The Glass Ocean

by Lori Baker

  Finally naked, she steps before the mirror.

  She has never seen herself this way before, the entire pink and white and gold of herself unclothed. She surveys herself critically—wincing slightly as she cups her breasts in her hands, weighing them, considering the dark flush of the aureoles, then turning slowly sideways to look at herself in silhouette. She unpins her hair, lets it fall. She is a beautiful woman; she has known this; now she sees it. She places her palm against her belly, just above the luxuriant blond bush of pubic hair. Behind her, in the mirror, she can see reflected the sea, grey blue, frothy with whitecaps, protecting all its secrets, framed in her bedroom window.

  She does not linger long. This new being, her naked self, is not, for her, an object of admiration or of desire. She dresses again, rapidly, twists her hair up into a thick, glossy coil, which she pins neatly into place. A few renegade curls hang loose at the nape of her neck.

  • • •

  I wonder, does she miss her own mother now? Or is it still her Papa she thinks of—Marie-Louise Girard nothing but a ghost: unsought, unwanted.

  • • •

  She tries and when she cannot move it herself, carefully covers the mirror with a sheet she unfolds from the linen chest at the foot of the bed, making certain that each flounce of the rococo frame is fully hidden.

  • • •

  Not long afterward she appears in the kitchen, adjusting her hat, pulling on her ice-blue shawl.

  Mary, I’m going out.

  Yes, madam. Will you be going to see Mr. Argument, then?

  No, Mary. I won’t be long.

  Still there is no anger in my mother, despite her servant’s impudence; just a deepening of the glacial reserve, and of that cast of unhappiness that arrived in the morning, which she can neither dispel nor disguise—it shows still, at the corners of her lips, and in her eyes—a seriousness that stifles even the girl-of-all-work, who lowers her head, suddenly embarrassed, and begins to scour the stove.

  There is no rush for dinner, Mary. It will just be me tonight. Mr. Dell’oro won’t be home.

  Yes, madam.

  • • •

  My mother emerges onto Bridge Street in the lengthening afternoon. It is spring, still chilly, the sky greenish, gravid, but without rain. She is on her way to Skinner Street.

  As there is no sun she casts no shadow.

  • • •

  It will be three hours before she returns. There will be a wait in Skinner Street. This is beyond her control.

  • • •

  On her way home she will pass, on the sidewalk, Thomas Argument, who will smile at her, and nod, and walk on, saying nothing.

  He is a shrewd man, Thomas Argument. Although my mother doesn’t know it yet, he won’t visit her again. This, too, is beyond her control, as she will very soon discover, to her infinite, though disguised, distress.

  • • •

  What is my father doing while my mother is in Skinner Street? He is with William Cloverdale, of course, making a beautiful, honey-brown glass eye, the iris shot through with strands of gold, for a girl from Hull who lost hers after being violently punched in the face by her lover because she had been, or so he believed, unfaithful. In this glass eye my father places four tiny brown grains of glass forming the initials: CGD’O.

  If looked at very closely, by use of a magnifying glass, for example, these initials will be discernible in the glass iris, just above and to the left of the pupil.

  But to most people, gazing unaided into the eye of the assaulted woman, the initials will look like a darker brown fleck in a honey-brown iris, a tiny ripple, constituting not a flaw, but rather an attempt to capture, naturalistically as possible, the inconsistency of the living organ that, as everyone knows, always has its flaws, its mars, its blots, its idiosyncrasies.

  Add them up correctly and they equal beauty.

  As in this particular case: my father’s joke, his inclusion of my mother’s initials, CGD’O, makes the eye beautiful, although nobody who looks at it will understand why; it is a beautiful enigma.

  Whether the glass eye is more beautiful than the original is debatable. Certainly my father hopes, thinks, intends that it should be.

  • • •

  I don’t like my father sometimes. This is one of those times.

  • • •

  Not that I like my mother much either, at this moment:

  • • •

  It is the next morning, or maybe the next—they’re all the same, now that my father has ceased to come home, now that Thomas Argument has ceased to visit. This is a new morning ritual, only somewhat different from the old. My mother clings to the bedpost, Mary tugs at the corset laces—

  Pull, you little fool!

  But I am pulling, madam—

  Then pull harder!

  But I can’t pull no harder—if madam will pardon me sayin’—

  Tighter, Mary! Tighter! It must be tight as you can make it! Or I’ll find a stronger girl!

  Yes, madam! I’ll do my best, madam!

  Mary needs her job, so what choice does she have? She laces the corset as tightly as she can, so tightly that my mother cannot breathe, so tightly that she will have welts from the whalebone stays, a bruise on her stomach from the busk. Her white and pink and gold body won’t be beautiful now—but then, nobody’s looking, except Mary; even the mirror’s gone back into the closet. And while Mary might run from my mother’s room crossing herself—grumbling Evil things in this house, evil things—she needs her job, so she won’t tell anyone, not even her sister.

  Not this. Because it is too real.

  Tighter, Mary!

  But I don’t want to hurt madam—

  That’s all right, Mary. You let me worry about that.

  Yes, madam.

  • • •

  It is the first blow in the battle between my mother and me.

  Tighter, Mary! Tighter!

  • • •

  She is trying to crush me—to squeeze me out. We are already enemies, she and I. In fact we have been enemies for some time already. Even before she knew of me my mother knew of me: the secret she holds close beneath her rib, that she would not look at until forced to do so by Mary’s indicting words—It’s not my fault, is it, that madam’s got so fat?

  She had to look at me then. That’s when I became real—summoned into existence by a girl-of-all-work, confirmed in existence by Dr. George Hawson Holtby, Surgeon, of Skinner Street. From whose office Thomas Argument saw Clotilde departing, in tears.

  • • •

  At least he acknowledged her. Nodded. Smiled pleasantly. But the minute he saw her, he knew what it meant. A shrewd man, Thomas Argument. A man of the world.

  He won’t be back. There will be no further gifts from him. No music boxes or toys, no mirrors, no dresses, no corsets, no stockings.

  He won’t respond, even, when my mother writes him a letter, and sends Mary off, at great risk, to deliver it in Church Street. He will simply nod again, and smile, and say, Thank Mrs. Dell’oro for her courtesy, sending Mary away empty-handed.

  I don’t know what my mother put in that letter. Mary didn’t even dare to read it. Some things a servant doesn’t want to know.

  She can’t help knowing, of course, because she sees it, Thomas Argument’s cold, cruel, thin-lipped smile when he says, Thank Mrs. Dell’oro for her courtesy. As if he has just received, by special messenger, an order for an expensive custom delivery of glass.

  • • •

  My father will have won, very abruptly, the battle of Vesuvius, without even knowing how. Won’t even know that he’s won it, actually. He’ll go on competing with himself for a long time. He’s not a man of the world, he’s the antithesis of that. He won’t even notice, or if he notices won’t understand, the other battle taking place right under his nose—the one between my mother and me.

  • • •

  She’s a very determined opponent. I am, after all, a huge obstacle to her dream. Nob
ody goes to Isla Desterrada with a big belly. Even my mother knows that. And although Dr. Holtby has told her it is already too late for him to intervene—even if he would—and he wouldn’t—my mother, fierce in time of war, is certain she can still get rid of me herself.

  The too-tight corset is only the beginning. If she cannot squeeze me out, she will find another way. She is willing to damage herself in the process: thus the ugly red welts from the whalebone, the purpling bruise on her stomach from the rigid wooden busk. These marks bother my mother very little—the pain not at all, the ugliness, the marring of her beauty, hardly. Where has her beauty gotten her, after all? And then, nobody is looking. Nobody will see. Only Mary sees, and Mary is nobody. What’s more, Mary does not want to see, wills herself, practically, to see nothing. She is nobody seeing nothing. Morning after morning she will tighten my mother’s corset in silence, pulling as hard and as tight as she can for one reason only, to preserve her job. She doesn’t comment on the bruises, but looks away, biting her lip. What would Mary say, if she could? Does she disapprove, as she pulls tight the laces of my mother’s corset, choking me, squeezing me—choking and squeezing my mother? Does she sympathize? And if so, with whom? With me? Or with my mother?

  She has seen Thomas Argument’s cruel smile. She knows that my father is never home. Mary is a woman, too, with a woman’s ambivalence, a woman’s understanding. She pulls the laces tight, grunting and straining as my mother clings to the bedpost.

  • • •

  My mother does other things, too, of course—things that are just between the two of us, between her and me.

  There are, for example, the long and strenuous walks that we take together, she and I, throughout Whitby, into the market, up and down the Harbour Road, down the East Cliff, past the dockyards, even out onto the Scaur; yes, up and down the Scaur we walk, over that black, humped and twisted spine of rock that she hated even as a child, back when Felix Girard brought her here, during the exhumation of the Whitby Beast. We are exhaled upon, the two of us, by the cold, wet, antediluvian breath of the sea. Licked by the tongue of it. Then we return, soaked, exhausted, shivering, and Mary puts us to bed, with scoldings and cups of tea.

  Madam must not strain herself—Madam will get ill—

  Mary pours the cups of tea but my mother will not drink them; will not stay under the clean sheets and white, nubbled bedspread, kicks these off, will not, for that matter, even stay in the bed, but must get up immediately.

  I’m fine, Mary—really fine—

  Mary says nothing to this, there is a collusion between them, the wordless collusion of mistress and servant, the terms of which are that Mary will object, but only to a certain degree; will take care of my mother, but only to a certain degree; after which the objections cease, Mary bites her lip, and my mother is let to do whatever she pleases.

  It is, after all, none of Mary’s business.

  The matter is strictly between my mother and myself.

  In our mutual struggle I am, thus far, mostly silent, but rooted. I have gotten hold of my mother, have anchored myself, have sunk my fibrous tethers deep into the deepest of her warm, soft, secret places. There I cling tenaciously, making her blood my blood, her oxygen my oxygen, her food my food, replicating, artfully, ceaselessly, the intertwining filaments, the spiraling that reads: CGD’O.LD’O.CGD’O.LD’O. I never rest from this, my life’s work; I will continue infinitely: CGD’O.LD’O …

  She cannot shake me loose. She cannot squeeze me out.

  She cannot dislodge me by jumping off the chair in the parlor, no matter how many times she tries.

  Nor by belly flops onto the mattress, even if she can feel the hard edge of her traveling trunk beneath each time she lands.

  I am as determined as she is—maybe more so—even though I am nothing yet, just a bud, a floating branch, a wand, a thing without mind, without thought, without memory, without even, in the common parlance, a top or a bottom, limbs, digits, a head. I am nothing but pulse and root and will.

  I got the will from her.

  She has, in that regard, nobody but herself to blame.

  Together we go down the cliff, she and I, down into the many-branching warren of streets piled with the whitewashed cottages of fishermen, and from a woman who lives there, my mother, in her most serious attempt on my life, purchases a small pouch of dried herbs—hellebore and juniper leaf—from which she will later make a tea that will make her very sick indeed, sick for a whole day and a night and another day, with only Mary to nurse her; my father, the entire time, is at William Cloverdale’s shop guiltily perfecting his creatures by night, crafting fanatic numbers of glass eyes by day to make up for what he stole the night before, imagining—when he dares imagine anything—that she is in the arms of her lover. He doesn’t imagine her vomiting into the slop pot, with frantic Mary holding her head, until there is nothing left to vomit; and then vomiting some more—deep dry heaves from the very bottom of her physical and spiritual self, yielding nothing but bile; though this is, in fact, what she is doing.

  For a day and a night and a day.

  And when she is done I am still there, my roots, if anything, dug deeper; still hard at my work, at my mindless replication: CGD’O.LD’O.CGD’O.LD’O.

  There is starting to be something more to me now. From my single bud other buds have grown, though all of me, yet, is little more than potential. Pulse and root, will and potential. CGD’O.LD’O.

  • • •

  I have said I do not like my mother much, and that is true. But I don’t blame her. I would have wanted to kill me, too, if I were she. For it is true that I have ruined, am ruining, will ruin her dream of going to find her Papa, the only person in the world she truly loves, the only one she can ever love, thanks to some strange, misshapen budding in herself, some small filament gone awry at the core in the making of Clotilde that no one now can ever change, not even me. What consternation she feels, sitting up in her bed after the tumult of the hellebore and juniper leaf, so weak that she must actually accept Mary’s unwanted ministrations, the watery soup, the weak tea, the spoonfuls of mildly colored and tasteless porridge! Propped up on pillows, gazing impotently out to sea.

  • • •

  It’s possible, of course, that she doesn’t know what I am made of. This, though, I can’t say for sure. I don’t know, can never know, just what passed between my mother and that long-limbed, hyalith-eyed man, Thomas Argument. I can see, though, how it would bother her—not knowing, exactly, what it is that grows inside her, sapping her energy, generating, with its waterlogged backflips and somersaults, waves of gut-wrenching nausea and grief. CGD’O.TA—a monster in potential and in utero, a gangling, spidery creature with a calculating smile, wrapping itself around her innards, robbing her of her opportunity, making a mockery of her life …

  I’d worry about that, too, if I were in her position. Giving birth to a monster. She dreams about that sometimes, in the long nights when my father isn’t home.

  A cruel-eyed monster. A monster with flippers. A monster without a head—just a bud with a gut, devouring her future.

  It’s voracious, in her dreams. It never stops eating.

  She hasn’t the comfort of knowing that it isn’t a monster at all, cuddled there beneath the curve of her ribs; it’s just me, twirling senselessly on my stem, inscribing, upon the placenta, in the amniotic fluid, on my own beautiful and rapidly multiplying fronds, a poem, composed of the only letters I know: CGD’O.LD’O.CGD’O.LD’O …

  • • •

  My mother is a stubborn woman. Even after the advent of the hellebore and juniper leaf tea, she refuses to call a truce. Instead, as soon as she is well enough to leave the house again, she purchases, from the chemist Jim Watt, a small, red tin containing “Widow Welch’s Female Pills: A certain remedy for removing the obstructions to which Young Women are so frequently subject.”

  And when those don’t work she also tries, in quick succession, Hooper’s Female Pills, then Trowbridge’s
Golden Pills of Life and Beauty, both without result.

  None of these attractively packaged products lives up to its advertised claim to resolve issues of female irregularity and obstruction.

  My mother’s issues remain unresolved. She is still obstructed.

  It is around this time, perhaps, that she begins to realize she is stuck with me—really stuck with me—or rather, that I am really stuck to her, that I have attached myself, that her heart is my heart, her lungs my lungs, her stomach my stomach, her liver my liver. We are, for all intents and purposes, one creature. She cannot shake or squeeze or press me out; she cannot poison me. The only way to get rid of me will be to get rid of herself. And my mother is much too conceited for that. A world without Clotilde is an inconceivable world.

  • • •

  She’ll never be really, truly alone again. This will be her new torment and despair, also her new conceit and her new joy.

  She is pursued. She must run. But not yet.

  • • •

  Her surrender, when at last it comes, is quick and complete.

  Two more months have passed.

  Tighter, Mary! Pull the laces tighter!

  La! I canna do it, madam—it’s impossible! You’ve grown too fat!

  There is inexpressible weariness in my mother’s reply.

  Very well, Mary. Very well.

  Clotilde relaxes her grip on the bedpost. Mary relaxes hers on the corset laces.

  The servant is confused. She has never seen my mother give up—on this, or, for that matter, on anything. Except on Thomas Argument.

  She had no choice but to give up on him. That was entirely beyond her control.

  Does madam want to try again?

  No, Mary. You can go.

  Clotilde sinks down onto the bed. Beneath her thigh she can feel, through the thinness of the mattress, the sharp edge of her traveling trunk, half packed with dresses and corsets and camisoles and stockings and new cambric hankies.

  • • •

  This is it: it’s the end. My mother has to accept, at last, the undeniable thickening of her waist, the engorgement of her breasts, their soreness, the darkening of the aureoles, the increased prominence of the nipples. The gorge that rises in her throat every morning, whether she’s eaten breakfast or not. She knows what it all means: