“That’s true, Constance,” Donna Jo said. “We can hope she takes this as a new chance for an obedient life. Many haven’t been so lucky.”
“Mmm,” the wives said in muffled agreement.
My perfect little sister. I hoped she was just playing along. She was good at acting obedient, but then so were we all. At least until obedience became impossible.
I believed the Prophet when he said he would marry Constance if something were to happen to me. I had to think of a way to get us both out.
The thump of boots on the wooden floor below told me my family was on their way to the Prophet Hall. The front door slammed shut, and it was quiet for the first time that day. I lay back and tried to sleep again, tried to ignore the pain that niggled at the tourniquets and radiated up my arms.
The lock slid back on the other side of my door. My mother stood in the doorway. In her eyes, something burned with the kind of frantic fire that might sputter out at any moment.
She approached, whispering for me to stand and put my arms out. Delicately, she edged a knitted maroon glove over each stump then slid my arms into my navy button-fronted jacket. She helped me place each foot into a pair of leather boots, tying the laces in loose knots. When she was done, she stood and looked at the door.
“Constance—” I started to say, but my mother put a finger in front of her lips again.
“Go,” she whispered. “You save yourself.”
She shut her eyes tight for a moment, then turned around and walked out.
The door swayed behind her after she left.
For a moment, I could only stare at the open door. A part of me saw it as a violation and wanted to close it, knowing all of the rules it broke. The wind fought through the chinks in the wall and the door began to creak shut again, the gap of darkness that meant freedom growing smaller and smaller. Fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast, I pushed my body through the doorway.
Downstairs, the muslin walls wafted in the momentary draft from my mother’s exit. It was impossible to tell if someone lurked behind a wall. I slid quietly over the floor toward the kitchen. It still smelled of dinner, a pot on the table skinned with the yellow remains of onion soup, and my stomach walloped with hunger. But stronger than the smell was the breeze coming from the open front door. I stood at the opening, not bothering with food. Not bothering with feeling sorry to leave the home of my childhood. Pushing the image of Constance back, too.
Blood started dripping through the stitches around my stumps soon after I entered the woods, a slow dribble that fell to the undergrowth with audible plops. If anyone was following me closely, they’d easily make out my path, crimson coin shapes glinting with moonlight, leading straight to Jude’s house.
Chapter 43
All the women I ever knew had palms like toughened cowhide, inches of built-up callus gloving each hand, fingers rough as a cat’s tongue that, when they grabbed my wrist in admonishment, could leave behind raw patches long after they let go.
Those were hands of trowel digging and washboard scraping, but they also were the hands that cupped a baby between them, that slipped slices of boiled potato into a toddler’s mouth, that wiped faces clean and patted cheeks in something like love. Their version of love, at least, steel-eyed and always looking for something to improve.
I asked the doctor today where my mother is. He looked up at me like he wasn’t sure what to say, but he decided on the truth. She’s living in a women’s home. She’s taking medication and learning how to balance a checkbook and type on a computer, copying articles out of magazines to get her fingers used to making words again.
“You could visit her, you know,” the doctor says. “When you get out.”
I shake my head because the idea is still too untested, a fragile thin-skinned thing that needs to strengthen before I touch it. “Where are the rest of them?”
“Group homes,” he says. “Government housing.”
I’m picturing their hands again, only now they’re flicking light switches, wrapping around jars of peanut butter, tearing the cardboard top from a package of processed macaroni and cheese. Those hands weren’t made for a life outside of the wilderness. They don’t make sense here. Now, I wonder if they wish they could take those hands off and put them away, get back the hands they had before.
“Have you given any thought to what you’ll do when you’re released?” Dr. Wilson asks.
“Not really.”
“Did you apply for the Bridge Program?”
I shake my head. “No point. I wouldn’t get in, and anyway you only qualify if you’re eighteen or younger when released. I’m probably going to Billings, so . . .”
“Sounds like you’re giving up.”
“Maybe.”
“And you’re just fine with that.”