Bitter Sun

by Beth Lewis

  The night closed in, clouds obscured the stars and moon. No light touched the tops of the trees or swaying corn stalks. The world was black and there was only me. Then the rain began, soft and pattering at first, then a harsh drum beat. It made a cage of my home, made every wall and window vivid and tight around me.

  I went about the house, switching on the lamps, listening to the hunger growl in my stomach. The weather turned the radio to white noise and the thought of staring at a book made my head ache. All I could think of was Jenny. Out alone in this weather.

  Momma, please find her.

  Momma, please don’t.

  The nail polish had set hard. Red and too bright in my plain house. It was a taunt, like God was telling me, heads up, kid, remember this picture, this is what you’ve got to look forward to. But it wouldn’t be polish. It wouldn’t be fake and shiny. It would be real and it would be Jenny’s if Momma’s rage found her.

  I sat on the floor, chipping away at it with my fingernail when, over the beating rain, I heard the truck pull into the yard.

  I’d been in a bubble but now the real world rushed upon me like waves on rock. Everything sped up. My body moved before my mind told it to. I was up the stairs and onto the landing, hiding behind the rails.

  You’re a coward, John, the voices said, but I had been in the path of the whirlwind already and I couldn’t be sucked up into the gyre again. I’d be twisted and torn and pulled apart before I could help her. If she needed it. Maybe Momma had calmed and they needed time alone to talk. I’d listen and if things turned bad, I was only a staircase away.

  See? You’re a damn sissy.

  No, I’m—

  The front door crashed open.

  My chest turned hot and spiked and I clutched the railings until my knuckles turned white.

  Momma had Jenny by the arm and dragged her into the family room, slopping wet footprints and mud across the hall. Backpack nowhere, sunhat gone, but alive. Safe. And home. The spikes in my lungs softened to marshmallow.

  But something didn’t feel right.

  Momma usually shouted, screamed, but she was dead silent.

  I realised a beat later it was because she was sober. There was no fuel for her fire. It burned white-hot on its own and felt all the more dangerous for it.

  They disappeared into the kitchen and I moved across the landing, to the top step, to see them.

  The sound of a chair scraping the linoleum, then it came into view. Jenny’s chair. Where she always sat around the table. Her faded butterfly sticker on the top rail.

  ‘Sit down,’ Momma said, so calm and cold it made me flinch.

  Momma stood opposite Jenny, her back to me. My sister’s face was not my sister’s. It was streaked with tears or rain, eyes puffy and raw, and a bright red bruise grew on her cheek. My own swollen cheek ached at the sight. A small cut in the centre of Jenny’s welt said Momma had turned her ring around before striking.

  ‘Where did you think you were going?’ Momma said. Her voice filled the empty house, quieting the rain and turning our home into a speaker box. Everything too loud, too close.

  We were our own planet then. A rock sailing through the darkness. Just us, our farm, our whitewashed house. The dirt road no longer led to Larson, it cut off at the gate and fell into nothing.

  Momma repeated her question.

  No one would ever turn up at the door, break the moment apart, save Jenny from whatever Momma was going to do. Because she was going to do something. Something terrible. She had that coiled snake tension all over her. I felt it. Jenny felt it. And I couldn’t move.

  ‘Answer me!’

  Jenny flinched, sank back as far as she could in her chair. Her fingers scratched at the seat, dug and dug and dug into wood. Her chin pressed into her chest, couldn’t, wouldn’t, look up into Momma’s eyes. Those blue eyes that were Jenny’s as well.

  ‘I …’ Jenny began but what could she say? ‘I was just …’

  The sound of my breathing, my heartbeat, clogged the landing. I want to be a bird, I want to swoop down these stairs and grab Jenny, fly her away. But I was rigid, stuck to my spot like I was a part of the house itself. Part of the prison.

  ‘You … you were just?’ Momma whined.

  Then she rushed to Jenny, towered over her. ‘You were running away with Eric, weren’t you? Weren’t you?’

  ‘No, Momma,’ Jenny tried but it was a lie. I saw it and it broke my heart. Momma saw it too. Momma can spot a lie like a hawk can spot a mouse.

  ‘Don’t lie to me, girl.’

  Then Jenny looked up. Met Momma’s eyes, met her ferocity. They had the same power in them, the same rage, only Jenny hadn’t been destroyed by hers like Momma had. Not yet, anyway.

  ‘We were going to Washington,’ Jenny said.

  She had been running after Eric, chasing him down to take her away to some better place. Tears spilled from my eyes and sizzled to steam on my cheeks. You would leave me, you would walk out the door and leave me and never look back?

  ‘He wanted me. He said so,’ Jenny carried on and I silently prayed for her to stop. ‘He was sick of you, called you a withered old hag.’

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ Momma said, her voice taut, a rubber band stretched to its limit. ‘You are so stupid. I should have cut you out of me the second that no-good man put you in.’

  Momma stood behind Jenny, her hands on my sister’s shoulders. Those hands, fingers, so long and dark against Jenny’s pale throat. They enveloped it, held it in a cage like the harrier held its prey. So gentle at first.

  Momma bent down slightly, put her face closer to Jenny’s head. ‘Then you came out a girl and I thought, I can teach her, I can show her my mistakes and she won’t make them herself.’

  Momma’s hands tightened around Jenny’s neck and my body tensed, ready to fly down the stairs if she closed her fists. All Jenny’s defiance ebbed away and she was so small in those hands. Her fierce eyes faded to a light blue and her lip and chin trembled.

  ‘But you are making those mistakes,’ Momma went on, her voice getting deeper, darker with every word. ‘You’re making them over and over. I wanted so much better for you but you just don’t deserve it. You’re dirt, you see that don’t you? Head-to-toe filth and I ought to let those men do whatever they want, as much as they want, until they’re all spent. I ought to charge them for it for all the grief you’ve cost me, but that dirty little cooch isn’t worth a nickel. What’s the point in you then? Huh? What’s the fuhking point in you?’

  I trembled on the steps. Rooted. Stuck between fear and shock and needing to help. Jenny had left me, the icy shard of that realisation pierced my chest. I felt the rubber band in Momma’s voice stretched beyond its ability, I saw the white strain in its fibres. I waited. Any moment now. Any second.

  ‘I didn’t …’ Jenny said. Tiny. Quietly defiant. Oh, Jenny.

  Snap!

  Momma snatched up all of Jenny’s hair in one hand. The chair toppled. My sister screamed, disappeared from view. A moment. A horrible moment of not knowing. What do I do? What the hell do I do? Then I heard her. Her voice reached up the stairs to me.

  ‘Johnny!’

  And I was on my feet. Down. Two, three steps at a time. Then I saw it and my blood, my bones, my limbs, every part of me froze and I stumbled.

  Momma had pulled the carving knife from the kitchen drawer.

  ‘This is for your own good,’ she said, terribly soft against Jenny’s struggles, her tears and pleas and please, Momma, please, stop, stop, stop.

  Red-hot horror exploded in me. Momma wrapped her hand around Jenny’s hair. Held Jenny tight against her side.

  ‘Don’t!’ I shouted. A dozen pictures, possibilities, went through me, a dozen evil thoughts in my head. She’s going to kill her. She’s going to kill Jenny. It didn’t matter what Jenny did, what she didn’t do, you can’t hurt her. You can’t hurt my sister.

  Momma looked up. Saw me.

  Run at her, Johnny, grab her arm, take
the blade, take it in your chest if you have to, but I was too far and too slow. The floor was thick mud, the rug a tangleweed, the overturned chair a mountain in my path.

  ‘Momma!’ I shouted and shouted. The house filled with rage. Everyone roaring, crying, begging.

  ‘Let me go!’ Jenny dug deep scratches into Momma’s arm but there wasn’t a speck of Momma left. It was all monster and monsters don’t feel pain.

  Momma yanked Jenny’s hair upward, ripped strands from her scalp with sickening pop-pop sounds.

  In one long arc she brought the knife up and sliced.

  It wasn’t clean. The knife wasn’t that sharp. She gripped Jenny’s hair again, strands broke and split as Momma hacked and strained. A sheen of sweat on her neck, thin face red and boiling. Then she was finished.

  Jenny fell to her knees. Suddenly released. Her kneecaps cracked on the floorboards and she cried out a new hurt.

  I skidded down beside her, wrapped my arms around her shoulders. Too late. I was too late. I stared up at Momma and the length of Jenny’s hair in her fist. A scattering of it on the linoleum, clumps of it matted with blood. Jenny’s perfect hair, sunshine on her back, down to her waist, a beauty, a cascade. Now dull yellow in Momma’s hand like Mary Ridley’s after days dead in the water.

  Jenny was stone in my arms. Her eyes wide, staring at the floor behind me. Her body rose and fell against mine, air scratched against her throat and lungs and came out in rasping breaths.

  ‘They won’t want you now.’ Momma licked her lips, breathless. ‘Don’t worry, my baby girl, they won’t want you any more. Momma fixed you.’

  Momma took a step closer. Grip on the knife tightened, her knuckles bleached white around the handle. ‘Well? Where’s my thank you? I taught you better manners than that.’

  I felt sick. Cut off her hair, make her cry, make her bleed, and make her say thank you for it? I wanted to scream.

  Jenny shuddered in my arms, closed her eyes and said, ‘Thank you, Momma.’

  No fight, no sass, no life. Just Thank you. Dead words out of a dead mouth.

  Momma murmured good girl, good girl, and let go of Jenny’s ragged hair. It fell, splayed on the floor.

  Momma tossed the knife onto the kitchen table and wiped her face with one hand.

  ‘John, make your sister a sandwich,’ then her eyes went to Jenny, her hair, her tears. ‘She’s had a long day.’

  She kicked the hair. ‘Clean this up too.’

  When I didn’t move, when I kept my sister in my arms, held her trembling body to mine, Momma grabbed me. Momma pulled me. Fingernails dug into my arm and I felt my skin rip. My muscles were nothing against hers and I was torn away, fell backward, Jenny left exposed, shivering.

  ‘I said,’ Momma bent right down to my ear, ‘make your sister a sandwich.’

  ‘Yes, Momma.’

  I stood on uneven feet, my shoulders and back knotted up, waiting for another strike. This wasn’t my mother, this wasn’t the woman who’d bought me the bird book and taught us Euchre and braided Jenny’s hair. This was some new horror and I was useless against it, tissue paper in a rain storm. The house buzzed around me. Darkness on both sides of the walls. The world outside was gone, the world inside changed forever.

  The only thing I could focus on was the knife. The only tangible piece of the puzzle I could control. Get the knife, Johnny, get the knife before Momma changes her mind, does something worse. The blade lay on the table, facing me like it was choosing my hand to secure it. Go on, Johnny, before it’s too late.

  But my sister was on her feet. My sister was at the table. My sister snatched the knife and held it, shaking, arms straight out, blade tip pointed right at Momma’s face.

  My heart, my gut, sank straight to my feet. ‘Jenny, give that to me …’

  Did I even say that out loud? I heard it in my head but my throat was dry and tight.

  Momma turned. A second. A beat. Then she laughed.

  ‘Well, well,’ she said, stepped past me, put herself between me and Jenny. ‘Little bitch has teeth.’

  Jenny’s face, red and swollen, with a line of blood slicing through her skin from the wound on her cheek, and another from somewhere deep in her hairline, was not a face I knew. It was alien, ruined, a new thing taken shape in my kitchen. What was left of her hair fell choppy and uneven across her forehead and the bright blonde I loved was dimmed, like someone had thrown a shade over the sun. A house full of strangers. A family I no longer knew.

  Fresh tears welled in Jenny’s eyes. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’ Momma took another step to her.

  ‘Why do you hate me?’

  The tip of the knife wavered, lowered slightly. It was enough.

  Momma lunged. Wrapped herself around Jenny, clutched both wrists until my sister screamed and the knife fell to the floor.

  A moment of stillness. The house filled with Jenny’s wails, Momma’s breathing and my heartbeat and I couldn’t move, didn’t know how any more, feet and legs and back and arms were rock.

  ‘I don’t hate you, baby,’ Momma whispered close to Jenny’s ear. She pinned both of Jenny’s hands across her chest and held onto her from behind. Momma eclipsed her, hunched over her until the sobs quietened. Momma murmured hushes and it’s okay baby’s into the top of Jenny’s hair, kissing her and swaying her side to side. It felt like an hour, a day, a whole long, dark night, that the three of us stood frozen. My two monsters, calming each other, and me, paralysed at the side, just watching them, waiting for one to break.

  Jenny squeezed her eyes shut, took a deep breath, and went slack in Momma’s arms. Just like that, it was over. The monsters retreated, the air came back into the room and the darkness felt a few degrees brighter.

  ‘I don’t hate you, baby,’ Momma said again. She let Jenny go and knelt down in front of her, pushed a few strands of shorn hair from her eyes.

  Momma touched her forehead to Jenny’s. ‘I love you, my baby girl, can’t you see that? Everything I do is because I love you so, so much.’

  My eyes went from Momma’s face to Jenny’s. From triumph to defeat.

  Still stroking Jenny’s ruined hair, Momma turned to me. ‘Where’s that sandwich?’

  So I made it, in a numb, mechanical haze. I don’t even remember what was in it. One for Jenny. One for Momma. The thought of eating turned my stomach. They sat at opposite ends of the table. Neither would look at the other. Jenny barely ate. Momma smoked and drank can after can of Old Milwaukee.

  I couldn’t sit there, stand there, in their presence. Momma had taken a knife to Jenny but Jenny had taken it right back. They were my world, my life, and they were killing each other. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to cry so hard my face ached but I kept it in.

  The light from the kitchen window reached the edge of the yard. The sky was clearing, allowing the moon to highlight the world’s edges. I could finally see the answer to our ills, halfway across our field, fringed with silver light.

  I gathered up Jenny’s fallen hair and took it outside, grabbed the kitchen matches on my way. I tossed my sister’s hair onto the pile. That’s where our secrets went. Into the dirt with the maggots, ready for burning. The maggots writhed and pulsed and even in the dark, I could hear them moving. The tiny sounds their fat, white bodies made as they chewed and squirmed their way through our crops, our livelihood. They brought ruin on us. They drove Eric away. They knew my shame. They knew Jenny’s hurt. The infection they brought to our farm had taken root, gone too far. It was time.

  The rain had stopped but the pile would need help to burn. I went to the barn, found a gas can and started splashing the mound, all sides, as high up as I could throw. I struck a match, threw it, and the world lit up orange.

  I saw them, then. The birds.

  On the guttering. On the barn. On the fence line. On every branch of the oak tree. They bristled at the flames but didn’t fly away. Black marks on every surface, preening, shifting, watching.

  ‘What do you want?�
�� I said. ‘Get out of here.’

  I threw my arms up, shouted, ‘Get’, but they didn’t move.

  A thousand shining black eyes bored into me. A thousand talons flexed and tightened around my bones. A thousand wings beat in my chest. They were my birds, the ones inside me, the ones scratching under my skin. They were real and they were here. All around me, waiting for the maggots to hiss and burst, waiting for the fire.

  I heard the screen door creak open behind me. Jenny’s voice, dull and tired. ‘John? What are you doing?’

  ‘Do you see them? They won’t go.’

  I turned to her and flinched. Forgot.

  She was a doll a child had taken a pair of scissors to. Her hair, no longer than her ears, stuck up and out and everywhere. Blood ran down her face from a nick in her scalp. A deep scratch flared red on the back of her neck, curling around to her ear. A curtain of dry, flaking blood touched her shoulder. She was broken. And I had to mend her.

  ‘Do I see what?’ she asked but her tone said she didn’t care.

  I turned away, back to the birds. The guttering, the oak, the fences, empty.

  I felt the scratching under my skin, the feathers in my chest. Jenny stood beside me and the sensation stopped. My birds. My sister. Never in the same place.

  ‘Nothing. It’s all going to be okay,’ I said and took her hand, interlaced our fingers. Her skin was cold.

  ‘It’ll grow back,’ I said. ‘The corn. Your hair. Even Larson. It’ll all grow back and it’ll be just like before.’

  We watched the flames devour the corn. We couldn’t have known, either of us, how wrong I was in those few words. The west field turned sour and acidic and wouldn’t take seed. Larson tried to drag itself out of the mire but a few men wanted to keep it down, keep it desperate, and they did it well.

  PART THREE

  Summer, 1973

  22

  The winter passed slowly, like the last old man in the corner of the bar refusing to leave at the end of the night. Drag him out by the collar and drag the world round on its axis. One thought gnawed at me all through the cold months. Jenny wasn’t safe. Whether from Wakefield or from Momma or even from herself, she wasn’t safe, but I didn’t know how to fix it. The voices in my head told me to leave Larson, leave Momma, but that would mean leaving my farm and my future and my family. Besides, I had no money except for those few dollars I was saving to buy old man Briggs’ tractor. How far away that possibility seemed now, barely more than a child’s dream.