The Wedding Night by Harriet Walker (story reading txt) 📕

calming breath and hauled herself upright in the bath, releasing the plug to drain the water as she did so. Dripping onto the already slick tiled floor, she reached for a towel from the hooks on the wall. As she leaned out of the tub and into the line of the reflection in the mirror, which hung above the sink, steam billowed loosely around her body like a diaphanous sheer gown.

That was when she saw what was on the mirror—scanning upward from a trickle that her eyes followed like a delta to its source.

The rectangular mirror had fogged in the warm, damp room. In the obscuring clouds, Effie could see herself in pinkish outline but no longer make out her face. Except in the rivulets that crisscrossed its surface like cracks in dry earth.

The steam had resurfaced a message there, like a cry from the past, memories bubbling upward in the brain. The blaring capitals reminded Effie of those others they had found on Bertie’s pad, which were now etched into the heart of the group. These spoke to her every bit as directly, as though yelled into her face at close range—so much so that she let out a blurt of fright. Not quite Iso’s bloodcurdling scream the night before, but enough to draw footsteps from a group that was already on high alert.

The others padded swiftly from nearby rooms and congregated outside the door.

“You okay, Eff?” Anna’s voice called through its wooden panels, as loud in the small room as if she had burst right in.

“Did you slip?” Lizzie asked anxiously. So she’s awake again.

“I—I—I’m fine,” Effie stuttered, wrapping a towel around herself and wondering whether to wipe the mirror clean.

As she swung the door open and two more sets of eyes alighted on the words, Effie’s heart sank to watch two more faces—Lizzie’s and then Anna’s—visibly blanch at the force of them.

“YOU’RE MINE.”

The letters were warped and streaked in the condensation as though they were melting.

No, that wasn’t quite right, Effie thought: it was as though they were bleeding.

28. Anna

As she walked quickly down the hill away from the house, Anna nervously tied and retied the belt of her green jersey dress in a jerky knot. Her hands shook and her heart was still thumping from the message in the mirror, summoned in the steam like a spirit during a séance.

Anna did not know for sure who had left it there, angry prodding fingers squeaking against the glass as they scrawled, but she had an idea.

Anna didn’t want any of this in her head. She’d never asked for it.

How she wished she hadn’t seen what she had on the wedding night.

How she wished they would just admit what they had done.

When she had walked far enough down the field to be out of sight of the rest of the house, Anna sat heavily and stared at the countryside spread out like a blanket in front of her. She felt Sonny’s absence in her empty arms and wrapped them around her knees. The almond-shaped face of her antique gold watch told her it was six p.m. at home.

He would be in his high chair—an ergonomic Danish variety that had come with enough promises of health benefits that she half-expected it to raise him for her. By this point in the meal, he would no doubt be covered in whatever he had nodded regal acquiescence to for dinner that night. He had this haughty expression sometimes, one that made her either laugh indulgently at the little prince she had created or want to scream, depending on her mood and his.

Anna recognized the total confidence of the well-cared-for child—the unquestioning knowledge that whatever he wanted he would get—in some of the male partners in her office. Then she worried she was raising another of them.

Nobody had taught her how to be a mother; Anna had simply found herself approximating one, as she had done in the playhouse her parents had given her on her sixth birthday. Back then, the power of make-believe had given her a sense of purpose: sweeping and dusting, stocking imaginary cupboards, cooking invisible meals. Now, as she did it all for real, she ran purely on fear and guilt. Fear that she was doing it wrong; guilt that she wasn’t doing enough. (These days, she outsourced the sweeping and dusting to another woman, and felt dreadful about that too.)

Her and Steve’s fridge had gone from empty but for beer, wine, milk, and a piece of cheese to one that was filled with fresh fruit and vegetables. Their bedtime had crept forward from midnight to nine p.m. They worked, ate, and slept, and in between they absorbed Sonny’s love like essential nutrients when he was happy so that they might better bear the drudgery when he was not.

Anna used Tupperware now. She cooked things and froze them in portions that were perfectly calibrated to line Sonny’s tiny stomach, so small they stacked in the freezer like plastic matchboxes. She had a laundry day—several actually, spread out across the week like some protracted purgatorial punishment—when she separated and folded like an old-fashioned washerwoman. She was grateful not to have had to master a mangle or a washboard or strong lye soap, but she reflected that, for those women, this had been their actual job, as opposed to something they did in their supposed leisure time.

They didn’t have any leisure time; be more grateful.

This last was a constant refrain. Grateful for Sonny but also for the chance—the opportunity!—to work. Grateful for her salary, two-thirds of which went to the house and the rest to childcare she was unable to provide in person while she was earning it. And grateful to Steve—always, and reminded of it constantly by her friends—for the simple fact that he helped her at all.

Sometimes Anna felt so grateful she wanted to scream.

She had bought a sewing kit online recently, after she found a hole in one of