Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Eurydice
Faint sunlight cast bands on the clean kitchen floor. My mother stood with her face to the window, her fingers dug deep into dough. She hummed that song she’d taught me when I was four, the one about the deep forest.
“Eury.” Her face turned, and a softness came over it. A heart-shaped face, hair pulled tight. “You’re just in time for the rain. Take your boots off.”
I shut the door, kicked my shoes off left and right into the corner. “What’s to eat?”
“You know.”
The faintest tapping began at the windowpanes, the first droplets of afternoon rain. Each droplet hissed with acid where it touched the glass, and a green hue overtook the sunlight on the floor.
“Is it pig?” I said.
“Of course.” Her smile didn’t leave her as she turned back to her work; her fingers kneaded deeper into the dough. “The biggest in the Dip.”
The dough didn’t quite roll as it should. Didn’t have the right elasticity.
“Mama,” I said. “Is that fresh dough?”
“What else would it be?” She pounded a fist into it, and I paused with my hand on the back of the chair.
Was she angry?
“I don’t know.” I dropped into my seat. “Just didn’t look right.”
“I’d know, my love.” She picked the ball of dough up, flipped it over on the counter. “What did you learn from Elisabet today?”
“Nothing worth mentioning.”
She glanced over her shoulder, surveyed me. “You’ve been rolling in the dirt again, haven’t you?”
I studied a hangnail on my finger. “You call it rolling. I call it a wonderful afternoon.”
“A mind like a trap, and you’d rather be on the ground with the worms.”
I lowered my hand. She’d gone back to working her dough, pounding it like it owed her. “The worms?”
She waved a hand at me. “Sponge yourself off before you eat. I can smell you from here.”
A stinger of annoyance flitted through me. “I can smell you from here, too.” I had never been good at staying quiet.
Her hands went still. Her head turned, a slow and careful rotation, until her brown eyes found mine. “What did you say, Eurydice?”
I had touched on her greatest insecurity. She hated smelling of flour, hated even more being reminded of it. Maybe that was why she’d commented on my smell. A subconscious, ever-present worry.
I pushed away from the table. “Nothing.”
“Please, say it once more for your mother.”
“I’ll go sponge off.” I turned away, got my boots from the corner. We didn’t speak, but her pounding resumed. Louder, marked.
I opened the door. Outside, faint smoke rose where the rain hit the cobblestones. An intense rain fell, splattering against my boots and hissing.
Rain like this was rare. Twice a year, maybe. Just my good fortune.
The stoop creaked as I stepped down, kept close to the overhang. Across the street, even Jo the busybody’s window was shut.
In the alley, the bucket had overturned. Either wind or mischief, but all the gray water had poured out and seeped between the stones.
Damn.
Brick pressed cold against my back. When my mother was in a mood like this, she wouldn’t let me back in. Not while I had dirt under every nail, while my cheeks were faintly discolored with it.
I hated this. Hated that I had no choice.
I stripped to my underthings. With two quick breaths, I closed my eyes and stepped out into the rain.
Stinging, stinging everywhere. But my mother couldn’t smell the acid on me like she could the dirt. Nobody could smell the acid, except perhaps the king and queen in their cozy castle.
I danced in place, rubbing all over, yelping when the droplets pinged off the street and ricocheted into me.
Three minutes. That was all I could stand.
I was back under the overhang, skin aflame. Clean, sort of. Clean and stinging from my scalp to where the rain had seeped under my boots.
At the stoop, I waited. Stood before the old door with the sun painted on its face. Already I smelled the flour; already I felt her fingers in my hair. I set my hand to the knob, turned it and pushed in.
“Mama.”
Faint sunlight cast bands across the kitchen floor. Empty. A slab of dough sat on the counter, someone’s fingerprints on it. Kneaded, and then stopped.
The bedroom door was shut.
My boots hit the corner as I threw them off, one after the other. “Mama?”
No answer. That was my answer.
I approached the bedroom door, leaned my ear against it. Silence. I rapped twice on the wood. “It’s me. Eury.”
The bed creaked. A sob broke out from the other side.
The knob turned slowly beneath my hand. She lay in the rumpled bed, fetal, her cheeks wet and hair mussed over her face.
Her brown eyes met mine. Then they shifted toward the uncovered window, toward a sight I couldn’t see even if I looked out that window myself.
No, no, no—
I pulled the door shut, turned away. I didn’t know why days like this happened. I did, but not entirely. Something about fear. Something about grief. Something from her past she wouldn’t tell me.
In a few hours she would rise, and she would hate that I was dirty. Best to get clean before she woke up. Days like this, everything was fraught. Better not to undo the precarious peace.
I headed for the door. Outside, it had begun to rain.