Property Of, the Drowning Season, Fortune's Daughter, and At Risk

by Alice Hoffman

  “Oh, my God,” Lila said.

  “The next time you push you may feel as if you’ll explode,” Ann said. “You may feel like you’re burning.”

  But Lila had already been a spear of flame; she could dance on red coals now and not feel a thing. She bore down harder, and suddenly the baby’s head was free. Lila panted again to stop the urge to push while Ann untangled the umbilical cord from around the neck, and then, with the next push, the entire body slipped out in a rush.

  Blood poured from Lila, but she felt strangely renewed. She leaned her elbows on the pillows and lifted herself up so that she could watch as Ann cleaned off the baby and wrapped it in a white towel.

  “Is it all right?” she whispered.

  “It’s perfect,” Ann told her. “And it’s a girl.”

  Lila’s father had come home from a night spent out on the stairway, where it was so cold it could freeze your soul. He and his wife sat on the couch in the living room, rocking back and forth as if in mourning. Behind the closed bedroom door, Ann placed the baby in a dresser drawer on a bed of flannel nightgowns. It wasn’t until after she had delivered the placenta that she told Lila that her parents had already had her contact a doctor who arranged private adoptions.

  “But I have to have your approval,” Ann told Lila.

  Lila leaned her head back on the pillows and closed her eyes while Ann lifted her legs and put down a clean sheet.

  “You have to tell me,” Ann said. “What do you want to do about this child?”

  What amazed Lila was how fast it was over, how far outside herself she had gone and how quickly she had returned. Already, the pain she’d felt seemed to belong to someone else. How strange that now she didn’t want it to fade—she wanted to grab on to the pain and claim it for her own.

  “I’ll be honest with you,” Ann said. “I don’t really see how you can keep this baby. If you do, your parents won’t let you stay here. Is it fair to keep her, when you can’t even take care of yourself?”

  Even though the steam heat in the radiator made a gurgling noise, and buses trapped in the ice strained their engines, Lila swore she could hear her baby breathing as it slept in the dresser drawer. It was at that moment that her heart broke in two: she knew she could not keep this child.

  “I want to see her,” Lila said.

  “Take my advice,” Ann told her. “If you plan to give her up, don’t see her. Let me just take her away.”

  “I know what I want,” Lila said. “Let me see her.”

  As soon as her daughter was brought to her and she held her in her arms, Lila knew her cousin was right. But instead of turning her away, Lila held the baby even tighter. Her skin was as soft as apricots, her eyes were the color of an October sky. Lila could have held her forever. She begged for time to stop, for clocks to break, for every star to remain fixed. But none of that happened. Up on the fourth floor the neighbors ran the water in the bathroom, in the hallway outside the apartment there was the scent of coffee.

  When Lila gave her daughter up to her cousin’s outstretched arms, the room grew darker, as if she had given away a star. The dresser drawer where her baby had slept was still open, and it would be days before Lila would be able to close it again. But now, as her child was taken out into the coldest winter morning ever recorded in the city, wrapped in nothing but a white towel, Lila did manage to get one last look, and for the first time she knew the loss she would feel from that day onward, every morning and every night, for the rest of her life.

  They sent Lila away because she just gave up. By the end of February her milk had gone dry, and the bloody sheets had been cut into pieces and thrown into the incinerator, but Lila still refused to leave the apartment. She couldn’t even sit too close to her open bedroom window, because the breeze from outside stung her lungs. She had grown so used to the still air in the apartment that she had come to dread fresh air and light. You couldn’t tell the hour of the day in Lila’s bedroom when the curtains were drawn. It no longer mattered if it was day or night. If anyone had asked what future she saw for herself at the bottom of her own teacup she would have said endless days without purpose or plans. But then, on a day when the sky was as gray as cement, Lila found herself alone in the apartment. She went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. And when she opened the medicine cabinet above the sink, it seemed as if she’d had a plan and a purpose all along.

  As she slit her wrists with her father’s razor she felt nothing at all. Although when she imagined them finding the body she had to smile: her mother could scrub the floor for weeks with every cleanser on the market, and the blood would still never come off the black-and-white ceramic tiles. But Lila didn’t cut deep enough, and before she could correct her mistake, she fainted and hit her head on the tub. When her mother came home from the market where she’d bought codfish and potatoes and lettuce, Lila was still alive. Most of the blood had spilled neatly into the sink. But although the bathroom floor wasn’t ruined, when the ambulance drivers carried Lila out a trail of blood stained the oak floor in the hallway, and it never washed out.

  Two weeks later, when Lila’s wrists were still bandaged in white gauze, they sent her out to East China on the Long Island Rail Road. As Lila handed the conductor her ticket a bit of gauze peeked out from the wristband of her glove, and all the way out to East China she kept her hands clasped together in her lap. Her destination was the home of her great-aunt, Belle, a woman in her seventies who was so hard of hearing she was never quite sure if Lila’s mother had whispered baby or lazy when she called to ask for a room for her daughter. Certainly, Belle never asked what the problem had been, she just sent a taxi to meet Lila at the small wooden railroad station, and her only demand was that her great-niece never use salt when it was her turn to cook dinner.

  All through March, Lila tried to feel something. But everything around her seemed bloodless and cold: the bare maple trees, the sound of bats up on the roof in the middle of the night, the empty two-lane road called the East China Highway that ran right by the house and seemed to go nowhere at all. In her cold bedroom in the attic Lila could sleep, but she had no dreams. Each night before she went to bed Lila went to the window and longed for the deep oblivion of the sky. She had no energy, nothing left to give. Just speaking a few words to her aunt was an enormous effort—afterward, Lila always had to go back to her room where she slept on the old rope bed, covered by a quilt Belle had sewn when she was not much older than Lila.

  There was only one thing that attracted Lila, and that was death. The one time she agreed to do readings for her aunt’s old friends—having foolishly admitted that she used to tell fortunes—she saw nothing but symbols of death in their cups: hearts that refused to beat, black dogs, poisoned apples and pears. And although she continued to think about Hannie, she never once missed Stephen, the lover she’d thought she couldn’t live without. Stephen was a ghost; compared to death he was nothing, and it was death who called to Lila now. He was there with her every night when Lila ran her fingertips over the knives as she stored them in the silverware drawer; when she washed the dishes he was by her side, telling her that under just the right amount of pressure the glass she held could shatter into shards that would cut right through her skin. What was wonderful about these dark whispers was that they left very little room for Lila to think about her child. But at night, when the wind rose off the Long Island Sound to sweep through the potato fields and rattle down the chimneys, the cold air sounded like a baby’s wailing. And even when Lila put a pillow over her head and covered her ears with her hands, she could still hear the baby crying, and it cried from midnight till dawn.

  Lila became convinced that she wouldn’t last through the winter. She lost twenty pounds and her dark hair fell out in clumps—she found it all over her pillow in the mornings, as if a molting bird had visited her in the night. And then quite suddenly, without any warning, it was spring. The ice disappeared, the earth was left steaming, and all over East China the air was sil
very, like steam from a kettle. Puddles formed on either side of the East China Highway, and in them were small dark fish and green turtles. Laundry was hung outside on thick rope lines, and as soon as the snow melted there were white flowers and wild strawberries in every backyard.

  No matter how hard Lila tried to resist she was drawn outside her room. Even when she closed her window, she could smell lilacs from the tree out in the yard that had not yet bloomed. There was the scent of seaweed in the air, and a feeling of longing in everyone, even in Lila. Early in April, more than a month after her milk had dried up, Lila awoke one morning to find that her breasts had been leaking all night—her nightgown and bedclothes were drenched, and they smelled so sweet that bees came in through the window and followed Lila all through the house until she took a broom and chased them out the front door.

  Hannie had once told Lila that a long time ago, in the village where she had grown up, a separate cottage had been built for women who had lost their children at birth. Every morning people brought presents to leave outside the mother’s door: bunches of lavender, sunflowers, caged birds, hot black bread. For six nights the mother who had lost her child was not allowed to go any farther than the front door where the collection of gifts had been piled. No one was allowed to see her weeping; anyone who heard her cries in the middle of the night was to light a candle and then think of other things. On the seventh day everyone went out to collect wood, and a fire was lit outside the cottage. As the flames moved closer and closer to the rickety front steps no one could interfere, no one was allowed to run to the pond for a bucket of water. In moments the flames circled the cottage; nesting birds flew away, dragon-flies who lived in the eaves darted into the sky. And then came the hardest part—waiting until the flames leapt up to the roof.

  The woman inside always ran out to join the others, although sometimes it was not until the very last minute, just before the cottage collapsed into a heap of flaming twigs. It was in this way that the mother discovered that she still had the will to live, even now, and she was usually the first one to help when the cottage was rebuilt.

  Lila could not stand for April to affect her this way. Every day she felt more alive, but if anything this made her more bitter about her own ability to survive. There was nothing that did not remind her of her daughter: the new bark on the lilac tree outside her window was the exact same color as her daughter’s newborn slate-gray eyes. The moss that grew near the back steps was as soft as her daughter’s hair. It did no good to stay inside because there the lace doilies on the easy chair felt like baby blankets and the small silver teaspoons were exactly the right size for a child to hold as she ate cereal and pears. And so, one day in the middle of April, Lila left her aunt’s house for the first time since she’d arrived at the railroad station in February. Each time Lila took a long walk she felt more hopeless: for no reason at all she was terribly alive. In town people smiled at her, as if she was some young girl with her whole future ahead of her. And so, Lila made certain to walk away from town, out by the potato fields where there were nothing but sea gulls, who were so brave they actually swooped down to take bread right out of her hands. And if it was early enough, the time of day when fog rose along the white line in the center of the highway, there were sometimes small deer who stood perfectly still for a moment, before turning to run back into the woods.

  What Lila hoped to find, as she walked along the East China Highway, was a reason to go on living. She had turned nineteen only a few weeks earlier, and she’d been surprised to realize that she was still so young. The days were long now; sunlight lasted past suppertime. At night there were falling stars, and even when armfuls of lilacs were cut from the trees more and more blossoms appeared.

  Lila was faced with her past each time she chose a long-sleeved blouse from her closet to hide the scars on her wrists. But spring distracted her, she began to feel that her scars were not enough, and so each day she devised a new way to remind herself of her suffering. When she sewed she made certain to jab her fingers with the needle, when she cooked she picked up pots by their handles without bothering to use a potholder. All that remained pleasurable in her life were the long walks she took, until she realized that she could ruin these, too. The very next time Lila left the house she slipped her shoes off and left them underneath the porch of her aunt’s house. She would have to walk far, but by late afternoon the tar on the road would be hot enough, and Lila knew that her feet would burn.

  She had walked more than eight miles, and was halfway between East China and Riverhead, when Lila stopped at a gas station. She had come so far on the burning tar that there were blisters on the soles of her feet. She bent down and dusted off some of the pebbles and dirt, and when she looked up she saw Richard sitting in the shade outside the office of the gas station. He was twenty-one, and even from fifteen yards away, Lila could tell how handsome he was. She lowered her eyes immediately, angry at herself for imagining she had the right to look at a man.

  “The best thing for hot feet is to pour cold water on them right away,” Richard called to her.

  “I don’t happen to have any water with me at the moment,” Lila called back. Even though she wasn’t looking at him, Lila felt herself grow embarrassed.

  When Richard stood up, the metal chair he had been sitting on creaked, and Lila felt herself shudder, as if she’d been touched. Richard walked over, and as he passed the gas pumps he picked up a pail. He handed the pail to Lila, then stood there and watched as she emptied it onto her feet. The water was so clear and so cold that it made her gasp.

  “Is something funny?” Lila said, annoyed when she looked up and saw that Richard was smiling.

  Richard backed away from her, stung by her tone. He was more than six feet tall, but he was terribly shy. And right now he was also confused—he didn’t know what on earth had made him call out to Lila, it just seemed like something he had to do.

  “Nothing’s funny,” he said. “It’s just that you’re so beautiful I can’t stop looking at you.”

  Lila turned and she ran all the way home. She ran so fast that by the time she reached her aunt’s house her feet were bleeding. That night she locked herself in her room, and she swore that she would never again walk west on the East China Highway. But as she sat in her dark bedroom, the constellations in the sky were so bright they burned through the cotton curtains, and Lila knew that if she saw Richard even one more time, she’d be in danger. If she wasn’t careful she might just fall in love with him, and that was one thing Lila did not intend to do.

  At first, when she heard her aunt’s friends talk about Richard’s family, Lila assumed it was no one she knew. These friends were old Russian women who had come to East China by accident. All of them had immigrated long ago with hopes of being in Manhattan, but all had in common a cousin who helped pay their fare, and then insisted they come to live in East China. This cousin had raved about the soil that was so rich potatoes seemed to grow overnight, and it was he who first brought a band of migrant workers to the area. Even though their cousin had been dead for nearly thirty years, all of the relatives he had helped to bring over were still in East China. Every one had planned to move into the city after his death, but Manhattan had faded until it was nothing more than a dream; it was less than a hundred miles to the Midtown Tunnel, but it might as well have been on the other side of a black forest guarded by wolves.

  Of course there was one woman, the daughter of a distant cousin, who had managed to leave East China, although she hadn’t gone any farther than the outskirts of town. Twenty-five years earlier Helen had married a migrant worker, a Shinnecock Indian whom the Russian women referred to as the Red Man. The Red Man had taken Helen to a small unheated farmhouse where the pines were so tall and their shadows so dark that not even potatoes could grow. When Helen came to town to do her grocery shopping everyone said hello, but nobody really talked to her, and there wasn’t a soul in East China who didn’t know that Helen’s mother had died of shame.

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nbsp; In the winter, when the ice was treacherous, many of the old women didn’t venture out of their houses. When April came and the old friends were reunited, gossip flowed. On a particularly clear night, when Lila’s feet were still bloody and blistered, four of Belle’s distant cousins came to visit, and the conversation turned to the Red Man and his wife. It was a well-known fact that Helen had been cursed with a curious inability to have children, except for one, the son. Everyone wanted to know what had happened to the son during the winter—for years the old ladies had been waiting for him to be shipped off to the penitentiary, and none of them would have been surprised if he had murdered both his parents with a shotgun and then disappeared into Connecticut or New Jersey. However, there was not much news, even after the winter: Helen’s son was still working at the gas station his father, the Red Man, had somehow managed to buy. And later in the evening, one of the old Russian women admitted that after an ice storm in January, when she was stranded and out of groceries, Helen’s son had come to fix the engine of her Ford, which wouldn’t turn over. After having a cup of tea laced with whiskey, she shocked them all by adding that he really was quite handsome.

  Lila served the tea that night, but when her aunt’s friends asked her to read their tea leaves, she excused herself—she said she had a headache and couldn’t possibly see into the future that night. But really, Lila was simply too excited to sit still in a room full of old women. She was nineteen years old, and in spite of everything, very much alive. That night, Lila slept better than she had in months. For the first time since the birth of her child she dreamed. In her dream she found that lilacs were growing in the middle of winter, their blue petals pushing through a slick cover of ice. In the morning, when she woke up, Lila got dressed while it was still dark. She went downstairs quietly, even though her great-aunt wouldn’t have heard if she had slammed the doors. Before she left, she stood out on the front porch for a moment, not yet ready to leave her sorrow behind. In the middle of nowhere, between East China and Riverhead, there was a man who might be able to make her forget. Suddenly there seemed to be a reason for everything, and although Lila started off walking slowly, she wound up running down the two-lane road which for the very first time seemed like a highway that led you somewhere you might want to go.