Evangeline’s hand flew out. Burning and wild, she wrenched the spoon from her grandmother. Force moved within her, filling her mouth with the taste of wash water. The spoon felt solid in her hand, as though part of her. She pushed the old woman forward, knocked her feet from under her, and drove Grandmother Visser to the floor they’d scrubbed and swept that morning. Evangeline’s arm lifted. The implement struck down so strong, so quick, she could not believe that she had done it. And then she could not stop.
Grandmother Visser wailed. The spoon smacked her mouth. Evangeline’s arm flew, whipping again and again as if driven by holy fire.
She did not hear her grandmother beg, “Stop, stop, precious thing, please.”
Evangeline’s body rang, each sinew and joint remembering blackened knees from kneeling, bruised ribs from tightened stays, and the pain of being kept from the river.
The spoon buzzed and hummed, singing, calling for her to let loose the wild. A sickening thump sounded as a blow struck her grandmother’s throat.
Grandmother Visser’s eyes snapped open like a startled rabbit. The spoon dropped. Evangeline’s grandmother’s face reddened, tears pouring from it like a split cook pot. Panic awoke. Evangeline backed away from where her grandmother gasped for breath that would not come.
Grandmother Visser’s belly rose and fell in spasms, and her face turned a deeper crimson. She stared at Evangeline, awed.
Evangeline struggled to sit her up. Apologies spouted from her with the same fervor that her grandmother had for prayer. Her grandmother tugged on Evangeline’s arm until their knotted bodies came to rest against the woodstove. She rasped and wheezed. Evangeline patted her cheeks and begged her to breathe. Grandmother Visser’s head lolled to the side. A lank braid fell across her chest.
Cradling her grandmother’s shoulders, Evangeline began to rock.
Sarah Visser took her granddaughter’s hand.
Evangeline felt the moment life left her grandmother. What had been quick was no more. When Evangeline had been small, Grandmother Visser had taught her the basting stitch, blind catch stitch, and the featherstitch for seams. She remembered her grandmother’s hands wrapped around hers, a bone thimble balanced on her finger, guiding the needle through muslin, and the fresh smell of her skin after kneading dough.
Warmth seeped from Grandmother Visser’s body. Evangeline tried to take it into her own as she shivered against the iron stove. She wept. She’d thought her love for her grandmother tempered by anger, but it bit like a fresh lash.
The rooster crowed as dawn pinkened a crack in the kitchen door. With the sound came a single thought: Run.
She left by a window and ran out the barnyard, through the tall grass and into the pines. She followed deer paths through the trees. When her stomach threatened sickness, she pressed her thumb to a bruise until the pain became an ember that burned away all but the need to run. Find the water, follow the river, she thought. All will be well. She ran toward the river, to the Hudson that flowed away from the body of the woman who had raised her. She ran until her feet begged she rest. When thirsty, she drank from the river and it filled her and gave her life.
She followed the Hudson south toward she knew not what, only that it was away. Eva, Angel, Eve, I am a killer, she thought, and the words became her name.
* * *
Time and season ensured that Peabody’s menagerie and the mute fortune-teller’s apprentice moved northward. On this day, Peabody noted in the margins of his ledger that the goats gave sour milk.
7 JULY 14TH
There it is. No question. Drowned, July 24th, 1937.
Celine Duvel, aquatic performer with Cirque Marveau, found drowned Saturday in the waters off Ocean City, presumed to have taken her own life. Duvel is survived by a daughter, Verona Bonn. No service to be held.
It’s a tiny notice in the Daily Sentinel-Ledger, but the ramifications are shattering, because next to it is a microfiche printout of Verona Bonn’s obituary. The Diving Queen of Littles-Lightford Circus, my grandmother, drowned in a Maryland bay. July 24th, 1962. Survived by her daughter, Paulina. Two data points could be coincidence, but four?
Something is very wrong.
What began as a passing fascination with the book has turned into something darker, fueled by the startling discovery that the women in my family have a disturbing habit of not only dying young, but drowning on July 24th. The book’s original owner was more focused on profiteering and potential routes than detailing the lineage of drowning women, and there are many names: Amos, Hermelius Peabody, a girl called Evangeline, Benno Koenig, a fortune-teller listed as Mme. Ryzhkova, and more, but relationships are not remarked upon so often as wages. Dates are noted somewhat haphazardly, and nowhere is there mention of July 24th being of particular significance. Peabody only made note of things that struck his fancy, and clearly didn’t anticipate that more than two centuries later an unemployed librarian would be using this journal as a primary source.
Alice’s research has paved the way somewhat. She’s let me use her institutional ID from Stony Brook, which she was smart enough to not let lapse. It allows me access to records that I’d typically be barred from without a research request approval. It made sense to work backward, and so I started with my mother, the newspaper story with her picture at its top, sharp-faced with her unforgivingly black hair — an aloof beauty. Despite my memories and their flashes of warmth, the picture shows that my mother was not a happy woman. Not something on which I ever dwelled. It’s brutal to realize that someone might find a life with you in it unbearable. And so I’ve filled my days with digging through public records, searching folded newspapers and magazine scraps, until now I find myself staring at the Daily Sentinel-Ledger, and an alarming pattern.
It’s past ten. Alice should be in and already through the first layer of her to-do list. Now is when she usually pauses to reorganize her desk, puts the pens on the right side, taps her papers into a stack. I call.
“It’s me,” I say.
“Can’t talk long. Circulation glitch. Nobody can find anything and stuff on the shelves is showing up as checked out. Books are missing.”
I look at the two I stole. Were I a better person I might feel guilty. “Probably something with the bar code scanner.”
“Or the catalog. Anyway, what’s up?”
“Does it seem strange to you that I know almost nothing about my family?”
“Not really. Strange is relative with you guys. I mean, look at what your parents named your sister. Who does that to a kid?”
“I know.” Once I learned about the atomic bomb I was never able to think of my parents or my sister in quite the same light. I asked Dad about it once. His response was that Mom had ideas about reclaiming painful things; that if something terrible was made out of a beautiful thing there was an obligation to restore beauty, to reinstate meaning. The attempt with my sister failed; she exists like an explosion. I never had the guts to ask about my name. “I found something weird, though, even for us. You know the women I had you look up? They died on the same date as my mom. Women in my family have a way of dying on July 24th.”
There’s a pause. She shifts the phone to her other shoulder. Papers slide. I can imagine her neatening her letter tray.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Melancholy streak? That kind of thing runs in families. Add in a little seasonal affective disorder and it might make for a good coincidence or two.”