Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

I could tell, for all I was trying to blend my voice, that my mother heard my every effort. I stood out even now. But as the second chorus began, she looked over at me and nodded her head, pleased at last again.

A few days later, I took one of our horses and rode to the farthest edge of our property, past the long fields of new rye and hay, until I reached a long hill that sloped down sharply and hid everything below. I tied the horse carefully to a tree and walked down until I was sure I was out of sight.

This was my favorite place.

I wanted to hear my new voice. I was angry at being punished for what I was sure was God’s only gift to me, and yet I was ashamed still to sing in front of my mother, afraid the pleasure I took would be seen as pride. And as I often sang when I was sad as well, I could not even console myself as I once had, not in the house.

So here I was.

The song I chose for my test was a song my father sang often, a sea chantey. I later learned there was more to it than this, but this was the fragment he sang over and over.

What will you do, love,

when I am going,

with white sails blowing,

the seas beyond?

I liked to imagine my young father, pacing the deck at night on his crossing, singing this song. I sang it to myself there and then sang it again, falling into it, wandering into the woods as I did so. I imagined leaving my family, leaving the town, leaving it all and never returning. I saw their sad, empty days without me. When they missed me, they’d be sorry for how they’d treated me. My mother would cry for having made me wear that gag.

When I came out of the woods, I began to head back to the horse when I heard it whicker and looked to see my mother at the top of the hill.

Is it to make a fool of me, then? she said.

No, mother, I said, as unhappy to have been caught as I was to have made her sad. For she looked as though I’d insulted her.

I can’t have you running off like this, she said. You’re not a child anymore. You have responsibilities. We’re to be making your trousseau, in case you forgot.

I protested, but she would have none of it.

After that, as punishment, I was to wear the gag for another week.

All the time? my father asked of my mother that night back at the house. We were eating dinner.

All the time, she said, except at meals. Her voice has gone to her head, and that will be trouble.

Ah.

The other children say she’s possessed, my little brother said; Frank was his name. That if we hear her sing we’ll all be possessed as well.

Is it true, then? Thomas, the older one, asked.

It’s just foolishness and gossip, my mother said. Don’t repeat it. Or I’ll make a gag for you as well.

My parents left then to speak with each other out of our hearing.

Is it true? Thomas repeated to me.

I glared. And then nodded. The boys leapt up and cleared the table.

Now, if I wanted to scare them, I had only to make as if I were going to pull down the gag and look at them meaningfully. And while I hated not being able to speak, I enjoyed their fear. I liked how at church the other families stared at me, liked that the boys who once chased me now stayed back, afraid. But this was also pride. My mother noted it, and then said, One more week.

I don’t like it, my father said to me the following week as we washed our hands for dinner. It’s not right. I’m working on your mother. But she has it in her head that this will cure you, though I’m not sure how we’re to know you’re cured.

I started to cry when he said this.

Can you take it off at night? he asked me.

I nodded.

Well, then, I suppose that’s a blessing at least.

That night I heard him argue with her. I sat hidden on the stairs and listened. It’s you ought to wear it, he said. She’s a girl, not a freak, but now she’s being said to be possessed. Is that what you want for her? How are we to get her a husband if the men think she’s cursed?

You haven’t seen the wicked pride in her, my mother said.

You haven’t seen the wicked pride in you.

My mother began to cry, which startled me.

It’s not right, what you’re doing, he said. It’s not right at all. Nothing good will come of it.

Despite my fantasies of running away, I loved them too much to do it. I made another plan.

That night as they slept I went to where my mother kept a kettle on the stove. The water in it was still warm. I walked with it to my bed and soaked my sheets, careful not to wake my brothers asleep together in the bed across from me.

Careful not to wake them until my nightgown was wet and my hair as well, I lay down in the bed and then, with great purpose, rolled onto the floor, landing heavily with a crash. My brother Frank woke, sat up, and then got down from the bed to investigate me where I lay, very still, my eyes closed. He touched my forehead, rubbing my wet hair with his little fingers.

Thomas, he said. Wake up. Wake up and get Mom and Dad. Tell them she’s got the fever.

Soon I heard my parents come in. Get her downstairs, my mother ordered my father. Good Lord, her bed is soaked. I’ll have to hang the bedding out to dry. I’ll wash it in the morning.

I kept my eyes closed as my father carried me, not wanting to let on. If he was to look me in the eye, he’d know, I was certain.

When the doctor came the next day, I pretended my voice was gone, and he determined me to have been rendered mute, at least temporarily, perhaps permanently. There’s nothing wrong with her now, he said.

Well, my mother said. This was God’s will. She surprised me then for she began to weep.

I prayed for the Good Lord to take away your pride, she said. I suppose he has taken away mine also.

Whatever shame I’d felt before was nothing compared to this. As she wept next to my bed, she asked me to forgive her. I could not decide which was worse, to continue to pretend or to reveal the pretense. I decided to take my time, to act as if the voice had returned slowly — having planned this miracle, I would plan another.

My parents, in the meantime, returned to being loving with each other; the children stopped staring; my brothers no longer feared me and played with me again. Everyone was kind and told me how much they missed my voice at church. All returned to how it had been before except for me.

Then the real fever came and took them from me, every one.

My family died the fall of that year, my mother the last to pass. Her death left me alone on our farm, far from the town and the one road that ran to it. I decided it was more trouble for me to find someone to bury her than it was for me to bury her myself, and as I’d helped her bury my father and brothers, I felt I knew what had to be done and began.

I went to what was now the family graveyard, selected a spot for her to lie in, and when I found the dirt too frozen to move with a spade, paced out a fire the length of her to thaw the ground. I tended that fire for a week, sometimes cooking and reading there through the night, the three graves a short fence against the wind. There wasn’t much wood left for fires, so I pulled boards from the house and the barn. At the end of the week I was able to dig a narrow trench through the warm dirt, but I found the ground three feet down still frozen, so I set my fire again and waited.

I didn’t want my mother washing out of the ground with the first floods of the next spring, as I had seen once, coffins swept down a river as the current left its course and ate the bank.

I took more boards from the smooth wood of the doors to her bedroom and the kitchen, and made her coffin as I had seen her do for my father and brothers. I never thought to spare the farmhouse. I knew I could not stay. The farm settlement would return to the animals and the Minnesota storms, which had always appeared better suited to it.