MAGDA
1862, Bear Creek, ME
She was eleven when I wrapped her in a wolf pelt and left her, alive, on Round Mountain. That morning I fed her little, she gobbled bread and butter then reached for more, but I slapped her hand, which pained me. I had not slapped her in many years and I ached with the hurting of it like a cramp in my foot when I’ve worn shoes too small.
I brought the wheelbarrow from the barn to the side of the garden. The barrow was thick, and like the thumb of a farmer, was creased with soil and the leavings of plants and vegetables that had rotted in its bottom. I played a game with her, putting her in the bed of it and pushing it around the cottage.
She was clever, and I feared she would guess what I was about, but I think she did not. She did her chores, brushing the floors, picking pieces of lint or hair from the seams between the boards. I watched her back through a crack in the barn as she milked the cow, pulling on its teats in a brutal manner that made me glad she did not mistake me for a cow.
For many years after I bore her, I knew not what I would do once she came of age. She was a mute and gentle child, and I hoped father would never take notice of her. Still, I laid awake nights, shivering at the bellows of bears and wolves and other large toothed animals that made nocturnal visits, killing our sheep and scratching at the door. I had once dreamed that sacrificing the babe would stave off the wild beasts, but I feared it was nothing more than a dream and I was not so heartless to think I could kill her myself.
When the sun rose to noon, I knew the heat would warm the forest creatures and they would sleep until sunset. I drank a tea made of white herbs and salts. I begged the child crawl into my lap and I held her there like a babe, and nursed her from my breast. She was a greedy thing and I had to flick her cheek when she bit, but it wasn’t long until her sleeping body fell limp and I was able to roll her off me and onto the floor.
I removed her little leather shoes with the worn spots in the toes and placed them in the garden where they might be found. I tore her frock in some places, cutting my finger with a knife, I spread blood upon it and put it in the cart with the naked child.
The dress I left hanging from a low branch, and the child I left deeper in the forest where I knew I would not hear the animals feasting.
In my mind I did not want to make her a thing that did not matter, that I had not cared for, but I left her as if she had never happened and hoped I would forget. I hoped there would be relief in the forgetting, a purge of all memory of her. Still, when I reached the garden I vomited great torrents of liquid into the patch of tomatoes and hoped the stench would keep away those that dared eat my fruit.
Hannah
1865, Bear Creek, ME
The fetid scent of mildew floated in a mist around my naked body as I woke. I sat up on the mound of leaves and dirt that I found myself cradled upon. It was daylight. My limbs were gray with embedded dust, my nails long as cleavers, my mouth dry with thirst.
I don’t remember what came before I woke, which was odd because I usually know everything-just as it is happening. For example, when I stood, my hair reaching from the crown of my head to the earth, I stepped on something. It hurt, and at that moment I knew I had trod upon a sharp stone. I walked carefully then, stepping only on the bulging moss and avoiding stones.
And when I slipped between the trees where scraps of sunlight flickered on the moss like light in a glass, at that moment, I knew I was walking through a forest.
My hair was thick and tangled; like a rug of prickly sheep’s wool. It hung stiffly against my back and fell heavy to my ankles, and I knew I was not cold. But I did not understand how I had once felt the itchiness of sheep’s wool.
There was a farmhouse at the edge of the forest and a woman, heavy breasted with a tiny waist, hung sheets on a line stretched between the back-door and a large oak tree where a little swing, hung by ropes, drifted back and forth in the breeze.
I went to ask her if she knew the feeling of sheep’s wool, but when I approached and opened my mouth, I realized I had no words.
“Oh God!” The woman gasped and held her hand to her breast.
It seemed she might reach into her chest and lift out the beating bird of her heart and give it to me.
She yanked a damp sheet from the wooden pegs that held it to the line, tearing a small hole in the cotton, and flung it around me, grasping the edge tightly at my throat.
And I knew, like I know all things as they happen, I knew I had been caught. But I felt not sorry for it.
The woman wrapped her thin arm about me and pushed, not roughly, but firmly, nudging me into her house. The windows stood open and songbirds came into the kitchen helping themselves to the breadcrumbs that had been left for them there.
“Hush, my sweet.” She told me, though I had not spoken.
She led me to a wee chair barely large enough for a child, and pressed me to sit in it. It was tight to my hips and my knees rose almost as high as my sprouting chest. The little chair had blue jays painted on the arms and as I picked at the paint, scraping it away with my soiled nails, I found the thing was mounted on curved rockers; and I knew then there had been a time I was soothed by that movement, the back and forth swaying of a chair. So I stopped ticking away the paint and rested my filthy hands, gently upon the wings of the birds.
The woman was not so young, but not yet an old woman. She dragged a metal tub to the hearth; I thought it must be heavy, the lip of it was thick and it was deep and wide as a fox hole full of cubs, but she moved it easily about her, spinning in a dance sort of way to swing it close to the fire. I had a thought, that once I had seen a woman twirling by the fire.
“That’s a good girl,” she said to me as she put oily rags upon the ashes in the grate.
I felt lightness at her words, as though she had reached between the buds of my breasts and gently tickled the beating bird of my heart.
She said, “We’ll get you clean as a babe, then you must sleep, for our father will be coming and he cannot find you.”
The woman fanned at the fire with her ragged skirt, lifting it almost to her knees so that I saw her ankles were pink and bright. Then I looked at my feet, at my ankles; I looked upon my legs and where my hips joined; nothing of me was pink, it was brown as dirt but for the ring of dried blood which stuck to a wisp of golden curls that sprouted at the center of me between my legs. And at that moment, I knew the blood was a new thing.
A chunk of dried mud fell from my thigh and burst upon the floor. I brushed my foot on the wooden planks, trying to hide it beneath the chair, for I remembered that the floor must be clean of dirt. But as I moved, more clots of it broke away from my skin and rained around me.
“No, no, darling,” the woman said, crisp as a piece of celery. “Stop squirming.”
She came with a dustpan and a little red broom to clean up the dust. I took the tools from her, and then guarded the floor, like an owl over a rabbit hole, against the mud that fell-and I swept it up quickly into the dustpan.
“You are hungry, but you will have a bath first.” she said as she poured a pail of water into the tub.
Many times she pumped clear water from the sink, filled the bucket and hung it over the fire to warm. I began to sweat in the room as the tub was filled and I scratched at my neck, chipping away a crust of dirt and leaving a red mark.
“Don’t scratch,” she told me, “you will get an infection.”
She came at me with a pair of garden shears, rusted at the joint of the arms, but I was not afraid. At that moment I remembered I had understood fear.
I felt the metal slide upon the back of my neck and heard the thick groan of the iron as it luxated the mat of hair, then, in a second cut, severed it completely so it fell in a thud. The woman gathered it and threw it on the fire, raising flames high into the shoot.
“We must burn everything.” She said. “No one can know that you quicken.”
I nodded, and felt afraid. At that moment, I realized I did not know everything. I did not know why I was afraid.
She helped me into the bath; the heat made my skin prickle and I struggled to get out, but the woman held me in and rubbed her hand on my back.
“There, there, it will cool in a moment.” So I was calm.
She twisted a piece of rag and water fell in a rainstorm from it; she wiped it on my face, in my ears and squeezed water into my brow until I closed my eyes and laid back. The nap of my hair was still long enough to pillow my neck against the edge of the tub.
When the woman was finished bathing me, she brought a sheet from the line. Though it was clean, a shadow of blood lay upon it almost seam to seam.
“You do not remember, but I have wrapped you in this before. It was yours and mine together, and mine before you were born to me.”
She sat upon the floor with me swaddled in the sheet and I stretched across her lap as she stroked my cheek. Her body swayed back and forth like the little chair and she crooned softly in my ear.
When I began to nod off, she whispered, “No yet, my sweet. You must eat first, until you are full.”
She pulled a fat breast from her blouse and put the weeping nipple to my mouth.
