Kept women (part 4)

I did not ask what I might see, I sensed the subject would not be a welcome one. That the time would come that I would know more, as the time had come to know this much. There were weeks and months of sharp looks and whispered arguments between my mother and hers. Nana knew God’s plan, had been told night upon moonlit night what we were made for. Mammy knew some, but less. She hated the woods and would not pray to what they held. Had shunned God’s light, and in return been kept in the dark.

By the time it was all agreed, summer was drawing to its end and the evenings sweltered. Be it from the heat or my nerves, I didn’t know, but I grew restless and disinterested in my daily life. To eat turned my stomach and sleep was earned only through exhaustion. Food rotted in the cupboards, but the smell was a perversely welcome one. Many nights I hunched, knees folded tight to my chest, and breathed deep the saccharine air. Nana slept well and never caught me, though I don’t think she would have minded much. Mammy was a night owl. She would see me through the doorway and retreat to the far side of the house.

Still there when I returned to bed, she’d curl up in the corner and stare. Her teeth not quite hidden behind a barely contained snarl. She hated what we were.

It was on one of these sleepless summer nights when the sun hung close to setting that Nana announced I would meet the angel. She smiled broadly, chest swollen with pride, but something in her eyes gave away something buried deep. Something I couldn’t name, but I could recognise. I felt it in my dreams when I looked in the eyes of the angels.

Mammy was silent, impotent rage flowing off her in every direction. I was so caught between the two of them, so lost in my allegiances that I had no room in my heart for my own thoughts on the matter. Not that my thoughts would have made any difference. What good would it be to protest? I set about making myself ready. Through the walls I heard my mother’s final attempt to keep me home.

“They won’t have her. They can’t.”

“She’s long overdue, thanks to your histrionics. We’re lucky she seems to take after me or it would all be too late.”

“I can’t let them have her. You never should have let them have me.”

“Why must you fight me every step? You know as well as I do it can’t go on like this. She won’t survive it much longer – we’re lucky no one has come looking.”

“She’s only a child.”

She’s older than I was. Older than you were too. If you ever listened you’d understand, but your head is too full of fear. You don’t know how lucky we are to be so close to His light – to know without doubt what God’s will is.”

“You know as well as I God isn’t in those woods.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“You know exactly what I mean. What we suffer here – what you force us to suffer – is no blessing. There’s nothing holy in that forest. If that thing you worship truly came from heaven, it is the Devil.”

I burst through the doorway, trying to stop it before it could start, but I was too late. Shoes half on, overcoat forgotten, I stumbled and slid against the wall to keep my balance, rounded the corner too slow to see the blow land, but I heard it.

A whipcrack slap, the red welt of an open right hand against the paper white of my mother’s face. Nana’s back still to me. Either she hadn’t heard me coming, or she simply didn’t care to hide what she said next.

“Go to your knees at the altar and stay there ‘til morning. She’ll go tonight. Pray she survives your blasphemy.”