Chapter 21
I’m officially on house arrest. A humiliating blow to the last remaining ounce of dignity, not to mention mobility, that I had in this horror show of a world.
A fabric rope made of three ragged towels is tied in an infinity loop around my ankles, right above my bandage, making it just barely possible for me to shuffle around the kitchen at a glacial pace.
Even at a creep, it’s hard to keep my balance, even harder to use my walking stick properly, and so I keep nearly falling over or gasping at the pain of my bandage rubbing against the fabric as I follow Mary’s commands: Bring me the potato basket, go get the sharper knife, carry this crock to the fire, sweep up the crumbs from the floor.
I can’t help but notice that she’s intentionally making me do as many trips back and forth to the kitchen as possible.
I can’t help but think she’s desperate to see me trip and fall flat on my face.
“You know,” I say, on my tenth crawl toward the fire to retrieve a spoon that she magically forgot to ask for when I was there earlier to drop off the crock pot of venison stew, “that your life would be much easier if you were just doing this without me. You know that, right?”
“Of course I do. But Papa said.”
Papa said. I roll my eyes and grab the spoon, then begin my pilgrimage back across the room.
Papa sure did say. In fact Papa said specifically, If you cause another problem—if you try to leave this ranch, or even worse, try to take a child with you—I’ll tie you up by the horse and see how you do overnight, you exhausting wretch of a woman.
I hand her the spoon. “I can barely walk as it is, you know. Don’t you think this is a bit unnecessary?”
“This morning, I would’ve agreed with you,” she says breezily.
“And then you tried to run away on one leg.” She reaches for a covered bowl of milk that has been sitting on the counter by the window since morning.
She takes the cover off and begins to skim the cream off the top and into another bowl.
Butter. She’s making butter. As she takes the bowl of cream and pours it into an old wooden churner, I think of my electric mixer and feel a rush of yearning.
Afternoon, y’all! Today we’re making butter from scratch—well, except for the fact that we’re using my good old KitchenAid to do the churning part, otherwise we’d be at it all day, and no one wants that! Ha! Ha ha!
Ha. Ha ha ha.
Mary starts to churn, working the cream with the wooden ladle in effortful thrusts, putting her shoulder into the movement. Over the steady clunking, she says, “Why do you try to run away so much?”
She isn’t looking at me, which is perhaps why I’m able to tell the truth.
Or maybe I’m just exhausted to the point of being incapable of thinking strategically.
Or maybe I am a lunatic, stuck in a nightmare, and there is nothing left to lose.
Or maybe I am dreaming. Or maybe this whole world is going to shit and I am a victim of my own motherfucking—
“Because I’m not supposed to be here. That’s why.”
She pauses mid-churn. Looks at me. “You’re not supposed to be here?”
“No. I’m not.”
“You are not supposed to be here?”
“No!”
“Where are you supposed to be, if not here?”
I gesture helplessly at nothing. “I’m supposed to be here, but here should be different.”
“But this is what is here. What else could be here, if not this? Who could be here if not us?”
I feel like I’m frozen in the pages of a children’s nursery rhyme. I am here, I am there, I am miserable everywhere! “Forget it,” I say.
Mary gives me a chiding look. “Really, the way you let your mind run wild with fiction, no wonder you’re so exhausted all the time.
” She begins to churn again. “Anyways: you know not to go to the woods. There are all manner of terrible things in there. Wolves and Indians and other souls who are bent—”
“—on our spiritual destruction,” I mutter sniffily. “Yeah, yeah, I know.”
Mary stiffens. The churning increases in speed. “You know, there are people in the world who don’t have a family at all. And how would you like that? Being all alone in the woods, no one to save you when you stumble into a trap?”
A gust of anger whips through me, strong enough to snap a neck. “You. Are. Not. My. Family.”
Mary freezes. The room falls silent. “Go get more firewood,” she says quietly, and I’m suddenly transported back to my real house, my real life, as I say to Clementine: Go tell Nanny Louise to check the forecast. The kind of meaningless command designed to remind someone who’s in charge.
Designed, also, to give you a moment to collect your shaking breath.
Mary doesn’t speak to me for the rest of the night. At dinner, though, she does hand me a piece of bread slathered in fresh butter. A peace offering. This world, I realize, is full of them—or rather, the girl holding the buttered bread is. She stares at me, palm extended.
The butter is delicious.