Elena Knows Page 10

  They both wait for the other one to begin. Would you like some cake?, Isabel asks, I made it, banana cake. No, thank you. How old is she? Who? Your daughter. Julieta?, Isabel asks and she glances at the framed picture, Nineteen, she turned nineteen three months ago. Rita died three months ago, Elena says, and Isabel starts, I didn’t know, she says. That’s why I’m here, that’s why I came, Elena explains. Isabel sits silently, not looking at Elena, not even looking at anything in the room but looking back in time, to a place Elena can’t see, even though she’s been there. Elena feels the need to fill the silence with details. She was found hanged, in the belfry of the church two blocks from our house. Isabel grabs the edge of the chair to steady herself, Elena hardly notices, from her hunched position she can’t pick up certain subtle movements that happen above the height of her chest, she can only see that the woman across from her has stood up. I’m going to get a glass of water, she excuses herself and leaves the room.

  Elena sits alone for more than ten minutes, she tries to get up but once again the levodopa has begun its downward swing and she has been stripped of the ability to move freely. It’s too soon for the effect of the medicine to have worn off and even though she knows that her time isn’t measured with clocks she looks at her watch; it’s more than an hour until her next pill, so it’s better for Isabel to take her time, she thinks, since her time that isn’t measured with clocks has begun to run out like sand slipping between her fingers, like water, and, Elena knows, she won’t be able to get off that couch until after she takes her next pill. Through the door that Isabel left ajar a Siamese cat enters and saunters over to the couch where Elena sits. It jumps onto her lap. Get out of here, who invited you to the party, she tells it, and gives it a shove. The cat doesn’t fall; it begins to walk along the back of the couch, passing behind her hunched shoulders. The hairs on the back of Elena’s neck and arms stand on end when the animal brushes up against her. It walks down the armrest and advances onto her, rubbing its head on her hands, butting them, demanding to be petted. You’re better off dead than with me, she tells it, and the cat seems to understand but it persists, it meows, it rubs against her hands again, but Elena still refuses because she hasn’t touched a cat since before she was married, her husband never let Rita have one, not even when he found the kitten she had hidden in a box under her bed, secretly feeding it milk. No, Rita, cats are filthy animals, they lick up their own vomit and they lick themselves. It’s tiny, Dad, it doesn’t know how to lick. In a little while it’s going to grow and it’s going to be just as disgusting as any other cat. I like cats, Dad. But then he told her about mange, and eczema, and fungal infections, and illnesses that causes babies to be born blind or mentally defective, and again about the vomit they lick up and how they lick themselves until Rita said, Enough, Dad, and she decided she didn’t like cats anymore. Eventually Rita herself was the one who said cats were filthy because they lick up their own vomit and they lick themselves with the same tongue. Elena doesn’t know if she stopped liking cats when Rita did, or if she never liked them, or if she actually does like them. All she knows is that they never had cats in the house because her husband wouldn’t allow it, and Rita inherited his right to ban them, and Elena hasn’t touched one since. But the house she’s in now isn’t hers, and Isabel’s cat is insistent, now butting against Elena’s feet, moving between her legs, in and out of spaces it shouldn’t be able to fit through. If Rita could see me now, she thinks, and Elena knows what Rita would say if she could see her, she knows the lecture by heart but would like to hear it, would like to even hear her scolding and her insults and her anger. She’d choose Rita’s insults over her absence any day but she knows that it doesn’t matter what she’d choose because death has taken away her ability to choose. Her daughter is dead. The cat jumps back up onto her lap, walks over her thighs, one leg and then the other, circling, watching her from some place behind those blue eyes, and Elena knows what she’s going to do. She’s going to end up petting it. She’s going to give in to it, so that it stops pestering her, so that it will leave her alone. She rubs her right hand, the one that works better, on the animal’s head and the animal writhes with pleasure. You like that, she says, and she thinks that she might like it too. If she could. If her husband’s and her daughter’s words didn’t leap to mind, saying cats are filthy, if she was deaf like her feet, she could maybe enjoy petting this animal, the tickle of its fur. If she could, if she let herself, but she doesn’t. Cats are filthy, they lick up their own vomit, her dead husband says to her dead daughter, and her dead daughter repeats it to her, and she listens, as if they were there, her dead family speaks to her, scolds her, gets angry with her, and Elena pushes the cat away so she doesn’t have to listen to them anymore.

  But the cat doesn’t go away, it’s not enough for her to move her hand and say, Go away, kitty, go away. The animal glances at her and then jumps back up. It can’t hear the voices that speak to Elena, and it’s not scared of them. The cat feels warm curled up in her lap and he falls asleep and now that she doesn’t feel guilty, since she tried to listen to her daughter and her husband, in spite of herself, or maybe not, she lets it lie there.

  Sorry, says Isabel, and she sits back down across from Elena. Is the cat bothering you? And Elena says no, but now that she’s said it, now that she’s openly accepted the animal, the cat wakes up at the sound of their voices and jumps from her lap to the floor, abandoning her, leaving her warm lap to once again grow cold. Isabel returned with makeup on, blush and lipstick, but Elena doesn’t notice. I had to get a drink of water, but surely she drank the water to wash down something else, a tranquiliser perhaps, because she moves more slowly, and she smiles, and she looks as if Elena hadn’t just told her ten minutes ago that Rita was found hanged from the bells of a church. To what do I owe the visit, then?, she asks and cuts a slice of cake that she has no intention of eating. What brings you here? Elena begins with the afternoon that a police offer knocked on her door to tell her that Rita was dead. Before the man even began to speak Elena already knew that something bad had happened. If a police officer comes knocking at your door, it’s a bad sign, she says and the woman nods her head. I was sitting there waiting for my daughter to see me all dolled up, cut, dyed, and waxed, Rita had got me an appointment at the beauty salon, I didn’t want to go, but once it was all done I wanted to show her, to make her happy, so that she would know that when she went to tuck me in bed that night she wouldn’t have to see the whiskers around my mouth that she complained so much about, or my grey roots. But Rita never saw any of that, she never saw me again. Elena did see her daughter again. They took her down to identify the body. On the way to the morgue they told me what had happened, your daughter hanged herself in the church belfry, ma’am. It can’t be her then, I told them. She still had marks from the rope around her neck, her skin was purple and scratched from the old rope, her eyes were bulging and her tongue was hanging out, her face all swollen. She smelled like shit. She hadn’t got lucky according to what the forensic doctor told me, if she’d been lucky she would’ve broken her neck and died instantly, but her bones were still intact, she died slowly, by asphyxiation, and people who are hung and die of asphyxiation have seizures and they shit themselves. I didn’t know that, of course, how could I know that. Elena takes a sip of tea through the straw, repeats the process two more times before continuing. Shit, my daughter’s last breath smelled of shit. Isabel stares at her, rocking slightly in her chair. They say she killed herself, but I know she didn’t, Elena says. How do you know?, Isabel asks. Because I’m her mother, it was raining that day and my daughter never went near the church on rainy days, don’t you see? But Isabel isn’t sure if she does see what the woman is trying to say, so she just stares at her, and instead of answering, she asks a random question to fill the silence, Do you want to put the teacup down? No, I still have a little left, Elena replies. But it must be cold by now, don’t you want me to pour you a fresh cup? No. Isabel serves herself, she war
ms her hands on the cup, swirls the liquid, watches it settle, and then finally takes a sip. I kept on top of them to follow any possible leads, Elena says, I wrote out a list of suspects for Inspector Avellaneda, Inspector Avellaneda is the officer they assigned to the case, but everyone it could’ve been was somewhere else the day my daughter was killed, I don’t have anyone else to add to the list, they tell me to give it up, even Inspector Avellaneda says so, but I tell myself no, that if the person who killed her isn’t on the list it’s because I don’t know them, and if I don’t know them the universe opens up, it could’ve been anyone, and if it could’ve been anyone, the investigation is going to get harder, I’m going to need to move around, interview people, find clues, possible motives, dates, facts, evidence. Elena wipes the drool hanging from her mouth and stares at the hooved legs of the table in front of her. She’s out of breath, she hasn’t talked so much in a while. Isabel waits, lets her take her time without rushing her, not breaking the silence with even a sigh. After a moment Elena is able to resume the conversation. So for everything that’s coming I need a body, but I don’t have one, this one just barely got me here, today, I don’t know if tomorrow I’ll be able to even move, there’s not much more I can do, with the Parkinson’s, you know? Yes, I know, you told me, Isabel says. So I can’t control my body. Herself’s in charge, fucking whore illness, excuse my language. Isabel excuses the language and asks again, So what brings you here? To call in a debt, Elena responds. To call in a debt, Isabel repeats, staring hard, I knew it. She smiles nervously, covers her face and shakes her head as if she were trying to prove to herself she’s not dreaming. I knew that sooner or later you or your daughter would come, she says. So you’ll help me then, Elena says. Isabel seems confused, I don’t understand, she says. Elena tries to explain, Are you going to repay your debt? Isabel stands up and takes a few steps that don’t lead her anywhere, walks back, looks at Elena, asks, What debt are you talking about? You know, Elena answers. No, I don’t know, Isabel says. So Elena spells it out for her, Maybe you’d like to help me, because of that day twenty years ago when my daughter, without even knowing you, helped you, saved you, a voice called her to do it, so maybe you feel indebted and would like to return the favour; I didn’t want to come here and start demanding things, but I thought I’d take advantage of your feeling of owing my daughter something that you could pay back by lending me what I don’t have, a body, a body that’s able to help. Elena stops, she’s said what she came to say and even though she didn’t ask any questions she waits for a response. Isabel doesn’t say anything. The two women sit in silence until Elena begins to feel uncomfortable so she continues talking, Thanks to my daughter you have your daughter, you built your family, you can ring in every new year holding onto them tightly as we see in those photos you send us. Your story had a happy ending, but I’ve been left with no one to hold onto, and it’s not like I hugged my daughter much when she was alive but the fact that I can’t do it now, because she’s dead, because her body is in the ground, and we are all of dust and to dust we must return again, as my husband said, well that hurts. It hurts. As Elena speaks, Herself begins to take control of her tongue and her words come out clumsily, some syllables clenched into senseless sounds that the other woman can’t make out. Isabel serves herself more tea, takes a sip, stares at Elena, but she doesn’t speak, she decides not to speak for the moment, just listen. The cat jumps back up beside Elena and then begins to walk along the top of the couch. Isabel watches it pace behind Elena’s hunched back, following it with her eyes. She senses that the animal bothers the woman who sits bent over across from her but she doesn’t intervene, she doesn’t remove it, this time she doesn’t even ask Elena if the cat bothers her, she just watches, the cat and then Elena, observing this woman who rang her doorbell to call in a twenty-year-old debt that she hasn’t forgotten. Isabel hasn’t forgotten the debt either, but she remembers things differently. She sets the teacup on the table and now sees Elena from a different perspective. She observes her bent head, her inclined torso, her slumped shoulders, her hands folded in her lap clutching a damp handkerchief, and the way her body leans to the left. She looks at her dirty shoes and her wrinkled skirt, and despite everything she sees, she says, Elena, I can’t help you. She says it calmly, as if she’s been waiting for this moment her whole life, as if she’d prepared each word in advance. I can’t help you because I killed your daughter. Elena’s eyes open much wider than she thought they could, she begins to shake, and it’s not Herself that makes her shake, but Isabel, the woman she set out in search of that morning who is now sitting across from her saying she killed her daughter. I killed her by wishing her dead so many times, Isabel clarifies, because she realises she needs to. There hasn’t been a single day in my life that I haven’t wished to some god, some sorcerer, some star, that your daughter would die, and now she’s finally dead. Elena can’t breathe, her drool flows freely, as if her saliva were her tears, she shakes, but she doesn’t cry. I’m sorry, I know you’re her mother and I can imagine your pain, but it’s not my pain. I killed your daughter but I will never go to prison for it, because I killed her with my thoughts. I killed her by wishing her dead so many times. I killed her without ever speaking to her again, without ever seeing her face to face. I killed her even if it was another person that put the rope around her neck, just like she killed me that afternoon she found me, locked me in her room. Do you remember that afternoon, Elena? Elena says of course she remembers, she wouldn’t be here if she didn’t. You have things wrong, Isabel, I don’t understand what you’re saying. We have different ideas of the debt that is owed, Elena, she replies, we don’t even agree on who owes what. What are you talking about, then? Elena asks as she wipes the handkerchief across her mouth and the last syllables of her words mix with the saliva and turn to paste. The two women fall silent for another moment, the cat moving between the two of them. Isabel stands up and turns on a lamp, which, Elena knows, was not necessary. It’s so absurd! All this time you’ve thought I felt indebted to your daughter; for twenty years you’ve believed something so different to what I believe. I’ve lived my life and you’ve lived yours, we’ve both constructed that past, that day, as if we weren’t both there in the same place at the same time. It’s absurd, yes, Elena says, Rita is relentless, was relentless, but thanks to my daughter’s relentlessness you have your own daughter, you have to take the good with the bad. Isabel cuts her off, I never understood that saying, Elena, what’s the good you’re referring to? And does the good come because of the bad or the bad because of the good? You’re mixing everything up again, you’re confusing me, you’re asking too many questions, Elena says. I didn’t want to be a mother, Isabel repeats the same words, twenty years later. You thought you didn’t, Elena corrects her. I never wanted it, the woman insists. You thought that before you held the baby in your arms, but once you had her in your lap, nursing at your breast, you. Elena isn’t able to finish her sentence because Isabel cuts her off again, saying, I was never able to nurse her, my breasts were empty. I’m sorry, Elena says. Don’t be sorry, I didn’t want to be a mother, everyone else wanted it, my husband, his partner, your daughter, you, my body grew for nine months and Julieta was born, condemned to life with a mother who didn’t want to be one, the woman says. But Elena doesn’t listen, Until you saw her, now that she’s here, living in your house, calling you Mum. She doesn’t call me Mum, she calls me Isabel, she always knew, I didn’t even have to say it. I did what I could, I fulfilled my duties, I fed her, I took her to school, I bought her clothes, I threw her birthday parties, I even loved her in a strange way, she’s a good person, it’s easy to love her. But I never loved her like she was my daughter. Her father did, he was both father and mother to her. He’s the one who takes the pictures and sends them out every year, he and his partner, Julieta’s godfather, who shares the clinic and other things with him. They’re her parents. I’m something else, something that doesn’t have a name, someone she cares about like you might care ab
out a friend, or a neighbour or a roommate or travel companion. But that’s all we are. Travel companions. I don’t know what it feels like to be a mother because I’m not one; what does it feel like to be a mother, Elena, can you tell me? Elena can’t speak, she shakes like never before. She doesn’t want to hear any more of what this woman has to say, levodopa, dopamine, Herself, the whore, Mitre, 25 de Mayo, Moreno, Banfield, Lanús, Lupo, the Hippodrome, she repeats the names, changes the order, mixes up the words that no longer have any meaning, but over her confused prayer, she can hear what Isabel is saying, I wasn’t ever a mother even though you tried to force me to be one. It would be nice if now, after twenty years, you could finally get that through your head. The woman walks over to the mantelpiece, picks up the framed picture of her husband and her daughter and she hands it to Elena. This is all we are. A picture. A family portrait for other people to admire. Elena looks at the picture that she’s already seen, but she looks at it differently now, searching for signs of the truth. Maybe Isabel’s smile in the picture is fake, or maybe her arms crossed under her chest show she’s uncomfortable, or maybe it’s significant that her gaze doesn’t meet the camera, as if she looked up a second after the camera clicked, late because she had been in another place or another time. Elena sets the picture down on the couch and tries to stand but she can’t. She wants to leave this house now that she knows she won’t find what she’s looking for. She wants to return home, retrace her route in reverse, Olleros, Libertador, Hippodrome, but she mixes up the order of the streets, she can’t even stand, she shakes. Isabel walks over to her, Do you need help? It’s useless, Elena answers, I have to wait. Then wait, the woman says. And Elena clarifies, I’m going to have to wait here. Isabel looks at her and then says, We’ve already waited all these years. They both fall silent once again. Elena knows that Isabel is looking at her, she knows what she’s looking at. Elena observes the other woman in return, examines her legs, crisscrossed with little blue veins like spider webs. Isabel notices and moves them to the side. Things turned out so differently, Elena says. Different to what? To what I always imagined, different to what made me come all the way to your house. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known. Isabel bends her head to look Elena in the eye but Elena avoids her gaze. Isabel stands up and then says, I’m not so sure, you might’ve come anyway. You confuse me, Elena says, and she looks around the room although she doesn’t know what she’s looking for. Isabel sits back down. That afternoon your daughter told me that if I had an abortion I’d hear a baby crying in my head for the rest of my life, but she hadn’t had an abortion, she didn’t know, she was repeating what someone else had told her, maybe a man, maybe not, but someone who thought they knew. I’d have liked to talk to your daughter before she died to tell her what I’ve heard in my head every day of my life since then, since that day she dragged me dizzy and vomiting to your house. Elena, in spite of her confusion, makes an effort to listen, to follow what the woman is saying, she squints, concentrating on understanding the words, but she can only understand fragments as Isabel says, I don’t know what it feels like to have an abortion but I do know what it feels like to be a mother even though you don’t want to be one, Elena. I know how it feels to have empty breasts, and the guilt when her tiny hand stretches for yours but you don’t want to touch her, you don’t want to rock her, or swaddle her, or warm her up or cuddle her, and the shame of not wanting to be a mother, because everyone, all the people who say they know what they’re talking about, insist that a mother should want to be a mother. The woman pauses to push her hair out of her face and wipe sweat from her brow. Elena squeezes her balled up handkerchief but doesn’t offer it because she knows the rag she uses to wipe her drool isn’t fit to be shared. People like your daughter, who didn’t even know me, your daughter who didn’t have the nerve to become a mother herself but who treated my body as if it were hers to use, just like you, today, you didn’t come here to settle a debt but to commit the same crime all over again twenty years later. You came here to use my body. I didn’t, Elena says. Isn’t that what you just said to me a few minutes ago? No, that’s not why I came. But that’s what you said. I don’t know what I said. You should know. You confuse me. Why did you come to my house, ma’am? Say what you have to say once and for all, and then go. Elena can’t see Isabel’s eyes but she knows that the woman is crying, she knows because of the way her legs are trembling. Elena gives her a moment. She stares at the carpet, Isabel’s feet rubbing against each other, caressing themselves. Then she looks around for the cat but can’t find it. She knows she should say something, clear up the misunderstanding, explain that she didn’t come to commit any crime, that she has never in her life committed any crime, but she can’t, she can’t even think clearly. She doesn’t know anything anymore. Isabel is the one who speaks first, repeating for the third time, now crying, the question that neither one of them has been able to answer so far, Why did you come here today? Elena repeats the words over and over inside her head to drown out the sounds of Isabel crying. She adds them to the tide of so many sobbed words, the king and the whore and the levodopa and the dopamine, and the streets backward and forward, but she messes it up, she knows she’s left some out, that she’s skipped over more than she wanted to, she starts over, repeats the prayer, she gets lost. She’s thrown off by Isabel’s crying, and now her questions, How can you be so sure your daughter didn’t commit suicide? Because it was raining, dammit! And my daughter was afraid of lightning rods, she was afraid of being struck by lightning, she would never have gone near a church on a rainy day. But Isabel doesn’t budge, Never isn’t a word that applies to our species, there are so many things that we think we’d never do and yet, when put in the situation, we do them. Elena feels heat rise up through her body until her blood boils, she doesn’t know what to do, what to say, or she does know, she thinks, she’d like to hit this woman sitting across from her, to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, and then look her in the eye and shout in her face to shut her up once and for all. But as much as she’d like to she can’t. She can’t even stand up and leave. She’s stuck here, in this house, caught in the trap she set for herself, forced to listen to what Isabel has to say, like a curse. And thinking about the fact that her curse is unavoidable, that she is powerless, the heat gradually subsides, her body relaxes, and she is once again a stooped old woman, listening to what another woman has to say. Isabel dries her tears with her hands, and dries her hands on her skirt. She takes a deep breath to be sure she’s not going to cry, and then she says, I would’ve sworn that I’d never even have considered having an abortion, but I’d only thought about it, without ever having been pregnant, my decision was in my head, not in my body. I thought that before I’d ever had anything inside me. The day I did, when I went to get the test results and saw they were positive, it wasn’t just something imagined anymore. For the first time, I knew. Isabel looks at Elena, waiting for her to say something, but Elena can’t, so Isabel continues, People confuse thinking with knowing, they let themselves confuse the two. When I read the results and I saw it was positive, I knew that what I had inside me wasn’t a child, and that I had to deal with it as quickly as possible. Elena wipes her handkerchief across her face as if she were sweating too, she feels the damp cloth running over her skin. They could’ve told you a dozen times what it feels like to have Parkinson’s, in precise, graphic words, sparing no details, but you only knew the truth once the disease was inside your body. You can imagine the pain, the guilt, the shame, the humiliation. But you only know something once you’ve experienced it in your life, life is our greatest test. Isabel stands and walks to the window, she looks outside, if Elena could see, she’d see a tree bursting with new green leaves but since she can’t see, she just wonders what the woman is looking at. You know, I was never in love with my husband, we were both virgins when we married and in the beginning I wasn’t able to open up enough to make love with him, we couldn’t do it. It wasn’t until three months after getting married that we f
inally did it, and it was violent. He pulled my legs apart and said, you’re going to open up, one way or another. I had bruises for several days, and pain, a pain that lasted a long time, it wasn’t just that night, he kept it up until I got pregnant and then he never touched me again. It’s been twenty years since he touched me. Does it bother you that I’m telling you this? Elena thinks that Isabel’s pain bothers her much less than her own pain but she doesn’t say anything, she just makes a gesture with her hand for the woman to continue. He goes out with his partner. They take trips together, they are companions. My husband named him Julieta’s godfather. That’s him in the picture on the mantelpiece. Isabel walks to the mantel and picks up the photo, she looks at it for a moment and then takes it to Elena, to the couch she’s confined to. Elena holds the frame and looks at it. Him, she says. The women fall silent once again. Elena doesn’t know what to do with the picture she has in her hand, she searches for the other one, the one she looked at earlier, where Julieta’s father had his arms around the two women, she stacks the two frames and she gives them to Isabel, who doesn’t look at them, she just places them back on the mantel, in the exact same position and distance from one another as before. The night my husband first took me by force, he was there, I didn’t see him, the bedroom was dark, but I’m sure he was there, Marcos wouldn’t have had the nerve on his own, he wouldn’t have been able to. He was also here that afternoon you brought me home, when I begged you not to make me come in. He helped my husband keep me under control the whole nine months I was pregnant, they kept me almost like a prisoner, sedated, a nurse with me all day, as if I were crazy. They told me I was crazy, and there was another nurse at night, watching me sleep. They took care of everything and I let them do it. I’ve never been a strong woman, the one time I was able to muster any courage was that afternoon Rita found me at the place near your house. Elena remembers, Who is this woman, Rita? Why did you come back? I heard a voice, Mum. Isabel continues, A nurse from my husband’s clinic gave me the address. She saw me crying after I went to see him with the test results, she probably heard the shouting too. He already knew, the lab had let him know, the medical field is full of informants who work for people with power. I’d gone to beg him, to tell him I didn’t want to have a child. He slapped me in the face, said he was ashamed of me, that he would divorce me right there if it weren’t for what I had inside me. I went out into the hall, and I couldn’t even walk so I sat down, and that’s when the woman approached me, the nurse, and without saying anything she put a slip of paper in my pocket with an address and a name: Olga. I’ve never been a strong woman, all the strength I’d mustered I lost that afternoon you and I first met. Elena is still shaking, Isabel moves closer to her and even though she doesn’t say anything, her voice echoes inside Elena’s head, asking, again and again, why did you come? Isabel’s voice drowns out her own to the point that she can’t even recite the streets that will take her back home. One day, some day, like the day your daughter found me vomiting on the pavement, or the day your daughter was found dead in the church belfry, or today, life will test us. For real, not a dress rehearsal. And on that day we will finally realise that we are all alone, forced to face ourselves, with no lies left to cling to. The woman goes to the window and straightens the curtain, unties the bow that holds it open and then reties it. Isabel looks at Elena, sitting there mutely with her head bent, unable to look her in the face. She moves closer, she sits beside her, and she waits. She will wait for as long as it takes for Elena to be able to say something. It was raining, Elena says eventually. Isabel doesn’t allow herself to feel sorry for the woman. No one’s disputing the rain, she says. That’s all I have. Then you have nothing. What do you want from me? Elena exclaims angrily, and Isabel replies I don’t want anything from you, you’re the one who came to my house. You confuse me, Elena says, you make me mix everything up. Isabel waits, she gives her more time and only when she thinks she’s ready to listen she says, I wouldn’t have ever known I was capable of doing such a thing until my menstruation stopped and the lab test came back positive. What test could life have placed in front of your daughter to make her do something she never thought she’d do? What could’ve made her decide she didn’t mind going to a church on a day like that? What could’ve been so terrible that she preferred to walk through the thunder and lightning she believed could kill her? Maybe she wanted the very thing she’d been so scared of before, for a bolt of lightning to split her in two. And when it didn’t happen, when she got there and realised it was all a lie, that she was soaking wet but still alive, she chose to climb the tower, tie the kind of knot she’d never thought she knew how to tie, put the rope around her neck, and hang herself.