I never knew if Bess had seen what was to come.
I woke one morning to sounds of rain and wind, Bess’s bruised face across from mine. Her shirtwaist torn beneath our quilt, her breath short as if it hurt to breathe.
“I have fallen,” she said. “Pay it no mind. Stay below. We shall make landfall soon. Mr. Ganey’s letters are in the satchel.”
I brought her water, which she wouldn’t drink. I wrapped her in the quilt. I waited and prayed. I slept, my mind brittle and unsettled. But I did not wake when she left my side that night to slip beneath the calm murk. I would not have believed it, until the old woman who had danced on the deck shook her head and gathered me toward her.
“Those beasts,” the old woman said. “Is there nothing holy that they would not sunder? Do not speak, lass. It will only encourage them.”
I later understood why Bess spoke of the letters. Inside the satchel, on an envelope sent long ago to her by Mr. Ganey, she had scratched her last words.
I am ruined, she wrote. Many times over. I bear the fault of it, and I regret I am not strong enough to stand between you and what comes next. I love you, dear one.
The second time I bled was my wedding night. Though I was not who Arthur Ganey had been promised, after consultations with his sibling, I was deemed acceptable by him and his sister, Maude. My quietness did not bother Arthur; he was also a quiet sort. This time I pinned rags I’d found in the pantry, and that evening in the dark if Arthur realized his second-pick of a bride was bleeding, he must have thought it was virgin’s blood; his slowness and timidity during the act itself suggested he worried over hurting me. After removing himself from my body, he filled the ewer with fresh water so I might wash and brought me a clean cloth from the kitchen. I repinned my rags and waited for what might come next. But Arthur was silent. He lay back down and slept. He did not return to our wedding bed for the rest of the summer.
Later, Maude Ganey would tell me he slept fitfully. That his mind troubled over the farm. He had been spoiled, she said, her voice shy and secret. Unaccustomed to sharing, the only son, she said; they’d had a brother who died before Maude came, and another babe that was born dead, taking their mother with it. This reasoning struck me as odd. Arthur never touched me again for any reason and continued to spend the small hours elsewhere. I never asked Maude why this was, though she entreated me to her confidence. We were to be as sisters, she said. But I had been sisters with Bess, and Maude could not compare. Maude was sterner and stricter than a sister should be. She insisted we stitch straight hems on pillowcases, no lace, no embellishments. We ate breakfast with china so delicate I was nervous to touch it. She never spoke of where to put my soiled rags. Once the bleeding ceased, I burnt them in secret in the firepit behind the kitchen one night. I watched them twist like living things and my mind hardened like tempered metal. I resolved to reach for my new husband.
My parents had not always lived pretty, but pretty stories be damned. Though I had no one to instruct me, I knew that being a good wife, despite my youth and inexperience, was essential. I had survived much on the voyage across; God’s ferocious waters could not take me. I was all defiance and bravery.
Though they often shared it with their children, my parents always shared a bed. My father was not timid, but neither did he wander or take to drink, despite my mother’s odd ravings. A marriage wasn’t all sweetness, but there was companionship to be had, and I was intensely lonely. Thus I went out in the evening wrapped in my shawl to see if I could find Arthur. Perhaps, under the stars, far from the sharp ears of his sister, he would tell me his secrets. Perhaps this coaxing was the job of a wife of a quiet man.
I did not find my husband that night nor the next. I wavered in my resolve and felt shamed at not being a shiny enough lure, until I found the man who deigned to be caught.
Chapter Three
Daisy stepped into the shower, hitching up the door so it would close properly. Their house was full of compromises like this. Faucets dripped, windows didn’t open, the stovetop needed a long match to ignite, the washing machine only worked on the heavy-duty setting. Though it had belonged to Evie Isherwood’s family, no one had lived in it since the seventies. Rob Isherwood wasn’t a bad landlord, but he had a way of letting little things pile up long enough that the Whitsuns had to find work-arounds.
She held her ruined underwear under the spray. There was blood, but also spangling down her fingers were bright swirls and blackish snarls, like severed bits of a living creature. Once the stains faded from scarlet to pink, she slapped the underwear over the glass door, and then got to work scrubbing herself, rubbing the bar of soap on her armpits, under her breasts, between her legs. Hugh had no idea this was her first period. She couldn’t decide if that made things worse or better. He had been worried, inviting her to come inside, reassuring her that everything was okay, but Daisy realized that was probably because he thought she’d tell Poppy. She had climbed down the ladder and was halfway across the service road before he could even holler after her.
After she was clean, she wrapped in a towel and searched beneath the sink for pads. There was a box of tampons, but the thought of shoving her own fingers up there right now upset her. Pads seemed much less complex. She trailed across the house in her towel to the laundry nook, where she found some clean underwear in a basket and one of Poppy’s bras—she and Poppy wore similar sizes. She pressed the pad into the crotch of her underwear and then quickly dressed. But the cutoff shorts she normally wore made her feel like she was smuggling something down there. She pawed through the heap of clothes for something less binding and, though they were too short, settled on a pair of pajama pants of Lilah’s. Dressing out in the open felt reckless, but for once, nobody was home. She wasn’t ashamed of her body, really; Carna was always very matter-of-fact about nudity, and Violet always said having no shame was a fine thing, a perk of not having any men under their roof. But none of the Whitsun girls besides Lilah were in the habit of going around naked or even half dressed.
Her stomach growling and churning, she went into the kitchen and ate some strawberries from the fridge. Then a banana, and a bowl of granola with almond milk—Lilah was on some anti-dairy kick lately—and some homemade trail mix that was stale. She imagined Hugh, sitting down to a plate of sandwiches and pasta salad and potato chips. She loved that kind of food. Picnic food, grill-out food, summer food. She found a bottle of ibuprofen in the cupboard and gulped down two tablets with two glasses of sweet tea. It was after seven o’clock and clouds were dimming the lowering sun. Her belly, now full, ached. She wanted to lie down but it would be stiflingly hot upstairs, even if she turned on the fans and opened the windows. She dragged the double-star quilt off the sofa and went to the back porch.
Carna sat most nights out here, drinking her whiskey and smoking cigarettes that she crushed out in a chipped white dish with an angel painted in the center of it. Her aunt had never explicitly claimed this space but for years it had always been where she alone sat in the quiet, drinking, smoking, not rejecting company but rarely inviting it. Her bedroom had a similar force field around it—Poppy was the only one who would enter it without asking—in contrast to Violet’s bedroom, which was always open for morning cuddles or if someone had the flu, no permission necessary.