(TRIGGER WARNING PLEASE READ: This chapter contains allusions to sexual assault as well as other dark topics. Please do not read if this may trigger you )

PART TWO

Early the next morning, I watched as the golden light danced through my bedroom window and felt no different at thirteen than I had at twelve. I pulled on the frock Grandmother had laid at the end of my bed for me. It was one of her old ones, with a new, tighter-fitting corset that fit snugly over my bust, and a cream petticoat with ruffles. She had stitched a small flower, a daisy, into the underside of the collar. I found myself wishing for a more boyish attire, since these dresses and corsets hurt to wear, but I knew never to complain.

Downstairs, my mother stood over her mixing bowl, staring into it as though she were wishing it would mix itself. She did not say happy birthday. I finished fixing my dark hair under my bonnet, using the back of a spoon as a mirror.  I didn’t look bad, with my dark eyes and thick eyebrows, but I wished I took after Mama more than Father. She was beautiful.

Mama kept her eyes on the bowl and sighed. “Nathaniel was supposed to get the eggs.”

“Mama, Nathaniel left weeks ago, remember.” I rubbed my hand up and down her arm, which was cold and bumpy. “I’ll go to Lowry’s and collect more for you. Do you have something to trade?”

Finally, her feet moved, and she walked over to the pantry and opened it up, though I’m not sure it was my Mother making these movements. Something inside her was working enough, but it wasn’t her anymore. I don’t remember when she changed, but I do remember her infectious laugh and how, when she used to smile, it felt like a hug. She pulled out a large tin and passed it to me. Inside were a few pages of writing scrawled in black ink. 

“What are these?” I waved them in front of her face. 

“I don’t know. They’re Matthew’s.” 

“What do they say?” I devoured each twist and turn on the page but hid my excitement. I saw the words miles and left, but didn’t want Mama to see me reading. Not that she paid much attention to anything anymore. I could die right now, and she’d probably just sigh. 

I tried to read the pages as I walked through town, glancing down every time I was alone. The first page seemed to be a set of directions, from Eve to somewhere called Samuel. That couldn’t be right. We had all been taught the history in Sunday School: there was a war which destroyed the land and killed over half the population, so the Godless fled the country as it had become uninhabitable. The founding fathers of Eve refused to leave and instead prayed for protection. There was nothing beyond the fence except barren wasteland and the ruins of a world we did not know of. I pushed that page into the front pocket of my birthday frock, safe alongside the notebook. Surely six pages were enough for eggs? The Lowrys were family friends whom I had known my entire life. Well, I’d known everyone in this town my entire life. There were fewer than a hundred of us. The other pages seemed to consist of recipes for meals and ointments. 

I carried on, passing the church and the schoolhouse, turning onto the road where Mr and Mrs Lowry’s grocery shop stood. I clutched the remaining papers to my chest as I pushed open the doors. The bell above my head rang out, and Mr Lowry appeared at the desk. He was tall and lean, and had very thick dark grey hair that fell across his forehead in a way that seemed to obscure his view. It was usually Mrs Lowry who manned the shop until other women started accusing her of eating the stock due to her weight gain. They were probably right.

“Six eggs, please.” I smiled. 

“Of course, Mary dear.” There was a twinkle in his blue eyes, and he reached up onto a high shelf beside him and brought down the egg basket. “Oh, did your mother give you something to trade with?”

I fished the loose pages my mother had given me out of the bag and placed them on the counter. I still wasn’t sure what they were for. Mr Lowry chuckled again as he sorted through them, inspecting both sides of each page thoroughly. 

“There are only six pages here. I asked for seven.” 

I stared at him. I shouldn’t have taken one, but something inside of me told me it was important, that I needed to know. “That’s all she gave me,” I shrugged.  “I’m sorry.”

“Well, it’s not enough.” He drummed his fingers along the counter. “ I can’t give you my eggs if I’m not being paid fairly in return, can I?” He questioned, his thin mouth curling up at the corners.

“No, Mr Lowry.” I shook my head and went to gather the papers back up, but he snatched them away with his left hand, grabbing my wrist with his right. His grip was tight. 

“But…” He began as he pulled my arm closer to him, crushing my ribs against the side of the counter. “There may be another way you could pay me, so that your mother won’t be upset about not having any eggs, presumably to bake your birthday cake!”

“I don’t have anything else on me, Mr Lowry,” I pleaded, trying to pull my hand away. 

He didn’t loosen his grip, only tightening it more, pulling me so close that I was practically sprawled on top of the counter. My legs lifted off the ground. Mr Lowry was smiling, and I didn’t like it one bit. 

“Oh, Mary, what I’m asking for is much simpler.” He tilted my head upwards, and I saw into his cold blue eyes. They weren’t twinkling, but glistening in anticipation. I should have cried out, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. He grabbed my chin and forced his lips upon mine. I felt that warm sliver and flick of his tongue against my teeth, and I opened my mouth and bit down as hard as I could. I didn’t even mean to. It was a reflex. He let out a scream and grabbed my neck with both hands, hauling me over the counter completely. I tried to protest, flailing my arms and legs, but he was much bigger than me. One dirty hand went over my mouth. One dirty hand went to his belt. He pulled it off and threw it to the ground, where it recoiled like an old leather snake. Blood dribbled down his chin as he forced himself upon me. I knew then what he was going to do to me. 

Then, all I could see was white. I couldn’t stop shaking, every one of my puny muscles tensing and untensing so fast and hard, and my eyelids began to flicker too, like the oil lamp outside my bedroom window that kept me up at night sometimes. I wasn’t in Lowry’s shop. I was surrounded by whiteness. White sheets hanging on the washing line, crisp as Sunday mornings. And there was that sound again. The singing. The wailing.

(Mary) 

(mARy)

(MaRy)

The long tendrils of the oak tree stretched towards me. They curled around my ankles and wrists and lifted me upwards and upwards until I was face to nobbly face, eyes formed from cracks in the bark. It smiled at me, and then the white turned to pale grey, and out of the grey came Lizzie Smith, splayed out on the floor with Mr Lowry on top of her, too. As I whirled around, there was Lizzie Smith again, screaming on the floor. She was covered in blood, and there was something coming out of her. 

A baby.

Then there were hands I recognised, Father’s, clutching the baby tight as Father Callahan dragged Lizzie’s still body away into the darkness. The baby was crying, and then other hands, hands I didn’t know, had taken the baby and were running away, and in the middle of it all, the oak tree stood watching.

And then the greyness was gone. And I wasn’t shaking, but I was hurt all over. And Mr Lowry was sitting in the corner of the room, doing his belt back up. 

“There,” he winked. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

I shot up, grabbed the eggs and ran home. It was still light outside, but I felt heavy. I scrubbed the floorboards and darned the socks and hemmed the skirts and cooked the dinner and barely spoke a word. Mama finished my cake, but I didn’t touch it. When I blew out the candles, I wished for nothingness. Father was happy enough to devour it all, licking the crumbs from his fingers. Grandmother watched me from her rocking chair as I swept up before I went to bed, and it felt as though she knew. She always knew, but never said. So I never said either.

I don’t know how many days and nights passed until I truly let myself relive it. I hadn’t even known that what he did to me was possible.  It was only when I reached the end of Faith’s diary, where she wrote about her friend’s father taking her behind the animal shed and doing the same things, that I let myself feel. It wasn’t fair. Men were so much bigger and stronger, and they were in charge of everything. Women were the sinners, they told us. I used to hate Eve for taking that fruit, but perhaps she was just hungry, and men didn’t like that she provided for herself.

I couldn’t help but feel responsible for what had happened. Mr Lowry kept giving me colourful boiled sweets every time I visited on Mama’s behalf, the kind I loved as a child, but they tasted sour. I saved them up in a little pouch each week and gave them to Meggie, whose face always lit up in excitement. She asked about the diary, and I told her that I hadn’t finished reading it. Always lying. Perhaps Mr Lowry was right to punish me. The tree had kept itself on the outskirts of my mind, showing no more vision. I thought I was mad. Crazy. Like Mama. But one night, the tree’s song became so loud that I collapsed to the floor with my head in my hands and screamed so loud that half of Eve were waiting outside the house to see if I was okay. The illness, they were probably all thinking. 

Doctor Harpenden and Father Callahan stood either side of my bed, with Father Callahan reciting the Hymn of Protection over and over as Doctor Harpenden took my temperature and wandered his greasy hands all over my stomach, pressing and feeling and even pushing his ear against my belly and listening.

“My child,” he whispered softly. “You are a miracle. Like the Virgin Mary herself.”

Grandmother gasped. I felt something inside my stomach writhe. 

“I’m pregnant?” I choked, staring from Harpenden back to my father. “I haven’t sinned, I promise!” I searched my mind for the scriptures. “‘Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.’ I would not sin against myself!”

Father Callahan knelt by my side. “Are you telling the truth, Mary?”

I nodded violently. “Of course I am. I would not disrespect our Lord”

“Then, as Doctor Harpenden said, you are a miracle. Immaculate conception, like how Mother Mary had Jesus.”

Doctor Harpenden turned to my father. “You should keep her inside for the next nine months, for her own safety. Do not reveal this pregnancy to anyone in case it does not reach full term. We know what happened to the others.” 

My father nodded. They meant Lizzie. Maybe they meant Faith. Faith’s entries stopped soon after she talked about being assaulted. What if she had been pregnant too,  and met the same fate as Lizzie? What if that was going to happen to me? I cried until I fell asleep again, and that familiar white landscape engulfed me. 

The tree’s roots guided me tentatively through the haze until I came upon a well. It was not the well outside the church, but a much bigger, red brick one. I peered down inside it and heard something crying. 

“Please! No!” Came a voice, and when I turned around, I saw Nathaniel on his knees, begging. His hands and feet were bound with twine. “I didn’t mean to find it! Father, please, don’t do this!’

My father towered over him, raising a hand. “You liar!”

Before I could reach them, the vision had wavered, scattering into a million fragments.