on it, then reaches beneath it and pulls out three hassocks upholstered in burgundy cloth, so worn in the center the burgundy has given way to pale pink. I imagine Mother’s twiglike legs pressed into this cloth. And I wonder, Was her body so less scarce then, she could make an imprint independent of her mind?
Susanne motions for me and the preacher to kneel beside her, and she opens the binder, puts it on the table. “Can you read this?” she says to me.
I lower my own knees to the thinned cloth. I hunch over the binder. My own bone-hair drapes toward the binder and shields my eyes from Susanne, but I see the preacher: she doesn’t kneel; she doesn’t move. Yet I feel a connection between her and Susanne—their entanglement. Even though the bridge fell away. Like the mysterious quantum particles Mother taught me about, so entwined, if one spins, the other spins, no matter that a universe spans between them.
“I thought I could trust you,” the preacher says.
“Aslaug’s not one of your sheep, Mor. No harm done.” Susanne looks to me. “Can you read this?”
The old crones’ weaving has gone awry, I think: I don’t belong in this moment, woven into this private space. “‘The Pharisees and the scholars have taken the keys of knowledge and have hidden them,’” I read. “‘They have not entered, nor have they allowed those who want to enter to do so. As for you, be sly as snakes and simple as doves.’”
“You know how to read Greek,” Susanne says.
“Mother taught me.”
“And other languages?”
I nod.
“You’ve read this passage before?”
“No.”
“It’s not from the Gospel of Thomas,” she says, as if this should mean something to me. “At least not from the contemporary version. It
’s a transcription of some sayings by Jesus found on papyrus fragments in the late eighteen hundreds. The fragments are probably more representative of the original version of Thomas.”
“I don’t know the Gospel of Thomas,” I say. I try to place it in the Bible or the Apocrypha, but I can’t. “Mother studied material like this, but she didn’t teach it to me.”
“Your mother studied this?” Susanne says.
“Documents like this. I never understood why, though. She said religion’s nonsense.”
“She didn’t believe that,” Susanne says. She looks at the preacher. “Maren kept studying, Mor. Searching. After she left. She still believed.”
“Believed what?” I say.
“Maren told Aslaug religion is nonsense,” the preacher says to Susanne. “That’s what she believed. You have to give this up, Sanne. You have to let it go. Aslaug’s father was Mikkel. You have to accept that. It’s the truth.”
“It’s not the truth,” Susanne says. “Look at her.”
I hear a door open, and close. I hear steps on the stone getting louder and louder and stopping. I turn to see the guitar player. He stands at the entrance to the vault, spinning a paintbrush in one hand. His skin is the color of Mother’s wheat bread, and his eyes remind me of the blackberries hanging heavy and tempting along the back roads of Hartswell.
“‘The sounds of mourning do not suit a house which serves the Muse. They are not wanted here,’” he says. He stops the spinning, bends as if bowing, kisses the preacher’s cheek. He has a mole on his own cheek that looks nearly alive and a deep cleft in his chin. But the groove between his nose and upper lip is almost nonexistent, as is his upper lip, which stretches long and thin. The glasses he’s wearing seem too large for his face; when he stands, they teeter halfway down the bridge of his nose.