The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [6]
In bed, the three little girls laid flat on their backs, Emma in the middle. Liz and Alise each had a leg over her to keep her in place. It was hot, but that was how they did, summer and winter. Most usually it made me smile, but that night I didn’t have a smile in me. Liz’s eyes were flat like she couldn’t see.
“Mama?” Alise said.
“What?”
“Our story.”
“Oh,” I said. It had slipped my mind. I could hardly think straight for worrying about Liz.
I lit a kerosene lamp and got the book of fairy tales from the parlor. I admired the feel of a book. The cover on this one was worn; Isaac’s mother sent it when our first son, Isaac Two, was born. That was eleven years this past February. I opened the book and held it to each girl’s nose. I always believed that smelling the pages of a book took a person into the story.
“Go on. Say it,” I said, figuring this would do Liz some good.
Alise and Emma wiggled a little, grinning with excitement. “Fee, fie, foe, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman,” Alise sang with Emma a word or two behind her. Liz didn’t, though. She kept her mouth pressed.
Alise turned her head on the pillow. “What’s the matter, Liz?”
Liz stuck out her bottom lip.
I shuffled through the book, page after page of make-believe about kings wanting sons, poor men seeking gold, and beautiful young women waiting to be rescued by princes.
“Honey,” I said, looking at Liz, “you got a story you’d like to hear?”
She shook her head but said, “Rapunzel.”
I found the story and held the book as close to the lamp as I could. My reading eyes were fading on me. Isaac used a magnifying glass to read by, but I couldn’t bring myself to use it. I already felt like an old woman. I’d rather guess at the words. I knew the stories well enough to do that.
Squinting some, I read. The girls listened as if the story might be different this time or as if they had never heard of Rapunzel, the girl with the long fine hair like spun gold who lived locked in a tower pining for her handsome prince.
“Prayers,” I said when the story ended, and together we thanked Jesus for looking after us and keeping us safe. “Sleep tight,” I told them and kissed each one on the cheek. I picked up the lamp.
“Mama?” Liz said.
I turned back.
“Mama, there was a snake. In the well.”
Alise and Emma looked at Liz, then looked at me. I put the lamp on the dresser and felt Liz’s forehead. I said to her, “You aren’t scared of snakes, are you? You’ve never been before.”
Liz gripped my hand. “It was in the well and it came at me.”
“Did it hurt you, honey?”
“It tried to. I kicked it and it hissed me.”
Alise and Emma sucked in their cheeks.
I said, “But you got it?”
Liz shook her head. “It went behind a rock but I saw its eyes. They were red. It’s waiting to get me, Mama.”
Emma’s face screwed up. I put my fingertips on her lips and patted them, hoping to keep her from crying. “A red-eyed snake, why, that’s the best kind,” I said. “That’s a good snake, just surprised to see you, Liz, that’s all. Not used to seeing a child in the well. Probably just curious.”
Liz puckered her forehead. She wanted to believe me, I thought, but was finding it hard to do.
“A friendly snake?” Alise said.
“Like a bull snake,” I said. “Now go on to sleep.”
I pried Liz’s hand from mine and kissed the back of it. I wanted to take away her fear. I did. But that wasn’t how it worked. She had to carry it all by herself. Like we all had to. But looking at her in her bed, I knew I had to stop that fear from getting bigger.
I said, “Think about Rapunzel with all that yellow hair.”
Liz nodded.
“I’ll leave the lamp.”
Isaac was outside on the porch in his rocking chair. His pencil was behind his ear and his accounts book was on the plank floor by his left-hand side. Like always in the evening, he’d been recording the day. It was his way to keep a constant tally on the cattle, the weather, and