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I picture my mother’s hands, strong, callused.
Broken visions of her have appeared before my eyes several times since being left for dead in this godforsaken barn. Each time, she is walking through the barn, toward me. She is wearing the same white and yellow housedress as the day she died, stained and splattered with blood. Her skin is white, luminescent under a bright aura that circles her.
Each time I begin crying, despite myself. Begging for her to help me, to set me loose.
To save me.
To love me.
But in this vision, she never speaks, just advances close enough where I can almost—justalmost—touch her with my toe.
Mom. Come here, Mom. Mommy, come here.
Help me.
She stares down at me, watching me beg with minimal interest. An apathetic expression ofI told you so.
It’s your fault.
I sob, continue to beg, growing more and more desperate, my insides feeling like they are about to come out of me. Then, she smiles. But her teeth aren’t human, they are animal, sharp, pointy, and covered in blood.
“Chin up, shoulders back,”she says before fading away, into the cloud of gnats hovering overhead.
Chin up, shoulders back. Do you know what’s funny about that? My mother said those words often, but never to me. Never. Not once. It was always Anna.
I viciously kick at a mosquito buzzing low in the air. The maggot goes flying from my toe, lands somewhere in the dirt.
There is nowhere else to suck blood from me, I think as I scowl at the mosquito. My arms and legs are riddled with angry, red insect bites. A hot, bright red rash has formed on my inner thigh.
I bend my knee, bring my foot to the inside of my opposite leg and begin scratching away at one of the bites with my toenail. Harder, harder until sweat beads on my brow and the pain feels like electricity shooting through my veins. Harder still, until the skin peels away, revealing a slick, raw, pink pad of flesh. Harder still, until my nail punctures the flesh and I carve a hole. A thin trail of blood trickles down my leg.
I move to the next bite, one I had worked the day before. I rip off the scab and jab my nail into the yellow pus-filled hole.
My vision wavers, my clit quivers.
I shift my weight, moving my buttocks in a circular motion until the tip of the twig I have been sitting on for days is pointing into my anus.
I grit my teeth, viciouslyjab, jab, jabthe nail into the pus.
Harder, harder.Harder.
With a guttural scream, I come.
Tears run down my face.
Where is Rhett?
Jesus Christ,where is Rhett?
31
Marjorie
I’m scared of my daughter. There, I said it. I’ve realized that I’ve been scared of Sylvia ever since that day at the Cherry Tree Festival. The day I found Anna at the bottom of the water embankment.
Last night I woke to Sylvia standing over my bed. I asked what she was doing. She said nothing and turned and walked out of the room.
It scared me.
