The Eye Unseen (14 page)

“Forgive this child, Lord. Take her back under Your wing. Cleanse her soul. Make her pure again,” Mom rattled while she blew against the smoldering herb and coated me with the miasma.

“Oh, this is bullshit!” I heard myself scream. I pulled up from the chair, but Mom flattened me with her hand.

“That’s Satan talking. He lives under your skin, Lucy. Let him be as vulgar as he wants! He’s suffering! Hearing him curse means it’s working!” She puffed more sage and choked me with the smoke.

“He does not live inside me. If anyone houses him, it’s YOU.” I couldn’t believe my own mouth. I had never spoken to her like this.

“You’re possessed. God has always known this. That’s why the devil tainted you. Devil-girl.” Mom raised her hands to the ceiling. “I could feel his touch on you when you slid out of my body….”

Mother ran her hands up her thighs, over her crotch. She was speaking so loudly I thought that the Hanleys could probably hear her, but then I realized I was causing most of the racket. Panicking. Huffing out my tension. Yelling at her to keep away.

“…You were so hot, you slithered out of me like a snake covered in oil, and I could feel how he had already held you, I could smell his stench on you, a whore straight from my womb….”

“SHUT UP!”

“…That beastly red hair of yours….”

“WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? WHY CAN’T YOU JUST LET ME LIVE LIKE A NORMAL TEENAGER?”

“…Just one look at you and I understood. All of those horrible cramps I’d had while pregnant with you were just God’s hands trying to push you out….”

This time Tippy chimed in. She hustled over to nip at Mom’s heels.

“I should have killed you then. Before you were born. Let them suck you out of me like venom, I would pay again and again for someone to cut me open and haul you out and throw you on a burning pile, but no! I had faith that God would forgive you! Harlot!”

I stopped yelling. I didn’t even know what a harlot was.

How could I ever win this battle? Fight her disease and get Mom to see that she was utterly mad? What could she possibly want from me?

“I’m sorry. I didn’t…realize I’d done those things. Will God ever forgive me?” I whispered, trying another tactic. When Mom had switched to talking about aborting me, I knew we were driving down an entirely different street. For a second my empathy swelled and I realized that her craziness had much deeper roots than Brandy and I had ever imagined. But then my spine stiffened. Had she really had this perception of me since I was a fetus?

No wonder she hated me. Mom had always been drawn to Brandy, had such ease around her, shared laughter with her like they were best friends at a slumber party. With me she was stiff. Controlled. Anything but comfortable.

My eyes watered as my face heated. Whatever substance Mom had used to smear the sage gave off fumes that made it almost painful to breathe. I used this and acted as humbled as I possibly could.

She embraced me. Mom welcomed my tears and met them with her own.

“We’re going to do this together, Lucy. You and me. We’re going to clean you up, let God see you in your pure form. Let Him understand your stupidity.”

“Yes, Mommy.”

I let her pull me up beside her, the sage starting to dry on my face. The herb itched, but that discomfort was nothing compared to my humiliation at being half naked and the victim of another of Mom’s crusades.

When she opened the basement door, the panic instantly set in. Mom walked behind me, closing us in, this space in the house still much larger than the shed. I thought of my sweater left upstairs and how goosebumps were swarming my skin, the cold air almost tangible.

She was escorting me to my tomb.

“Keep moving.” Mom poked me in the back with the herbs in her hand. I hadn’t realized that I had stopped on the stairway. “Go over there, by the window.”

I knew where she was taking me. Brandy and I hated this room. We hadn’t opened the door in years. The last time we did Tippy slinked in and barked at the air, something she never did. The dog’s reaction had terrified us.

But Mom had altered it some. The floor was no longer covered in coal dust, and two old comforters had been thrown inside. My quick assessment also revealed six jugs of water and what looked like a bucket in the corner.

She pushed me in. I expected her to slam the door shut, but Mom joined me. Tippy was nowhere to be seen. She always hovered beside me, and I was practically hyperventilating when I couldn’t find her.

“Stop looking for your dog. I left her upstairs. This is about you and God, and that damned dog doesn’t have any part in it.”

I stood with my hands wrapped around my chest. Not knowing what to expect. Despite the cold, I had been sweating so hard I could smell my own body odor under the scent of sage.

Mom left me for a second and powered on a machine just outside the door. She didn’t explain and I didn’t ask, but I could instantly discern a change in the air. Somehow she was pumping heat into the coal room! I looked up and saw a hole cut into the woodwork above the door, a tube inserted from the other side.

She lit the sage again. Puffed smoke at me. Walked around the small space and seemed to light it afire, fanning the bundle at the walls and back again at me. I choked, and her eyes crackled with joy.

“I can see the devil in there, Lucy. In your soul. You must let him out.” Her finger touched my chest, my heart freezing upon impact.

Mother danced in the cramped space, her hands clutching the herbs, the smoke spinning through the room. The vision itself was astounding. For a second I pictured her chanting around a bonfire, a witch doctor trying to heal my wounds, and realized that maybe she actually had good intentions. This didn’t seem like punishment. More like a last ditch effort that Mom had concocted to save me.

“I will, Mom. But I don’t know how.” Thinking of Mother as someone trying to salvage me, I felt a huge weight lifted from my shoulders.

“None of us know how, sweetie. You have to find it within yourself. Let go of the devil and let God in. He will help you.”

She worried the sage through the air again, touched the concoction stuck to my forehead, and left me alone in the coal room.

When the door shut I half expected demons to jump out at me. I imagined them as children playing hide and seek, watching me, giggling, waiting until I was unaware before they attacked.

But thankfully they never showed.

I let my eyes adjust to the darkness. In my bedroom, Tippy and I had every inch memorized and lived as easily in the pitch black as we did at high noon. But here, with no lights, and the window boarded up, I stumbled over the comforters as I moved away from the door. The heat was really pouring in and I was thankful, for the blankets were stiff with cold. I sandwiched myself between them, shivering, wishing that I not only had Tippy’s companionship but her body heat as well.

I closed my eyes and thanked God that I wasn’t stuck back in the shed. That time in my life had been maddening, and I couldn’t fathom enduring this with a foot of snow on the ground and the cold metal walls closing in on me.

But my words didn’t come back to me. If Mom was right and God for some reason hated me, why would I feel so comfortable talking to Him? As I always had? Wouldn’t I feel ill attending church? Wouldn’t something horrible strike me down if God loathed me and I entered His house? I prayed all of the time. I talked to God dozens of times a day. If He couldn’t stand me to the point that He wanted to strike me down as a fetus, why would my words enter the world with such ease?

I curled up as tightly as I could. The blowing heat made for some company, the noise rather calming. Listening to it, I imagined waves and an ocean that I had never seen, except in pictures and movies. I closed my eyes. Approached the faraway water. Ran into it, my body soaking up the hot sun, my arms outreached toward Heaven.

Joan

The dog slept with me for a change. We giggled a lot about you, locked downstairs in the dark. The door bolted shut. Sweating away your sins.

Could God ever forgive you?

I fed Tippy popcorn, took her on a car ride, even bought her a big bone from the butcher that was almost the same size as her body. We had a blast. A couple of times she pawed at the basement door, wanting you. I pushed her away with the broom and we went on, pretending you didn’t exist.

I couldn’t help but stare at her face. Her bad eye. The scar from the botched job at the cheap vet her first owners had taken her to still showed the marks from the stitches, made her look like a rag doll.  When I tried to touch it, she jumped away.

We were doing fine until the morning, two days after your venture into the basement, that Aunt Evelyn joined me at the kitchen table. I hadn’t seen her in so long I had almost forgotten how she seemed void of all things feminine. Her skirt was long and disguised the way she sat, slightly slumped in the wooden chair, legs spread wide like a man. I appreciated the length of her hair, the thick braid that adorned her back but looked as though she’d slept in it for a week without brushing it in between times. She looked rugged. Wizened. Old.

“I don’t know why anyone would allow an animal to live inside the house. Dogs belong in the yard,” My great aunt told me, her fingernails tapping the table. “What will you do next, spread feed for the chickens in the laundry room?”

“I don’t have chickens.”

“That’s odd. I could swear I heard them clucking before I came downstairs. Do you have my tea?”

I served Evelyn the hot chamomile she loved. Remembered, after all these years, to put honey in the bottom of her mug and let the hot water do its trick.

We said little. I read the newspaper, actually took a bit longer dissecting it than normal, while Aunt Evelyn polished an ax.

“Must you do that at the table?” I asked. After all, it was my house.

“Someone has to be prepared.” She ran her cloth over the sharp surface, and I became almost mesmerized with her methodical movements. If I had gripped the weapon like that, my fingers would be lying on the floor. But Evelyn didn’t have to worry about such earthly problems. She folded her fingers around the edge of the blade, practically burned the metal sterile with her tight grasp and frenzied cleaning.

We exchanged short glares. I knew why she was here.

“I’m handling things.” The newspaper folded, I took it to the pile by the fireplace.

“Oh, indeed you are. As I’m certain you tell your mother on a regular basis. How long did it take her to bleed out, an hour? Or much less?”

“Please. How rude.”

“Just being honest, dear. You can’t spite me for that.” She pursed her lips, raised her eyebrows in that creepy way she had, and downed some of her tea. “Now, let’s get to work, shall we?”

I did as instructed: cleaned the table, put a kettle on the burner, brought my aunt all of her files, including the new ones she had carried in with her, and put the dog in my room so she wouldn’t be a nuisance while we studied.

“This one was always fascinating. She was a half-breed, long before it became fashionable. All of her children died as they pulled them from her womb. Six of them, flexing and stretching and apparently eager to join the world. Until their legs passed through. Then it was downhill fast. All of them dead within minutes.”

“What a tragedy.” I understood the woman’s pain. The disappointment of longing for your own flesh and blood to appear and instead being handed a corpse.

My mind flashed to Alex. His laughter. How Brandy was just like him.

I tried desperately not to think of you.

“Stay on task.” Evelyn said.

“But I’ve read these files over and over again. What else could I possibly learn?”

“What else? How about a lesson in standing tall? That it’s not butchery but the preservation of the human species you’re fighting for?”

“You’re one to talk. When have you ever taken matters into your own hands? It’s one thing to study something but an entirely different story when you have to do it yourself.” I stared her down.

“Good God, child. Don’t you know anything?”

Her astonishment stirred my curiosity.

“I thought I pretty much knew it all.”

We both sipped our tea.

“Do you ever see my mother?” I missed her, even now. Fifteen years later, and I could still see her watching my tragedy unfold, the terror in her eyes, the helplessness she felt written across her face like someone had scrawled it in black magic marker.

The utter devastation I felt when he took her hands, the blood dripping onto my skin, and used them on me. While my mother continued to watch, knowing that soon she would die.

“That’s an odd question. But yes, I have. Just not recently. I spend my time elsewhere.”

“How was she?” I perked up. For just a second I could feel my mother’s embrace. However fleeting, it brought me back to the innocence I used to have.

“As well as could be expected. She gets along without her hands, but it is quite challenging for her. Alex helps out.”

My mug slipped from my grip and shattered on the floor. In the room upstairs I could hear the dog barking, afraid I was being attacked.

“You’ve seen Alex?”

Sitting across from my great aunt polishing her battle ax, I could smell him in the room. Even in my chair my legs started to give way and I had to push my back flat against the cushion in order not to fall off.

With my eyes closed, I could swear it was the early 80’s and my husband was just returning home from work. I would watch the clock and wait for him every day. Alex would come in, pull me into him, his breath and sweat and long-since-applied after-shave meeting my nose and overwhelming me with a wave of absolute comfort and serenity.

That same scent met me in my chair. What would Alex think of me now? He was handsome and pure. When other women walked past us on the street, their eyes lingered on him, then flashed toward me with jealously and even a bit of outrage that he would have me and not them. Alex radiated energy.