huddled against a stalk, grabbed the root, and bent my whole body around it. Tears of frustration ran down my face.
Finally, maybe hours later, I sat up and stretched, blinked at the moonlight. I turned and looked up through the corn at my house, the dark windows. Shivering, I pulled out my book, Sister Carrie, and read about Carrie for an hour, getting lost in her world of factories and concrete before dragging myself off to sleep.
Things remained tense between Mary and me throughout the next day. My tenacity surprised me, but I discovered a stubbornness in myself that I’d never known I had.
“Please, Mary,” I said again and again, then rushed off in tears or anger when she refused to budge.
“Tessa, I’m telling you,” she said, following me back into the stacks, “I barely remember anything at all.”
I kept my eyes on the shelf in front of me. “You aren’t that old, Mary. You remember. I know you do.”
“It’s too dangerous, anyway,” she said.
“Couldn’t you show me just one time?” I asked. My eyes filled with tears, and I turned to her. “Just once?”
“You know, Tessa,” she said, “it’s beautiful to see you so sure of what you want, so passionate about something. But why does it have to be the trapeze? I gave all that up. For good.”
“Because I’ll be good at it,” I said, surprising myself.
She stared at me as I purposefully arranged a pile of books. “I don’t think I can do it,” she said, finally. I looked up at her and was surprised by the expression on her face, a look of something like wistfulness. Her face closed then, like a trap door, and she turned and walked away.
She avoided me for the rest of the day, sending me back into the stacks again and again with books to organize and shelve. I was nearly crazy with frustration, but when the sun went down I walked home slowly, scheming all the while. I walked through the town square and ignored the group of kids sitting under the tree, even when they tried to provoke me. Maybe I could get Mary to hang up the trapeze and learn by myself, I thought. Riley Farm opened up in front of me, but I barely noticed. Maybe there was someone else who could teach me. Though I knew that such a thing was unheard-of in Oakley, before Mary Finn.
When I stepped into the house, it took me a second to notice my father standing before me, in the dark hallway. I pulled back in surprise. He’d been watching for me, I realized, from the living room window, and all at once I felt like I’d been caught doing something wrong.
His eyes bored into me. I stood immobilized, my heart skipping forward and hammering against my chest. I saw it then, in his hand. A book. My book, the one I had carefully hidden under my mattress the night before.
Slowly, I looked back at his face. He was massive in front of me, a mountain. He could have reached out and picked me up between his fingers, I thought, crushed me under his toe. There was nothing more terrifying in all the world than my father standing there with Sister Carrie in his hand. He loomed over me, then leaned forward.
I jumped, sure he would hit me. I braced myself for it, my whole body tensing into a wall of muscle and bone. My father lifted his hand, and I shut my eyes. A moment later a loud thwap! shook the house. I opened my eyes, saw my book lying on the floor, its pages twisted and crushed.
“Get this trash out of here,” he said. “Get it out now.”
He turned and left the room, and I crumpled to the floor, snatched the book up into my hands and under my skirt. How had I let this happen? I knew he would punish me. I could already feel his hands coming down.
I ran from the house and out into the road. Just outside our property I knelt down to bury the book, but then thought better of it. My father’s eyes seemed to follow me, wherever I went, and I could think of only one place to go where things would be okay.
I ran to the herb garden in back of Mercy Library, dug out the silver key Mary hid there, and let myself in. I must have been a sight to behold: ragged and out of breath, a mashed-up book in my hands. I made my way into the dark space, hoping Mary would still be there.
The whole place was dead quiet. I felt funny and started tiptoeing through. I passed the little kitchen, and the herbs seemed spooky in the dark, roiling around in their glass jars, glittering and smoking as if they were all dreaming in there. I slipped past, through the stacks and into the main part of the library. Mary wasn’t anywhere. It was so dark I could barely see.
I tiptoed to the basement door and cracked it open. “Mary,” I called. There was no answer. I peered down but couldn’t make anything out.
Sighing, I headed to Mary’s desk and sat down, cradling the book in my lap. A power seemed to surge from Mary’s seat and rush through me, up my back and arms, to my face. It’s okay, I thought. Shhh. But the panic took hold in my gut and wouldn’t leave. Never in my life had I so openly disobeyed my father. I felt tears rush to my eyes and wished Mary were there to comfort me. My father was capable of anything. This, I knew to my bones. Could I just stay here? I wondered. It was the first time the thought had truly seized me: maybe I could stay here forever, never go home. Maybe I never needed to see my family again.
And then I heard it: Mary laughing. She must not have heard me before. I swung open the basement door and ran down the steps, toward her room. A faint light shone through the crack beneath her door. How hadn’t I seen it before? I almost forgot everything, my relief was so strong.
I pushed open the door and gasped. Mary was crouching on top of a naked man, her body bare and slick with sweat. Her breasts were full and round, her hair nearly wet, sticking to her neck. The man’s skin was paler than hers. His hands gripped her hips. I didn’t recognize him.
I felt completely shattered. Mary looked up at me, and her mouth dropped open, her hands rushed to her breasts. “Tessa!” she said, and quickly rolled off the man, to her side. She grabbed for her clothes on the floor next to the mattress. The man sat up and looked at me, annoyed.
“What is this?” he asked.
In its way, it might have been worse than seeing my father looming before me, holding the book in his hand. This was Mary, acting like a slut. My mother’s voice echoed in my head: a tramp, she’d said, a black-haired Jezebel. I had never felt so betrayed, in all my life.
“You’re a slut!” I screamed, my teeth mashing together. “How could you?” My insides were teeming, boiling. I had no idea what would come out of me next, what I would do. “A goddamned whore!”
Tears nipped at my eyes, but I fought them back, translated them into rage and heartbreak.
“Tessa!” Mary cried. “Tessa, stop!” Her face looked crushed with worry. “Tessa, come here!”
She reached for me, but I backed away. “Don’t come near me!” I turned then and ran: up the stairs, through the basement door, the stacks, the back door. I heard her calling out for me, but I trampled straight through the herb garden, into the grass. Past the lumberyard, through the town square, and onto the road that led to home. The air was like fingers swatting my face. The moon was like an assault. I thought of Sister Carrie in her factory, longed for the world to be as flat and dull as that, a place where I would never have to feel anything at all.
I cut through one of the farms near my house and then slowed, slumped in the grass. I felt completely unmoored. I could not go back to the library, and I could not go back home, where I knew my father was waiting with his leather belt. I could feel him peering into the dark night, and, irrationally, crouched down in the grass so he wouldn’t see me. I knew that the sooner I got back, the less of a beating I’d get, but the dread seeped into every pore of my body. Where was there to go? Every minute I was gone made his anger worse, and yet I prayed that with each new second a new possibility would emerge. Could I leave? Go somewhere new? Run off to the circus? Sobs wracked my body, and then finally I went numb, resigned myself to my fate. There was no other place for me but home.
I