The Water Cure(9)

‘This house is going to kill us,’ I tell Mother. She has no qualms about hitting me in the face then, condition or no condition.





Lia


Two dark purple fingertips on my left hand, from being submerged in ice. The dead big toenail of my left foot also.

The comma from a paperclip I held in the flame of a candle, pressed against the baby skin of my inner upper arm.

The starburst at the back of my neck where Mother once sewed my skin into the fainting sack. Two stitches. She did it on purpose, and yet somehow the blood when I ripped them out was my fault. I want to die every time I think about it.

Bald patch near the nape of my neck, size and smoothness of a thumbnail. That wound belongs to King, who pulled the hair out with his own hands.

Large red stain on my right thumb. This is the thumb I press to the hob when I am cooking. It helps.

Water mark on my flank. Mother poured the hot kettle on me. I screamed bloody murder. I punched her square in the jaw and she just grinned, a pink-tinged grin, because I had caught her lip against the teeth but caused no mortal harm.





Grace, Lia, Sky


When the damaged women saw King for the first time they often recoiled. Man. But our mother explained that here was a man who had renounced the world. Here was a man who recognized the dangers. Here was a man who put his women and children first.

Away from the toxins, a man’s body could swell and develop unchecked. That was why King was so tall. We thought the hair on the top of his head might grow back too, but it turned out that was a damage that could not be reversed.

‘What are men beyond the border like?’ we asked him.

Eventually he gave us an answer. He spoke of perverse appetites. He spoke of bodies grown strong despite the toxic air, men like trees grown against the wind, knotted, warped. Some thrived on the poison; it was like their bodies had learned not just to overcome, but to need it. He spoke of danger. Men like that tracked around the toxins carelessly. You would feel the effect in their breath, the touch of their hands. Men like that would break your arm without thinking. ‘Like this,’ he had said, demonstrating on us, clasping both fists around each of our forearms in turn and making as if to snap. We felt the bone threaten to give, stayed calm. ‘And worse.’





Grace


The season turns about five months after your death and there comes a higher tide than usual, water pressing up against the coastline. An annual occasion. The sea rushes forward to cover the jetty, engulfing the shore and swelling right up to the pebbles on the shingle line. Mother consulted the almanac a week ago so we knew it was coming. We gather in the lounge to watch the swollen moon from the window. The light feels purifying.

I think about the things that have washed up to us on previous high tides. Squat catfish the size of my arm, rotten as a blister. Jellyfish full of poison. Other things that we were not allowed to see, things that meant the beach needed to be cordoned off, our curtains closed. Tides dredge and bring forth. The world comes nearer to us.

‘Careful, girls,’ Mother instructs us. She is letting us watch for now because it is beautiful. Because of the light’s quality. When I glance to my side I see Lia’s eyes wet with tears. Sky’s eyes are closed, and I close my own eyes too, picture my heart flipping in my chest. Underneath that I picture the baby, lying still. Even through closed glass the air smells of pine and salt. It almost burns.

The next day comes house arrest as Mother patrols the shore. She puts on King’s white linen trousers, the fabric falling over her feet, a muslin veil hanging down from a wide-brimmed hat to cover her face. It looks elegant. She will check the tideline, the shallows, even the edge of the forest, though the water never rises that far. She locks the front door behind us. We lag in reception, watching her pass through the door, watching the handle turn, the click of the key. The world outside seems to glow with a new and clean light.

We go to the lounge. Mother has let down the curtains but not the blackout blinds that cut out sunlight completely. Lia goes to the window, but Sky calls out ‘No!’ with such fear that she doesn’t have the heart to push it. Instead she comes back and kneels on all fours so that our little sister can ride her like an animal, even though Sky is really too big for that now. They move mournfully around the room, Lia dipping her head so her dark hair reaches the floor, gathers there like a rope being let down. In the end they lie on the carpet and stick their limbs into the air, moving them around.

‘Woodlouse,’ Lia says as she watches the movement of her arms and legs, slow, controlled. It was our old game. ‘We are stuck and cannot get up.’

Soon Mother comes back to tell us we are safe again, but we decide to keep all the windows and doors closed anyway, just in case. Mother nods at our caution. ‘You are doing so well,’ she tells us, taking off the hat. The muslin trails to the ground. ‘I am so proud of you.’





Lia


Trauma is a toxin that hooks into our hair and organs and blood and becomes part of us, the way heavy metals do, our bodies nothing more than a layering of flesh around everything ingested and experienced. These things sit inside us like the misshapen pearls we sometimes prise from oysters. Fear calcifies in our veins and the chambers of our hearts. Pain is a currency like the talismans we sewed for the sick women, a give and take, a way to strengthen and prepare the body. ‘You think you know pain,’ Mother used to say. ‘You don’t know anything, you have no idea.’ And then the love of the family, a balm that keeps our airways soft and wet, a thing to keep us drawing breath.