You were stupid, and you still are. Do you ever even try?
Distantly she heard her parents address her in turn, her mother more often than her father. Fists on the door. Demands for chores, questions about what was wrong. The pressure inside her head made her sweat, and when a steady hand rapped against her bedroom door during the afternoon, Matrona thought someone had finally sent for the doctor.
The old door opened on creaking hinges, and Roksana’s voice rang through the air. “Matrona? Look at you! Like you’ve been trapped in a pillory under the sun all day.”
Matrona rubbed her fingers over her temples—they were starting to bruise, she’d done it so many times. Her back ached from her mattress, and she pushed herself upward.
You don’t deserve her friendship, the persistent voice murmured.
“What are you doing here?” Matrona asked when the voice repeated itself.
The mattress shifted when Roksana sat on its edge, setting a bag down beside her. “The children are out of school for the day. Darya Avdovin mentioned you were ill—among other things—and I was concerned that maybe the stress . . .”
Roksana shrugged; Matrona moaned and buried her face into her pillow.
Even the children gossip about you. Matrona wasn’t sure if the thought was hers or something brought on by that deplorable doll.
“And how would Darya know?” Matrona spoke into her pillow, squeezing her eyes shut as a sharp pain shot up her jaw and into her crown. The girl wasn’t yet ten years old.
“Well, she said her grandmother came by for milk this morning. There wasn’t butter to be had, and your mother complained it was because you’re ill—”
You leave all the work to your parents. You’ve never pulled your weight, the voice rattled.
Matrona spoke just to hear something other than the incessant insults. “Roksana.” She pulled back from the pillow. She blinked green-and-blue spots from her vision, and her friend’s frown replaced them. “What would you do if every terrible thing you’d ever said to yourself, even as a child, came back at once?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Roksana’s delicate eyebrows scrunched into nearly flat lines.
Matrona’s head throbbed, and renewed pressure pushed down on her chest. She took several seconds to breathe deeply, trying to ignore the punishing sensations. “Haven’t you ever seen your reflection and thought, ‘Oh, I look homely today,’ or perhaps reprimanded yourself from some small wrong you did as a student or a teacher?”
“Well, yes, I suppose.”
“They’re such little thoughts”—Matrona winced, fingers returning to her temples—“often passing as quickly as they came, or after a good night’s rest. Only, imagine if all those thoughts were . . . I don’t know, saved in a chest. Every single one. And every bad feeling you’ve ever had. Guilt over telling a lie, or shame from doing something wrong. All of it inside this chest. And then suddenly you’re in the room with the chest, and it opens, but someone’s jammed the door and you can’t get out—”
“You’re rambling, Matrona.” Roksana clicked her tongue and resituated her heavy body, trying to get comfortable. “You sound almost poetic, in a sad, strange way.”
“Just imagine it, Roksana!” Matrona cried, her hands jerking away from her temples and slamming fists into her pillow, making her friend jump. “Imagine how it would make you feel. What would you do, trapped with all of it around you?” Tears wet her eyes, and she blinked rapidly to banish them, her eyes still sore from the night’s weeping. “Tell me what to do.”
Roksana’s frown deepened, and she stood from the bed, returning her bag to her shoulder. “You’re not trapped in a room with some devil’s chest.” The distance in her voice made Matrona’s stomach squeeze, made a harmony of voices in her head sing, Stupid, stupid, stupid. “What’s wrong with you lately? First you embarrass yourself, and Feodor, no less, and now you’re wasting away in your room, talking about chests and jammed doors. You sound like Mad Olia Maysak.”
“I’m not mad,” Matrona spat. She prayed it was true.
Roksana sighed. “Get some rest, then, and find me when you’re better.” She shrugged and turned about, leaving the room with the door cracked open. Matrona heard Roksana say something to someone in the hallway; then her footsteps faded in the direction of the front door.
Matrona’s abdomen panged as the cursed doll spell erupted inside her again, bubbling up shame and loathing that could not be assigned to any one happenstance or memory. She curled over her pillow, swallowing, trying not to sick up, again.
Her door opened with enough force to bang into the wall behind it, and her mother said, “There’s a bath ready for you in my room; go get into it and clean yourself up. Your father just returned from his errands and said Feodor means to see you, and I’ll not have you looking like this after all the mending we had to do for you!”
Matrona pressed a clammy palm to her forehead. “Please, Mama, I don’t feel well.”
“Neither do I, but I’m up and about. Get up before I pull your hair.”
Stomach clenching, Matrona released her pillow and slid off the bed, shaking her head at the dark whispers in her ears. Once in the hallway, her mother snatched her by the elbow and yanked her into the other bedroom, where she practically ripped off Matrona’s clothes—the same she’d worn to Slava’s home the day before—and dunked her into the basin of river-cold water.
Matrona gasped, the shock of the cold clearing her head. “It’s not warm,” she gasped, more air than voice.
“Only because you dallied,” her mother snapped, shoving Matrona’s head forward and dragging lye over her neck. “Can you wash up, or must I do that, too?”
Matrona reached up a trembling hand and took the lye. Her mother left, slamming the bedroom door behind her.
“You must resolve this.” Feodor paced the length of the front room, moving back and forth before the brick oven, his hands clasped behind his back. His shirt was wrinkled around the waist and elbows. The evening sun trickled through a window, casting the shadow of the half-open shutter over the floor. Matrona’s parents were in the pasture, milking the cows.
“I have been very patient with you,” Feodor continued, glancing Matrona’s way as he walked back and forth, back and forth. Matrona felt the glance more than she saw it. Feodor had been pacing for nearly half an hour, lecturing her thoroughly enough that his disapproving voice had replaced the mocking one inside her head. It left her body limp and heavy, as though ink flowed through her veins, instead of blood, smudging her insides with darkness. He’d begun to repeat himself, and Matrona’s tongue was too heavy to ask him to stop. He continued, “I don’t understand the enigma you’ve become this week, Matrona. For heaven’s sake, I thought we were past this.”
Unseen cords wrapped around Matrona’s shoulders and tried to pull her toward the ground. She fought against them. Though a full day had passed since her last visit to Slava’s house, the urge to curl up into a ball and let the earth suck her up had not lessened. Her head continued to ache—more so if she focused on it—and the dismal thoughts running through her brain had long since begun to repeat themselves, much as Feodor was doing now.
The comparison made her stomach turn, but perhaps that was just hunger. This bizarre depression had consumed her appetite as well.
“I’ll be well in a couple of days,” Matrona murmured, cradling her forehead in her hands. Surely she would recover by Slava’s next deadline, else he could expect nothing from her. The voice inside her attacked again. Is that the kind of posture you choose to take before your future husband? Can you not bear it and smile for his sake?
She bit the inside of her cheek and shot back, Can he not bear a smile for mine?
She tried to straighten, to pull up the corners of her mouth, but they were so heavy, and the effort made her bones throb.