to consider.
We reach Salette
long after I’ve decided
I can’t take another step.
And yet I do.
At the sight of our dismal group
the abbess at the gate
throws the doors open wide
metal on metal screaming our arrival.
(battering ram on portcullis
swords clash outside my door
armor jostles as my chambers
fill with men)
Zahra’s hand on my back
anchors me to this moment
but my heart pounds
like I never left.
(I never will)
Our infirm entrusted
to the care of the sisters
(blessed art thou amongst women)
I volunteer
to guide the horses
to their own refuge,
reveling in a moment
free of responsibility
for all these other souls.
Zahra moves to join me
but I nudge her toward Helene.
Stay with her, please.
Forehead to muzzle
I breathe in the stable’s
familiarity: hay,
sweat, safety.
But that’s a story I tell myself.
We’re no safer here than anywhere.
If those monsters could breach
a drawbridge and armed guards
how are rosaries and faith to stop them?
Child?
A novitiate
no older than myself.
Are you well?
I laugh.
My parents
are dead, my sister
mute with despair.
With every blink
I see behind my eyelids
the men who laughed
held me down
silenced me with filthy hands
took turns making a mockery
of every time I held a sword
and thought myself their equal.
I could do
with a bath.
La Salettes sanctify themselves
with freezing water, no palace servants
to boil and haul the buckets that scald
their hands but warm my bath.
It doesn’t matter.
There isn’t water
hot enough to wash away
what’s etched into my bones.
Even if there were
I’ve no desire
to linger, exposed
my body a living
history of horror.
In a stark room
at a rustic table
Helene sits,
Zahra on one side
Emilde on the other
a crucifix behind them
and several hovering
angels in black.
A hunk of bread
tureen of pottage
sit untouched.
My stomach growls.
Where are the others?
Helene does not respond.
Some took to bed,
some bathing.
Zahra serves
a bowl of pottage,
pushes it my way.
Bed.
My muscles ache
but I’m loath to test
what will happen
when I close my eyes.
I push the bowl back toward Zahra.
Helene? Have you eaten?
Still no answer.
We’ve tried.
Emilde has never been more
than hands that brought my tea.
Would I have looked more closely
had I known she is my sister’s
faithful shadow?
Are her parents dead like Zahra’s?
(Like mine.)
Perhaps I should have thought
before I dragged these women
through the countryside
some might have kin, a warmer
comfort than these cold stone walls.
It’s not as though their service
is required in my household any longer.
There is no household.
Two cots
fill a room
smaller than
Helene’s larder.
No windows,
a single guttering flame
sends shadows dancing
across dingy walls.
Emilde settles
on a cot with Helene,
stroking her hair
humming in her ears.
I should be the one
to soothe my sister.
She should be the one
to soothe me.
But always we have been
brash Marguerite
ladylike Helene
in their own corners
with their sword
and their book.
Servants for confidantes
when all that time
there was a sister
who could have
should have
been there.
Zahra tucks in behind me
shivering from the chill
or what we’ve survived
or both.
The pitch-black darkness
doesn’t hide the fact
that four exhausted girls
have found a place
to lay their heads
but do not sleep.
No ice-cold water numbs me
no other bodies left to tend
my every muscle tenses
against intruders
brain races
but never fast enough
to outrun the images
sounds, smells
right there at fingertip
each bit of skin that touches
scratchy mattress is aflame
with other touches taking, desecrating.
Hours later
breaths even out
advance retreat
the servants sleep.
Helene?
My sister lies
within my reach
and still I do not know
what she has suffered.
As though by knowing
I could change a thing.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jess arrives before Papi to find me in the kitchen, eyes swollen, breath shuddery, hands covered in dough. They don’t bat an eye; they throw on an apron and start helping.
When Papi bursts in, the first batch has just come out of the oven. “What’s going on?” he says. “¿Y el U-Haul? Where’s Nor? Are those . . . peanut butter cookies?”
“Indeed they are, Mr. Morales. Andrés.” Jess glances at me and pushes a cookie on a napkin across the counter to my dad. “Nor’s probably in her room. She’s using the U-Haul to pack up some things she’ll need in the off-campus apartment she’s moving to.”
Papi takes this in for a moment, then hurries down the hall. I grab the cookie and shove the whole thing in my mouth.
“You should try the longsword class with me,” Jess says.
“Really?”
“What?”
“I should learn how to use a fucking sword?”
They blink, uncomprehending for a moment. “Oh, shit, no not because of that. For research on Marguerite. She’s going to pick up a sword e
ventually, right? You’ve got to know how to describe that.”
They have a point. But for all the words I’ve spilt, the idea of actually wielding a sword is terrifying.
“This is my decision!” Nor shouts from down the hall.
“Of course it is, morena! But I’ll need to see if student housing can refund your dorm if we’re going to afford an off-campus apartment.”
“Someone literally stabbed a dagger through my door! You want me to stay there because you paid for it?!”
“¡No, mija, claro que no!”
“Then I don’t really have a choice, do I?”
Of course she has a choice. She has a home, with a bedroom and a family and a dog. I could kind of understand when she wanted to stand her ground and show they couldn’t run her off campus. But if she has to leave, why not run home?
She has a sister.
But maybe I’m why she can’t be here. She’s so pissed at me for everything I’ve done that she doesn’t feel safe here, either.
Nor comes stomping down the hall, lugging a box of who knows what.
Jess lays a hand on my shoulder. A warning?
“You do have a choice!” I can’t help myself. “This is your home. If you’re so mad at me, then I’ll go! I’ll . . . stay with Jess for a while. I’ll—”
Nor drops the box she was holding. Something inside breaks. “Oh my god, when are you going to realize this is not all about you? It’s not about you at all!”
Chester noses his way between us, sticking closer to me. Nor may be red-faced and screaming, but my heart has stopped.
“Elinor.” Papi stands behind her, careful not to touch her, but clearly aching to hold her. “No seas asi. She’s trying to help.”
Nor takes a steadying breath. She turns and faces Papi, completely unable to stand the sight of me. “The apartment I’m going to is free. Feminist pity or something, plus the room was already empty for the summer.” She picks the box up off the ground and heads for the door. “And when you talk to the housing department, don’t sign me up for a dorm in the fall.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Green Lake is at full capacity. Smack in the middle of Seattle, people stream around the three-mile route with strollers and kids, dogs and Rollerblades.
The path is barely passable on a day like this, but some sort of social order is maintained as serious runners and people on wheels stay to one side and everyone else stays to the other. But I can’t deal with the paths. I can’t deal with the dudebro runners who think because they bought some pricey spandex they suddenly qualify for the Olympics and all must clear the path to let them through. I can’t deal with the yappy dogs whose owners insist they’re friendly right up until they try to tear Chester’s face off. I can’t even deal with the babies in strollers, all adorable and innocent and completely unaware of how this world will destroy them in a few short years.
Instead, Chester and I sit close to the edge of the lake, but far away from the snack bar and paddleboat rentals and swimming area, with their happy families and splashing children and (potentially) people I know.
I thought being outside might help, since I can’t write at home and now I’m paranoid in coffee shops. It takes Chester a while to understand that we’re not going to walk or toss a ball. Finally he settles onto the blanket next to me, gazing forlornly out at the ducks in the middle of the lake.
I flip open the notebook and find some new illuminations. Jess adds to them whenever I leave it lying around. Sometimes I watch while they draw, but they get self-conscious and stop drawing, so I usually try to wait until they leave it lying around again. It’s a game we’re playing with each other.
I’ve finally tuned out the background noise and gotten into a groove when something hits me in the back of the head, hard. Chester jumps up, but instead of protecting me from an attacker, he grabs the weapon—a Frisbee—and goes running toward the water.
“Oh, shit, I’m so sorry.”
Of course it’s a dude, with no awareness of those around him. I sigh. If Chester hadn’t run off with the Frisbee, I could have flung it into the lake and been done with it. If I turn around and see a UW T-shirt or any other collegiate attire, I may shove the perpetrator in the lake.
But he’s wearing a GARFIELD HIGH DEBATE shirt, crooked glasses, and an unfortunate sunburn across his very fair nose and cheeks. He looks like he should be starring in a sitcom about a scrappy debate team captain who ends up in an R & J situation with the captain of the rival debate team. Except instead of double suicide, there’s lots of biting sarcasm and dueling pop-culture references.
“My cousins are punishing me,” he says, glancing nervously over his shoulder. “I basically destroyed them during a dinner-table politics conversation last night. So they’re destroying me via Frisbee humiliation. Not that any of that’s your problem. Any thoughts on how to get the Frisbee back from your dog, though? If it were up to me, I’d say the Fates had made themselves pretty clear and leave it to decompose at the bottom of the lake within a few millennia. But my cousins are pretty attached to their Frisbees. It’s like an obsession. They call it disc golf? Have you ever heard of that?”
I’m supposed to find him charming, in this sitcom scene I’ve been thrust into. The earnest, babbling nerd who never has to worry about talking too much because that is not A Thing boys get accused of. The more they talk, the more charmed girls are. (Girls written by all-male TV staffs, that is.)
I blink at him, then turn to look out into the lake, where Chester is now gleefully treading water, gripping the Frisbee triumphantly between his teeth. “Chester! Come!” Chester absolutely does not come. And I will not be charmed.
“Baxter, come on!” a preppy-looking redhead whines from across the grass. “You better get that disc back!”
“Meet my cousin Darlene.” Baxter—I guess—rolls his eyes. “Visiting from California.”
I clap my hands. “Mr. Rochester, you come here now!”
“English lit fan?”
Here’s where we bond over our mutually nerdy interests. “My sister named him.”
“Ah.” He sits down on my blanket.
“Uh. Make yourself comfortable?”
He scrambles up. “Oh, sorry. I thought we were talking.”
Because a conversation I didn’t even initiate is an invitation to go full meet-cute on me.
Did Craig attempt a meet-cute with Nor? Did he attempt fumbling-yet-adorable, and when that failed, resort to force?
“Am I gonna have to wade out there?” Baxter asks.
I shrug.
“He’ll come back in eventually, right? He won’t tread out there until he exhausts himself and drowns? I wouldn’t sleep very well if I knew I was responsible for the death of Mr. Rochester. Even if he was a pervy creep. The guy from the book, not your dog. I don’t know your dog.”
It’s the tipping point in the meet-cute scene—our shared aversion to Mr. Rochester. You hate Mr. Rochester? OMG so do I!!! The second I indicate we have a single thing in common, this guy will for sure expect my number and a date and who knows beyond that.
I’m not going to be cast in this role, and it’s the only one available to me. I shove everything into my bag. “He’ll follow me if he thinks I’m leaving.” I walk briskly toward the path and sure enough, the moment I cross Chester’s acceptable distance, he bounds out of the water and rushes to me, Frisbee in mouth.
I leash Chester, then toss the Frisbee back to Baxter. Or at least in his general direction. I might miss by a mile. “Sorry about that!”
Then I turn and get out of there before Baxter thinks we’re friends. Or worse.
* * *
—
The familiar clanking of tools on pipes tells me Papi is finally working on our leaky sink. The cobbler’s children will have shoes! Hopefully!
Except when I walk into the kitchen, the
legs sticking out from under the sink are very distinctly not my dad’s. Unless he lost fifty pounds and started wearing skinny jeans. And glitter Converse.
“Jess?”
Startled, they bash their head on the pipes—rookie mistake.
“Sorry, I’m so sorry!” I squat down to help them out.
“Everything okay?” comes Papi’s voice from around the corner. “¡Ay, canchita! Don’t scare my assistant! I haven’t taught them the important art of emerging without a bash on the head!”
“Your . . . assistant?”
Jess grins and holds up a wrench. “Your dad was teaching me a few things.”
“They’ve got a knack for it! More than you or Nor ever did.” Papi grins and reaches out to ruffle my hair. With hands that have just been doing plumbing things.
I have no desire to join in, but also, Jess and Papi are bonding over plumbing. It feels like Papi and Nor in the kitchen, baking up something delicious while I sit around waiting to eat it.
“Are you guys hungry? I could make some sandwiches or something,” I finally say.
But Papi’s already eaten and Jess has to get to class.
“Sure you won’t come with me?” Jess picks themselves up off the kitchen floor. “It’s a drop-in class. You don’t have to have previous experience or anything.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to cramp your style with your medievalist friends.”
Jess rolls their eyes and hands the wrench over to Papi. “Thanks for teaching me about pipes, Mr. Morales. I feel I have become a more productive member of society today.”
Papi claps Jess on the shoulder. “It’s Andrés, my friend. And barring a plumbing emergency, let’s plan on Tuesday for some parallel-parking lessons, ¿sí?”
* * *
—
The longsword class is held in the basement of a Unitarian church in the U District, with a giant rainbow flag and a sign that says LOVE IS LOVE IS LOVE IS LOVE IS LOVE. Jess salutes the flag as we walk in, but then says, “The Unitarians are totally cute, but the class is an outside group. So FYI . . . not everyone here is training for the resistance.”
I’m not an idiot. Any delusions I had that Seattle was some sort of liberal bastion of progressive, intersectional feminism was thoroughly squashed by the number of people more concerned about a distraction to the Husky football prospects than a woman’s right to be safe in her body. But if I’m honest, I did kind of expect the class to be a group of people like Jess—medievalists, Ren Faire enthusiasts, LARP-ers. Theater kids all grown-up. If my assignment to cover entertainment for the Oracle my freshman year taught me anything, it’s that theater kids are all training for the resistance.
We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire Page 11