She could do no more than smile wearily at Cromwell; she stumbled when she tried to walk, so Digby lifted her in his arms. She clung to his neck as he carried her inside. Digby said to Cromwell, “Thank you, my friend, for waiting. Go home, please. Your family won’t forgive me for keeping you out like this.”
He brought in a thermos of hot tea and chicken sandwiches that the cook had prepared. While she ate, he filled the bathtub with steaming water. He helped her out of her clothes and into the bath. Her arms were splotchy, with patches of pale discoloration like an old map. He registered her collapsed and wrinkled stomach, a contrast to her swollen breasts, the areolas stretched into dark saucers. He sat on the stool beside her. She placed her ankles on the edge of the tub and let her body sink deeper, vanishing completely under the water, save for her feet. Digby saw blood trickling from the base of her right toe; he moved closer. Her feet were studded with blisters. She emerged. He stroked her hand, which felt knobby and leathery. He studied her fingers: they had fissures, as if she’d been working with fence wire. She pulled her hand away.
He felt himself sinking.
Her hands, her blistered feet, the pale patches on her arms—he knew. He’d been with Rune at Saint Bridget’s too long not to know. He wanted to scream, to shatter glass, to rail at the unfairness of a life that gave with one hand only to take away in bigger measure with the other.
She looked on, wide eyed, watched as understanding came to him, saw him clutch the edge of the tub and sway. She dared not say a word. Gradually, he composed himself. He reached in the water for her hand once more, then brought her fingers to his lips.
“Don’t!” she cried, pulling away, but he wouldn’t let go.
“It’s too late for that,” he said in a choked voice, pressing her palm to his cheek, because the love he felt was separate from the dreadful knowledge he now possessed.
“I forbid you,” she said, withdrawing her feet into the tub, water sloshing over the edge.
“I forbid you to forbid me,” he said, slipping to his knees, plunging his arms into the water to encircle her body, to pull her to him, this woman without whom he had no reason to go on. “There’s nothing you can do to lose me,” he sobbed, clutching her wet body to his. He chased her mouth as she dodged him, but he found it at last, tasting her lips and their mingled tears as she gave in, sobbing, letting him kiss her, kissing him back. Clinging to his wet clothed body, she wept, letting out what she had stifled for so long, sharing at last the terrible burden she had carried alone.
He held her tight. What did humans have in their arsenal for these moments? Nothing but pathetic moans and tears and sobs that did nothing, changed nothing. Water sloshed over the tiles: precious water, abundant water, water that could wash away blister fluid and blood, wash away tears, wash away sins if you believed, but would never wash away the stigmata of leprosy, not in their lifetime, because they had no Elisha to say, “Wash seven times in the Jordan and be cured,” no son of God to touch the leprous sores and make them go away.
Elsie’s letter made sense. He understood why she’d left their daughter. The reason stared at him in the curling of her fingers, the beginning of a claw hand. He knew all too well that pregnancy weakened the body’s defenses, allowed a few diseases that were already in the body, like leprosy or tuberculosis, to explode. Elsie knew it too, having grown up with Rune as a neighbor and friend; she knew what laypeople would not: a newborn baby was in grave danger of contracting leprosy from the mother.
“You understand?” He nodded. Tears streamed down their faces. “I was never meant to have children, Digby.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I wanted our baby, Digs! As soon as I knew I was pregnant, I wanted to come to you. But I was stuck there. I couldn’t get a letter to you. And during the horrible, endless rains, my hands and feet . . . It happened so quickly. I didn’t know what it was. But then I couldn’t hold a pen. I knew.” She stared at her cracked fingertips. “I almost died giving birth to her, Digby. Maybe that would have been better. I had a convulsion, after which, mercifully, I remember nothing. The baby was upside down. I had a severe hemorrhage. But somehow we both survived. Mariamma. That’s her name, after my mother-in-law. A beautiful baby. It was days before I could even lift my head and look at our daughter. I wanted to hold her, but I could not. Rune had told me why they never allowed babies at Saint Bridget’s. I knew.”
Digby tried to picture his child, their child, their daughter. Mariamma. He longed for her. “I can raise her here, Elsie. I’ll take care of you separately. And . . .”
“No, Digby, we can’t. You can’t. She’s better off motherless than being the daughter of a leper.” It was the first time that word had been uttered since Digby picked Elsie up. The word lingered; it would not go away. She watched Digby’s face. “Yes, a leper, Digby. That’s who I am. No one keeps a leper in their house. No one can keep that a secret.” She leaned forward. “Believe me, she couldn’t be raised in a better home than with my mother-in-law. Big Ammachi is love itself. And she’ll have Baby Mol and Anna Chedethi.”
“And your husband?”
She shook her head. “He’s in bad shape. He took opium for his broken ankles, but he couldn’t stop. Now it’s his whole world.” She took a deep breath and looked squarely at Digby. “He thinks the child is his, Digby. He has reason to. Just one reason, one time. He was full of opium. I didn’t fight him. I could have, but I didn’t. Once he knew I was pregnant, he convinced himself that it was Ninan born again. That it was God asking for forgiveness. When it was a girl, he sank deeper into the opium.”
The only sound was water dripping from the tap.
Elsie said, “The only way out for me was for them to think I died. Why burden them with this knowledge of this disease? If I’d told Big Ammachi, she’d have insisted I stay. She’d have embraced me no matter what. Just like you. But I’d just drag the whole family down. Ruin their name. Ruin life for my daughter. It broke my heart that I couldn’t tell Big Ammachi the truth. Better she thinks I drowned.”
“But if my Mariamma lives here with us, but separate—”
“No, Digby!” she said sharply, sitting up. “Listen to me! Do you know how many nights I stayed awake to think this through? I died last night so that my daughter might live a normal life. Do you understand? That means I need to go where I can never be found. Ever! I must be where no one thinks to look, no one runs into me, no one hears rumors about me. My daughter can never learn of my existence. Elsie drowned. Do you understand? Gwendolyn Gardens isn’t that place.” Her agitation and the resolve on her face silenced him. “The only other choice I have is to walk off the edge of that Chair of the Goddess. But I’m not ready to do that. Not as long as I can still work. I want to create till I can’t anymore. I can do that at Saint Bridget’s.”
He helped her out, dried her off. She folded a towel lengthwise and passed it between her thighs and tied a mundu to keep the towel in place. Once she was in bed, he brought his kit, to unroof and bandage her blisters. She tried to pull her feet away.
He remembered the blister after their first hike. She’d felt no pain. Was that an early sign he’d missed? There had been blisters on her hands when she sculpted, but that was normal—other than the fact that she hardly noticed them. Now she could step on a carpet or on a nail and the two would feel the same.
“I just wish you wouldn’t touch them,” she said, watching him work on her feet.
“You can’t get it that way.”
She laughed bitterly. “That’s what Rune used to say. But Digs, I got it. How? From growing up beside the leprosarium? From visiting Rune? How?”
“We’re all exposed, at one time or another. Some of us are susceptible.”
“What if you’re susceptible?” she said.