The Hummingbird's Cage by Tamara Dietrich

Author:Tamara Dietrich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-05-13T04:00:00+00:00

Tea and Empathy

Back from Simon’s cabin I withdrew again, hunkering down until it was almost like the bad old days under Jim’s boot. I couldn’t buck the feeling I’d stumbled onto something I shouldn’t have—a glimpse of the baby I couldn’t save . . . the boy he might have become if I had. I couldn’t stop picturing his face—every line, every curve, every inch of it. I was floundering in grief and guilt.

Olin had said Morro could be a Place of Truth for me, but that nugget of wisdom should have come with a warning label. Truth wasn’t just something that could set you free—it could kick you in the gut ten times over. In its way, truth could be as brutal a bastard as Jim ever could.

I kept to my room, just like the early days when we’d first arrived. Jessie brought me meals on a tray again and didn’t ask what was wrong or where it hurt. At night, Laurel climbed up on my bed and slipped under the covers.

This was new territory. With Jim, it was constant survival mode—every morning armoring up for one more round. I could never have surrendered like this around him, or he would’ve eaten me alive.

But here . . . here, I could shut down. I could lie in bed—neither asleep nor awake—and just drift. Aimless and mindless as a dandelion seed. And know with utter surety that if I only let go, let go for good and all, I could rise and rise . . . a sweet, numbing nothingness sluicing over me, through me, warm and solacing . . . until I dissipated at last, like the cloud that day in the vegetable garden.

Courage is a kind of salvation.

It was Olin’s voice.

Olin’s words in my ear, so close he might have been drifting on the wind beside me. I could smell the tang of cured tobacco . . .

My eyes flew open, and instead of a blank, open sky above me there was only the bedroom ceiling. I concentrated until the light fixture slid into focus.

Courage? Forget it—wouldn’t know it if I tripped over it.

And what’s courage, anyway, but delusion? You pick yourself up only to get beat down all over again. That doesn’t make you brave—that makes you a punching bag. I stayed ten years with a sadist because I was too witless to see him for what he was. And when I did, I was too big a coward to get the hell out.

And yet . . .

I focused again on the ceiling. On its vast, vacant depths.

And yet . . . I did get out, didn’t I?

. . . a kind of salvation.

I did get out. And brought Laurel with me. We broke free of him. Whatever else, we were in a good place now, with good people. And after all this time, he still hadn’t found us. Hadn’t managed to make his own way here, for all his threats to never let us go. Ever.

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