The Memory Thief

by Rachel Keener

  “Gonna have to fight to go now,” Janie said. “Gonna have to fight like I taught you.”

  I pulled against the rope, deeper into the icy water.

  “But you didn’t teach me, Janie. You weren’t tough. You were just lost, same as me.”

  “Shut your trap,” she hissed.

  “I got somethin’ else that might work. Treasure.”

  I cried out as loud as I could. “Hey! You know those two silver spoons that went missin’? The heavy kind from the china cabinet, right next to the Great Room archway? I stole ’em. I still have one, too, here in my pocket. I lost the other, but you can have this one back. Just let me go.”

  I threw that silver spoon as hard as I could and listened for any response. But the rope pulled tighter.

  “I can’t stay with you, don’t you know? We don’t belong together. I pretended once that we did. That day we were sewin’ aprons, and you were tellin’ me pretty stories. I closed my eyes and imagined you young. Imagined you were her and we belonged together. It was a lie, but lies can be a gift sometimes.”

  The ocean seemed colder than ever before. My skin was numb. My legs were stiff and could barely move. But through the perfect black of a whole world burned to ash, I saw it. The tiniest sparkle, through the water, there on the bottom of the ocean floor.

  “Look,” I whispered. “The missin’ spoon. Maybe if I sink down low I can git it. Maybe if I sink down low I won’t ever come back. See them marks across the handle? That’s our name.”

  I sank down to my shoulders. The spoon was so close, its light so clear.

  “Grandmother,” I whispered. “Where’s my green baby blanket? The one you wrapped me in on the day I was born. I could use it now. I’m cold. I’m so very, very cold.”

  II

  When I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by cinder blocks. The same dull gray as the ones of my childhood. But this time, they were high above my head on every side. Who would have thought cinder-block towers could rise higher than I’d ever climb?

  I didn’t know where I was; there was no window to look out. Just four walls of gray and a black door. My first thought was to rip the IV out of my arm so I could escape. But then I realized my arms were tied tightly to the bed.

  I could see, though, with a quick raise of my head, that I was badly hurt. Bandages wrapped around my arms and legs. Red circles stained through the white cloth. That’s when I remembered the room at Red Castle. The click, like the sound of fingers snapping. The heat and the gagging. The check I signed over to Tabby. The window that lied, just like everyone else. Promised sweet peace but left me bleeding and hurt, tied down inside a gray cinder-block tower. If I had only known what to cry for, I would have screamed out the panic that swelled inside me. But I couldn’t cry Mother anymore. You were dead. I couldn’t cry Money anymore. I had it but gave it away.

  The thought occurred to me to cry Whiskey. After everything, the blood and bandages that covered my body, that word still sat greedy on my tongue. And it made me sad. It took away the hope that Janie’s letter once gave. That sweet letter she wrote before she ran away:

  Angel,

  I’m getting away. Sorry I can’t take you with me. But I’m not your momma and I can’t always be taking care of you. You’ll figure out how to do it yourself one of these days. I hope to see you again.

  Love,

  Janie

  P.S. I wasn’t pretending when I called you princess at night. I know I’m one of them. But they say you ain’t. You could be anybody Angel. Even a princess.

  The letter gave me hope. But the day I woke up tied down—cut and hurt all over and still craving whiskey—I learned a new lesson. One Momma and Daddy never taught me. In the end, I was theirs, too. As much as I liked to deny it, as much as they fought against it, it was true. Maybe we didn’t share any blood in our veins. But as it turned out, blood wasn’t nearly as important as I’d always believed. Wasn’t nearly as important as Janie believed the day she wrote that letter. The thing we shared, the thing that flowed in all of our veins, was stronger than a family name. Stronger than any drop of blood. Whiskey flowed through us. Made us kin, made us family, in a way that nothing else ever would.

  I sucked in my breath and wished that my hands weren’t tied down so that I could try again to end the pain. That horrible pain that twisted inside me. Not from the cuts or the fall. Not from the bits of glass that were surely still stuck to my skin, but from the truth. That after all the running, all the fighting against it, I was the drunk woman passed out sloppy on the couch. I was the drunk woman demanding whiskey prizes. I was Momma, and though I hated her, she was all mine.

  “You’re awake,” the old woman whispered. “Do you hurt?” She leaned over me with a tissue and gently tapped at the tears that spilled down my face. “I’ll call the nurse.

  “Just a bit to help her relax,” she said to a lady who walked in with a tray of needles. “She’s been asleep so long already, no need to make her sleep again so soon.”

  Something dripped down into my IV and soon I felt things start to slip away. The gray walls, the blood seeping up through white bandages, the shame of being Momma. I was drunk again. Tied down and drunk.

  The old woman reached over me, tried to remove a tiny bit of blue glass still stuck to my skin. Still cutting me.

  “This isn’t what I wanted,” she said. “I never dreamed I would end up holding you prisoner. Never dreamed you’d nearly die in my arms. What I always wanted, what I always prayed for, was something different. I have seen you thousands of times in my dreams. Where you grew up happy. Where you were gifted in music. Sometimes you were even valedictorian. Sometimes you marry well and I have great-grandchildren. Each of them with white hair, just like your mother’s. When I fall asleep at night and fear wakes me up, there are two things I do. I whisper the carving above my door and then I whisper prayers. That you grew up well. That you grew up safe and happy. Do you know when I carved those words above the doors?”

  I tried to shake my head.

  “When I tried for the last time to find you and couldn’t. It was a sort of rebellion, I suppose, on my part. My own way of screaming at God, saying, Fine. You won’t bring her back to me, I’ll stop wanting.” She laughed softly. “Like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum. Doesn’t work, though. That whole ‘raise the fist to heaven’ thing.”

  She reached out and gently touched the top of my hand. There was one unbandaged spot, about two inches of spared skin. She stroked it with her fingertips, back and forth, one of the only places she could touch me without causing more pain. She pulled her hand back quickly, sucked in her breath, and whispered, “How I wish she could see this.”

  She covered her face with her hands. I looked away.

  “Let me tell you something I’ve learned,” she whispered. “Death is a slow, slow thing, child. Death isn’t something instant and easy, like a fast bullet or a jump through a second-story window. You start to die long before you breathe your last. Looking at you here, at the pain in your eyes, I imagine you started to die the day I first handed you over to that woman. Hannah started to die that day, too. We all did.”

  I knew your name. Finally. You were Hannah Rey.

  “During your birth, as she screamed and Cora prayed, I stood and faced the wall. Not because I didn’t want to see you. Not because I hated Hannah, but because I couldn’t bear the pain. Hannah was the love child of my old age, and there she was, wretched in blood and misery. Once you were born and I heard your cry, I went to Hannah and pulled you from her chest. Weak as she was, I still felt her hands tighten around you. Weak as she was, I still saw the panic in her eyes. I remember I had my hand on the doorknob when she cried ‘Wait’ the first time. ‘Wait,’ she said again.”

  The old woman stood and stepped away from my bed. She turned her back to me, but I could still see her shiver as she whispered, “Even now I dream of it, over and over. In my dreams I always stop and ask, Why? Hannah’s answer keeps changing. Sometimes she says
, I want to hold her again. Sometimes she says, Let me look at her once more. Sometimes she just screams loud and crazy, like a mother whose child has gone missing.”

  Even through the numbness of good drugs, I could feel tears pouring from my eyes. She misunderstood. Thought I was crying about my cuts. “Don’t worry. They are many, but most aren’t deep. The doctor said you won’t have too many scars. It was the ones on your arms that were the most dangerous. We had a hard time getting those to stop bleeding. He had to give you a few pints of blood.”

  I closed my eyes to try and stop my tears, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know how to stop that kind of tears. The old woman’s words pounded inside my mind like a victory chant. Like the last bell in a great boxing round. She started talking again, but I didn’t listen. I closed my eyes and savored the joy of finally knowing for certain.

  You wanted me. Your hands tightened around me as she pulled me away. Your face went wild with panic as she pulled me from you. You cried, Wait. And then you cried it again: Wait!

  And I knew the answer. The one the old woman didn’t. The one from her dreams, when she asked, Why? I knew what you were trying to say. Not, I want to hold her again, and not, Let me look at her once more.

  I knew your answer. It went like this:

  Wait! you screamed, your face wild with panic, your arms reaching for me, even as your mother walked away. Wait!

  Why? she asked coolly.

  You look at her and you say the truest thing you’ll ever speak. You say the one thing, the only thing, that either of us will ever be certain of.

  We belong together.

  III

  Days later, I finally began to wake up from the fog of my new friend Morphine. My body throbbed with the jagged cuts, the hundred stitches that covered my skin. I tried to sit up but discovered that I was still tied down. I pulled against the restraints.

  “Untie me!” I demanded.

  The old woman was sleeping in a chair next to my bed. She startled awake, looked at me steadily, and shook her head. I tried again. “You can’t keep me tied up like an animal. I’ll tell the nurse when she comes back. Untie me!”

  “I can’t believe it,” she said bitterly. “You really still want to leave?”

  “Yes!” I screamed. “I’m well enough now.”

  “Look at you, Angel. Look at your body, back from the brink of death. Look at the miserable choices you’ve made, for whiskey, for that window. And now, after all the time I’ve poured into you, grooming you, teaching you, saving you, you still want to run? You are alive because of me. Only a fool would want to leave.”

  I screamed for help. I screamed for somebody, for anybody, that might hear. “Somebody please help me!”

  The old woman sat in the chair, studying me. “Foolish girl! No one can hear you. No one can help you.”

  “I hate you,” I moaned. “I hate you so much.”

  She nodded her head. “I know.”

  “Just let me go. You don’t have to pay me anymore. I just want to go.”

  She shook her head. “Never.”

  I screamed for help again. I pulled against the restraints with all my might. I promised her as I fought, “I’ll find a way out of here. When you’re not lookin’, I’ll find a way. But before I go, you can bet I’ll git you first, I’ll show you just how mean a girl from Black Snake trailer can be.”

  My body was throbbing with exhaustion and pain. The old woman sat in her chair, disgust smeared across her face. I turned to the wall to hide my defeat. I whispered, “Why?”

  “Because,” she said, “I made a promise. I always keep my promises.”

  “I’m hurtin’ again,” I cried. “Call the nurse.”

  She stood over my bed and looked down on me. “Remember, Angel. I’m the one who calls the nurse. I’m the one who makes your pain go away. Or not.”

  “I’ll never forgive you. If that’s what you’re wantin’.”

  “No,” she said, and shrugged. “I want to raise the dead.”

  “Call the nurse,” I begged.

  “In time, child. But now that you feel well enough to want to leave, I’d like to explain why that wouldn’t be wise.”

  She told me again about what it was like to find me in that hospital room. What it was like to have me, at last, safe under her roof.

  “You were supposed to love it in my home. You were supposed to find peace and healing and realize you had no need for anything else. You were supposed to make everything better, like any miracle would.”

  “Just call the nurse.”

  “But you tried to leave me. Over such a thing as whiskey. You jumped out of a second-story glass window. You nearly ruined everything, the entire plan.”

  “Lady, I didn’t know there was a plan,” I cried.

  “There’s always a plan,” she said lowly. “And I will not allow you to mess it up. I will not allow you to run away. I will not allow you to die. There’s a reason you are here, Angel. You have been chosen. You have been sent to me.”

  “I have a thousand cuts across my body,” I whispered.

  “Nurse!” she called out. She leaned across the bed, until her face was just inches from mine. “I sold you, beautiful as you were, to try and save my daughter. There is nothing I won’t do to save her. If you try to leave again, if you try anything like before, believe me, I will make you wish there was a window nearby. Do you understand?”

  The nurse held the morphine injection up to my IV line. “No, not yet,” the old woman told her. “Do you understand?”

  I nodded my head.

  “Then here is your peace.”

  Warmth slid through the needle in my arm and crept its way throughout my entire body. The room grew softer. The lights no longer glared, but glowed like a Tennessee moon.

  “She cried, ‘Wait,’ ” I mumbled.

  “Yes.” The old woman stood up and walked to a table that had been placed by the wall sometime during the night. There was a pitcher of ice water on it. She poured herself a glass and slowly took a sip. She brought the water to me, held it to my lips. I felt the coolness trickle into my mouth. I forced myself to swallow.

  “When I was a child,” she said, as she sat back down, “my father was a hard man. He had this line he’d say, before he whipped us, about beating the Devil away. I remember thinking sometimes, when he’d stare at me in such anger, Beat me harder. Whatever it was he saw, whatever clung to me and made me bad, I wanted it gone. Sometimes at night, I’d sneak his belt out. Hit the back of my legs until they were bruised.

  “My mother was so different. Gentle and easy to crush like my sister, Leah. She only spanked me twice in my whole childhood. And she cried as she did it. She said, ‘I don’t do this to hurt you, child. I do it because I love you. Because I want better for you.’ Who do you think I was more like, the day I took you away? My mother or my father? I know what Hannah thought. She thought I saw the Devil in her. She thought I was trying to beat the Devil away. But I swear to you, I wasn’t thinking Devil. I was only thinking of Hannah. How she was just seventeen. My own child, having a baby. I didn’t sell you to hurt Hannah. I did it because I loved her. Because I wanted better for her.”

  “I wasn’t somethin’ bad,” I mumbled. “I was just a baby.”

  “No you weren’t bad. You were perfect. So tiny, both your feet fit inside the palm of my hand. And your little ears, they looked like pink seashells. But Hannah had this great sin. This black mark that would ruin her life. And I didn’t want to face it. I couldn’t deal with it. I wanted to hide it, make it like it never happened. The thing is, I knew it couldn’t be done. I had studied too many scriptures to ever believe that I could hide sin. But in my panic, I still tried. I still thought maybe I could get away with something Eve couldn’t. Maybe I could avoid Achan’s curse. Do you know any of those stories?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’ll call the nurse to feed you some broth and I’ll be back shortly. There’s something I want to read to you. It’d be a go
od place for us to start. A nice first step in our work together.”

  When she returned, I was dozing in a perfect haze. She patted my hand until I opened my eyes.

  “This is part of our story, too. Your story.”

  She read about Adam and Eve. How they ate the wrong fruit and tried to hide it from God. How they lost the love garden. Their easy, carefree lives. How they lost the face of God himself.

  “What do you think about it all?” she stopped and asked. “I’ve always wondered what it must be like to hear these stories for the first time. I’ve never had a first time. They were whispered to me from birth.”

  “I like the part about the serpent.”

  “Why?”

  “Makes me think of Black Snake.” I wanted to tell her about the first night in the trailer. But the words were spinning inside my head. And the only thing I could get to come out right was “Maybe the serpent just wanted the garden to himself. Maybe he thought Adam would come after him with a hoe.”

  She laughed softly. “Believe it or not, this story gave me hope. Even as I sold you, I thought of it. Adam and Eve hid their sin. They were found out and they lost the garden. It was a hard punishment, to be sure. They had to work to live, could no longer see God’s face, but they still had each other. They were still whole. They still had a chance in this world, to live and grow and love. That’s all I wanted for Hannah.”

  “Wait,” I whispered.

  “What?”

  “She didn’t?” I asked. “No chance?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s a different story.” She turned pages and started reading again. About the Israelite named Achan, and how he hid stolen treasure beneath the floor of his tent. He was found out and they stoned him. And his children. All of them destroyed, over that hidden sin.

  The old woman’s voice shook as she read the story. I looked at her, saw how the lines in her forehead creased deeper with her effort to control her emotion. It was only then that I started to realize what you must have been through. All this time I had wanted to tell you about what had happened to me. About what I had seen and felt. I had longed, for so many years, to hold up the ruins of my childhood before you and whisper, This is why…