Yesteryear: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel by Caro Claire Burke - 10

It’s nighttime. I’m slouched on a wobbly, ancient, bullshit chair in the corner of this wobbly, ancient, bullshit kitchen, holding a big hunk of ice wrapped in a dish towel to my eye. Yes, my eye. Remember when my face was the problem, mere hours ago? Remember when the worst thing that had happened to me was getting slapped?

Well. Well, well, well.

I never thought I would look back fondly on a knockout.

My foot— Lord, my foot —is bandaged and elevated on a chair opposite me. I’ve passed out twice now: once from the pain of the needle piercing the muscle, and once when I woke up halfway through and saw what my stitched skin looked like. Now even looking at the tightly wrapped bandage makes me whimper with grief.

The pain. How to describe it? I’ll be brave and say it has dulled to a roar. It feels like my body has depleted a month’s worth of energy from the mere translation of so many nerve signals screaming EMERGENCY to my brain.

It’s not just my foot, either. Every bit of me feels broken. My brain is a smashed computer drive, my memory and logic and intellect crushed into little shattered pieces, glittering and useless in the dim firelight. Emphasis on dim: the light from the fire just barely illuminates one half of the kitchen, leaving the rest of the room in shadows. I sit there in the flickering light while the girls move all around me, disappearing confidently into the darkness and just as quickly reappearing in the light as they walk around the room, making dinner. Perfect little homemakers. Big fat bitches.

Sorry, Lord—but—

“Excuse me,” I call out weakly.

Mary says sharply, “Don’t answer her,” right as Maeve pipes up, “Yes, Mama?”

I shake my head softly. My eyes are warm with tears. “I want to go home,” I whisper. “Please, take me home.”

“But Mama—” Maeve starts.

Mary cuts her off. “Will you go get some firewood, Maevie?”

Maeve hesitates, her big bright eyes locked sadly on me, and then she nods and walks to the door.

As soon as Maeve is outside, Mary crosses the room in four short steps and crouches by my chair, so that we are face-to-face. “I’m going to say this once,” she says, in a decidedly less friendly voice than the one she used with Maeve. “So listen closely: you are my mother.”

I’m not your mother, I nearly growl, but I clench my teeth.

“This is your home,” Mary continues. “This is your life. You’re behaving like a child right now, and you’re not a child. You’re a grown woman, with children of her own to take care of—and do you know what? Your actual children can’t stand when you act like this. Especially Maeve. It makes her very upset.”

My mouth is open, I’m about to protest— this is not my life, you are not my children —but she barrels forward, leaving no room for me to speak.

“You’re a grown woman,” she repeats. “You should know not to walk willy-nilly through the woods during trapping season. So really, you have no one to blame but yourself. Now, ” she says and claps her hands, like she’s trying to startle me out of hypnosis, “I’m going to give you two options. You can pull yourself together for dinner, or you can go back to your bedroom and shut the door. So which is it? Bed or dinner?”

I take a quick inventory of my own needs: I have a raging headache, a foot that is connected to the rest of my body by twelve inches of string, and I’m starving. One of those problems can be fixed. “I’ll stay and eat,” I mutter.

“Wonderful,” Mary says, in a tone that indicates otherwise.

Soon the two boys come barreling into the house, shouting and stomping their boots, followed immediately by Old Caleb, who tips off his cowboy hat and sets it on a hook. He walks over to Mary and hands her a large sack, which she takes and sets on the counter. I watch as she pulls three fish from the bag, each the length of her forearm and the color of quicksilver. “Beautiful,” she says, and asks Abel to fillet them.

He goes outside into the nighttime with the fish and returns ten minutes later with a handful of long white strips, which Mary drops into a boiling pot. “You can set the table for dinner,” she says to me over her shoulder. When I don’t move, Maeve and Noah do my chore for me.

And then we are seated at the table, me closest to the firelight, and Old Caleb at the far end, barely visible in the darkness. Mary is walking around, ladling soup into our bowls. The spread for dinner looks nothing like the meals I’ve made for our Natural Dinner series. In the videos, I showcased homemade cornbread, baked carrots, thin strips of pork with homemade cherry marmalade spooned over the plate in mouthwatering swirls. On the table before me is a single steaming crock of watery-looking soup with some vegetables and chunks of white flaky fish bobbing along the surface, and a small plate of biscuits. The meal looks, frankly, like shit.

“Are you feeling better, Mama?”

I look up. It’s Abel who spoke to me. He’s staring at me from the opposite end of the table. Just a meekly firelit shadow, and still through the darkness I can see he’s the spitting image of Caleb. Ruddy cheeks; blazingly innocent eyes. His voice is soft and light, it hasn’t yet cracked—but he holds himself like he’s planning for it to crack very soon.

“Well?” Old Caleb says loudly from the dark, startling me. “Answer the boy.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Good,” Abel says. “You really shouldn’t be wandering around in the woods all alone. That’s how the savages will get you. Right, Pa?”

“Right!” Noah chimes in. “Better be careful, or they’ll stick you in the belly with an arrow, like this !” He mimes stabbing himself in the stomach, then leans back in the chair with a groan, eyes wide, the very picture of a shocked and dying soldier.

“Mary,” Old Caleb says, ignoring the boys. “Lead grace.”

The hilarity dissipates immediately. Noah sits forward in his chair, Mary clears her throat, and they bow their heads as one.

I watch everyone eat for a good long minute. The boys shovel big sloshing spoonfuls of soup into their mouths. Mary sits with her hands in her lap, watching her brothers with obvious disdain. Maeve stirs the broth with her spoon, talking quietly to the bits of carrot and celery and fish that bob along the surface, until Mary snaps at her to stop playing with her food, so Maeve lifts a spoonful of soup to her mouth, looking regretful to have to kill such precious friends.

I hesitate, then reach for the biscuit that looks the least likely to be poisoned. A fluffy golden one from the dead center of the pile. If it were possible for a biscuit to look cheerful, then this one does. It’s slick with butter, warm in my fingers. I take a small bite, chewing slowly. Oh. It’s delicious. The butter is as fresh as anything I’ve ever made, and the biscuit is perfect in texture. Soft and fluffy and just a bit crumbly. For a moment, I stop thinking altogether. I take another bite, then another, and suddenly the biscuit is gone and I’m reaching eagerly for another.

After dinner, as the fire is dying and this world is turning slowly to black, Mary and Old Caleb half walk me, half carry me to bed. I’m feeling a bit nauseous now. My cheeks are hot to the touch. “You poisoned me,” I mutter as Mary tucks me into bed, the room just a few shades lighter than pitch-black. “Those biscuits. You—”

“Quiet,” she says. “You just have a fever. You’re lucky it’s not worse, after all you’ve done.” She leaves the bedroom and then comes back. “Here,” she says, and shoves a spoon roughly into my mouth before I can protest. She misses my mouth a bit and a thick liquid drips down my chin. I swallow the amount that made it into my mouth, making a face. It tastes like rancid cherries. “That will help,” she says. “You’re welcome.” And then she’s gone.

I turn over onto my other side, and suddenly I’m staring straight into Maeve’s wide eyes. Like a little owl. Hoo, hoo. She must have climbed into bed while Mary was guiding me in. “Hello, Mama,” she says, barely visible.

“Hello, Maeve,” I mumble back. I’ve never felt weaker in my life.

“Sorry for your boo-boo.”

“Thank you, Maeve.”

We lie like that for a long time. My breathing becomes hoarse and ragged. My teeth begin to chatter. I wonder if I will die tonight. “Maeve,” I say softly, “where are we, really ?”

“Home,” she whispers back. “Home, home, home.”

Pointless. This is pointless. Like slipping quarters into an empty gumball machine. “Is there another word for home? What do you call home, Maevie?”

“Oh,” she says, as I drift slowly away from her. “Yesteryear, Mama! That’s what we call home.”