Gossamer: A Story of Love and Tragedy

by Thompson, Lee

“Why me?”

  “Because you have to learn what people are all about, little ogre, so that you might fear them just enough to avoid them.”

  “Do you fear them?”

  “In great numbers, yes. Individually, no. They’re weak by themselves. They’re overpowering and cruel as a group, consumed by one terrified mind, driven to greater evils than they could ever be by themselves. It’s all about intent and resources, the more these sorry souls grow worried and frightened, or the more hungry and eager, the more their intent is sharpened into a singularity, and the greater their resources as they add numbers to their cause.”

  I nodded, not understanding a word of what she said. The crystal hummed against my fingers. I said, “Can you see the future?”

  “Sometimes,” she said, as she finished repacking her suitcase and lifted it like a feather from the bed and set it on the hardwood floor. She took in the room again and shook her head. She said, “I don’t know how anybody could want an existence such as this.” She turned to me. “Did your mother spend a lot of time in here?”

  I nodded again.

  “I thought as much. Pathetic.” She shuddered and sat next to me, her fingers snaking in between mine until she’d extracted the crystal and it glowed as bright as the lantern near the sill. I heard Father cough in the other room, his secretive steps a moment later as he traversed the darkened hall, wishing to spy on us.

  Auntie, if she sensed or heard him, made no sign of it. I could hear him breathing out there, the whisk of his clothing as he shifted his stance. I stayed quiet because Auntie did despite truly wanting to scream as I envisioned a noose about my mother’s neck and my father, his hands crammed deep in his trousers, walking backward through a teeming mass of dirty, angry faces.

  I whispered, “He tricked me.”

  Auntie handed the crystal back. She glanced at the open door. Any warmth in her eyes, any amusement, vanished. She said, “I don’t understand why your mother ever fell in love with that man.”

  I said, “Mother told me he’s really not my father.”

  “One can hope,” she said.

  The rest of the night passed quickly and I fell asleep in her arms. I never heard Father retreat to his room and at first light wondered if he had slept outside the door, in the hall, for he beat upon the casing with a violent fist. I stirred, wiped sweaty hair back from my forehead and wiped the sleep from eyes with my wrist.

  Auntie was standing across the room, flipping through Mother’s journal, enthralled by the secrets my mother had thought she’d hidden so well from the rest of the world. Father beat the door harder and cleared his throat loudly.

  She ignored him.

  He said, “You’re to keep her here during the execution, am I understood?”

  “Leave us,” Auntie said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Leave us.”

  His face screwed up into a ghastly mockery of repulsion.

  “You heard me,” he said, once he’d calmed himself, his hands jerking at the hem of his suit coat. It was the only one he owned and he’d always managed to wear it every day. He stomped down the hall and to the front door, slamming it behind him. Auntie closed the journal and said to me, “Get dressed. Comb your hair. Whatever it is you’re supposed to do to make yourself presentable.”

  “We’re going, aren’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if they string you?”

  “They won’t,” she said, but there was a flicker of doubt in her eyes.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be there.”

  “She’s my sister and your mother. Of course we have to be there.”

  I nodded assent. Even so small, I knew she was right.

  I dressed quickly. Auntie held my hand and led me to the front door. Father was gone. The sky was gray. In the distance I could hear the excitement of the mob gathered around my mother. I squeezed Auntie’s hand harder and tried to catch her eye but she only increased her pace, nearly dragging me alongside her. We crossed the street, the sky a darling blue, birds singing in the trees, the cobblestones damp from a long week of rain and abuse.

  As we rounded the next corner I felt something steal the breath from my chest. She was there, higher than the crowd, perhaps fifty of them or more, who pressed in tightly on all sides. She was strung on a cross with two to her right and one to her left, all women, all crying. I wondered how many of their husbands or children were among the spectators, and how many felt as I did, enraged, yet helpless. For, I knew, that if Auntie could not save my mother then nothing and no one could.

  So I kept my mouth shut and my palm grew sweaty in hers, and the dust of chimney sweeps hung heavily in the air, mingling with the cigar and pipe smoke pouring like a pyre from a group of about twelve men, O’Connor and the priest Longfellow among their number. As if sensing our not belonging, first the policeman turned, then the priest. They leaned toward each other and exchanged words I could not hear. I told Auntie, “I hate them, but not as much as I hate my own father.”

  “Keep quiet,” she said, jerking me to the far right of the crowd, away from where O’Connor and Longfellow stood sternly among the smoking men, all of their faces lost in the thick vapor, all of us cold beneath the bright July sun. “Here,” Auntie said. We stood close to the edge of a body of flesh. My mother’s head hung limply, the weight of her body causing the ropes about her wrists to turn the flesh an angry red. I saw Father near the middle of the crowd, alone as far as I could tell, and praying again, for what I did not know. If it was forgiveness he sought, whether from Mother or God, he was best off not holding his breath.

  I looked at the four bound women again and did my best to distance myself emotionally from their silent acceptance. They were brave, I thought. Braver than I could ever be. I would be screaming my head off if I were tied to a cross, a meter of dry sticks bundled at my feet. And then it struck me that this was not to be a hanging at all, which would have been bad enough, but easier, I decided.

  In a hanging, from what local boys had told me, the neck snapped quickly if the executioner had done his job properly, and most did because they took their line of work deathly seriously. But here there were no nooses. Only the dried kindling beneath the women’s’ dusty black and thick shoes, worn and cracked from constant movement to provide outside the homes for their family and at home, again, providing for their families. I wiped my eyes, realized I was crying and Auntie pulled me tight to her side. She shushed me and whispered, “Don’t give them the satisfaction of tears.”

  The them she meant being of course the policeman and priest who watched us with their grim and amused faces from across the open square. I forced my tears to cease with great effort, thinking of the dolls that Auntie had in her possession, hoping that she would allow me to hold the match beneath their private parts, against their smug faces, knowing that across town, in some rectory, or some seedy alley, those men would squirm, plea, not to anything or anyone but merely to and for relief.

  The crowd around us shifted in tone and volume as the executioner strode from a doorway, close on his heels the magistrate, a fat, short man with a blotchy complexion. The executioner didn’t wear a hood like I had suspected he must. His hair was cut short and blond, the figure he cut wide and solid. He stepped lightly and his eyes roamed the faces before them, lighting momentarily upon my father’s, other men and women’s, then mine. He offered me a small nod, grim-faced, as he squared his shoulders and withdrew matches from his pocket and then wound a shoddy piece of cloth around a stick stolen from the farthest woman’s unlit pyre. The magistrate raised his hands as the mob grew excited, some yelling, some crying, whether in fear or disgust, and he told them to be still. He said, “Let this day be marked… bow your heads.” I did not bow mine. Instead I looked at Auntie, who had not bowed hers either. The look on her face told me to pay attention, to make nary a sound that might detract or distract. The air was thick with quiet murmuring.

  The priest, Longfellow, stepped from the knot of men about his per
son and trudged forward, his head low, as if this were all a burden he alone must bear. He stopped at the magistrate’s side, between him and the executioner. They all had their heads raised and eyes open. The murmurings died away as the priest recited some litany from the bible. Tears stung my eyes again, unable to look at him, or my father, or Auntie who surreptitiously slid her arm around my shoulders and inched closer.

  I was staring at my mother, who, in her final moments had raised her head and looked boldly at the crowd gathered to condemn her. Her gaze traveled from the far left to the far right. When her eyes met mine, she choked and she shuddered and hung her head. I whispered, “Mother…” And Auntie squeezed me tighter to her side as if her comfort alone would provide the strength I needed and sorely lacked.

  Longfellow finished his dry and uninspired reading. The magistrate said, “We burn the evil from among us. We will not tolerate even the smallest sliver.” He waved a hand at the executioner who nodded and lit the torch he’d fashioned. Once it grew brightly with fire he set it to the pile of kindling and logs beneath the first woman’s feet.

  Wood crackled.

  Several people gasped.

  The flames touched the soles of her feet and she threw her head back and screamed. But it was only the beginning of her suffering, just the smallest taste.

  Flames caught the hem of her dress about her ankles. It climbed the garment quickly and her screams were lost beneath the sound of burning, cheers from the crowd, the noise of the others accused as they racked their bodies against the bindings and support promising them the same fate.

  The woman they had made a wick of had her mouth open and fire danced inside the wretched cavity, causing her teeth to glow. Above her mouth, her eyes shriveled in their sockets and the stench of her flesh and hair succumbing to the inferno wafted like a plague upon the wind.

  Everybody but the accused covered their mouths and noses.

  Everybody except me, Auntie, the executioner, and the priest, Longfellow.

  I wanted to remember the smell. I wanted it to cling to me so that I might learn whatever lesson it was Auntie wished to teach me by being here, and my mother, too. She, tranquil now, as the executioner lit the second woman who cried uncontrollably and had been since the lighting of the woman next to her.

  A solid black ball weighted a place in my chest. It was so heavy that I felt as if I might sink to my knees as the first woman’s screams died away and the second woman’s took their place.

  I will not tell you what it was like to watch my mother burn. And if you feel that you need to know—or gods forbid, have a right to know—then I hope you find those you love experiencing it so that you might discover true loss first hand because you are an animal despite all of your posturing.

  I will tell you this though… watching someone you love—someone who has fed and clothed you and tended you while you were sick—die a horrible death leaves you feeling as if your entire body is sheathed in ice.

  It’s a cold that will never go away, a cold that will always linger.

  *****

  During the following week, I was remiss to leave my mother’s room, or even her bed. Auntie carried me wherever she wanted to go and she allowed me to hide my face from my father, who I feared could not look in my direction either. But I heard him drinking, his throat working as he swallowed, the sound of him opening a new jug of wine, spending the last of our money to quiet the demon in his head. It was not easy for him, and yet, it was not easy for me either. Or Auntie, who despite her hardened exterior, was fiercely loyal and devoted to those, like my mother, whom she loved dearly.

  The third day after my mother’s burning, Auntie returned to the house covered in dirt, her face drawn, her hands trembling. I sat at the kitchen table and said, “Where were you?”

  “Digging up bones,” she said.

  “Whose?”

  She brushed off her clothing and said, “We’re taking her with us.”

  “Who?”

  “Your mother, who do you think?”

  “Her corpse.”

  “Yes,” she said. “We’ll need it to go where we must go.”

  “And where exactly are we going?”

  She looked out the small back window. The kitchen was quiet, as was the rest of the house. It was late in the afternoon, still, sunny, and for some reason, thinking of my mother’s corpse outside our home, her face wearing that horrible mask of death, corrupted by flame and injustice, turned my stomach and I gagged. Bile burned my throat. My eyes watered. I choked the bile down and whispered, though it hurt, “Will any of them ever pay for what they’ve done?”

  Auntie turned and faced me. Her hands had stilled. She rubbed her palms together and shrugged. “God willing,” she said.

  I nodded. “Can I see her?”

  “I’m not sure you should.”

  “I want to,” I said.

  She considered it for a moment. “All right, now is as good a time as any for you to see what death looks like once it’s cooled.”

  “Once it has cooled?”

  “Come on,” she said.

  I followed her out the front door, deep into the alley between our apartment and the building next to us. A beaten, wooden dumpster hunched near our building. A dark door with a pale light pinned above it stood open and inside the building I could hear other children, oblivious to what was happening in their neighborhood.

  Auntie said, “Here,” pointing beyond the dumpster, on the far side of it, where a blanket wrapped around my mother’s corpse lay lost in shadow. It was summer. It should not have felt so dreadfully cold.

  I knelt next to the body, fingers hooked at the top of the sheet worn thin by use. I glanced at Auntie and she nodded, whispered, “Go on…” and I did, peeling the sheet back from my mother’s face.

  It was glossy, bright, stricken.

  It looked as if her open mouth and eyes were alive yet frozen, a thin layer of clear wax melted over and into them.

  She was hideous, not my mother at all.

  Tears stung my eyes. I shook my head violently.

  Auntie said, “This is what they do when they’re of a single mind to destroy that which they fear.”

  “It’s not her,” I said.

  “It’s her.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  I pulled the sheet back over her face. This was not the woman who had fed and clothed me and tended my sorry person when I was sick. This was a strange impersonation of what she had been, sure, but not the genuine article.

  “Not her,” I said, quietly. “Even fire can’t destroy a person that much.”

  “Only fire can,” Auntie said. “Only the people who light it.”

  I shook my head, trembling, standing now. “I want to go back inside.”

  She nodded. “You thought she’d retain some of the life you knew…”

  I nodded also. I had thought that, but not anymore. What lay beneath the sheet, hidden, disturbing, was a horrible fixture, a thing not human, if it ever was.

  “Inside,” I said.

  Auntie raised her arm and offered me her hand.

  She said, “We should bring your father out to see.”

  “We should,” I said, “but he won’t.”

  *****

  On the seventh day after Mother’s burial and resurrection, my father was pacing the living room while I sat on the couch. He was very drunk and crying. He opened the window and stuck his head outside and looked at the street down below, at the people who moved on, oblivious to his guilt, the thing he’d never be able to forgive himself and that suffocated him.

  Auntie was out. She’d been out a lot recently. She didn’t tell me where she went or when she’d be back and a lot days and a lot of long nights I feared that she’d leave me alone with him and the house’s terrific silence.

  His tread was loud across the room. I twisted where I sat to keep an eye on him. Father mumbled to himself, calling himself Judas Iscariot, then calling himself worse once he
realized that at least Judas had been paid thirty silver coins for his betrayal.

  “Stupid,” he said, not looking at me. Not looking at anything, smoking his pipe, chewing on the stem, the muscles flexing soundly in his jaw. I kept quiet. My knees knocked. He said, “I’m not a bad person. I’ve never been a bad person. I’ve done more than enough good to make up for one bad thing in my life. That’s all it was. One mistake. A big one, but just one.”

  His hands clawed at his face. His hair was matted and sweaty. He coughed into the crook of his elbow and then removed his pocket watch and stared at it with blurry, wet eyes, as if marking his final moments, his final thoughts.

  He grew quieter, more at peace, and moved to the window ledge and sat down upon it, slowly turning until he faced me and the room, the street at his back.

  He was in the window one moment and outside, falling, screaming, the next.

  I had merely blinked.

  My breath trapped in my throat, I crossed the room, five years old, a tender age for a child, one that should be easier, I thought, as I looked out upon the street below. The Irish policeman, O’Connor, was there kneeling by Father’s corpse, which was broken and bleeding over the cobblestones like a dropped egg. His head was turned away from me. I could still smell the scent of his pipe tobacco.

  O’Connor stood and shoved him with the toe of his boot. There were a few other people on the street and they crowded nearer. It seemed like they looked as one mass insect from the street to the window from which I leaned.

  I heard hushed yet sharp dialogue among them, me backing into the room, their words carrying up regardless… The witch’s daughter… Did she shove him? And… O’Connor’s voice: Someone stole her mother’s remains, and it seemed I could hear the creak of his neck and eyeballs as he glanced at our apartment.

  Much mumbling followed. I shook my head, thinking that they had it all wrong, and I prayed for Auntie to return and save me. Come, I thought. I need you!

  But the only noise, the only entrance through the door, was O’Connor’s wide-shouldered frame, his smudged cap, his too-white hands holding the same scarred Billy club he’d nearly beaten my mother’s head in with. He pointed the weapon at me and said, “Get over to the wall there and don’t you move a goddamn muscle.”