The Memory Thief

by Rachel Keener

  HANNAH

  I

  Hannah didn’t fall through the porch of the old plantation, like Sam once predicted she would. Instead, her feet carefully stepped over the empty places that dropped six feet to the ground below. And she passed easily through the front door, though the handle was lost long ago. The house was dark inside even when the sun was strong. Trees covered the outsides of the windows and dirt covered the insides. The house was cold, too. Even on warm fall days, heat wouldn’t go where light refused to.

  Hannah counted ten rooms on the main floor and looked up a broken staircase to guess of many more. Her suitcase was missing, left behind on Folly Beach or in the back of the taxi that drove her to the plantation. But she never once thought of it.

  Instead she pulled down old curtains, the hems gnawed by the same gray creatures that scurried around her at night. She pulled her hand across dusty velvet and marveled at the softness of it. She took off her clothes and let dirty polyester fall to the floor. Then she wrapped that velvet, decades old, around naked skin. She shivered with pleasure at its softness.

  She explored her new home, and found a hand pump on top of an old well that she used for water. In the old orchard she dined on fallen peaches, well past harvest, that lay on the ground and had begun to rot.

  Something lived in the chimneys of that home. Especially at night, she could hear it, scratching, beating, living. She waited, her eyes open, and eventually saw an owl fly out; it had a wingspan of three feet. The other gray creatures, the ones that now wallowed in her polyester, scattered. The owl flew perfectly, under arched doorways and fallen beams, until it escaped out a broken window.

  Other things lived in that home, too. Haints. They were all around her. Sometimes they called to her. Other times they sang. Either way they always looked the same. White blond hair falling down their backs. Polyester clothes hiding pale skin.

  One was ten years old. She sat on a box in the corner of the room while her mother brushed her hair.

  “Some day you’ll be a mother, too,” the mother said. “And you’ll brush your little girl’s hair, just like I’m brushing yours. Hopefully she won’t have as many tangles.”

  “When?”

  “Stop squirming. When you’re much older. Right now you’re still mine.”

  The child giggled. “I just turned ten.”

  “Still too little,” the mother said.

  “Will she have long eyelashes? Like a teacup princess?”

  “If she does, don’t ever let her know.”

  And then they would disappear back into the rotting walls. Hannah waited for them every night. She’d sit wrapped in molded velvet and pull her fingers through her hair. Until she could feel the brush that moved in the mother’s hands.

  There were others, too. A girl, looking the same as the ten-year-old child, only older. Sadder.

  “Mother?” the girl called.

  “Yes, child. What’s the matter?”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “What is it?” the mother asked, looking worried.

  “There’s blood.”

  The mother smiled and took the girl’s hands. “How wonderful!”

  The girl started to cry. “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re thirteen years old. You’re a woman now.”

  “But why is there—”

  “It only means you will have babies one day.”

  Hannah had it memorized. Her mouth mumbled the words like a favorite passage from one of her books. And when she got to the part where the mother said you will have babies one day, she laughed loudly. But the walls of that plantation hadn’t heard laughter in decades and didn’t know what to do with it. The sound bounced unclaimed from room to room.

  She was not afraid of the haints. She called out to them. Brought them peaches from the old orchard. Decorated their corners with red and yellow leaves and carefully arranged clumps of Spanish moss.

  She spent week after week in her new home, caring for her new family. The smells of rot and mold didn’t bother her. Neither did the taste of rusty water or browned peaches. She liked her velvet corner. She never planned to leave.

  But then one day, after so many safe days inside her tomb, light poured in. She pulled her velvet closer, wrapped it around her face, and closed her eyes. She heard a scream and clutched her curtain tightly. Something clawed at her. Pulling and tearing until the curtain split open and she felt cold air across her naked skin. She saw horror on the faces around her, and watched them stumble back in confusion.

  Fists raised above her. She turned herself into the corner, but the fists came down on her. And the screams cut her. Someone came running. Poured himself over her, around her, until the fists stopped. “What are you doing?” he yelled.

  “Look at her!”

  Hannah reached for her curtain and saw it was thrown to the middle of the room. She tried to pull her body low to the ground, but discovered she could no longer lie flat for the new swell beneath her. And so, with a naked stomach filling the space between her and the rotting floor, she crawled. Hand over hand, skin pulled across splinters. Her eyes fixed upon velvet.

  Somewhere in the room was moaning and weeping. A shrill scream, that made Hannah long to cover her ears. It was like a colicky newborn that nothing would comfort. Like an abandoned baby that no one would help.

  II

  Father carried Hannah into their old shack on James Island. He laid her gently in bed and left the room without speaking. Mother came to her, sat by the bed with a list in her hand. Mother stared at the paper, never once looked up, as she read off each question. Who. When. As Hannah answered, she thought of deep water. The Grapes of Wrath. And the beautiful plantation.

  “His name was Sam, and it happened two weeks before we left,” she said.

  Mother nodded slowly. Then held up her hands to count silently. “You’re going to have a baby in about four months.”

  A funeral began in their home. Bethie guarded the door, shook her head to the mailman that wanted to deliver a package. Her father answered the phone and whispered lies about reinforcing bridges over the Cooper River. Then he paced, his heavy steps giving a boom boom percussion on the hardwood floors. Mother wailed all night. On and on with no relief.

  Day came. Hannah could hear Father.

  “We’ll move west after she has it and say the baby is ours. She can move on with her life and always be the baby’s sister.”

  “I am sixty-one years old.” Mother laughed bitterly. “I am not Sarah. You are no Abraham. And this baby is certainly not our promised land.”

  “Well, the boy should know. She’ll be eighteen in a year. We were married then. Maybe, with our help, they could make a go of it.”

  “No,” Mother hissed. “For seventeen years I’ve turned a blind eye to you. I let you give my baby dirty books. I listened while you challenged her to question why she followed the creed we live by. This is your mess. I’ll clean it up; that’s what a mother always has to do. Clean up messes. But now it’s your turn to look the other way.”

  That night Mother brought her a plate of supper. A turkey sandwich and sliced pears.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Doesn’t matter in the least,” Mother replied, forcing the plate into her hands. “Time you stopped thinking of only yourself.”

  Hannah no longer shared a room with Bethie, who was ordered to sleep on the couch in the living room. She spent her days alone, hiding her stomach beneath piles of blankets on her bed and eating the trays that were carried to her.

  “Get up,” Mother said one day, setting a tray of food by her bed. “Go for a walk. It isn’t good for you or the baby to be in bed all day.”

  Hannah waited until the sun was beginning to set. Then she walked out of her room. It was the first time she’d done that, other than to step quickly across the hall to the bathroom. She walked through the house and felt new pressure in her feet. The added weight in her hips. She caught herself against the wall and
realized walking required new skills.

  She found Bethie by the marsh, took her hand and pulled her away. Together, they walked to the beach. Hannah’s skirt was pushed low so that her stomach could swell over it. Her hemline dragged in the marsh sand. Her breasts spilled out of the edges of her bra. There was no modesty anymore. Her body displayed sin like a prized trophy. And as the cars passed by, she knew what they were thinking. She even whispered it to herself with their soft southern tongues. Bless her young heart. A knocked-up Holy Roller.

  Winter was dark at the ocean. With stronger winds and bigger clouds. Christmas passed. Then Valentine’s. But Hannah moved through these months without complaint. Her body grew bigger and her heart felt cold.

  “I’m sorry, Bethie,” Hannah said one night, as they walked. “I’ve messed your life up, too. You should be at school.”

  Bethie shook her head, put her arm around Hannah. Sometimes they would sit on the dunes and count waves until they could no longer see them. Hannah reminded Bethie of the grocery-bag lesson their father taught them when they were little. He would fill a bag full of various objects. Like candy. Or money. King crowns. He would have them reach their hands into the bag and pull something out. Only if they said the right thing could they keep it.

  Hannah pulled out a dollar bill. “I’m a child of God, more precious than money,” she’d whisper, as her father nodded. Bethie pulled out candy. “I’m a child of G-g-g-g-od, and that’s sweeter than c-c-c-candy.” Once Hannah pulled out a seashell. She held it in her hand, unable to think of the correct answer. Her father helped her. “You are a child of God. The crown of creation. More glorious than the ocean.”

  The baby moved within her. She talked to it. Even stroked it through her belly sometimes. But she didn’t own it; it would never be hers. Mother said it was meant for someone worthy. Someone that waited for a baby and couldn’t have one. “Just like our Bethie was a blessing to us when we couldn’t have more children,” Mother explained.

  Most of the time, Hannah accepted Mother’s words. She didn’t try to imagine the baby’s face. She didn’t wonder what color its eyes would be. She only thought of the words Mother told her every day when she brought the breakfast tray. Soon this will all be over.

  There was one night, though, that Hannah lay in bed watching the skin of her stretched stomach. Something knotted up. A tiny hill upon the mountain of her middle. She guessed a knee. Maybe a foot or hand. “I’m not better than the ocean,” she whispered. “Maybe you can be.”

  That was the first time she thought of keeping it. She didn’t know how to be a mother. How to teach modesty and all the other things she failed. She only sensed that a growing baby was something very close to holy. Despite her own filth, a promise bloomed within.

  “Father,” she whispered in the dark of night. “Come to the water.”

  It was freezing that night. Little bits of icy rain falling around them. But she was always hot, with the weight, with the memories.

  “What?” he asked, his eyes shifting around the night sky, scared to look at her.

  “I want to keep it.”

  “What?”

  “I want to keep it.”

  “You’re not married.”

  “I want this baby.”

  He shook his head sadly. Pulled her as close as he could get her to his chest. He sobbed.

  “It would be selfish.”

  “Why?”

  “I know it’s been hard to grow up the way you have, but if this baby is a girl, can you imagine how much harder her life would be? Being raised by an unwed mother and still having to wear skirts to the floor and a noose of hair around her neck? She would be an outcast.”

  “I’ll leave the church,” Hannah sobbed. “I’d even let her wear pants.”

  Hannah cried as Father whispered “I’m sorry” over and over in her ear. And she cried more when he told her about the wonderful family Mother had found. A woman, married for fifteen years, with no children of her own. A preacher’s wife that had prayed for years for a child just like the one within Hannah.

  “When we get back home,” he said, “nobody will know. Mother’s already talked to that lady you used to work for. She’s agreed to help deliver you, off record. And the barren woman will say it’s hers. A few more weeks and you’ll be home again. It will be like this never happened.”

  Exhausted, Hannah could only nod. But the next night she woke Mother.

  “Come swimming. No one will see us.”

  “Have you lost your mind? It’s the middle of the night. It’s not even summer.”

  “You’ve never been, have you? If you could just feel it, Mother, feel the water everywhere that your clothes should be. It’s so special. I want to share it with you. I want to share it with my baby.”

  “It’s not your baby,” Mother hissed.

  Hannah went alone. Stripped her clothes off by the dunes in the middle of the night. The cold bit her skin as she pushed her body into the water. Her balance was thrown off by her new shape, and the waves tossed her playfully. The burn of the cold soon eased into a sweet numb that made her feel sleepy. The baby moved. And Hannah smiled sadly.

  “I’ve had this much at least,” she whispered.

  Her body felt more weightless than it had in months. The bright moonlight bounced off the skin of her stomach. Someone yelled, but she ignored it, and let her mind go as numb as her body.

  Someone else was in the water. Grabbing her, dragging her to shore. Her heaviness returned, and she felt the struggle of someone working hard to pull her to the dunes. Blankets were wrapped around her naked body. Arms wrapped around the blankets. Hannah looked up to see Bethie crying over her.

  The next day, dark clouds rolled over the ocean and hovered over the coast. A storm settled in, more dense and dark than any spring storm a local could remember. Hannah looked out her window and saw the marsh water rising nearly to the back porch. It made her feel caged, all that water coming up to the back door and her knowing that on the other side lay the ocean.

  Early that night, pains began. And though she cried with fear, Mother smiled and even laughed sweetly. “It’s almost over, daughter. We’ll be home soon.”

  Father set out in the storm. His car plowed through deep puddles and violent winds. By the time he returned, the house was beginning to shake. Hannah heard old wooden boards groan with the heavy effort of staying put.

  She screamed when the pains came. And she screamed again when the window above her broke. But the water felt good. The rain streamed over her bed like a cool baptism.

  Cora was there. Lifting her legs and mumbling instructions. She said something to Hannah. Words of encouragement or faith. And then her tongue lit up with fire and she shouted to the heavens. Hannah screamed, too, but never stopped listening to that sweet mystery language. Through every broken syllable, every nonsense word, Hannah heard only this: You poor baby girl.

  And then the storm inside her body stopped. “A beautiful baby girl,” Cora announced. She laid her across Hannah’s chest. For one tiny moment, Hannah’s baby was all hers.

  “You,” Hannah whispered to her baby, even as Mother stepped forward. “Better than the ocean. As close to holy as I’ll ever get.”

  III

  Three days after she gave birth, Father carried Hannah to the car. Bethie rode up front, in between Mother and Father. Hannah was too weak to sit up. She lay down in the back and watched the clouds pass by above her. She wanted to sleep. She wanted to die. But neither seemed easy enough.

  Crossing the state border hurt worse than the birth. Carolina held everything. The ocean with its low tides. Her first love. Her daughter. She screamed so that Father broke out in a sweat, Bethie sobbed, and Mother yelled, “Get control of yourself!”

  “Keep going,” Mother insisted, when Father hinted at stopping to rest. “She needs to get home.”

  Mother turned to Hannah. “You’ve answered all their prayers. For years that woman has begged God for a baby. Your sacrific
e made it possible. You should be so proud.”

  “What of mine?” Hannah moaned.

  “Your what?”

  “My prayers.”

  Late in the evening, Father pulled over at a hotel, even though Mother wanted to drive through the night. They fell asleep quickly. Father in a recliner. Hannah in one bed. Mother and Bethie in the other. Everyone woke up feeling better, refreshed in the morning. Eager to put the past behind them. To start again, new and clean.

  Except for Hannah. The sheets around her were wet with blood. Her eyes wouldn’t stay open for more than a moment at a time. Her skin was damp and cold.

  “We’ve got to take her to a hospital,” Father cried.

  “No,” Mother whispered. “No, there can never be a record. We promised…”

  “But she will die!”

  “And she’ll die if there is a record.”

  Father ran from the room, but returned quickly with a doctor carrying a black bag. Hannah never remembered the exam or what the doctor said was wrong. She only remembered how Father handed him a stack of cash.

  They stayed in the hotel for two weeks. The doctor came back to check on her and Mother handed him cash every day. Hannah swallowed handfuls of pills. And when she could finally hold her eyes open, she looked out the window next to her bed. She saw mountains.

  She had passed through them before, but they were always a part of the journey. One more thing to hurry and get through. She’d never paused long enough to feel them, how heavy they could seem, especially lying sick in bed and looking up.

  “These are the Appalachians,” Mother whispered when she saw Hannah’s opened eyes. “Some of the oldest mountains in the world.”

  Hannah didn’t speak.

  “Think of all the history this land has seen. Think of the families that have found protection here. From wars. Famines. From sin.”