The Good Daughter

by Alexandra Burt

  “It’s inside you now,” Aella said. “It’s done.”

  Later, Quinn went to bed but was unable to sleep. She must have walked ten miles or more that night, but exhaustion wouldn’t come.

  —

  Yes, the pup had been stillborn and Quinn had not only lied to Aella but had lied to the spirits, had taken them for fools. Maybe that’s why Tain’s first baby never lived—what other reason could there be?—but in the end, there was going to be a child.

  Tain was pregnant by Nolan, and she’d have a baby after all. Judging by her belly, the baby would be due sometime in the spring. And Quinn filled in the blanks, imagined all three of them living on the farm with the baby, a sort of commune like the woman whose name Quinn no longer remembered had told her about at that Galveston beach.

  But quickly it became apparent that wasn’t going to happen. Quinn smiled at Tain every day, didn’t so much as scowl at her, but Nolan, him she hated for what he had done. And that hate didn’t ebb—it multiplied. He wasn’t just scum, but lower than that: Nolan and Tain had been carrying on behind her back. Quinn didn’t blame Tain at all, she loved Tain fiercely, but Nolan was another story altogether.

  “She’s just a child, Nolan.” Quinn tried to remain calm yet she couldn’t, had to watch him every Sunday in church, so pious with the hymnal in his hand, yet his mind full of filth. “What are you thinking? She is pregnant. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

  They’d go on for hours, yelling at each other. Quinn began to plead, tried to make Nolan understand, and sometimes, for a fleeting moment, she thought she had gotten through to him, but then he’d just defend himself all over again.

  “I’ve been telling you for months to make her leave. You wouldn’t listen. Now you’re blaming me?”

  “Your judgment is what I blame. How can you take advantage of her? She’s not even all there. You know that.” Quinn watched his face closely. Maybe it was the light playing shadowy tricks, but she swore she saw something like regret in his eyes. “Tell me why.”

  “Why what?”

  Was he so cruel that he was going to make her spell it out? “Why are you carrying on with her?”

  “You are the dumbest woman I have ever met, Quinn Creel. By far. Don’t you see that it’s your fault?”

  Quinn closed her eyes. “My fault? Are you mad? Are you completely mad?” Putting the blame on her when all she had ever done was be a good wife. She stood in silence, her hands quivering. Shiny objects on the table, on the walls of the shed, they called her name, tempting her to shut him up. The hammer on the table. The saw hanging on the wall. The long silver nails in a neat pile.

  “Don’t you see what you’ve done? You allowed her to stay, even though I begged you to make her leave. Then you become her friend. You spend all day with her, you even sleep together. And she loves you, Quinn. She loves you with the few thoughts she can keep in her mind at one time. She wants to please you like a dog pleases its master. She’d do anything for you.”

  “Just what are you saying?”

  “She did this for you. She’s watched you cry, cared for you when you bled and you couldn’t get up. Wiped your tears. And still you go on and on, talking about babies. You never let it be. I was content, had come to terms with it, but you kept carrying on and on. You poisoned her mind. All she did was give you what you’ve always wanted.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Tain has no idea what’s going on.”

  “She used me. She might be simpleminded, but she can get anything she wants. Learned it somewhere, I assume. She used me to give you a child,” Nolan said. “I didn’t use her. Yes, I made a mistake, I’ll be the first one to admit it. But don’t underestimate her. She knew what she was doing. And it was all because of you.”

  It was all because of you, Nolan had said.

  Her hate remained, yet something else snuck into her head. An inner voice, unfriendly and cruel whispered to her, Everything has gone wrong and it’s all because of you. The world seemed to close in on her and the air around her became hard to breathe. Her thoughts scattered like some electrical short circuit in her head, too many for anything to make sense.

  Eventually Quinn’s hatred toward Nolan became rational, void of her emotions, almost as if she had come to some sort of agreement within herself: quite simply, Nolan needed to be punished.

  —

  The only birth announcement was a slight drop in temperature and the descent of absolute silence upon the farm. As if the weight of what was being set in motion was apparent to Tain, she was afraid to push, had forgotten how to breathe through the contractions, and all she knew to do was scream, her voice high-pitched and tearing at Quinn’s patience.

  “Is it out yet?” Tain kept asking as if she was blind, sitting off to the side, waiting for the news, while all the while she was the one doing the pushing and the birthing. Quinn understood then how simple Tain truly was, how meek, just short of being completely backward.

  In a moment of clarity, Quinn saw the future, their future: Tain would remain at the farm with them, she’d conceive baby after baby with Nolan, and maybe even other men in town, like a stray dog in heat. And people would talk, would look at them in church, and even if they quit going to Mass, there’d be trips to the market and city hall, the bank, and doctors, and they’d all stare, gossiping about them living together. Nolan would continue to pin insects and sire babies with the dimwit living in a back room while the wife watched on.

  Is it out yet? Is it out yet? Is it out yet? It went on for hours and Quinn said almost a dozen times, nodding as if to convince herself. “Almost. Push harder!”

  Quinn felt a tremor of pleasure, for she was closer to whatever was going to come of this. Between the stillbirth and Nolan carrying on with Tain, she’d be happy enough if this baby finally got there healthy, she’d settle for that. But if she could have it her way, she’d keep Tain and the baby on the farm, just as long as Nolan left. She’d cried too many tears, had taken just enough abuse and humiliation to want him gone. Yes, this baby belonged to the both of them, her and Tain.

  It wasn’t until the darkest part of the night that the baby crowned. Quinn instinctively slipped the umbilical cord over the baby’s face, hoping she wasn’t tightening it by mistake. It slipped out of Tain’s pelvis with its umbilical cord coiled and blue. It was a girl. The baby didn’t cry, didn’t even let out an angry shriek.

  Quinn felt her chest tightening. Not again, she wanted to scream, not another one. Fear was too mild a word for what she felt and she wiped the elfin body vigorously yet gently. The baby began to gripe, timid at first, but then her voice became stronger and she broke out into an all-out wail. After Quinn wiped the baby down and tied a diaper around her, she handed the bundle off to Tain, but she pushed her away.

  Tain had become less and less lucid as the labor had gone on, and after it was all over, she stared off into the distance. Quinn remembered the lack of emotion after the first birth, the absence of tears and involvement, as if she had watched a cow give birth and was utterly bored by it.

  “You have to feed her. I don’t have formula,” Quinn said and Tain reluctantly complied, pressing the newborn against her chest. Tain watched in amazement as the baby latched on to her nipple, but then it slipped out of the baby’s mouth and she started crying and all Tain did was look around helplessly.

  Quinn drove to a neighboring town to buy diapers and rash ointment, and she stocked up on baby formula, anticipating Tain would soon refuse to feed her. Every day from then on out, Quinn had to remind Tain to feed the baby, bathe and change her.

  After a week went by, Quinn reminded Tain to come up with a name.

  “Have you thought of one yet?” Quinn rocked the baby as Tain twirled her wet hair around her index finger. She had only taken a shower because Quinn had asked her to. She wasn’t sure what Tain knew about conception but sh
e hoped she knew the basics, knew that the whole Nolan business had to stop.

  “I don’t know,” Tain replied, “you pick one.” Then Tain looked around the room. “Where will she sleep?”

  “We’ll go and buy a crib. We can put it by the window; there’ll be a breeze and she can hear the birds. We’ll get a mobile that plays a melody. And a changing table maybe.”

  Quinn worried about Nolan and buying anything new, knowing he’d gripe about how much money it was going to cost. She had been avoiding him so far, had not spoken to him about much but the bare necessities, but maybe now was the time to have a talk.

  “I’ll talk to Nolan, see if he can help me with the furniture.” Quinn looked down at the baby, her eyes gently twitching, her lips pursing in her sleep. She was beautiful with her perfect skin and black hair, so much like Tain, nothing of Nolan’s washed-out complexion and sandy hair. “Get some rest, and if you need anything, I’ll be downstairs.”

  Tain nodded and closed her eyes. She was exhausted, and Quinn couldn’t blame her. She tucked the baby by Tain’s side, close to her chest.

  “She’ll hear your heartbeat that way,” Quinn said and turned around but Tain was already asleep, the baby molded against her.

  Quinn saw Nolan’s truck parked in the driveway and she went out the back door and made her way to the shed. She called out his name but there was no answer. Lifting the large metal latch partially with one hand, she pushed the door with both hands, leaned her shoulder into it for added pressure, and then the latch lifted, full of resistance at first, but then the door gave way.

  Nolan sat on a stool in front of an old table functioning as a workbench. He smiled as he turned, but then his face froze as if he had expected Tain instead of her.

  Quinn felt a tinge of anger ripen once more inside of her. Between the chemicals hanging in the air and the floor covered in a white layer, she felt nothing but disgust for him. He had brought her here, punished her with indifference when she didn’t get pregnant. He’d been trying to get rid of Tain ever since she’d shown up, wanted to leave her to some dubious fate and wipe his hands clean. He fathered her child—but in Quinn’s mind, just one question remained: how to get rid of Nolan, how to have money and a place to live for her and Tain and the baby, how to convince him to leave. Maybe she should reiterate that fact that he had sinned, that his guilt ought to motivate him to go and let them be?

  Quinn opened her mouth, had lined up her case, but Nolan stopped her by raising his hand.

  “Quinn, we’ve known for a while now that this was going to happen. It’s been going on for too long, and it’s against everything I believe in,” Nolan said. “All these lies, day in day out. And now there is the baby,” his voice nasal, annoying.

  Nolan went on about sin and redemption and what God required him to do and how he could never, never, go against the word of God and that a man must care for his and forsake all others, and how sometimes things happen on their own accord and all of us, he said, deserve to be happy. And that, with a heavy heart, he had made up his mind, and nothing more was to be said about it. “Not another word, Quinn. I have to make this right. Sometimes we make the wrong choices but God demands we can make those wrong choices right.”

  Quinn ignored the dozen or so frames with gory insects pinned behind glass leaning against the table, and then she realized the frames had braided wire sticking up from the back, ready to be hung on a wall. Quinn scanned the shed, realizing there wasn’t any room on the walls of the shed—they were covered in tools hanging off nails, dirty aprons, and rickety utensils, and then Nolan’s voice went up in volume as if he wanted to make sure she was hearing and understanding him, as if he wasn’t going to repeat it because his word was law.

  “I need you to give me a divorce. I want to marry Tain and raise my daughter. I hope you understand.”

  He went on. Quinn comprehended nothing at first, but then it sank in: he wanted to take from her the only thing that she cared about.

  God. Child. Obligation. Every time he opened his mouth, Quinn got angrier. I hope you understand. All these years of reproach and criticism, his looks of disapproval, and all those years he’d spent in this shed, devoting himself to what Quinn was most afraid of, what she despised. She could handle the nightmares, could handle feeling imaginary hands on her body, could push that away, but those crickets, those damn crickets ready to be hung in her house, on her walls, that was too much.

  Quinn imagined one of those frames on the wall in her bedroom, Tain sleeping in her bed, carrying on with her husband. Not a stitch of hate toward Tain—her simplemindedness had been proven—but for Nolan to be this callous? All these years of her swallowing her retorts and just living this isolated life on this rotten farm, how she had smiled through it and carried on with chores that were Nolan’s obligation. And now he made it all go to shit.

  “Here,” Nolan yelled, and pulled some papers from his jacket pocket. “Here, I’ve put the farm in your name. It’s all yours. I don’t want it anymore. I don’t want any of this, you can have it all. I just want a divorce and the baby.”

  All those years of her trying to convince him to sell and buy a house in the suburbs, all the brochures she had brought home, all those times she had shown him floor plans, and he had just ignored her. And Tain came around, and he was ready to give it all up, give up the farm and everything on it, if he could just have a divorce.

  All her rage spilled over, fast and destructive. It consumed all of her—everything that she had so delicately hidden over the years, how she had never resorted to violence before, not once, not even as a child, never—and as she scanned the table her eyes fell on a hammer claw, shiny and new, its wedge large and blunt. And before she knew it, the smooth handle was in her hands, its grip powerful, as if her reach was now extended and therefore the damage not so much of her doing, but that of the hammer that had chosen to intervene on her behalf.

  Quinn was strong, had been the one splitting wood all these years while Nolan was in the shed or the barn toying with unimportant things. Quinn raised the hammer, switched the blunt neck to the back, wanted the claws split like a forked serpent’s tongue to make contact. She raised her right arm and aimed at Nolan’s head where his hairline had receded, where the claws could penetrate his skull and soft tissue, digging into his brain, destroying his evil ways and his wicked and immoral thoughts, with just one hit.

  Her arm was sturdy and so was her shoulder and she paused just long enough so he saw the look in her eyes.

  Nolan screamed. Mouth gaped open, about to raise his speckled hands to ward her off. Too little too late.

  Quinn’s left hand joined her right, her fingers interlacing around the wooden handle. In a perfect half circle she brought the hammer from behind her head down on his skull.

  There was a sound, a crack, then a spatter of warm liquid on her face—she closed her eyes—and then she heard glass shatter, thought he’d be upset at her for breaking his jars and glass frames, but then she realized it was over. She was surprised how little effort it took to drive the claws into his head.

  Quinn thought of this moment later, the moment she became the warrior, more like a progression toward fate than a choice she made.

  He had it coming. Nolan had meant to wind her up, had been vengeful and mean, and this was what he deserved. One minute he was speaking of God and faith, and the next he was a bleeding mess on the floor. He had it coming.

  Quinn was taken aback by how little what she had done bothered her.

  Thirty-five

  DAHLIA

  MY body is tired and my mind won’t let me rest. My life seems to be spent in anticipation of something big happening, something I can’t put my finger on. As I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, the stagnant air of the room leaves me with an epiphany: it was a mistake to come back to Aurora. No one has to take my blood or shove me in a high-tech tube to know that the past is a fe
rocious beast determined to turn me inside out, a juxtaposition of my mental state on one hand and my mother unraveling on the other. Then there’s Bobby—I haven’t even begun to put us in any kind of order—it just seems as if another part of the past comes rushing at me every day: my mother’s stories and the flecks of images that have emerged lately from my childhood form strange inkblot shapes.

  And then there’s the farm, this house, the drag it produces. It catapults my mind into some sort of limbo, as it does my body: there are the uneven floors that make me lose my balance and the past seems to seep through the window frames and then rise and make the wallpaper peel. All those abandoned artifacts that have somehow served their purpose seem to communicate with me—this very quilt I sleep under every night, with its pink wreath, is in perfect condition, whereas the others are frayed and yellowed after moths have waged a decade-long war. That too lacks explanation. The farmhouse seems to shudder, and even if I open all windows, the light still struggles to creep in and its rooms are always dark and shadowy. Would a new coat of paint and the fragrance of a cake baking in the oven change that? I doubt it.

  The shed. I have never actually stepped inside—the first time I attempted to enter, I couldn’t open the latch; the second time I found the door gaping open but I just stood there with a flashlight, shining a beam into the darkness. I have never set foot in it and maybe I should just go right now and see for myself.

  I throw a hoodie over my pajamas. Outside, the sun is up, yet barely there, struggling behind wispy clouds. The sky changes constantly, juxtaposes itself onto an infinite canvas that colors are tossed upon, first blue, then bright pinks and oranges pile on top of each other, only for low-hanging clouds to fill my world with a gray haze the next. The clouds push against one another in anger and everything is alive, growing at each passing moment, a constant changing opus offering itself to me.