A Certain Slant of Light (47 page)

  
But James was gone.

  
It was time to stop. I took one small white pill from the bottle
and looked at it. Like the button from a baby's dress. I put it in
my mouth and scooped a handful of warm bath water up. I swal
lowed and tried two the next time. I found that the pills were small enough so that taking a few at a time was not difficult. Cathy may not survive this, I thought, and Dan may think that
Jenny did this because he left them. These thoughts should have
stayed my hand, but my mind and heart were already going to
sleep. Either God would take me in his arms, or he wouldn't. I
tried to imagine heaven, but all I saw was dark water.

  
I felt my stomach tighten as I swallowed my fourth handful. I
couldn't remember when I'd eaten last. I closed my eyes and took
deep breaths as I felt the pills creep down my throat. Then the
faintest of all possible flutters, like a tiny bee shaking its wings,
tickled inside me. I put a hand to my belly, flat and soft in the warm water, and fear jolted me. This felt familiar. My pulse
started racing, but the drug was already pulling down on my
arms and head like heavy snow on tree limbs. I gripped the side
of the tub with one hand as I slid back, water up to my shoulders.

  
Had James and I made a child together? Even that, being but
a pinhole of hope to me now, couldn't move me. I knew it was wrong, what I was doing. Like murder, but I needed to be done
with it all. I felt my lids begin to relax and my heart beat slowly.

  
And then I felt I was being watched. I opened my eyes and fo
cused on the room. There was no one there, only tile and mirror
and tub. But there
was
someone there, curious about the speck of
life inside me. She'd come back. Something that was happening
here had called Jenny back. I felt that she was just behind me,
but when I grasped the side of the tub to turn and look, I sent the remaining pills flying out of the bottle to roll across the floor like a broken string of pearls. I closed my eyes and tried to see her. A small oval face with large eyes and golden hair.

  
She was there, shyly waiting for me to die, her eyes wide, her lips slightly parted as if she might speak. She stood at the far end
of the tub and watched with empathy but made no move to save the body that had once been hers.

  
Please,
I thought at her,
come in. I
'
m going.

  
I could feel the water tickling at my neck now. The hand that
held the side of the tub slipped and splashed into the bath. And now there was something else in the room. A presence dark and
nauseating. The same blackness that had thrown me out of a
ladies' room at the mall. The evil inched out of the base of the
wall and across the tiles. Jenny's spirit did not seem to see it.

  
Hurry,
I thought at her.
Hurry, sweetheart.

Water black, muddy, and ice cold trickled down the cellar's walls
and steps. The roaring outside shook my nerves, but I smiled and
said, "It's all right, baby. It's just a storm." My daughter, not yet
two years old, whined and clung to me with all her tiny might,
her fists full of my blue dress and dirty apron and her legs around
my waist. I held her on one hip as I put the lantern on the shelf
and looked around for the wooden stool that I used to store down
there. The distant sound of glass breaking made me sorry that I
hadn't thrown a blanket over the bookcase with my favorite books.
Although the cellar was no bigger than a wardrobe, I couldn't
find the stool, only firewood, broken tools, my straw baskets on
the lower shelves. A crack of thunder and a flash made the child
scream and begin to cry. I myself jumped and held her to me
hard, then thumped her back cheerfully.

  
"Hush, baby girl." I sat on a stack of wood and she hid against
my chest, still wailing.

  
We had fled to the safety of the cellar when a broken tree branch smashed through the bedroom win
dow and a loose fence post shattered a kitchen window moments
later. But the cellar, which had seemed so sound at first, was slowly
filling with rain. Water, two inches deep on the cellar floor, re
flected the lamplight in little gold worms that appeared and disap
peared. When the next crack of thunder split my ears, I shrieked
and was on my feet at once. Half a moment later there was a crash
that shook the whole foundation of the house and rattled my
bones and teeth. The baby stopped breathing for one moment,
then cried even louder. At once dark water was gushing into our
hiding place through the seams in the slanted wood doors.

  
In disbelief, I watched for ten full heartbeats as a lake began to
rise up my legs. Then I rushed to the doors and pushed on them, but they wouldn't move. Something was blocking them, holding
them down. I couldn't put the baby on the floor, so I sat her on the
woodpile and attacked the doors with all my power. Time slowed to an agonizing crawl as I searched for tools, then started hacking
at the planks of the cellar doors with a broken garden hoe. I was slowed, but the water kept coming. Maybe the river, more likely
the water tank. I tore at the wood with my bloody fingers and
called for my husband, though I knew he was miles away.

  
The baby was crying so hard that I looked back and saw that
even on the woodpile, she was chest deep in water. I snatched her
up and sat her on the shelf. I went back to the doors and clawed
and screamed at the stubborn wood until a plank finally tore free
and I could see out. The enormous trunk of our oak was now pinning the cellar doors shut. It didn't move an inch no matter how I
raged at it. The opening through which I could see the outside
world was only about as large as a cat. The water was up to my
shoulders now. My teeth were chattering when I took my baby daughter in my arms and said, "Sweetheart, you run to Fanny's
house."

  
The storm that howled outside the mouth of the cellar looked
terrifying, but now the water was to my neck. The baby held me
around the head, clutching my hair and crying. "It's all right," I
told her, moving to the gap in the jagged planks. "I'll come later.
You go to Fanny. You run to Fanny's house."

  
She protested in wild yelps, but I pulled her off my neck and
pointed her out the hole. "Not to Grandpa's," I said. That was
downhill and too near the river. "Fanny's house. Run!" A bobbing
basket tapped against my shoulder.

  
I held her waist as she crawled through the tiny space, sput
tering as water hit her face. The lantern hissed and the small gold light behind me was gone. Once free, the baby turned around and
peered back into the gap. The water was up to my chin. I coughed
as a small wave surprised me. I spit the water out. It tasted like
iron and soil.

  
"Mama?" she said.

  
"Don't wait for me, baby," I called. "Run!" She turned and
disappeared into the storm. If I had been wiser, we would both be
wrapped in a quilt under the bed upstairs. Another bone-tearing
crash made me suck in water and gag. From above a high scream
pierced me like a blade and was cut short as if the flood swal
lowed my child whole.

  
I felt water at my chin, still warm but not hot. I blinked and
spoke out loud. "I killed my baby." Then I felt a hand on my
belly, but it wasn't my own hand. I felt a falling sensation in my
middle. My own hand drifted to the surface of the bath, and then
my whole self drifted to the surface of my body. Not my body.
Hers. I floated above and the body slipped below, gold hair spread
on the surface of the water, darkening as it became wet. A hollow
sound like an empty seashell began to softly ring from the tub.

  
The girl Jenny was watching this. "Go," I wanted to tell her,
but I was as mute as when I was Light and hovering around Mr.
Brown. Oozing like black mud, the evil was moving closer to the
body than the girl was now, almost to the edge of the tub.
Take
the body,
I thought at her.
I can t get through again. You have to.

  
Jenny slid down into the water with her body, and the flesh
trembled. Then the eyes opened at me. "Thank God," I thought,
but next moment, a bubble rose from the face and the lids started
to drift shut.

  
"No!" I tried to shout at her. "Wake up!" Her hair drifted
down to her shoulders, too heavy to float now. Jenny wasn't
breathing. I tried to touch her, but I was formless. Furious, I
screamed at the bathtub with the naked girl sleeping below like a
white doll.

  
If you exist, I told God, you help me.

  
I ducked into the water and brought my lips right to her ear.
"Wake up!"

  
So many times I had moved a curtain or startled a bird into
flight when I was trying to be silent and invisible, and now that I
was frantic to slap her out of her apathy, I could not even ripple
the surface of the water. She had gone back into her flesh, and yet
the blackness that had crept into the room hadn't fled. Did it not realize that she was no longer empty? The blackness dripped up
the side of the tub and relaxed into the water, coloring it a smoky
gray.

  
Something about the arrogance of this infuriated me.

  
I came in as close to Jenny's face as I could in the darkening
water and yelled, "Fight!"

  
Her body jerked, she opened her eyes again, and then she was sitting up, coughing and sputtering. The evil disappeared, leaving
the tub clear. Jenny vomited and cried out in horror at the small white pills in the bath water with her. In confusion and repulsk
she let the water out of the tub and pushed the pills away from
her as they went down the drain. She sat bewildered and shiver
ing. She turned the hot water on and took a handful of it, drink
ing it down in a panic. She saw the pills on the tile floor. She
sat in the tub, naked and wet, the tap flowing warm water over
her feet.