asks with a smile.
“No.” A blunt sound, not as airy as a word. The young woman’s eyes had sprung onto Bonnie Loo’s broad dusky face.
Bonnie Loo clears her throat. “They’ve started your cottage. It’s all framed.”
“I know.”
“Then you’ll have windows.” Bonnie Loo is privy to how Silverbell has been pressed to join the family at meals or to sign up for a crew, always to a blank stare and no-show. As with the girl Jane Meserve, some blame it on trauma, some pronounce her an “introvert.” Settlement mouths bark and Settlement hearts are sticky and Settlement hands will make tidy. But it’s no accident that the sucker-punching Tambrah’s legends have become braided with Bonnie Loo’s, for Bonnie Loo’s posture and sometimes pissed-off tremble of the lip show possibilities one might not want to test. She says, “Well, I ought to hustle. Big load of shell beans to fuck with. And my wash has been on the lines for four days. There’s been a crow getting in my cottage when the kids leave the door open. He tells me there’s an eighty percent chance of showers and a sale on drill bits at Mertie’s Hardware.” She chortles. “He—”
“I heard about you.”
Bonnie Loo turns to face her directly. She grins. “Oh, I’m sure.”
“You don’t have to worry. I’m not interested in him.”
“Who?” Bonnie Loo pictures the wheedling crow. She sees him cocking his head and fluffing himself up to twice his size before pooping or his reedy voice the last time he spoke, Sign up now! Don’t miss this chance! Diamond-like brooch for every occasion!
“Your husband.” Is Silverbell smirking? Your husband. Your your your . . .
Bonnie Loo fingers the cuffs of the deep pockets of her sweater, a sweater roomy enough for when the baby, his baby, begins to really show.
Yes, actually she has lost it and attacked Settlement women. It was Beth, smart-ass Beth, only last winter. Well, it was a pushing and shoving fight, Beth laughing the whole time, but Bonnie Loo got in some squeezes, one around the throat that Beth pretends to forget. But oh, so many witnesses!! It is on record. It is in the History as it Happens books in the amazed “voices” of kids.
Bonnie Loo says, “Okaaaay.”
Silverbell squints. “I don’t want to get my sources in trouble. But they warned me that you . . . are . . . violent. I can’t say who told me.”
Bonnie Loo bows her head, blinking. She slapped Ellen. She threw a baked potato at Geraldine. “Lee Lynn has been up here a lot, but—”
“No, not her . . . she didn’t tell me.”
“Well,” Bonnie Loo sighs. “Actually one of Lee Lynn’s best traits is that she is not a gossip. Not a mean gossip. She sees herself as a healer. Just don’t get me mixed up with Tambrah. Tambrah is gone. You’ll never meet her. And . . . the History as it Happens books . . . kids stretch everything. Maybe your kids’ve been digging into Settlement history.” One hiccup of a laugh.
Silverbell tucks some of her stringy hair behind an ear. “It was Gordon who told me.” The hand at her ear now has a real elderly shakiness.
Bonnie Loo takes note.
“Well, that . . . whatever I did do, it’s history. This is now. You are safe here and . . . at home. Believe me.” And yet in this very moment Bonnie Loo is straightening to a fuller more bearlike height and bulk, as if to rise up beyond belief to swipe Silverbell Rosenthal away. Away.
Silverbell almost moans, “I don’t think this is the place for me to live.” And yes, her hands are shaking mightily. And this causes Bonnie Loo to have a flash, the body memory they call it, of her own hell, her father once younger than she is now, falling from the sky through police floodlights, the squirting black red meat of him bursting through his shirt, and from his head, face . . . crack! crack! crack! . . . every shot fired by them emptied more of him into the weeds around the loaded logging truck.
“Is there anything really really really special I can make you for supper tonight?”
A sharp “No!” Silverbell holds her hands against the front of her white T-shirt, her trim stomach, hands steadied. “This you brought will last for the rest of my life.” She snort-laughs.
“You’ll . . . love your cottage. It has a view of the sheep. And there is a smaller cottage going up near you. Benedicta’s. You’ve not met her yet. She’s a cute elderly lady.”
“I might be gone soon.”
“Don’t leave the Settlement cause of me. I might be gone soon.”
“I didn’t mean on account of you.”
Bonnie Loo sees how unrumpled all the beds are, a pair of rocking chairs with seat cushions of the same fabric as used in many dresses, skirts, and kids’ sunsuits here . . . obviously Silverbell has been sitting in the dark in one of these rockers. Or standing? For hours of every day? “Did you tell anyone else you aren’t staying? They’re hammering away up there making you a place.”
“He’s scary.”
“Who?”
“They say he can hypnotize people, brainwash them.”
“Who? You mean Gordon?! That’s horseshit from talk radio.”
“I don’t listen to talk radio.”
“Who said it?”
Silverbell backs up to one of the rockers, sits very carefully.
“Before I came here. Everybody was saying it.”
“But now you can see he’s not that way.”
Silverbell doesn’t reply.
Bonnie Loo steps closer to the rocker with Silverbell in it. “If you leave, where would you like to go? We know people all over the state. Someone could help you find a job and a rent. What kind of work do you do? Besides raising dogs.”
Silverbell says nothing. Her eyes flood.
Acorns smash upon the roof. Seems like hundreds.
Bonnie Loo swallows. That empathetic stone in the throat. “There’s no rush, for God’s sake. It’s not like you’re on the side of the road. You can take your time to figure things out. Everyone says Eden and Bard are doing okay.”
Then Silverbell says through clenched teeth, “He touches me.”
Bonnie Loo’s eyes widen. “He?”
“Gordon, yes.”
“Touches you?”
Silverbell glares at Bonnie Loo and waves a hand with spread fingers. “Yes.”
“Where the fuck does he touch you?” Bonnie Loo hisses.
“My ears.”
Bonnie Loo explodes.
