rolled off the man, to her side. She grabbed for her clothes on the floor next to the mattress. The man sat up and looked at me, annoyed.
“What is this?” he asked.
In its way, it might have been worse than seeing my father looming before me, holding the book in his hand. This was Mary, acting like a slut. My mother’s voice echoed in my head: a tramp, she’d said, a black-haired Jezebel. I had never felt so betrayed, in all my life.
“You’re a slut!” I screamed, my teeth mashing together. “How could you?” My insides were teeming, boiling. I had no idea what would come out of me next, what I would do. “A goddamned whore!”
Tears nipped at my eyes, but I fought them back, translated them into rage and heartbreak.
“Tessa!” Mary cried. “Tessa, stop!” Her face looked crushed with worry. “Tessa, come here!”
She reached for me, but I backed away. “Don’t come near me!” I turned then and ran: up the stairs, through the basement door, the stacks, the back door. I heard her calling out for me, but I trampled straight through the herb garden, into the grass. Past the lumberyard, through the town square, and onto the road that led to home. The air was like fingers swatting my face. The moon was like an assault. I thought of Sister Carrie in her factory, longed for the world to be as flat and dull as that, a place where I would never have to feel anything at all.
I cut through one of the farms near my house and then slowed, slumped in the grass. I felt completely unmoored. I could not go back to the library, and I could not go back home, where I knew my father was waiting with his leather belt. I could feel him peering into the dark night, and, irrationally, crouched down in the grass so he wouldn’t see me. I knew that the sooner I got back, the less of a beating I’d get, but the dread seeped into every pore of my body. Where was there to go? Every minute I was gone made his anger worse, and yet I prayed that with each new second a new possibility would emerge. Could I leave? Go somewhere new? Run off to the circus? Sobs wracked my body, and then finally I went numb, resigned myself to my fate. There was no other place for me but home.
I walked back to Riley Farm and pushed through the front door. The house was silent. I tiptoed through the hallway, peered into the living room. My mother sat on the couch, working on the bright orange sweater she was knitting for Geraldine, who sat on the floor playing dominoes. The house was too quiet.
Then I heard my father behind me. “Let’s go, girl,” he said. I looked back at my mother, but she just stared at the orange yarn, moving the needles up and down.
I woke the next morning aching all over. My arms were tender and bruised. I tried lying on my back and then winced and sat up. The sun glared in. The night before I had thought I would never return to Mercy Library, but now I yearned for it so badly I was almost in tears. I was late for work already. I could not stay in that room, that house, another minute. I didn’t even wash, just pulled on a skirt and top. My heart thudded as I descended the stairs, but one glance out the back window proved that my father, mother, sister, and brothers were already in the fields.
The walk was slow going; every step hurt, moved my body in a dozen directions it didn’t want to go. A weight was pressing down on me, too, a deep sadness I had never experienced before. As I walked along the main road, past one of the neighboring farms, I looked up and saw Mary, bending back branches, ducking, and walking from behind a line of trees and into the road about a half mile down. She was wearing a bright red-and-white checked dress with a full skirt that fell to her knees. Her black hair tumbled past her shoulders. When she saw me, she waved and started running. I thought I was seeing things. I blinked, shook my head. Mary never came to this part of town, and would be way too busy opening the library by herself.
“Tessa!” I heard. I looked up and there she was, in front of me. “I was worried half to death.” She knelt down and threw her arms around me, and her scent of cinnamon and cloves made me start crying. Her arms pressed into my wounds. She leapt back, stared at me, frantic. “I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to come after you, but I didn’t want to get you into trouble. What happened?” She seemed to see me then, my wounds and bruises. Her face registered everything at once. I felt like she could see right through me.
“My father found a book under my mattress,” I said.
“Come,” she said gently, taking my hand. “Let’s go.”
I nodded, numb, wiping my face. “I’m sorry, Mary,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean those things.”
“I know, sweet child,” she said, squeezing my hand. “And if you had, that would be okay and we could talk. You know that, right? Nothing you could say could make us stop being friends.”
“Okay,” I said. “But I didn’t mean them.” The image of Mary on the bed flashed through my mind, pulling at my heart, but I blinked it away. “Really.”
She nodded. “Anything,” she said. “Don’t forget that. I’m your friend, Tessa. I love you. Okay? Even if I have other friends, it’s not the same. You and I are friends for life.”
Tears fell down my face, and I just let them. I clutched Mary’s hand, didn’t even care when we passed through the town square and people saw me crying. When we got to the library I saw that Mary had set a sign out in front, saying the library was closed until the next day. I looked at her, confused. “Come,” she said. She led me to the back of the library, to the kitchen. She pointed to the stool. “Sit.”
I watched dully as she opened the ivory box that sat on the table and took out two small pouches. Her face was serious, focused. She shook them up and measured about a teaspoon of powder from each one into her palm, then set a pot of water to boiling. She took a small vial from the box and poured oil into the powders in her palm. I smelled lavender, some type of flower scent, as she rubbed the powder through the oil. “Now just sit still,” she said. And then carefully, gently, she pulled off my top. I just sat there as she leaned in and rubbed the oil on the tender part of my right arm, which became warm and then burning hot in an instant. “Shhh,” she said, when I started to squirm. She walked around and spread the oil into my back, and then down my other arm.
Next, she lifted my skirt and rubbed the oil into my left thigh, where a long bruise trailed to my knee, and into my calves. She pulled my skirt back down, turned to the pot of hot water, and sprinkled in handfuls of herbs from two of the jars on the shelf above, ones I did not recognize. A few minutes later she drained the herbs through a strainer and wrapped them in a cloth that she pressed down over my right arm, where she had rubbed in the oil. The arm went from hot to cool immediately, and suddenly I felt no pain at all. She repeated the process all over, on my back and legs. Finally, she leaned down and patted the cloth over my face, my closed eyelids, my forehead and chin. She sat back, gently pulled my top back over my head. “There,” she said, kissing my forehead. “Now I’m going to show you something. Come on.”
I slipped off the stool and was astonished at how different I felt. My skin tingled and buzzed; almost all the pain was gone. I pulled up my sleeve and glanced down at the bruise on my right arm, saw that it had already faded from purple to pale pink. “How did you do that?” I asked. Suddenly I felt more alive, back in the world.
“Herbs,” she said, smiling. “Magic.”
“But I thought you said they didn’t work.”
“I said that the herbs have a mind of their own,” she said. “That’s all.” She winked mysteriously, then grabbed my hand and pulled me deeper into the library, all the way to the back of the stacks where there was extra space. I
