When Darkness Loves Us

Martha kneaded the dough. She pushed and folded, pushed and folded, sprinkling flour in the sticky places. It was an automatic, easy rhythm. Her pudgy fingers knew the work by themselves. As she pushed, her body rocked forward, up on her toes. As she folded, she fell back flat on her heels. Pushed and folded, sprinkled more white flour, pushed some more.

Her mind wandered.

The chickens squawked and fought over the new food. She didn’t think they would like it; it was just hard pieces of corn and seeds. Looked like rocks, too, in it. But they loved it. They just scratched and pecked and flapped.

Martha tried eating a little of it, but it was too hard to chew. How can the chickens chew it when they got no teeth? How come they like that better than the bread? Mr. McRae knows.

Martha’s hands told her when the dough was ready. She greased up a big mixing bowl and plopped the dough in it, turning it once to oil the top. Then she put a clean kitchen towel over it and sat down to watch it rise.

Now she could think about the sparkling wall. All those pretty glasses lined up in front of the mirror. All those bottles with different-colored waters in them. The cool empty room. No, not empty. There were those men. And that funny feeling when her feet wouldn’t go straight.

She thought about that drink in the bar only when she had time to sit down and concentrate. She knew there was more to it than she remembered. She knew there was more to it than she would ever even know. She didn’t understand a lot of things. Most of all, she didn’t understand the moments of clarity she had, when the whole world looked sharp, in focus, and her mind understood.

It was as if she lived her whole life under water—no, under oil. Greasy oil that coated her whole perception of things, but once in a while, her subconscious would break through the surface, take a roaring gasp of fresh air, and look around while the filmy sheets of grease ran down her eyes. And at those moments, understanding would rock her soul with great heaving sobs of newness. Then she would slide under again, swimming in murky clouds of distortion.

Somewhere, though, those pieces of understanding were stored. She thought of them as little golden eggs—no, little fragile bubbles—with knowing stored inside, and they were stacked up in little triangular piles in some unused storeroom of her mind.

Martha gave the table a slap that stunned her hand. Now where did I get such a thought as that? What kind of an idea is that, anyway, bubbles in my head? Bubbles in my head all right. Bubbles in that drink they gave me.

She wanted to go back to that place with the shiny wall. She wanted to see the man with the apron, the one with the toothpick in his mouth, and the one without a tooth in front. She wanted to feel a part of something, a part of a friendly something.

Oh, I wish could understand.

Then a new thought came to her and her brow furrowed, her curly gray hair slid forward toward her eyebrows, her lips circled up, and her twisted lump of a nose wrinkled.

If understanding is in the bubbles, maybe I can pop one and catch it.

But the storeroom was guarded by a monster. She had seen it in her dreams, and as she thought of it now, its monstrous face snarled at her. Sharp teeth dripping with vicious saliva were bared; purple pink gums backed by wild yellow eyes showed its ferocity. It lunged straight at her eyes, rotten breath pushing her back in her chair.

She stood up quickly, startled, before her feet were under her, twisting her ankle, the pain driving the vision from her eyes. She bent over and rubbed it, automatically putting her trip to town off another day. She couldn’t walk on this ankle.

A glance at the rising dough showed it had a long way to go yet, so she hobbled over to the sofa and lay down. She put her foot up on a pillow. Comfortable, she looked at the worn brocade pattern next to her head and began to pick at it. How does this go, she thought, picking absently, pulling apart the threads to see what was underneath. All thoughts of the bar and the people who inhabited it were gone, chased away.

Martha packed carefully for her trip to town. She put five loaves of bread in each brown paper sack and filled two more little sacks with eggs. She wanted Mr. McRae to be very happy with her.

She dressed in a special red-print dress, her going-to-town dress. She looked in the mirror, thought she looked a little different but she wasn’t sure how, put on powder and lipstick, and brushed her hair back. That was it; her hair was too long. If the girl didn’t come soon, maybe she could cut it herself. Mother had always told her to keep her hair short, then she could just wash it with a washcloth and not have to worry about more soaps and stuff. But now her hair hung in gray curls around her face. She put more powder on her nose.

She put one bag of eggs in each bread sack and lifted them carefully. They were light. She went out into the sunshine and the early morning cool and began walking.