by Julie Berry
You rotate your hat brim between your hands.
“Good morning to you both,” you say, and turn and walk away.
I call after you. “Wai-!”
Mother slams the door and glowers at me.
LXXVII.
Through the window I watch you disappear. You walk slowly, like one arrested by his thoughts, and once you pause. Will you come back?You don’t. I press my face against the cold, damp glass. “Don’t be chasing after him.” Mother lets a lump of rags splash back into her pail.
That’s all she says to me for the rest of the day.
LXXVIII.
It takes her an eternity to fall asleep that night. She won’t even go to bed until well past midnight. I close my eyes and pretend to breathe like a sleeper, and this is dangerous, for such subterfuge has more than once tricked me into real sleep while I waited for Mother to succumb. But nothing could lull me tonight, not while I know that you’ve come for me, not after an entire day of maddening speculation. Such torture, and yet so sweet—the wondering why—I can barely bring myself to pity Darrel. Who could be afflicted when I feel so alive? At last her breathing slows, becomes a regular rhythm. Still I wait. I am good at waiting, though tonight every nerve in my body wants to burst out of my skin.
The room is black as iron. Cold night air seeps through the window near my bed. Darrel moans in his sleep. Outside coyotes bark.
I rise from my bed and pause to see if Mother stirs. She doesn’t. I lace on my shoes and cover myself with a coat. Mother is past knowing what I do.
The door will betray me if anything can. I feel around it, up and down, and in its path. Mother has left a pan of dry beans on the floor before the door. A trap.
I am eighteen. Old enough to be married and keeping a house of my own. If she is so ashamed of me, why does she want to keep me here forever? Not for love of my company.
I inch away the pan of beans. I take an hour, or so it feels, to lift the latch and coax the door open. I step out into the night breezes that whip through my long hair. It’s wicked of me to go see you without my cap, with my hair down. I’m drunk with the thought of it.
I close the door and take my first soft steps. As soon as I’m past hearing, my feet run to you. They know the way. The dark night hides my errand. Branches brush my face. My hair flows behind me like a banner waving. I feel myself swelling, bursting with this moment and my daring. The night in the woods was nothing to this. All the while it’s you who fills my thoughts, you who have come asking for me, you who thought of me, why I don’t know, but if you but think of me I’ll fly to you.
LXXIX.
Your house appears. I stop. Breathing is painful. There’s a light in your window. The door is dark, but a line shines underneath, pulling me like a moth.
This is why I’ve come, and I can’t go back until I know what you wanted to say to me.
How will I answer you, when you speak to me? Will my sounds revolt you?
You know I can’t speak. I trust you. You are the kindest person I know. My heart is in your hands.
I will my feet to carry me to your door.
I raise my hand and knock.
LXXX.
Footsteps. Latch. And there you are. Your shirt unbuttoned halfway down, your hair rumpled, your lips parted, your eyes shocked. I hug my arms around myself and curse myself back to my bed.
But there you stand, haloed by lamplight, every warm, shining inch of you. You take in my hair, the scandalous bridal white of my nightdress. Do I imagine, or do you look at me in a way you’ve never done before?
“Judith.”
My name, again, from you. We are not on the public street tonight.
Your eyes are wide; this is so improper. But it’s the middle of the night, and no one is about to see. You hold your door wide. “Please, come in.”
I walk in, invited this time. I’m not sure what to do next, but you offer me a chair, then swing your kettle back over the fire and throw another stick on the flames. I’m to be offered a drink, a cup of tea. I sit up straighter in my chair.
You sit down opposite me and bend forward. I can see into your shirt, and it flushes me with heat. You search my face, which seems to make you unsure of yourself, and so your eyes rest on my hair.
“It was good of you to come.”
The village would not agree, but we shall let the error pass.
I don’t want to stare at you and add to your unease, so I look around the cottage. It’s dark, save for the firelight and a lamp on the table. The bed with its blue-patterned spread fills my vision. Noth long ago, I draped that blanket over you.
“You must think me strange.”
Oh no! I shake my head. Not you. Never.
“May I ask you a question?”
Of course.
“It’s just that, for all these years, I never thought I’d . . .”
I’m leaning toward you, staring at your teeth, your lips, your red tongue as you speak. You rake your fingers through your hair, looking like you’ve just rolled from bed. I don’t know how I’m breathing.
You speak to the floor. “I have to know, before I go mad,” you whisper. “Was it . . .”
I reach forward and touch your hand. Twice now. Such fire under dry leather skin. I squeeze it and force you to look into my eyes. What do you see? You can ask me anything, Lucas, and I’ll answer with all the truth that’s in me, even if I have to draw my foolish pictures to do it. There’s nothing I wouldn’t tell you, if I could, and if you asked me. Nothing I wouldn’t do.
You struggle to swallow, as if there’s a bone in your throat. Your eyes are fixed upon my hand holding yours. When you look back at me, you’re pleading and my heart breaks for you. I don’t relinquish your hand.
“You brought my father to the battle and saved us all.”
I bask in pleasure, even though you’ve brought him into the room.
“After all these years of thinking he was dead, it was a shock to see him alive. I’ve been tortured by the thought. . . . So many thoughts: why didn’t he come to me, why wouldn’t he let me help him, didn’t he want to see me?”
He hurt so many people. Of course you suffered. But you did a brave job of hiding it. And here you are, confiding your feelings to me, to me!
“But the worst of all is thinking, and fearing . . . I don’t want to harrow you, but I fear if I don’t know I’ll never have a moment’s peace in this life again. . . .”
I move my chair an inch closer and look into your eyes with all the reassurance I can.
You lift your head and meet my gaze.
“Was it my father who hurt you?”
LXXXI.
I pull my hands away.
LXXXII.
To say nothing is an answer of a kind.
To answer is another.
To lie could protect you. Would you believe what you wanted to? To tell the truth will make me loathsome in your eyes.
Even more than I already am.
I pledged to give you all the truth that’s in me. And you want me to tell you this.
LXXXIII.
Worse than all else, this was your only purpose in seeking me. And I am the worst of fools.
LXXXIV.
There is desperation in your eyes, and anguish. Desire, and terrible, terrible fear. I have seen that look before. Not in this room, not in your eyes.Candlelight moves across your face and unveils him before me.
LXXXV.
“Or did he find you,” you say, your eyes pleading, “and tend your wounds?” LXXXVI.
He did find me. He did tend my wounds.
LXXXVII.
Lucas. At your bidding I’d have fallen at your feet. I’d have lied for you, I’d have lied to please you, if I had the words to do it. But I can’t answer you this. Not even for you. In time the truth would make you hate me, if you don’t already. But more than that, against all reason, I hold myself too dear.
You want me to tell. You wish to understand your father’s sins, to relieve your an
guish, even at my expense. To relieve another man’s suffering must I expose myself again? I scrape a tear from my eye. It was not my wish that you see it. But see you have, and your eyes betray you: guilt is settling down upon you, and horror at what you’ve said.
That can’t bring me any comfort. You hold me in your anguished gaze. Something like realization dawns on your face.
I rise and turn and leave you.
LXXXVIII.
You call after me, after Judith, to wait. I don’t. My feet carry me homeward, though I scarcely care if they do or don’t. No one at home needs to see my tears nor hear my sobs. The night wind penetrates me. Has it grown colder since I walked here, or is that only my affection?
I think I hear footsteps again, and then I’m sure that I do. It must be you, coming to try to apologize. I walk faster, then run, until I reach my door. I want none of your gallantry now.
Fool to imagine! Fool to dream! Fool to think your visit meant that by some miracle, you might, in spite of everything, come to look on me!
It’s enough to know I don’t matter to anyone else in the world, but you treated me gently. You made me think you respected me. You let me imagine that you of all men weren’t fascinated by what might have happened to me.
That won’t excuse me for presuming to give my heart to you. It’s not your fault you broke it.
LXXXIX.
I’ll go live in the colonel’s house. I’ll keep my promise to the dead and take no harm from it. Phantom and I will keep each other company. I’ll be rid of Mother’s contempt, and spared from ever seeing the knowledge in your eyes of how I shamed myself before you, and how your father marred me forever.For though I will not answer you, I know that I already have.
Book Three
I.
I let the door slam behind me as I go inside. Mother and Darrel thrash around in their sheets and sit up.“Mmm,” I tell them, so they know it’s me. Darrel lies down again. For a long time Mother doesn’t move—I can tell from the silence—but at last she lies down.
I get out of my coat and boots and crawl back under my blankets.
Darrel begins to snore.
My body is heavy and sore with grief. Sleep would be welcome, but I can’t rest. The silence and blackness smother me, make me want to bolt back out the door and run for the colonel’s house across the river tonight. But that’s ridiculous.
I will go, though, and when I do, I will learn to stop remembering you.
I have a widow’s claim on whatever your father left behind. His hut was the place where young Judith died, and I was born. Ought I not to return to my home?
Young Judith was infatuated with you. I ought to know better.
The night drags on.
“Think he’ll marry you?”
Mother. My muscles clench.
“This man of yours. Or boy. The one you keep going to.”
I am paralyzed. She thinks I’m bedding a lover in a village hay barn. My own mother.
Her voice is calm and low. From behind her bed curtains, it has a distant, ghostly sound.
“Or is he someone already married?” She could be a friend whispering to me in church.
Can I pretend I’m asleep? No, she knows I’m awake.
“If you’re going to make a strumpet of yourself, find another place to live.”
I can’t even let myself breathe freely, lest my throat reveal some emotion she can seize upon.
“So for your sake,” she says, “I hope he can and does marry you.”
II.
I learned, during the years with him, how to cry without making a sound. Mostly I learned how to not cry. But my mother has found a fragment of my feelings that I didn’t know was there, and pierced it between her thumb and fingernail.
For her to see me every day, and believe this of me, hurts in my deepest inner parts, wounds wordless memories that I still hold of my life and my mother, before he took and cut me.
III.
I can’t live here anymore. Then I remember, I wasn’t planning to. I’m going to move to the colonel’s cabin. I’ll go tomorrow. Mother is not the reason for my leaving. You are. I leave you both behind.
There is a curious comfort in letting go. After the agony, letting go brings numbness, and after the numbness, clarity. As if I can see the world for the first time, and my place in it, independent of you, a whole vista of what may be. Even if it is not grand or inspiring, it is real and solid, unlike the fantasy I’ve built around you.
I will do this. I will triumph over you.
IV.
“Wake up, slugabed,” Mother barks in my ear. “Winter’s come and morning’s wasting.” I sit up in bed, disoriented. When did I fall asleep? Did I really go to your house last night? Did Mother really talk to me? She seems her usual self today; did I dream she spit me out?
The sun is indeed already up, and its light is different today. The wood of our cabin walls and doors seems paler, newer.
I look out the window.
Snow! Heavy and deep, and still falling fast.
That explains the strange light, and the muffling quiet
that kept me sleeping longer. Even sunrise slipped by unnoticed, absorbed by a foot of snow. Mother opens a trunk full of winter things—hats and gloves and scarves. I wrap myself up, seize my bucket, and head for the barn. Person will have noticed her morning milk, snowfall or no.
I pitch hay for her and for Phantom, milk Person dry, then clean their stalls. My footprints from coming to the barn are nearly hidden when I return. I squint against driving snowflakes and relentless white to look at the woodpile and the chicken coop. How many days’ wood have we laid by? Not enough, if the storm is long. This used to be Darrel’s task.
But why should it matter to me whether Mother has enough wood? I’m not staying.
I give Mother the milk, then wade to the chickens. My ankles are wet, the snow biting. I open the hatch, and the hens have sense enough to stay in. I feed and water them quickly, gather the eggs, then rake out the coop and leave the mess where it lands. Snow will bury the odor.
I reach the house and find the door locked. I knock and rattle it with no success. I pound the door, and finally Mother comes. She offers no explanation.
I don’t need one.
V.
I peel my wet things off and drape myself over the fire. Darrel edges his chair aside with difficulty to make room for me. Last night’s grandiose plans are a handful of snow down the back of my neck. In this storm I could barely even reach the cabin, much less survive there. Even if this snow were gone in two days, I’m not prepared to venture off alone yet. What would I eat? What would I burn?
And how can I leave Darrel? But, oh, to endure a winter cooped inside with Mother’s scorn.
And you.
I will leave, but not until spring.
VI.
Darrel’s face is plastered to the window. He takes a child’s delight in the snow. He must wipe the pane each time it frosts over with his breath.
From indoors, where the fire crackles, it is a gorgeous snowfall, coating every branch and limb, painting over autumn’s drab with purity. I remember past snows that charmed me just as Darrel is charmed today.
Has he yet considered how the snow will hamper him? Or how he’ll even move at all?
“Take me out in it, Judy,” he says. “I haven’t been outdoors in weeks. I want to taste the snowflakes.”
Mother doesn’t suppose this even deserves an answer.
Time, then, for Darrel’s first outing.
She mashes her hands into her hips when she finds me, moments later, fishing through the trunk for his hat and scarf.
“And what do you think you’re doing?”
I hand Darrel his trousers and help him slide them on under his nightshirt. I pull a sock over his stump, then wrap the leg of his trousers up over it and tie a string loosely around it. He pulls on his jacket and bundles his hands and head.
“You’re not going out,” Mother fumes. “You’
ll catch your death.”
“I lost a foot, not a lung,” Darrel says. “It’s time for me to see the world again.”
“I forbid it.”
Darrel reaches out to me and I help him to stand.
His good leg is weak and wobbly. He clings tightly to my shoulder and I hold on tight to his waist. Together we hopstep, hop-step over the threshold and out into the snow.
“Slip and fall, why don’t you, and break your other leg.” Mother slams the door behind us.
“Winter always did cheer her up,” says Darrel.
He breathes deeply, filling himself with winter air. It smells clean and moist and sweet. His eyes are not accustomed to so much light after lying so long in the dark house, and he squints. Snowflakes melt into his orange lashes.
I look out across the way toward the stream, which snarls like long black lips across the white face of the earth. Beyond, out of sight, is your house. I see a column of smoke rise through the white sky, loose and unfurling like a girl’s long hair without her cap.
What are you about today?
Why do I care?
I don’t.
This will be a new amputation. You’ve been a part of my flesh, underneath all my skin. Your removal will bleed and leave me lame for a time.
VII.
I nudge Darrel and we hop forward. Snow squeaks under our feet. Once his leg seems to falter under his weight, and I pull him against me. He’s skin and bones now, and only a bit taller than me, so it’s not difficult to support him. “Bet Mather and Hoss’ll be sledding at Drummond’s Hill,” Darrel says.
