Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [37]
My heart pounded as I entered the building.
She looked up from behind the desk, stared at me with her blue cat’s eyes. I stared back.
“I’m sorry I went to your house, Tessa,” she said. “I’m sorry for everything that’s happening to you.”
“You should be,” I said, then picked up a pile of books from the bin to return to the shelves.
I could feel Mary’s eyes on me as I made my way into the stacks, my back straight. I could feel her grasping for something to say.
“Your hands,” she said, as I reached up to one of the shelves. “I saw yesterday. What happened?” She reached over and took my hand in hers. I snatched it away, but not before she saw the thick scabs and calluses.
“I was practicing,” I said.
“Practicing what?”
“By the river,” I said. “With a rope.”
“What is happening, Tessa?” she asked, leaning down and looking straight at me. “I tried telephoning you. Why were you gone for so long? Are you being hurt? Are they hurting you?”
I looked at her. I wanted so much to tell her what had happened out there in the corn, how sick I was now, and sad. For a moment I considered telling her about the river and the rope, my one-armed swing-overs, as I had begun to think of them. But I couldn’t. Something had slipped in between her and me in that cornfield, something I could not control.
“Is it him?” she asked, dropping her voice to a whisper.
Her eyes were dark, and it scared me, the way she looked at me then, as if she knew everything. I dropped my eyes, looked to the floor.
“No,” I said.
“You can always come to me, you know.”
I heard a tremble in her voice. I met her eyes and had never seen her look so broken, her face soft and slack, as if she’d been hit.
“You can leave home, Tessa. They can’t keep you away from the world.”
“Everything is fine,” I said. I felt dizzy, as if my head were about to explode. “I don’t know what you keep talking about.”
“Okay,” she said softly. “It’s okay.” She leaned down and kissed my forehead. The spice scent overcame me so forcefully I could barely breathe.
Without thinking, I pushed out my hand and shoved her away. And then everything welled up in me, all at once. I ran to the back of the library and out the door that led to the garden and water pump. I fell into the grass, let everything break free. I was barely even conscious of Mary right there next to me, gathering me up in her arms.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Shhhhh.”
It was as if the broken part of me had spilled out, and I wailed and twisted around, in the grass. Mary kept me bound up in her arms. The pain gnawed at my gut, strangled my throat. I thought of my mother and father and sister and brothers, of how much I used to love them, how hurt I used to be when they laughed at me, when they joked that I was a punishment from God. I thought of the other kids under the oak tree always looking and laughing, and the cornstalks bent in front of the moon, the feel of dirt against my back, the feel of my body and my heart and my entire self being broken down, erased and wiped out. How much I wanted, sometimes, to be wiped out, how Mary was the only person in the world who could fill me again, remake me into something new.
Slowly I became aware of a vague herb smell, a handful of herbs in my face and on my skin. The pain lessened. The broken-glass feeling in my gut numbed, then disappeared. I lay back and felt the words and images leave my mind, until there was nothing left except that moment, right then.
I opened my eyes and came back to earth, to the library, to her.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Everything is okay.”
I sat up, and my head pounded with grief. “Please,” I said. It was a terrible feeling, looking at her right in front of me, feeling her hands on mine, knowing how far I was from her now. I can never tell her, I thought. But as she watched me, it was as if she knew what I was thinking already, as if I had unleashed my whole heart there, in the garden, and she was holding it in her hands.
We looked at each other, and her cat’s eyes seemed to grow