The Water Cure(58)

The falling woman was not the first death. I do not know if my sisters remember the woman who never raised her head from the basin. Mother’s hands at the back of her neck until it was too late, the small, frantic movements dying away, the damaged women standing up from their chairs one by one. It was not Mother’s fault, you explained to everyone, once you had regained control over the room. The woman had not been ready to take the cure. Her body proved unfit. It was her own fault.

We were told we would never receive the water cure ourselves. Our bodies didn’t need it. I realized much later that this also meant we would never leave.

Long before the days of the cure, you came for our books. Lia and I had learned to read with them: intelligible romances, comedies, thicker books with blocks of print. Lia was reading too swiftly, enjoying it too much. Fine electricity webbing my sister’s brain. The quickness of her sentences gave you pause. You left only the recipe books, lined up on a shelf, their images like living things. Sky never really learned to read, thanks to your actions. Meanwhile, Lia and I taught each other bouillabaisse and sous-vide and truss so that we would not forget. In the absence of red meat, our lips swallowed words. We were eating a lot of peanut butter, jarred dulce de leche. Foods energy-dense and blameless.

Then you came for our hair. Mother kept it cut just beneath our shoulders, lining us up in the ballroom when the season changed and shearing the ends. Mine was the thickest. It curled underneath but not on top. The damaged women were stealing the hair, going through our bins. They were doing it for their own protection, but you put a stop to all that. We could not cut it or give it away to anyone. It tangled around our waists within what felt like months. I used to wake up and think it was down my throat, a hand or a snake, killing me.

Finally you came for our hearts, which had started to vibrate in our bodies like red and pulsing lights. They panicked you. You knew they were signals beaming outwards. You knew they would be the death of us.

I would lie on my stomach for hours, waiting for my feelings to scorch the ground beneath me. You thought we were in need of more drastic therapies. Stricter ways of measuring our loves.

So we portioned it out in finite acts. A kiss to the cheek was worth this much. I could hardly spare a hand placed to the small of the back, a slow glance, a smile. Languorous with it. Spiteful. I would give it all away if I could go back. I would touch my sister until her limbs grew black and blue.

When I went into Mother’s room just before Gwil’s death, I saw that somebody had taken the irons down. All I felt was relief. Finally, finally, there was nothing to tie me to you. Not even my blood, which I didn’t have to look at or acknowledge anyway. I could just leave it to do the dirty work in my body.

‘Can you tell me why you don’t love me?’ Lia asks him, very quietly.

‘I do,’ he says, eyes watering. ‘I do.’

‘No, you don’t,’ she says. ‘But I’m interested to know why not.’

‘Please,’ he says.

She pauses. ‘You really hurt us,’ she says.

I am so weary of the small and large deaths of my heart.

Despite myself, memories of you that knock me over: small tendernesses. Both my hands held in yours. Gift after pointless gift. A hairband. A china swan, palm-sized. White chocolate that coated the inside of my mouth. Relics.

First time, in the dark light of the study. Nobody would come in. Cot bed in the corner where you slept, alone, during times of great productivity. I was drunk on sharp white wine, and nervy. So were you. A long time coming. Looks and words, your presence in the corner and at the doorway.

Only harm can come of this, I thought afterwards, staring at my face in the mirror of my bathroom. The elation felt dangerous. A bright and skittering ripple inside my stomach, my ribs. It made my hands shake so hard that I could not brush my hair, the hundred ritual strokes each night that Mother had taught us. I had to sit down on the floor. Then I had to lie down against the cold tiling, supine, as if love were a force like gravity. A thing to keep me close and crawling on the ground. I am going to do myself great harm.

In these last days, I found a blood-sodden nightgown at the back of Lia’s drawer. It looked and smelled like something evil dug up from the ground. At first I didn’t know why she had hidden it there. Then I thought about how pale she has been recently, and about the rings around her eyes, and with a deep sorrow I thought, Not you, but there was no surprise in it, I had known it was coming.

Maybe the men had been drawn to her from a long way away. Maybe her own body had signalled them to the shore, a haze of light in the air above our home, and they had lifted their heads and howled at the sky with joy to think of us, the girls, helpless under their hands, before they had even seen our faces.

Lia presses her face close to Llew’s, but I cannot be sure if she is praying or talking. I can no longer look at her, at them. My face is wet, suddenly.

I feel we should go away and lie down for a long time, somewhere with the smell of ferns, bodies of calm water. I see it, somewhere, a far way off.

I hope, if by any chance you learn of this, it leaves the worst possible taste in your mouth. My sisters are still of you. It has always been that we are what you made us, and so our survival is a tacit endorsement of you, however much we might hate that. But our lives are our lives.

I take Sky’s hand and we turn away, walk towards the house, pausing at the edge of the beach. We sit on the wet sand and watch as each wave rushes towards our feet. On the horizon, flat light falls behind cloud.