Girl Runner

by Carrie Snyder

  “But our cake for Edith?”

  “Leave the cake for later. I know you girls will be of help to Betty. One of you must stay with her at all times, do you understand?”

  And then, just before she walks out the door, she says to me that I must not run for the doctor. “The doctor will not be able to help.”

  The ordinary summer day is changed, like that.

  Our mother gone down the lane, Cora and I follow Olive on hushed, eager feet toward the Granny Room, where a bed is kept for the girls who come. The girls rarely stay longer than a night or two, sometimes a week at most. I do not wonder whether my mother accepts payment, or whether the girls offer it, or their families. I know nothing about the transactions that go on here, or even, it must be said, about the work itself that my mother does on behalf of these girls. I have not, until today, been permitted to enter the Granny Room, not while a girl rests there.

  Olive leads Cora and me through the great room, littered and crammed with our father’s detritus, and through the front hall, which no one ever uses as an entryway, although there is a door, and into the parlour, which belonged to our grandmother. I remember her not at all, but Olive and Cora claim bits and pieces of memory: horehound candies kept in a glass jar with a cork stopper, handed out to little visitors, and a scrap of black netting she wore pinned to her tightly knotted hair to signify perpetual mourning: she had much to mourn, having lived through the deaths of her husband, four grandchildren, and a daughter-in-law.

  Grandmother’s furniture remains: a stiff horsehair chair and matching sofa, with carved dark wooden legs and backs, and a china cabinet of dark wood and glass, in which Mother now keeps her tinctures, medicines, and preparations. There is a red rug on the floor, richly patterned with vines and flowers, leaves and birds.

  I would like to stop and examine it more closely. Are the birds speaking to one another? Are there wild animals among the vines?

  We pause outside the closed door: the bedroom.

  “Not all of us at once,” says Olive. “We’ll frighten her.”

  “She deserves to be frightened,” says Cora rather breathlessly. “After what she’s done.”

  “What has she done?” I’m confused.

  “Nothing that concerns us,” says Olive.

  “It concerns us now. She’s in our charge.”

  “And we’ll look after her like Mother would,” says Olive, becoming suddenly fierce and turning on Cora: “And if you won’t, then stay away. Do the beans and bake the crumb cake and go off and visit Edith, and leave this girl to me and Aggie.”

  Olive turns the handle on the door, gently pushes it open, calling out, “It’s just me, Olive, and my sisters, come to see how you are.”

  The girl who lies in our grandmother’s bed rolls her face on the pillow to see us. It is a hot day, but she has pulled the sheet to her chin. It occurs to me that she may not be decently dressed underneath it. I spy on one of the wooden chairs her folded dress and hat, and her good shoes are placed neatly underneath. The girl looks as if she does not care about much of anything. She looks quite blank, preoccupied. She pulls her bare arms out from under the sheet and rests them silently on her stomach, her mouth and forehead twisted, as if she is struggling not to make a sound.

  Olive quickly pulls over the other wooden chair and sits beside the bed, leaning to touch the girl’s hand. “Are you in some pain?” she asks quietly.

  “Something’s happening,” says the girl.

  “Well, then. My mother’s help is doing the trick,” says Olive.

  “Will it hurt?” the girl whispers. Her eyes are full of fear.

  Olive doesn’t answer, not exactly. Instead she promises, “We will stay with you. We will be with you.”

  I am impressed. Olive could be our mother, she is so sure, so confident. Cora makes a noise with her mouth closed, a hmpf, a scoffing sound. I give her a poke, make a face at her. Stop it. Cora stares at me unblinking, pretending she’s done nothing.

  The room is too hot, and I go to the window and open it. “Maybe we’ll catch a bit of breeze,” I say, trying to be cheerful. I still do not understand what has made the girl sick, nor what is happening to her. I stand by the window with my arms hanging at my side, wondering how else I might help. Cora stands in the doorway like a statue. When our eyes meet, she crosses her arms over her front, her legs slightly apart, like a sentry. She won’t enter the room.

  “Cora, Aggie,” says Olive, without turning her attention from the girl, “could you brew some tea, please, as Mother suggested, with fresh garlic? I will stay with”—she pauses fractionally before saying the girl’s name, as if she’s afraid she’s betraying her privacy by naming her at all—“Betty.”

  “Might as well put the cakes in to bake,” I tell Cora as she fills the kettle and sets it to boil on the big stove in the summer kitchen.

  “You don’t know what that girl did, do you,” says Cora in a steady tone that I recognize. She is about to tell me something that I don’t want to hear, and she’s relishing the moment.

  Silently, I walk away from her into the kitchen to fetch the filled cake pans.

  “That girl has a baby in her stomach that she doesn’t want.”

  I walk the cake pans right past Cora, who is hovering in the way. I push her aside with my elbow, but she only shrugs and follows me closely. My elbow is a sign of weakness. She knows she’s upset me, and she’s pleased.

  “Our mother is helping that girl kill her baby.”

  My hands shake as I set the pans on top of the hot stove, beside the rattling kettle, and open the oven door.

  “And now we’re supposed to help kill the baby too.”

  “You’re lying.” I turn on her, oven door hanging open and cake bottoms beginning to cook on the stovetop.

  Cora says nothing. She doesn’t need to.

  “How big is the baby?” I whisper, thinking of the only infant I’ve ever seen up close, when I was no more than five myself, and Little Robbie was born to Edith and Carson.

  Cora doesn’t know. She looks suddenly not quite so certain.

  “Have you seen the babies? What does Mother do with them? Does she bury them? Why is the girl’s stomach so flat? Shouldn’t it be very big for a baby to fit inside it?”

  Cora cannot answer me. She doesn’t know.

  “You think you know, but you don’t!” I am flustered and hot from the oven, which I suddenly remember is open, and I shove the pans in and slam it shut. The kettle begins to steam. Using a thick flannel pad, I carry the boiling kettle past Cora and into the kitchen, and begin to prepare the tea, as directed, with smashed fresh garlic mixed with the dried herbs, slowly pouring the hot water over top.

  When everything is ready, I make up a tray with a pretty embroidered tea towel, and a china cup, and a small bowl of honey, and a little spoon that came from our grandmother. Something in me wants to make the tray look pretty, like I would for any guest.

  Cora follows me.

  “You’re helping her,” she whispers accusingly.

  In truth, it would never occur to me not to help the girl, or Olive, or most especially my mother. Mother has told us what we are to do. I cannot imagine choosing to defy her wishes. The alternative is quite impossible to fathom—inconceivable, you might say, though under the circumstances, I should probably not put it that way.

  I carry the tray through the parlour and the open door to the bedroom, and set it onto the dresser just inside the door, where my mother keeps sheets and bedding fresh smelling with sprigs of lavender. The girl is rocking her head from side to side on the pillow. She does not look well. Her forehead is wet.

  “Make up a basin with cool water and some clean cloths for compresses.” Olive speaks quick and low. Her voice remains calm, but her eyes, as they meet mine, are worried. I can feel my heart beating faster. I understand why my mother has kept me from the Granny Room until now. This is what she’s been hiding from me: illness, fear, the suffering of strangers.

  I
push past Cora, who stands like a stone in the doorway, and run for a basin. I’m back as quickly as I can come, and have to push past Cora again, water sloshing onto both of our dresses. I frown at her, but she doesn’t budge, and won’t even look at me. I’m not sure who or what she’s looking at, exactly. I place the basin on the wood floorboards.

  “Shut the door,” says Olive. Cora doesn’t move. “Shut the door!” Olive raises her voice, and Cora challenges her in silent refusal. “In or out, Cora, make up your mind!” Cora hesitates, and Olive stands, suddenly furious, and pushes her out of the way and leans onto the door to close it, with some difficulty, as Cora appears to be leaning back. As soon as the door is shut, and Olive returned to the girl’s side, Cora opens the door. I can see that Olive might strike her, she’s that angry, but Cora simply steps inside and pulls the door shut behind her.

  Why? I mouth the word.

  We soak the cloths, Olive and I, and begin bathing the girl’s face and arms. Olive moves the sheet to wash down her legs. I have never touched another person’s body before, not like this, and I am surprised by how pliable she seems, how easy it is to lift and position her limbs, and how she responds to our touch—she relaxes against it. I feel for a moment that this is going to turn out just fine, whatever this is. But then the girl almost sits up, sharply. Her stomach is hurting her, and it must hurt very much, for her eyes are full of fear. I realize that blood is pooling from under her hips, spreading on the sheet, and I stare at Olive.

  Olive’s eyes open wide, but her instructions give the impression of calm.

  “Lie back down, gently now,” to the girl. And to me: “Lift just now, just here, and . . .” Olive opens the drawers for more sheets—I see that Mother is keeping old sheets in these drawers, not new, not nice, these are torn and mended and stained and greying with age. Olive spreads the old sheets under the girl. The smell of lavender rises thickly. I am grateful for the sleepy perfumed scent, which fights against the raw animal smell of fresh blood.

  Olive presses on the girl’s stomach, kneading it with one hand, the other holding the girl’s hand, bringing forth more blood.

  “Stop!” I whisper frantically.

  “This is how it is done,” says Olive. “This is how I’ve seen Mother do it.”

  “What is happening?”

  “You are killing her baby,” says Cora.

  At that, the girl makes a sound, her first, just a quiet helpless cry that comes from her throat as if she can’t stop it, though she wants to. Tears stream out of the corners of her eyes, but she forces herself to stay silent inside her fear. I think, you are being very brave, but I don’t say it out loud. I hope she can hear my thoughts, read my eyes.

  “We are not doing harm,” says Olive firmly. “She is suffering a miscarriage. She needs our help.”

  I look across the girl’s body, which lies between us, into Olive’s eyes, and I believe her. Almost. I believe her enough. I can’t decide, just then, whether it matters that I believe Olive’s version or Cora’s, because what matters is that Mother has told me to help, and so I must help. Besides, I am here and helping, and now I want to, no matter what. I feel that I couldn’t leave. It is the girl I’m thinking of, not the girl’s baby, that is true, and perhaps it is unfair of me, and unimaginative, but it is the girl who is suffering, and whose suffering I want to soothe. I keep washing her cheeks and brow, and her arms, rinsing out the cloth, washing again. I’m running the wrung-out cloth over her hand when she turns it palm up and wraps her fingers around mine. That is when I understand: she wants something steady and strong to hold on to. It is a want that I can answer. I let her hold my hand. I stop daubing her. My other hand folds on top of hers.

  Olive checks under the sheet from time to time. I look away, to give the girl what little privacy I can.

  “We need another basin,” Olive tells Cora, but Cora won’t go. She is the witness in the corner, the angel of stone, the truth teller. Olive must go herself. In the moments that Olive is gone, Cora and I face each other across the room.

  The room is silent and still, except for our breathing. And then I am holding my breath until Olive returns, briskly, prepared for what’s next. Into the basin goes some fleshy unformed dark red tissue that looks livery. I stare quite hard, while pretending not to, but I can’t find a baby in that basin. I can’t find anything that looks human, or shaped, or recognizable. I can’t find anything but clotted blood. I see Cora looking too. She seems surprised. I think she expected to see a whole baby come out of the girl.

  “We’ll just keep pressing and kneading, until it’s all clear,” says Olive. “But you may sit up now. You must have some tea.”

  Olive discreetly washes her bloody hands in the basin of cool water, curlicues of colour spin out, and the liquid swirls a pale pink. I try to pull my hand from the girl’s, in order to pour the tea, but the girl holds on. She wants to tell me something. I shake my head to warn her that Cora is in the room, and Cora is not someone with whom you want a secret shared.

  “He said he’d marry me. I don’t want to marry him. I don’t want to see him ever again.”

  Shhhh, says Olive. Hush.

  “Can you help me?”

  I don’t know what she means. We’ve helped her, surely. What more can we do?

  And then I know. We can do nothing more. This is it. This is all Mother can do too, and the room knows it, and the house around us, and the heat of summer, and the promise of the turning seasons. The distant smell of acrid smoke knows it: a summons from the burnt-up crumb cakes in the oven, which beg watching by the girls who bake them, for it is never boys who bake cakes.

  Later, when we are getting supper on and waiting for Mother to come home, Cora points out there is blood on the back of my dress. But it’s not the girl’s. It’s my monthlies, returned.

  That is my first story.

  THE SECOND STORY is mine, all mine. Because I too have been the girl in the Granny Room, lying abed, shivering, in need of my mother’s merciful help. I will keep this story short. It is too sad to stand up under the weight of words. I will tell it thin and plain, if I tell it at all. There is no one alive, now, who knows the story, and only a few knew it, ever.

  I’ll tell only what I’ve spent my life promising: that I regret nothing. And it will be a lie, of a kind. But it is also the truth.

  15

  I Think I Know

  “YOU DON’T KNOW ME,” says the woman in Edith’s kitchen, “at least not very well. My name is Nancy. I should have introduced myself earlier.” Nancy, she says. Well, I know this kitchen, don’t think I don’t, untidy as ever.

  “I’m very sorry to disturb you,” I say firmly. “I will leave now.”

  “You’re not done with your tea!” The girl is flustered.

  “We’ve still got footage to shoot,” explains the young man.

  “Take me home,” I demand, clear as a storm on the horizon.

  “Won’t you stay?” says the woman. “I’m sorry I’ve upset you.”

  “It’s your story we want to tell,” the girl insists.

  Everyone crowding in on me. A crowd of crows. Well, well, well. What makes them think my story is theirs to tell? What makes them think I’ll cooperate any further? Don’t they know—they are dealing with an expert in the telling of other people’s stories.

  Edith, I say to the woman who has got me by the hands with her strong, fine-boned fingers, no rings, dry and calloused. Edith, I’m very sorry to have come here, and I will be going now.

  “Miss Smart, my name is Nancy.”

  So you say. In Edith’s kitchen. With Edith’s mess all around you.

  “Miss Smart, I’m sorry to tell you that your sister Edith is no longer alive. She died many years ago. She is buried in the New Arran churchyard if you ever want to visit. We could take you.”

  Edith is dead? I do not mean to say this out loud. I do not mean to look old and confused.

  “Yes, Edith is dead, Miss Smart.”

  Ah. Li
ke everyone else.

  “This would be the perfect time to tell her,” says the young man, his camera eager to see me weep.

  The woman won’t let go of my hands. She insists on burdening a person: “Miss Smart, my name is Nancy, and I’ve got something very important to tell you.” Her name is Nancy, so she says. “Miss Smart, you’re not alone in the world. That’s what we want to tell you, me and Kaley and Max—we were your neighbours, yes, but we weren’t just that. We’re family. I moved back to my family’s farm after the divorce. The house had stood empty so many years, I thought it might have fallen down, but no such luck. You can see that it stands yet.

  “Your sister Edith was my grandmother, Miss Smart. That’s why I was so—surprised, I guess. Disappointed. About the coffee cake. When we were kin. I should let it go. It’s ancient history now.”

  I shake my head. I’m remembering a burnt-up loaf of crumb cake, meant for Edith, could that be what the woman means?

  But she won’t stop her talking.

  “My mother moved in with Grandma Edith when I was ten—not that she wanted to. Too much talk in a place like this, she said. But she came back to look after her mother. She was a good daughter. Like my kids. Yes, you are, both of you. I was a teenager when Edith died. And then we got the heck off the farm, me and Mama. We flew like birds across the country till we reached the ocean. I never imagined coming back. To this. Place. But here I am.”

  “You’re Edith’s.” That’s what you’re saying.

  “Yes. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “You’re Edith’s?” Prove it. Can you hear my fury? It pours from me, fear distilled. My hands slam down onto the tabletop.

  “I know there was a rift somewhere along the line,” says the woman stiffly. “Mama didn’t know what had happened. And Grandma Edith never said a word wrong about you, Aganetha, though she wasn’t fond of your sister—I’ve forgotten her name—but who would be? I wasn’t half-fond of her either, when we’d meet in town. ‘How is your poor grandmother keeping these days?’ she’d beetle for me, digging around. ‘And do you see your father from time to time?’ A person who liked to poke a person where it hurt. Still, and all, she took the coffee cake and invited me in, and you weren’t a force of welcome, exactly, it must be said.”