And Then She Fell, page 20
Write. You need to write. And keep writing. That’s how you’ll fulfill your destiny and save your girl.
By the time Dawn wakes, my head is full. I have no choice. I have to do what they say or they’ll never stop. I get up, pick up Dawn, and strap her into her car seat so she has somewhere comfortable to sit while I write. As I stand on the precipice of the staircase, though, her car seat heavy with her weight swinging slightly in my hands, the image of us falling down the stairs and cracking into hundreds of shards like demolished porcelain dolls appears behind my eyes like a premonition or warning. I stand at the top of the stairs, paralyzed, until the voice demanding I write gets loud again. Then I slowly step down, one stair at a time, balancing my weight just so before moving, then waiting until my heartbeat calms again before I continue down to the next, treating each step like the possibility of a fatal fall because that’s what it is. It takes almost an hour, according to the clock, but we reach the first floor intact and alive.
I was careful to switch the baby monitors so I could bring one down with us. I want to make sure I can hear Steve’s still sleeping the whole time we’re here. I even change the password on my laptop once it’s loaded. I can’t trust Steve. Not now that I know why he really courted me. I was just a job for him. A means to an end. I open the small bottle of Smirnoff I hid in the back of my top drawer beside the oxies and take a couple hard swallows. The voices dull, the way I knew they would.
Make sure to pump and dump.
That voice is Meghan’s. That laugh is Meghan’s. I pick the Smirnoff back up. I swallow and swallow until the laugh is finally drowned out.
CHAPTER 19
Mature Flowers Faces Her Fate
Pretty much right after the Ancient started demanding sex he got her pregnant. I know, right? It surprised them, too. Mature Flowers was sure this was the first real step toward making her the most important woman who ever lived. I mean, something as big as creating a new life so soon after her marriage couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? No way. The effects were simply too far-reaching—particularly in a place like Sky World, which was still reeling with the sudden introduction of death. No, life is never a coincidence. It’s always important—regardless of whether it’s made with intention or not, whether it lasts for centuries or flickers out like a brief flame. Besides, isn’t “coincidence” what you call a pattern when you haven’t quite figured out how to connect all its pieces yet?
Anyway, as I’m sure you coulda predicted, Mature Flowers really wanted to tell her dad about the new baby. She was sure he’d be so pleased she finally figured out her purpose—she was gonna be a mom!—but her dad disappeared. Hadn’t said a word to her since she married the Ancient, in fact. And she hadn’t said a word to anyone but the Ancient, either. He told her after their marriage that she wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone but him.
Still, Mature Flowers was nothing if not stubborn. Every day when the Ancient left their lodge, she’d go the Great Tree and hoist herself into its branches. Some of the nicer women in the village tried to ask her to come down. She wouldn’t listen. Even more frustrating for the women, she refused to speak to them. Mature Flowers hoped the Ancient would hear them gossip about her giving them the cold shoulder and know that she was being obedient to his wishes. Mostly. Technically, yes, she was talking to her dad, but she figured since he was dead, talking to him didn’t count. She didn’t really consider that the women she was ignoring would also gossip about who she was talking to in that tree. Big mistake, as we’ll soon see. But for now, all you need to know is she needed Daddy’s approval more than she needed any of theirs. Mature Flowers would sit up in that tree for hours and sing and cry and beg her father to speak to her. As the sun was starting to set, she’d hop down, wipe her eyes, and hurry home to make dinner like a good little wife. She’d smile no matter what the Ancient said or did to her when he got home, hoping that somehow, somewhere, her dad was watching her obedience and filling with pride.
Clearly, Mature Flowers was a mess. She’d married this asshole to make her dad happy, and now her dad wouldn’t even give her the satisfaction of actually being happy. No “Good job, kiddo!” No pat on the back. Not even a smile. He’d totally bailed on her, again.
Now, I could be a really good storyteller and build up all this tension and suspense, hammering in the idea that her dad abandoned her only for him to appear out of nowhere in her hour of need . . . but that’s actually really predictable and boring. Also it’s totally untrue. Remember when I said earlier her dad was a bit of a dick? I wasn’t lying. Not this time, anyway. Her dad was a bit of a dick. He never appeared to her again.
Are you bummed out yet? I told you Mature Flowers’s life sucked. You’re the sadist who stuck around to watch. But things will get better eventually. I mean, they don’t get that much better in the long run, but if you’re one of those glass-half-full types I’m sure you’ll find something to latch on to. Probably.
Or who knows? You might be here to watch her flounder, waiting eagerly for the moment Mature Flowers drowns. Maybe you’re into that sort of thing. Not everyone’s satisfied with a happily ever after. Are they?
CHAPTER 19.25
A Moment to Reconsider
Is there a definite, observable moment where interpretation becomes bastardization? If there is I’m flirting with it. I mean, I’m writing my people’s Creation Story—the story that lays out our entire worldview as Haudenosaunee—in the voice of a gossipy, irreverent young woman when common sense (and stereotypes) say I should be writing it in the voice of a sage old Indian man. There’s a reason that was the exact persona Steve instinctively took on when he so effortlessly tried on the role of storyteller. It’s a confined space, and a confining role, one that can trap our men in stereotypes and sand down our revolutionary edges, historicizing our urgent now-ness. That now-ness was exactly what Dad wanted to imbue all his stories with, sure that it would be the key to ensuring our people remained just as dazzled with our stories as ever—adults as excited to pass them on to their children as their children would be to receive them.
But the sage old Indian man is also the role that white folks are comfortable with us inhabiting, that they in fact hope we’ll keep inhabiting so they can keep pretending they aren’t still stealing our cultures, languages, and the lands that helped us carve out both, without which we’re nothing. The voice I’m using for this story emphasizes our modernity and humor. It’s the only voice that seems right, I know that, and it does in ways remind me of the amazing one my dad used, but even when I feel good about what I’m writing there’s a part of me that wonders what he would think. What Ma and Aunt Rachel would think. What my mysterious grandmother would think. What the community would think. Am I doing right by them? Is this traditional enough? Is that even worth considering? After all, isn’t it true that the only way we’ve kept the stories and ceremonies we still have is by allowing those stories and ceremonies to stretch, bend, shift, change?
The stuff about Mature Flowers’s dad is pretty heavily editorialized compared to most versions of the Creation Story I’ve heard. In most versions, he’s not even her dad but her uncle. He does show up, tell her to marry the Ancient, then leave. But most other storytellers don’t dwell on why he’s doing this or what its effects on Mature Flowers are. They also don’t talk about Mature Flowers going back to the Great Tree to try to talk to her father again. I made that part up. Instead, Mature Flowers unquestioningly does everything that’s asked of her. Not that different from Jesus’s mom, Mary, now that I think about it. Maybe that’s another stamp Christianity has left on our people’s minds and stories. Maybe it says something about the agency afforded women in colonized spaces—even women specifically tasked with birthing revolution and new worlds, like Mary and Mature Flowers. Maybe it’s a “coincidence.”
But this, right here? This moment in the story? This is a crucial moment. Every storyteller takes a firm stance. One moment Mature Flowers is in Sky World. The next she’s falling down a hole beneath the Great Tree. Did she jump, did she fall, or was she pushed? Each option means something different for our people, our history, our women. There’s responsibility in representation. You write some words and suddenly the entire weight of your people and their history is thrust upon your back. It’s heavy. It smothers. But you have to carry it if you want to keep it safe. Otherwise someone else will pick it up—a stranger, an outsider, an academic trying to make their mark—and they’ll do with it as they see fit.
I want to make the right choice. I do. I just don’t know what that choice is.
CHAPTER 19.5
A Musical Interlude
The sunlight has left me. Or maybe it wasn’t ever there to begin with and I’ve only noticed now. Either way, that’s how it is—as if a veil hangs over my life, dulling it, shadowing it.
I’m sitting in an ornate room, something big and impressive that would be called a parlor or smoking room by people more refined than me. Another place to be bottled up and perform. There are heavy burgundy curtains, velvet, hanging along the walls; there is marbled tile beneath my heeled feet. Gold frames everything it can frame—paintings, chairs, the edges of the piano and the bench beside it, which I am currently propped on. There is a turtle rattle in my hands and I’m hitting it in time with my own heartbeat, humming.
“No more of that. Come here.”
A person I don’t recognize gestures to the middle of the room. Their face is white as piano keys and smoothed of all wrinkles. Their lips are twisted into a smile that scares me. Everyone around me waits, their lips either pursed or pressed against a crystal flute of champagne or wine, maybe a tumbler of bourbon or gin. I am aware they are waiting for me. They don’t make noise or give me pointed looks to tell me this, but they make their expectations known, the way people like that do.
I drop the rattle and stand. I don’t remember making the decision to do so. The rattle clatters on the floor as I walk to the chair. I sit. A harp appears in front of me as if from a wisp of smoke and I know I have to play. I know it’s important I show no fear or hesitation. So that’s what I do, and as my fingers miraculously dance across the strings, I become aware of sharp pain. A dagger. It’s in my back and it goes deeper as I play, dragging down my spine, a rough rhythm vibrating within me with each bone it hits. Then something flies past my strumming fingers and as it lands with a wet red thwack, I know it is my flesh, just as I know I have to keep playing and show no fear because they will eat my fear like chocolate cake. If I leave any room for hesitation they will squeeze between my atoms, jam into those tiny holes of time and space inside me and lay a thousand eggs that will hatch into a thousand winged creatures that will feast on me from within, until they’re strong enough to control me and I have no choice but to watch the body I used to think of as mine succumb to the will of another, of many others, who are still, at the end of the day, just one. And so I continue to play and the sound of the notes continues to move the dagger across my flesh, tearing off chunks, and the people in the room continue to listen and watch and sip their drinks, and as I notice that my skin hits the marble in time with the song, I wonder: Are those observers amused or disturbed? Or both? Maybe others’ pain has been offered to them as fuel for their own pleasure so often they can no longer feel happy without first witnessing another’s despair. I watch them all watch me, mildly, as if this entire spectacle were only slightly more interesting than a middling true-crime podcast.
Suddenly, like a broadcast intrusion, my mind goes dark except for the quivering gray silhouette of the Shape.
“Hello?” I ask. “I’m here.”
But I’m not. I’m back in the gilded room with a dagger deep in my back, the harp strings making my fingers mush as they cry out bittersweet notes and the dagger moves faster with the song.
“Wait until you hear the climax. Pure bliss,” the mysterious voice calls out to the bemused onlookers as my blood splatters the bottoms of their expensive gowns and slacks.
Then, once more, everything blinks into black and the Shape is there.
“Don’t tell any of them—”
And I’m back at the harp playing, my fingers becoming bloody stumps, and I’m also a violin, feeling the bow quickly sliding back and forth along my newly exposed tendons and nerves, the ungodly screech emitting from my lips sounding like tortured strings in a demonic duet.
The Shape is back, their voice interrupting like a radio when you’ve driven too far away from the station.
“It’s important to remember—and get to the portal—”
The stringed symphony bursts in my ears and my eyes explode open and all of a sudden I’m no longer in that reality or the black blank space with the Shape but in the one that includes my office, where I’m lying beside the car seat and Dawn is screaming and my breasts are like two stones strapped to my chest leaking poison, so I push myself to my feet and lift her into my arms and try to feed her from them, but she spits me out and squirms like the worm at the bottom of a tequila bottle, and that reminds me about the alcohol I drank and how she shouldn’t be drinking from me anyway. So I prepare to make a bottle of formula that she’ll swallow up so much faster than anything my body has made for her, and after shaking the bottle until it’s mixed I set it down, pick up Dawn, and begin smashing her into the kitchen tile over and over and her little head bursts like a grape in my mouth and the blood is everywhere and it smells like copper and baby wipes and some has got in my mouth and I start to gag and shake until I realize I’m still in the office and I’ve done nothing wrong yet; I’ve only thought about doing something wrong. I remind myself to be careful, so careful, as I carry her softness into the kitchen to make her the bottle she needs and wants, trembling with the knowledge that I’m an absolute fucking monster for even thinking about hurting her. Occasionally wondering if there’s a way to tell which thoughts are premonitions and which are merely warnings.
CHAPTER 20
Tanya, Tea, and the Whispers of Trees
So,” Tanya says as soon as she shoulders past the door, as though we’re in the midst of an ongoing conversation that has spanned our whole lives, which has had no real beginning and will have no real end, “I spoke to some medicine folks down the bush about the stuff you told me.”
It’s the morning after that awful nightmare, and I’m holding Dawn close to my chest, my nose buried in the baby smell of her fuzzy scalp as I follow Tanya through the living room and into the kitchen. I’m not sure what I’m expecting from her, but I know what I need to do. The cockroach and Nadia from Russian Doll and snippets from the Shape all told me as much in their own ways. Quite simply: I have to be careful. I can’t tell anyone the full extent of what’s happening to me. Not right now. Maybe not ever, provided I don’t want to end up locked in some psychiatric facility. That’s the sort of thing Steve would do. The sort of thing generations of well-meaning white folks do for those whose visions and perceptions scare them: lock them away and drug them senseless. I don’t think I have to worry about Tanya doing that. Therapy and mental illness are colonizer shit. Our people would rather white-knuckle our problems than face doctors who either don’t believe our pain or blame us for it.
That’s what kept Ma away from doctors after her accident. She told them during her recovery that her hip, ankle, and knee were still in so much pain after the surgeries and rehabs, and they told her the problem was she was fat. That she was lazy, hadn’t fully committed to rehabbing her body, and was well on her way to a diabetes diagnosis. But she had rehabbed properly. I made sure she had. I drove her to all her physical therapy appointments and sat in the car in the parking lot to make sure she didn’t sneak off to a fast-food place nearby, the way she tried to the first couple times. When the physical therapist sent home a stapled set of exercises for her, we went through them at home together, me summoning my inner Jillian Michaels to coach her through the pain, and her summoning her inner George Costanza to complain about every single thing. But each time it would reach a point where her leg locked up, I had to help her to a chair, and she’d bite her lip to keep the tears welling in her eyes from pouring down her cheeks. Her doctor said the solution was losing weight but didn’t explain how she was supposed to do that when even moderate exercise sent one side of her body ablaze with pain. It seemed like he had given up trying to help her—and further, was terribly annoyed anytime she dared mention her ongoing issues, as if her anguish was a personal affront to him. The morphine and oxy didn’t stop the pain exactly, but they made it more bearable. Her doctor wouldn’t even prescribe her that, though, saying he was worried she’d come to rely on it too heavily and become an addict. Which is ironic, because his decision led to that anyway.
So-called modern medicine wasn’t meant to help people like Ma or my grandma or me. It couldn’t. The same way whatever Tanya brought with her today had little to no chance of stopping whatever forces I was fighting. Whatever they were—the threats from the houses, the messages from the Shape, the words of neighbors and cockroaches, the looks from TV characters and liquor store clerks—it was clear to me that they were intent on pulling apart the threads I’d so carelessly spun together and called a life. Still, I was hopeful that Tanya might hold some helpful part of the puzzle—a piece I’d had no chance of finding while I was still among spies and surveillance.
