Burn Our Bodies Down(55)

Is this where that dress came from?

Yesterday I would’ve called this proof that the dead girl came from Fairhaven, that Gram was keeping her hidden. Now I know better. This isn’t enough to force the truth out of Gram.

“Okay,” I say slowly. “You wanted to show me a dress?”

“It was your mother’s,” she says. “Lots of this was. She barely took anything with her when she left.” Gram turns around, tilts her head. “She almost didn’t take you.”

Shock punches through me. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been thinking that my whole life. I’ve never heard it out loud before.

“She did, though,” I say, once I’ve gotten my breath back.

“Well, after all that, I should hope so,” Gram says. She steps toward me, the dress still in her hands. I go rigid as she holds it up to my shoulders, smooths it along the collar until her fingers are pressed against my neck. “Doesn’t that look nice?”

Nice? Gram with a stack of clothes and a girl to dress them up in, before she sent her out into the fields to die. It was something abstract yesterday, something I could pick up and put down. Now it’s the two of them in the attic, Gram’s hands soft on that other girl’s cheeks, and maybe Gram didn’t set that fire, maybe Gram didn’t decide to end it, but the door just closed on any kind of innocence for me. I don’t think there was ever any here to begin with.

“I don’t know,” I say nervously.

“Try it on, then.”

“That’s okay.”

“No,” Gram says, a hardness suddenly running through her voice. “I insist.”

I look around, feel goose bumps rise on my skin even in the attic heat. “Okay, I’ll just go to my room and—”

“Nonsense.” Gram unzips the dress and holds it out to me. “I’m your grandmother. Nothing to hide from me.”

No ground to give in her eyes, no frailty in her body. Mom is something breakable, but the woman she came from is not. I inch away from her, curl in on myself as I unzip my shorts and let them drop around my ankles. My shirt next. I drape it over one of the stacks of boxes.

“Stand up straight,” Gram says. “You’ll get a bend in your spine if you keep hunching like that.”

I close my eyes for a moment. I could be buried now. I could be in a grave and this could be Gram dressing me for my funeral. But I’m breathing. I’m here.

“Fine,” I say, and I reach for the dress, slip it on.

It’s too small, like the dress that girl was wearing when we pulled her out of the fire. Gram makes a sound of disapproval and turns me by the shoulders. It won’t zip, I know it won’t, but she forces it anyway.

“Suck in,” she says. “There’s a good girl.”

The zipper closes inch by inch, scraping my skin, until it finally hits the top of the collar. So tight I can barely move. For a moment the attic swims and stripes, here and somewhere else, me and someone else, everything happening over and over and over again, and I’m so dizzy I have to rest one hand against the wall to stay upright.

“Come on,” Gram says, stepping back. “Let me see you.”

I’m not sure what seeing she can do in the dim light from the single bulb, but I stand there and let her look. Let her think the sway of my body is more than dizziness. Let her think she’s unsettled me—this is no worse than Mom’s pajamas, than her bed and her room and her house.

“Are we done now?” I say, but Gram only purses her lips, considering me.

“I can’t remember what your mother wore this for,” she says. I go to undo the zipper, but Gram’s grip tightens on my shoulders, and I can feel the seams straining. “It’s a bit fancier than what she usually preferred. Your christening, maybe?”

I stop fussing with the dress. “I had one of those?”

“After a fashion.” Gram shakes her head. “No, it wasn’t that.” And then she smiles, gently tucks my hair behind my ear. “Oh, yes,” she says. “I remember now. It was when I took her to the clinic.”

“The clinic?”

“Right.” Gram’s gaze is steady, her expression calm. “For the abortion.”

I nearly choke. “Excuse me?”

“She changed her mind, obviously. They’d only given her the anesthesia when she came back out.” Gram chucks my chin and steps away, starts stacking the boxes back up. “Aren’t you lucky?”

My breath coming shallow and quick. I knew Mom never planned for me. She never mentioned a word about my father, like if she didn’t tell me his name she could pretend he didn’t exist. But it was more than just blocking out him, wasn’t it? It was blocking out me, too. Because she never wanted me at all.

“Why did she change her mind?” I say, my voice hoarse and half here. Maybe she heard my heartbeat and couldn’t do it, and maybe I have always belonged in her life. But Gram doesn’t even turn to look at me.

“I’m not sure,” she says, lifting the last cardboard box back onto the stack. “I never asked.”

She leaves me. Goes back down the stairs, the light throwing her shadow across the floor, twisting it, shredding it, until it’s just me in the damp heat, shaking in my little blue dress.