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And no one would care.
* * *
—
I continued to pretend to be good, because I knew of no other way. The woman from the floor had spread rumors that I was truly insane, and no one spoke to me. I did not mind; I had no use for friends among the other prisoners.
I watched carefully. The cell doors were always locked. A nurse escorted me to my only meal with other people. We went down a hall that connected to the large common room. The doors leading out were guarded. Nurses worked alone, but they never left individually—always in a pair. So any idea of overpowering a nurse and stealing her uniform was out of the question.
I had no weapons. No means of obtaining one. Even if I were to devise an escape, what would I do once I got out? I could not go back to the Frankensteins, could not go back to Lake Como. I would be what I had always feared: cast out, penniless, destitute. The walls that bound me went far beyond this asylum.
Each day was the same, an infinite parade of degradations and torture accomplished by unyielding women and overseen by the condescension of uncaring men. If not mad already upon internment, surely no mind could withstand the torment of this hell.
I focused on avoiding laudanum, though I also longed for the release of it. Surrounded by blank-eyed, foggy-minded prisoners, I was both repulsed and envious. Was that how we endured? How we survived? It was how I had lived my whole life: willfully ignoring and erasing truths around myself.
I held off; the nurses did not care so long as I was manageable. But without a goal, without something to achieve, I could feel any resolve or strength I once thought I had slipping away. Soon, doubtless, I would let laudanum claim whatever time I had left before Victor was ready for me.
* * *
—
I had begun talking to the nurses, though they were rough and unkind and never spoke back. But I had to do something to occupy myself, and we inmates were not permitted much conversation at supper. I wanted to unburden my mind. To strip away all the falseness I had clothed myself in, until I stood, naked and unformed, truly myself.
Most days I spoke of Justine. Of my guilt. Of her goodness. I circled ever closer to the truth, a wound still too raw to touch. When I finally spoke the truth, I would give up. I would take the drugs. And I would look for whatever blank forgetfulness I could find.
The forty-fifth morning of my captivity, I lay on my cot with my eyes on the ceiling, trying to find pictures in the cracks of the plaster. The nurse came in with my food. Breakfast and dinner were choked down in solitude so we would not have our delicate nerves overtaxed by socialization.
I glanced at her, avoiding eye contact. The nurses interpreted a direct look as threatening; it was a guaranteed way to be bound to the bed for a day or two. I had begun to develop calluses on my wrists and ankles. Besides, I had just ended my monthly courses, during which I had not been permitted to leave my bed at all so as to avoid taxing my strength. I did not want to spend any more time than I had to in here.
But in my furtive peek, there was something in her clever dark eyes beneath the stiff white cap that reminded me of someone I had once known. Or maybe I just longed for a friend. Any friend.
I did not deserve a friend. I was ready to tell the truth. I closed my eyes, finally letting the memory play out as it had actually occurred.
“Can I tell you a story? Justine loved this story. But this time, I will tell it the way it really happened. I always lied to Justine. I wanted the world to be more beautiful for her. The world is ugly. Uglier now, without her. Anyhow. Here is my story:
“I needed Victor. I needed him to love me. So I climbed a tree and brought down a nest of robin eggs as blue as the sky. He picked up the first egg, holding it to the light of the sun. ‘Look. You can see the bird.’ He was right. The shell was translucent, and the silhouette of a curled-up chick was visible. ‘Like seeing the future,’ I said. But I was wrong. The future would be revealed in a few more moments.
“He lowered the egg and used his knife to crack it open. I cried out in shock, but he ignored me. He peeled back the egg, grimacing as liquid spilled out onto his hand. He never did like to get messy. Digging up the bodies must have been hard on him. That
is probably why he choked little William. No blood.
“So Victor pulled the chick free. He let out a trembling breath, and I realized he was scared. He looked up at me—and because I did not want to lose this chance at a new life, I nodded for him to keep going. ‘I can feel its heart,’ he said. The chick shuddered and shivered and then went still. He peered at it, pulling its tiny claws, its wings that would never unfurl. ‘How did the egg keep it alive? And where did what made it alive go, I wonder, when its heart stopped? It was alive, and now it is just…a thing.’
“?‘We are all just things,’ I answered, because I had never been more than that to the people who had raised me. Victor looked thoughtful. He held out the chick to me, as though I would want to hold that little piece of death.
“I took it. He watched me closely, so I acted as brave and curious as he had been. I acted as though we had not done a terrible thing. I said, ‘You should cut it open, see where its heart is. Maybe then you will know why it stopped.’
“Victor looked how I had felt when I discovered the nest: like he had found a treasure.”
I sighed, numb with the release of finally telling the rest of the story.
Of all Victor’s crimes, of the murders I now knew he had committed, that tiny bird haunted me the most. Perhaps because it was easier to think of a bird than of Justine, or of William. But probably because I had been complicit. I had made myself Victor’s that day. I had chosen to look directly at whatever he did, unflinching, unjudging. I continued that for the rest of our childhoods together. I never asked what happened to Ernest’s arm in the cottage. I just dealt with it and took care of Victor.
I never asked, and he never told me, and we both assumed we were protecting the other. Was it any wonder he thought I would continue as his forever, after bloodying my hands at the moment of our meeting?
That was, I thought, the moment I ceased being Elizabeth and became his Elizabeth. And now I could be neither.
“God in heaven,” the nurse said. “What have they done to you?”
