We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire
Page 18
our honor?
He sneers.
What would you have me do,
little sister? Get myself killed?
How then would you two survive?
He sent me
to shepherd
shattered women
when I was barely more
than shards of glass myself
into a world content
to dash our shards
our jagged selves
along the unforgiving rocks
so he could play
at furious elder brother
while doing nothing
and now, enraged, inadequate
he strikes the vessel
I’ve managed to rebuild
despite the cracks
the missing pieces.
How then will we survive,
my sister and I?
By our own strength.
Helene lets Philippe sit
at her side, resting her hand
on his, granting affection
she never grants me.
Sometimes I catch a glimpse
of the boy who didn’t yet know
his status, who still believed
his sisters equal to his strength
and temper, wit, before the world
taught him such equality
would make him weak.
Sometimes I see it
and the fury rises
that he didn’t care enough
to fight against the lies.
My own brother.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
My own mother.
She didn’t tell me. Lies or protection? It doesn’t really matter which. But what if I had known this part of her story?
USELESS
Emilde glares daggers
at Philippe when she thinks
nobody sees, but when I catch her
I give the faintest smile, nod.
Philippe can play defender.
She and I will protect Helene.
Philippe barricades himself
in the library with René,
waxing bombastic about
the prince of Orange.
Leave them to it.
Isabella drags me
away from the doors
that close in my face.
Let him think
his talk important.
Your brother’s arrival
changes nothing.
We still need to refine
your footwork.
Our bags are packed,
the horses ready.
At dinner, René lets slip
a hint of our plans
though he is meant
to keep them from Philippe.
Philippe laughs as though
it is absurd, as though
with a wife like Isabella
René would joke
about a woman’s power.
My brother has always
been a fool.
After dinner Isabella walks me
through the grounds, this refuge
where we’ve grown and healed,
tissue reforming, stronger than before,
prepared for the next battle.
Are you ready?
I wish she wouldn’t ask.
If I consider it
I might change my mind.
You do not
have to go.
I shake her off,
walk more quickly.
Philippe thinks
the very idea
is a joke.
Your brother should know better
with you for a sister, but
he would have to care enough
to look past what the world
has told him of women.
Do you excuse him?
Of course not.
We walk in silence.
I wish
I could know
your baby.
My baby will know you
come what may.
My baby will need
stories of warrior women
who fight for justice
with word or sword
and yours will be
the first she learns.
You cannot be serious!
Philippe throws open the doors
to my chambers, sending my heart
through the vaulted ceiling.
A man barging into a room
will never be mere annoyance again.
I’m so sorry!
Zahra bursts after him.
He found our bags—
What is this lunacy?
Philippe’s rage
almost convinces me
he cares for me,
that this isn’t about
his own inability
to protect this family.
Charging off
to be a hero?
He sneers.
With your chambermaid?
You can barely hold a sword!
I can do more with a sword
than you have, else you would have
spilled some blood, rather than
slunk back to torment me!
Philippe strikes me.
Father never did
and Mother only
when I was small.
Zahra gasps
stumbles forward
and Philippe smacks her
so hard she falls to the floor.
No hesitation
I take him out at the knees
as Isabella’s done to me
so many times, but far less
gently. I’m on his chest,
knee on his throat.
Tell me again
how useless I am.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Mom sits at the kitchen table, surrounded by papers, as per usual. Her coffee mug is empty.
I start pulling out the things I need to make masala chai the way Nor taught me—peppercorns, cardamom pods, cinnamon, fresh ginger, sugar, mortar and pestle. “Want some chai?”
She glances up, “Sure, sweetie. Thanks.”
I put the spices into the mortar.
Mom taught us about consent in elementary school. Early elementary school. In middle school she gave us Speak and We Should All Be Feminists. The parents of someone in my Girl Scout troop got upset when Mom talked about rape statistics while we were working on our self-defense badges. That was the end of my participation in Scouts. (Mainly because I was tired of being a cog in the machine of Big Cookie. But still.)
I throw my weight into grinding the spices. They don’t need to be dust—they need to be cracked and bruised and flayed open. Like our family. I grind them to dust, then drown the spices in milk and water, setting the pot on the burner to heat up.
Mom’s hunched over some college student’s terrible analysis of The Scarlet Letter or The Great Gatsby, when what she studied—what she threw her heart into and went into grad school debt for—was the depiction of female vengeance in films made by men. And how the male gaze of one generation of filmmakers bleeds into the male gaze of the next generation—but not only filmmakers, because art reflects life.
Mom’s life sent her down this path, the things that happened she doesn’t talk about. The part of herself she keeps in darkness. From the sound of the note from her high school friend, it was a teacher. Maybe she had to write terrible papers on The Scarlet Letter for his class, hand them in, await his evaluation,
his judgment on her voice.
A wave of nausea breaks over me and I grip the counter.
“Love?” She’s there, hand on my cheek. “Are you all right?” She peers in the pot and turns the heat down. I always rush chai, when really it needs to simmer, give the flavors time to intermingle.
“You haven’t been eating well. I don’t think you’re sleeping, either. Honey, maybe you should take a break from your writing project.”
She thinks this is about Marguerite. “Yeah, okay. I will.”
I want to ask her. I want to know this piece of her. Want her to know her story is worth telling. But also she doesn’t owe it to me, or anyone. And if, after all these years of being a mother who was so open about all the ins and outs of womanhood, she hasn’t chosen to tell us, asking would only hurt her all over again.
Will Nor tell her children? Her daughters? If she has them, someday when they’re old enough to understand, if that’s an age that ever comes, will she tell them or will they somehow one day wander upon some evidence, an internet post, maybe even one I wrote, and then Nor will be flayed open again.
AINSI TU SERAS
Emilde appears, helps Zahra
to her feet, then curtsies
as though my brother
is not clearly at my mercy.
Master Philippe
my mistress asks for you.
I keep pressure
on his throat.
Is Helene unwell?
She says
only her brother
can ease her worries.
I release him.
The pure loathing
in his eyes would
flatten me if
I hadn’t seen it
a million times before.
I move to follow him
but Emilde stops me.
Go. Helene
will distract him.
Go now.
In the stable
I ask a question
Isabella cannot answer.
Am I a fool?
It matters not.
I won’t be deterred.
You are a young woman
of great conviction.
And you have been wounded
in such a way that only you
know how to heal.
If this is what you must do
then no one shall stop you.
Weapons and armor
to suit our frames
are concealed in packs
but Isabella insists
we have daggers
strapped against our thighs
constant reminders
of our power
and yet, now that
the moment is here
my limbs are lead.
What will this solve?
What will it change?
But, Marguerite.
Isabella draws me aside.
I’ll think no less of you
if you decide
against this path.
There’s more than one way
to fight. You do not
have to wield a sword.
Helene appears
on silent footsteps
holding out her labor
of these many weeks.
It’s folded over
larger than I realized.
Perhaps
everything about Helene
has always been larger
than I realized.
She unfurls the cloth,
a banner edged in silver tears
human bones and at the center
an orange impaled
on a lance.
The Prince of Orange.
Ainsi tu seras,
the script reads
both delicate and bold.
Thus shall you be.
I choke back a sob,
rush to embrace Helene
before remembering
she shrinks from touch.
But as I retreat, she
pulls me close, clings
to me like she never has before.
And Philippe?
A ghost of a smile
flits over Helene’s face.
Locked in the cellar.
Emilde stands guard.
On the road before dawn:
two girls
once mistress, servant
now comrades in arms
two women who won’t
pass this way again
but will complete
what they set out to do.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I don’t even like to ride the bus at night and Marguerite and Zahra are setting out into the unknown with only a few weeks of combat training and each other. What they’ll find along the road could make up whole other books.
Maybe I’ll write them, one day.
But this is the story I’m telling now. So what I choose to show has to be a piece of the bigger picture. Is every man they meet along the way a threat? Or could there be men who don’t instill fear?
#notallmen and all that.
But they are a threat, unless proven otherwise. And two young women traveling alone don’t have the luxury of allowing men to prove themselves trustworthy.
It wasn’t just Craig.
It was the players and football fans who immediately rallied to support a water boy they’d never given the time of day to before, who thought the distraction to a football program was more damaging than the destruction of a girl’s life.
It was the administration pledging a crackdown on the Greek system that fizzled the second the media looked away.
It was fraternity brothers who made him their pet, even though they hadn’t considered him manly enough when he pledged. Because if he was guilty, what were they?
It was even running back Reece Hutchinson, hailed by feminist Twitter as the #notallmen hero we’d been waiting for because he testified on Nor’s behalf, to the fury of the Husky faithful. He saw Nor and Craig together, saw how completely plastered she was. Saw Craig grabbing her arm and pulling her toward the back door. Even tried to stop them.
Didn’t get drafted to the NFL, despite being a top-ranked prospect. But that’s okay because at least he’s a Twitter hero.
Except here’s the thing: Reece Hutchinson is a human battering ram. Does anyone believe Craig Lawrence would have stood a chance against him? It didn’t even have to get physical. If Hutchinson had done more than the barest minimum, had leveraged his status and done more than say, “Bro, maybe leave her alone,” none of this would be happening.
Then, maybe, I’d consider him a hero. Except no one would know. And if no one applauds your feminism, did you even perform it?
PLEASE, SIR
A full day’s travel later
Zahra sinks into a hayloft
and she is gone to a land
I hope is more peaceful
than the one I visit
in my own dreams.
Sleep will not come for me
but the farmer will. I do not
block out Zahra’s snores
the animal smells, my racing mind.
I pick hay from my stockings
and wait.
Dependable as the goats
that must endure his rough hands
every morning, the farmer appears
silhouetted by the moon.
He scans the barn and
doesn’t see us in the corner
where he said we could stay.
Finally he spots me leaning
over
the edge of the hayloft.
I’m in no mood to hide.
He limps to the base of a ladder
in no condition to climb.
What you doing up there?
I smile at his frustration.
A girlish whim.
He retreats
to his safe, warm house,
no word of why
he came to the barn
in the dead of night.
We both know why.
Zahra and I creep
from the barn
saddle our horses
and slink away
before the sun
has cracked the horizon.
What we will miss in breakfast
is worth avoiding what we will pay
in a thwarted farmer’s anger.
Please, madame.
My sister is with child,
her husband fallen in the war.
We travel to his village
so at least she may give birth
surrounded by his kin.
Please, monsieur.
My cousin is unwell.
If only you could see
her mastery of womanly arts—
she sings, she dances,
she lifts the hearts of men.
A bit of food might set her right
and then . . .
Please, Father,
we are lowly novitiates,
our convent overrun by scoundrels,
even our habits
ripped from our heads.
We only need
a place to rest
before we move on
to the Mother house.
Each time, a story
wilder than the last.
Each time, a meal,
some shelter, a bit of hope
to help us on our way.
Each time, my dagger at the ready.
What if he’d asked
to see your womanly arts?
Zahra guffaws,
the ale we pinched
from our last benefactor
gone straight to her head.
We’re close now.
By all reports we’ll reach
de Gaucourt’s camp by morning.
Didn’t you know?