Forget me not.
I am Artemis now. I throw the cup against the door, and the golden buttons bathe the floor.
The parishioners filing into the church sound like mice in the attic. About to enter the trap. It is Sunday morning, two mornings after I was locked in this room, and I’ve seen no one, heard little. But now the music beats through the floor, and the muffle of the preacher’s ranting rumbles through me.
I imagine the woman in army fatigues gyrating, and squealing laughter. My mind sees the preacher’s tambourine glinting with paned light, and Sanne’s smug expression, and Rune’s fingers screeching across the strings. I hear Sanne and the angel girl singing, “I need thee, oh I need thee. Every hour I need thee. Bless me now, my Savior, I come to thee.” But I don’t hear Rune.
I listen to the activity above me for a half hour before I realize: I have an audience. If I can hear the sheep, they can hear me. I stand on the bed and, stretching, ram the hard heel of my clog into the low ceiling. It cracks into the plaster, and the plaster dusts my face. I pound again: the crack spreads; the dust spreads; the air around me jitters with dust. I stop, brush my face and shoulders and sleeves, shake my hair. And I listen, hoping to hear footsteps on the stairs, on the stone floor of the hallway. But I hear only the sound of a man’s voice magnified, testifying, “It was a miracle.” I climb from the bed and carry my clog to the door, and I smash it there, against the wood. Then I smash it against the small window, and I shatter the window, and I pass from this room, from my teenage self, to our yard in Hartswell, to my tiny self. And to Mother, and the hammer, and the splintered glass of our car’s mirrors.
I don’t hear the footsteps until the preacher rounds the corner, running. I see her face and body framed in broken glass: her hair sprays from its bun; a red modesty cloth flaps behind her like one futile wing. Then Sanne rounds the corner, enters the frame, and she is a white monster with a flaming face and flaming hair. They fill the room before I realize what’s happening, and I’m on my stomach before I think to struggle. Sanne’s pushed me to the ground, kneed my back. I feel lumps of apple beneath me; a plastic bowl or cup dents my shin. The opened bag of nuts is flung or struck, and nuts skitter across the stone floor and swat my face. Sanne wrenches my arms to my back; the preacher tightens the modesty cloth around my wrists. Then Sanne yanks my head backward; I feel my hair rip.
“Stuff it,” Sanne says. “Stuff that.”
The preacher balls the Jesus napkin and tries to shove it in my mouth, but I bite her. She rears back and slaps my face. I feel the hot imprint of that anointing palm, her long fingers. Sanne digs her knee deeper into the small of my back and wrenches me further.
“Why?” I say, but barely, and then the napkin slides in and stays in and my voice is caught in it.
“I’m sorry, Aslaug,” the preacher says, and I smell the schnapps. “They’d put him in jail. He’d go to jail.”
“Tape it,” Sanne says. “There’s tape in that drawer.”
I kick toward Sanne’s back, but she’s stronger than I am, and it feels as though a pick jabs the base of my neck each time I move. And it’s hard to breathe because of Jesus.
The preacher opens the drawer and finds the tape, then she finds the broken bulb, the bulb I broke months ago. “What is this?” She exhumes the bulb, the shards of sharp glass.
“It doesn’t matter,” Sanne says. “Just tape. Now.”
The preacher stretches the tacky coverlet over my lips, but her hands shake; her eyes seem unfocused. She drops the tape and moves nearer the door. I kick again, then go still. Because I see, and I hope Sanne sees what I see: the preacher is retreating, at least in her mind.
“Rune didn’t do anything, Mor,” Sanne says, and her hold on me weakens. Her strength is now directed toward the preacher, it seems. Toward holding the preacher. “Aslaug’s lying. Rune said so. Aslaug’s scared, Mor. She’s lying.”
“Then how? Aslaug’s pregnant. How is it that she’s pregnant?” The preacher’s words are rounded with schnapps. And disbelief, I think.
“Mor…I know it’s God. It’s like with Maren,” Sanne says. “I didn’t really believe before either. I wanted to believe, but I didn’t, not really.”
“No,” the preacher says, and now her eyes focus and meet mine. “This has nothing to do with Maren.”
“But it does,” Sanne says. “I read her notes, Mor. It does.”
The music starts again; I hear it through the floor.
“We should go,” the preacher says, and she sways.
“We have to tie her,” Sanne says. “We can’t leave without tying her.”
Tie me? I feel incredulous. And then I think of the preacher’s skepticism; I have hope she’ll resist Sanne.
“We’ll tie you on the bed if you don’t fight, Aslaug,” Sanne says now to me. “Otherwise, it’ll be the floor. I know you don’t understand. I know you’re scared. But I understand. I do. You have to trust me.” She lets go of my hair and my face hits the floor. “All right?” she says, as if I can answer, as if any of this could be right. As if Sanne could be right: a virgin birth. As if I would trust her after this.
The preacher doesn’t let me go. Neither she nor Sanne looks at my face as they flip me, lift me to the bed, roll me back on my belly, stretch my legs wide. “We need something to bind her,” Sanne says, and I hear a confidence in her voice that seems newly born. The preacher walks from the room. Sanne sits on me; her white dress rides her calves, and I see the edge of the tattoo she claims is not there. When the preacher returns, she carries several more modesty cloths, and she and Sanne secure my legs to the bedposts with these.
This becomes the ritual. Before each service, I am cleared away, along with the crumpled papers in the pews and the stale gum. They arrive an hour or so before the service. Sanne binds my hands; the preacher gags me. And together they attach me to the bed. Then they return to the sanctuary to set out the tambourine, the glasses of water, the anointing oil. And I comply: I hold my wrists together, open my mouth wide, lie still as they tie me to the bed; for if I don’t, I stay tied the remainder of the day, and through the night. And I remind myself: they can’t bind my mind.
In my mind I scale the worlds of Yggdrasil. I imagine the great ash, its green the color of climbing, wet moss; its thousands of tangled branches become thousands of tangled stories, spun of gods and goddesses, elves and giants and dwarves. And fire. And cold and ice. Hours became days and now days become weeks and weeks become months, and these stories of Yggdrasil grow in my mind. As my belly grows round, and my breasts full, as I feel the flutter of the baby within me, my mind flutters with these, these stories that carry me up and away to other worlds. And yet, inevitably, I fall back to the roots of Yggdrasil, deeper even than the world of Niflheim, the land of the Maine winter, the land of cold and ice. And I find I am still rooted to this room, to my body.
With this body. I’ve found the golden buttons upon waking on two more occasions now, each time steaming in a cup of tea. And each time I’ve slammed the cup against the door and splashed the buttons upon the stone. This body in me was rooted in me because of human desire, human need. And now? Does it stay rooted by choice? When I slam the buttons against the door, it feels like fate, not choice.
And I wonder if fate also roots me here, in this room. The bedroom door is sealed each night like Mother might seal a jar; I have nothing I could fashion as a tool to pry it free. And, absent the broken bulb, which Sara took, I’ve nothing I could fashion as a weapon. My freedom lies in the travels of my mind, and my words and hands must be my weapons.
Sanne and the preacher do take me outside several times a week into the slush and Maine fog. But my words they catch in the handkerchief, my hands in the modesty cloth. We go early in the morning, when the sun creeps in faint lines through the pines. The preacher stumbles along on one side, Sanne holds firmly to me on the other. They grip my arms and walk me about the back of the church near an old burial ground, its finger-like tombstones
a Hartswell-sky gray. The church is shielded from the houses around. There is no Grumset here, no spying neighbor to call the police.
But there is Rebekka. She is here often. She hears me, she sees me. And yet she seems to not hear me, she seems to not see me. She wanders the hall outside my cage, humming to herself. I can hear the soft patter of her feet, so unlike Sanne’s plodding, so unlike the preacher’s. And at times I see her when Sanne or the preacher opens my door. Her belly is growing like mine, and it pulls me like a magnet. But she seems oblivious to my belly, oblivious to me. “Help me!” I call to her. “They’ve locked me up!” As if somehow she doesn’t know. But she doesn’t help me.
I ask Sanne and the preacher, before they stuff me with Jesus, why they are confining me. The preacher says, “I can’t let you go to the police,” or, “It would destroy Rune. It would destroy my church.” But she says this through schnapps and slurring; it seems it is she who is self-destructing. I tell her I’d never do that—I’d never go to the police. But then my words get trapped. Still, I sense the preacher doubts. But does she doubt Sanne or Rune or me, or God?
Sanne repeats some version of “How can you not believe? It’s a miracle, like with Maren. A virgin birth.” She leaves me books of theology, marks pages about virgin births and prophets and messiahs. I’d like to tell her to shut up, throw her books back at her; sometimes I do. But other times I listen and take the books. I need other worlds for my traveling mind.
I rarely see Rune, but I do see him as we pass through the sanctuary on the way outside: he slumps over a painting or listens to Rebekka read. Sometimes I see him through my opened door, standing far behind the preacher or Sanne at the end of the hall. But I never hear his laughter; I never hear his music.
I listen for him now as I lie on the bed, as I stare at the walls, at the ceiling, as I read Sanne’s delusions, trying to stave off insanity. I tell myself I wouldn’t long for Rune the way I do if I weren’t trapped in this cell of a room. I tell myself my feelings for him are biological, hormonal, nothing more. But I don’t really believe this. I hear the preacher in my head over and over telling me Rune was in love with me, and at times I think I’m in love with him. But then I hate him.
“Why did you say it?”
I open my eyes and see his face above mine; Rune’s face hangs above mine. I’m not sure if he’s real or if I’m dreaming. Even if I touch him, I think, I won’t know if I’m dreaming.
“Why did you say it?” he says again.
I shake my head; I don’t know what he means. I want to reach up, feel his hair. A kerosene lamp burns on the table—he must have carried it into the room—and its light wanders through his hair and down his face and neck.
“You said I raped you,” he says, and his dark eyes close. He’s not wearing his glasses and his face is moist, and then my face is moist and I know I’m not dreaming. He opens his eyes and looks at mine. “I can’t stay in here—if Mor finds me here…But I need to know why, Aslaug. Why you said it.”
“Didn’t you?” I say.
“Didn’t I what? Didn’t I rape you? How can you ask me that?” He pushes himself up, jerks the kerosene lamp toward him.
“Wait,” I say. I try to reach for him, but he backs away. “Did you leave the tansy? Did you leave me that tea?”
“What?” he says. “What are you talking about?” And I see he doesn’t know.
“I’m in love with you,” I say.
He backs up against the door and almost falls. “You’re crazy,” he says, and I think I see fear in his eyes. “You’re completely nuts.” He knocks the door open.
“Wait,” I say again.
But the door shuts and I hear the lock snap.
SOLOMON’S SEAL
2007
—Please state your name for the record.
—Dr. Amelia Hoenir.
—What’s your profession, Dr. Hoenir?
—I’m a physician. An internist. I’ve had an office in Bethan for thirteen years now.
—Are you aware of any other doctors with the last name Hoenir practicing in Bethan?
—As far as I know, I’ve been the only Dr. Hoenir in Bethan since I opened my practice.
—Dr. Hoenir, have you ever met the defendant, Aslaug Hellig?
—I don’t remember meeting her. I meet a lot of people, though.
—Do you have any records of ever having treated Aslaug Hellig?
—No. We looked for any records regarding her. We found none. And we have an excellent record-keeping system. Lots of checks and balances. It’s pretty rare we would misplace anything. But even if we had, we’ve scoured our system trying to find records regarding Aslaug Hellig. We’ve found none.
—So you feel confident you never treated Ms. Hellig?
—As confident as I can be.
—Thank you, Dr. Hoenir. No more questions, Your Honor.
RAGGED ROBIN
2004
If not Rune, then how?
Another month passes. And then two, and this question balloons within me. I want to tell Sanne I’m no longer sure how I became pregnant; I want to tell the preacher and Rune. But how can I tell them? What would I tell them? That I am a child of God? That I am carrying the child of God?
Sanne opens the door; she’s holding two books. “You’ll enjoy these,” she says, and she waves the books. She’s a ragged robin: her hair is almost completely pink now, and it flames every which way. A cuckoo flower, Mother called the ragged robin. “These books are different than others I’ve left for you,” Sanne says. “Nothing about a messiah in here. But they’re provocative. The Essenes would have loved them.” She tosses copies of the Tao-te Ching and Chuang Tzu on the bed. “You can’t keep your life on course if you don’t let it flow. ‘Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force.’”
“What does that mean?” I say, and I think as Mother would have thought: a cuckoo flower. I grab a handful of old food from a tray and fling it at her white front; it forms a sick-star blemish of bleeding orange.
“That’s brilliant,” Sanne says. She picks clumps from her dress. “You know, Aslaug, the one thing I just can’t understand is why God picked you for this and not someone with more imagination.”
“You mean you can’t understand why God didn’t pick you, isn’t that right?”
I see recognition in her eyes, but she says, “Flow as life flows, Aslaug.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I say again.
“Cussing doesn’t become you.” She still picks at the star. “The saying’s from the Tao-te Ching.”
I look at the book lying on the bed. “I didn’t ask where it’s from. I asked what it means.” I have the urge to pick up the Tao-te Ching, hurl it at her, but I resist; I want to read it. “That I should let you and Gudinden keep me locked up? That I should just accept I’m pregnant, even though I don’t know how I became pregnant? Is that what you mean by letting my life flow?”
Sanne has turned to walk out the door, but she stops in the doorway; she turns around. Her pink hair slips into her face, falls out of her face. She reaches up and knots it, just like Mother used to do. I recognize my mother again in her, in her gestures, the shape of her wrists, the tendons that rail her neck. “You just said you don’t know how you became pregnant,” she says.
“I don’t know.”
“But you said it was Rune….”
“It wasn’t Rune. I was wrong.” And I feel the weight of what I’d said about Rune lift.
“How could you make a mistake about something like that?”
“I dreamt it,” I say, “that Rune raped me. I didn’t realize it was a dream.”
Sanne steps back into the room, wraps her arms around me. I feel my middle press into her, the baby enveloped between us. I let myself be tucked into her body, as if I could share this enveloped baby, share the burden of what I’m carrying. And I sense myself go still inside, like a torrent has passed through me, cleaned me out.
“Until you became p
regnant, it was all sort of a game to me. I was intrigued by Maren, her ideas. But I didn’t really believe you’d been born of a virgin birth—that you were any sort of ‘consecrated human being.’ But I wanted Mor to think you might be. I wanted Rune to think you might be. I wanted you to think you might be. One night I even steeped jimsonweed in that schnapps Mor would give you, so you’d hallucinate or something. So you’d seem unusual to Mor and Rune. So they’d wonder.”
“You drugged me?” I say. “When did you do that? Why would you do that?”
“For entertainment? I don’t know. I was mad at Mor. I was mad at the world. I was bored. It was a stupid thing to do. Mor ended up drinking a whole bottle of the schnapps I’d doctored. It nearly killed her. And it made you sick, too. I could have killed you both. I mean, I couldn’t have known Mor would get that call. I couldn’t have known she’d start drinking again…. Don’t look at me like that, Aslaug. It was wrong. I know that. I don’t know if I could’ve lived with myself if Mor hadn’t recovered. But she did recover, and then you got pregnant, and I realized it wasn’t a game. It had never been a game. God really had directed me to Maren’s notes. God really had directed you here. This was real. What happened to Maren was real. What’s happening to you is real.” She says this, and yet I wonder, Is she trying to convince herself? “Mor wants to believe, too, because she doesn’t want to think that Rune…But now she’ll have to believe. What other explanation is there?”
What other explanation is there?
“Have I told you the Essene prayer about the Virgin Mary?” Sanne says. “Remember I mentioned some scholars think Mary was an Essene? Well, there’s this prayer that seems to be about Mary. ‘Within the Most High your soul blossoms. It leaps for joy at the sight of the ascendant path. What is on high came to meet what is below, and the Most High has impregnated your soul through His radiant look. Out of all the generations, yours is blissful, for the Almighty does great things for you. He impregnated your soul.’”
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