My heart and my flesh

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Third Voice: Your mother was dark, but this child was fair. Your father’s own child. The one most like your father. Your father’s own, then.

Theodosia: Oh, God, I believe, and there’s nothing to believe.

She thought again and again of the pond below the hill in the creek bottom. The water would be fresh and sweet after the long winter rains and it would stand high along the banks. In the morning someone would find her body there, water-soaked, lying in the clean mud at the bottom of the water, stones tied to her feet. It would be easy to go out the door some night and never come back. Once she had gone out the door the rest would be inevitable, the door having become the line between to go and not to go. The front door seemed necessary, and she could not think tenderly of the morning, of any morning, of the stones that would be tied to her feet. All circumstances were set toward this departure. The days of the week, distantly comprehended, did not differ, one from another; Tuesday or Monday, Friday, all sank into a flat mass and were approached without emotion. She felt her hand as it was folded into the other hand and knew the feel of the bones and their bent articulations and the texture of skin as felt by itself. Prophecy gathered vaguely about the facts which were already well stated. One fact more remained as the act of departure. She slept lightly, her sleep weighted by the act, burdened by it.

A pleasant sense of Frank gathered in and out of her sleep, Frank representative of something he was not, blended with the positive he signified and become one with it. A warmth as of life crept over her, memories that were symbols and dim anticipations. Half dreaming, her body knew that it would be renewed by his presence, that her beauty would be restored by his praise, that he would drape her scarf about her shoulders and set her hair to the way he liked. “It’s pretty this way, soft ripples in it,” a kind voice said, more kind than the voices of the dialogues. Kind voices were speaking now, voices of praise, giving warm life and the warm flow of blood through her members. The passage through the door receded and flattened to a mere saying, a doctrine. The kindness of Frank suffused her and the need of him ran over her. She knew clearly then the strength of his body as it was warm with life, his hands full of life-blood, his limbs rich with the throb of their joy. The odor of life was about him, the strength of people, of places, of people talking together.

A gentle rain had begun to fall and the snow of the day before would melt. She had waded to the wood-lot through the running snow and had brought in the last of the wood, six or eight pieces, piled now at the side of her hearth. A winter light lay on the running leaves of gray and silver and a winter apathy was settled deeply into the stilled vignettes at the border, the woodpeckers knocking at the recurring tendrils that spread about the faded roses. The day, Wednesday, seemed on tiptoe, aware of itself. She could scarcely remember whether she had been down to her aunt’s room for the noon meal or not. The light lying along the ceiling seemed to be an afternoon light, but the drifting of the rain across the air suggested morning. She tried to recall some detail of the descent for the food which would make the memory of it differ from every other descent. A picture of the old dog, Tilly, moving across the hearth near the baking pones of bread and lying down heavily on the stones beyond the hearth-rug came again and again. The dog had opened her mouth near the hot pone but she had drawn away, closing her mouth slowly with a yawn-spasm jerking her lower jaw, and just at that instant the clock on the mantel had begun to strike some hour.

Third Voice: She’s already dead, already dead. She died one night. Anyhow they found her on the old rags down before the fire, dead, in the room with five old crazy hounds. Found her on the floor rolled up in a knot, dead where she’d been asleep. Five insane old dogs, half-starved, in the room all night. She died on the floor with the dogs.

Second Voice: This house, it’s full of devils, full of demons, full of devils.

Third Voice: Her bed had not been slept in for months on end. Dust on the pillows. Dead, she is, already.

Theodosia: She didn’t have to continue in life if she didn’t want to. She didn’t have to sleep in the bed either. She could sleep any way she wanted to. She didn’t have to sleep in some regular way to prove she was alive.