Old Wives’ Tales,

or the Feminist Revisionist Tales:

“The Angels Whisper,” “Unyielding Hatred,” and “The Wampus Woman.”

By

Kimberly Estenson

In partial fulfillment of the degree

Bachelor of Arts with Honors in English

Wittenberg University

April 9, 2019 2

Critical Analysis of Old Wives' Tales

If the imagination is to transcend and transform experience it has to question, to challenge, to conceive of alternatives... nothing can be too sacred for the imagination to turn into its opposite or experimentally call by another name. - Adrienne Rich

This past summer I came across a recent publication recommended on the New York Times

Best Seller’s List, The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley. This novel retells the life of

Beowulf’s classic villainess, Grendel’s mother. In The Mere Wife Grendel’s mother faces many of the same trials found in the original text; she is still at risk of losing her son, she is still hated by and excluded from society—in fact everything is the same, except that the narrative is now placed in a modern day, dystopian suburb. By placing a traditionally demonized figure in a contemporary context, I was moved by how the author was not only able to draw readers’ attention to Beowulf’s original problematic representation of women, but also how Headley was able to comment on issues women face today. Grendel’s mother faced issues in the original text such as not having a voice and having her worth being tied to her title as a mother, both of which seem strikingly similar to issues women face in the present.

As an English major, I have been assigned Beowulf in numerous classes and so had already engaged in this text many times. However, while reading The Mere Wife, for the first time I could read this story in a way where I could appreciate the prose and drama of the original text without feeling guilty for loving something that also attacked women. This was a rare and invigorating experience for me, and ultimately the kindling to this project. Outside of Headley’s novel, Dr. Richard’s class, “Darkness Within,” has also largely impacted this project. Dr.

Richard’s seminar took place my sophomore year and was centered on traditional monster texts

(i.e. Frankenstein, Tempest, Wieland). However, we were uniquely challenged to find humanity 3

in the monsters of the text and monstrosity in the humans of the text. Of the three original texts

that I revisit in my short stories, they were all included in the “Darkness Within” syllabus.

The literary term behind Headley’s novel is called feminist revisionist theory. A subsection

of feminist theory, feminist revisionist theory re-tells classic and mythological stories in order to

offer a female perspective on a traditionally male-oriented text, with the understanding of and desire to combat the unconscious absorption of traditional gender norms taught in the original texts. Upon research, I realized that this genre of literature is something that I had come across long before The Mere Wife; I just had not heard the term before. Among the books and writers that have influenced and inspired me throughout this process there also is the The Red Tent by

Anita Diamant, in which the biblical life of Dinah, along with the wives of Jacob from Genesis is explored in depth, offering a uniquely female perspective on Jewish tradition and history. The theme of intergenerational sisterhood from this text inspired Carmilla’s sense of connection with her ancestor, Lily. In addition, I have been shaped by Angela Carter’s work, including her collection of short stories, The Bloody Chamber, which includes much more violent retellings than Disney versions of fairy tales like Beauty and the Beast and Snow White. While each female experience is different, I wanted to keep Carter’s unabashed portrayal of the less “lady like” experiences in women's’ lives. Whether through menstruation or child birth, women are more likely to experience bleeding and pain, and yet these normal parts of their existence are often censored from traditional texts. Furthermore, I have been impacted by the recent increase in the retelling of traditionally demonized female characters in film and theatre as well. For instance, there is the book and then hit Broadway musical Wicked which retells the story of the

Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, and then also there is Disney’s Maleficent 4 which is a cinematic retelling of the story of one of their original characters, Maleficent from

Sleeping Beauty.

Because I grew up in an age of so many prominent feminist revisionists texts, it is hard to imagine that there was ever a time in which I did not question the demonization of women.

However, growing up heavily involved in a conservative church and community, without any other perspectives to challenge my understanding of gender norms, my personal vision of women and their role in the world was drastically warped. As I came of age in my church community, I realized that myself and other women have grown up programmed to see their voices and stories as secondary and trivial. When women express their opinions, their validity is instantly questioned because they are assumed to be just ‘over emotional’ or a ‘bitch’. We are taught to preface our statements with phrases like “I feel that” or “I’m probably wrong, but--”. In short, men tell their stories, and those versions become history, whereas when women tell their stories, they merely become old wives’ tales. Therefore, by re-writing the story of Lilith from the original Jewish myth, Grendel’s mom from Beowulf, and Carmilla from Le Fanu’s Carmilla, I sought to gain a better understanding of how these texts shape gender norms by challenging what these texts have taught me to be as a female.

In mythopoeia scholar Christine C. Keating’s article, “Unearthing the Goddess Within:

Feminist Revisionist Mythology in the Poetry of Margaret Atwood,” she discusses the idea of how mythology shapes our perception of self and our role in society. On female-centered mythology she states, “We are Eve, Mother Earth, the Madonna, Desdemona, Medusa,

Persephone, all embodiments of male-created myths that have captured our reality and ultimately our identity” (483). People, therefore, are the product of stories that tell them what others were 5

like before them, and so through understanding other women in mythology, we gain an

understanding of self.

My approach to writing Old Wives Tales was under this understanding in which mythology

helps us understand ourselves, and also, I wrote with the Carl Jung’s idea of Collective

Unconsciousness in mind. According to Swedish psychologist Carl Jung, the collective

unconscious seems to “consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the

myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a

sort of projection of the collective unconscious...” (The Structure of the Psyche, 8). Therefore, while I chose to write my three stories each two hundred years apart in American history, under the idea of collective unconsciousness, their lives are not too far from each other.

And by presenting the history of women before, I desired to show how each of my characters is a product of the women that lifted her to where she is today. There is an often unconscious genealogy of how we understand what it means to be female and how we adapt to live in a world that is constructed to harm us. As in evolution, women learn from how their mothers and their grandmothers survived before them. For instance, Carmilla ultimately learned to leave an abusive relationship as her ancestors Lily and Meredith did before her.

In each of these stories the women face a struggle between that of accepting the path that a patriarchal society has prescribed before them or giving into this unnamed, yet ancient understanding of a female existence that is empowered rather than controlled.

Long before the conception of Christianity, there were numerous ancient religions and cultures that chose to venerate and celebrate women. Women were not simply the 6

introducer of sin to the world or a distraction to men trying to live pious lives. Instead,

female goddesses could be round and dynamic characters. Ancient goddesses were

admired as creators of life and feared for also being able to bring destruction. Divine

females had a deeper connection with and power over nature, and most importantly, they

were not stagnant. Lily, Meredith, and Carmilla all must choose which mythology they will

allow to shape their identity. While each of these characters face an American culture

trying to shape them into women who are submissive, fertile, delicate, heterosexual, or

motherly, they also each feel a connection to the ancient women before them not bound my

patriarchal norm.

The Angels Whisper

Set in America in the late 1600’s, this story follows a husband and wife, two settlers eager to make their mark on a new country and home. The story opens with descriptions full of life, whether it be the loving relationship between Adam and Lily, or the lush wilderness that surrounds their small cabin. Lily’s optimism at the story’s beginning stems from her belief that because Adam loves her, he must also see her as equal. However, when time passes and she fails to fulfill her wifely duty of providing a son for Adam and remaining young and beautiful for him, Adam begins to show disdain for Lily. Lily realizes that Adam’s love was conditioned on the idea that Lily would make his own aspirations possible. And since she can neither control her body from aging nor prevent miscarriages, Adam discards his wife for a newer and younger model.

I found the beginning of colonial America to be a fitting time for a creation story. At its discovery, America’s abundant wilderness was often described as Eden. While the wilderness was perceived as full of opportunity and beauty, it was also uniquely associated with the fearful 7

and dangerous unknown. Eden was similarly perceived as a place of beauty and innocence, yet

also housed danger because it was inhabited by Satan in serpent form. In addition, while Eden is

generally accepted to be a paradise it could also be seen as a place of gender inequality, unitarian

beliefs, and even an imprisonment from the outside world. Lily experiences colonial America in

a similarly paradoxical way. She first believes it is a place of equality, harmony, and beauty.

However, with time she sees it is a place of selfishness, animalistic violence, and secrecy.

I paid homage to the original Jewish creation story through the heavy use of imagery

from the Book of Genesis. Traditional Biblical and Jewish imagery, such as fruit trees and

serpents can be found throughout this story. Furthermore, in writing this story I researched and

gained a better understanding of the purpose and impact of creation stories. I was most struck by

the David Adam Leeming’s quote from his book The Oxford Companion to World Mythology,

“Deities are metaphors for—dreams of—our ultimate progenitors, and psychology has taught us how important our mental depictions and memories of our parents are to any real understanding of our own identities” (Leeming 7). This quote aligns with the theme of an ancestral passing down of identity, or as mentioned earlier, Carl Jung’s idea of Collective unconsciousness. Lilith and Eve are seen in Jewish and Christian cultures as the mother of all humanity. Therefore, how women in these cultures have come to understand themselves is by the example set by the first mother.

I wanted the Angels in my text to resemble a Greek chorus. While this is not in tradition with the creation myth, I felt this would fulfill my need to relay the burden of societal pressure— which would have been difficult with only two other characters other than Lily in the text. In addition, their passivity of watching Lily as she makes the decision to leave her family, highlights the activeness of Lily. Outside of these reasons, logistically they also helped me 8

transition from scene to scene and offer the audience information foreshadowing the future.

Unyielding Hatred

The title of my second story comes from the following lines in Beowulf, in which Grendel

has just been slain and Grendel’s mother comes to avenge her son,

He fell in the battle

With forfeit of life, and another has followed,

A mighty crime-worker, her kinsman avenging,

And henceforth hath ‘stablished her hatred unyielding (17; ch. xxi)

When reading this verse, I am reminded of the double standard in which Grendel’s mother is

entrapped. In Danish culture, it was noble and moral to avenge the wrongful death of a loved

one. However, when Grendel’s mother attempts to avenge her son, she is not seen as a hero but

rather as a monster, or a “mighty crime-worker”. Double standards are also ever present in my

story “Hatred Unyielding”. Gerald’s (the Grendel of my text) mother, Meredith, lives among

double standards such as how white on black violence is rewarded where black on white violence is punishable by death.

In the story of Beowulf, Grendel’s mother is isolated from society, as she is living in a

mere or a marsh, far hidden from the view of Danes. However, she becomes an active participant

in the story once her ‘hatred unyielding’ is ignited by the murder of her son. In my version of

Beowulf, Grendel’s mother, Meredith, is not secluded by society by living in a swamp but rather

by being segregated into living in a black only-community. In both versions of the tale forced

seclusion is used as a device by the privileged community to dehumanize and generalize those

who are isolated. 9

In order to stay in the literary tradition of heroic epics like Beowulf, I used epithets to

substitute certain character names in the text. For instance, instead of calling the boss Mr. Wolfe

I usually referred to him as the ‘Cane Holder’. This helped to build a more ominous presence around his character. Other stylistic choices I made to in stay tradition with the original text was

the use of alliteration to make my sentences sound more lyrical, I kept gruesome and violent

imagery, and just as Grendel’s mother has no name in the original text, so also does Meredith not

have a last name because her original African name was lost in a dehumanizing life of slavery. I also chose to play with tense shifts and story chronology because the original text often switches to past tense in order to highlight the heroics of past men.

In addition, I chose to include a song in this text to be reminiscent of the medieval scop sung in the original text. A scop was a traveling performer who recited poems and songs in order to entertain crowds of people. These performances usually served to venerate great feats of heroes and admonish the actions of villains. The “Fairy Boy” song I included in my story is reminiscent of the original scop because one performer is presenting a story to a crowd through song. However, I deviated from the original text by having Gerald (the Grendel of my story)

perform a song of tragedy rather than a song celebrating victory. This helped to add a darker tone

to my text and foreshadowed the loss of Meredith’s own child. Furthermore, in the scop in the

original text the performer explains how Grendel’s wrath is born from jealousy at the mirth of

others,

It harrowed him

to hear the din of the loud banquet

every day in the hall, the harp being struck

and the clear song of a skilled poet. (86-89) 10

Gerald in “Unyielding Hatred” is also jealous of how the privileged people of society are able to enjoy their lives without fear of violence or prejudice. His jealousy ultimately leads to his demise. He enters a white bar, but his race is discovered and so he is attacked. Since there is no scop in my text, Gerald then becomes the prophet of his own death. Rather than telling an uplifting story of himself as a hero, he instead is preforming his own elegy. This self-demise is also related to the original text because, just as Beowulf continued to take on battles, and so had hubris enough to begin to believe in his immortality, so also did Gerald continue to leave his

“mere” or black community and began to risk his life without repercussion so many times that he became less careful and eventually died because of it. Whether it be Beowulf’s hubris or

Gerald’s, either way women are left to pick up the pieces. However, while the women of

Beowulf’s time were able to provide him a heroic and grand Viking style funeral, Meredith does not live with the same privilege. She had neither the money nor the social standing to provide her son with an honorable funeral. Ultimately, she chose to honor his passing through what she did have control over--revenge.

The Wampus Woman

In order to honor the original text and its genre, I attempted to include traditionally gothic themes in my story. This is seen in the line “Like the Wampus, she is angry, even when she is unaware of her rage. Like the Wampus, she lives in the liminal--and we fear, hate, and are fascinated with her for it” (page 48). Common themes of gothic literature such as the liminal, the fear of the abject, and the fear of one’s unconscious self taking the reins, are all present in

Laura’s description of Carmilla. Furthermore, I also included traditional gothic settings in my story. For instance, Laura’s southern plantation is reminiscent of the large, ancient, empty, and regal haunted houses included in the works of gothic writers like Edgar Allen Poe. Finally, I also 11

chose to keep certain powerful images from the original text. For instance, in Carmilla,

Carmilla’s casket and resting place is filled with blood, Le fanu wrote, “the limbs were perfectly

flexible, the flesh elastic; and the leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven

inches, the body lay immersed” (51). In my own story, this image is recreated when Carmilla’s

mom accidently deeply cuts herself in the bathtub. As the blood turns the water red, it appears as

if, like a vampire, she is also immersed in a coffin of blood (page 59).

With my retelling of Carmilla, I sought to show how women are also often the agents of

sexist ideals—whether they are aware of it or not. In the original tale, Carmilla is a literal

vampire who drains the life from the innocent and unsuspecting Laura. In the stories’ end, Laura is part of a team that hunts down Carmilla and drives a stake through her heart. However, in my story I chose for Laura to be the antagonist or the “monster”. Laura is controlling and critical of

Carmilla, and in the end attempts to purge herself of her own sexual guilt by trying to kill

Carmilla.

Laura is the one with the voice in the original story (however, even her words are bookended and verified by a male doctor in the prologue and epilogue). When described by

Laura, Carmilla is often chalked up to being mysterious and indiscernible, and yet the actions of

Carmilla are not mysterious—she is a lonely girl left by her caregiver into the hands of strangers.

Carmilla and Laura have an undeniable chemistry and a touching romantic relationship in this text. While Carmilla is a literal monster with supernatural abilities in this story, I remember after first reading it, I was just not convinced that she is the antagonist. Yes, Carmilla, as a literal

vampire in the original text, and she craves blood, but she stays with Laura for months, and yet

never kills her. Her motive must have been then not blood lust but instead companionship. 12

The origin of vampires is linked with the myths surrounding Lilith. In the Alphabet of

Ben Sira, once Lilith fled Eden, she was rumored to have become the wife of Satan and went on to spend her nights exploring the rooms of unsuspecting young men. Rather than vampirism being a metaphor for sexuality, I chose to have sexual relations be symbolic of vampirism in my text. Carmilla has feelings for Laura, but ultimately their relationship is not healthy. While not sucking the blood of Carmilla, Laura still manages to control Camilla’s the emotions and drain her life away.

Conclusion

I thought about writing a piece for the 2010s. I found it fitting to have my Carmilla piece be in this current decade, a decade in which gay rights took an enormous leap forward with the right to same-sex marriage. However, with time I realized that there were already an abundance of mythology living out in the collective unconscious of today—one must merely watch the news.

The daily lives of many women in America are burdened by the expectations that previous mythologies have set before them, and it fees almost disrespectful to write a fictional piece relaying the present because it could never, or should never, be as poignant as current reality.

When conjuring up images of women trapped by negative mythological images of themselves, the Kavanaugh trial first comes to mind. I think of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford first taking the stand and looking out at a room filled with people who already see her as a monster, seductress, and blasphemer before she has even spoken a word. I think about how brave she was to expose a personal and violent trauma in front of a court and in front of the world. She did not tell her story because she wanted to, but because she had to: she spoke “I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school.” While reading this 13

quote, I am reminded of Grendel’s mother before she attacks Beowulf. In Beowulf, the writer

calls the act of Grendel’s mother’s avenging her son’s death the “mournful mission.” Grendel’s

mother felt a need to make her voice heard, even though she knew going into it that it was

unlikely she would be able to avenge her son’s death and that her death was almost certain as

well. Dr. Ford, like Grendel’s mother, has witnessed a pattern of women being disgraced and

demonized for telling their stories and yet took on her mournful mission nonetheless.

I hope the following stories make my readers entertained, uncomfortable, and more aware of the reality of the histories and present of women around them. Like Dr. Ford, I am not under the impression that telling female stories will make my life or any other woman’s life magically fixed. However, not seeing immediate change is no excuse for silence or for refusing our

“mournful mission”. At least, I can say that I have left this project with a greater understanding of myself and of some of the women, whether fictional or not, that have made me who I am today. Intertwined within these tales are little pieces of me and my experiences as an American woman. I sincerely hope the reader may find monstrosity in the humans and humanity in the monsters of Old Wives’ Tales.

Works Cited

Beowulf. Project Gutenberg, Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/files/16328/16328- h/16328-h.htm.

Fanu, Joseph Sheridan Le. Carmilla. Project Gutenberg, 2015.

Jung, C. G. The Collected Works of Carl Jung. 2nd ed., vol. 8, Pantheon, 1953. Keating, Christine C. “Unearthing the Goddess Within: Feminist Revisionist Mythology in the

Poetry of Margaret Atwood.” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 43, no.

4, May 2014, pp. 483–501. 14

Leeming, David Adams. The Oxford Companion to World Mythology. Oxford University Press,

2009.

Rich, Adrienne. “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision.” College English, vol. 34, no.

1, 1972, pp. 18–30. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/375215.

Sirach. The Alphabet of Ben Sira. Valmadonna Trust, 1997.

15

The Angels Whisper

“She said, ‘I will not lie below,’ and he said, ‘I will not lie below, but above, since you are fit for being below and I for being above.’ She said to him, ‘The two of us are equal, since we are both from the earth.’ And they would not listen to each other. Since Lilith saw [how it was], she uttered God's ineffable name and flew away into the air” (The Alphabet Of Ben Sira). When the world was created, they say life struck like lightening. There was a blinding light, and color bled like the melting of a great cathedral’s windows. The big bang came from the

‘dannnnng’ of a holy gong and then we were just here. We. It has always been we for me; I was made to not know what it was to be alone. Adam was my lightening. There was no time before

Adam—my life began with him. I hear the angels still whispering how creation struck like lightening. There was blinding light, a sonic boom, and a fire that refused to be trapped in Eden.

He carried me across the threshold of our small, secluded wood cabin on my seventeenth

birthday. Adam kept making small comments about how he was sorry the floor wasn’t smoother

or the stream near enough for washing laundry, but I knew he was secretly proud of what he had

built by hand. This house he made was his own little creation that he could be ruler over. It only had one room, colorless and plain. We had our bed and kitchen table, some chairs and our family book. Some women may have seen this place as a prison, but to me it was full of possibility.

After all, we came to this New World to escape the materialism and greed of the Church of

England. Our hearts were above worldly possessions, and instead were occupied with brotherly love and hard, honest work. And so while our small abode was quite simple, it was a priceless gem in my eyes. Our cabin was created to keep us warm as we shared a bed, started a family, and grew our small farm. It was my wedding gift from him.

I loved him because he was like a stone weathered from the streams—smooth but

unbreakable. He had fur on his chin like the hair of a hedgehog and his legs were two roots too 16

thick to be unearthed. When he focused on something, he furrowed his brows and looked so

serious he was almost scary. Adam was a determined and hopeful creature. I loved him because

he loved me.

Despite being still only a child when we first knew each other, I was unafraid. Actually, I

was never afraid to be with him, not even our first time. For me, all that mattered was that I

could feel closer to him and to myself—to be part of a something so natural I felt like one of the

woodland creatures. He held my hand the night of our wedding and never let go until it was over.

After our first time as one body, I knew man was a wonderful invention. At that moment, this

New World was truly our blank canvas in which we had the rest of our lives to discover the

rambling rivers and hollows surrounding us, and the rest of our lives to explore the caverns and

valleys of one another. I never learned to be fearful of being with him or to be alone in the dense

woods surrounding our small home. I felt that the woods were our palace—like it had been made

for us. We lived simply in material means but sumptuously in love. Everything was new and full

of possibility. Our New World was ours to name and play in. At night we held one another,

listening to the grasshoppers chirping, nestled in their own den.

Together we performed the greatest miracle and brought a little girl, no bigger than a

child’s doll, into this woodland world. And so, our family became three.

“The creator caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took

one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the angels witnessed the

creator make a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.”1

Adam read the tarnished book aloud with Eve on his lap. It was the only book we had, and so it felt like another family member, carrying as much presence as any of the rest of us.

1 Genesis 2:21 17

“I just can’t imagine that children come from ribs--that’s so disgusting! Dad, when I came from your rib, did it hurt?” Eve asked her father.

“Of course it hurt! But you were worth it. Although, between you and me, I’m still fearful of taking any naps around here. I only have so many ribs to go around,” They laughed together.

I smiled along, but wished he would teach her less about a book and more about the outside world. What fifteen-year old still didn’t know the facts of a man and a woman? For Eve, the border of our farm might as well have been the end of the world.

“She’s nearly the age I was when we were married. Why do you still tell her fairy tales?”

I asked playfully. I was mending one of Adam’s shirts in a seat nearby, embroidery and sewing had long been a pastime of mine. The sun was setting and I hurried the pace of my needle. I knew that I could no longer sew by candlelight like I did when my eyes were younger.

“She doesn’t need to know about such things.”

“What things?” Eve asked.

“Nothing dear. Your mother is just teasing you. Go and help your parents by fetching us some water before it is too dark.” Eve gave her beloved father a childish smile and hugged him.

There was a silence for a moment as I sat with my needle and he continuing to read. I had something on my mind,

“She’s ready to marry soon.” I told him.

“Her health wouldn’t permit it.” He answered pertly so as to let me know there was nothing left to say. He was protective of our child. Eve has been a delicate child since birth; she gets sick multiple times a year, having to stay in bed for days at a time. Even during harvest time,

Adam puts all the farm work aside to sit and read with her when she is ill. I believed he saw her 18 fragility as something endearing. She wore her delicacy like a flower carries morning dew. You fear the petal will fall over from the weight, but you don’t wipe away the drops of water because of how stunning it looks.

“I think she is stronger than you credit her,” I continued.

“I think she’s weaker than you want her to be,” He answered, and we sat again in the quiet evening.

“She really is an attractive girl, and she got her blood over a year ago. But with us in such an isolated area, how are we supposed to find her a husband?” The light became too dim to work.

I gave up on the needlework.

“We don’t have to worry about that yet,” He didn’t look up from the book.

“Of course, the town over has dances every Sunday night. We should attend and meet other families. Maybe they will have a son.” I had wanted to take her out of the farm for quite some time now; this was Adam’s and my new World, but for her it was the only place she had ever known.

“Two girls shouldn’t travel from town to town, it’s not appropriate. Besides, I provide you both everything you need here on the farm.”

“Not a man for her,” I answered.

“You’re not listening, Lily.” He raised his voice a little. He rarely loses his composure and I was taken off guard. He wasn’t listening to me.

In the dark and under the reflection of the dancing candle flames, the features of his face appeared weary and aged. Seeing him in such a way made my frustration dissipate, and I was reminded of how sweet it was to be old with someone who aged by your side all the while. And so, I found in that moment my frustration was overtaken by feelings of adoration. He only 19 became more beautiful with age, and I found myself moving to his chair and beginning to message his familiar shoulders. I took in his scent, something akin to pine needles. His shoulders tensed,

“Not right now.”

He had been saying that cold phrase more lately. I wanted to feel close to him, but he looked at me now like I was proposing something criminal or bizarre.

“It’s been a while,” I felt the hurt and embarrassment rising again.

“It hasn’t.” I wondered why he wouldn’t look up from the book.

“It has.” I said this too quickly. He had better control of his emotions. Mine always flared up and made anything I say become compromised. I felt myself losing composure. However, I allowed myself to slip from a quiet, simmering anger I had been holding onto for some time, into a boiling and unstable state.

“We’re not as young as we were, Lily.” He smiled and playfully gestured to his graying hair. “Besides, don’t you think at this point in our lives we should be focusing on other things— like Eve? She is at a really important age right now” He threw Eve at me sometimes as if I didn’t know her and love her.

“You’re still young enough to work the farm. You are out there every day before the sun rises. Lifting crates of tomatoes and oranges.” I slid my hands down his sun-browned arms. “You don’t feel like a worn-out old man to me.” He gently removed my hands.

“Well, it’s not getting easier to keep this place running.” He finally allowed me to slip the book from his lap.

“I want to help you. We’re a team, Adam.” I said this as I knelt down to look him in the eyes. I held his hands in mine. “We do this together.” His eyes hardened, 20

“Please Lily. I’m trying to not embarrass you.”

“What do you mean?” I knew where this was heading, but I asked anyway. If we fought, at least he was engaging with me over that vexing book.

“Fine. It’s not worth it anymore. You’ve—we’ve changed. Lily, when we’re together, I just feel our bodies are failing. I just don’t want to keep feeling that disappointment.” He had never called it failing before. For the longest time he was the optimistic one, always telling me to not be discouraged. I’d be with child for a couple sweet months, but no matter up it always ended the same. I would walk in the woods or through the orchard and suddenly I’d be overwhelmed by that same pain. Blood would trickle between my thighs and I would leave another dead thing in the grass for some animals to consume. Adam never had the strength to look at it. He wanted no part in an ugly affair. He said there were medicines and people we could go see to help us. Yet, when he talked about it, it always felt like he was telling himself not to worry, or maybe telling me he wasn’t giving up yet on my body.

“We can keep trying,” There was nothing else for me to say.

“Look at you, Lily. You’re past the age of bearing a child. It’s too late.”

“We have Eve.”

“Do we?” His voice rises again. “Every other time you speak you are trying to just marry her off! She’s all we have, Lily. It’s like you can’t even bear to keep the one child you have.”

“It’s only natural for her to leave us. She can’t stay here forever. It wouldn’t be good for her.”

“After you just marry her off this house will be empty. When we die, our name will die with us. The farm, the house, it will just decay and become someone else’s dirt to plow. It will all be for nothing.” 21

“Just because we didn’t have a son, doesn’t mean it was for nothing.” He stood up

suddenly from his chair to get away from me.

“It’s not fair. Lily, I gave you everything I could. I did everything right, and—” He

stopped, catching himself. I witnessed how easily his face slipped back into a stone-like

composure.

“And I couldn’t give you a son.” I finished his sentence for him.

We were then both standing face to face. Hurt tinged every inch of me. Yet, I was

exhilarated with anger. I wanted to scream and pull my hair and make him seem as small as he made me feel. I always had too masculine a temper. Enraged, I decided I would use my red-hot adrenaline to make him stay face to face with me, and not looking away for Eve or that book again. I took a step closer to him,

“Let me give you another child, a healthy child.” He may have given up on my body, but

I wasn’t ready to yet. He was still the creature of my den, the spark of my creation. I felt the

prick of his beard on one palm as my other hand located his upper thigh.

“Make me a son. Can you do that?” he asked me.

I didn’t answer his question, instead I forced his lips to mine. Our limbs interlocked and we found ourselves wrestling like the woodland creatures once more. It was less making love than an eruption of the anger drove us to collision. He used the strength of his thrust and the unbridled weight of his chest to dominate me. Adam was using his body to prove to me that mine

was beyond use. Incensed, I fought back, desperate to show him that my body was valuable and

that I could still make life. Struggling, I pried myself free from under him. Once I was above

him, I glowered and forced him to make up for every night he had refused me because of these

etched wrinkles and silver locks. I moved his face so that he couldn’t evade my gaze. 22

Unswerving, he grabbed my hair to push me off of him. But I was just as steadfast; I found this control exhilarating, intoxicating. I bit him so hard he let go with a cry like that of a wounded beast.

In that moment I was sure he saw me as his partner, a lover not to conquer but conquer the world with. I needed him to understand that I was still enough. Once Eve was married and gone, he would still have an abundance of me. He would see it was only the people that lived unfulfilled lives that were desperate to live on through a legacy. I would fill and flood him.

But his anger gave him strength as well. His farm worked muscles and thick shoulders suddenly enveloped me and spun me under his crushing form. With one hand he held my chest down and the other he smashed my face into the dirt floor. I was immobile. Adam let out a growl, and then left me alone, laying bruised on the floor. He turned back to me,

“You couldn’t give me a son and the feeble daughter you gave me is only half here.”

The angels say they never married or had children. They all just woke up one day and found themselves floating on a cloud with everyone else they would ever know. There are no fathers or mothers in heaven, and so they were not born of pain. When the world began for the angels, each and every one of them was a biological orphan. Then one day, God made man. The angels looked down with curiosity at the wonderful invention. Yet, there was something they couldn’t place about the woman. Whispering, they checked to see if the others felt the same.

“The woman down there, does she frighten you?”

“She does. I can’t explain how.”

“She looks like an animal that doesn’t yet know that she’s a bird of prey. She doesn’t know that she can fly and kill.”

“She could fly out of Eden.” 23

“What would she find outside of Eden?” They asked.

I had been alone all day with only my needle. In desperate need of human contact, I wrapped up a loaf of bread and went to find my daughter and husband. They had been toiling in the field all day, and I was certain they would welcome a break. Yet when I saw them together in the apple orchard, they were not reaping any crop. Instead they were laying tangled underneath the late summer sky. Certainly, I thought I should have felt more shocked, but I then finally understood why he was so protective of her. Why he always took her side and why he was the child’s favorite parent and why he didn’t want to see her married off. They didn’t see me, and I stood shielded behind the shade of another tree in the orchard. My head became dizzy and confused; I was certain I saw the other carnivorous trees closing in on me. Their unearthed roots were like the legs of a sea monster fumbling towards me. Our woods never felt so small and entrapping in that moment. The sound of their sin pierced through the air. The farthest border of our woods would not be far enough to leave what I witnessed behind. I gave my whole life building this home and nurturing these trees around me. I brought my parched husband water to drink when he first planted the very tree they now lay together under. When I loved him alone, I never needed to imagine a world outside our wood. His eyes roofed my small existence and small was fine for me. Not for him.

My two greatest comforts suddenly became my greatest pain. To my surprise, it was not hurt but fury that first infiltrated my bones. I felt the rage within me set this body on fire. I had never been so convinced by my own emotions as I was in that moment. It was almost intoxicating to allow myself to feel something so strongly without second-guessing, and I wondered if they were as convinced of their secrecy as I was of my rage. As the tangled lovers burned in their own fire of passion, I pondered setting the cabin ablaze while they slept. I would 24

burn the fields he devoted his entire life raising. My sewing needle was no longer a tool for

mending, but a potential tool for revenge. Or perhaps, naked I would seduce him to our bed. I

would make him memorize every curve, scar, and wrinkle of my body, then take my needle to

his eyes. He would never see the unclothed body of another woman again.

After the orchard, I picked up my basket of bread and quickly returned to the cabin so

that they would not discover my absence. I had little time to decide how I would proceed. Part of

me wanted to burn the orchard and the home with it. But that plan gave way to fear. Where

would I go without Adam? I didn’t know how to be alone or how to support myself. I’d heard

rumors of women left without a husband and being forced to sell their bodies. The women never

lasted long. I decided to act like I never knew, this seemed like the safest option. After all, if I

didn’t know I wouldn’t have to ever look at the world outside Adam. I could play the dutiful

partner and wait for Eve to marry. Maybe when his body began to truly break down, he would

learn to love only me again and realize how little control we really have over our forms. I could

be of use to him in his old age.

As summer turned to fall and then winter, I watched the apple tree transform into a

lifeless log. Never had I been so grateful to watch the natural world around me curl up and

expire. Then, I thought I had a reprieve from what deceit I lived with and slept with and ate with,

yet my imaginings of patient ignorance crumbled when Eve began to show. I abhorred how

easily it was for her to get pregnant when it was so impossible for me. I had lost a hundred

children before Eve was conceived; and she was our one miracle. Yet now it seemed my miracle

is only laughing at my hundreds of failures. She must have some womanly magic of life that I

only could access once by accident. She had control over her body in a way I never could and so pretending to not know was no longer possible. When winter’s last frost had melted, she gave 25

birth to Adam’s legacy: two twin boys. Two more sons I gave. Without the hope of ignoring the

deceit, I began to plan my own legacy.

The pregnancy had taken a toll on the already delicate Eve. I didn’t want to see my child

in pain, and yet seeing the way Adam doted over her calloused my maternal heart. Where the

smallness of our house once likened coziness, now I felt only caged. I no longer understood who

I was in my own home and so I turned to the wood.

I had walked in the woods, but I realized I had never truly stayed there long enough to

understand the woods. I had no role to fulfill there, no routine to be culpable of neglecting. There

was no one but me, yet the constant chirping and clicking, howling and rustling kept me from

ever feeling alone. Outside of domestic duty, the earth teemed with a world unconcerned about

unsewn buttons and uncooked meals.

I recognized my own kind because I heard the calling of my name the first time I came

across one them. There was a vibrating ‘lthhhh lithhhhhhh’—it was the first time I heard ‘Lilith’ spoken in its native tongue. Under Adam and his new bride, I was only ‘Lily’, that is, a fragile and useless flower fated to be used and then thrown away after its brief existence. Because I hadn’t been needed or desired by anyone in so long, my name had not been uttered in months.

Hearing it for the first time in so long caused it to carry even greater weight. I was hooked by its

power and its sensuality, I wanted to be the person deserving of such a name.

The call came from a glittering thing that seemed to glide without wings along the landscape. She caught the light of the sunbeams coming through the foliage like a star crossing a night sky. She moved like she was made of only the hips of a seductress. Yet, unlike any woman

I had seen, she was covered in armor and was dangerous. I was never taught to be afraid of such things and so I felt only fascination, envy, and a sort of lost kinship. 26

The glistening thing drew me like gnats to the fire of a lamp. Without thinking, I reached out to feel her scaled shield. She had no patience for the insubordination of my touch. The serpentess was suddenly facing me, and with her crystal fangs she penetrated my skin. I felt a rush of warmth as she injected venom into my blood. But that pleasant warmth intensified until I felt I was on fire and yet my skin was not ash. Her poison was flame and she breathed fire.

Slowly I lost the ability to move my hands and then arms and legs. I crumbled to the forest floor.

My body lost all function and I was forced into my mind. My vision blurred but I felt her as she carelessly curled along my body, which was now merely an obstacle to her path. Regally, she looked me in the eyes and I then understood that not knowing I was her subject did not mean I was beyond the wrath of her law. The queen’s punishment was fire but so was her mercy. With the fire burning inside my immobile being, I felt every weakness and fear crumble. She washed me clean like a forest fire, and from the black soil there could only be new and hungry life.

I had been properly inducted into the forest that day and realized there was no longer any possibility of domesticizing the beast within me. I was a predator with venom in my veins. I no longer felt shame for the failures of my body. Instead, my body had the possibility to run and to hunt. My new form wasn’t meant for the indoors. I no longer wanted to be trapped by a home that blocked my sleeping self from waking to witness the stars. So, I left the log cabin that my husband had first carried me into, and instead existed in a world of no insides and outsides. No windows and no doors meant everything was free to grow wild, to kill, and be killed.

After a couple weeks, the beast within me was no longer satisfied with merely living in the woods, she had to have dominion over it. And so, I decided I would become the new she- king. The only way to become the new monarch was through the ritual of beheading. She had a stunning death. The whole forest was her subject, and so they all gathered. The trees were 27

witnesses and the birds sang her a hymn of blessings for the next life. However, no rodent, beast,

or reptile dared save her. The Queen of the forest earned her right not through noble birth, but

through shedding blood. Ruby eyes sparkled as the serpent extended her mouth. At the

plummeting of my kitchen knife her jaw was wide enough to swallow the sun, and her fangs

remained deadly even in her passing.

As the new ruler of the forest, I now had the right to enact the punishment against those

who had spited me. Eve’s two sons were still in their first few months of life and were the two

most vulnerable creatures in the wood. Justice wouldn’t be met until I ripped his legacy, his

prized treasure, away. I desired him to slowly watch his legacy dwindle without the ability to

stop it. Adam would feel as helpless as I did, but he was only a man and so could not from pain

birth a crown. With my new throne I was conquering his lawless kingdom.

The woods had taught me to move with stealth and with precision even in the night. The

wicked lovers slept soundly in their human den as I snuck in to desiccate it. The two sons were

now several months old, and they slept soundly together in a crib that must have been crafted by my husband’s hands. The wooden cradle shrouded the two infants like the web of a spider. Yet, they slept soundly despite being cocooned and set aside for the spider’s supper. Each plump belly rose with the intake and outtake of every fragrant breath. I hadn’t seen such untouched and innocent lives since the birth of Eve. Eve out grew her innocence, however, and so would these two babes.

From my cloak I drew two fangs: one for each child. The past serpent queens passed while expelling poison from her fangs. But there was certainly still enough venom in each to kill a small infant. The full moon shone through the window, offering me enough light to perform 28

my deed. The lunar light draped a halo around the face of each child. With fang in hand, I raised

my arm to exact my revenge.

But once the boy called Cain awoke, I was immobilized. Adam’s eyes were staring right

at me from the face of a child. I was taken aback. How could something so innocent have the

eyes of someone so evil? The little child called Abel had Eve’s smile, my smile. Cane looked at

me with wonder. Who was this ferocious woman with knotted hair that carried the scent of wild

weeds? Could she be another mother? His tiny fingers reached up and grasped my finger.

Another human hadn’t touched me, and I hadn’t allowed any other human to touch me, since the

day I witnessed the conception of these children. His touch was telling, and I sensed Cane was of

the serpent race like myself. If I were to pierce his heart, I would pierce the heart of another

serpent. Killing him was killing Adam’s eyes and my daughter’s smile. The beast in me had

taught me not to second guess. Then how was there still love in my heart for those I hated so

much? It didn’t make sense that I couldn’t force myself to harm those that brought me so much

pain. He had used my body until it lost its firmness and she drank my milk dry. They squeezed

everything they could from my form until nothing was left. I had finally claimed my body back from these leeches, but they seemed to still own my heart. How was I to claim my heart back?

Fang still in the air, I let my weapon fall.

When my life happened for the second time it struck me like lightening. I had mistaken every memory as a thing solid and real. My whole first life felt so incredibly tangible, but it was gone as quick as lightning strikes, and my insides charred and burned with flame. Then it was before I had even fully learned what it was like to move in a body without Adam, that my new form was sanctified by the serpentess. The angels say I left Eden because I was no longer chaste enough to inhabit such a pure and fresh world. They say I am the roaming witch that finds your 29

children at night, and that I am the black spirits who swallow the souls of unborn babes. The

rumors may have started with Eve and Adam. They must have been quite frightened to wake up

to their perfectly untouched children each nuzzling his own poisonous fang.

But really, I left because I could no longer be simply a mother, a wife, or even a queen.

My body was not built for anything in the confines of Eden. It was too fluid to be one thing, and

I shed my skin too often to have my body owned. You may find the carcass, the shed scales, of which I once was, but my body transforms too fast for you to recognize me. On my departure of

Eden, my own daughter came across me in the wood and couldn’t name me. She was with her

two sons, now tall as her knees. She asked if I needed any help, any clothes to cover my bare skin. I thanked her for her kindness and told her I was fine and would simply be on my way.

Upon the splitting of our paths, however, the little one named Cane stopped to look back at me.

He felt the serpent kinship; I am sure of it. I smiled at the thought of another snake living in

Eden. Every day Eve would unwittingly kiss goodnight the forehead of her serpent, without knowing his power and birth right. The venom of young ones is even more poisonous. Eden would one day have its own king.

30

Hatred Unyielding

“Known unto earth-folk, that still an avenger Outlived the loathed one, long since the sorrow Caused by the struggle; the mother of Grendel, Devil-shaped woman, her woe ever minded” (Beowulf, 20)

Iron trinkets clashed and collided. The machine towering over me was just one giant in a

train of giants, each chugging in unison. The mechanical ensemble held a rhythm more

consistent than any organist I had heard play in church. Standing for hours, my hands joined the beat and became two metal arms playing along in the cyborg orchestra. Then my brain checked out and the cotton mill did all the thinking for me. When you tossed your worries of fingers being crushed in machines and whole mills burning down with no windows to escape out of, then the hours went much more quickly, and the aching pain in my feet would dissipate. At five each morning I came and joined in the metallic musical numbers. I was no conductor, merely another player waiting to perform my part. As the machine began its breathing, the sun would eventually catch up to us early workers and our sweat added a new danger to our nimble work.

We were just one small wool mill, and the rest of the building was a conglomerate of

other floors dedicated to their own production. Each floor felt foreign to the one above and

below, as if they were separate body parts sewn together like the Frankenstein creature. I had

never been to the floor upstairs, so I wasn’t sure what lied above us. There were rumors though.

It was too quiet, unlike the other businesses. Each floor made its own signature sound and that meant there was life, and so the silence was unsettling. Some said it was made for the white men 31

to make machine people—and pretty soon they wouldn’t need us black folks anymore. But I

didn’t bother myself with rumors.

Below our floor was the butcher’s lair. In the day’s beginning, I could still sense the dismal smell of recent death rising through the cracks of the floor boards, and then feel the pang

of hunger that somehow still came after the scent of each fresh kill. But without fail, all my

senses slowly subsided. My mind blended away into the tinkering ticks and tocks of the metal

beasts around me. The music absorbed me into their iron rib cage, and I lost my physical form. I was left floating aimlessly in the realm of memories.

I remember the smell of wet grass.

Bats flitter above, eager to break their day fasting. The coos of owls were heard, and their

yellow eyes would sometimes charge from the darkness, you would blink and then they’d be

gone. I always felt the night had more life than the day. In the day people toiled, but in

the night people dreamed and loved. Tonight, however, was different. While the air

was crisp and the stars clear as ever, tonight had no feel of life.

I sat outside our dilapidated dwelling and stared up at the Big Dipper. In this part of the

city we could see the stars only in the summer. In the winter, the smoke from the resident’s chimneys masked the stars at night. We heard that the white people at the top of the hill didn’t use fire like we did. They had electricity to cook and keep themselves warm. Our smoke kept us alive, but it its scent and sting were just another reason for them to look down on us.

But tonight it was a summer night and so the Big Dipper could still be seen scooping. She had led my mother’s mother to Cincinnati. My grandmother told me how she hopped on over the

Ohio River, turned her head, and stuck her tongue out to the entire South. 32

Nights like these were usually filled with pleasant memories. Gerald and I would catch fireflies or maybe stick our feet in the sloshing Ohio River and wait to see whose toes would first be nibbled on by the velvet lips of a fish. Yet, I sat there feeling something awful was about to happen. My stomach was sour, and I was alert as an alley cat. Not that it made a difference— knowing something horrible is coming won’t stop it from coming. I had stood up against my boss earlier today. He was always touching and loving, but today I was too tired and too angry to accommodate his loving. Saying no to a white man was like sticking your tongue in a hornet’s nest. I had stirred up something, and for what? I thought I was finally standing up for myself, but I had acted in anger. Now, I had put my boy and myself in danger. The Big Dipper had led my family north, but not north enough to leave white folk.

Besides the murmurs of night lovers and the occasional screech of a sparred alley cat, the night was silent; and the stillness fed the dread in me. Gerald had just slipped into sleep. He was still bed-ridden from the Cane-Holder’s last rage. Sleep allowed him some relief, but he still winced from time to time in his dreaming.

When he first got hurt, I grew hungry because his blood smelled like the freshly slaughtered pigs from the meat shop below. My son’s skin had been twisted and peeled like a potato. His blood was black as coal. He screamed and shook, and even though I was his mother and was supposed to bandage each cut right up, all I could do was just hold his hand. Can’t put a band aid on shredded arm.

I saw some lanterns from the top of the hill. Now there were more, it looked like

Christmas lights parading towards us. It wasn’t normal for the them to go down the hill. What white people would come here? Our streets were littered with trash and beggars at each corner, the overcrowding and poor infrastructure made it so none of us could sleep peacefully. You 33

knew the world was in some real chaos when the white gods decided to visit the earth people

below.

I remember Gerald was too eager to enter the world.

It was so early. I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t even figured yet where I would bear the child

because the other women at the bottom of the hill said I was supposed to still have weeks left. At

work though, I had hidden my pregnancy. With no fat on my body, my clothes had already been

much too big for me. I was working the textile machine when my water broke. We aren’t

allowed bathroom breaks, so the others just assumed I pissed myself. They just moved a little

away and kindly pretended they saw or smelt nothing.

I could not think; I could only feel pain. I was about to become a mother and yet what

I wanted most desperately was my own mother-- someone I knew who went through this and lived. But she wasn’t here, no one was. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. I had never wanted to bring another life in this world, but if I had to, I wanted to pave for the child the safest

way into it. The shadows of scurrying rodents passed here and there. My shoeless feet propped

against the ashy brick wall, I bit on a folded rag, which I would later use to clean myself, to keep

from screaming and revealing myself. I had no husband’s hand to squeeze; I was alone, and I knew too well that production was least effective when alone.

Alone in that alley I became another one of the machines: breathing rhythmically in and out,

in and out, in and out. Even if I had the money to pay a midwife to help, what would she do

when she saw the little one? She might’ve screamed, called me a

traitor, maybe even suffocate him before he had known me. Amongst the clinking and grinding

and rising of smog from the smoke stacks, he would enter the world. He would be born in an

alley behind the textile factory. His first introduction to the world was not one of unconditional 34

love and promised safety. Rather, it consisted of leaden smog and scurrying rats, about the same

size as him. My jaw released the cloth in my mouth. A moment of silence, and then a shrill

infant’s cry. I was no longer alone.

I remember his little claw snug in my hand.

We spent our Sundays marveling at the giant iron buildings. The titans seemed to grow out of

the ground and reach all the way up to heaven. On those days, we truly felt that we lived in the

most modern of times. I tried to forget that it took two to produce a child, but Gerald was mostly

his father on the outside. He had blue eyes and sandy skin. The only way you could tell he

wasn’t white was when he would take off his hat, and there would be a glorious nest of Afro hair, kinked and gold tinted when in the sun. His whiteness always got him in trouble. There was a day in his teens, I remember yelling at him and slapping him on the back of the head because of how often he would walk the line of being white. When he went and opened the door for a young white woman, who clearly mistook him as a white man. After she thanked him,

Gerald flirtatiously took off his hat to her and laughed uproariously as the young girl screamed.

On this particular day, however, he was not quite a teenager yet. Around his twelfth birthday

he sauntered beside me along the city streets. Gerald welcomed each and everything in this city. He was in awe of the coaches with the giant horse-beasts carrying them along. I found all the noise overwhelming, but it seemed to give the little creature life. The steel buildings still felt

so artificial and manufactured to me, but to him it was all he ever knew, and it was a relief to him

from the filth and stench of his natural environment. We were taking our Sunday stroll and I

stopped at the black bakery to buy our weekly bread. I was distracted and just thought he was

still by my knee, but the boy had slipped off without me noticing. When I finally realized, I was instantly terrified. I had heard the whispers, warning tales of the little black children who were 35 kidnapped and carried over into Kentucky to be sold into slavery, never to see their family or freedom again. I was convinced I had lost him.

I ran up and down the streets, in search of the little one. I called out his name in shops and in the square. The city had never felt so busy and overpowering. He was gone from my sight for no more than twenty minutes, but it felt like a lifetime. Running from store to store, street to street, I turned the corner and suddenly found him in the unlikeliest of places; he was on the top of the court steps performing a song in the midst of a crowd of white faces. If I hadn’t been his mother, I don’t think I could have pointed him out as the one black boy in the crowd.

He looked completely at ease, but to me he was a lamb being circled by a wolf pack. He was singing a lullaby I used to sing him to sleep with. He had the voice of a siren, yet he was the one in danger. His little chest rang with the vibrato of a young boy’s voice not quite yet touched by puberty.

“A Mother came when Stars were paling, Wailing round a lonely spring,

Thus she cried while tears were falling, calling on the Fairy king.

Why with spells my child caressing, courting him with fairy joy,

Why destroy a Mother's blessing, wherefore steal my baby boy!

O'er the mountain thro' the wild wood, where his childhood lov'd to play, where

the flow'rs are freshly springing, there I wander, day by day, there I wander, growing

fonder of the child that made my joy, on the echos wildly calling, To restore my Fairy

boy." 1

An uproar of applause. The audience of white faces cooed all the while.

“What a beautiful child!” 36

“Have you ever seen bluer eyes?”

“How quaint, such a bright spirit singing so grim a story!”

“The little one’s voice would fit in with a heavenly chorus!”

He smiled ear to ear, quite pleased with his self. He was always too eager to be on display. I didn’t know how to save him, without revealing his skin color to those watching.

“Sing another!”

“Yes, please!”

The longer he stayed here, the more likely it was that the audience would find out that they were praising a little black boy. I had been standing about ten feet outside the crowd’s circle when I no longer had the choice to think of the safest way to rescue my son—he spied me through the crowd and unabashedly waved. A couple of the onlookers turned around, confused at how we knew each other.

“Over here!” he called me to him. The crowd parted for me to move in past them; they must have been wondering how this fit into the young boy’s act.

“Is that his mammy”?

“How darling! He wants to include his negro.”

“She going to dance?” one man from the crowd yelled.

“Yes, have her sing with you!” another stranger commanded.

Gerald laughed,

“Is that what you guys want?” The crowd cheered him on.

“Well I can’t say no then. Okay mammie, we can finish the final verse.”

He gleefully exclaimed. It was like a nightmare, suddenly he was not black, and I was not his 37 mother. I was humiliated and angry, defenseless and I felt horribly exposed. All these white faces. We sang again,

“But in vain my plaintive calling tears are falling all in vain, he now sports with fairy

pleasures; he's the treasure of their train! Fare thee well my child forever, in this world

I've lost my joy, but in the next we ne'er shall sever. There find my Angel boy.”

The crowd laughed all the while at the nurse singing with her young master. I felt like I was a dog being applauded for walking on his hind legs. Gerald offered a bow and commanded that I give a curtsy. They kept laughing and pleading for an encore, creeping closer to get a better look. I began hyperventilating--they were taking my air, I was sure of it, and my son’s too, even though he invited them to laugh at me.

This was the first time I found Gerald playing as a white man. He was invigorated; to be white meant to be safe and loved, and I could tell once he had that first bight, he would never be completely satisfied with his black life anymore. I knew this wouldn’t be the last time he would play as a monster.

I remember the lanterns bobbing like translucent jelly fish in the blackness.

The lights from the hill continued to grow closer, the lanterns growing in size. It was like watching a shooting star speckle by but then slowly watch as it morphed from a wish to an incoming meteor set on ruin. The few others who had been lounging lazily and enjoying the light summer air retreated with the predator’s arrival. He knew where I lived. The Cane Holder had come regularly before Gerald’s birth to visit me in the night. He used to be less willing to let other white people know of his mistress, and so he penetrated my home in secret.

But his vanity had grown; he became a titan among his people. He had started his own business, he was one of the elders at his church, and somehow his body had even 38

become stronger and more imposing with age. I knew why he really was their hero. When

anyone had a negro problem, he was the one to fix it. If a black man whistled at a white lady, by

night’s fall he had disappeared from this earth. We even heard rumors of the neighbor’s son who

had once jumped rope with white kids from the top of the hill. After a week of his absence, we

began asking the mother about his whereabouts. With a ghostly look in her eyes, she would grit

her teeth and faintly reply how he had moved north to stay with her sister. She swore it was so, but then why had he left all his clothes behind? The White Warrior was the protector and

shield of everything meant to be untouched by the poor and the unseemly. He would erase

anyone who dared to threaten the peace of his people.

With the lights closing in, the fire of the lanterns illuminated the faces of the group of

around fifteen men. Their clothes were dark and so it looked as if fifteen faces floated bodiless

down the hill. I ran upstairs to check on Gerald. He had woken up sometime without me knowing. He was staring at what was left of his arm. The new rags I used to wrap it were already

covered with blood. His breathing was raspy and erratic. My boy looked at me as I entered, and

he saw in my eyes that the worst was still to come.

“Mama, what is it?” he asked. “You look like you just saw a demon.”

“They’re coming.”

“Wolfe? Why, hasn’t he already punished me?” he motioned to his crushed limb. The

exposed muscle was stringed and tattered.

“I—I refused him today. I refused his touch.” I answered, realizing then how much more danger I had put us in.

“Lord, mom. How many are there?” 39

“Fifteen. Maybe more.” It was like I could feel the increasing heat of their lanterns as

they came closer.

“Grab the kitchen knife. I’ll do what I can, but you have to leave now so they don’t see

which direction you take.” He tried to get up with his good arm as support. But he had lost so

much blood and his body was on fire trying to fight infection. My boy fell with a yelp, but he tried again to rise.

“I can’t leave you here like this. There’s too many of them. Come with me. Maybe I

can carry you.” I moved over to try to put his weight on me, but it was impossible. My sweet creature had grown taller than me by then. I could hear distant shouts now from the incoming legion.

“Mom, I can’t go with you.”

“You can. You will!” I tried again to lift him, but he pushed me away.

“Stop! Ma, I won’t run. What’s a lame black man supposed to do out there? I’m done.

They marked me so that everyone will know that I’m black. I can’t ever walk outside again and

not have some white person recoil in fear or spit in my direction. You’ve never felt what it is to

be white; you don’t know anything but this dirty hole in the ground. But I can’t go

back, they took my white from me and I’m angry enough to kill. You go without me so that at

least he won’t get you.”

I was looking at a fifteen-year-old child who had his first real scorn from the world.

How could I talk him out of anger? So I grabbed the knife we kept to cook with. I placed it under

his pillow. For myself, I carried no weapon, but my hands could be lethal if need be. I stood in

front of my boy, eyes on the door. We waited.

I cannot remember my name. 40

I don’t have a name. As a young girl, I was told everything I know about my lineage from my mother’s mother, and I have only the memory of what a young girl chooses to listen to when she hears the myth of her family. It has been told to me that my mother died while giving birth to me and hadn’t named me yet. I came into the world hands first. Like some undead creature resurrected, I reached my claws through the dirt of my grave. Apparently, once I entered the world, my mom had lost so much blood already that she was muttering incomprehensibly.

The only thing my grandmother could decipher was when I was handed over to my mother and she looked at me with dead fish eyes and said, “All for this mere thing”. Then she slipped into her last sleep, and I fell from her limp arms on to the dirt ground of the slave quarters. Dear grandmother believed that since the first thing I was called in this world was

“mere”, I would be called Meredith.

Grandma doesn’t know the name of our ancestors, and she refused to take the name of the master that ruled over her body for so long. So, we had no family name. My father wasn’t at my birth. My grandmother never liked him—and from the sounds of it she wouldn’t of liked

Gerald, since from how my grandmother’s descriptions, Gerald is just like my father. My father was handsome, strong willed, cared too much for words like justice; he was always dissatisfied, obstinate, and a charmer. After my mother’s passing, my mother’s mother never spoke again to my father. With her daughter dead, she only had me to worry about. Grandma tied me, the dirt- covered babe, to her back, and left that night with the big dipper as her guide. Really, she was my big dipper until she died when I was fourteen. One day she just didn’t wake up. I mourned her for a day, and then the next morning I went in search of work. I left her body there, unable to pay for her burial. 41

That’s how I found the textile factory. The boss was the first white man I had ever

spoken to. He had a cane that went up to my shoulders. The man towered seven feet tall. I soon

found why the other workers called him the Cane Holder. It was his weapon of choice—both able to communicate fear and an air of class at once. He was so pale that in the smoggy light of the factory he appeared almost green. He gave me a grin and his teeth were like giant gray rocks jutting from the earth. I felt sure in that moment that he was strictly a carnivore; for a moment I even thought he might eat me. I was only a child when I first met him, but he made sure I wouldn’t be a child any longer. The first time he approached me, I didn’t understand. What I did understand was that he was the only thing between me and hunger, me and a home. So I didn’t scream. Four months after being pulled from the textile floor to the dark corners of his office, I missed my monthly blood.

I don’t seem to remember which one of the neighborhood boys had come to my home to warn me.

Gerald had been sneaking out half the nights of the week for the last couple months. He wouldn’t tell me where he went. He was barely ever home, and when he was, he would look at the room we lived in with such disdain. He didn’t look at it like it was his childhood home, but like it was some filthy cage for feral creatures. The few times my boy had entered our home, he would say,

“They have closets bigger than this.” But how did he know that? Had he been to one of their homes? Or he would say,

“There’s asbestos in the walls. Don’t you see that’s why you cough so much? It’s illegal for the landlord to keep the place like this. He does it because he’s cheap and because no black man would take a white man to court.” I wondered about the meaning of asbestos. 42

Where did he learn such words? And when I replied, he would shake his head as if in anger and

disappointment.

“Why do you speak like that? Don’t you understand it just makes them think less of

you?” I felt him distancing himself from our home and from me. It was if I could feel him

preparing to leave me forever. Like he was slowly distancing himself so that it wouldn’t be as painful when he left me for the white world, or perhaps if the white world killed him. He’d rather die in a white world than live in a black one. It was terrible, the watching of someone you love hate their self so much.

Although it was the early morning hours, I hadn’t slept that night. I was always restless when Gerald left. I often found myself staying awake until he would sneak back home, and I would pretend I never noticed his absence in the first place. I had been hoping for the silent shuffling of his footsteps, but when I heard the thumping knock on my door, I knew something was wrong. I opened the door and saw a boy from the neighborhood about Gerald’s age; he was out of breath and smelled of booze.

“Are you Gerald’s mom?” he asked.

“Yes. What happened? Where is he?” I demanded.

“He’s at the Herald’s bar, up the hill. I saw them taking him out, he looked horrible, miss.”

“Who taking him? Where?” I ran to grab my purse and quickly slipped my kitchen knife in it.

“I don’t know. This guy—there was a man leading the group and he had a cane. And

your son, he was just in real bad shape. I’m sorry I don’t know what’s happened to him.” The 43 messenger’s eyes were huge and distant with the remembering of whatever violence he had witnessed that night.

He must have seen Mr. Wolfe. I thanked the messenger and ran as quickly as I could to the textile factory. I couldn’t imagine Wolfe taking my boy anywhere but the factory; it was where he held complete control. With my purse held snugly under my arm, I fled into the early morning air. The sun was not yet up, but I could feel the restlessness of the animals. Birds began chattering; nervously telling stories of the nightmares from which they just awoke, but mine had only just begun.

I sprinted to the textile factory. Despite it still being so early, the building was unlocked, and from this I knew they must still be inside. Climbing flights of rickety stairs, I smelled blood. I prayed it was the butcher in early and not the blood of my son. I heard a faint moan and my body shook with anger and strength. As I climbed higher, the moan transformed into a scream, and a scream became something worse and more primal—like the sounds of injured animals; and then there was silence. The silence was pregnant with uncertainty and defeat; it was horrible, like the slicing of knives compared to the animalistic shrieks I had heard moments before.

I weaved through the rows of towering textile machines until I found the lost boy. He had been abandoned by his predators, like some mouse a cat opened up for fun rather than hunger. The angel was unconscious yet held up by his left wing that was wrenched deep in the guts of the textile machine. The sun had just climbed past the horizon, and it was a new day. My nightmare had lived on even when the dark sky had turned white. The golden rays penetrated the room and haloed that fairy boy. I thought that this must have been what it was like for Mary to see her own son hung for others to watch. Yet the temple of heavens did not open, there was no 44 earthquake to signify the pain of my son. Instead, there were just the bustling murmurs of people beginning their day. Gerald let out a sigh, and I saw he somehow was still alive. With one yank, I ripped his arm from the hungry machine. There was a scraping noise and much of the skin and muscle remained to be sewn into someone’s smock. I hadn’t carried my boy for ten years, and here I was finally carrying—dragging him—again.

I remember a single knock on the door.

“We’re here for the child, whore!” The voice came from what must have been one of Mr.

Wolfe’s men.

I remained silent and stood in front of the bed of my child. After a moment the weak door was effortlessly pummeled down. Three white men stood hungrily, and in the middle was the

Cane Holder. He roared,

“You’re lucky he survived the night he had the guts to enter Herald’s place. You should be thanking me for my mercy! This filth walked into a white bar; apparently, he’s been playing a white boy for quite some time now. Hand him over, and I’ll look past your insubordination from this morning.”

“Get out of my house.” I stood tense and widespread, like a beast about to bite out the throat of its enemy. The men merely chuckled.

“Come now. I’m his father after all. Don’t be mad, at a father who just wants to do his job as a discipliner.”

Wolfe gave a signal and the two other men pinned me against the wall. I gnashed my teeth at them and spit in their face, but I was cemented in place. The leader of the pack put down his cane and looked down on my son lying in bed, as if he was some choice meat that Wolfe had 45 not yet decided how to cook. He was high on power; his hands twitched, his pupils dilated, and his panting breaths made his entire shoulders visibly rise and fall.

He kneeled down to be face to face with my child, and for the first time both sets of blue eyes met each other.

“Never saw a negro with eyes so blue.” Said Wolfe. He reached his hand to touch the boy's face.

“Arghh!” The Cane Wielder let out a great scream. Gerald had claimed the last of his strength to cut off one of Wolfe’s fingers. Wolfe reacted in instinctual rage. With his good hand, he grabbed the knife and swiftly slit the throat of the fairy boy. The last sounds that came from my son’s throat, while inarticulate, somehow still sounded lyrical like a lullaby.

“No!” I shrieked. I thrashed and swore, but the man to the right subdued me with a hard blow to the head. The other raised my head by my hair to make sure that through the streaming tears I would watch what happened next.

“I had planned to make you watch him die slowly. The bastard seemed to want a quicker end to his life. Not negro. Not white. I don’t know what kind of thing he was, but it’s for the best nobody will go around guessing what he is no more. People like him have nowhere to hide--they are freaks of nature, and God made no hole in a tree or burrow in the dirt for him to call his.” I watched the blood drip from Gerald’s purple and gray cracked lips to the floor. The

Boy Killer paced as if giving a casual speech,

“I do what I can to keep my people safe. But it’s really a thankless service I perform.

What I keep, I have to take for myself. I hope you understand. Consider it a tax for the performance of a civil service.” Then, with his bear hands, one-by-one he plucked out the eyes of 46 my son, like they were some berries wedged in a pie. One of his men pulled out a jar and handed it to Wolfe. He plopped them in, and with gave me a devilish grin,

“Would you like to hold them?” he asked. I felt my insides wrench and turn, and I violently began vomiting.

“Guess not.” He turned to his men, “let her be. Come on.” The three of them left me alone in a room covered in blood and smelling of bile. On my hands and feet, I crawled over to the bed of my child. Joining him, I cradled him tight in my arms. His blood kept me warm until the morning.

I remember how he had the gall to pull me aside for loving the next morning.

But today he didn’t order me to go to his office, instead he took me to the upper floor.

“I want to show you my collection.” He opened a grim iron door. This area hadn’t been seen by any of the other workers; I’d only ever seen Wolfe disappear up the stairs to this hole. While I was caught off guard by this surprise, I realized the privacy of this cave-like room would better for what I had planned for him.

I entered a room of darkness, not knowing what to expect. The air was damp and cold and had an overwhelming and nauseating chemical smell of something utterly inhuman. Wolfe lit a match to light the wick of a lamp, and instantly the room was painted red by the small flame.

In this ruby realm I saw what could only be described as a hell-dream. There were shelves upon shelves of jars, big and small. And in them, were the spoils of his many battles. Jars of teeth filled to the brim, feet in the middle of some green liquid, like fruit in gelatin. There were whole limbs, and in other containers only scraps of limbs. Hands held in fists or with fingers spread as if the hands had been severed at the moment of shock. No jar was quite like the next, but they all shared in common one thing—they all belonged to black bodies. Then I noticed a glimmer of 47

bright blue. In the back corner was a jar in which Grendel’s eyes lay, staring back at me, unable

to blink and unable to rest. Wolfe was pleased that I had spotted them on my own so quickly.

“What do you think? The children of Cain may be fallen creatures, but they have given me such excitement in life. I have been adding to this collection for quite some time now. I’m even running out of space. Suppose I’ll need a larger room soon. But our bastard’s contribution, it’s my crowning jewel.” He was silent a moment to search my face for some expression, a clue to what I thought. When my face refused to betray the surging hate in my heart, he reached his hand out to touch my thigh. I flinched and pulled away.

“Goddamnit. Taking your child’s life was a warning. Do you want to join your son?” In response, I spit in his eye. He delivered a blow to my face and I immediately hit the floor. Black spots appeared in my vision as he knelt over me. I felt his bear hands tear at my blouse, and his weight held me tight to the floor. Struggling beneath him, I reached for the weapon I had hid in the seam of my skirt. I felt for it, but he found it first. Realizing my intention to hurt him, his eyes grew fiery with rage. Pulling out the knife, he forced my hand to spread out.

“Damn slut! I gave you this job and your son and this is how you repay me? Fine.

You’ll be next to your boy!” In a swift slash, my little finger was sliced from my hand. I shrieked

in pain. He examined the finger, it was a part of me, but now it was foreign. He raised the knife

once more, as if to dismember me again. Every inch of my body was bursting with hate. It

energized me, and turned the pain into something secondary, like a faint whisper egging me on. With my other hand I set my nails to his eyes. He cried out and retreated momentarily. I

began crawling away, but he grabbed my calve and began dragging me towards him. I held fast

onto a shelf, to keep him from taking me. It rattled and suddenly jars upon jars began falling. The

chemical scent grew stronger as each jar shattered, spreading the green liquid across the floor. 48

He was growing stupid and dangerous with anger. Wolfe lunged at me and spread his hands around my neck. As he squeezed the air from my body, he kept his face only inches from mine to watch as I faded from consciousness.

The world around me began to blacken and turn to an abyss. My senses grew fainter and then there was no sound, only a dull warmth in my body and his eyes staring into mine. I had endured him for so long because enduring meant safety, but now I had nothing left for him to take. I felt liberated by my lack of attachment to the tangible world. In this world all my pleasures had been robbed, and I honestly would have welcomed death in that moment, had it not been enacted by this devil. He had taken my body and my child, and now he planned to keep my body and Gerald in this dungeon even after death. My hate gave my airless body vigor, and it was my hate that guided my fingers to a shard of glass. It was my hate that plunged the shard deep into his throat. But it was my joy that kept plunging it again and again, long after his spirit left his body.

49

Miss Wampus

“But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and

their persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.”

(Carmilla)

Among the late summer days, the Tennessee hills become a lighthouse for all life. The

wind travels from the north and affectionately combs through the trees, and the leaves rustle with

the sound of animated arbor whisperings. The woodland creatures are scurrying and fighting,

loving, and up to whatever fairy mischief they desire. I have even heard there is a sacred part of

the Smoky Mountains where fireflies migrate and in a synchronous symphony they turn the night

forest into the Milky Way.

These summer evenings are what the hills are remembered for. Tourists and nomads will

describe the life and peace of this country, and brochures will only write about the wild vibrancy

of these hills. Yet, the story of which I report did not take place during the lighthouse season of

the hills, but instead in the haunting season. In the winter, these hills and valleys truly live up to

their name and become most like smoke. The cold air leaves fog throughout the hills and a mist that freezes the many lakes. The forest trees become bare, and where lush leaves once sat, there instead are only gnarled branches with arthritic hands scratching the sky.

Then, of course, there are also the noises. Without the leaves to absorb sound, suddenly you hear everything—even that which you cannot name.

This country is no stranger to superstition; folk tales have been part of its history since

settlers first inhabited this land. And before that, the Native Americans told their ghost stories

too. But it is the dead of winter when the people’s lives are most dictated by the fear of what

lurks in their woods. Nature becomes less a wonder and more a force to be feared. Families do 50 not linger outside once the sun has fallen; even the bears are grateful to sleep through the stranger season.

One fable that has long been told in these parts follows the tragic story of a woman punished for wishing to appease her curiosity. The Wampus cat, in these parts is believed to be a feared creature that is half-mountain cat and half-woman. She was once a Native American woman, beautiful but defiant. She was forbidden to hunt with the men, so one day she surreptitiously followed the male members of her tribe into the forest on a hunting trip. Clad in the warm winter fur of a mountain cat, she witnessed what the men had been keeping to themselves for so long: the men were trading sacred stories and performing ancient magic. For only a second she was able to absorb the wonders that had been hidden from her and every other woman. She was like Eve hungrily eating of the tree of knowledge. However, the Tribe’s

Shaman quickly discovered her. She was liable to share the magic with the rest of the women, and so she was transformed into a horrible beast. Today, she still roams the valleys and hills of the Smokies. Men may still hear a primal and lamenting cry when they venture out at night. But by the time you see that she is the source of the shriek, she will have slit your throat with her vengeful claws.

The following record belongs to someone who in fact thrives in the enigmatic realm between worlds. Like the Wampus, she is angry, even when she is unaware of her rage. Like the

Wampus, she lives in the liminal--and we fear, hate, and are fascinated with her for it. The girl who wrote this diary was born of the place between reality and magic. She rips any innocent from the reality they knew. Her words may sound human and decent, but I warn you now that her deception is masterly. I know because I was one of her many victims. Luckily, I got away in the end. She bewitched me and turned me into someone I hate. Now, I have even wondered if 51

she meant all along for me to find this journal. Perhaps she again is attempting to seduce my

soul. And whether this journal be truth or lie, it’s my role to share it. I may very well be doing

Satan’s bidding. And yet I already fear she has plagued me now. There is a tiny spark of

tenderness in my heart for her, and I wonder whether this journal really is only the bidding of a

lonely eighteen-year-old girl, who had no one but the confines of these pages to share her love

story with. I think maybe I am a servant to them both, the devil and the girl.

Her name is Carmilla, and until I found this journal, I was certain I had been her killer.

Carmilla’s Journal

August 2006,

I come from magnificent people. My family has inhabited the land of this country since

the first Puritans set foot on its wild earth. We have kept records of each member of our blood, and I am the product of a long line of defiant women. These calloused and sturdy women of the plain homesteaders never devolved into delicate southern belles. In fact, the women of my family are known in these parts for two things: their untamed ways and their inability to keep a man.

This tradition started with our matriarch, Lily. Her story has been passed on from mother to daughter- a chilling bedtime story I’ve grown to memorize. It’s said that she left her husband and child behind without warning. Despite how she had never left her property until the day she left her family behind, she ventured into the unknown. Her husband had been handsome, their farm lucrative, and their woods were compared to Eden. Lily braved the wild, unsettled land for years on her own, and then decided to stay in the mountains in her old age because it made her feel like she was flying. Lily left the Puritan faith but would tell people that the only thing she kept from the faith was a hell fire in her heart. 52

My mother and I do our best to live with fire in our hearts too. We are somewhat of outsiders in this community. We’re the only women we know that would live outside if we could. We hunt, we fish, and we hike. Our cabin is far from the town square, and we like it that way. We tell each other stories at night by the fire. When I was sad my mom held me in her arms and told me Lily’s story. My mother would braid my hair and tell me how brave Lily was, and how I would be just like her someday. I would ask what happened to her once she settled in the mountains.

“Who knows?” my mom would respond. “Maybe she is still out there. Maybe the woods are her kingdom.”

“Like the Wampus woman?” I would ask.

“Yeah, except less hairy.”

August 2006

Momma said that each child of God has been given a gift, that once discovered they should use it to glorify Him. Momma’s gift was embroidery. The way she moved a needle was like watching a spider spin a web with impeccable art and precision. My gift is dreams. I used to think I was like Joseph in Genesis dreaming about the sun, moon, and eleven stars. Many dreams flooded my childhood nights, but one stood out in particular. The dream was always the same. In it I would be watching myself lying on one of the graves in the burial yard beside the county church. The dirt was always black and fresh, and I slept soundly as if it were my own bed. The moon was bright and yellow like the eye of an unlucky cat. And while it was a winter evening, I was always only clad in a thin, white nightgown. The church bells begin to clang and mark the witching hour. I am awoken by the sound. I turn to offer a plaintive kiss on the gravestone—yet the name on it is never clear in the dream—and I turn around to face the church building. An 53

angel opens the building’s large wooden doors. She has stunning blue eyes that seem to reflect

the scintillating stars above; her hair is thick and wavy. The golden blonde tresses fall past her

hips. This celestial creature approaches me with a lit torch in her left hand. With her right hand she delicately strokes my cheek.

“Will you do this for me, love?”

Somehow, I always know exactly what she is asking of me. I do not answer but I take the torch from her, and without the light her face disappears. I walk to the church, where the doors are still wide open. I can no longer see her, but I know she is watching to make sure I follow through with it. I close the heavy doors that leave a deep echo bouncing off the walls from inside. I lock the door and look around the empty building. It’s usually so full of life and color.

But in my dream it is always night and the pews are always ominously empty. I kneel before the altar and begin to say the Lord’s Prayer. Once completed, I stand and pour the communion wine across the altar. I lift my arm with the lamp in it and let it fall on the table. The glass shatters and the wine catches aflame. I move to sit in the front pew and wait to burn along with everything else.

August 2006

When I was a little girl, I loved our weekly trip to the church. The closest one in the county was a thirty-minute drive through the hills. I would wake Sunday morning sleepy-eyed and dazed by the early hour. Mother scrubbed my face clean till it stung all over and was red as

clay. We would start the trip while the sun was still hidden, but the birds always sung our way

through the mountains, and I’d gaze out the window of our rusty pickup truck and watch as the

hills lit up with neon orange rays. Mom would drink her black earthy coffee and I would eat a

biscuit from last night’s dinner. I enjoyed having somewhere to be and somewhere to go. We’d 54 roll up to the old white church being filled with lines of old women in gaudy hats and little boys picking at their Sunday best. Like ants in a line we’d file into the sacred one-room church. There were two unpainted strips of wood beneath the steeple that formed a cross. The building was so old there was black grime and age between the white panels, like dirt under fingernails.

Church was the social hub of the county, the only consistent gathering place for those in the area. This chapel was the epicenter of gossip, it was where births and funerals were announced, and where people could start and end ancestral feuds. Most importantly, however, it was basically a marriage market in disguise. The little girls would send mischievous looks to the little boys when the boy would wipe dirt on the girl’s dress and plant a frog on their pew, but all the while the little girl stuck her tongue out at the boy she would not be able to stop herself from wondering if this child would grow to one day be her future husband.

And so since the church was the social hub, naturally it was there that I met the first girl

I fell in love with. Until then others just assumed I didn’t have playground crushes on any boys because they joked I believed in cooties or perhaps I was too focused on my studies and hobbies—both of which I would surely outgrow. The only thing I never actually outgrew were the chills I got when a compassionate and lovely girl would look me in the eyes for just a little longer than was socially acceptable, or when she would offer to run her hands in my hair to fix a tangle. I waited, but there was never a boy that made my skin hot and my cheeks flush. I was twelve when I realized I was in love with Emma. She had delicate ringlets of red hair and freckles that splattered across her cheeks and arms. Emma liked to climb trees and play in the creek; she was vivacious and would kick a boy if any dared pull her pigtail. She had a lovely singing voice and I made sure I always stood close to her during worship. I would mouth the words so that I could hear her better. In Sunday school I did everything I could to be near her. I 55 didn’t understand lust but I understood that I wanted desperately to sit next to her, to brush arms with her, and to hold her hand during prayer.

SeptemberSeptember 2006

What Emma loved more than anything in the world were horses. She had some at her ranch and one of them was her very own. A friendship had developed between us and she invited me one day to come see her horses. I was ecstatic but terrified too. The person I was most enamored with in the world wanted to share something so special with me. I combed my hair and scrubbed my face even though it was a weekday so that maybe she’d think I was as pretty on a

Tuesday as I was on a Sunday. Emma came from magnificent people too. Her family had more land than anyone else in the county. The rolling hills of their farm were lush and limitless. I experienced a kind of privacy there I had never experienced before in my own home. My home was cramped and creaky even when there was no breeze. I shared the same room as my mother.

There was nowhere you could go in our quarters where the other couldn’t reach you in a few paces. Yet while standing next to Emma and looking out over the lush fields and hills and her valley that was partly made up of a sparkling lake, I realized you could get lost on Emma’s land.

The independence and thrill of being lost was an intoxicating prospect to my twelve-year old self—particularly, if I were lost with Emma.

Emma mounted her horse. It was auburn and speckled black. The steed’s coat was so shiny it seemed to glow. It had muscles showing prominent and the beautiful thing’s ebony eyes looked absolutely defiant. She demonstrated how she would signify the horse to turn left or right, and to walk or trot. Emma told me how she liked the way the wind threw her hair around and how light she felt while riding her steed. Emma kicked her horse and suddenly she and the horse were sprinting in through the field. I watched as her fiery hair tossed from side to side like an 56 actual flame. She held her hands up like the old women do during worship service and she closed her eyes.

“I’m flying! I’m flying!” she yelled.

I watched in awe; she was like Artemis in the hunt. She had electricity and vivacity in everything she did, and I wanted desperately to be part of her existence.

“You can ride the white one over there.” Emma pointed to a horse not too far off. I had been admiring the horses for their grace and elegance, but inn that moment I was much more aware of how powerful and impressive the beast was than how beautiful it was. “I don’t think I can. I don’t know how.” I answered.

“You’re afraid?” There was no sign of her wanting to embarrass me.

“Yes.” I surprised myself. If any boy had asked me if I was afraid, I would have yelled at him and do anything in my power to prove him wrong. But I realized in that moment that Emma had disarmed me, and I felt exposed under her firm gaze.

“Then you will ride with me” she offered me her calloused, freckled hand. I accepted it and was helped onto the horse. I sat behind her. Linking my arms around her waist, I could feel the warmth of her skin and the expansion of her lungs with each breath she took. I had never been this close to her before and it was the closest thing to an embrace that I had had with another girl. It was a hot, summer afternoon but I clearly remember feeling chills travel along my spine.

I didn’t want the ride to ever end, but the sun was falling quickly. The light of the setting rays made the entire valley blood orange. Emma steered us to the stable, where she offered me her hand to help me off the horse. Yet when my feet had reached the ground, she kept my hand firmly in hers. 57

“You know, the first thing I noticed about you was your eyelashes. I can tell you don’t

wear makeup, but somehow your lashes are as thick and black as the horses’.” She raised her

fingers to my eyes. I closed them and felt as she carefully used her fingers to brush the lashes.

“It’s about supper time.” she had stopped caressing my eyes, but I didn’t want to open my

eyes again. “We should go inside.”

And so we did. We went inside and had dinner with her family and then I told her

goodbye and I drove myself home. Mom lets me borrow the car from time to time even though I

am underage, with lonely country roads no one ever gets pulled over here. Windows down and

the scent of wood flooding the car, I thought of Emma. I had never been touched by her before.

The smallest stroke of her finger had ignited a hunger I didn’t know was inside me. I knew then

that I wouldn’t be able to subsist solely on that memory. I needed more.

November September 2006

After a few weeksmonths of looking forward desperately to those Sunday mornings and

feeling crushed when I had to tell her goodbye for another week, I decided I had to do something about how I felt for Emma. My twelve-year old love was too profound for one day a week. So I asked my mother to teach me how to stitch—an art form that has been passed and prized for generations among the women of my family. I had never shown an interest in learning something so passive, and my mother was really moved when I asked her to teach me. I’d pricked myself not even ten minutes into learning and threw my stitching to the ground. My mother simply smiled and handed me back my work.

“Nothing beautiful comes without a little pain. Besides, it’s only right someone should experience the pain of their blade before they ever inflict it on another.” She gave me a mischievous wink. 58

I can’t say I was graceful or artful by the time I finished my token of love for Emma. But

I had gained an appreciation for this girlish hobby that I hadn’t before. My fingers were well pricked, and I had left spots of blood on my blouse, but I was proud of my creation. It looked perhaps more like a mountain lion than a horse. The lines were not even and neat. I used brown and black thread to represent her favorite horse, but the dark colors just left the piece looking dark and unsettling. Looking back, it was more of a Wampus than a steed, but it was the very first thing I had ever created and so of course I thought it was perfect.

I anxiously waited all week to offer Emma my token of love. I wrapped it in an old newspaper and attached a hand written card on top with her name on it. When Sunday finally arrived, it was an early November weekend, and the first snow of the year. It had been unseasonably warm until now and the drastic shift felt almost supernatural. Because of the snow on the roads, my mother and I arrived late to the service, so I was unable to sit next to Emma like

I usually do. We stood in the back and when it was time to take communion, I placed my present delicately on the windowsill facing the church cemetery.

It read:

Emma,

I think love must be the strangest illness. When I am near you I feel warm, but my skin has chills. I am sitting, but my heart beats rapidly. Since meeting you, I have felt myself a changed girl. Love,

` Carmilla

Upon returning from taking bread I went to grab the gift, but it had disappeared. I searched the room of people now swaying in worship. Only one other person beside myself had their attention parted from the music. The pastor’s daughter, Laura, was sitting in the front pew 59 and looking at something in her lap. She lifted the embroidered image of the horse to the light to get a better look. Upon reading the letter, I saw her turn around and look at me with curious eyes.

Church had ended and the procession of people began to exit the building. I was mortified and attempted to leave as surreptitiously as possible. But I felt a delicate hand lightly tap the back of my shoulder.

“This is yours.” I turned to see Laura staring at me, one arm languidly raised with the present in hand.

“No. That’s not mine.” I answered too quickly. She smiled a little and kept her hand raised for me to take it from her.

“The tiger is a little creepy”

“That’s a horse. I mean, I think it looks more like a horse”.

“Oh. I think that makes it creepier then.” She took it out of the wrapping to reevaluate the species of the subject. “Does she know yet—that you like her?”

“I don’t.” My ears were flushed and warm; I felt completely naked. Why would she ask something like that so casually and publicly? I snatched the letter from her hand and tore the letter into pieces. Upon throwing the shreds to the ground I put out my hand for the stitching. She stepped back playfully and gave a sly smile. She slid it in her blouse. I didn’t know what game she was at, but I was too embarrassed to do anything but flee the opposite direction.

From that point on, I would sometimes catch Laura staring at me during church service, as if I were some specimen under dissection. Like I was a pinned-down frog with my muscles and organs exposed. I had expected her to see my insides and laugh with discomfort or pale in disgust. Instead, she had this relaxed curiosity that just gave me shivers. Ultimately, the constant 60 fear of Laura revealing my feelings to others was paralyzing. It was hell, and I swore I wouldn’t put Emma through that—and so I never told her how I felt.

December 2006

In my seventeenth year my mother developed an illness. The doctor called it Leukemia-- cancer of the blood. It was the first time I had to confront the idea that she was imperfect and temporal. To my younger self, she was as sturdy and robust, but the disease caused her to change forms, like the Wampus cat. One day she was the beautiful and hearty forest woman I knew, and then she became this fragile stranger with translucent skin, covered in blotched bruises.

Everything human about her appearance slipped away.

The doctors said there was something wrong with her blood; there weren’t enough white blood cells to fight off disease. The little cabin we inhabited no longer seemed a place for just the two of us, because she was never there. Momma started to be hospitalized for anything as small as a cold. And because of this, our small cabin was no longer cozy and quaint, but a claustrophobic cell where any germ I carried may happen to be the one to break down her body.

She never said it, but she kept her distance from me even when she was home. I felt angry and hurt. I wasn’t going to hurt her; I wasn’t stupid enough to cough in her face or not wash my hands. She was still here, and yet it felt like her distance was the disease already taking her from me.

I was confused and hurt. Momma wasn’t the kind of person that would get a cough and stay in bed all day. She was resilient and stubborn against pain—she was as stubborn and resilient as Lily. One time, when I was six or seven, she broke her arm when she fell while thatching the roof. She had told me it was just a bump, and then she made me dinner and put me to bed before secretly going to the hospital. The closest hospital was forty minutes away, and its 61

outdated technology and limited funds could do little to help her—yet she drove there with one

working arm in the dark all by herself. I didn’t even know she went to the hospital until I saw her

cast the next morning. The mountains had always been something I saw as a natural miracle, but

now it was another obstacle keeping my mother from what would keep her alive. She could no

longer survive on simply water, food, oxygen—she had added a single new basic need to her life,

medicine, and the addition of just one new need completely toppled our lives.

One deep winter evening she woke me up in the middle of the night. Momma had been taking baths more often because they helped alleviate her pain and swelling. That night she had been shaving her legs and accidently cut herself with a razor. It was a deep cut. Even a healthy person would have had to get stitches. But one of the symptoms of her illness was that she bled more easily, and it took her longer for her body to stop the bleeding. I woke to hearing her yelling from the bathroom. Before calling for me she had tried to deal with it on her own. At first, she had just stayed in the bath and pressed a washcloth to the cut, but it quickly became saturated with the blood and began turning the water pink and then rosy and finally a deep crimson. By the time I had entered the room, I was instantly hit with the overwhelming smell of iron, and it looked as if she had been bathing solely in her own blood.

“It won’t stop.” Her shouting had subsided and she spoke now in a murmur. Her big, gray eyes looked up at me from her thin face and jutting cheekbones. She was so thin; her breasts were nearly absent and her ribs jutted out like a pair of claws latching desperately for its prey.

I witnessed a kind of fear I had never seen in her before, and a small part of me hated her for that weakness. Up to this point, she hadn’t allowed herself to look fragile in front of me, and so I didn’t realize how bad she was. At the hospital, she always made sure I remained in the waiting room. She took her medicine in private and refused any help I had offered. She had been 62

trying to preserve the part of my childhood where she was untouchable and where as long as she

was immortal, so was I. How did she let herself get to this point without asking for help? It was

selfish of her to preserve her pride. She hadn’t been protecting me, she had been keeping me

blind to her pain and it made seeing her unable to step out of her own bloody tub all the more

appalling.

The steep snow and poor mountain roads made the trip to the hospital nearly two hours

long. She was conscious for about an hour and a half of the drive. I was terrified, and guilty,

because, ultimately, I resented her for needing me. I was supposed to need her, and now I was

the one driving in the night in my pajamas and in a truck covered in blood with her life in my

hands.

The hospital kept her overnight. I drove home. The next day, I received a call from her.

“Carmilla! It’s so great to hear your voice. I’m sorry to have scared you last night.

Really, I feel horrible for waking you up. After talking to the doctor, we both laughed at my panicking. I completely overreacted to a little cut. Can you forgive me?”

I said I would.

“That’s nice to hear. You don’t have to worry okay?”

I said I wouldn’t.

“Are you coming home later today then?” I asked.

“Actually, I was talking with the doctor, and we agreed that it wasn’t good to put so much of my well-being on your shoulders. I’m really doing better, but we agreed it may be best if I stay in a better facility. That way you don’t have to keep making those long drives to a couple counties over.”

My ears turned red with anger. 63

“What am I supposed to do? I can’t live in the house alone.”

“Honey, it won’t be for long. And you can finally keep up with your reading and embroidery without me interrupting you. I can’t wait to see how your latest stitching is going to turn out.

“But it’s our house.”

“It won’t be long-”

“How long?” I interrupted,

“A few days, maybe a couple weeks-”

“A couple weeks? Give me a date,” I demanded.

“Just until I feel good enough to not inconvenience you-”

“ Inconvenience? Why didn’t you just tell me you weren’t getting better? Why have you been telling me not to worry? I could have helped, Mom!”

“I am getting better. It will be okay, Carmilla. I promise.”

“Give me a date.”

“Carmilla, it’s hard to say.”

I hung up on her.

December 2006

After hanging up on momma the night after I drove her to the hospital, the minister,

Laura’s father, called her and asked if I could stay with him and his daughter, until she was well enough to come and get me. The benevolent minister was all-too willing to take in the poor, nearly orphaned child. All the more, Laura had recently been adopting a more melancholy manner. The minister thought she must be lonely, always by herself in their giant plantation. And 64

conveniently, there was a poor, meek playmate to which Laura could impart her purity and

godliness. It was God’s planning for certain.

Laura is everything Emma was not, and yet she was the reason I started to want to go to

church again.

Laura was one of those happy children kept ignorant from the night. Her life was

carefully orchestrated. Surely, she had been taught to shield her body and flee from the preying

world to the praying one. She was a diamond locked in a vault, and every man in the county

wanted her more because of her unattainability. As long as a diamond is hidden, the buyers can

fantasize about its scintillating nature within their minds. The keeper of the key to the vault was

her father. He constructed a schedule for her that was strictly to be followed. She neither saw nor

spoke with anyone unless he dictated so. The only time she ever left the confines of their

plantation-style mansion was on Sundays. There, the men from their pews would strain their

neck to see some glimpse of the angel. But she would never be a prize to any of them should their father help it. To be honest, I used to hate Laura. She represented everything I fought not to

be—inhibited, objectified; naïve—yet she was handsomely rewarded for every yoke she bore on her shoulders. She wore her chains as if it was a jewel to show off to the world, and I found her

smug and idiotic because of it.

Her home was like a regal cave. Its limitlessness seemed to swallow me and I was

constantly finding myself lost and panicking. Despite its large interior, I still always felt I was

caged by the sunless rooms and airless corridors. There was an unsettling emptiness that no

foreign silk rug or embellished curtain could cover up. It was a plantation style home-the only

one in the county. Laura’s ancestors had built this community a couple hundred years ago

through the discovery of oil, Baptist scripture, and slave labor. While the house was kept in 65

impeccable shape, it still sustained an ancient aura. I felt the phantoms of past house slaves

walking the hallways and the spirits of Civil War soldiers seemed to still keep watch of the

impending Northern troops. Compared to my mother’s and my cabin in the wooded mountains,

this place felt angry and artificial.

Laura greeted me at the door of their home. She was almost loopy with excitement.

While giving a tour of her house, she had fits of giggles and nearly skipped from room to room. I

thought how it was no doubt that she must have been thrilled to have authority over another

person for the first time in her life, to have a responsibility outside of being her father’s perfect

Southern Belle. I noted a small tone of nervousness to her as well. I sensed that she was carefully orchestrating everything so that she would give off a favorable impression. I remained nearly

expressionless while she showed me her dining room, library, and billiard room, because I was watching her to see what exactly she wanted from me. Would she use her knowledge about

Emma against me? Would she order me around like some pet? Yet despite my fears, all I saw

was another teenage girl who was doing her best to be accepted.

“And this here is your room” She said.

I walked into the room of a princess in a fairy tale. Everything was elegant and refined.

Before me lay a grand marble fireplace with detailing of angels playing the flute, ornate

tapestries covered the walls, a raised king size bed with laced curtains, and a window seat made

of dark oak and covered in crimson velvet looking out on miles of rolling hills and valleys.

Across the regal room there was a chipped painting, yellow with age, of a young woman with one ivory breast exposed. Her despaired gaze was on heaven as the venomous fangs of a serpent lay buried in her breast. Laura noticed my interest,

“Do you know who she is?” she asked me. 66

“It’s Cleopatra.” I answered, “She’s latched a snake onto her . . . um chest. She’s taking her own life.” I blushed then from becoming aware we were both staring at her nakedness.

“There’s something more tragic when such a beautiful, young girl dies. You never see paintings of ugly old widows killing themselves.” I nodded, embarrassed. “She is beautiful.

Don’t you think so?”

Laura’s gaze stayed firm on me as she awaited my reply. We were interrupted, however, by a knock on the door. It was Laura’s father checking in.

“Already talking about girl things I’m sure! I don’t mean to interrupt, will you find this comfortable?” he was still dressed in his tie, he must have just got back from the Saturday night service.

“It’s too much” I answered.

“Not at all! Really, we are thrilled to have a guest. I am so often away because of church events and elder meetings; I really worry about Laura being alone so much. You know, it was her idea for you to come, after all. I am sure the two of you will find you have a great deal in common.”

Laura had asked for me to join them. I wondered why.

That night I was sinking in that mammoth bed unable to sleep. Could a bed actually be so comfortable it keeps you from sleeping? With no sleep in sight, I debated whether to call momma at the hospital. I’d never gone this long without talking to her before. Avoiding her, of course, made me feel guilty, but it also left me with a rush of independence. Without realizing it, before this point, I had never had a chance to really exist outside of her. The umbilical cord had symbolically never been cut. I had never defied her, and I was curious to find out who I was without her always being a few feet away. 67

The room of my door opened, and I saw the silhouette of Laura at the door’s entrance.

Her hair was down and she wore a thin nightgown. I was startled because she didn’t knock. I waited for her to say something, yet she remained silent.

“Did you want something?” I finally said.

“You’re still awake too.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“I had a nightmare. I get them a lot. It’s hard to sleep afterwards.” I did my best to offer an expression of concern. “I heard a few years back from some of the church boys that alcohol makes people sleep easier.” She pulled from behind her back a bottle of red wine.

“Baptists don’t drink alcohol” I replied.

“Think of it as communion wine. The more of Christ’s blood you drink, the holier you become.” She closed the door quietly behind her and climbed into bed with me. The moonlight allowed me to see only a ghostly outline of her. She took a long gulp and passed me the bottle.

Looking back, I am not certain why I drank from it too. Perhaps, I was as lonely as I could tell she was, and my need for companionship overcame my fear of her having yet another secret over my head.

The next day I woke to the sun climbing over the mountains. I was alone in bed as if nothing had happened the night before. Actually, I had no clear memory of my time with Laura.

It had been more akin to a dream. A golden-haired angel had appeared out of thin air. She had slipped into my bed and together we drank the blood of Christ.

January 2007

I stayed with Laura and her father for one cycle of the moon. My days were rather unremarkable. I read, took walks on the wintry and lifeless plantation, and I embroidered. For the 68

most part, we had her giant plantation to ourselves. While I felt the comforts and ornateness of

that place to be unlike any luxury I had experienced, I still felt somewhat like I was just a bird

caged within beautiful bars. Laura didn’t like when I walked outside without her. There was only

one phone in her house—belonging to her father. It was in his study, so if I ever openly

wondered aloud whether I should call my mother or not, Laura would say that we weren’t

allowed in her father’s study, so I wouldn’t be able to call mom anyway. Her father was often

away on church business and maids only came once or twice a week to clean. Some days, Laura

kept her distance from me as long as the sun was out. She was even slightly cold and pretentious at times when addressing me. Some days I would be reading one of the books I brought, and she

would start warning me about the wicked filth I was exposing my heart to. One day, I was

reading Lolita and she went into a complete fury. She started screaming about sexual impurity.

She ended by snatching the book from my hand and throwing it into the fireplace.

Yet, on other days, she was the giggly nymph I met my first day in her home. She would

take my hand and lead me around, and she would tell me stories while playing with my hair. Her

ever-changing moods baffled me and kept me on edge. But what remained constant were her

nightly visits. Each evening she would noiselessly slip into my room and climb into my bed with

a bottle of wine. I never asked her where she found the red wine or why she joined me under the

covers come nightfall. It’s as if who she was in the day was a stranger to the person she was at

night. She was unpredictable and enigmatic in her actions, and I feared approaching her with any

questions would scare her from coming the next night.

We would sometimes speak in hushed tones about her father or my mother. Other times,

we would share the narratives of our nightmares. I found that she also had been plagued with

horrible dreams all her life. However, mostly we didn’t talk to each other. Most of the night, 69

once we were both filled with wine, she would lay her head on my chest, and we would feel the

rising and falling of each other’s lungs. With the rhythm of her breath, the heat of her breast, and

the fuzzy-warmth of the alcohol going to my head, I would unwittingly fall asleep. And the next

thing I knew, I would wake up again the next day alone in my room. We never spoke of our night happenings.

January 2007

During the month I stayed with Laura and her father, I sat beside them during Sunday

morning services. I still couldn’t stop myself from sharing glances with Emma each Sunday. She

must have been hurt and confused when I completely stopped talking to her without explanation.

During service, Laura would link arms with me. It made me blush; it was something that

girls much younger than us would do. While sitting beside her, I became aware just how many

eyes followed Laura. She was like a celebrity everyone watched with awe, lust, and jealousy.

She was the beloved mascot to the Pastor’s message. People were eager to have any contact and

connection with her. I even noticed some of the other girls in church staring at me coldly with

envy. It was as if they wondered why they hadn’t been lucky enough to have a sick mother and

no one but the minister willing to take them in. We rose for the singing of hymnals. A chorus of

toneless elderly women, the piercing high pitch of teenage sopranos too eager too be heard, and

the deep vibrations of weatherworn farmers filled the small church. They sung the hymn,

“There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Immanuel’s veins; And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains: Lose all their guilty stains, Lose all their guilty stains; And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.

70

E’er since by faith I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply, Redeeming love has been my theme, And shall be till I die: And shall be till I die, And shall be till I die; Redeeming love has been my theme, And shall be till I die.2”

Hands were raised, Mrs. Tipton fainted in her frenzy, and then Zachariah began speaking in

tongues. While it was a crisp January morning, the room became increasingly hot. Women cried and swayed while men stomped their feet like a herd of elephants. I had found it harder to breathe, and I quickly grew lightheaded. Laura, with her arms linked to mine, pushed me side to side as she was swaying too. I tried to focus on the words of the song to keep me grounded on earth, when everyone else seemed high on heaven. Sometimes I felt in services like this that no substance could match the way a room full of the Spirit made me lose control. I sang along,

“The sinners, sinners plunged beneath, beneath that blood.

They’re gonna lose all their guilt-guilty stains!”

At the song’s crescendo, a claw-like hand from behind me cut deep into my shoulder and forced me around so that I was facing one of the Matriarchs of the church, Mrs. Holloway. Deep in her ninety’s, I was surprised by her forceful strength. With one of her gnarled, arthritic hands she held me tightly by the shoulder. The other hand encompassed my forehead. She was breathing heavily, and her pupils shot back and forth as if she were in REM. The crying and laughing and praising subsided as I looked into the Mrs. Holloway’s fiery eyes. The Spirit had

2 "There is a Fountain Filled with Blood" William Cowper The United Methodist Hymnal, No. 622

71 possessed her body and she flailed back and forth like one of those inflatable tube men outside of a used car lot. And with a quaking voice she prophesied over me.

“I see your mother now at the gate of heaven. But she is asking Peter to wait to open the gate. Her earthly body is ready to become dust again. Yet, she stands with one foot still in the world of flesh. She’s crying for you. ‘Carmilla’ she calls! Before this midnight her body will surrender to the earth and her soul will ascend with the angels. She is crying, crying for you! Do you hear her?” Mrs. Holloway began shaking uncontrollably and fell to her knees. The Spirit had left her and then she sat much more limply on the church pew. She looked at me now with her own dull eyes. She had no memory of what had been spoken through her body,

“Poor Carmilla. I really believe our merciful God will forgive your mother for whatever wickedness she has committed to deserve her cancer. The blood of Jesus is strong enough to heal any sinner!” She smiled knowingly, showing me her gray teeth.

I realized then that I had been crying for some time. My body was overtaken by large, loud, heavy sobs. Laura held me close to her chest and I sobbed in her arms as the rest of the church continued their Bedlam. I tried to cry every last drop of the Spirit out of me.

January 2007

The next morning, I received a call that my mother had passed in the night. Blood had filled her lungs until she choked on her own blood. I didn’t leave my room for a couple days after I found out. I locked my door at night so that Laura wouldn’t visit, and it was if Laura was alone in the home again.

I considered all the times I could have called her at the hospital. How many times I refused her calls. I had reasoned that, if she said she’d be back soon then I’d stubbornly hold her 72

to her word and just speak to her face to face when she was done hiding this disease from me.

And so, I never called my mom after the last conversation we had. I was angry at her for not

letting me help, and for then leaving me all at once because of how willful she was to keep her

pain hidden. I had got so fed up with her pretending that everything was fine, that I refused to

hear from her at all.

In the darkness of my room I festered in my regret and guilt and self-loathing. With the

death of Momma, I had no roots, and this terrified me. I tried to channel the strength of Lily. She

had lived alone most of her life—in fact, she chose to be alone. She craved it. But this didn’t feel

like a choice for me. She left her family, where I was the one left behind.

But amidst all those ugly emotions, there was a small, but solid spark of happiness.

There was this relief of not having to guess anymore if she would really get better. There was a

sense of liberation for not having to be her everything any more. And there was an excitement at

the thought of staying in this large, beautiful home. Here, there were comforts I had never

known—but the best part of this house, of course, was that Laura occupied it. So, while I felt

enough grief to fill Grand Canyon at that time, I also felt this seed of giddy luck. I knew my heart

was ugly and confused for feeling anything happy, but my love for Laura was also ugly and confusing.

Around midnight, on the third day of me being secluded in my room, Laura knocked on the door. I remember thinking how it was the first time she had actually asked to cross into my

threshold. It must have been humbling for Laura the princess to have to request permission to

enter what she saw as just one of many rooms she held dominion over. I hadn’t eaten in three

days and she was carrying food and, admittedly, I really missed her, so I invited her in. 73

Laura tentatively entered the room, carrying a plate of raspberries. In the light of the full moon, her ivory skin was glowing like a Greek goddess blessing the earth with her presence for the night. She gently crawled into bed beside me.

“You should eat.” she held out a raspberry for me. I didn’t react, so she moved her hand to my lips. I opened my mouth and she placed the sweet fruit on my tongue.

“I’ve missed your company.” Laura said quietly. I wasn’t sure if she meant our walks around her plantation, or if she was referring to our night happenings.

“You too.” I said. We sat for a moment looking at the full moon.

“Laura, do you think Momma got sick because she was being punished?”

“I can’t speak for the Lord. But I think God is a little different in all our minds. The God in my head wouldn’t hurt you or your Momma.” We were silent for a while. Laura continued to feed me raspberries. The juice made her hands covered in in red.

“You said your momma taught you to stitch, right?” I nodded my head. She had a guilty look on her face. “I should’ve given this to you sooner.” Laura pulled out from her dress the stitching I had done so many months ago of Emma’s horse. “I was jealous. You were the first thing I wanted desperately that I knew I couldn’t have. . .I’m sorry.” She handed me the stitching. I traced the texture of the fabric with my fingers.

“Laura?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m completely alone.” I felt the rush of tears fall down my cheeks. Laura wiped away on of my tears with her blood-red hands.

“You’re not”. 74

Laura rubbed her red hands on her white nightgown, leaving stripes of crimson. Slowly she took off her dress, never taking her gaze off me. That was the first and last night we ever made love sober. Unlike the other nights, I remember ever moment.

January 2007

The next day I woke and Laura was gone. I thought nothing of it, but when I went downstairs Laura was especially distant from me. She had assumed one of her cold moods where she would criticize me at the smallest thing. At one point I even reached to fix an astray ringlet of her hair, and she slapped my hand away, looking at me disgusted, as if I just betrayed her for touching her in the day. I didn’t expect to feel so hurt. I felt rejected and bitter, because she had been so tender with me the night before; she had finally been with me completely and not just physically, and I supposed she had not been satisfied. There was a shift in our relationship, and we both understood that there was no regaining the innocence of our past nights. Without drinking the red wine, there was no Christ blood purifying us with the guise of ‘accidental’ love.

We had performed the worst sin—the kind where you know the deed you’ll perform is wrong, and yet you follow through with it. With the wine we could be secure in the fact that we were just sinful merely by being weak humans. Now, we had sinned as with our eyes unclouded and because of that we had spit in the face of God.

February 2007

Laura doesn’t visit anymore at night. I went to her room one night. The door was unlocked but no one was inside.

February 2007 75

Laura was within ten feet of me for the first time in a week. It was at my mother’s funeral. Few people attended. The ones that did looked more at Laura in her stunning dress than at Momma.

February 2007

I overheard a conversation between Laura and her father. She was begging him to send me away. He was confused and taken aback. It had been her idea from the start, and how could a minister throw an orphan child out of their home? He noted that Laura wasn’t herself. The Laura he knew was charitable and loved the least of these. He said he would pray for her.

February 2007

Laura came to my room again tonight—without wine. I wanted to ask her why she had been so cold, why she had left me isolated after telling me I wasn’t alone; to be honest, I wanted to slap her perfect face. She had played with me, and I was so desperate to be loved that I let her.

But before I could open my mouth to say anything, she was in bed with me. She kissed me hard and held me hard. She looked at every part of me, as if she was trying to sketch it in her memory so that she would never forget it.

Laura, when you read this, do you still remember everything? The birthmark on my upper thigh, the dimples in my lower back? I hope you do and I hope it haunts you every night.

After we slept together, we laid in bed and looked in the eyes of the other. I felt completely vulnerable when she stared in my eyes, and that was actually the first time she had made me blush.

“You’re going to hate me” Laura broke the silence. 76

“I couldn’t” I answered, surprised by her bluntness. “You took me in, you make me feel

like I’m not alone.

“No, I’m selfish. I love you, Carmilla.” I smiled the first time since the death of Momma.

“Before I met you, I was caged and bitter in this empty house. Everyone wants something

from me. To sleep with me, to be seen with me, to look up to me as an example of the perfect

daughter of Christ. I’m trapped by their fantasy of what they want me to be. They want me to

live out contradictions—to be strong but delicate, independent but subservient, beautiful but

pure. But you have accepted even the worst of me. I love you. But love is always selfish, and I

need you to love me to death.” She spoke with a doleful tone, like she was saying goodbye.

She got up and walked to the door.

“Where are you going?” She didn’t turn back to answer my question.

“We’re sneaking out.”

February 2007

I had never snuck out before, and the danger of being caught, along with the rush of

blistering winter air, left me with a sense of euphoric exhilaration. Though it was night, the wheat colored moon was full and followed our path like a film spotlight. We had left in such a hurry that we both didn’t grab a coat. We were both only dressed in a white night gown and slippers. Laura told me that where she was taking me was a surprise. However, once we were close enough to hear the bells strike eleven, I knew that we were headed for the church. Snow fell from the sky like ash of Pompeii before the eruption.

We snaked through the tombstones of the church graveyard, taking turns chasing the other. I caught her for a kiss, she caught me for an embrace. I felt wild. In my white dress, I felt like an artic fox after its prey. 77

Then the church bells struck midnight and a vague terror filled my body and mind. I looked around with the disturbing feeling I had lived this moment already. The snow, the church, the blonde angel reaching for me. It was my nightmare. I look down and I am standing on top of the nameless grave in my dream. The snow is covering the name, so I bent down to brush it off with my hands. It was if I was still in that dream, watching myself from above. The me from above wanted to scream not to look, but my body was led by a strange force. Then I was sitting on the grave, knees wet by the snow. The inscription was so old you could barely read it. But my hands traced the rough etching of the stone, and I was sure. It was Lily’s grave. She had ended up forgotten by her own family, left in an abandoned church grave yard. What was my matriarch and mutineer idol doing here under the ground forced to lay prostrate to the cross of the steeple?

She was supposed to be flying, roaming the woods, and laughing at those who didn’t approve of her freedom. She was my myth that I aspired to be. Yet, sitting on her grave made her not only real, but mortal too.

“I had a dream about tonight” I heard Laura’s voice from behind. She was looking down on me. “You told me that your dreams are God’s gift to tell you the future. He shows you what will be. Well, mine are his gift of telling me what I must do. He shows me what must be. He speaks to me in dreams. I'm chosen, like the prophet Elijah.”

“You’ve been here in your dreams too?” I asked, “Why didn’t you say something?”

“When you told me your version of the dream, it was incomplete. You couldn’t see everything. Your sin has kept you from God’s true message.” She answered.

“I don’t understand.” From behind her back, Laura pulled out a silver knife and pointed it at me. 78

“I told you that you’d hate me. I love you, but I’m not blind to your conjuring. You’ve

confused me and made me defile my body.”

“Laura, put down the weapon. We haven’t done anything wrong--”

“The devil placed a demon in my own home. I was too weak to see his evil deeds” She

seemed to be speaking more to herself.

“But my eyes have been opened. He forgives. He will forgive me. I just have to show

him that I am willing to leave the iniquities behind. If your hand causes you to sin you cut it off.”

She motioned for me to stand up, and with her knife she began leading me to the church.

“I didn’t make you do anything. I'm the only one who didn't, remember? It’s your dad

and everyone else that is trying to control you.” Laura shook her head violently.

“You’ve made me hate my body. Its proof of my sin. I’ve watched it blacken and rot. I can’t get out of it. I can’t escape it. I can’t until you stop tempting me.” She had led me to the

church’s large mahogany doors. “Open it” she ordered. With the blade still pointing at me, I did

as I was told. She was crying.

“I’m doing this because I love you. I love you so much, I am willing to cast away your

body to save your soul!” I was forced to enter the church. We looked at each other for a moment,

face to face.

I watched helplessly as she closed the door. First her blonde hair fell from view and then

her leaking eyes and then there was none of her in sight, and with the thunk and heavy

reverberation of the door sealing into place, I was alone. For a moment everything was dark and

silent. Then there was the smell of smoke, and the flames lit up the room, so that I could finally

see everything.

End of Carmilla’s Journal 79

She was supposed to die in that fire. I don’t understand how she escaped. I stayed there the entire night watching the church burn until there was nothing left. The entire church became rubble and ash, it looked like a war scene, like a scene from the Blitzkrieg. She was pronounced dead ten years ago. Carmilla had no living family and so people were quick to accept her death and not ask questions. She was blamed for the fire too. They said she must have gone crazy after losing her mom; they said she always seemed off even before the death of her mother. Really, she was a ticking time bomb.

I never saw her escape, but now it all makes sense to me. When the steeple was enveloped in flames, with the cross charring and folding in on itself, I had expected the immense weight of my demons to be lifted. Yet, I felt nothing. I had this itching terror that I could never shake. Shadows resembling her in the night would put me in a cold sweat and my nerves completely unstrung. I woke from dreams where she, still covered in flames with her skin blistering and melting off, reached to drag me down with her into the lake of fire.

A couple months after the burial of her empty casket, there were more reports of the

Wampus Woman roaming the woods. Men would go hunting after nightfall and they would say that they saw a naked woman, covered in scars and dirt running in the distant hills. Then Emma disappeared. Her absence was an actual hit to the community morale—her father was the wealthiest man in the county after all. But it was finally decided that she must have ran away from home. She wasn’t the first young person to turn their back on a small town without saying goodbye.

This year is the tenth anniversary of rebuilding the county church. It was too old of a building anyway. The burning of the church was God’s way of telling us we needed to make his 80

House bigger and better. This weekend is the big jubilee. The whole county will be assembled in

the church for the potluck, games, fellowship, and communal remembrance of our past.

The timing of this journal showing up is quite unnerving. I was in Carmilla’s old room

the other day. My husband and I had decided to finally redecorate the estate to be more

neoclassical inspired. I approached the fireplace to consider what color marble to replace it with,

when I saw this tattered journal laying on the mantel piece in front of the painting of Cleopatra.

Its crimson leather was well worn and creased, yet the pages still feel fresh with rage.