When Darkness Loves Us

She was silent for a long time. Long enough for Leon to count his heartbeats in the quiet, long enough for him to think she had fallen asleep. When she finally spoke, it startled him. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think so.”

He put his arm under her head and snuggled his body close to hers. She felt him fall asleep, one muscle at a time, but she kept blinking to stay awake, suddenly afraid of the nightmare, the one dream that was as real to her as Leon was. Eventually, she drifted off, but her dreams had a presence, a lurking danger pacing the sidelines, ever present, always just out of sight. Even in her sleep, she wondered what it was, where it was, and if it would be with her always.

CHAPTER 16

Doc Pearson took the stethoscope out of his ears and hooked it around his neck. He motioned to Fern that she could dress Martha again, while he sat at his desk and made notes. This was a puzzler. The child had apparently suffered some major trauma, and had totally withdrawn. Only time would tell what kind of permanent damage had been done.

Fern sat in the chair next to the doctor’s desk and pulled Martha into her lap. The child looked straight ahead, rarely blinking, seemingly oblivious to the world around her.

“She’s perfectly healthy, Fern. I can find nothing wrong with her at all. Her reflexes are fine; her eyes look good. If it was something wrong with her brain, it would have come on slowly; there would have been symptoms. I think it’s been some kind of a shock, a trauma, but what would be so horrible as to induce this type of trance is beyond me. Does she eat?”

“When I feed her.”

“With your experience in healing, surely you’ve seen people in shock before.”

“Yes.”

“Well, the body goes into a survival stance. Sometimes the feet and hands get cold because all the blood is reserved for the vital organs. What Martha needs is to be kept warm, and she needs lots of loving. I think she’ll come out of it just fine, but she’ll need lots of care.”

“Could a . . . could a dog, or a wolf or something do this to her?”

“I suppose it’s possible. Sure, if she’d been attacked. I don’t see any marks on her.”

“No, I know—it’s just that when I tried to look inside, I saw . . .” She saw the skeptical look on Doc’s face. “Nothing, it was just an idea.”

“Keep her warm and pay a lot of attention to her, Fern. I think she’ll be all right. Bring her back next week.”

By the next week Martha was walking by herself. The week after that she began feeding herself with her hands. It was two years before she was again toilet trained, and Doc Pearson said the brain damage was permanent. There was only a slight ability to learn. Severely retarded, as a result of a trauma. Fern grew to accept it.

Harry did not. Harry looked into homes for the retarded and spoke daily of taking Martha to one of them, insisting on it, but Fern wouldn’t even listen. She wiped the saliva that drooled from the corner of Martha’s mouth and talked softly in her ear. They began to fight bitterly over the situation, Harry’s voice rising in temper, Fern trying to quiet him down, telling him that it was love and care she needed.

Harry hated the sight of Martha, and razzed and jeered every time she learned something new. When she began to dress herself, she would tend to button her dress wrong or put it on inside out, and Harry would stomp out of the house, shouting that the sight of her made him sick, and something had to be done, because he couldn’t live the rest of his life looking at a retard.

Fern understood his fear and shame and anger. Harry was a sensitive man who just couldn’t deal with the disappointment of a child who was not right. His faith couldn’t handle it. To Harry, God was punishing them all, God hated them, they had somehow gone against his wishes, and had been cast out of his grace. And, of course, it was all Fern’s fault.

The first strange experience happened when Martha was thirteen. Fern was in the kitchen, cleaning up after breakfast. Martha was bathed and playing quietly in her room. Then she started screaming. Fern dropped a plate that shattered on the floor and flew to the bedroom. Martha was standing there, blood on her hands, blood on her thighs, screaming, hysterical, out of control. Fern wet a washcloth and slowly wiped the girl clean.

“It’s okay, Martha. It’s just a little blood, honey. It happens every month. It’s normal. It means you’re growing up to be a big girl. Let me show you now.” And she tried to cope with a new responsibility for the girl. Martha reacted in exactly the same way for six months in a row; then suddenly she began to take care of herself and the monthly hysterics stopped.