DECEMBER 21, 2011
She can hear their laughter. Boots across the floor. That awful music.
None of them notice the woman climbing in through the window: dark hair, a thin face, watery eyes.
Hazel can smell her from here—mud? Cigarette smoke? Piss? Who is this woman, and why is she here? She smells like an animal in pain, a dying cow at the back of the barn. Her clothes wet, mud-stained.
Hazel stares at this woman’s face, the one that is easing toward her. This woman’s cheekbones look so familiar. Her eyes a deer’s eyes—dark and tender.
She comes to Hazel’s bedside and sits down on the stool beside her. Hazel stares. What has happened to this woman’s face? Rings under her eyes. Scabs across her cheeks, like she’s been picking. Dark hair swirling around her brow and cheeks and ears.
Hazel glances toward the kitchen, at Deb and Danny and Vale, dancing like fools to that unbearable music. Why don’t they see this woman who has broken into the house? Hazel wants to call to them, but her tongue won’t move. Parched—her mouth is. Her throat unable to swallow. The woman seems more ghost than human. The woman reaches for Hazel’s hand, and Hazel lets her touch it. Warm hand. Remarkably so. Beautiful small fingers—near-child size, all bone. Why are the pockets under her eyes so dark? What are those scars, up and down her thin arms, below her sweatshirt sleeves? The woman’s sweatshirt: white with a wolf emblazoned on its front. Streaks of brown across it. Swamp water.
Oh. For a long moment Hazel cannot breathe, but then it comes, volcanic, her chest filling once more with air. Bonnie—this is Bonnie.
Bonnie come home. Hazel folds her fingers over Bonnie’s fingers. Squeezes them as tight as she can, every muscle in her body straining to do so. Bonnie, who has been missing. She remembers that now: a storm. Hazel mouths, with her dry lips and dry tongue that won’t move, “Bonnie.”
The woman squeezes Hazel’s fingers. Smiles at her. Her smile is bright—a beam of sunshine. “Hello,” she whispers. “How are you?”
Hazel tries to say, “I am terrified,” but the words don’t come.
Why don’t the others see? What a racket from the kitchen: their ridiculous bodies, angry sounds.
Bonnie, Hazel thinks, squeezing her hand. Wild child Bonnie running barefoot across the yard, squatting to pee on Hazel’s periwinkle, seeing a cow, yelling out “thow!” and smearing her face with jam. Motherless child whom Hazel taught to pick ripe blackberries and gather eggs and shell peas.
“It’s cold out there,” Bonnie says. Laughing. “Dreadful.”
Hazel nods. Squeezes the hand tighter. It’s not about the land, she thinks. It’s going to that baby, that baby girl, fat thighs and dirt in the rings of her neck, pee dribbling down the inside of her thighs.
Bonnie bends down and kisses Hazel’s brow. “Sleep tight,” she whispers. Her sour smell overwhelming. She lets go of Hazel’s hand, goes to the window.
Hazel tries to reach for her. To call her back. But the words don’t come. Bonnie slips outside. Closes the glass behind her.
Great light. Great panic. Oh my God. Great light. An astonishing pain. Hazel reaches for the bed sheets. Opening.