Charlotte Kersten

I think my next project (????!!!!) is going to be written in first-person, and I’ve been writing bits and pieces in that perspective just to get used to it. I’ve also been thinking a lot about the stories left to tell with The Economy of Blessings, and a lot of my ideas have to do with how things might have turned out differently. With that in mind, here’s a thing I wrote a few nights ago while I was maybe/possibly a bit drunk:

Harlan said it to me when I was still mad and madder than ever, after the nurse got sacked and I stopped doing everything she told me to do, the writing and talking and walking and all of that. It weren’t that I was ungrateful for how she tried to help me, mind. But she left and it all went back to how it’d been before, only I knew better now and the knowing didn’t do me a bit of good. Sometimes I thought that if I could forget everything I wasn’t supposed to think, it would be all the better. I couldn’t, though, no matter how hard I tried. 

So, yes. One day he said I oughtn’t chew that ashoqlore ever again. Are you sure, I said, and that was as close to being smart as I came anymore, and he said yes, sweetness, and so I stopped it. I didn’t think much of it at first, I suppose, because I wasn’t thinking much at all then, to be honest with you. I do remember thinking well, something would happen or it wouldn’t but it didn’t make much sense for me to be fussed either way because what could I do about any of it?

I wasn’t thinking much about nothing, but even so I could count the days, at least. I counted and after a while I was sure, and Harlan was just that happy about it, so I thought maybe it’d be a good thing after all.  I thought of that Father Prophet as came when I hit my head in bed all that way back and how he said doing what I was meant for might be a fix for everything that was amiss with me. I remembered hating that man and the questions he asked me, but it felt all foggy when I looked back on it. Harlan always loved to tell me how fine things would be once something or other was different, and now it was all about how fine things would be when we were a family, a proper family. 

When Miss Nirossz left, I’d stopped summoning Solaufein, too. It was a horrible, wicked thing of me to do, leaving him all alone like that. I know if I try to explain it I’ll just sound more foolish, so I won’t try. But I didn’t stop thinking about him, never, and I suppose the thoughts tipped over into my dreams sometimes. I didn’t mean them to, but I’ve never quite managed to sort my dreams. I’d dream we were talking just like we used to, or sometimes I’d dream all the marvelous things he’d shown me about Miz’rifaezar. Well, one night I dreamed about that first memory he ever showed me, back when Harlan’d had me take the xulle to summon him so I was all funny in the head. The one with the Miz’ri ladies in their robes and the baby at his naming ceremony. That baby sat in one of the fine lady’s laps and everyone smiled and cried and the other lady called him a little glow bug and I’d thought I’d never seen someone so so loved. Then I woke up from the dream. I looked at Harlan asleep next to me and I looked at the room around me and I thought oh by the dead, what am I to do? 

I didn’t do nothing but think at first, and it was hard enough to do that. It’s a stupid thing to suppose, I know, but sometimes I supposed that Harlan could tell when I was thinking things I oughtn’t. And the last time I’d tried to do more than think what I oughtn’t, what had come of it? Mr. Lyness had agreed to invite my husband abroad as I’d begged him to, but Harlan had declined the invitation on account of my poor health and the way my recovery depended on his care. Even when I remembered that failure along with my other failures, I didn’t stop thinking. I thought about a girl who he’d hate as much as he hated me for being weak and womanly and soft and stupid. I thought about a boy who would come to hate me as much as his father did, who I’d try and fail to keep from growing up to be like him. I thought of a child growing up in a home built with the blood money we’d stolen from Solaufein. Me as a mother,  mad as I was, Harlan as a father. I thought about my sister Immy and how she’d grown so lovely, and I thought about that smiling Miz’ri baby who were just a memory now. I thought about either of them knowing a bit of what I’d known as Iraluri Reynfried. And then I’d thought enough. 

I asked it of my maid Laele all casual. Did she happen to know of doctors as’d help women, and did she happen to know what those doctors would take for pay? She was doing my hair when I asked it, and she didn’t so much as drop a pin. I’d figured that she could tell Harlan what I was about if she pleased, or she might refuse to do anything since whatever I did might be traced back to her if she helped me. But I’d seen how she looked at him when he wasn’t looking at her – he’d threatened to dismiss her with nary a reference enough times, shattered things as she’d had to clear up, shouted horrid at her when she failed to please. Ma’am, she said all quiet. There’s pills and such. You could try gin and a hot bath. Or there’s the staircase. I told her no, I didn’t want a baby ever. I could’ve explained that Harlan had made up his mind about the way things were to be with us so it’d just happen again unless I found a way to make sure it couldn’t. I didn’t though, and I didn’t need to. She had an answer for me in two days. 

It was a night that my husband was at the club with his set and I was to be home. I brought spare drawers and the money Laele had pawned for the silver-pearl necklace that Solaufein had untangled for me while we stole from him. Harlan had never known I’d had it to begin with, so I supposed it was the safest thing to pawn. I don’t know if that man was a doctor or not but he took my money sure enough and he did what I paid him to do sure enough. I think I remember him telling me that I needed to look for something called sepsis, but I don’t remember him telling me what to look for. I think I remember the cab driver charging me extra of what I had left from the pawning because I bled on the seat. 

When I woke up again it was to the same nurse as’d been there when I’d hit my head the night of that ball when everything was so terrible and I’d tried to say no. She was the one as’d said Harlan looked so fine in his riding jacket. Well, this time she dropped her knitting needles when I blinked at her, and she said that I’d had a terrible misfortune happen to me. My husband was that worried and wouldn’t I do everything she told me to do to make sure I got back to perfect health? I said yes ma’am I would and she said I was a sweet thing. Mr. Reynfried wanted to see me soon as I woke, she said, and he’d promised to do all he could for me. I knew that he could do all he wanted but I’d done something he could never undo, so I said yes, of course, I wanted to see my husband.