Chapter 1 #7
I didn’t know how he’d gotten my sketch pad.
It was possible that my mother had found it while cleaning.
It was possible that he’d gone snooping.
“Brothers and sisters, I will not show this filth to you. I will not soil your minds. Suffice it to say I was devastated to learn that Satan has found a crack in the armor of my own family. That my daughter was exposing herself to sins of the flesh. But I prayed on it, and I realized, this is a test from God,” he said.
“For if I can cut that diseased limb from the tree in my own yard, so can you.”
He yanked me forward. “Kneel, Eloise,” he demanded, and I fell at his feet. “What does Isaiah 5:20 tell us?”
Tears gathered in my eyes. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.”
“Jeremiah 17:9?”
“For the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.”
My father moved behind me, but I didn’t dare turn around. I looked at the front row. My mother’s gaze was vacant, but Adie’s eyes burned as if she was pouring strength into me.
“Hands on the ground, Eloise.” I obeyed, my braid snaking to hang in front of me. “Proverbs 13:24.”
I closed my eyes. “Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.”
He flipped up my skirt. It was a small mercy that my bottom faced the back of the church, instead of the congregation. “Daddy, don’t,” I whispered. “Please.”
But his belt ripped through the loops of his trousers as he pulled it free, the snap of leather ringing in my ears.
The first lash nearly flattened me. By the fifth, I was sobbing so hard that snot was pooling. By the tenth, I could not stop from crying out.
He finished, leaving me humiliated. “I do this,” he told the congregation, “because I love my child. This is not punishment. It is mercy. It is salvation.” Then my father was helping me to my feet. “What do you say, Eloise?”
My jaw was so tight my teeth ground. “Thank you,” I gritted out.
He put his hand on my head, bowing his own. “In this new purity, Jesus, fill my baby’s heart again with your love and your devotion. Amen.”
Amen, everyone said.
That night, I squeezed into Adie’s twin bed in her room, lying on my stomach while she lay cold washcloths over my welts. “I don’t know what you were thinking, Ellie,” she murmured.
“It was just a drawing,” I told her.
“It wasn’t appropriate.”
I came up on an elbow. “Do you go to the doctor?”
She frowned at me. “Yes.”
“Is it inappropriate for him to see you without your clothes on?”
“That’s not the same and you know it,” Adie said.
“It is,” I tried to explain. “It’s just a body. It’s something to draw.”
“Well, next time”—-Adie sighed—-“try a bowl of grapes.”
She looked at me, and we both burst out laughing. Then she pulled the hair tie from my braid and unraveled it, wrapping the white ribbon around her wrist as if she were a present. “Did he kiss you?”
I nodded.
“What was it like?”
I thought about this for a moment. “Like when the electricity pole came down last summer after that storm, and the power line was alive.”
Just then, my father opened the door to Adie’s bedroom. I yanked down my skirt to cover my bare thighs. “Eloise,” my father said. “You do not belong here.”
“Yes, sir.” I gingerly got to my feet and edged past him.
He watched me mince down the hallway, and then he stepped into my sister’s room and closed the door with a snick so soft, it sounded holy.
Adam’s even breathing is a metronome, but I stare at the ceiling waiting for Molly to wake for a feeding. After a few hours of trying to remain perfectly still, I slip out of bed. I pad toward the kitchen, thinking to get a glass of water, but I am distracted by the dining room table.
I have put away the tesserae of the mosaic, but the cutters and blades—-all tools of a trade that I practiced what seems like a lifetime ago—-are still neatly lined up. I lift the wheeled nipper and pump the handle, the way I would to trim a piece of glass. It feels unfamiliar, unwieldy.
My mind races: I shouldn’t have left out these tools.
They’re dangerous. What do I do about the mosaic in the bathroom?
I’m not going to have time to finish it.
The water should be turned back on. If I turn it back on, what do I do with the unfinished wall?
Adam is going to go crazy if he has to keep showering in the smaller bathroom.
What if I was very quiet? Could I get the mosaic installed at night when they’re sleeping?
What if I’m working on it in the bathroom and I don’t hear Molly cry?
The image of the two phoenixes is large enough to cover three--quarters of the table, pressed onto its mesh backing.
It needs to be divided into pieces that will allow me to hang it.
The first fault line runs between the two birds, along the mother’s beak.
It will carve away a piece of the mosaic about a foot square.
I turn on the light over the table, pick up the X--Acto knife, and start to cut.
It’s only when the tip of the razor blade catches that I realize I’ve completely forgotten to put a protective layer beneath the mosaic so that I do not slice into the table. The point is stabbed deep into the wood, and I know there will be a ragged scar on the beautiful maple.
I yank at the knife, gritting my teeth as I pull, but it’s stuck so firmly I have to pinch my fingers close to the base to wiggle it a little. Then I give a mighty jerk and the whole knife goes flying, embedding in the floorboards an inch from my bare foot.
I am utterly fascinated by this near miss, this juxtaposition of blade and bone and sinew. I am not in my body but hovering beside it, objective, captivated.
I pick up the X--Acto knife and turn it over in my hands. I prick my thumb against its tip.
Would I even feel it, if it sank into my flesh?
(Are you still alive? Are you sure?)
I push the blade into my palm. Blood wells, but I feel numb—-like I’m watching this in a movie, not cutting my own skin.
I push harder.
“Eloise?”
Adam’s voice knocks the knife out of my hand, and searing pain rushes back in. I hold the wrist of my wounded palm, just as surprised by the injury as he is. “It—-I slipped—-”
“Jesus.” He disappears into the kitchen and returns with a clean dish towel, which he wraps tightly around my hand, pressing down to stop the bleeding. “Hold this. I’ll get the baby.”
My head snaps toward him. “What?”
“You need to go to the ER.”
I peek under the dish towel. “It’s already slowing down,” I lie. I can’t go to the ER. They will ask me what happened. If I say I did this to myself, they will think I’m crazy. If I say it was an accident, they will think I’m clumsy. Either way, it will end with Molly being taken away from me.
Adam’s mouth is pinched, as if he’s trying to hold in words that threaten to spill. “Ellie,” he says softly. “I’m worried about you.”
I pin on a smile so bright, it makes me squint. “I am fine! I was wide--awake and came out here to work. It was a stupid accident.”
His eyes lock on mine. “Really?”
I nod. “Really.”
He goes to the bathroom to get gauze and tape and Neosporin. Adam gently peels away the dish towel and washes the cut.
“I just think this is . . . a lot for you,” he says, pressing gauze to the cut. “Maybe you should call the midwife.”
The blood oozes through the pristine white linen. It takes me a moment to tear my eyes away from it. “The midwife,” I repeat. “That’s a great idea.”
“It would be so much easier,” the midwife tells me on the phone, “if babies came out with an instruction manual!” Her voice is rosy and chipper. I imagine her rolling her eyes, thinking, If I had a dime for every new mother who was nervous . . . “Do you nap when the baby naps?”
“When I can,” I say honestly.
“You’re just not yourself right now,” she says. (Then who are you?) “What you need is a break from the routine. A yoga class! A massage! Valerian tea. Or aromatherapy.”
Adam is waiting when I hang up. “Well? Can they give you anything to help you relax?”
As if this problem is my fault, my failure. (Isn’t it?)
“She suggested tea,” I tell him.
July oozes. I buy an aromatherapy candle. I do yoga poses—-warrior and downward dog—-while Molly watches me from the baby swing. Evie comes to visit and brings a breast pump, so she can feed Molly while giving me a few hours to myself.
It is like being a cow.
Whackowhackowhacko, the pump whispers, like it knows I’m going crazy.
“Eloise?” Evie says, her hands on her hips. “I’ve been calling your name for five minutes.”
She stays until Adam comes home from work. They talk in the kitchen, not realizing that I can hear them. I’m worried about her, Evie says.
She spoke to the midwife, Adam tells her. She’s doing everything she’s supposed to.
Maybe she needs to talk to someone else, Evie says.
I hear the door close and then Adam comes into the living room as if he hasn’t just been discussing me. “How are my girls?”
(They’re going to send you away. And then how will you protect the baby?)
“We are perfect,” I promise, and I instruct my body to cook dinner, to nurse Molly, to make love to Adam, so good at this ruse that I fool us all.
(We are best friends.)
(You thought you could get rid of me.)
As I push the baby along the street, the sun beating down on me and the humidity a choked throat, I keep turning around to see who is whispering.
Pedestrians funnel around me, oblivious. There is no one there. The voice is a speaker set under my own skin.
(I’ll always be in your life, Eloise.)
“God?” I whisper.
All I hear is laughter.