MAY 21, 1957
There is blood. Lots of it. Too much of it. There is a truck, bullying its way up the old logging road to the cabin, bullying its way back down. They bring Lena and the baby to Hazel’s house. Lex carries her to an upstairs bedroom full of bright-painted pine and curtainless windows. “It’s okay,” he whispers, his body smelling like fear—animal. She holds on, puts her face against his chest, holds still in that familiar wool, the well-loved pocket below his clavicle.
Somehow there is her girl-child, suckling, and then Hazel takes her from Lena’s arms, and her girl-child is gone.
Hazel says, “Sleep, Lena. You need the rest.”
The house she left so many years ago. The house that called its Abenaki neighbors niggers and Gypsies. The house that scoured Lena’s dresses and forever tried to tame the tangles in her hair.
But she cannot sleep without Bonnie. “My child,” she says into that white room, those white walls, but Hazel does not come. Lex does not come. Lena tries to rise out of the bed, but her body will not move. Streaks of shooting pain between her thighs. Breasts that leak and spurt and weep.