August Ansel - The Attic

Renna’s glazed eyes rolled toward Handy, looking for some sign. Her breathing was chesty and labored as a wind-broke horse, probably from sleeping on the fouled mattress, wrapped in the dusty drapes from Granny’s room. Gods knew what she might have inhaled during the night.

“It’s all right,” said Handy. “You’re coming up with us.”

“Where?”

“Up to where I can have a look,” said Arie. “First, let’s get you out of this slippery thing.” She tugged off the satin robe and tossed it into a corner. The smell of mildew and thick dust, combined with the smell of Renna herself, was powdery and pungent.

“Walk her to the closet,” Arie said. “I’ll be right back.” She clambered into the attic and fetched the ladder, lowering it through the floor hatch. From below, Handy braced it against the closet wall. He got Renna’s stronger leg onto the first rung and then positioned himself behind, with his arm tight around her waist. When he was able to wrestle her onto the second rung, Arie leaned down and got hold of her under one arm. There was simply no way to get her up without hurting her. She wept steadily, but Arie could see that she was trying not to yell. Halfway through the hatch, almost up and in, she turned the wrong direction and scraped her bad hip against the edge. She let out a warbling cry.

Through the open sky panel an answering howl ignited—two voices, three. Renna covered her mouth with her hand. Her eyes rolled up and she passed out, whether from pain or fear or exhaustion, Arie wasn’t sure.

“Well enough. It’s best she’s out of it for a bit,” Arie told Handy. She took a sheet from her own bedding, snapped it once, folded it in half lengthwise, and laid it across the rough board floor, directly under the sky panel. Handy took Renna under the arms and Arie took her under the knees, and they laid her there on her back. “Get the ladder,” Arie said. “And put the hatch closed.” While he did this, she opened the sky panel. The inside surface of the big panel door was painted with high-gloss white paint, and the morning sun slanted onto the surface and reflected down into the attic, directly where Arie had put Renna. In the clear light, she looked gray and corpselike. “She’s just barely here, William,” Arie said. “Don’t set your attention on her making it.”

“What now, then?” he asked.

“Up there,” Arie said, gesturing at the sky panel. “You’re mostly visible when you first climb out, so go up slow and check the street before you do.” She handed him a yellow plastic tub that had once held several pounds of margarine. “You’ll see my water in the angle between the gables. Fill this.” Don’t spill, she almost added, but held her tongue. A son of God’s Land might be soft-headed enough to entwine his life with a stranger’s, but he would never be careless with a draught of water.

While Handy went on the roof, Arie tossed a large handful of dried chamomile and calendula flowers into a bowl with water and rubbed the wet herbs between her hands to make a quick tea. She grabbed a pile of rags and bent over Renna, who hadn’t roused in the least. Arie put her fingers to her carotid artery; the pulse was there, faint and racing along. She took off her shoes, old sneakers with no socks underneath; her feet were black, with toenails grown long and thick. She wore wide-legged cotton trousers closed at the waist with a drawstring. Arie untied and started to peel them down, but the fabric stuck fast to the larger wound on Renna’s right hip and wasted buttock. The pants had acted as a sort of bandage and barrier, but they would have to be removed for her to heal. Handy walked overhead, and the sound was disorienting. Arie’s own pulse rushed in her ears, body primed for the worst. When his feet dropped onto the ladder, she had to take several deep breaths. Her fingers had strayed to the haft of the short spear. He put the margarine tub on the floor next to Arie.

“I’m going to have to cut these britches off to clean her up, and then take care of these wounds,” she told him. She’d already gotten the smaller of her scissors. “I doubt she’ll wake up while I’m laying waste to her trousers, but chances are good she’s going to scream bloody murder when I try to get the remnants off.”

He looked distinctly uneasy for the first time since Arie had clapped eyes on him in the woods yesterday. “William,” she said quietly, “this child is in terrible shape. Did you not think to clean and cover these open spots?”

“She’s no child,” he said. “I had no business uncovering her.” He shook his head, as if Arie had asked him to do something repugnant. “She didn’t want to be touched, anyway. Told me no three times. More than three, even when I just tried to see where she was hurt.”

She felt a hot stab under her breastbone. Told me no three times . Daddy Mack’s Rules. Number 24: If a man would lie with a woman, even if it is a woman whom the Lord has provided into his hand, if she should refuse him even unto a third time, he would not lie with her.

“I don’t believe you were trying to ravish her, were you, William McInnis? Was it fuckery you had in mind? In your worry over defrauding, you’ve left this woman’s wounds to fester directly into her clothing.” Her voice was even and low-pitched, despite the fury blowing through her. “Perhaps if I’d told you three times no to coming into my home you’d have turned aside?” He did not reply, nor make eye contact. “You’re going to help me here,” Arie said, “and you’re going to see a great deal of her body, much of it fouled and some of it torn, and you will not look away. Not once.”

While she spoke, she ran the shears in long strokes up one pant leg, then the other. She left three sections, one on each side and one in the center. The panel on Renna’s unhurt left leg fell away easily; on her right leg, Arie snipped slowly around the stuck places. They had to roll her onto her left side so that Arie could snip around the wound on her buttock. At each bite, the fabric was raggedly torn and stiff with dried blood. Careful as she tried to be, a few times the fabric pulled at the dog-bit spots, and Renna would make a little moan. The flesh under Arie’s hands was swollen and stiff, hot.

Through it all Handy stayed mute, but he didn’t turn away. In fact, he seemed to anticipate Arie’s movements and made the difficult task a little easier. It was only when Arie pulled away the center panel of Renna’s pants and handed him the whole ragged mess that he hesitated.

“Put these over by the floor hatch. We’ll toss them downstairs later. Then I’ll need plantain,” she said. “You know it?”

“Yes. How much?”

“It’s all over in the yard, particularly out by the back fence. Take that,” she said, pointing to a heavy burlap sack. “Fill it if you can.” She told him where to find the rope ladder. He was clearly glad to be sent out.

Arie watched, some relieved when he paused at the top and scanned the street. She turned her attention to getting Renna as clean as she could before debriding and tending her wounds. When she’d told Handy the girl was fouled, she meant it quite literally. She wore no underdrawers, and Arie couldn’t imagine how long it was since she had properly bathed. She washed her as she would wash a neglected child, a task she’d been trained to perform when she was only a child herself. Mammy Delonda loved being pregnant. She did not love mothering. When each one was born and mostly weaned from the tit, she’d pass it off to the older girls. I’m centered in my purpose, she’d say when full of a new baby, giving Daddy Mack her eternal doe eyes and caressing her belly in a way that made Arie and her sisters decidedly uncomfortable.