The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [62]
On the way back I heard footsteps behind me. Now you’ve done it, I told myself, here comes the mugger. But it was only a young woman in a black raincoat, carrying a bag or small suitcase. She passed me at a fast clip, head craned forward.
Sabrina, I thought. She’s come back after all. How forgiven I felt, for that instant – how blessed, how filled with grace, as if time had rolled backwards and my dry old wooden cane had burst operatically into flower. But on second glance – no, on third – it was not Sabrina at all; only some stranger. Who am I anyway, to deserve such a miraculous outcome? How can I expect it?
I do expect it though. Against all reason.
But enough of that. I take up the burden of my tale, as they used to say in poems. Back to Avilion.
Mother was dead. Things would never be the same. I was told to keep a stiff upper lip. Who told me that? Reenie certainly, Father perhaps. Funny, they never say anything about the lower lip. That’s the one you’re supposed to bite, to substitute one kind of pain for another.
At first Laura used to spend a lot of time inside Mother’s fur coat. It was made of sealskin, and still had Mother’s handkerchief in the pocket. Laura would get inside it and try to do up the buttons, until she hit on a way of doing them up first and then crawling in underneath. I think she must have been praying in there, or conjuring: conjuring Mother back. Whatever it was, it didn’t work. And then the coat was given away to charity.
Soon Laura began to ask where the baby had gone, the one that did not look like a kitten. To Heaven no longer satisfied her – after it was in the basin, was what she meant. Reenie said the doctor took it away. But why wasn’t there a funeral? Because it was born too little, said Reenie. How could anything so little kill Mother? Reenie said, Never mind. She said, You’ll know when you’re older. She said, What you don’t know won’t hurt you. A dubious maxim: sometimes what you don’t know can hurt you very much.
In the nighttimes Laura would creep into my room and shake me awake, then climb into bed with me. She couldn’t sleep: it was because of God. Up until the funeral, she and God had been on good terms. God loves you, said the Sunday-school teacher at the Methodist church, where Mother had sent us, and where Reenie continued to send us on general principles, and Laura had believed it. But now she was no longer so sure.
She began to fret about God’s exact location. It was the Sunday-school teacher’s fault: God is everywhere, she’d said, and Laura wanted to know: was God in the sun, was God in the moon, was God in the kitchen, the bathroom, was he under the bed? (“I’d like to wring that woman’s neck,” said Reenie.) Laura didn’t want God popping out at her unexpectedly, not hard to understand considering his recent behaviour. Open your mouth and close your eyes and I’ll give you a big surprise, Reenie used to say, holding a cookie behind her back, but Laura would no longer do it. She wanted her eyes open. It wasn’t that she distrusted Reenie, only that she feared surprises.
Probably God was in the broom closet. It seemed the most likely place. He was lurking in there like some eccentric and possibly dangerous uncle, but she couldn’t be certain whether he was there at any given moment because she was afraid to open the door. “God is in your heart,” said the Sunday-school teacher, and that was even worse. If in the broom closet, something might have been possible, such as locking the door.
God never slept, it said in the hymn – No careless slumber shall His eyelidsclose.