7.
It was a rare month at the poorhouse when someone didn’t die, and when Desirée was twelve, she lost her mother. She found
her in her cot one morning, a growth protruding from her stomach, her face white, and her eyes bulging.
Desirée covered her with the sheet and went, crying, to the matron. She wiped her tears away before knocking on her door.
There was no ceremony. The new caretaker wrapped the body in the sheet and carried it across the fields to the burial ground,
shovel in hand. Desirée, frozen with fear, watched, unable to understand. She had seen it happen before, but those were other
people’s dead, and most of them didn’t have families to mourn them. Her own father had been drafted to fight in the Korean
War while she was still in her mother’s belly. She had no one else.
The matron, watching her, held a hand to her own painful middle and said, “The best thing for you right now is work.”
Maybe she’s right, Desirée thought. She went to the kitchen. She cooked. She served breakfast. My mother is not here, she
thought.
She walked back to the kitchen on numb legs. One of the men tried to josh her, saying he still had her nose, and Desirée whipped
around, fury in her eyes. He recoiled.
“No,” she spat. “You do not.”
“She’s got you there,” one of the other men chuckled.
The caretaker came back, black dirt on his hands. He went into the kitchen to wash them, and the soil poured down the sink where Desirée washed the dishes. He watched her out of the corner of his eye.
Months later, Desirée, now thirteen, crossed the fields with a pitcher of cold raspberry juice, pressed from the fresh berries.
The men watched her approach, the swinging dress, the soft new breasts. They drank deeply from the pitcher, thanking her.
They wiped the sweat from their eyes and looked at her speculatively.
Carrying the empty pitcher marked with the grease of their lips, Desirée walked along the edge of the woods. She had explored
them before, but she’d never gone in too far. She was afraid of the dark woods.
The shade under the trees felt good. The air smelled of fir and summer.
She almost tripped, and she looked down. It was a small white bone. It looked like part of a rib. It lay there like a curving
white shadow, like a rock. It appeared to be human, and it hissed at her: I was once alive.
She looked around and saw the raw, overturned earth, the shovel leaning against a tree nearby, flecked with dirt and streaked
with clay.
“Hello.”
The caretaker came out of the woods. He was a tall, strongly built man with dark skin, pulled taut over his cheekbones, and
hard eyes. He had oddly red lips for a man, and when he smiled, like he did now, they showed regular teeth.
“Hi. I guess,” she whispered.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was walking,” she said, holding the pitcher tight to her chest.
“Is that for me?” he asked playfully.
“It’s empty.”
“I see that.”
He saw her looking at the rib bone. “There’s feral pigs in these woods. They come digging. Did you know that?”
“No.” She swallowed.
He kicked dirt over the bone, and she knew he would bury it again.
“It’s not safe for you here,” he said.
She couldn’t figure out how she felt. Her body ached with something indescribable.
“Is my . . . mother buried here?”
“Yes.”
“Where . . . is she?”
“Does it matter?”
She didn’t know what to say. Maybe not.
“I see you,” he said. “You’re always working.”
Her body had started changing the year before. She wanted to hide her breasts. They hurt under his eyes.
But at the same time, she kind of liked it. It was like taking a bite of a fruit that tastes sweet at first but then tastes
rotten.
He was maybe in his late twenties. Silver had yet to trace his hair, but the skin around his dark eyes was already creased.
She backed away, slowly, and he saw it. He suddenly relaxed, turned away, and shrugged, as if the encounter had no importance.
He was not stupid. He knew how to reel them in.
“Maybe someday I’ll show you where your mother is,” he said.
“Really?” She stopped.
“Sure.” He was genuinely nice now. Why not?