Stillbird

by Sandra Shwayder Sanchez

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” was all he could say for several minutes, and Stillbird thought he was apologizing to her for the rape and started to tell him it was over long ago and she was okay and to please go away because she did not want to see him there, and she didn’t need him. But he kept saying it, and then he said he’d take care of her and that she would not have to be all alone, and finally she asked, “What?”

  “They got everyone, even the women and the children and there was nothing anyone could do. They surprised them, and the men weren’t ready for them, and anyway, they were outnumbered. The farmers had soldiers with them.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know nothing of this do you? Of course there was no one left to come to you, to tell you, and no warning of what was going to happen until it was too late. The young man who came here sometimes, he was one of the first they killed. The three old women were among the last, but they were killed also. They spared no one, no one. And then they buried them all in a large ditch. All the soldiers dug and the farmers helped, and then they dumped all the bodies in the ditch one on top of the other, unholy it was, and then they burned the cabins…”

  And Stillbird simply stared, trying to listen as fast as Abel talked, and Abel talked faster than he ever had, having more to say than he could keep up with. And now he would tell her about the massacre, and now he would tell her he would take care of her, and then back to the terrible story of her people, and then back to the terrible story of his heart.

  Stillbird tried to scream but no sound came out, and she wanted to cry but her throat and eyes were dry, and she wanted to move, get away from Abel by the door but her legs wouldn’t work, and thank God her arms were paralyzed around her baby, or she would have dropped him, she couldn’t even feel him there in her arms, but she remained stuck around him in place, in front of the man who had come finally after all those days of waiting for someone to come and take her away from her loneliness.

  She allowed Abel to come closer, to touch her, to walk her to a chair and sit her down and then change his mind and pick her up and carry her and the baby to the bed and lay them down there. And Stillbird fell asleep there with her child in her arms, and she didn’t wake again until she felt Abel loosen the front of her dress to let the baby nurse, and she didn’t stop him or move to help herself but suffered his touch meekly, almost thankfully, because she still couldn’t move or cry or even say the softest word. And so it was for two more days, and Abel was so gentle with her and the baby. He fed her food that he cooked, spoonful by spoonful, as if she were the infant, and he spoke softly to her and cajoled her to eat so she would have milk for the baby, like he knew all about it. He kept telling her how sorry he was about her people, and he seemed to know them, but it was days before it occurred to Stillbird to wonder how he knew them. Her people had refused to meet Jamie or his brother when she married, and she began to think about that and wondered with a terrible dread how Abel knew these people, and then all of his kindness seemed sinister, but she didn’t know what to do, and she knew she had to go with him. How long had he been watching her? From the very beginning? She knew she could never hide from him and that he would persist until he found her wherever she could go, and she didn’t know anywhere she could go, with her own people dead, massacred by soldiers just like in the stories her mother had told her about the years before the war. It was still happening, and they had thought it was over finally. Stillbird was too tired and too shocked for rage; it was the sad part of wisdom that crept into her soul then and made her quiet and calm as she prepared to follow Abel back to the home he promised her. She had nowhere else to go, not with an infant, his infant at that.

  Abel took Stillbird and his son, whom he named Charles after a king of Scotland, back to the cabin that Jamie had built for his wife, thinking that Stillbird would feel more at home there than in the bachelor quarters he had constructed for himself on the land that he and his brother had homesteaded together when they first came to this land. Stillbird didn’t care and had no reaction. She thought back in those early days of their life together that she should try to appease him, but she could not find within herself enough feeling to smile at anything, and this hurt him, she could see. She truly did feel sorry for him then, right along with her fear of him. She was confused and tried to be careful, but that carefulness on her part made him feel more desperate to please and then angry, not at her, but at life. They both sought refuge from this intolerable situation by concentrating their attention on the baby, and both were kind to the child and took joy from his innocent radiance and satisfaction from his utter dependence on them.

  Their first two years together were peaceful and could have been romantic had Stillbird been inclined to love Abel at all. He courted her each and every day, touching her only with his eyes and tender words that he composed carefully and spoke with a childlike yearning. He brought her all the early spring blossoms and especially those he noticed she preferred when she walked out in the woods. More than the wild roses or exotic azalea blossoms, Stillbird loved lilacs and often broke off a sprig to carry with her throughout the day. Perhaps remembering a scene Stillbird didn’t know he had witnessed, Abel filled their bed with lilac blossoms one April night and begged her to let him love her gently, promising he’d never be rough with her again, and because she was tired of his unshed tears, she suffered him to enter her person a second time. Every day thereafter, she drank a cautious measure of tansy tea in order to avert another pregnancy without harming herself. Whether due to the tea or timing, Stillbird did not get pregnant again, not then, not ever, and for that she thanked the creator every morning. In her heart she planned to disappear, to die if necessary, as soon as Charles was grown and had made his own life. She could not envision tolerating Abel for any other reason but her son’s safety.

  Sometimes she tried to look at Abel differently, to find what was good and beautiful in him, and she would tell herself that he was a kind and loving father and that should count for something, and certainly he treated her with a gentleness she could not fault. But she could not forget the first violence and even his gentleness had an intensity to it that disturbed her, as if she herself were so fragile and precious that he couldn’t see her as flesh and blood.

  Jamie had compared her to the wildflowers of the woods and named her Rosie. Abel compared her secretly in his heart to some ethereal idea he did not share with her and gave her no name at all, and she left him there, lacking that intimate and powerful connection: knowledge of who she was. He was hurt by this and hurt by her each and every day, as each and every day, he failed to win her love, and couldn’t accept that she would never forgive the rape, and forgetting that she had rejected him even before the rape. Speaking only half his thought, he would often say, “But we have Charles.” And Stillbird, feeling that sad part of wisdom, would let him hold her hand and she’d respond, “Yes, we have got Charles.”

  One morning when Charlie was two years old, he toddled out to the front porch and was fascinated to see a long rope-like thing lying in the sunny patch on the weathered boards. Charlie reached out to touch the snake, but Stillbird quietly put one hand over her son’s outreached hand and with the other, she gently laid a finger over his lips. She stared into her son’s eyes and whispered to him not to disturb the snake and then she showed him how to keep a quiet and respectful distance from the snake while she carried him inside. Later the snake slithered off the porch and Charlie watched from the doorway, fascinated by the sudden sinuous movement. He’d never seen anything so fast. Stillbird explained to Charlie he needed to stay away from snakes and never try to touch one unless she herself told him it was okay. When Abel came home from working the hay field, his son was so excited to tell his father about the snake. Talking was exciting to him, and Abel suspected that Stillbird talked far more to the baby than to her husband, or where would the child find so many words? Abel was angry that Stillbird could talk so freely to the c
hild but said only what she had to to him, and often Abel would hide and listen to her talk and sing to Charlie just to hear the sound of her voice with joy in it. But he realized he was a guilty man and could not blame her for this.

  He could blame her, however, for her failure to protect their son. When Charlie was finished telling his story, perhaps before he was quite finished, Abel asked Stillbird in a puzzled voice why she had not taken the shotgun by the door and killed the snake? Before she could respond, he asked her in a voice that was puzzled and harsh why didn’t she think the snake would come back? Or didn’t she care? Didn’t she believe it was a danger to Charlie? Didn’t she think at all? Were Indian women so careless of their children? No wonder some folks called Indians savages. Whereupon Stillbird protested, quiet-like and puzzled herself, and Abel slapped her hard across her face and told her never to talk back to him again.

  Stillbird was stunned and stood still and staring at Abel full in the face for a long time, for the first time ever, until he had to look away. But he felt victorious. He had confused her and made her look at him, see him; and his power filled him with euphoria. He walked outside, taking the shotgun with him to look for the snake, which he found nested with several others in a pile of rocks by the river. He shot several times, killing a couple of the snakes and stirring up others that slithered into the tall grass like thick, earthy lightening, and then he went back to the house and requested his supper. He was kind but firm with Charlie that night and put him to bed. He made a formal apology to his wife, after which he made love to her, and she was too confused to deny him. He sensed her confusion as fear, which made him first sad and then satisfied: if she would not love him, let her fear him, he would settle for that.

  The winters of southern West Virginia were lovely in a soft misty way: the evergreen trees blended with skies of a multitude of soft grays and here and there a splash of some auburn leaves that had clung to the trees despite the wind and occasional snows. And then there were the days of crystal brilliance when snow covered everything in a diamond light that shone beneath perfect blue skies that made Stillbird suck in her breath and want to run. She would walk for miles every day, sometimes letting Abel take Charlie with him to cut the firewood, sometimes taking him with her to search out stray calves grown big enough now to forage on their own. They were lucky to have a strong thermal spring on their property that ran all winter, never froze. And the calves could always drink from its earth-warmed flow. Stillbird would pretend she had to search long and far for this or that calf; she always had a story to tell Abel why she’d been gone so long on those days she left Charlie with him and took only her dreams and her memories for company. Abel understood her preoccupation with the child, but never could understand her preoccupation with solitude. After the incident of the summer she knew she should talk more to Abel, be friendlier to him. But when she brought herself to do this, she noticed that it didn’t matter anymore, made things worse because he would snap at her, act as if whatever she said was foolish or flat out wrong. So she went back to her silence and back to her habit of never looking at him. He no longer made love to her, but satisfied his sexual appetite quickly every night with a certain grim dutifulness, as if he had paid good money for her and wanted to be sure he hadn’t wasted it. Often when he was done, she would wait until she was certain he was sound asleep and then she would dress and go out to walk in the moonlight cleansing her soul of her shame.

  At first only rain or snow could keep Stillbird from her nightly walks and later, not even that. She would spend longer and longer walking the hills in the moonlight, or by the light of stars or backlit clouds, often feeling her way down familiar paths in absolute darkness. When she was overcome with sleepiness she would turn back, and one night she had gone so far that she could not keep on walking home but had to curl up at the root of a large tree to sleep. She awakened at dawn to see a man standing with his back to her and facing the sun lighting up the sky over the mountain. As she watched, she determined that he was painting on a canvas that he had set up on a portable easel. In one hand he held a palette with a space for his thumb and splotched with many colors of paint and with the other, he dabbed at the paint and then the canvas. She stood up very quietly and gently, slowly walked toward him, as if she thought he were an animal that would run if he caught her scent or any sudden movement. Stillbird was so surprised to see another human being, a stranger there, that she wasn’t sure he was real, and when he turned and saw her, he also thought he was having a vision. He stared at Stillbird and she stared first at him and then at the painting, which seemed nothing more than a blur of dots of colors. He gestured to her to come closer to examine the painting, and she approached him still warily. Then he spoke and his voice was mild and sweet, low and soft, as if he did not want to disturb the quiet of the dawn, which concluded itself above them in a brilliant rose and then disappeared into an innocent blank sky. The moment of magic was gone and Stillbird was certain that the man was real, his voice louder now, his man smell and sounds having sent the shimmer of rose light into another world, her world of dream that he had somehow managed to share ever so briefly. Then she resented his presence in the woods, but the painting was lovely and when she looked from him back to the easel, he continued to speak with such kindness that finally she spoke too. She would never be able to remember a word that passed between them, only that some words did. And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway if she could have recalled the innocence of their conversation, because the conversation between a woman a strange man is never innocent!

  There had been a balmy humid warmth in the air when Stillbird awoke at dawn to see the painter, but as the sun reached higher in the sky it got dimmer and the air became cooler and soon a light snow began to fall, filling the air and sky with a thick, soft whiteness. Stillbird could glimpse the sun shining faintly and farther and farther off from her world, behind the slowly moving clouds of white. The snow outlined the black, bare branches that made graceful patterns against the sky and melted as it hit the silver creek that ran over and around varicolored rocks and tree roots. It was too beautiful to leave, and Stillbird spent the morning wandering in the first snow of the season, reluctant to go home.

  Geese criss-crossed the sky, making the only sound in that muffled, foggy morning, and as she walked through a landscape that drifted in and out of the mist, Stillbird wondered again if the man she had seen was real or just a vision caught between sleep and awakening.

  Only when she came within view of the house and the lean-to that served them as a barn did she know with certainty and a sickness of heart that the strange man was indeed real, for she saw him talking to Abel in front of the haystacks several hundred yards from the barn. Scanning the thick white sky, she found the pale circle of light that was the sun and realized she had been gone far too long, and that Abel would be worried about her and being worried, would be angry. She saw that Charlie was with him and expected the child’s presence to calm him as she walked, not changing her pace, toward them. She thought she might pass them and stay on the road to the cabin, but Abel called to her, and when she got close enough to hear, she heard the strange man, the foolish man, address her and begin to talk about the morning. She said nothing and the man’s words tapered off as he realized he was somewhere he didn’t belong. He thanked Abel then, for directions perhaps? (Stillbird didn’t know and couldn’t ask) and begin to walk out of their lives as inconsequentially as he had wandered in.

  No sooner had the painter headed off into the mountain than Abel began beating her. The man was still within her view but Stillbird was too proud to call out to him and knew instinctively that the stranger would be too afraid to interfere with a man who was beating his wife, maybe believing himself that she deserved it because of her conversation with him during the early morning mystery of the sunrise.

  Stillbird endured Abel’s beating in silence, feeling her soul join the geese that flew noisily overhead back and forth and back and fo
rth, and she watched from a far distance as what started with a slap that knocked her down, ended with Abel kicking her prostrate body furiously. She curled up and tried to roll away from him on the wet rocky ground, but he followed her with his kicks and only quit when he heard Charlie crying. Then he yelled words of blame at her for what she had made him do in front of their son and carried the boy back to the house, running with him in his arms.

  Stillbird lay beneath the sun, now high in the sky and burning through the morning fog and drying the earth and warming Stillbird, and she rested and waited for Abel to return and help her, but when no help came, she gathered her broken right arm in her left one, cradling it close to her broken ribs, drew her legs up under her, and stood slowly on those strong but shaky legs and walked slowly, deliberately, very carefully, every breath causing sharp pains in her side.

  Abel watched her approach the house, and when she was close enough for him to see her holding her arm and the pallor of her face, he walked up the road to meet her and when he got close enough to see her grimace with pain and begin to swoon with it, he cried out and fell to his knees, holding her around her legs, which began to buckle. He stood and scooped her into his arms, crying as he carried her home. He told her how sorry he was and prayed to God to strike him dead if he ever did such a thing again, and Stillbird, hearing his words before she passed out with pain, realized it didn’t matter if she believed him or not, because she had nowhere to go and a small child to care for.

  Over time Stillbird learned to gauge the cycles of Abel’s violence. As long as she herself was in pain, quiet and depressed, he treated her with a tender solicitousness, but when her own mood inexplicably elevated, his would plummet into morose anger that would eventually flare up in a sudden act of violence for any reason or no reason at all. Charlie would cry when it happened, sometimes bringing his father back to his senses, but then as he got more and more independent and himself endangered, Charlie would run away and avoid the anger that could as well be turned against him. He could see that his mother was helpless to stop it.

  Spring, summer, fall, winter: each season bringing its own glorious beauty to the land, and Stillbird lost herself in their ebb and flow, walking night and day to find the earliest buds of color in the late March breezes that came warm from a far off sea, before winter’s last brilliant blaze of ice and snow, and then finding the remnants of wet weather springs that dried up almost, but not quite, in the mid-summer, where she would steal a secret coolness from the entrance to vast caverns beneath their home, where puddled a few drops of sacred silver water. The autumn was her favorite time when she knew she could fly out of her body and drift back to ground with the leaves of unspeakable brightness; colors untethered to anything solid, like spirits gone wild with joy in the crisp air. This was the cause of the elation that surprised and angered Abel so often, so unfathomable, so resilient.

  So the years passed and Abel was more often kind than cruel, but it was the cruelty that Stillbird got used to and the kindness that she feared. When he would leave for several days to trade in town and return with luxuriant satin and exquisite lace for Stillbird to make a dress that only he would see, she would begin to wait. Sometimes the blows would come even before the dress was finished, and she didn’t mind if he tore her work to ribbons; just waiting for the storm to pass, her wounds to heal, a certainty of quiet now his fury was spent, and Stillbird weathered Abel through a dozen cycles of the seasons of the earth. At night when he lay on top of her, she dreamed she was buried and that wild things, flowers and lichens and mosses grew up through her and over her and protected her from any real violation. Abel’s intensity never waned, but Charlie’s childish affection wandered and he decided that his mother was plain crazy, talking only as she did to the deer and the birds in the woods. He was glad no one ever saw her; “the woman,” as his father always called her, not knowing her real name (and Charlie not telling out of shame rather than a respect for the confidence his mother had long ago placed in him). “That crazy woman.”

  IV