It Will Just Be Us, page 18
13
At the sight of the gun, I freeze. I feel a ghost of the gun on the back of my neck, my mugger’s weight on top of me, the cold ground pressing into my cheek.
“We are not your slaves,” comes a voice from behind me, and I turn, put my back against the wall, and see Jonah and Meriday standing in front of the locked door. Jonah has his hands up in a pacifying gesture. Meriday is clinging to his side, hiding partially behind him as he shields her from August. “Your father was paying us. We cannot continue to work for you without pay. You must understand.”
“My father isn’t here anymore,” says August. The barrel of the long gun trembles.
“And we are sorry for your loss,” says Jonah.
“It is because of thee.” August’s face is twisted in a rictus of anger and grief. “First mother, then Constance.” He shakes his head. “But my father was weak. I am not like him. I am the master of this house now, and it is time I set it to rights.”
“Please,” Meriday murmurs into her father’s side. Her hands cling to the fabric of his shirt, twisting it in her fists.
“Go on,” says August. I am horrified by the look on his face. He always seemed a bit rash to me, and more hard-hearted than his father, but he has managed to keep his temper in check beneath a veneer of righteous calm. That all seems gone now. Here in its place is a darkness that lives in some men, waiting dormant for the kind of grief that will set it free.
“No.” Jonah lowers his hands and stands his ground.
“Get in!” August shouts. “You will obey me. I will not have thee traipsing around my house, as if I am not in charge of it. You will do as I say, or I will report thee to the authorities. Insolent swine! I’m sure your master would be glad to have his property returned to him.”
For a long, tense moment, I think that Jonah will not back down; I think that August, in this vicious, wild state, will aim the gun at his face and fire. But at last Jonah turns, and I see that the door to the locked room is standing open. Placing his hands on Meriday’s shoulders, he guides her into the dark room at the insistence of August’s gun.
I follow them.
August lights a lantern with the gun still propped under his arm, aimed at Jonah. By the flickering orange glow, he fixes chains to the bedpost and forces Jonah to close the free end around his ankle.
“When you are ready to obey me,” he says, “I will let thee out.”
“I will never obey you,” Jonah snarls. “I will rot before I call you master.”
“Please,” Meriday tries again, her voice small. Though she isn’t chained, she still clings to her father’s side. The lantern light gleams in her wide eyes.
August ignores her. When he leaves, he takes the lantern with him, plunging the room into darkness. Meriday gasps at the sudden loss of light.
I am here, too, in this darkness. My heart skips a beat as I listen to the grinding sound of August locking the door, his footsteps receding. Jonah’s and Meriday’s voices murmur softly in the dark. How long will August leave them here? I wonder, my heart crawling further up my throat. I try to find the window, but it isn’t here. When the window appears, I am not sure, but at the moment this is a windowless room. The room has not grown it yet. And they are trapped in the dark, in this amorphous negative space that seems larger by the day, large enough that they hardly dare ungrasp their hands to find where the room ends.
But I am not locked in. I feel my way back to the door and let myself out, closing it behind me and releasing a long, slow breath of relief. In spite of my escaping, horror churns in my gut. I stand outside the door, hoping August will return and let them out.
It is difficult to tell the passage of time when you are watching a memory. After a while, I hear Jonah and Meriday pounding on the door to be let out, begging, screaming. And I think they have been in there for a long, long time.
What is it that this room is hiding? My father killed himself in it. Jonah and Meriday were held prisoner. Julian will live here, too.
There is an evil in this room.
Just as I am finally backing away from the door, I see August return and release Meriday. I do not know how long it has been, but she comes out haunted. Her eyes are vacant, unfocused. When light spills into the room, Jonah holds up his hand over his eyes, which look blind and lost.
Instead of leaving, I wait and watch.
Meriday has been given tasks. Perhaps August let her out so she could tend to the house. She returns to give Jonah food and clean the bedpan, and she looks older now.
How much time has passed? Weeks? Months?
Years?
And I understand, now, all the glimpses I’ve seen of her and August in the house. Now they make sense.
Because fate is cruel, and because they had no one left in the world but each other, during the course of these years, Meriday and August grew close. I’ve seen their cordial, clipped conversations give way to familiarity. I’ve seen them in the evenings, sitting beside the fire while August reads, or teaches Meriday to read and write. I’ve seen her look at him with fondness—but a fondness conflicted with fear, with disgust. Imagine what it must do to her to have to be in August’s company and pretend that her father isn’t upstairs rotting away.
Eventually, Meriday became pregnant.
I never knew what to make of it. I’ve seen glimpses of her growing belly. She was so young, a teenager, but beautiful, glowing with pride, imbued with the gift of creation.
Meriday gave birth to a son who was fortuitously pale—pale enough to pass as white. She named him Lucius.
I know he was able to live as a white man for the whole of his life—that he never told anyone who his mother was. I know, because Lucius was my great-great-grandfather.
I wish I could go back in time and kill August. Julian, I think, you killed the wrong Wakefield. He was an evil man, and hasn’t the world had enough of evil men?
As I leave this hallway behind for my own room, I think of Clementine when she came limping stiffly out of the swamp, dripping with muddy water, her skin sodden, her eyes gleaming like reflected fire. I think of her final words to Meriday: I will protect you from what will happen to you. If you come with me, we can stop it.
Clementine, who could see the future, must have known what would happen between her daughter and August, must have seen Meriday’s attempts at refusal, the consent she was obliged to give, for to refuse him might have meant death or imprisonment. It was the same fear Clementine had carried with her from John Garrow’s plantation, the thing she was trying to save Meriday from all along.
But she must have known, too, that Meriday would give birth, and that her son would have children, and on and on, and eventually, somewhere down the line, a boy would be born, a boy unlike any other, a boy who could see Clementine for what she really was.
* * *
Safely back in my own room with the door shut, I pull out my father’s journal and open it to the desperate pencil scratches of its final entries. By this point he has been scribbling circles, spirals, zeros, onto the paper, filling them in with so much pressure that the page bubbles on the other side, at several points making holes with the sharp pencil tip. These holes in the paper, for some reason, concern me the most.
Will he tell me what he saw in the locked room? Can I comprehend what is really in there, what Jonah experienced when he was locked inside? What did my father see that so broke him, that made him commit the ultimate final act of his life?
Do I really want to know?
* * *
Please don’t think me a coward, Aggie.
I have been watching myself in this room. He is deliberate in his movements, but there is something in his eyes, something—would I see it, if I looked in the mirror right now? He is showing me what to do. He has been showing me the answer, all this time.
I think I will follow.
He—I—this version of myself—
how can I be me if I am also him? who is he if I am me?
I watch him, me, with a rash of stubble and bloodshot eyes, wearing my blue flannel and black jeans—where are these clothes right now? In the laundry?—fasten a rope around one of the beams in the ceiling. Where did he get the rope? In the basement. Yes, there is a rope down there, now I remember. Why is there a rope down there? Is it there for me/him, for this moment?
Once the rope is tied tight and proper, he sets the wooden chair that I am sitting on right now underneath. Is the chair in two places? Am I?
What are you doing, I wondered, the first time I saw. What am I doing? But I couldn’t sign to him because he cannot see me, I can only see me. Him.
And then I watched him put the rope around his neck—it is tied into a circle, a zero—and step off the chair. Me. I have watched myself do this. And I asked, why? And the next time I asked, why? Why? Why?
And the tenth time, and the twentieth time, and the hundredth time.
And he kept doing it. And I kept watching.
I watched him struggle when the rope pulls taut. It doesn’t break his neck; he’s not high enough, but he cannot get any higher. There is no way to create a larger drop. So he chokes, swinging, kicking, clawing. My His eyes bulge, as when you squeeze on the end of an underinflated balloon. His My face goes red.
It is awful. It is grotesque.
How can I watch this and keep coming back? I am fascinated. I cannot help it. How could I not watch this? It’s the same every time because it is only one time, I think, so many times and only one time, after all.
Why did he do it? I wonder.
And the more I wonder, the more I cannot understand, the more I understand, the more I will never know, the more I feel I know, what is it, why do I do it, is he telling me something? Where is he going? Where has he gone, once it is done and he hangs swinging in the air, staring and not seeing me. Where is he. Where am I.
Maybe he went through the Zero. Logically, I think, that could be the case. If he went through the Zero, then maybe he is in some other place right now, and maybe he has found the truth.
I have to follow through. I will follow.
I have just realized, they’re not in the laundry, after all. I am wearing my blue flannel and black jeans today. I haven’t shaved.
And there is the rope.
I will follow.
* * *
I close the journal and push it away from me, that sick feeling that lodged itself in my gut earlier tonight crawling around in the back of my throat.
Was it fate?
Did he do it because he was always going to do it, because it was his choice, or because he saw that it would happen? Is it fate that dictates what will happen to us, or do we? And if we do, does that mean whatever will happen will still happen as a result of us, of our choices and actions, or is there a possibility to change the outcome once you know it? Does observation allow us to change reality? Or is there nothing at all that we can do to change what will someday occur?
All of this is to say: should I kill my nephew?
PART FOUR
THE KING OF CUPS
14
Home, again. Elizabeth is back and resting. The color has returned to her face, and she is happily barking orders at me to fetch her a glass of water or a fresh pillow, so it seems she is doing just fine. Mother has been fussing over her more than usual, with checklists for when the baby comes and instructions for how to clothe, how to change, how to feed. She puts a hand against her belly and stares into her face. “You’re feeling all right?” she says, her voice hard, only half a question. And then, “Sing to him. He can hear you.”
Elizabeth eyes her suspiciously, leaning back to distribute her weight, hands planted against her hips. She frowns as if trying to think of a song.
Mother leans down, her face close to the bulb of Elizabeth’s belly button protruding against her lilac maternity shirt, and softly sings, “Oh my darling … oh my darling …”
I have to turn away.
A sour note lingers at the back of her desperate song.
Maybe she thinks if we get everything right, he will be fine. If we only love him, and care for him, he will be a normal boy. Maybe she thinks this is her second chance.
But all the love in the world won’t save a boy without a soul.
When I went through the pictures from Nathaniel’s camera, I found the one I had snapped from the laundry room closet. Where Julian should have been, right in front, flash lit, there was only the empty room. I don’t know why I thought he might appear in the photograph, why I thought I could make him tangible. It wouldn’t have proven anything to Elizabeth.
All moves apace for a day or two, with little interruption from the house. The world has renewed its regular rhythms, and I find myself floating through them like a leaf in a stream, pulled along by the current of time with glimpses here and there of passing moments like fish darting by.
I try not to think of my father, or Jonah, or Julian. I have reached a point where if I think of these things, my heart will begin sinking like a stone and anchor me in the bottommost depths of the river, stuck in one dark place while I watch time flow past above me, unable to partake of its cool movements.
But every time I look at Elizabeth, I think of Julian. “He could kill you,” I tell her, wondering if it isn’t too late, thinking of the yellowing bruises on my back. He could kill us all, at any time. We might never see it coming.
“I appreciate your concern,” she says, “But this isn’t the nineteenth century. I’m not likely to die in childbirth.”
“I don’t think you understand.”
“Leave me alone, Sam.”
Perhaps when she is at the top of the stairs, I can sneak up behind her and give her a push. I imagine her tumbling head over heels like a rag doll, the corners of steps jarring into tender flesh. No heartbeat. Having to carry that dead thing inside her womb for another week or two, then pushing it out, laboring to deliver a corpse into the world.
I shudder. Perhaps not.
But what if I nick her, just a bit, with a rusty blade, and she gets an infection, and that infection travels to the fetus, and …?
I imagine creeping up on her in the dark with an antique knife raised, and Elizabeth waking to find me there, a murderous phantasm come for her child. Samantha Wakefield, Killer of Infants, is what they will call me. And the people of Shadydale will whisper out of the corners of their mouths and tell the tale of the Mad Wakefields, insane killers all, with death in their blood.
No, there must be a better way. I spend my time brooding over the problem, waiting for inspiration, thrilled with terrible thoughts.
And then one morning, as I am grading papers, sipping coffee and pleased to be commenting with my lucky blue pen, there is a knock at the door.
I stop cold, dropping the pen midway through my sentence, angry that I have been interrupted. My heart thuds unhappily.
Elizabeth, who lounges on the couch opposite me here in the drawing room, absently flips the page of the magazine balanced on her enormous belly. “Be a dear and get that?” she says without looking up.
The knocking returns, a relentless rapping.
“What if it’s another Jehovah’s Witness?”
“Then thank him kindly for stopping and tear his brochure to shreds,” she says mildly, carelessly, and I wish she were the one to get up and check the door.
The essay will have to wait. I go to the door, and the knocking dies away as wood is pulled from knuckles.
Standing there, disheveled and desperate-eyed but trying to hide these things beneath a veneer of self-control, is—
“Donovan?”
A sweep of brown hair curls over his stubbled face.
“Sam,” he says brusquely, brushing me aside and looking around the foyer as if he will see Elizabeth hiding just behind the empty vase. “Where is she?”
“Don?” Elizabeth’s voice calls distantly from the drawing room.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
He looks at me strangely. “Your mother called me.”
“Is that Don?” Elizabeth calls again.
He takes a step forward, toward his wife’s elusive voice, but I move to block him. “Who said you could come inside?”
I am reminded of those easy evenings at their house, of being grateful to have his buffer between me and my sister and our tendency to get into little spats, but now I feel I must defend her from him. Don looks at me incredulously, as if he cannot believe I am trying to block him from entering.
Then, from the other end of the foyer, her voice softer now that she has approached, Elizabeth says, “Let him in.”
Grudgingly, I step aside. Elizabeth watches him blankly, her hair pulled away from her face only halfheartedly. Donovan moves forward but stops shy of touching her, even though his hands are outstretched.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she says without inflection. “And so is Julian. Is that all?”
He glances at me with a look that asks me to leave them alone, but I refuse to move. The front door is still open, inviting him to exit and inviting in the frigid winter air.
“Lizzie,” he says. “Can we talk?”
Silence lingers like smoke, subduing the foyer in its somnolence. Elizabeth stares at her husband with eyes beset by purpled bags, and the wind shivers her hair over her face. Finally, when the silence has grown so pregnant I expect it will burst at any moment, Elizabeth says, “Sam, would you close the door already? You’re letting in the cold.”
Shutting the door feels like defeat. I will be closing him in here with us instead of pushing him back outside where he belongs. “Are you sure?” I ask, my hand on the door.
“Yes.”
“But what about—?”
“Sam, close the door.”
All right. I close the door.
* * *
It requires a certain amount of convincing for me to leave the drawing room and allow the two of them to talk, although I do not go far, instead electing to eavesdrop from the hallway. My mother, after appearing and disappearing again, keeps away, mumbling to herself all the things she has to be getting on with.
