Linden Hills by Naylor Gloria;

Author:Naylor, Gloria;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2016-12-05T05:00:00+00:00

December 23rd

She had been staring at Evelyn Creton’s last page for hours. Sitting up in her cot, she would doze off with the book still in her lap and awaken to stare again, the stiffness of her neck telling her whether she had been asleep for hours or just minutes. Her mind was completely blank and her fingers lay still and calm on the edges of the cover. She now looked up at the clock on the basement wall and the westward angle of the metal hour hand told her it was nine o’clock. But nine o’clock in the morning or evening? Nine o’clock of what day? Of what season? It was cold, colder than it had been when she first came down, so it must be winter. It was nine o’clock and it was winter. It snowed in the winter. And the air got warmer when it snowed. She could feel it becoming warmer down there now. Was there snow on the ground outside? A lot of snow? Snow that would melt when the spring came, to create water that drained into the soil, nourishing the trees out there so they would produce leaves in the summer to disappear in a burst of flaming color in autumn, leaving the branches bare, bare and ready for more snow. The seasons—whatever season it was now—would change.

The book left her lap in one fierce sweeping motion and crashed against the clock, bouncing onto the floor. A jagged vertical line now cut across its circular face. She had enjoyed those changes; each one had brought some sort of beauty into the world. And that beauty had given her comfort. She wasn’t like these other women; she had coped and they were crazy. They never changed. She pressed her lips together and looked at the crack on the clock. Anger began to scratch at the scars in her mind and she trembled as fresh blood seeped through the opening wounds. That’s why Luther never talked about them: there wasn’t a normal one in the bunch. But there was nothing wrong with her. She remembered loving the seasons, loving life. And there just couldn’t have been anything wrong with what she had wanted. A home. A husband. Children. That was all, and that was so little. To ask for so little and to have it taken away. No, it wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t sick. If there was any sickness, it was in this house, in the air. It was left over from the breaths of those women who had come before her. The Luwana Packervilles, Evelyn Cretons, and God knows who else. Blood from the open scars dripped down behind her eyes as she looked around the basement, futile and bewildered. This didn’t happen in a moment or even in a marriage. This had happened a long time ago. She could taste the anger at the back of her throat as her eyes came full circle to her son. His lace-draped arms were still spooned toward the air, the outline of her body permanently carved into the curve of his limbs.

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