The Memory Thief (16 page)

Hannah waited until the sun was beginning to set. Then she walked out of her room. It was the first time she’d done that,
other than to step quickly across the hall to the bathroom. She walked through the house and felt new pressure in her feet.
The added weight in her hips. She caught herself against the wall and realized walking required new skills.

She found Bethie by the marsh, took her hand and pulled her away. Together, they walked to the beach. Hannah’s skirt was pushed
low so that her stomach could swell over it. Her hemline dragged in the marsh sand. Her breasts spilled out of the edges of
her bra. There was no modesty anymore. Her body displayed sin like a prized trophy. And as the cars passed by, she knew what
they were thinking. She even whispered it to herself with their soft southern tongues.
Bless her young heart. A knocked-up Holy Roller.

Winter was dark at the ocean. With stronger winds and bigger clouds. Christmas passed. Then Valentine’s. But Hannah moved
through these months without complaint. Her body grew bigger and her heart felt cold.

“I’m sorry, Bethie,” Hannah said one night, as they walked. “I’ve messed your life up, too. You should be at school.”

Bethie shook her head, put her arm around Hannah. Sometimes they would sit on the dunes and count waves until they could no
longer see them. Hannah reminded Bethie of the grocery-bag lesson their father taught them when they were little. He would
fill a bag full of various objects. Like candy. Or money. King crowns. He would have them reach their hands into the bag and
pull something out. Only if they said the right thing could they keep it.

Hannah pulled out a dollar bill. “I’m a child of God, more precious than money,” she’d whisper, as her father nodded. Bethie pulled out candy. “I’m a child of G-g-g-g-od, and that’s sweeter than c-c-c-candy.” Once Hannah pulled out a seashell.
She held it in her hand, unable to think of the correct answer. Her father helped her. “You are a child of God. The crown
of creation. More glorious than the ocean.”

The baby moved within her. She talked to it. Even stroked it through her belly sometimes. But she didn’t own it; it would
never be hers. Mother said it was meant for someone worthy. Someone that waited for a baby and couldn’t have one. “Just like
our Bethie was a blessing to us when we couldn’t have more children,” Mother explained.

Most of the time, Hannah accepted Mother’s words. She didn’t try to imagine the baby’s face. She didn’t wonder what color
its eyes would be. She only thought of the words Mother told her every day when she brought the breakfast tray.
Soon this will all be over.

There was one night, though, that Hannah lay in bed watching the skin of her stretched stomach. Something knotted up. A tiny
hill upon the mountain of her middle. She guessed a knee. Maybe a foot or hand. “I’m not better than the ocean,” she whispered.
“Maybe you can be.”

That was the first time she thought of keeping it. She didn’t know how to be a mother. How to teach modesty and all the other
things she failed. She only sensed that a growing baby was something very close to holy. Despite her own filth, a promise
bloomed within.

“Father,” she whispered in the dark of night. “Come to the water.”

It was freezing that night. Little bits of icy rain falling around them. But she was always hot, with the weight, with the
memories.

“What?” he asked, his eyes shifting around the night sky, scared to look at her.

“I want to keep it.”

“What?”

“I want to keep it.”

“You’re not married.”

“I want this baby.”

He shook his head sadly. Pulled her as close as he could get her to his chest. He sobbed.

“It would be selfish.”

“Why?”

“I know it’s been hard to grow up the way you have, but if this baby is a girl, can you imagine how much harder her life would
be? Being raised by an unwed mother and still having to wear skirts to the floor and a noose of hair around her neck? She
would be an outcast.”

“I’ll leave the church,” Hannah sobbed. “I’d even let her wear pants.”

Hannah cried as Father whispered “I’m sorry” over and over in her ear. And she cried more when he told her about the wonderful
family Mother had found. A woman, married for fifteen years, with no children of her own. A preacher’s wife that had prayed
for years for a child just like the one within Hannah.

“When we get back home,” he said, “nobody will know. Mother’s already talked to that lady you used to work for. She’s agreed
to help deliver you, off record. And the barren woman will say it’s hers. A few more weeks and you’ll be home again. It will
be like this never happened.”

Exhausted, Hannah could only nod. But the next night she woke Mother.

“Come swimming. No one will see us.”

“Have you lost your mind? It’s the middle of the night. It’s not even summer.”

“You’ve never been, have you? If you could just feel it, Mother, feel the water everywhere that your clothes should be. It’s
so special. I want to share it with you. I want to share it with my baby.”

“It’s not your baby,” Mother hissed.

Hannah went alone. Stripped her clothes off by the dunes in the middle of the night. The cold bit her skin as she pushed her
body into the water. Her balance was thrown off by her new shape, and the waves tossed her playfully. The burn of the cold
soon eased into a sweet numb that made her feel sleepy. The baby moved. And Hannah smiled sadly.

“I’ve had this much at least,” she whispered.

Her body felt more weightless than it had in months. The bright moonlight bounced off the skin of her stomach. Someone yelled,
but she ignored it, and let her mind go as numb as her body.

Someone else was in the water. Grabbing her, dragging her to shore. Her heaviness returned, and she felt the struggle of someone
working hard to pull her to the dunes. Blankets were wrapped around her naked body. Arms wrapped around the blankets. Hannah
looked up to see Bethie crying over her.

The next day, dark clouds rolled over the ocean and hovered over the coast. A storm settled in, more dense and dark than any
spring storm a local could remember. Hannah looked out her window and saw the marsh water rising nearly to the back porch.
It made her feel caged, all that water coming up to the back door and her knowing that on the other side lay the ocean.

Early that night, pains began. And though she cried with fear, Mother smiled and even laughed sweetly. “It’s almost over,
daughter. We’ll be home soon.”

Father set out in the storm. His car plowed through deep puddles and violent winds. By the time he returned, the house was
beginning to shake. Hannah heard old wooden boards groan with the heavy effort of staying put.

She screamed when the pains came. And she screamed again when the window above her broke. But the water felt good. The rain
streamed over her bed like a cool baptism.

Cora was there. Lifting her legs and mumbling instructions. She said something to Hannah. Words of encouragement or faith.
And then her tongue lit up with fire and she shouted to the heavens. Hannah screamed, too, but never stopped listening to
that sweet mystery language. Through every broken syllable, every nonsense word, Hannah heard only this:
You poor baby girl.

And then the storm inside her body stopped. “A beautiful baby girl,” Cora announced. She laid her across Hannah’s chest. For
one tiny moment, Hannah’s baby was all hers.

“You,” Hannah whispered to her baby, even as Mother stepped forward. “Better than the ocean. As close to holy as I’ll ever
get.”

Three days after she gave birth, Father carried Hannah to the car. Bethie rode up front, in between Mother and Father. Hannah
was too weak to sit up. She lay down in the back and watched the clouds pass by above her. She wanted to sleep. She wanted
to die. But neither seemed easy enough.

Crossing the state border hurt worse than the birth. Carolina held everything. The ocean with its low tides. Her first love.
Her daughter. She screamed so that Father broke out in a sweat, Bethie sobbed, and Mother yelled, “Get control of yourself!”

“Keep going,” Mother insisted, when Father hinted at stopping to rest. “She needs to get home.”

Mother turned to Hannah. “You’ve answered all their prayers. For years that woman has begged God for a baby. Your sacrifice
made it possible. You should be so proud.”

“What of mine?” Hannah moaned.

“Your what?”

“My prayers.”

Late in the evening, Father pulled over at a hotel, even though Mother wanted to drive through the night. They fell asleep
quickly. Father in a recliner. Hannah in one bed. Mother and Bethie in the other. Everyone woke up feeling better, refreshed
in the morning. Eager to put the past behind them. To start again, new and clean.

Except for Hannah. The sheets around her were wet with blood. Her eyes wouldn’t stay open for more than a moment at a time.
Her skin was damp and cold.

“We’ve got to take her to a hospital,” Father cried.

“No,” Mother whispered. “No, there can never be a record. We promised…”

“But she will die!”

“And she’ll die if there is a record.”

Father ran from the room, but returned quickly with a doctor carrying a black bag. Hannah never remembered the exam or what
the doctor said was wrong. She only remembered how Father handed him a stack of cash.

They stayed in the hotel for two weeks. The doctor came back to check on her and Mother handed him cash every day. Hannah
swallowed handfuls of pills. And when she could finally hold her eyes open, she looked out the window next to her bed. She
saw mountains.

She had passed through them before, but they were always a part of the journey. One more thing to hurry and get through. She’d
never paused long enough to feel them, how heavy they could seem, especially lying sick in bed and looking up.

“These are the Appalachians,” Mother whispered when she saw Hannah’s opened eyes. “Some of the oldest mountains in the world.”

Hannah didn’t speak.

“Think of all the history this land has seen. Think of the families that have found protection here. From wars. Famines. From
sin.”

Mother walked over to the window and pulled the curtain back so Hannah could see more. “Look how high they rise. Like Jacob’s
ladder.”

“When are we leaving?” Hannah whispered.

Mother shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe we won’t.” She kept her back turned as she spoke. She stared at the mountains so that
Hannah wouldn’t see the fear that had gripped her. Over how easy it was for her daughter to fall prey to the world.

Mother and Father were scared. And every scared person needs a place to hide. The mountains were perfect. Not just because
of the land. How the clouds settled over the top, or how sometimes the trees grew so thick they hid the sky. But because of
the people, too. If ever there was a place where people liked to keep to their own, it was the mountains. Neighbors could
live within walking distance for years, but never know each other existed.

“What about our home?” Hannah whispered.

“All we need is each other. All we need is a chance to make a fresh start. We don’t need a brick house. We don’t need a fancy
neighborhood.”

They built a fortress. It was the first step in Mother’s plan. If the gated neighborhood up north had failed to keep them
safe, then surely a castle on top of a mountain would.

Mother returned to her sewing. But soon, her daughters had enough clothes. Her husband had enough socks. And there was so
much time to think. About babies, and how busy they can keep you. About babies, and how much sewing a new one requires.

There was plenty of time, too, for Mother to notice Hannah. How despite the new home, despite the return of her girlish shape,
Mother’s promise had not come true. Hannah was not the same as she had been before.

Mother wanted a distraction. Something that would absorb her family, keep them busy, and protect them from their secret memories.
She convinced her husband to draw up plans for a major home expansion. She opened up the kitchen. Added a Great Room. Took
down a wall and built two new wings of bedrooms. She called the tourism board and listed their address as a mountain retreat.
Then she visited shelters. Street corners. Church charity closets. Anyplace where she could find desperate people. She lured
them to her home with promises of work, food, and shelter.

Through it all, Father remained in his study. He focused on his drawings. New and complex designs that he mailed away to patent
attorneys and sold for crisp checks with large numbers typed across them. When his trembling hands made new drawings difficult,
he finally went to the doctor. He accepted the sentence of Parkinson’s. Returned to the chair in his study and passed his
days in silent thought.

But for Hannah, at least, Mother’s plan seemed to work. She settled into her new routine and stretched herself toward a whole
new level of piety. She stared at the bridge hanging in Father’s study until she felt it rise within her. Until it was the
very bones that held her up. She spent her days tending guests and mumbling old prayers from her childhood. She quit the color
yellow. She decided there was something redeeming about the colors gray and black. She hated the golden halo of her hair.
She worked hard every morning to pull it back tightly. She watched closely as Mother taught her how to tie on a proper head
covering.

This new submission, this new zeal from Hannah, was a victory for Mother. But there was one detail of the plan still missing.
Hannah was isolated, just like she had been when she was three years old. Her modesty set her apart even from Bethie, who
would never cover her head and was looking more and more like just another mountain hippie with every week that passed. She
wore chunky knit purple sweaters, and patchwork scarves that she sewed together and then draped around her waist. Her hair
was still long, but loose now, or with just one small section braided.