“Wish I could take it back,” they sing. “Would if I could.”
“I would, I would.”
The breath is knocked out of my lungs. My leg instantly turns to concrete. I fall down to the floor again. This time I can’t get back up. If I can just reach the stage. If I can just save her from them. I drag my body along the floor with my arms. Drag myself toward the red lights of the stage, toward the ring of men, still chanting, all working upon the woman at once. I want to speak, to scream, but my throat feels strangled. My head is throbbing with blood.
The audience is clapping fiercely now.
“Help,” I whisper to them. But no one helps. They only applaud. The woman on the table is limp. She’s given up. Surrendered. Her leg is just hanging there. Dead. I can feel its deadness. The men clap one another on the back, applauding themselves. Job well done.
The audience just laughs at me on the floor. Stamps their feet. Black leather and pointed. I feel them pummeling my body with their stamping and clapping as all the lights go out again.
* * *
I stare out at the black. So dark and quiet now. No pain now. Nothing at all now. Black as pitch all around. No, not black as pitch. Some soft glimmer of light coming from somewhere. Pale blue like early morning or evening. Pretty, I think, but I’m afraid. Why am I afraid? The stage underneath me is soft like the softest grass. My fingers clutch what feels like little blades. I smell flowers somewhere. Sweet like spring. Hyacinths. Lilacs. That’s better too. Much better. Flowers. Soft stage. Blue light. Where am I? Still here. I can sense the audience out there in the dark. Still watching me. Fear sharpens. What’s next? Run. Maybe I’ll try to run again. Get out of here. Call someone. Get help. Find Grace. But can I even run? Did the men break me? Now I try to wriggle my toes, easy. Then I try to move my legs, easy. I get up off the floor, and it’s so very easy I nearly cry with relief, with joy. I’m all right! Thank god, thank god, thank god! I’m surprised there is no applause. The audience is dead silent. Waiting.
Run. Run out of this theater and never come back.
But something in the sweetness of the flowers, in the soft blue light, holds me there. I can run, but I’m not running. I’m standing still. Standing there on the soft dark stage, breathing in the flowers. I could breathe them in forever.
And that’s when I hear the sound of a baby crying. Of nursery music. What? Where is that coming from? There’s a bassinet in the center of the stage, under a single blue spotlight. All by itself. I have to go up there. I have to make sure she’s all right. I can’t just leave her alone, not with these animals. I walk to the center of the stage, to the bassinet. I gaze down at the baby shrieking inside. Kicking and batting the air with her tiny hands and feet.
“This is a real baby,” I say.
The audience applauds softly.
“Whose baby is this?” I ask them. “Where did this baby come from?”
They laugh. The baby cries more loudly.
I pick up the baby. She immediately stops crying. I gaze at her face gazing at me. Fat cheeks. Bright eyes. Something familiar about her eyes. Some kind of deep knowledge in my hands that are holding her warm, small body. That seem to know how to hold her. That maybe have held her before. When? In a dream maybe. I stare into her small face still gazing at me, curiously. Who are you? Who left you here by yourself? Is your mother in the audience? Why does my body seem to know who you are?
More lights come back on. I’m in another living room. A living room like any other except for the grass floor. Blue-and-white floral couch. Two red chairs. A piano. Bookcases. Coffee table fanned with baby books, picture books. Flowers everywhere. Flowers growing all around me in the grass floor, fresh cut flowers in vases on the end tables. A family lives here. A happy family.
Where am I? I want to ask. But I feel in my bones that I know this place. Know it just like I knew Grace’s. Better than Grace’s. Why do I know this place? I feel a prickle of fear.
The baby begins to cry again in my arms. She begins to kick at the air with her impossibly small socked feet. I bring her closer to me. A rush of something courses through me. A warm wave. She immediately quiets down.
The audience claps lightly.
“Oh, good. You got her,” says a voice. I turn. Paul. Not Hugo. Paul. Actually Paul. His goldfish hair gleaming under the lights. Coming onto the stage. Coming toward me. Smiling. He’s holding more freshly cut flowers in his hands. He’s looking at me like I still belong to him, like I never hurt him, I never limped out the door. Never wandered past this life into a darkness that swallowed me whole. I still live here. Here in this house I don’t even recognize anymore—it’s been so long. Our house. Outside is a garden where I planted roses, lilacs, irises, my own gothic garden where dogwood and cherry trees grow. Their shade keeps us cool in the evening. Each night, we sit out in the garden holding hands, watching everything we planted bloom.