I was destroying everything that had been done to me. I was still bleeding around my wrists, and a thread of crimson circled in the water. So that this evening would not claim me, I imagined the Hudson River, the woods at dusk. I was the rain, pouring down onto the streets of Brooklyn, into the yards where gardens grew, onto the cobblestone alleyways behind the fish markets. For a thousand nights I would not think of what had happened, nor would I remember the physician, a fool who thought it acceptable to defile a creature he wanted only for its rare qualities, like the shark is wanted for its skin, said to be the most beautiful in all the world.
When I climbed out of the tank, I put on my robe, then went to lie upon the floor beside the tortoise’s pen. I had no idea whether or not the tortoise slept or dreamed or remembered. Sunlight streamed in beneath the closed curtains, causing patterns of dark and light on the floor. There was a rabbit, a hat, a bird in flight. I would not let this incident make me forget I knew what love was like. Outside the window, sparrows were singing in the milky light. On every branch of the pear tree in the yard there was a new leaf unfolding, a vivid green. Spring had truly arrived, a season that had always been my favorite but was so no more. Now I wanted winter, a time when snow covered everything, even though my hands would be cold in such weather, for I had decided I would never wear a pair of gloves again, not for warmth, not for protection, and never to hide who I was.
MAY 1911
LATE IN the afternoon, Maureen knocked at the door. By then the day was warm and Coralie’s room was stifling. When there was no answer, the housekeeper cracked the door open and peered inside.
“Even if you’re ill, you have no choice but to face the day,” she called.
Maureen bustled into the room, convinced she had a cure for anything that might plague her ailing charge. Coralie wished that for once the housekeeper had left her alone. She was in no mood for human interaction, and in no condition to face anyone, least of all Maureen, who had a talent for reading her emotions. Coralie shrank beneath her blanket, mute and withdrawn, as a tray of tea and biscuits was placed on her bedside table. She sank down further when Maureen went to open the curtains.
“Don’t,” Coralie pleaded. When Maureen threw a worried look over her shoulder, Coralie said, “My eyes burn with the light.”
She did not wish Maureen to spy the marks that had been left on her. There were two scarlet circles, fading in color but still quite evident on her wrists.
“Are your eyes the only problem?” Maureen knew her charge’s temperament so well she quickly guessed there was more at hand. She sat at the edge of the bed, then pulled the quilt down and spied the bruises on Coralie’s arms. She drew in a breath, then grasped Coralie’s wrist and traced a finger over the red impression left by the fishing wire. “What happened to you?” she asked, distraught. “Some man, I’ll wager. Don’t tell me it’s the photographer, for I told him I’d make him pay if he wronged you.”
“No. Not him.”
Maureen’s expression was fierce. She rose to her feet, frantic, as if she intended to find justice. “If it wasn’t him, then who? Where is this man who’s treated you so badly?”
“Far from here, I hope.”
Maureen and Coralie held hands and kept their voices low.
“Did he have his way with you?”
Coralie shook her head.
Maureen went to the kitchen and in a short time returned with a poultice of madder root and a thorny thistle, which she insisted would heal Coralie’s bruises. The thistle was common enough, but it often caused the death of stray dogs when they carried off stalks growing wild in the fields. “Your father needs to know,” Maureen put forth once the bruises had been treated.
“Do not speak to him of this! Do you hear me?”
Coralie was so firm in her assertion, and so grim, that Maureen grew ashen as a glimmer of understanding took hold. “Did he have a part in this?”
“It was a doctor he employed to see if I was still pure. The gentleman thought he might take it upon himself to ruin me.” Coralie was so emotional, she held nothing back. It was a relief to be truthful with Maureen as she now admitted to the night viewings she had always kept secret. “It was to be mere theater. A show like any other. And yet it ruined me in some way, more so than what this horrid man tried to do to me.”
Tears flooded the housekeeper’s eyes. “I haven’t allowed myself to believe it, but now I know you should never have grown up in this house. I wanted more for you,” Maureen said with yearning. “And you’ll have it.” She appeared resolved, though her face was wet with tears. “You’ll have a proper life, and when you do, you’ll see that love has nothing to do with what you’ve found under your father’s roof.”