Under the Light

by Laura Whitcomb

  My mother seemed so sure of the answer. “Pack, go with him, and don’t rock the boat.”

  That was the opposite of going overboard, I thought. Not rocking the boat. Not making waves.

  My mother had already set out things for me to take to San Diego, piles on the foot of my bed and on my desktop. Two large empty suitcases waited. I heard her in the office on the phone. I stared at the stacks of clothes, the white Bible I’d had since I was eight wrapped in a slip to keep it safe, toiletries in zippered plastic bags. Even desk supplies in a gallon bag. She’d left the bedding and the picture of the praying hands on the wall, but everything else was stacked up and waiting.

  I took the larger of the two suitcases out into the hall, empty. I went and got a big black trash bag from the kitchen and shook it open. Back in my room I started with the clothes. I didn’t need much. I put two pairs of pants and two shirts, a white sweater, and two plain Sunday school dresses into the bottom of the other suitcase. One nightgown, underwear, and the bag of toiletries.

  The rest went into the trash bag. Scarves knitted by my aunt, a snow hat I’d worn in fifth grade, my flannel pajamas with kittens on them, my jewelry box with its worthless treasure, my ballet box, toe shoes and all. My childhood was swallowed whole. Even the contents of my bottom dresser drawer, where a false bottom had kept my pictures and Polaroid camera safe. The black-and-white photographs blurred as they fell away. And all my colors bled together as I tossed the rest of my old life out—red sweater, yellow dress, blue skirt—into the black bag.

  CHAPTER 26

  Jenny

  THE CAINE HOUSE USED TO FASCINATE ME when I was little. Mrs. Caine collected figurines of angels, some of them salt and pepper shakers, some fragile blown glass; some of them were bells or made from sand dollars or walnut shells. They were shelved in deep racks with glass fronts so they were always in the dark. Now as I walked past the cabinet the angels seems like prisoners. I wanted to open the glass fronts and let them fly away.

  My mother said the women’s group was going to hold a special prayer meeting for me. I guess because my father was picking me up that afternoon to take me to California. I agreed. My plan was to be completely cooperative. I was floating on a river of calm, a leaf on the current. It would be easy to go to church and be homeschooled and use a camera only to take pictures at birthday parties and Christmas. I might learn to be happy. As long as I didn’t care what happened to me next.

  When girls visited women’s group, and I had several times, they sat in the least comfortable chairs, but when we came into the living room Mrs. Caine put me in a large recliner. It was right across from a glass cabinet of brass and wooden angels. They stood in a straight line in the shadows, a tiny army.

  It did seem strange that there was no food. Usually they served nut bread or crackers and cheese. There was one small pitcher of water, but not even any glasses. No smell of coffee coming from the kitchen. That should have made me suspicious.

  My mom sat on the sofa beside my chair. The quiet was creepy—even more than snacking, these women liked to talk.

  “Jenny,” said Mrs. Caine. “We have come to realize you need help.”

  I was used to agreeing with my parents when they said I needed prayers. I nodded. Of course I needed prayers.

  “And your mother can’t deal with this by herself,” Mrs. Caine went on. “We love you, dear. That’s why we watch over you and notice when things aren’t right. For instance, we know that you’ve been having trouble remembering things lately, like what you did and said just a few days ago.”

  That wasn’t the kind of sin I expected them to point out.

  “And no one would disagree that lately you haven’t been acting like yourself.”

  Why couldn’t they just pray for me and get it over with?

  “You’ve lashed out in anger at your mother and at all of us. You’ve been secretive and disobedient.” Mrs. Caine paused. “You had sexual intercourse.”

  I was startled by this. It hurt to come out of my numbness for a moment. My mother had confided in them more than I realized.

  “In church, you behaved very strangely,” she said. “Almost as if being in the Lord’s house made you agitated. You repeatedly threw the Bible onto the floor.”

  “I did what?” I asked. Then I realized she must have meant the way I was letting the pages fall open and reading quotes with Helen.

  “I know,” said Mrs. Caine with an unpleasant tone of pity in her voice. “It wasn’t really you, was it?”

  I looked down at my hands in my lap because glancing at the women around the room bothered me. They wore their matching sweater sets and modest makeup and reasonable shoes, and yet they held their crosses like they were expecting a vampire attack.

  “You were screaming,” said Mrs. Caine, “that you were trapped when you were in the nursery changing room. You told your mother that there was a kind of spirit inside you.”

  I didn’t have to look at my mother to feel her embarrassment. Maybe she’d told Mrs. Caine secrets that she didn’t expect to hear repeated.

  “We’re going to help you,” said Mrs. Caine. “Let us do that.”

  A Heavy Prayer Intervention. They’d lay their hands on me and I’d thank them and some of them would cry and we’d have tea and then it would be over.

  “There are certain signs,” said Mrs. Caine. “You saw someone in the bathroom when you took sleeping pills, someone your mother couldn’t see.”

  I did look at my mother now. Nerves pulled in tight lines around her eyes. She’d told them such strange details. It didn’t make any sense. What did thinking I saw someone by the bathtub have to do with dropping a Bible?

  “You knew things that you couldn’t have known,” said Mrs. Caine. “Things about your English teacher.”

  This must’ve been from Helen’s time. He was her host. Had she talked about him?

  “At last week’s meeting you knew someone in the room was having an affair,” said Mrs. Caine.

  Helen was me that night. “What did I say?”

  “You don’t remember yelling at us?” Mrs. Caine asked. “Your mother tells us that even your handwriting looks different sometimes.”

  Without a word, my mother put her hand on my arm. Did she wish now she hadn’t shared so many stories with Mrs. Caine?

  “Cathy, it’s natural for you to be protective,” said Mrs. Caine. “Your instinct is to come to her aid. But you know in your heart that we’re not the enemy. We’re here to save Jenny.”

  My mother took her hand away. “She was baptized in our church,” she said. “You were all there. She went through confirmation class and joined the adult congregation.”

  “She invited it in,” said Mrs. Caine.

  It? I felt an odd buzzing from one ear to the other.

  “We’re not just dealing with Jenny anymore.”

  My skin crawled like a swarm of ants. Why did they have to pull me out of my numbness? The sadness opened in me like a shattering window.

  Mrs. Caine stepped closer, standing right in front of my chair. “Jennifer, you have to refuse evil and give yourself back to Christ.

  “I do,” I said. I knew it was better not to argue. Just agree that you’re a sinful wretch and promise never to do it again.

  “The Devil tricked you. That’s what he does. But you invited him in, didn’t you?” asked Mrs. Caine.

  The word woke me up, made my ears taut. Devil.

  “No,” I said. My face was burning. I wanted to throw up. “Not the Devil.”

  “A demon, then,” said Mrs. Caine. “But Jesus Christ is stronger than any demon.” She stepped closer and nodded to the other women. “Just relax, Jenny. We’re going to lay hands on you.”

  This wasn’t foreign to me. It happened every week in my house, but as Mrs. Lowe and Mrs. Baum came over and knelt in front of me, they pressed my wrists down onto the armrests and held my legs against the chair with their bodies. I knew this was not really the laying on of hands in prayer. I
t was more like holding me down to be tortured.

  “Don’t!” I tried to pull free, but the women held fast and whispered comforts to me like aunties who want you to stay still while they take out a splinter.

  “It’s expected that she’ll fight,” Mrs. Caine said matter-of-factly.

  Mrs. Garman and Ellen Woolcott came and each held one of my shoulders to the back of the chair. I wanted to scream and throw them off, but I didn’t want to look or sound like a possessed person.

  Mrs. Caine lifted the little pitcher of water and dipped her fingers in it, then flicked the liquid in my face. A drop stung my left eye and another hit my lower lip. Salt water?

  Mrs. Baum whispered, “It hurts her!”

  Ellen Woolcott gasped, let go of my shoulder, and hurried out of the room and down the hall.

  “It’s fine,” said Mrs. Caine. “If she’s scared, it’s better if she’s not in the room.”

  Finally my mother spoke up. “I don’t like this.”

  “Trust me,” said Mrs. Caine.

  There was nothing I would’ve liked more than to run away, but I was sticking to my plans. Go along with everything. Let them think what they wanted. Just be passive and thank them afterward. But as they began to read aloud together, it hurt my feelings that my own mother didn’t stop them. They were treating me like a monster and she was letting them.

  “Lord have mercy,” Mrs. Caine chanted, and the others, even my mother, joined her. “Heavenly Father, hear us. Intercede, O God,” they spoke in unison.

  I wanted to slap their hands away. But that would be exactly what they’d expect a demon to do. “I’m not evil,” I said. But I felt like my body was weak and empty, my spirit was small and cowering—I was shrinking on the inside like a burned-up match. I said, “I don’t have a demon in me.”

  “Don’t converse with it,” whispered Mrs. Caine.

  I remembered the way my father would hold up one finger while I was trying to talk about my feelings or ideas and I would have to be silent. If I spoke again, my mother would hush me. In those moments I was nothing, less talkative than a sparrow.

  Be a sparrow, I told myself. Be silent and fly away. No one will bother you if you disappear.

  CHAPTER 27

  Helen

  IN MY PERSONAL HELL, time had stopped. I was already drowned and now I was seeing the gap in the cellar door through a distorting veil of silty water. I was upright, the crown of my head floating just a few inches below the ceiling, my body hanging below, my hands floating at shoulder height.

  This time the scene felt different—it used to scald my skin with cold and chill my bones to aching—now the cold only brought a numbing sensation. I was as stiff as clay. I could see one frozen bolt of lightning hanging in the sky, its brilliance diffused in waves of blue and green.

  What tortured me was that this storm would never grow or wither. No sunset was pending, no season change. No one would ever come to find my body.

  Better that I should hide here instead of haunt Jenny, I told myself. Yet a hard lump of doubt weighed on my heart—I had abandoned her. That was worse than pushing my baby out into a storm, wasn’t it? At least I had told my daughter which way to run. I had left Jenny alone in a sea of dangers, most of which I had stirred up. And I hadn’t even said goodbye.

  I would have loved to grab the rope of time and reel back in all that had happened. Even if I couldn’t go back so far as to save my own life—run upstairs with my baby girl and survive the storm—why couldn’t I at least pull time backwards far enough to start over with Jenny? If I could begin again, arrive when she awoke in the bathtub, I could take more care. I would keep my sorrows and fears out of her way. And I would come to her only if she called me. I would never force myself on her again—she would have to invite me back.

  Even if time could be moved like tugging a rope, it would certainly be a ponderous rope that stronger spirits than I found immovable. As I watched that single thread of lightning billow through the water above me like the aurora borealis, I imagined the heavy cord of time stretching away from me in the water like the hard, thick rope on a great ship. And I imagined it wavering, softening, then flattening into a ribbon.

  If time was as thin and flexible as all that, I should be able to pull it with ease—I could unroll it from its spindle and be back with Jenny. I pictured the last time I had seen her—she’d been sitting on her bed, holding out the back of her hand that I might speak to her. I couldn’t hear her voice, but she might have been asking me a question that a Y or an N would have answered: Are you with me? Will you help me?

  She was far away, but I could feel her lifting her hand to me now, waiting for me to speak. She needed to know: Am I crazy or are you real? Am I alone or will you come to me and help me?

  Jenny was calling for me.

  And I tried to write the letter that would reassure her. Two simple strokes that made a Y on her skin. Yes, I am real. Yes, I will help you. But my fingers were as still as a statue’s, white and lifeless, floating in the dark water.

  I wished I could grasp that ribbon dangling in the flood and drag myself closer to her, because I felt as if her hand was tied or chained down. She couldn’t reach any farther—I needed to close the distance. And the questions she was asking me, she hung her life on them.

  Do you care what happens to me? she was asking.

  I could not see her—the water was too dark—but I felt her thoughts. Yes, I answered. And a ripple rolled away from my fingers. I had moved.

  Are you there? she asked me.

  Yes, I answered, and this time I saw my finger move. Yes. Two strokes that crossed. Yes, I am here. And I could feel the back of her hand. I wasn’t under water. I was standing in an unfamiliar living room.

  To my horror Jenny was being held in a chair, physically bound by four women. Two held her wrists and legs and two pressed her shoulders to the back of the chair. And there was Cathy herself, sitting beside Jenny’s chair, looking uncomfortable but doing nothing to stop them.

  “Dear God, spare us.” The woman who spoke stood over Jenny, holding a small pitcher in her hands as if it were a holy relic. She was the one who had watched Jenny from across the aisle in church.

  “Dear God,” the other women repeated. “Spare us.” Cathy was the only one who didn’t mimic these words.

  Jenny held her eyes closed and squeezed the tears back. She trembled and strained with her left hand to raise it to my touch.

  I drew my Y on the back of her hand. Yes, I’m back.

  She drew in a sharp breath and relaxed, as tears began to roll down her cheeks. I knelt in front of her chair. On her arm, next to the hands that were holding her down, I wrote love.

  Jenny shuddered and let out a sigh.

  I looked around at the frightened women holding Jenny down, and Cathy, appalled and yet merely watching, and the one woman who wasn’t scared glowering at Jenny with something akin to pleasure. I noticed the crosses and the Bibles.

  Is this an exorcism? I asked Jenny.

  She must have heard me, because she lifted her left index finger and wrote a letter Y in the air.

  “What’s she doing with her finger?” one of the ladies whispered.

  I wanted to slap those stupid women, but I remembered my promise to be careful. There’s nothing wrong with you, I whispered to Jenny. In case she couldn’t hear me, I wrote on her arm: no fear.

  “Deliver us, O mighty God, from all evil,” the woman with the pitcher intoned. She dipped her fingertips in the pitcher and lifted them out, dripping with water. She flicked an angry splash into Jenny’s chest.

  “Deliver us,” the ladies chanted, “O mighty God, from all evil.”

  I drew the shape of a heart on the back on Jenny’s hand and felt her relax a bit more, just enough to take in another slow breath. Her spirit was still weighed down, though. Even if she agreed with me that there was nothing to fear in the room, something on the inside of her was holding her captive.

  Are you still f
rightened? I asked her.

  She nodded.

  “She’s agreeing,” said one of the women.

  Jenny lifted her finger and painted the air with a Y. But she was answering my question, not agreeing with the text of the ceremony.

  I stood in front of Jenny’s chair, right beside the woman with the pitcher of water. I held my hand out to Jenny and said, Take me to see what frightens you.

  To my surprise, Jenny’s chin began to quiver. She still had her eyes closed, but she turned toward me, I knew it. She shook her head no.

  “She’s saying no,” one of the women whispered.

  The woman with the pitcher hushed this woman.

  When James was afraid to remember what had happened at his death, I had gone with him into the memory and witnessed his most painful moment—I wanted to do the same with Jenny, but she was scared.

  Take hold of me, I told her. I leaned down and wrote on her arm: Show me.

  “Drive out all unclean spirits,” the woman beside me chanted.

  I ignored her and held out my hand to Jenny. We’ll look together, I told Jenny.

  Still she shook her head.

  It’s easy, I told her. Like the flood I showed you. That was my hell.

  I decided to show her my own scars again before demanding to see her wounds.

  I reached down and slipped my hand into hers, lifting her mind into my memory. My death scene closed around us, the flood was up to our chins. Jenny’s spirit appeared with me in this reimagining of my death. She held my hand tightly and opened her eyes. She turned to me, astonished, shivering. The scene was active again—time had found its legs again.

  Look, I whispered. I pointed to the hole in the cellar door, no bigger than a cat, and showed her my daughter’s tiny fingers holding the jagged wood and then disappearing. There was a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning. We heard my baby shriek, which made Jenny cover her ears.

  It’s all right, I told her.

  Jenny tilted her head back, trying to keep her face above the surface. She spit out a mouthful of water that sloshed over her chin. Finally the flood overtook us completely. We stared at each other through the dark water.