The Rattled Bones(74)

“Gram?” ?This time my call is a whisper.

I walk slowly up the attic’s bare wood treads, each one creaking as my footfall forces it to bear my weight. Creee-eeee. Thunder ricochets outside. And then silence. Except for my breathing, the groan of the stairs. Gone is the wind that burst the door open, then shut.

“Gram?” I let the question fall into the cushion of quiet. The total quiet. Silence pulls me up the stairs. The air turns colder with every ascending step. Paint, so palpable in the air now. I fumble at the wall when I reach the third floor but can’t find a switch. There’s a tickle at my face, a light brush. I reach for it and my fingers find string. I pull the cord, and light invades the attic.

I expect to see my gram.

I don’t expect to see Agnes.

But she is everywhere. On canvas. Her painted face.

One painting of Agnes at the shore, washing a tub of white linens against the rocks. Another painting of Agnes training tomato vines up sturdy sticks within her garden. Agnes in her open boat, oarless and drifting. Agnes in her open boat, rowing through a storm. Agnes flying over the sea, her arms stretched eagle-wide, her dress floating behind her. Agnes sleeping, her eyes closed, peace drawn over her every feature. Agnes soothing a swaddled infant at her chest, the sun high behind her.

Her large eyes stare at me from the walls, the ceiling. Images of Agnes are stacked ten, twelve deep on the easels, each one holding as many versions of her as they can bear. I turn slowly in the space, surrounded by Agnes. My heart skips and I remember my gram, the way she called for me. I scan the floor, looking for where she’s fallen, but the floors hold only stacks and stacks of Agnes.

“Gram?” I whisper.

Silence.

I reach out for the nearest canvas, and I want to trace the long line of Agnes’s jaw, the full spread of her mouth. My fingers hover just outside of her image before the canvas jumps, swatting me across the face. I fall back. Another canvas smacks at my head. A painting whirls at my legs. The air is stirring now, the attic a tunnel of whirling wind. The canvases fly at me, hurling themselves like discs. A thwap to my skull. A cut to my ankle. The corner of a frame digging at my arm. I bring my elbows high, my arms crossed at my face. I try to see my way back to the stairs, but the hard wooden edges of the canvas portraits stab at my sides, jab at my flesh. I drop to my knees, crawl to the opening of the stairwell. A print soars at me, throwing me off-balance, pitching me down the stairwell.

The stairs thud at my back, my head. Pain sears my backside, my shoulders, my pointed parts rattling over the steep stairs, the unforgiving steps.

Gram appears at the bottom of the stairs, her chest heaving, her face washed of color. She gathers me to her arms as I break across the bottom step.

“You’re all right,” I croak.

The attic settles to a still quiet above us. Rain pounds at the roof, the only sound.

“Of course I’m all right. But, Rilla.” She looks me over, her thumb brushing across my cheek. She clears my hair from my face. “What happened?”

“I heard you calling for me.”

“I wasn’t calling for ya. I heard ya yelling for me.”

I bend to sit up, press my fingers to my temple. My one knee screeches with pain, as if a hammer smashed it—the first tumble. The crease of the stair. I gather my leg to my chest and push down the pain. I hobble to a stand, and Gram steadies me as my body adjusts to the wounded parts of me.

“Why were ya up there?” Gram says it like an accusation, like it’s my fault I fell.

“I thought you needed my help. I was worried about you.”

“I’m right here.”

“Gram.” I look her in the eye, see the love I’ve always known. The woman who has been my grandmother and mother and everything in between. “You know her.”

“Know who?”

“Agnes.”

Gram’s face wrinkles. “I don’t know any Agnes, Rilla.” She puts the back of her hand to my head. “Are ya sure you’re okay?”

I brush her off, move slightly so that I’m standing by my own might. “The girl in your paintings.”

Gram’s face pales, her eyes searching mine. It is a minute, maybe longer before she speaks. I watch her try to make sense of what I might be saying. I watch her wrestle with the notion that I might know her girl. “Ya know her?”

“I do.” I take Gram’s hand and we walk upstairs together.

The paintings are gone. They are shredded canvas, sprawled over easels, broken pieces hurled into the attic’s corners. Shreds of Agnes hang from the windowsill. Agnes litters the floor. Her eye. A part of her mouth. Locks of her hair.

Gram throws her hand to her mouth. “Did ya do this?”

“No, she did.”

“Who?”

“Agnes.”

“How?”

It’s a question I can’t answer. I don’t know how any of this is happening, what force tore the canvas to scraps, but I know Agnes has been haunting my grandmother for years. Visiting her paintbrushes, in the room above mine, all my life. I think of how Gram told me my mother’s mind deteriorated so terribly while she was pregnant with me and know that Agnes has been trying to reach the women in my family for too long.

And I know all the things I have to tell my grandmother.