If I Told You Once

Once upon a time, on a night when the houses lay buried to the eaves in snowdrifts and bits of ice danced on the wind, I left my village intending never to return.

Earlier that evening I had gone to bed in the back room with my brothers and sisters as usual. The others sighed and slept. I felt the warmth leave my fingers and feet.

I listened to my parents in their room. The bed frame creaked as my father sank down on it. I could picture him, his feet hanging off the end of the frame, head tipped back and the coarse beard sticking straight up.

Light seeped through the crack beneath their door. My mother was awake, I pictured her finishing some mending or nursing the latest child. She kept her hair covered during the day, and at night she put it in a single tight braid that reached past her waist in a thick, vicious-looking rope.

I listened to the sounds of the other room, my ears yearning toward the door: the whisper of candle flame, the creak of her chair, the chilling click of teeth as she bit off the thread. I hoarded the warm patch I had made in the sheets.

A strip of moonlight slanted through the window. I could see arms, fingers, ears: my younger brothers and sisters, sleeping in a heap like puppies. Some sucked their fingers as they slept; some sucked each other’s fingers. I could not distinguish between them in the dimness.

Ari had been my dear one, my favorite. He had absorbed my attentions, and now he was gone. I missed his rank warmth. When he was restless in the night I used to stroke his head, his hair so thick I could not see his scalp when I parted the hair with my fingers. He always slept with his eyes half open, the whites glowing and shifting like iridescent fish. His back made a graceful curve as he lay on his side, he clenched his teeth in what might have been a smile; in the dark you could not see how the thick hair grew down low on his neck, ending in a point between his shoulder blades. He roamed in his dreams, legs twitching like a sleeping dog’s. In the mornings when I drew the sheets back to air them I often found dry leaves, night crawlers, double-tailed insects waving their feelers in the sudden light.

I wondered where he slept now.

The wind thrashed around the house, the boards creaked; I heard the softest of breaths as my mother blew out the candle. One of my brothers cried out in his sleep: Look out—the fire! and then subsided. My father let out a businesslike grunt as he hoisted himself over my mother and began the task of creating yet another child. There came a sound I never heard from my mother during the day: a cooing, like mourning doves. The dim light from the window grew even softer; it began to snow.

It was falling thickly and steadily. It was the sort of snow that could hide a person’s tracks completely in a matter of hours.

It was time to leave.

I dressed in underclothes, flannel petticoats, skirts, jackets, woolen stockings. My mother had knitted the stockings so tightly they could almost stand up by themselves. Last I put on the boots, which would have fit half the people in the village. The local cobbler made boots in only two sizes, for the sake of convenience.

I wrapped my head in a shawl. My brothers and sisters were quiet, their faces blissful in sleep. They lay in a tangle of curves and bulges, whorled shapes, like vines in the garden patch. I suppose they looked like me, their hair, their eyes, but I had never bothered to notice. For too long I had thought of them only as annoyances that asked impossible questions and demanded breakfast.

I dug beneath my mattress and pulled out my secret, the egg I had kept warm under my body for years. It was still as deep and glittering as ever, with the city inside: the pointed towers, the starry sky, the carriages pulled by white horses with feathered headdresses, footmen with velvet trousers and mustaches like wings. I thought I saw them move. Perhaps it was my breath.

I left by the window and set out, the air prickling my face, the snow swirling around, white clouds against a darker sky. I tried to step lightly, but my footsteps crunched rudely in the snow, like cows chewing.

I did not look back.

It was the only home I had ever known. I could feel it behind me, hunched and glowering, its shoulders frosted with snow.

I felt a cold breath on the back of my neck, a sharp twinge that ran down my spine. I tried to run, but like a dream my steps seemed to grow even slower as my heart raced.

I knew my mother was watching from the window.

Standing with her arms folded beneath her breasts, chin out, her braid swaying pendulously behind her. She was at the window, or perhaps she was in the yard, heedless and barefoot in the snow, her eyes raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

I could feel her drawing me to her; like a spider she was sending out her threads, I could feel their tug in the small of my back. They drew tauter with every step I took. I knew if I paused, those threads would tighten, they would snap me back, I would be pulled home gliding so smoothly over the snow like an errant sled.

Oh, how she pulled at my hair. My scalp smarted.

I knew she was rolling up her sleeves, stretching out her arms; she was pursing her lips kisslike to draw in such a breath that my clothes streamed out behind me; she was undulating her fingers in the entrancing way she used to hypnotize the chickens before she chopped off their heads.

I kept walking, I knew not to look back. My mother had taught me nearly everything she knew, so I knew what she was up to, I was wise enough not to look at her face.

And yet if she had called out my name then, I think I would have gone running back to bury my face in her lap. The warmth of her body through her clothes, a smell like fields of wheat. Her voice could do that.

But she did not call out. Perhaps she was too proud for that.

I forged on, forcing stiff marionette knees. Her eyes nipped at the backs of my legs so that I stepped faster, and faster. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the village looked no bigger than the magic city inside my egg, and my mother was too small to be seen.

I was free of my mother at last. The threads snapped. I had beaten her. My body was my own; I felt something melt inside me, a hot jelly, sliding loose and shifting downward, pulsing. It was a frightening feeling, not unpleasant.

To the east, a faint glow paled and spread; the bare trees were thrown into stark black silhouettes against the paling sky. And I was very, very cold.

I tramped for hours as the snowfall abated. My nose and lips were numb, they were blunt stupid things stuck to my face; I wished I could knock them off the way you knock icicles from the eaves.

I thought of my mother. I supposed she had cursed me, cursed me the way I had seen her curse soldiers: with words too dangerous to utter aloud, so that she had to draw their shapes with her fingers in the air, with her own face carefully averted. The venom of her curses was so powerful it could sometimes rebound and scald her, like drops of boiling oil bouncing off the pan.

The thought of my mother’s curses brought on a stitch in my side and a blurry, sticky cloud in my right eye.

I had no idea where I was going, I only knew I was lengthening the distance between myself and home. Between myself and a life like my mother’s, a path worn deep in the dirt, a path packed so hard no grass could ever grow there, much less flowers.

I had never been outside my village, but I knew there were places that were different. I had glimpsed them in the egg, and in the words of the bandit in the woods. I thought of him, my bandit, with his sharp face and strange talk. I saw him lying in the snow, sunk deep as if in a feather mattress, his throat necklaced with blood and the marks of wolf’s teeth.

After I had found him so, I went home and burned my wolf hood. It made an awful stink. My mother watched but said nothing.

I would never have to feel her eyes again.

The thought should have made me happy.

I walked on. Once I heard an ax biting into wood, echoing through the trees. It reminded me of my father. From the sound alone I could judge the weight of the ax. I hurried on.

Twilight was falling, swiftly creeping up behind me.

I told myself I would keep traveling until I found a city, a place like the one I had seen in the egg. I would give myself a new name, walk among a different sort of people. I wanted to walk slowly in gardens, carelessly snapping twigs off branches as I passed, tossing pebbles in a fountain, watching the surface of the water break apart and, quivering, come together again to show me my face. That seemed the most perfect kind of luxury.

I stuck my hands in my jacket pockets. They should have been empty. I had brought nothing.

And yet I drew from my pockets several chunks of bread, some large leathery mushrooms, a carved wooden comb.

Gifts from my mother. She must have known all along.

In another pocket I found a pouch filled with my mother’s favorite herbs, the ones without names, dried and tied in bundles. There were plants like miniature trees, like tangled pubic hair, seaweed, bird feathers, crumpled paper. The smells rose up from the bag and fought each other.

My egg was knotted in my petticoat.

How stupid of me to think I could leave home without my mother knowing. She had known I would leave before I did. She had allowed me to leave. Perhaps she had watched, and tugged at me with her eyes merely to test my resolve. It seemed no matter how I tried to escape, I was still entangled in my mother’s plans.

I saw her braid swinging.

I saw her figure plowing smoothly through the snow before me, as if she had cart wheels beneath her skirts instead of legs.

I walked for five days.

On the evening of the fifth day I saw smoke in the distance. As I came closer I came upon a village, not unlike the one I had left. I wanted to go to one of those houses, ask for a place to sleep. But I couldn’t; they were too familiar. I had the sensation that whichever house I called at my mother would open the door. She’d fill the doorway, dusted with flour, sleeves rolled, arms folded, children clinging constantly to her skirts as if they’d been sewn there as ornaments.

So I skirted the village as night fell. I smelled bread baking.

How ugly the trees were now. Behind me the lights of the village glowed like warm embers.

Then, like a granted wish, I came abruptly to a clearing in the woods, and a small house with a peaked roof and smoke curling from two chimneys. A stone path led to the door, and I found myself knocking on it before I’d had a chance to think.

I could hear rustling inside, the crackle of fire. The doorstep on which I stood was worn, and the spot on the door where I’d rapped my knuckles was a silky smooth depression in the wood, as if countless hands had knocked before me.

Yes? said a voice and the door opened slightly. I stared into eyes that were a disturbing yellow, lashless and unblinking.

She looked me up and down. The eyebrows rose in crafty peaks.

Are you in trouble? she asked sharply. She wore shoes tipped with iron.

I nodded.

Well then, she said briskly, come inside, though you should have known to come to the back door.

The room inside was small and familiar. Wooden chairs, a low bed, a stone floor. Bunches of herbs hung drying near the fire. A piece of knitting lay interrupted on a chair.

She helped me remove my clothes. What I had at first thought was a hat perched on her head was in fact a dense mass of silvery gray braids wound together, a huge round loaf of hair. Her hands were spotted with age.

She hung my clothes on a chair to dry and said: Why don’t you sit and warm yourself for a minute? I opened my mouth to speak but she clicked her tongue at me and turned away.

There was a smell in the air, musty, faintly sickishly sweet; I could not place it. On shelves nearby stood stoppered jars and bottles of the sort people used for pickles and preserves. I looked closer and saw stored there twisted roots suspended in brine, the pale floating bodies of frogs, the milky globes of cows’ eyes, and jars and jars of a viscous liquid, reddish brown, with a dry crust on top.

A kettle stood on the hearth, and two mugs. Had she been expecting me? No, the mugs had been recently used; dregs of tea clung to the insides.

I heard the woman scrubbing her hands vigorously in a tub of water. Did you happen to bring anything to give me? she asked, peering over her shoulder.

I shrugged, shook my head.

Ah, they never do, she said to herself. She turned then and came toward me. I quickly backed away. Are you ready, then? she said. Her bared arms were terribly thin.

Don’t be changing your mind now, after you came all this way, she said. Hop up on the chair now, there you go. Her voice was firm; she grasped my arm and I found myself standing on the chair. Strands of my hair hung before my eyes like the bars of a cage.

She looked up at me with those yellow eyes, she put a hand on my thigh to still its trembling. The smell in the room was strange and terrible, a sweet rottenness; I could taste it.

My tongue seemed to have gone to sleep.

I saw that she held in her hand a bit of metal, like a piece of twisted wire.

Lift your skirts dearie, she said, you know it has to be done.

Her voice carried such command that I automatically gathered my skirts in my hands; I had lifted them nearly to my knees before I came to my senses and pushed her away and tumbled off the chair.

Hush, hush, she said and reached out to me, but I scuttled away from her on all fours. Hush, she said as I tried to explain myself at the top of my voice.

I quieted when the woman put away her horrible wire. She did not seem amused by the misunderstanding, but she gave me a bowl of soup and said I could sleep in the shed. I asked for her name; she told me to call her Baba.

That night as I lay in the shed, warming myself beside Baba’s yellow-eyed goat, I wondered about this strange woman. I thought about the house, how it had appeared as I approached with the stone path and the two chimneys. I realized there must be a second room, a second fireplace I had not seen.

I woke thinking of Ari, and found the goat nibbling my hair.

I thought I would move on that morning, but Baba came to me with a cool assessing look and said she could give me work if I cared to stay on for a few days. She had wood that needed splitting, and there were errands I could do for her since she did not like to go down to the village. In return she offered me a place to sleep.

I accepted, though I did not like or trust her. In the daylight her eyes took on a thick muddy color, like pus.

I did not like to admit to myself that I had left my mother only to find another. A grim substitute. I tried not to think about it.

So I spent days chopping. My father had taught me how to swing an ax. I worked myself into a rhythm and Baba stood by the back fence, watching.

She needed a great deal of wood; it seemed she kept both fireplaces burning much of the time. By now I had noticed the door that led to the room I had never seen. Although Baba entered it several times a day, she never invited me in. She sometimes emerged with dirty dishes, stale bed linen. I sometimes heard her voice through the wall, mingled with another’s.

From the village gossip I learned that Baba was the local herb woman, both midwife and doctor. There were whispers that she was a witch: some swore they had seen her flying through the air in a bucket; others insisted her house could raise itself up and walk about, on a pair of giant chicken legs.

And they whispered about the girls from neighboring villages who came to Baba secretly in the night, hoping she could save them from disgrace with that piece of wire that made me think of a rabbit snare.

One day a girl my own age beckoned me aside and told me something more, about the men of the village going to Baba in the dark hour before dawn, but her breath was so heavy in my ear that I could not understand what she said, and when I asked her to repeat it she blushed deeply and ran away.

In the evenings, sometimes, Baba combed my hair. I did not like the way she gathered my hairs from the comb, so carefully, then balled them and slipped them in her pocket.

I did not like her much.

During the day I saw sick villagers come to her door for ointments and tonics. Sometimes at night there would come a knock at the door to the shed where I slept, and I would find a pale nervous girl shivering outside. I’d bring the girl through the connecting passage to the main room, to Baba, who would immediately send me back to bed. I sometimes lay awake listening for the cries, the sobs, and Baba’s stern, soothing tones. In the mornings the floor would be scrubbed and clean.

Also at night came the older women worn out by childbirth. Baba gave them herbs to toughen their wombs, keep a new child from taking root. These women seemed more ashamed than the girls; they bowed their heads and gulped, these women who had borne ten or twelve children and felt guilty for calling a halt to it.

I watched all these things and stored them away.

One day in the village I heard rumors of a soldiers training camp nearby. The people spoke of a new recruit, a monstrous man of unnatural size and animal appetites, who ate flesh raw, wrestled bulls to the ground, and howled at the moon. The army officers hoped to train him, he would make a marvelous killing machine. The officers were having difficulty teaching him, he seemed not to understand their words and would sit moaning and scratching for hours. When provoked he went on rampages. People said he had already killed two men during one of his panics. But the officers would not give up, they would break him like a wild horse if necessary.

As I heard the story, my heart leaped up, then dropped like a stone.

It was Ari. I was sure of it. I would find him if I could, and take him with me wherever I went. It seemed an easy plan, in my head.

I did not like the way people spoke of him. He was not the monster they made him out to be. The things they said were true and not true at the same time.

Soon after, I was awakened late in the night by footsteps. The house was full of the heavy bumbling sounds of men. Their smell, manure and iron, reached my nostrils. I opened the door that connected the shed to the main room of the house, and peered in.

More than a dozen men from the village crowded the room. Baba stood among them, yellow eyes unblinking. No one spoke. Each man handed her something: a bag of sugar, silver coins, a basket of eggs. The men seemed restless, shifting their feet, with sweat standing out on their faces and necks. When Baba had received all the gifts she went to the door of the secret room, unlocked it, and led the men inside.

About fifteen minutes later they emerged. They seemed even more agitated than before and did not want to leave. But Baba herded them out and locked the door behind her. The men filed out into the snow.

On subsequent nights I awoke more and more often, to hear the shuffling of heavy feet and to witness the silent ceremony of gifts and visits to the secret room.

The next time I passed through the village I overheard the men talking in the blacksmith’s shop. They were talking in hushed tones of a love sickness, they spoke of going to Baba’s house to get the cure. It was a dangerous addiction, they said.

One of these men passed me later in the street. He was black haired and red skinned; he gave me a mocking smile, touched his cap, and went on his way.

I recognized him. He was one of Baba’s nighttime guests; his wife had borne him fourteen children and had recently come to Baba for an herb to stop a fifteenth.

I chopped wood and great horny calluses rose up on my hands.

One morning Baba was called away early to assist at a premature birth. When I was sure she had gone I began exploring her shelves, peering in boxes, holding jars up to the light. I heard a faint tune; at first I assumed it was something in my own head. But it did not go away, it went on and on and grew faintly annoying.

It was coming from the secret room.

It was the same voice I had heard many times before. But today it was clearer than ever.

I turned to look and nearly dropped the bottle I was holding. She had forgotten to lock the door, it was slightly ajar.

I put the bottle back on a shelf and walked toward the door as softly as I could, which was not soft at all, considering my cloddish shoes.

I pushed at the door and stepped inside.

The room was swathed in lace, yards and yards of it, the sort Baba spent hours knitting in the evenings. It draped the walls, hung in festoons from the ceiling. A fire burned brightly in a stone fireplace. The room was so warm I felt the sweat pop out on my face.

An enormous bed filled most of the room, a high bed covered in more lace, finely woven shawls, and quilts. And on this bed lounged such a girl as I had never seen before.

She lay sprawled in a loose robe, regarding me with unconcerned green eyes. She had the softest, whitest flesh I had ever seen; her face, her throat, her hands were smooth and unblemished. Her robe had fallen open in the front; I could see one of her breasts, a pale perfect mound. It looked like something rich and creamy you could eat with a spoon. Most extraordinary of all was her hair: somewhere between red and gold, it hung loose from her head, cascaded over the pillows, her shoulders, lay on the floor in a thick shining carpet. I was nearly stepping on it.

That rotten sweet smell was even stronger here.

Her face was pale and flowerlike; the cheeks were two spots of pink that I suspected were painted on. I gaped. She did not seem human; I wondered if she was something Baba had created: carved out of soap, baked in the oven, cultivated in the dark like a mushroom.

Close the door, cow-eyes, there’s a draft, she said. Her voice was that annoying singsong that had faintly haunted the house since I arrived.

I closed the door and stepped closer. I knelt beside her and studied her. I could not resist poking her arm; her flesh was as cushiony as it looked. It was flesh that had never worked or sweated under the sun. I poked her again. I fingered a thick handful of hair. She was a fascinating plaything. She lay there limply, regarding me indifferently.

Baba said there was a girl here, but she did not want you to see me, she said.

Why? I said, watching the hair slide and shimmer like water.

She said in her grating voice: I hate it here, I’m going mad in this room.

How long have you been here?

More than two years, I think. I’m not sure.

Why don’t you leave then? I said.

At that she raised herself up and began tossing aside the blankets that covered her lower body. Her legs entranced me: smooth, white, hairless. And then I saw that she had no feet.

How …

She leaned back and sighed. She told me how a man had gotten her into trouble, a married man her father’s age who pushed her down in the forest without a word and held her there. She had been in trouble and had heard Baba could help her out of it.

She said: I used to live in a village far away, I had to walk all night to get here, it was terribly cold and by the time I arrived my feet were frostbitten. Baba got rid of the baby, and I hardly felt it, for the pain in my feet. I got terribly sick and she took care of me for weeks, and when I came out of the fever I found myself here, in this room, and Baba told me my feet had turned black and fallen off, she hadn’t been able to save them from the frostbite. I couldn’t go home, after the trouble with the man, so she has kept me here, all this time.

Your hair, I said. Has it always been like this?

No, she said, it’s Baba’s doing, she rubs a horrible green paste into my scalp every night, and then it grows like weeds.