Yesteryear: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel by Caro Claire Burke - 4

After Caleb and I bought the farm, we met with several architects and contractors to discuss a renovation. Most of them scratched their heads at our demands. The house on the property was from the late 1800s but had been fully renovated just a few years ago. The windows were new, the appliances were new, the roof and the light fixtures and the floors were new. And now we wanted to renovate it…again?

“You do realize this will cost half a million,” the first architect said.

“You do realize the resale value will be cut in half,” the first contractor said.

“Are you both completely insane?” the second, third, and fourth architects said.

“I want it to feel like stepping into a time machine,” I kept repeating in every meeting. “I want it to feel authentic .” (“Authentic to what ?” one of the architects asked.) Then I would add the five most important words in any business meeting: “Money is not a concern.”

The sixth man we spoke with was the one we decided to work with. He didn’t try to talk us out of any of our plans, nor did he raise his eyebrows when I listed my requests: I wanted the dishwasher and microwave and all modern kitchen appliances to be hidden from view; I wanted a claw-foot tub absolutely dripping in natural light; I wanted wide-plank floors that felt like they’d been ripped straight out of the Mayflower herself. I wanted all the aesthetics of the olden times and all the amenities of modernity, and I wanted this seemingly irreconcilable set of desires to be somehow reconciled via a series of impeccable design decisions. As I spoke, this contractor, an older man who’d worked for decades in the area, took notes prodigiously. At each of my requests, he would nod and say in a quiet monotone, “We can certainly do that, ma’am.”

Right before the meeting ended, the contractor looked at me with a totally straight face and said, “Will you be wanting indoor toilets, ma’am, or would you prefer an outhouse?”

I laughed stiffly. “Indoor toilets are fine.”

“Great.” He shut his notebook and looked at us. “Let’s build you two a time machine.”

Welcome to the time machine.

I’m lying beneath the covers of that god-awful quilt, curled in the fetal position. I have no idea what time it is. I’ve woken from what felt less like a nap and more like anesthetized surgery. My left eye socket is pulsing in a steady throb. The skin on my palms, forearms, and legs stings horribly. My feet don’t hurt so much as they feel unnervingly warm, swollen with blood. My brain, too, is ringing and spinning in a way that makes me wonder if I have a concussion.

Wake up, Natalie.

Mama, we’re having breakfast.

Go to the barn.

A good wife doesn’t speak to her husband that way.

Uh-oh.

It’s us, of course.

I’m your goddamn husband.

MAMA, 1855.

It’s hard to think right now. Literally. I can feel, actually feel, the muscular effort of conjuring thoughts, as if every word is a rock I must find and then pull from the mud.

It must have been that man who carried me back to bed after he knocked me unconscious. Caleb, allegedly. An older version of my Caleb. Old Caleb. As I lie there on my side, I imagine him carrying me: touching my skin, tucking me into bed, doing God knows whatever else while I was passed out. It makes me want to vomit. Except it’s unlikely that I’ll actually vomit; my stomach is growling and whining.

I roll onto my side, wincing as my body lights up in ten different locations. It’s not just the injuries. My body generally feels old and worn-out.

I pause. Blink slowly. Consider the parts of my body I can see readily. The backs of my hands, my forearms. It’s hard to consider the state of my skin when my body is streaked with grime and dirt.

There are no mirrors in this room, no way to see my own reflection. No way to reassure myself that I am, in fact, my actual self. Amazing, the things a person can take for granted. I’ve never once paused to think about the sheer miracle that is a mirror. I’ve never once considered there might be a day when I would be desperate to see myself, only to realize I was lacking the necessary tools to do so.

I close my eyes, try to cool down my overheating brain.

Calm yourself, Natalie. Regroup. Think. Think!

My brain weakly oozes little darts of panic in response.

“Mama?”

I twitch at the sound. Lift my head off the pillow. Ouch; a headache pierces the back of my skull like a surgical needle.

There’s that little girl, standing by the doorway. The same one who called for me earlier. She’s wearing one of those strange pilgrim outfits, hair fully braided. My heart squeezes in a sort of heartsick revulsion, the kind I felt in the early days of postpartum with Clementine. That innate instinct to love a child, especially one who looks like you, coupled with the overwhelming desire to kill the needful thing, to bash its head in and run.

The girl moves inside the room, her little hand trailing the wall. “It’s Maeve, Mama,” she says shyly. “It’s me.”

“Maeve,” I echo groggily, like some demented cavewoman. I love that name. It’s always been on our list, ever since the very first child. With each of our girls, we considered Maeve but never found a soul who seemed to fully fit the bill. This little girl, though, is a perfect Maeve. Soft and watchful and sweet.

I close my eyes. Paw roughly through my thoughts. Mumble, “Where am I, again?”

“Home,” she says immediately. She’s staring at the floor now. She looks upset, or maybe disappointed. Like she’s playing a game she doesn’t want to play.

A prickle of dread runs through me. A new thought rises to the surface, spiked with paranoia: She was trained to answer these questions.

“What day is it?”

She’s been slowly creeping along the wall toward me as we talk, in an incremental shuffle that feels less intentional than instinctual, like she’s magnetized by me. Like she loves me. Like I’m—my heart stutters a little bit—like I’m her mother.

She kicks softly at the nightstand, flicks her gaze toward me, flicks it away when our eyes meet. “Wednesday.”

My brain latches onto the information with such quick and immediate relief— this is a word we know; this is a day of the week where we are from —that it takes me a few moments to realize I can’t remember what my last day was back home.

What do I remember?

Such a simple question, and yet it feels impossible to answer.

I remember my mother and my sister. I remember marrying Caleb, I remember giving birth. I remember the email from Shannon. For the record, I don’t think you’re a bad person . Oh, and that hopeful look on my husband’s face when he said, It’s time to run —

“Your eye, Mama,” Maeve says. She’s by the bed now. She hesitates, then steps closer, bringing a hand to my swollen face. I flinch and close my eyes, preparing for the shudder of pain. When nothing happens, I open my eyes. Her finger is hovering above my skin. She knows what a bruise is. She doesn’t want to hurt me. “Hungry, Mama?”

My stomach rumbles in response. “Yes,” I admit. “Very.”

“Come to the kitchen. Come have a biscuit.”

I hesitate. “Where is…” Your father? Your boss? “…that man?”

“Out working,” she says. “With Abel and Noah.”

Abel, Noah. Names as biblical as they come. How old is this girl? She looks like a six- or seven-year-old, but she speaks like she’s three or four. For a shameful moment, I want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her little body until the truth comes sputtering out of her like vomit.

When was I taken from my home?

How long has it been?

What happened to me?

Are my children and husband looking for me, right now?

Are the toddlers having meltdowns?

Is the baby screaming for me?

The baby. My hand flies to my stomach.

My little sea creature.

The baby’s gone. I’m not six months pregnant anymore.

My mouth gapes open in a silent scream.

Throughout my life, on so many different occasions, I’ve wondered with genuine curiosity how people were able to move through the world without faith. In college, I watched the girls in my hall so proudly emancipate themselves from every institution that shaped them: their families, their country, their Creator. They were insistent on snipping every last one of their tethers to the mortal universe. It was unfathomable to me: the idea of floating forward through the world, held up by absolutely nothing. What kept you from plummeting?

As Maeve guides me down the hallway and back toward the kitchen, her little hand tightly gripping mine, I remind myself I’m not alone, no matter how much it feels like it.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

I remind myself, with more than a little bit of unease, that nothing is accidental. Nothing in this world happens that is not a part of His plan. (Visions of martyrs dance in my mind: women burning alive, children losing their heads, so some man’s faith might be restored. My hand drifts back to my stomach, and another wave of lightheadedness passes through me. I’m not some sacrifice, am I, Lord? )

The kitchen is quieter now. The two boys and the man are, as Maeve promised, nowhere to be seen. The older girl is bent over the kitchen table, her back to us. As we walk closer, I see her stirring something that looks like cake batter. She picks up the bowl and pours it carefully across a wooden grid, filling a dozen or so rectangle molds.

Soap. The girl is making soap.

I’ve done that before. It was one of the first tutorials I ever shared online, only a week or so after the (blessed!) day my account went viral. That video was sloppy and boring; I recorded it in one long take, wrote a painfully trite caption— cleanliness is close to Godliness! —and uploaded it, then watched with abject horror as all of my new followers shredded it to pieces.

Why is this chick even famous

This video is so out of focus lol

Did someone accidentally lobotomize Martha Stewart???

In the year following that moment, I made a dozen more soap-related videos, each one cleaner— ha! —and more well executed than the one before. Before long, the praise outweighed the anger, and the anger itself shifted in tone, from criticisms of the execution—à la, why is she even famous —to criticisms of the concepts inherent in the video—à la, who has time to make soap?

When that happened, I knew I had won.

Now Maeve drops my hand and runs over to the table, where she climbs into the chair next to her sister. “Mama wants a biscuit,” she says.

“Mama can wait until dinner,” the older girl replies.

Maeve is now distracted by the materials on the table, and so she doesn’t answer, instead reaching for a small wooden bowl filled with lavender sprigs. She grabs a fistful and dumps the flowers unceremoniously over the center of the grid, so that half the molds are covered completely in purple, and the other ones are untouched.

“You have to spread them evenly,” the older girl says. “Let me show you.” She takes her own fistful of sprigs and scatters them perfectly across the remaining untouched soap molds.

I point at the lavender sprigs. “Who taught you to add the herbs?”

The older girl turns to face me. “You did,” she says calmly. “It was you.”