Bone House_ A Novel - Betsy Tobin [72]
I wait until they have all gone, then approach the cottage door. I knock gently, then open it and poke my head inside.
“Mother?” The room is dark and it takes a moment before my eyes find her in the poor light. She is perched upon the side of the bed, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her head bowed. At the sound of my voice, she lifts her head and I let myself in, carefully bolting the door behind me. I cross over to her side and sit beside her on the bed.
“Are you all right?” I ask. She nods then, just barely, but everything about her has gone rigid, as if her very center has been frozen. Her face is white and drawn, and her lips are pressed together in a taut line. Only her eyes cannot be checked, for they alone betray her horror.
“It is done now,” I say gently. She turns to me then, shakes her head slowly from side to side. “What is it?” I ask.
She starts to speak, then swallows her words and closes her eyes.
“Surely they found nothing?” I ask urgently. She sighs deeply then, and with her eyes still closed she places a hand gently on her side, beneath her ribs. In that spot, under her clothes, she carries a scar from long ago. “The scar,” I say. She opens her eyes then, lets her hand fall into her lap.
For all my life my mother has carried this scar. It is the length and breadth of a finger and is raised and reddened, though the color has altered somewhat over the years. Now that she is growing old, the skin around the scar hangs down in fleshy folds, lending it a slightly protuberant look. I have never known its origin; only that it has always been a part of her. Once when I was very young, she lifted me upon her hip and as she did I reached a tiny hand to touch it. Her whole body bristled and she dropped me like a sack of flour. I lay on the floor crying, and she stood silently over me, her chest heaving with anger. I never tried to touch it again.
“What of the scar?” I ask her urgently. “What did they say?”
She turns to me and for the first time raises her head to meet my eyes.
“They say it is the devil’s teat.”
“You told them otherwise?” I ask slowly.
“Yes, of course. I told them it was from a wound. That I have had it many years. Have carried it all my life,” she adds. She pauses then, lapses into sullen silence. I wait for her to continue.
“What did they say?” I press her. She turns to me with a look of disbelief in her eyes.
“It makes no difference how many years, do you not see?” She shakes her head from side to side. “They will think what they wish.”
“No. This cannot be. Did they ask you where it came from?”
She nods.
“Did you tell them?” I ask this quietly, for this is something even I have never asked of her.
“I told them it was from a man,” she says, her voice hardening. And suddenly her eyes are wide and far away, lost in time.
“What man?” I ask, though I know full well the answer.
She looks directly in my eyes. “Your father,” she says.
And then it strikes me that they are right: my father was the devil and he has left his mark upon her. I turn to her and she is hunched over: the carcass of a woman.
“Who was he?” I ask.
“It makes no difference,” she says without emotion. “He is dead.”
“How did it happen?” I persevere.
She stares ahead of her. “It was . . . so long ago,” she says shaking her head. “I was someone else then. Younger than you are now.” She reaches up a hand to touch my face, but her hand halts in midair, then drops into her lap.
“I had not yet begun to birth babies, though I often assisted my own mother. I helped my father as well, in the fields, and with the cows. He sold his milk to many others in the village.” She pauses then, lowers her voice. “And to the Great House.”
Something in her tone makes me frown. She has always shunned the Great House. Before I went to work there, I never knew she’d entered its borders. After a moment, she carries