In The Blood

(Content warning: emotional abuse; animal cruelty)

“Where’s my tea?” His voice was not loud, but it could cut through the thin air of their house like a razor through silk. It was the voice of God, solemn and undeniable. She dried her hands on the dish towel beside the sink and hurried over to the kettle, which had been whistling, she now realized, for a full minute while she stared out the window. She took the kettle off the stove and poured the steaming water into her father’s black mug, then dipped two tea bags in and made up his tray. No sugar or cream for the reverend, just a lemon wedge and a piece of dry toast. She was halfway down the hall before she remembered to take the tea bags back out of his tea, and threw them in the hall trash with a tiny breath of relief. She was already on thin ice with her father, because of the cat.

 It was just a little gray wisp of smoke that lurked around the churchyard, yowling at the radishes in her father’s garden and hunting mice. He had accused her of feeding it, which she had meekly but adamantly denied. Despite her denial, he had subjected her to an hour-long lecture on the evil nature of cats, and their association with witchcraft, and the evils of women’s souls and the perils of deception. He had then made her promise on the name of her dear departed mother that she never had, and never would, willingly give food to such an evil creature, which she had reluctantly done. Secretly, she wondered what he would think if he knew that she not only fed “that servant of Satan” a pitcher of cream three times a day, but that she had begun to smuggle it up to her room, under her sweater, at night. Her father was not a forgiving man.

  “Tea time is at 3:30, Cornelia,” her father said without turning around when she opened the door to his study. “It is now 3:34. Has this house descended into a slovenly anarchy?”

“No, sir,” Cornelia said, setting his tray down on his desk, careful not to jostle his piles of notes. He was working on his sermon for Sunday, and Cornelia could tell by the white-knuckled grasp of his skeletal hand on the pen that it would be a real pew-rattler.

“Have you been allowing your thoughts to wander?” Now the reverend did look up, his flat grey eyes glaring straight through to Cornelia’s bones. “An idle mind is the devil’s delight, Cornelia.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“You haven’t been allowing your mind to stray to the filthy events transpiring downtown, have you?” He set down his pen and folded his strong, thin hands on top of his desk. Cornelia swallowed.

“No, sir,” she said, looking at her shoes. The left one had a small hole in the toe, but she knew better than to mention it. He would just say that new shoes were a worldly luxury, and demand to know if she was proud of putting earthly vanity ahead of the needs of the poor.

“No daughter of mine will ever be allowed to enter such a den of iniquity,” he said. “And you ought to know better than to ask.”

“I didn’t ask, sir,” she said, daring to raise her head.

His pale, hard eyes flashed. “Are you arguing with me, Cornelia?” His fingers twitched.

“No, sir. I’m sorry, sir.” She ducked her head.

“Good.” He picked up his pen. “Let me work.”

Cornelia all but ran from the study, pulling the door shut behind her. She hurried through the house, finally bursting out of the back door and pulling in a lungful of fresh air. Her heart fluttered like a wounded bird in her chest, and she collapsed on the back step. Last week, she had been stupid enough to approach the subject of the circus that was coming to town. She hadn’t even asked to go, only mentioned that there would be skydancers and firebreathers and even a real, live lion. Her father had sensed her desire to go, though, and had crushed it under his heel like a cockroach in the pantry. She knew it had been a mistake to say anything to him, but at the time she really hadn’t thought the circus was so bad. Some clowns in a big tent. Popcorn. A trained bear. What was so evil about that?

But then, there must be something wicked in it, or else she wouldn’t still have such a desire to go. Her father must be right—the devil was working on her, trying to lure her away from the righteous path. How exactly tightrope walkers and face painters were off the righteous path was unclear to her, but it was also unclear to her why they were so alluring. She’d been dreaming of seeing the circus ever since she’d glimpsed the poster, hanging in the window of Murphy’s Ice Cream parlor.

If she was honest with herself, she’d been dreaming of more than just seeing the circus; she’d been dreaming of going with them. It sounded awfully exciting, a life on the road… a life of performance, of bright colors and changing scenes. So unlike her life now, where she wasn’t even allowed to go to school. She was sixteen years old and she’d never been taught by anyone but her parents, because they believed the private school in town was too worldly. It hadn’t been too bad, before, when her mother and sister were around. Her sister was awful, just like their father—cold and stubborn and determined, but she had served the very important purpose of taking their father’s attention off of Cornelia. Whether they were screaming the house down in a battle of the wills or in perfect accord, her sister had always been their father’s favorite. But now her sister was gone, married to the man on the hill, and her mother… her dear, sweet, gentle mother, fragile as an October lily… she had been dead for nearly two years now, and Cornelia’s life had grown a little worse with each day of those two years. She was alone in this house with a father who despised everything about her, and it had been two years since anyone had given her a kind look or a loving touch. Life with the circus, she imagined, might not be any less lonely, but it couldn’t be more.

A soft brush against her ankle pulled her out of her thoughts and she looked down to see the little smoky cat winding between her feet, large yellow eyes looking up at her beseechingly.

“Hello there,” she said, reaching down to scratch the cat behind the ears. He turned his head into her hand, rubbing his soft fur against her skin and purring enthusiastically. She would take the cat with her, of course, she thought idly. Maybe they would train the cat to ride a horse, or something, in the circus. He was an awfully smart little thing, and Cornelia felt sure that he would be a much better performer than she would. She didn’t intend to actually perform in the circus. Who would want to look at her—gangly, pale, awkward, all eyes and mouth and elbows? No, she would do the cleaning up, or maybe some of the cooking, if they’d let her.

A sharp bang made her spine stiffen, and the cat ran away. She looked back at the house and saw that her father had closed his window. Her heart thudded painfully. Had he seen the cat? Surely not, she told herself. He was a practical, efficient man. If he wanted the window shut, he would simply shut it, not take time to look out and watch her. He hadn’t seen the cat. She was sure of it. But her heart still beat uneasily as she went inside and started dinner.

She was making meat loaf, one of her father’s favorites. The heat from the stove made the kitchen uncomfortably warm, so she opened all the windows and turned on the ceiling fan. The summer evening air drifted in through the kitchen, bringing the scent of apple blossoms. It was a beautiful day, the kind that stretches on well into the night, the air velvety and sweet. Cornelia took her shoes off and moved around the cool tile floor silently as a ghost, chopping vegetables for the salad. She felt that she ought to feel happy, or at least content, but instead she felt restless, her blood itchy inside her veins. It was the kind of night when the world felt alive, and she wanted to join it. Instead, she lifted a steaming colander of carrots out of the pot and put them in an ugly green bowl. Outside, she could hear her father working in the garden as he always did before dinner, his shovel turning dirt in a relentless rhythm.

The door opened and her father came into the kitchen, dirt in the crevices of his nail beds.

“Dinner isn’t quite ready yet,” Cornelia said.

“I know.” Her father opened a kitchen drawer and dug through the contents. “I need some twine.”

Cornelia opened a cupboard and got the roll of brown string. “Here,” she said. “Are you staking the peas again?”

“There was a vermin in the garden,” her father said. “I took care of it, and now I’m going to string it up as a warning to the other dirty rodents.” He took the twine out of Cornelia’s hand.

“What did you do?” Her voice almost failed her as her stomach twisted.

“I only hope this can be a lesson to all the other worthless rodents, that I will not tolerate them infesting my home.” He turned and went out of the kitchen.

  Cornelia followed him slowly, feeling as though she was moving through a dream. She followed him out through the back door, and watched him make a noose of twine and string up her dead kitten, looping the rope over a fence post and hoisting it up into the air. Then he dusted off his hands and walked back inside, pushing past Cornelia. She stood on the porch, frozen, and watched the limp little body of the smoky cat twisting back and forth forlornly in the bluing air. Then she turned around and went back inside.

Dinner passed in silence, her father chewing with sharp, punishing bites, Cornelia staring at her plate and clutching her hands in her lap. After he was finished, she cleared the table and washed the dishes. He read his bible in the living room while she cleaned the kitchen and shut all the windows. At nine o’clock, she came into the living room and he presented his cheek, which she obediently kissed before climbing the stairs to bed. She left the lights on as she stripped off all her clothes. Instead of putting on her nightgown, she opened all the windows and then turned off all the lights and lay on her bed, letting the summer air wash over her naked body and make all her hair stand on end with goosebumps. 

She felt keenly the lack of a little soft body curled up at her side. Her fingers closed over the empty air as she stroked a little back that wasn’t there. Her own fault, all of it. She never should have defied her father. She should know better by now. The kitten’s soul was on her own head. And she was alone, once more.

When she closed her eyes to cry and have it over with, though, a strain of music floated in through her window, bearing with it the faint but distinct scent of popcorn. Behind her eyes, golden lights flickered over a red tent, and a girl in a silver leotard began to walk across a tightrope. The tinny music of the portable organ piped through her ear and into her blood, and she found herself standing up and walking across the room to her closet. She found her fingers skimming over the drab clothes her father approved the purchase of once a year, then darting through to the back. It was her mother’s dress, a bright red leftover from the mythical days before she’d fallen under the spell of a stern preacher from Stone’s Crossing. Cornelia had found it in the attic during the week after her mother’s death, when her father had ordered her to gather all of her mother’s things to give to charity. It was soft and generous and daring, with a plunging neckline and a full skirt, and for some reason Cornelia had kept it. She’d hidden it here, behind her gray wardrobe, telling herself every week that the next week, she would give it away. Now she slipped it over her head, the cool fabric brushing over her skin, insubstantial as the summer air. She shivered with the feel of it, luxurious and forbidden.

She went to the mirror and looked at herself in the moonlight, and almost lost her nerve. She looked ridiculous, a pale slash of a girl in a garish dress, her hair pulled into two tight braids down her back. She rubbed the fabric of the dress between two fingers, though, and felt herself steel with determination. She dug through her desk and found her watercolor paints, then spat on her finger and rubbed it in the red, smearing color across her pale, over-sized mouth. It was awful, garish and evil-looking. She found her paintbrush and lined her eyes in black, then pinched and slapped her cheeks to give them color. Finally she yanked the bands off of her pigtails and unraveled the harsh braids, letting her hair fall in dark waves around her face. She ventured another glance at herself, and found a stranger staring back at her. The stranger was wicked and wild, but she looked brave.

Cornelia went to the window above her bed and calculated whether or not she could jump from the ledge to the branches of the tree outside. Sense told her that, no, she could not make the jump safely. She jumped, her bare toes flexing against the window ledge, her fingers grasping at the empty air until they closed around the cool, smooth bark of the apple tree. She shimmied down the tree and then she was free, running barefoot across the lawn without glancing back to check whether her father had seen her.

She ran barefoot across town, to the empty lot beside the river where the circus tent sat, lit by a ring of torches. As she walked across the prickly grass to the tent, she felt her nerve faltering. She shouldn’t have snuck out, she realized. Her father would be furious. He would beat her more savagely than ever. He might even throw her out. And she hadn’t brought any money, anyway. How would she get into the big tent?

She was turning around to slink back home when a voice called out to her.

“Hey! Where you going? The show’s this way!”

She turned back and saw a tall boy walking toward her. He had black hair slicked back, and a flame painted along one side of his face. He was carrying a stick.

“I—I forgot my money,” she said, eyeing the stick.

“Aww, it’s our last night in town!” he said. “Last night’s always free.”

“Really?” She examined his face. He wasn’t handsome, exactly, but he was very striking. His voice had an unfamiliar lilt to it.

“Well,” he said, leaning closer to her. “It is for pretty girls.”

She felt her face flush.

“Whaddya say?” He held his free hand out. “Will you come in and see the show?”

“Well…” Cornelia hesitated, glancing over her shoulder, half expecting to see her father storming up behind her with a shovel and a ball of twine. She looked back at the boy, bit her lip and tasted paint. In the dim light of the torches, his eyes looked as yellow as the cat’s, with little flames in them. She could keep looking at him forever, she thought. She put her hand in his.

“Let’s go,” she said, a little out of breath.

In the end, they never did make it to the circus. It was the best night of Cornelia’s life. She felt so alive, she almost forgot to be afraid— almost, but never quite. Still, she was sure her father would never know. Even his almost otherworldly sense for sin could not detect goings on that happened outside of town, in a field of glorious honeysuckle bloom, under cover of moonlight.

She tried to talk the boy out of walking her home. She really did. She had pleaded with him to understand that her father was a very strict man. He laughed away her fears and insisted. 

“It’s not safe for a pretty girl to be out on a night like this. You never know what kind of vagrants and drifters might be about.”

He kissed her again, and she forgot what she had been afraid of. After all, her father would have gone to sleep hours ago. She had been silent walking out. There was no way he could suspect that she wasn’t sleeping soundly in her own bed, the way she had been every night before for her entire life. She had never given him reason to doubt her, had she?

So they sailed through the moonlit streets like a pair of boats over warm, smooth, water, and Cornelia reveled in how good it felt to have someone’s hand to hold.

When they reached her garden, there he was. In the doorway, outlined with light. Standing silhouetted like the archangel at the gates of Eden, the hoe in his hand a weapon of the Lord’s wrath. For one heart-spinning moment, Cornelia wondered if she was banished— free at last, to wander the Earth, out from under the heel of divine mercy.

“Get inside,” her father said to her, his voice the very edict of the Almighty.

She obeyed.

It was weeks later that officer Bernard Mayhew of the Stone’s Crossing police force stood on the porch of the white house and hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, waiting for Pastor Lovell to open the door. The smell of roses blew around the house, from the Pastor’s flourishing rose garden. Officer Mayhew took in a deep breath. It was still warm, for September, the summer fading slowly into an apple-scented autumn. He was anxious to finish his shift today and get home; Mabel would be cooking pot roast tonight.

The door opened. Officer Mayhew had to squint to make out the pastor’s pale face in the shadows of the house.

“Good afternoon, Pastor,” the policeman said. “We’re canvassing the neighborhood, looking for a runaway. Word is he came in with that circus, end of July, but he hasn’t been seen since. Would you happen to have seen him?” He recited the speech he’d delivered 30 times already this afternoon, and handed the pastor a photograph. He didn’t know what these circus people expected, really he didn’t. Weren’t the sort of kids who joined the circus exactly the kind you’d expect to vanish in the dead of night? He was hungry and had more important cases to work, but, there you had it. The questioning had to be done, like it or not.

The pale, bony hand reached out from the darkened house and took the photo. In the shadows, Officer Mayhew could see the watery blue eyes scanning the page.

“I’m afraid he doesn’t look familiar,” Pastor Lovell said. 

“You’re sure? I only ask because we heard some reports that he was seen talking to your daughter.” 

“Officer Mayhew, my daughter is a good girl. She is not in the habit of conversing with vagrants, gypsies, or carnival workers,” Pastor Lovell said, handing the picture back.

“Of course,” the officer said. “Might I just ask her a couple of questions?” The captain had been on him last month for not being thorough, and Mayhew was determined to prove him wrong. He’d be thorough even if he starved to death. Well, even if it made him late for dinner.

“I’m afraid Cornelia is not at home,” the pastor said, his grim face setting itself in even grimmer lines. 

“I see.” Officer Mayhew nodded.

At that moment, a door closed somewhere in the house. A second later, Cornelia appeared at the top of the stairs, carrying a bag and pulling a suitcase behind her.

“Cornelia,” the pastor said, in that voice that made his congregation quiver and repent every Sunday without fail. “I thought you had gone.”

“My cab just arrived,” she said quietly. “I’m going now.”

“Off for a vacation?” Officer Mayhew asked. “Wonderful. Mabel and I went to the Caribbean last year. Did us a world of good. Where are you headed off to?”

Cornelia paused at the foot of the stairs to get her coat from a peg on the wall. “I’m going to Switzerland for a while,” she said. “I’m going to stay with relatives there, for my health.”

“Wonderful place, Europe. Just wonderful.” Officer Mayhew beamed. “Before you go, would you mind answering a few questions for me? Just one or two.”

Cornelia darted a glance at her father. The pastor’s face remained unchanged, the lines in his skin as deep and still as a stone statue.

“All right,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

He repeated his speech about the missing runaway boy, and gave her the photo. “I’ve heard that you were seen talking to him at the circus this summer. Do you know who he is?”

She studied the paper, her eyes bright and wide in her pale face, and her hand shook a little. Poor thing, Officer Mayhew thought. She really needs to get out of this dark, musty old house.

“No,” she said at last. “I’ve never seen him.”

“Are you quite sure?” Officer Mayhew asked, disappointed. This had been his best lead.

“I’ve never been to the circus, Officer,” Cornelia said. “My father taught me better than that.”

“Well, nothing wrong with a little fun. The circus was great. I took my two boys.” Mayhew smiled appeasingly.

“That kind of lifestyle is no example to set for our children,” Pastor Lovell said, his voice calling down thunder from heaven. Officer Mayhew fought the urge to duck. “Wanton displays of flesh, grotesque glorifications of the misfortunes God visits on the children of the wicked, hedonistic wallowing in the exotic! Perhaps the Lord would have convicted you, if you had come to church this summer.”

Officer Mayhew nodded noncommittally. “Well, thank you both for your time. Please give me a call if you remember anything.” 

The pastor nodded. “Go on,” he said to his daughter. “Or the cab will leave.”

Cornelia hesitated, then picked up her suitcase, wincing a little. “Goodbye, Father,” she said.

The pastor said nothing, only waited with his hand on the door as she dragged her suitcase out onto the porch.

“I’ll be off as well,” Officer Mayhew said, thinking of Mabel’s pot roast. “I have to say, though, Pastor, your garden is looking stunning this year. My Mabel is always so jealous of your roses. How do you get them to bloom like that?”

Pastor Lovell smiled a thin, stiff smile. “Fertilizer,” he said. “Top-grade fertilizer. And, of course, the will of the Lord.”

Officer Mayhew smiled and shook his head. “My poor Mabel fertilizes and prays all week long, but her roses never come up as good as yours.”

“It must be in the blood,” Pastor Lovell said.

Cornelia looked back at him.

“Nobody can grow roses like a Lovell,” he said.

“Naturally, yes!” Officer Mayhew chuckled. “Well, you have a pleasant evening, Pastor.”

“I hope to see you in church on Sunday,” Pastor Lovell said.

Cornelia kept looking back until the door had closed with a soft and final snick.

Officer Mayhew walked her to her cab and helped load her bags into the trunk. 

“Well, enjoy Switzerland. A girl like you ought to see the world a little,” he said, thinking to himself that little Cornelia was looking awfully pale. 

“Thank you,” she said. “And I hope you find that boy you’re looking for.” 

She seemed like she wanted to say more, so he waited, his hand on the door of the cab. After a moment, she looked up at him, her big eyes like the eyes of an old china doll. If she had meant to say anything more, though, she must have thought better of it, because she only smiled a tired smile.

“Good night, Officer,” she said. 

Officer Mayhew got back in his car and drove, glad that visit was over. Old Pastor Lovell always gave him the creeps. He was so overwhelmed with relief, and the anticipation of dinner, that it never occurred to him that the small, pale, mousy, Miss Lovell, had never given back the photograph.

Cornelia clutched the paper version of the boy’s face as the cab pulled away. She was not going to Switzerland. She had been banished at last, her sins too great to be forgiven by the great and terrible God that ruled over her. Unlike all her little lies and failings, this sin was too big to be hidden, to big even to use against her. It would consume her, and her father wanted her far away from his good name when that happened. The clear dark eyes of the boy in the photograph seemed to be looking right at her. She was afraid, as usual. She didn’t know where to go, what to do, how to live without the thumb of a tiny, angry, God pressed firmly on her soul at all times.

The cab radio played a strain of haunting, rousing, music, and Cornelia felt her soul rise up, unshackled to righteousness for the first time. A sinful little smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. Perhaps she’d join the circus.