“I’m the one who’s tortured! I mourn that baby!”
“In that case, you put that paper baby in a box and you bury it!” Rose thrust her finger at Josephine, at which point Violet had seen that her sister was shaking clear up to her shoulder.
Violet had never seen Rose so wild with emotion. But while a part of Violet had wanted to peel her fourteen-year-old butt off the bay window cushion and go put an arm around her sister, another part felt like her spine was made of concrete. Violet had sat, frozen in place, naïve and baffled by the source of the argument.
In fact, Violet had only been able to mobilize after her sister stormed out the front door, Josephine trailing behind her, screaming: “Every day I have to face the knowledge of who you are and what you’ve done! You are lost, Rose! You are morally and academically out to lunch! There’s no point to living the way you do it!”
Violet could still remember what she was thinking as she’d mounted the stairs. She’d been secretly and unforgivably thrilled that someone other than herself was in trouble.
Josephine’s office was a little room at the top of the stairs. Inside, there was a drawing desk, a goosenecked lamp, and at least a dozen yards of bookmarked art books. Much as the style bored Violet, even she couldn’t deny that Josephine knew her stuff. Her mother had always been most in her element when she was talking about the X-shaped composition of The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew or the fact that Murillo’s Two Women at a Window were really common prostitutes.
That said, what Violet had seen upon approaching Josephine’s desk was no Francisco de Zurbarán or Jusepe de Ribera. It was a color photocopy of a dead and possibly dismembered baby, its neck wrenched at a broken angle, as though someone had angled its slashed and bloodied face toward the camera lens on purpose. Its bloated umbilical cord (still attached) was slung on the other end over a bucket that was three inches deep with blood. In fact, blood was what Josephine might have called the “major theme of the composition”: It was smeared across the table. It was the viscous red shadow on the towel under and around the dead baby. It was the sheen on the instrument almost out of the frame—the one that looked like an oversized pair of tongs. The caption read: What a proud society we are: killing the defenseless in the name of a woman’s right to choose. In the upper right-hand corner was a friendly message from the sponsor: The Mid-Hudson Pro-Life Coalition invites you to stop the abortion agenda.
That photo was the main reason Violet had gone vegetarian. Anytime she smelled beef, anytime she saw a bloody cut of meat, she saw that picture of the late-term abortion. As for the incident, Violet had never mentioned it to anyone. She’d let it sit—or rot, really—in the part of her mind that Rose had labeled the amygdala in her drawing of the human brain. Violet never again set foot in her mother’s office, and she actively avoided thinking about what she’d seen there—what it meant about her mother, who’d seemed to delight in the pain she’d caused, and what it meant to Rose, who’d gotten the hell out of Dodge because she couldn’t stand to have her personal struggles batted around for sadistic sport anymore.
Violet leaned her head against the phone box, and when the faintness passed, she dialed 411 for the number of Kingston Hospital. The woman on the switchboard said there was no one by Will’s name in the system and explained that he’d probably already been treated and released.
So Will had no complications. It should have been a huge relief, but Violet wasn’t sure exactly what to make of it. Did it mean her mother had just blown a small thing out of proportion? It felt ominous—yet not entirely surprising—that everyone was purposefully leaving her in the dark.
Violet pictured her brother at home on the couch in his girlish nightgown, their mother feeding him ice chips from the palm of her hand. The image was disturbing in more ways than one. Because as much as Violet resented pampered Will, she also wanted badly to protect him from the light of his life. It seemed like only a matter of time before Josephine betrayed him the same way she had betrayed Rose, in a way that was designed to seem “accidental” and utterly deniable.
Violet thought Will would one day self-fulfill his mother’s prophecy exactly the way the rest of the Hursts had. Josephine said Rose was “lost” and Rose had gotten lost. Josephine liked to accuse Violet of being “crazy,” and out of nowhere, Violet had flipped her shit. Josephine treated Will like he was an extension of herself, and it seemed only a matter of time before he started treating people the same way she did. He was a good boy, but there was no way he’d grow into a good man with their mother bearing down on him, teaching him how to punish and manipulate.
Violet had read about a deity who came to Buddha and asked, “Who is the best friend one has at home?” Buddha had answered: “Mata mittam sake ghave” (“Mother is the best friend one has at home”). But a shitty mother made either criminals or lifelong victims. The only real question, in Violet’s mind, was which one would Will become?
After phone time, Violet and Edie were sprawled on the floor of the dayroom, playing a game of bingo that the ladies’ auxiliary had recently donated.
“O twenty-four,” Edie said. “So what are you gonna do about Rose?” During afternoon group therapy, Violet had discussed Rose’s great escape and bizarre resurgence.
“Bingo!” Violet was too dignified for victory dances. “Ignore her, maybe. I’m not sure I trust Rose. It feels like she’s only doing this because she wants something.”
“Your turn to call …,” Edie told Violet. “So you’re not gonna write her back?”
“Have you noticed some of the numbers are worn off these balls? This set has to be fifty years old. How much do you think we’d make if we listed it on eBay?” Her attempt at a diversion didn’t work. There was a loaded silence; the other girls were staring slantwise at Violet while they stacked their bingo markers. “Pissed off as I was about the way Rose left, I was glad she got away. I always thought she was too. There’s something creepy about Rose coming back, especially now, at the height—the fucking zenith—of Hurst hysteria—”
“Hold up,” Corinna said, using her bingo card to form a T for time-out. “Do you think your sister is living under a fake identity?” She didn’t give Violet a chance to say she didn’t know before she added: “That shit is hard. I’ve tried that. Making up names and addresses. Always worrying someone’s gonna recognize you while you’re pumping gas and call out your name.”
“Why’d you run away?” Edie asked.
Corinna shrugged. “Don’t know. I like the idea of clean slates.”
Maybe it was Violet’s imagination, but everyone in the room seemed to exhale at once. Anyone who’d taken a whack at suicide knew that was a blank slate too.
In a way, Violet’s sallekhana wasn’t all that different from Rose’s decision to take off. Fasting to death was the only way Violet could think of to put space between herself and her mom. It was the only way she could conceive of ditching her post as beloathed daughter and beloved scapegoat.
Corinna wistfully twiddled her ID bracelet. “Seriously, though. Write that bitch Rose and ask her how she ran away without anyone catching on. After I leave here, I have to go back to sharing a trailer with my three-hundred-pound mother and her maggot-infested dogs. I need to know the methods of big sister’s magic. Please? I’ll even lend you a stamp.”
Violet still had no idea what she was going to do when she got discharged. She refused to go home, yet the idea of cutting herself loose made her feel guilty and terrified. Guilty … because wasn’t it heartless to disown your own mom? Terrified … because TV or, maybe, society at large had taught her a person couldn’t succeed in life without a loving, supportive family. But if life hadn’t handed you great role models or lessons, weren’t you obligated to go out and seek some for yourself?
Corinna had