The Hummingbird's Cage by Tamara Dietrich Read Free Book Online

wife, an hour of tea and sympathy. Penitence for poking a rattlesnake that was sleeping in someone else’s lap. And I wasn’t sure what I could expect of her.
    But, for the first time ever, there was someone sitting right in front of me who knew Jim—the real Jim, not the affabledoppelgänger he presented to everyone else. She knew him—if not to all his dark depths, then at least to his capacity for them. She had loved him, too. Once. And he’d made her bleed. Even her.
    â€œThe stories—” I stuttered. “The stories I could tell . . .”
    And the next thing I knew, I was telling her—the dark things, the forbidden things, the things I’d never told anyone, could never tell anyone, especially when they pressed and prodded and tried to wring it out of me for my own good. The bruises, the bones, the burns, the scars—these are just the tangibles they can check off on any medical report. How do you quantify the words that cut as deep? The bottomless, wretched fear of more of the same?
    The dam cracked; the truth gushed out. I told her about my tea tin, the groceries, the gas. The fishbowl isolation. The suffocating prison of this tin-roofed house.
    The steady erosion of my own sanity. The no way out. The gut-churning horror of being forced to live every day with a monster.
    I took a deep breath and braced and told her about Tinkerbell. About the grave he made me dig, the limp body, the spear-headed shovel.
    About Laurel, and how hard it is to pretend to your clever child that everything’s all right, that Daddy loves her, that Daddy’s a good man, that Daddy would never, ever turn on her one day.
    Bernadette was staring at me, expressionless. I searched her face for traces of disgust, for judgment, for compassion, for absolution. I couldn’t stop myself.
    I took another shuddering breath and told her what I hadn’t even allowed myself to think too much about, for fear ofmaking it real. Making it true. About the night Jim returned home from his jail stint, just after New Year’s. The welcoming meal I’d prepared—pot roast, potatoes, coconut cake. Laurel had dressed pretty for her daddy in a crimson velvet dress with bows. We’d sat down as a family, and Jim seemed happy to be home, kissing Laurel good night, even tucking her in. When she was finally asleep, as I was washing the dinner dishes, Jim called for me from outside. He was in the backyard near the woodshed. He was wearing gloves, and I thought he was restacking the cordwood, but it wasn’t that. As I got close, I could see his face in the lantern light, and it was twisted with the old familiar rage. My stomach heaved. He grabbed my hair and pulled me inside, yanking out hunks till I gasped. He dragged me across the shed, pulled me upright, and with his other hand grabbed an object hanging on the wall. He held it close to my face so I could make it out. It was a machete.
    People disappear all the time, he’d said. He’s a cop; he should know. No one would miss you, he said. Hell, no one would even notice. And if they did, he’d just tell them I’d left him and gone back to my family in another state. No one would check. No one would care.
    This is my future, he told me. This is my end, if I ever, ever, ever humiliate him like that again.
    Bernadette was still staring at me, her eyes still blank. I waited for her to say something. To say anything. To tell me what a pathetic wreck I was. What a terrible mother. To hop on her motorcycle and leave a trail of diesel fumes all the way to the Javelina so she could sit with Sam and tell him all about the nutcase outside town.
    Instead, she said, “Show me.”
    She helped me up again, and slowly I led her through thekitchen, through the back door, through the yard. When I got to the shed, I hesitated. I hadn’t been inside since that night. Bernadette paused, too, for a second, then moved past to unlatch the