Molly would have been shocked at his reaction had she possessed any remaining energy for shock. Now that Moll was here, though, now that she had checked Moll’s hands for weapons (no gun, no knife, no metal pipe), her final resources exited her body.
“Sleep,” Moll said simply, and carried Ben out of the room.
And Molly could muster no resistance, no rage, only an irrepressible sensation of relief. So what if someone was taking advantage of her in her weakest moment? So what if someone was taking care of her in her weakest moment?
She rolled over toward moist, slumbering Viv, embraced her, and slept.
When she awoke, hours or days later, the sheets were clean and the bed empty of children. The sky outside was half-light, heading either toward morning or night.
She did not know how the sheets could have been changed while she slept. It was a miracle, the explanation of which she hoped never to learn.
She stood up. Something was unsteady: the world, or herself. The thought of walking, of speaking, demolished her. Yet she managed to put on her robe and open the door and limp a few feet.
“Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors, see all the people!”
The children, seated at the table on either side of Moll, clapped. They were wearing clean pajamas. Their hair was wet and brushed, their fevers broken. There was food (toast, applesauce) on their plates. There was drink (neon, Gatorade) in their cups.
All three turned toward her, noticing her at the same instant.
They looked interrupted. She felt like an intruder.
Ben almost immediately turned his attention back to Moll in hopes that she would once again make her fingers into a church, a steeple, a row of people.
The children seemed vibrant, recovered.
“Hi, other Mommy,” Viv said.
Terror, or nausea, swelled in Molly. She leaned against the wall.
“Are you feeling obnoxious?” Viv said.
“Obnoxious?” Distantly, Molly marveled at her daughter’s big word.
“She means nauseous,” Moll said. She stood and filled a glass with Gatorade and stuck in a straw and handed it to Molly. “Go back to bed.”
“Yeah,” Viv added giddily. “Go back to bed!”
And because her legs refused to hold her up, she obeyed.
There was nothing she could do. There was nothing her body would allow her to do.
She was loath to admit that this was the realization of an old fantasy of hers: to be in two places at once. To have two bodies. To give herself over to her own recovery while her children were in the hands of someone who loved them exactly as she did.
But her fatigue overmastered her anguish, and she fell asleep. She slept, woke, slept, woke.
“Ready or not, here I come. Ready or not, here I come.” Viv’s voice, moving fast down the hallway. “Ready or not, here I come.”
The six words triggered in Molly the same charge of animal fear she had always experienced during hide-and-seek, even when the seeker was just a four-year-old. Every time it was a minuscule version of hiding from men with boots and guns.
“…or… not… here… I…” Viv wandered back up the hallway, despondent, lonely, no longer running.
“Viv!” Molly called out from the bed. “Vivian!”
But by then Moll and Ben had emerged from somewhere, by then there were shrieks of surprise and laughter.
Unheeded, unneeded, Molly slept.
The scariest dream of all is the one that takes place in the room where you’re sleeping.
When Moll shepherded them into their room for bedtime, Molly crept out of bed and crouched beside their door. She could hear Moll reading to them. Talking to them. Put this on. Here you go. Yes, that’s right.
She opened the door.
Moll had claimed her spot, lodged between them on Viv’s bed, nursing Ben.
Moll looked at her, startled, a criminal caught in the act. A reaction, a jolt, that she had not manifested at all when Molly had come upon her and David.
“Go away,” Viv said to Molly.
“Don’t say that,” Moll chided.
“Well, Mommy, how about I snuggle with you for six days, and then Mommy may come in and tell me an animal story?”
11
“…Now the days of David drew nigh that he should die;
and he charged Solomon his son, saying,
‘I go the way of all the earth: be thou strong therefore, and shew thyself a man;
and keep the charge of the Lord thy God, to walk in her ways, to keep her statutes,
and her commandments, and her judgments, and her testimonies,
as it is written in the law of Moses,
that thou mayest prosper in all that thou doest,
and withersoever thou turnest thyself…’”
The familiar voice fell silent.
A steady hand on her forehead.
Just the thing she was craving.
A warm, steady hand.
Dangerous, this comfort.
Ice clinking in a glass. The fizz of ginger ale.
A figure perched on the wide windowsill, almost invisible, beneath the incomplete moon. She, too, liked to perch there, almost invisible. More than once she had frightened David when he entered the bedroom, believing it empty.
Now, lined up on the windowsilclass="underline" a Coca-Cola bottle, an Altoids tin, a toy soldier, a potsherd, a penny.
“Then came there two women, that were harlots, unto the king,
and stood before him.
And the one woman said,
‘O my lord, I and this woman dwell in one house;
and I was delivered of a child with her in the house.
And it came to pass the third day after that I was delivered,
that this woman was delivered also:
and we were together; there was no stranger with us in the house,
save we two in the house.
And this woman’s child died in the night; because she overlaid it.
And she arose at midnight,
and took my son from beside me, while thine handmaid slept,
and laid it in her bosom,
and laid her dead child in my bosom.
And when I rose in the morning to give my child suck,
behold, it was dead:
but when I had considered it in the morning,
behold, it was not my son, which I did bear.’
And the other woman said,
‘Nay; but the living is my son, and the dead is thy son.’
And this said,
‘No; but the dead is thy son, and the living is my son.’
Thus they spake before the king. Then said the king,
‘The one saith, This is my son that liveth, and thy son is the dead:
and the other saith, Nay; but thy son is the dead, and my son is the living.’
And the king said, ‘Bring me a sword.’
And they brought a sword before the king.
And the king said, ‘Divide the living child in two,
and give half to the one,
and half to the other.’
Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king,
for her bowels yearned upon her son,
and she said,
‘O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it.’
But the other said,
‘Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.’
Then the king answered and said,
‘Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it:
she is the mother thereof.’”
The two women and their single shadow left the palace on a street paved with gold. They walked until the gold turned to dirt, and they kept walking. The road was long and straight. No sound but the sound of pebbles shifting beneath their feet. Sometimes one would carry the baby. Sometimes the other would carry the baby. They did not have water or anything else. They walked. They were two women with one live child and one ghost child. They were two women with four children. They were three women with six children, nine women with eighteen children, fifty women with a hundred children, five hundred women with a thousand children, their single shadow before them.