The Good Daughter

by Alexandra Burt

  Dahlia sits paralyzed. “What?” is all she can muster.

  “There was a storm. A woman by the name of Tain Fish came to this house, and she bled all over the floors. That’s the story of the stain. It can’t be wiped away. You might as well not even try.”

  —

  The night of the storm, it was a hurricane—Memphis no longer recalls the name—that hit the Gulf Coast, not once, but twice; first it made landfall in the early morning, then it swerved back out into the Gulf, just to turn around and unleash a second wave of rain all the way to Northeast Texas.

  That night, Quinn stood by the kitchen window, filling a glass with water from the tap. She had awakened earlier and been unable to go back to sleep with the rain hammering the roof and the constant creaking in the very bones of the house, and the wind tearing at the structure as if some impetuous wind spirit was determined to destroy the world altogether. All the while Nolan snored upstairs, the scent of chemicals lingering deep in his skin.

  As her stomach cramped with a dull ache, a harsh fork of lightning severed the sky. In its wake she saw movement beyond the trees, low to the ground—a coyote maybe, or a fox? Then it dawned on her that it didn’t move fast enough to be an animal, didn’t make any attempt to seek shelter below the juniper trees to the left, didn’t try to find a gap between the wooden slats of the barn. There were no gleaming eyes, no sudden scurry, just a white bundle the size of a large dog. It might be Seymour’s dog, Ghost, Quinn thought, large and white and shaggy, herding Seymour’s few pitiful goats caked in mud after a bout of rain. Maybe Ghost got frightened by the storm and ran off; maybe he was hurt by a branch striking him as he darted for shelter?

  Quinn opened the front door, hit the porch light switch, and watched the night through the screen door. A spray of rain hit her face as the screen flapped so hard she thought it might rip. Rain wasn’t the appropriate word; it was more a torrent of what hours ago had begun as high winds and a steady drizzle and had turned into the most powerful storm she had ever witnessed. The wind didn’t howl, it screamed; the rain didn’t just fall, but was driven, hard, mercilessly, lashing the land, determined to punish it for some unknown indiscretion. The trees didn’t sway in the gale force winds, they creaked, bent, and moaned as their fine limbs were ripped away. Parts of the sweet pea trellises tumbled and splintered across the meadow; apple trees were uprooted, leaning, battered beyond their ability to recover.

  Another flash of lightning; the bundle hadn’t moved. Quinn stepped outside and without a further thought ran toward it, her nightgown sticking to her skin in less than a second, her body leaning into the wind, hoping it wasn’t going to pick her up and toss her about like the metal bucket that landed right beside her with a thud.

  When she reached the rounded and plump shape—the silly words dinosaur egg came to mind—Quinn froze. Everything that moved stood still, everything that roared became silent; the wind and rain, as if they were a blender on the highest setting, calmed suddenly, as if she and the giant egg were caught in a composed pocket of a world otherwise in uproar. Another bolt of lightning and she found herself staring at a body with a rather large abdomen, swollen and engorged past normal size. Quinn thought of many things, all of them competing to be acknowledged: stories of caskets and bodies floating to the surface, a corpse floating in water, facedown and bloated.

  The body turned and moved, a face appeared, cheeks, forehead, lips, mouth, and eyes—a young face, a woman, barely a woman, more a girl. The face deflated like a balloon, folding in on itself. And Quinn made for the house, up the porch steps, screaming Nolan’s name, over and over. Nolan. Nolan. Nolan. Help me. Hurry. Help. Nolan. Nolan. Nolan.

  Nolan appeared, pants unbuckled and carelessly tucked into his boots, shirtless. He hesitated on the porch, eyes squinting against the rain, his body swaying in the wind. With only a fraction of a second’s hesitation, he ran over to the woman on the ground, careful not to tread on her with his heavy boots. He picked her up, gently, one hand under her fragile neck, the crook of his other arm under her knees. Nolan limped to the house and onto the porch as her ragdoll-like limbs swung about. Her ponytail was ragged; loose hair fell over features so peaceful Quinn feared it was too late.

  She’s dead, Quinn thought. The earth stood still once more, negated gravity, halted. Quinn’s thoughts tumbled about like the leaves and branches around her: aimlessly, ending up who knows where, unable to still themselves. The swollen belly twisted and wriggled and she could have sworn that there was a visible outline of a foot beneath the skin stretched tight as a drum underneath the white dress.

  Cut her open, Quinn wanted to scream, cut her open so we can save the baby. For this was her baby. Aella said so, she said so. Her baby. Hers!

  A wind gust rose, merciless, with a force so strong that Quinn forgot to breathe, pushing her body against the door frame as if the wind was making an attempt to get her out of harm’s way while Nolan, with the girl in his arms, tumbled down the porch, the wind having other plans for them. The last image Quinn would later remember was the girl’s black hair sticking shamelessly to Nolan’s naked chest. It made her uneasy but then Quinn stepped forward and helped Nolan carry her over the threshold.

  —

  Quinn had seen a cat giving birth. A black water balloon had emerged from the tabby, and then it had busted and five kittens were born minutes apart, some emerging with their heads, two with their legs, one even rear first. Each kitten was wrapped in a jelly-like membrane filled with clear fluid. The tabby forcefully licked the kittens, shredding the sac, allowing them to take their first breath, then chewed off the umbilical cords and began nursing them one by one until the next one emerged. The tabby had purred through the entire birth.

  This was nothing like that. The girl clawed at Quinn, pulling at her nightgown, twisting it in her fists as if she was attempting to rip it off of her. As Nolan paced back and forth, as the windows rattled and lightning illuminated the sky, the girl’s screams echoed through the house.

  Nolan had dropped her in the foyer, on top of the woven oval rug, too spooked to carry her in the kitchen when her screams began to slash at him. Anxiously he tore the phone off the cradle on the wall as if he expected service to be restored and it struck Quinn how silly that notion was, how absurd Nolan was, pacing back and forth, incapable of making sound decisions.

  At some point, Quinn didn’t exactly remember when, Nolan got in the truck and left to get help, just to return minutes later. “I can’t get to the road, it’s covered in branches and fallen trees.”

  Nolan stood motionless and the girl screamed with her whole body—eyes wide, mouth rigid and open, her chalky face gaunt, fists clenched with bleached knuckles, body taut and stiff. Her chest heaved. The girl was coiled up on the rug, writhing and screaming, when she suddenly crumpled into herself and went quiet.

  Quinn’s mind raced. If the mother died, so would the baby, and nothing in this world was going to keep her from holding her baby. Her baby. All that money, all she had done was now coming to fruition. She felt her sanity leave her as if a deranged thief had made off with it and she heard her own voice, yet the words seemed like they’d come from someone else.

  “Get me a knife from the kitchen.” Nolan didn’t move, stood pale and motionless as if he had turned into a statue of salt. “Get me a knife,” she repeated, this time slowly, gentle almost, emphasizing every syllable. Get. Me. A. Knife.

  Quinn pushed the girl’s gown upward and there it was. This thing. Tiny. Newborn was too much a concept for it was barely the size of a loaf of bread and covered in something thick and white. It wasn’t moving at all.

  It had all been in vain. There was nothing left to beg for, nothing left to offer, nothing to receive in return. She had done what Aella required, she had held up her end of the bargain, had paid her a king’s ransom and all she got was this? A thing with bulgy eyes and an elongated head, as if there was an immense
pressure within this tiny body covered in transparent skin.

  There was no cord to be cut. The entire afterbirth lay on the wool rug, a bloody tree with a white umbilical trunk that had served its purpose and was no longer needed, an offering to the gods who had clearly turned a deaf ear to Quinn’s pleading.

  Nolan handed Quinn a towel he must have grabbed from the kitchen table where the rest of the clean laundry sat in neat stacks. As Quinn wrapped the baby in the white bath towel, allowing the face to show, Nolan picked up the girl and carried her upstairs to one of the spare bedrooms. Quinn followed him and Nolan appeared with a bowl of water and Quinn began to wipe the girl’s thighs with a rag until the water turned a dark crimson. It needed changing three times before the girl’s body was clean.

  After Nolan left the room, Quinn sat by the bed. The girl’s heaving and shaking had ceased. Her eyes were puffy and red. Quinn handed her the baby, speaking in a slow and measured voice. “Do you want to hold him?”

  The girl held the baby in her arms, and she began to awkwardly rock the bundle as if it were alive. At some point Quinn went downstairs and came upon Nolan passed out on the couch. There was an empty bottle of malt liquor on the coffee table.

  Back upstairs, she found the girl sleeping, deep and motionless, no movement behind her closed eyelids. Quinn changed into a dry and clean nightgown, one that buttoned up the front, and she took the bundle from the sleeping girls’ arms and went to her own room, where she sat on her bed, gently placing the newborn against her breast—aware of her grotesque behavior but unable to refrain from it—pushing her nipple between the baby’s cold purple lips.

  Quinn’s mind flickered with images of the engorged belly, the blood—there had been so much blood—the girl’s screams still echoed in her ears, the lifeless miniature hands, the cold lips on her nipple, and once all that noise and those images drained, sadness was all that was left. Such cruelty, such mockery, to leave her here with the lifeless body of a baby that would never be. Lives wasted, hers, the girl’s, the baby’s. Quinn looked down at it—a boy it was—and longed to join him. What was the point in continuing to draw breath? Nothing had been achieved, everything was lost.

  Later, she would bring the baby back and leave it with the sleeping girl. Outside, the thunder and lightning had all but ceased and all that was left was a steady downpour of rain, only occasionally interrupted by a grumbling in the distance.

  —

  The next morning the sunny sky belied the previous night’s havoc and the entire world seemed to be covered in leaves and branches and other debris, as if it had rained green confetti and rubble from above. Quinn entered the shed and Nolan flinched when she said his name. The air smelled of alcohol and rich wet soil.

  “I need your help,” Quinn said.

  Nolan turned around and looked at her with bloodshot eyes. “Is the girl alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do we do? I don’t know what to do. Do we call the police?”

  “We don’t need the police. And the phone’s still not working,” Quinn said but wasn’t sure since she hadn’t tried.

  “Is the girl talking? Is she awake?”

  “She’s sleeping.”

  “I can try to tie the trees to the truck and pull them off the road and take her to the hospital.”

  “What for, Nolan?” Quinn asked and gently touched his arm. “She’s okay. She had a baby, is all. She doesn’t need a doctor.”

  Nolan jerked away from Quinn. “We need to call a priest for that baby. This is not what you do with a dead body. It needs to be blessed and buried properly, prayers need to be said. And we need to take the mother to a hospital.”

  Mother. That girl was no more a mother than Quinn was. “Can I have this?” Quinn pointed at a wooden box of Ball fruit jars. It was about the size of a large shoebox.

  A sound escaped from Nolan’s throat, half breath, half gasp. “I’m not digging a hole. The least you could do is ask her what she wants to do with the body. It’s her baby.”

  “She is in no shape to dig a hole. And if you won’t help, I’ll do it myself,” Quinn said and grabbed the box. This was my baby, she wanted to add but then thought otherwise. Nolan didn’t need to know of the pact she had made, he wouldn’t understand.

  Out of all the spots that were appropriate—Quinn had pondered many of them; the center of the meadow was impractical; behind the barn there was a constant standing of water and swarms of mosquitoes; in the flower bed behind the house she’d have to live with the memory of it every single day—she decided on the one underneath the cypress in front of the fence, right by the meadow.

  Quinn tiptoed into the girl’s room. She was asleep. She pulled the bundle from underneath her arm, glad she didn’t have to explain anything. She left the room without a sound and underneath the tree she folded the part of the towel that she had used to cover the baby’s face into a makeshift pillow and placed the tiny body into the box. It fit perfectly, as if it was made for it.

  She forced herself to get on with it before the girl woke up. She began digging with a shovel but after numerous attempts, Quinn gave up. She had barely excavated a hole one foot deep. The soil was saturated and heavy, and even if it had been dry, the shovel was unable to penetrate the rocky and compact ground. In the barn she found a wheelbarrow full of dry and dusty soil. It wasn’t perfect but it would do.

  After she placed the wooden box in the shallow hole, she then tilted the wheelbarrow and dumped the dirt high on top of it. Though it was morning, the world around her seemed to be made of shadows, and every breath felt hollow in the chest. She spread the dirt with her bare hands, then packed it down. She imagined how the ground would settle in no time, and there’d be nothing left to remind her but a faint rise of soil.

  —

  Later that night, Quinn awoke to the howling of coyotes in the distance. The air was thick and heavy around her. The wailing seemed theatrical and over-the-top as if they felt some sort of way about what had occurred on the farm. She thought nothing of it and flipped over and settled as far away from Nolan as possible.

  —

  She allowed the girl to sleep for two nights and three days. She never so much as stirred, never asked for food, and never even opened her eyes.

  Nolan helped her so they could pull the bloody sheets out from under the girl and replace them with freshly washed linens. After the third day was about to turn into night, Quinn brought her a bowl of soup.

  “You need to eat,” Quinn said and gently rubbed her shoulder. The girl was on her back, her head turned only slightly sideways. Quinn studied her face; petite with large eyes underneath bushy eyebrows. She seemed foreign in some fashion—yet her skin was white and pale—and something about her was exotic. Was it the shape of her face, the full lips, the black hair? “Please eat,” Quinn insisted, wondering if it was okay to stroke her cheek. By then she was worried about her and thought maybe they’d have to take her to a hospital after all.

  Nolan had all but cleaned up the road; there was only one large fallen tree trunk he hadn’t been able to move, even after he had tied it to the truck. The trunk was still attached to the roots and refused to budge, as if something was dead set on holding them all captive.

  “Please, just open your eyes,” Quinn begged, hoping the scent of the chicken broth would reach her.

  Raspy and unintelligible words suddenly spilled from the girl’s lips.

  “Say that again,” Quinn said and on a whim she grabbed the girl’s hand, not bigger than that of a twelve-year-old.

  The girl cleared her throat and Quinn handed her the glass of water from the bedside table. She drank the water with greedy gulps, just to break into a coughing fit. After it was over she looked around the room as if she expected to see a crib in the corner.

  Quinn’s heart sank. “I buried him,” she said, then pointed toward the window, where, beyo
nd the house, the porch, and the driveway, the mighty cypress stood with a wooden box underneath barely two feet of dirt. The girl, without any emotion on her face, followed the tip of her finger but didn’t say anything. And Quinn sat next to her on the bed, gently lifted a spoon of chicken broth to her pale lips. The girl pinched them shut but then relaxed, and her lips parted. Quinn fed her spoon after spoon, as if nourishing her that way would somehow infuse Quinn’s strength into her. She talked to her, softly at first as to not scare her, then raised the volume, told her of the storm, the trees that traversed the road like sutures on an open wound.

  Later that night, Quinn woke, and when she entered the girl’s room, she saw her standing by the window, holding her still-plump belly. The moon was bright and Quinn took her by the hand and led her down the stairs and out the front door, off the porch and toward the cypress. The ground was still soaked and the rain had carved miniature canyons in the dirt. They stood silently underneath the cypress, holding hands, the girl childlike with her hand quivering. Quinn felt the bitterness in her heart soften, melting away.

  Quinn told the girl her name and Nolan’s name.

  “Tain,” the girl said, “my name is Tain Fish.”

  “You can stay as long as you want, Tain,” Quinn said.

  Tain seemed to want to say something else but didn’t and Quinn wondered what that could have been.

  Twenty-six

  DAHLIA

  BUSINESS at the Lark Inn is slow during the week. There are husbands with other men’s wives, an occasional truck driver who got off I-45 looking to spend his mandatory break in a bed instead of his semi, and others who stay for a couple of hours and leave used condoms in the plastic garbage cans underneath the sink. After the rooms are clean, I sit with Bordeaux in the office, we drink coffee, and he explains the Frontdesk Anywhere software program.