The Book of Speculation: A Novel

“Deliver me from the will of the flesh.” Her arm swung back, a tight-drawn string, and with a snap descended.

Spoon hit skin and Evangeline writhed. Redness rose, raw and stinging. Welts blossomed as she was smacked for the river, smacked for Will Aben, smacked for her mother and the father she’d never known. Smacked for the pine needles stuck in her hair. Smacked for the dirt under her nails. Smacked for her bloodied feet.

Struggling to cover her face, Evangeline did not see her grandmother’s tears, her sadness, or her fear.

Smacked for each broken lace. Smacked for scaring the hens so they wouldn’t lay. Smacked for crawling out the window. Smacked for being unclean. Each blow ended with begging the Lord’s forgiveness for lacking the strength to hone the girl into the steel that makes a faithful woman.

Sarah Visser was tired from the loss of her husband, her daughter, and from raising and loving a wanton child. While Evangeline had grown, Sarah had decayed. Her hair had grayed, her braid loops as thin as rats’ tails, her face had widened, and her fire was doused under fat and wrinkles. Her arm grew weak, her breathing ragged.

Evangeline’s hand flew out. Burning and wild, she wrenched the spoon from her grandmother. Force moved within her, filling her mouth with the taste of wash water. The spoon felt solid in her hand, as though part of her. She pushed the old woman forward, knocked her feet from under her, and drove Grandmother Visser to the floor they’d scrubbed and swept that morning. Evangeline’s arm lifted. The implement struck down so strong, so quick, she could not believe that she had done it. And then she could not stop.

Grandmother Visser wailed. The spoon smacked her mouth. Evangeline’s arm flew, whipping again and again as if driven by holy fire.

She did not hear her grandmother beg, “Stop, stop, precious thing, please.”

Evangeline’s body rang, each sinew and joint remembering blackened knees from kneeling, bruised ribs from tightened stays, and the pain of being kept from the river.

The spoon buzzed and hummed, singing, calling for her to let loose the wild. A sickening thump sounded as a blow struck her grandmother’s throat.

Grandmother Visser’s eyes snapped open like a startled rabbit. The spoon dropped. Evangeline’s grandmother’s face reddened, tears pouring from it like a split cook pot. Panic awoke. Evangeline backed away from where her grandmother gasped for breath that would not come.

Grandmother Visser’s belly rose and fell in spasms, and her face turned a deeper crimson. She stared at Evangeline, awed.

Evangeline struggled to sit her up. Apologies spouted from her with the same fervor that her grandmother had for prayer. Her grandmother tugged on Evangeline’s arm until their knotted bodies came to rest against the woodstove. She rasped and wheezed. Evangeline patted her cheeks and begged her to breathe. Grandmother Visser’s head lolled to the side. A lank braid fell across her chest.

Cradling her grandmother’s shoulders, Evangeline began to rock.

Sarah Visser took her granddaughter’s hand.

Evangeline felt the moment life left her grandmother. What had been quick was no more. When Evangeline had been small, Grandmother Visser had taught her the basting stitch, blind catch stitch, and the featherstitch for seams. She remembered her grandmother’s hands wrapped around hers, a bone thimble balanced on her finger, guiding the needle through muslin, and the fresh smell of her skin after kneading dough.

Warmth seeped from Grandmother Visser’s body. Evangeline tried to take it into her own as she shivered against the iron stove. She wept. She’d thought her love for her grandmother tempered by anger, but it bit like a fresh lash.

The rooster crowed as dawn pinkened a crack in the kitchen door. With the sound came a single thought: Run.

She left by a window and ran out the barnyard, through the tall grass and into the pines. She followed deer paths through the trees. When her stomach threatened sickness, she pressed her thumb to a bruise until the pain became an ember that burned away all but the need to run. Find the water, follow the river, she thought. All will be well. She ran toward the river, to the Hudson that flowed away from the body of the woman who had raised her. She ran until her feet begged she rest. When thirsty, she drank from the river and it filled her and gave her life.

She followed the Hudson south toward she knew not what, only that it was away. Eva, Angel, Eve, I am a killer, she thought, and the words became her name.

*

Time and season ensured that Peabody’s menagerie and the mute fortune-teller’s apprentice moved northward. On this day, Peabody noted in the margins of his ledger that the goats gave sour milk.





7

JULY 14TH


There it is. No question. Drowned, July 24th, 1937.