Chester jumps on me before I’m all the way inside.
“Fuera, chucho,” Papi says, shooing him away.
I kind of want to throw my arms around Chester, the only one with no opinions on my dagger injury, but it hurts to lean down and pet him.
“Couch or bed?” Papi asks, his hand gentle on my elbow.
“Her bed is a mess,” Mom says from the kitchen table, where I’m startled to see her sitting with Jess. I don’t know where else I thought Jess would be, since neither of their parents is in town and they came back to Seattle because of me.
I crumple on the couch while Papi heads to clear off my bed. I can’t remember what’s on it—scrapbook stuff or Marguerite stuff—but at least it’s Papi and not Mom. Chester jumps up and settles at my feet, his breath steady and warm—Chester, my hound, my constant.
Jess sits on the floor next to the couch. “You got the all clear?”
“Just a flesh wound,” I say.
“It’s not a joke.” Mom doesn’t fawn over me.
“Your sister said she’d come by later,” Jess says, glancing briefly toward my mom.
“You talked to Nor?”
“We’ve been texting a little. She has class until four.”
At least she hasn’t forgotten me, isn’t angry with me, like Mom. Not angry enough to completely ignore me, anyway.
“Aside from the flesh wound, how are you feeling?”
“I’m okay. Sore.”
“Who would have thought?” Mom says. “That if you stabbed yourself with a medieval sword, you might be a touch sore!”
I don’t think pointing out that it was a dagger is the right move here. Thankfully Jess reads the room as well.
“But I’m so glad to hear you’re feeling fine,” she goes on. “The rest of us are just peachy too.”
Chester sits up, ears cocked, considering Mom’s strange vocal register. Probably the other dogs in the neighborhood do too.
“Since everyone’s feeling so excellent, maybe now’s a good time to discuss this!” She holds up something I hadn’t noticed on the kitchen table in front of her.
My notebook. A rusty smear across the cover.
Her bed is a mess.
“You went through my stuff?”
Now she gets up and heads my way, but I don’t think she plans to stroke my hair. “Oh, excuse me if I put a few things away when I was scrubbing the giant bloodstain on your carpet!”
Jess scrambles to their feet between us, putting up an appeasing hand. “She didn’t, though. She didn’t find the notebook in your stuff. I showed it to her.”
“Thank you, Jess,” Mom says. “I really appreciate all you’ve done. Would you give us some privacy now, please?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Ma’am? Jess throws me an apologetic look and heads down the hall, going into Nor’s room.
“Nor’s room?”
“Absolutely none of your concern,” Mom snaps. Then she pinches the bridge of her nose and takes a slow, steady breath. When she’s done, the manic gleam in her eye is unchanged, but she pulls a chair closer to the couch and sits, gripping the notebook in both hands. Marguerite.
“We talked about this.”
“Mom—”
“No, you know what? I’m going to talk now. I try to listen. I try to be the kind of mom who listens. Sometimes I screw it up, but most of the time I think I do a pretty decent job—”
“You do—”
Death glares stop me in my tracks. “And all that listening sometimes means I don’t get my say. I have plenty of opinions about your choices, Nor’s choices. Don’t think I don’t. But I bite my tongue until it’s raw because you’re your own young women and I’m trying to let you make the mistakes you have to make to grow, but sometimes you’re Chester sticking your nose under that fence, asking to get scratched!”
She takes a shuddery breath as Papi steps into the room. “So I’m speaking my piece now. You’ll have your turn.”
Which is honestly kind of a relief, to know that no one’s expecting any explanations from me right now.
She holds up Marguerite. “We talked about this. We talked about how it was upsetting you. Of course I want you to express yourself. Of course I believe in the power of story. You can judge the books I teach so there’s food on our table, but you’re not the only one who loves stories around here! The difference is I want our family to be able to move on and I don’t know how we do that if we keep rehashing this one event!”
This one event. Like it was a piano recital or a house fire.
“If all you were doing was expressing yourself creatively, well okay then. But, Marianne, my love, you stabbed yourself. After you were televised telling the whole world you wanted to learn how to use a fucking sword.”
“I wasn’t going to hurt myself. Or anyone else! It was research!”
“I don’t care.” She’s the worst liar in the history of the world. She cares like Marguerite cares, like Duchess Isabella cared when she rode into battle herself to rescue René from men holding him for ransom. Like Isabella’s daughter Margaret of Anjou cared when she ruled all of England in place of her mad husband, so pissing off the men with her power that they disinterred her remains and scattered them during the French Revolution.
That’s life for a woman who won’t shut up.
“I’m keeping this for now,” Mom says, holding my notebook close. “You need to rest. Clearly we need to get you some counseling. Jess explained about the swords and your father is going to lock them in the shed with his tools. That’s all I have to say right now.”
She gets up and heads toward the hall, taking all my research, words, heart with her.
“How’d that work out for you?” I could control myself, but I don’t. “Keeping silent. Stuffing it down. Not telling anyone about what happened to you. Super healthy, right?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She’s almost reached her bedroom door.
“How about Marla? Does Marla know?”
She stops, her shoulders tense. I’m right, I can see it. She never told anyone else. Maybe not even Papi. My mom, who took me to endless marches as a kid, waving signs that said I WILL NOT BE SILENCED.
“And that teacher? Your silence worked out pretty well for him, I’m guessing. How about the girls he hurt after you were gone?”
Her face echoes that night when she arrived at the emergency room and couldn’t process what the doctors were telling her, but then I stepped out of Nor’s exam room into the hall and she realized we would never be the same again.
I can’t explain my fury with her, that she didn’t tell me, because I know she doesn’t owe me. I’ve done enough reading about survivors to know they get to control who they tell, that they don’t have to tell anyone, that not everyone is safe enough or wants the scrutiny, I know all this. But also, decay thrives in darkness.
Just like Lady Snowblood becomes Kill Bill, Toshiya Fujita passes a legacy to Quentin Tarantino, Mom’s abuser hands his privilege to Craig Lawrence. And we all let it happen, every one of us.
Mom chokes out a sob and her door slams behind her.
I almost wish I could take it back.