There were a few cedar boards in the barn. I fetched them and laid them side by side in the bottom. The scent was faint but reminded me of the cedar chest Gran had her wedding gown stored in. I went back to the house and took some loose chips from inside Gran’s wedding chest. I sprinkled them on top of the boards.
The blue butterfly pots I’d made—they had wings shaped almost like fingers tightly pressed together, wings that wrapped themselves up around the sides of the pot. George Bridger had suggested making two, and I’d taken his advice. I’d pressed Ellen’s name into each before glazing and firing. Now I took one of the pots and set it gently in the grave.
When I paused in passing beside Gran’s bed, she looked at me with wide, dark eyes—the rest of her had faded into nothingness—and we didn’t speak. When I picked up the bundle from beside her and carried it out, she didn’t stop me.
After that . . . I remember it all, but like I was someone else, watching from afar, bemused, as a young woman laid her precious bundle into the midst of those cedar chips. Somehow the woman reached into the pile of dirt and took it, handful by handful, and returned the earth from whence it came. I held my breath, watching her. I didn’t think she could do it, but she did.
Gasping and breathless, I watched her, and when it was done, she mounded the dirt with her bare hands, shaping it and patting it into place. I could read her mind. She kept telling herself, “Just this—this and no more—and then you’ll be done. Do this, and then you’ll be finished and able to rest.”
But still the woman wasn’t satisfied. She looked around, this cold creature, and decided to pry up a cement slab her grandfather had made as a step at the shed door. She dug it out with her bare fingers and rolled it end over end to the creek, across the bridge, and up the slope.
When she reached the cemetery wall, despite the weight of the slab, somehow she managed to lift it over and lay it on top of the mounded dirt. She climbed back over the wall and searched the woods and creek bed by moonlight. She gathered up rocks, large and small, and carried them back. She arranged them like a necklace around the perimeter of the block. The mica flecks and milky quartz crystals glittered like earthbound stars in the light of the moon.
Was it deep enough? Secure enough with the concrete block on top? Rocks all around to mark it as special? I heard the woman’s voice in my head asking, Is she safe now? Not asking about herself but about the bundle. Baby Ellen. Is Ellen safe?
There were noises in the dark night. The woman stared, her eyes fixed on the stone wall. I, myself, saw a small figure move, not much more than a shadow on top of the wall, but it remained indistinguishable. Meanwhile, small animals—rabbits, possums, and a raccoon or two—crept from their burrows. They prowled for food and were driven by the other needs of life. They, and the insects, came alive with the dark, and filled the air with their noises.
The woman’s knees grew wet and cold as the earth soaked through her clothing and the night settled damp around her. A gentle breath of wind swirled the air. The branches overhead moved, shaking up the moon-cast shadows. The wispy almost-form on the stone wall vanished. The woman lifted her arms, her hands grasping at the empty air as wails and cries filled the darkness. Wild, crazed sounds. Creatures emerging into the night stopped, then slunk away. There were better places to hunt and mate. Tonight, this landscape had become a hostile, nightmarish hell.
Finally, only the woman remained. The continued cries hurt our ears, but I was helpless to stop her. They issued from her, hurting her chest, tearing at her throat, and over some period of time I knew the truth—the coarse sounds emanated from us. They came from inside us—her on the ground and me at what should’ve been a safe distance—the wails screamed from a consciousness whose reality had been torn fiber by fiber, beyond acceptance.
I was pulled back roughly from my distant perch, but I couldn’t come in all the way home, not back to where I’d begun. Instead, I found a place to dwell within Hannah but that was not Hannah. Hannah, the girl who’d lost her child, went to sleep, and then I was finally able to rest.
A few times I heard Gran’s voice from a distance.
At false dawn, I awoke. I was curled up in the loam, sheltered only by the moss and lichen-covered low stone wall of the cemetery. The predawn sky lit up this patch of land and the flat concrete block, and I knew my baby was gone from me. Really gone.
I pushed up to my knees. My fingers screamed. The early light wasn’t enough to give me the details, but they felt torn and bloody. My joints ached. I made it to my feet but couldn’t stand all the way up. I was hunched over like an old woman, older than my Gran even, and I crept, drained and hurting, back to the house.
Gran was on the floor in the open doorway between the kitchen and the living room. She was half-propped against the doorframe, and her legs were sprawled out. Her eyes were closed. I was so near the floor already that it wasn’t a long trip down. I touched her face.
“Gran? You there?”
She murmured something. Her eyes opened slowly. “Hannah?”
I sagged. “You’re OK, then?”
She nodded. Even in the near dark, I could see her eyes were red and wet. The lids were swollen; she could only peek out. Her cheeks had sagged long ago, and her jawline had grown soft as her wrinkles had deepened, but tonight she looked like she’d grown old twenty times over. She put her arm around me, heavy but firm, and pulled my face into her midsection. I let her hold me close for a few minutes but then struggled free.
“I’ll help you back into bed,” I said.
“All right. Help me get to the bathroom first, and then a drink of water would be welcome.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Everything hurt me, inside and out, but the necessity of getting my grandmother onto her feet and sorted out stirred the life back up inside me. I found I could put one foot in front of another, as long as she didn’t ask. When we passed the bedroom door where Ellen’s crib was clearly in sight, she didn’t comment. She coughed. She sniffled. She groaned. She muttered. But she didn’t ask. And that was a good thing.
I’d tossed the rain-wet blanket into the crib when I was changing her that last time. In the dim light and from a certain angle, I could almost believe she was still there, and the past almost twenty-four hours had never happened.
After Gran was settled, I fell into bed and curled up, filth and all, into a ball. I closed my eyes and left this world again for a while. I hoped I would never have to return.