The air outside is cool against my face, a sudden breath. I’m sweating a little under my shirt; the back of my neck is damp. I hadn’t realized how warm it could get upstairs, how quickly dead air collected, as if trapped in a bottleneck. It’s well after midnight, the sky above newly strung with stars. I’d gotten up finally, when James insisted I leave, his finger lingering along my eyebrow. “People will worry,” he said. “The ones who shouldn’t. Go home and get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Large forsythia bushes have started blooming by the front stairs; in front of them are the tulip plants pushing their way out of the dark earth, their buds still swollen tight. I get in the car, start the engine, think briefly of Mr. Herron’s tangerine parfaits. The streets are empty at this hour, deserted as a Sunday afternoon. I drive slowly, my fingers barely touching the wheel. I feel the way I do when I have drunk too much beer—outside of myself, fuzzy around the edges. My skin is hot to the touch and my fingers are trembling. At a stop sign, I close my eyes, remembering his mouth against mine, the way he lingered over the edge of my jaw, buried his face in the hollow of my neck. The way he’d said I was beautiful. The way he’d looked when he said I was beautiful, as if all the facts and statistics he’d given me over the years were nothing if I would only believe this.
Me, beautiful!
I tip my head back against the seat, holding the novelty of it in my chest. It’s big and warm and like nothing else I’ve ever felt before in my life. I’m afraid to move, as if doing so might disturb it, a pebble thrown into still water. But I know I have to get home. I have rooms to clean, beds to make, laundry to wash. A child to hold.
After a long time, I open my eyes again and step on the gas.
THE HOUSE IS dark when I let myself in finally, drained and bleary-eyed. The light in the living room is still on, the curtains open. I am hanging up my coat when my name floats softly down the steps: “Bird?”
“Yeah, Ma. It’s me.”
She appears in the hallway, dressed in her flannel nightgown with the pink wildflower print and her big purple slippers. Her hair is askew—flat on one side, still puffed and teased on the other—and the hollows under her eyes are as large as quarters. “What time is it?”
I shrug, glance down at my watch: 1:10. “Late.”
“Where were you?” Ma asks. “You haven’t been talking to Father Delaney all this time, have you?”
“No. I was just driving around.”
“Driving around?” Ma repeats. “What does that mean?”
“It means exactly what you think it means, Ma. I was in the car, driving around the neighborhood.”
“Just wasting gas?” Ma presses. “Jeez, Bernadette. Gas is so expensive now. What’s the point of that?”
“I needed to think.” I head up the steps, past my senior year portrait that Ma still keeps on the wall, and pause for a moment, struggling to recognize anything inside the vacant expression and dimmed eyes. I lean in closer. It’s my reflection I’m staring at, the eyes looking back at me now that I don’t recognize.
“What’d you have to think about for so long?” Ma whispers the question. And then more vehemently: “Bernadette. Do you have to speak to me with your back turned?”
I whirl around then, glaring, ready to tear into her. Except that the expression on her face is so full of worry, so etched with concern, that I feel everything inside start to drain out of me, a slow leak. And then I am crying, hard, something that has come from a dark corner, a sudden, forceful release of feeling. It surges out with such intensity that my legs give out beneath me; I am seated on the step, leaning against the wall, weeping as though I have just learned how to do such a thing, the sounds coming out of my mouth a language all their own.
MA HELPS ME back down the steps, shushing me softly, steering me toward the kitchen table under one arm. She lets me cry as she busies herself around the kitchen, putting a flame under the copper kettle, taking out two mugs, arranging tea bags neatly inside each one. She fills the sugar bowl and then the creamer, and takes out a package of butter cookies, fanning six of them on a small saucer. When the kettle whistles, she pours the boiling water into the mugs, sets one in front of each of us. Then she folds her hands. Sits forward. “All right now,” she says. “Tell me.”
I reach down and pick up the string of my tea bag. “Ma. I really need you to listen to me.” My voice is cracking. I clear my throat, pull a tissue out of the box on the table, and blow my nose.
“I’m right here, Bernadette.” Ma takes a bite of cookie, dabs the corner of her mouth with her ring finger. “Go ahead.”
“It’s about the day I got pregnant.”
Her whole face tightens, first with confusion, then with alarm, a sudden defense, as if someone has just pulled a fire alarm. She blinks once, twice. Picks up her teaspoon and fills it with sugar. Both of us watch the granules pour from her spoon, white sand dissolving in a tiny, scalding ocean. “Oh, Bernadette,” she says finally. “I really don’t think it’s necessary to get into—”
“Ma.” I wait until she looks at me. “I didn’t just get pregnant. I was raped.”
She stares at me without saying anything, the cookie frozen in her hand. Outside the house, the swish of tires rolls by along the street; a bird cries in the distance.
“Who?” she says finally.
I bite my lip, stare down into my teacup, wish I could somehow immerse myself beneath the dark liquid. “Charlie.”
“Charlie?” She sits back in her chair, another blow. “But you . . . you were dating Charlie. You told me you were . . . with him.”
“I know, Ma.”
“So how could he—”
“He just did. He pushed his way into my apartment one night, and”—I bite the inside of my cheek so hard that I can taste blood—“he just did, okay?”
“Bernadette.” Ma leans forward, her head tilted a little to one side. “Are you sure that’s what happened?”
“Am I sure?”
“Yes. Are you sure?” She is floundering now, having been dragged into some kind of strange territory that she does not know the way out of, but refusing to admit it. “I mean, back then you were drinking and carousing, and . . .”
“And what? Drinking and carousing gives someone a license to rape me?”
She rests her elbow heavily on the table, brings her fingers to her forehead. “Well, of course not. But . . .”
I am trying to think logically. I am trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. I know she has a right to question my choices back then. The few times she came to my apartment, she’d seen the bottles of booze, the crushed joint in the seashell ashtray. Still, alluding to that behavior of mine right now as a justification for Charlie raping me hurts so much that I have to reach down and grab hold of the chair I am sitting on so that I don’t take a swing at her.
Suddenly Ma lifts her downcast eyes. “What did Father Delaney say about all of this?”
“Father Delaney?” I run my tongue over my bottom lip. “I didn’t talk to him about this.”
She arches her back, raises an eyebrow. “But I thought that’s why you said you wanted to stay later. To talk to him.”
“Ma, I wouldn’t talk to Father Delaney—or any priest—about that night if you paid me a million bucks.” I drain the last of my tea, even though it’s scalding, and set my cup back down on the table. A numbing sensation fades from the middle of my tongue, followed by an immediate stab of heat, which pools and then settles like a lily pad along the rough surface.
“Now why would you go say something like that?” Ma looks as if I’ve punched her in the gut.
“You want to know why?” I pull my chair in a little closer to the table, lean on both elbows. “Because Father Delaney would say the same bullshit about it as he did at Dad’s funeral. That God was right there next to me the whole time. And I don’t want to hear it—or anything about God—ever again.”
“Father Delaney’s words are not bullshit,” Ma says, whispering the last word. “And don’t you speak of God like—”
“You know what, Ma? Fuck! God! If He thinks it’s enough to sit next to someone and hold their hand while their brains are being splashed against a windshield, then fuck Him! If He thinks He’s got it covered, whispering in my ear while some guy holds my arms down and shoves his dick into me, then fuck Him, again! Okay, Ma? Do you hear what I’m saying? Do you?”
Ma claps her hands over her ears, squeezes her eyes shut. She’s moaning a little, swaying side to side. Then she stops. Opens her eyes. They are piercing. “I want you out, Bernadette.” Her voice is shaking. “You can leave Angus here with me until you move in at the lake, but I want you out by tomorrow. You are not welcome here any longer.”
“I’ve never been welcome here.” I grab the cow-shaped saltshaker off the table, clench it tight in one fist. “It’ll be my pleasure to leave.”
The shaker goes hurtling out of my hand, smashing against the wall and splintering into four small pieces before crashing to the floor. I turn to leave but not before noticing the severed cow head as it skitters into one corner and then rolls to a stop, one lone eye staring up at Ma.