The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [42]
It wasn’t like her to sleep so much in the afternoons. There were a lot of things that weren’t like her. Laura wasn’t worried, but I was. I was putting two and two together, out of what I’d been told and what I’d overheard. What I’d been told: “Your mother needs her rest, so you’ll have to keep Laura out of her hair.” What I’d overheard (Reenie to Mrs. Hillcoate): “The doctor’s not pleased. It might be nip and tuck. Of course she’d never say a word, but she’s not a well woman. Some men can never leave well enough alone.” So I knew my mother was in danger of some kind, something to do with her health and something to do with Father, though I was unsure what this danger might be.
I’ve said Laura wasn’t worried, but she was clinging to Mother more than usual. She sat cross-legged in the cool space beneath the gazebo when Mother was resting, or behind her chair when she was writing letters. When Mother was in the kitchen, Laura liked to be under the kitchen table. She’d drag a cushion in there, and her alphabet book, the one that used to be mine. She had a lot of things that used to be mine.
Laura could read by now, or at least she could read the alphabet book. Her favourite letter was L, because it was her own letter, the one that began her name, L is for Laura. I never had a favourite letter that began my name – I is for Iris – because I was everybody’s letter.
L is for Lily,
So pure and so white;
It opens by day,
And it closes at night.
The picture in the book was of two children in old-fashioned straw bonnets, next to a water lily with a fairy sitting on it – bare-naked, with shimmering, gauzy wings. Reenie used to say that if she came across a thing like that she’d go after it with the fly swatter. She’d say it to me, for a joke, but she didn’t say it to Laura because Laura might take it seriously and get upset.
Laura was different. Different meant strange, I knew that, but I would pester Reenie. “What do you mean, different?”
“Not the same as other people,” Reenie would say.
But perhaps Laura wasn’t very different from other people after all. Perhaps she was the same – the same as some odd, skewed element in them that most people keep hidden but that Laura did not, and this was why she frightened them. Because she did frighten them – or if not frighten, then alarm them in some way; though more, of course, as she got older.
Tuesday morning, then, in the kitchen. Reenie and Mother were making the bread. No: Reenie was making the bread, and Mother was having a cup of tea. Reenie had said to Mother that she wouldn’t be surprised if there was thunder later in the day, the air was so heavy, and shouldn’t Mother be out in the shade, or lying down; but Mother had said she hated doing nothing. She said it made her feel useless; she said she’d like to keep Reenie company.
Mother could walk on water as far as Reenie was concerned, and in any case she had no power to order her around. So Mother sat drinking her tea while Reenie stood at the table, turning the mound of bread dough, pushing down into it with both hands, folding, turning, pushing down. Her hands were covered with flour; she looked as if she had white floury gloves on. There was flour on the bib of her apron too. She had half-circles of sweat under her arms, darkening the yellow daisies on her house dress. Some of the loaves were already shaped and in the pans, with a clean, damp dishtowel over each one. The humid mushroom smell filled the kitchen.
The kitchen was hot, because the oven needed a good bed of coals, and also because there was a heat wave. The window was open, the wave of heat rolled in through it. The flour for the bread came