We walked to the river from the forest in silence, both of us lost in thought. My head ached; I felt as though days had passed since I had pushed past Thea’s front gate.
‘Do you think it will be enough?’ I asked her when we reached the bank.
‘Yes,’ Thea said.
‘When you know, you must come and tell me. I don’t know when I can visit again. I cannot bear to wait. I . . . I feel sick at the thought of it.’
‘I will leave you a sign . . .’ She cast about her, then picked up a smooth stone from the river’s edge. ‘This stone. On the sty gate, so you can see it from your bedroom window.’
‘If you are coming?’
‘Yes.’
‘And if . . .’ I paused. ‘If God will not allow us to remain together . . .’
Thea leaned towards me. ‘It won’t happen.’
‘But if it does?’
‘I’ll leave something else. I’ll tie my headscarf at the same place.’
I took the stone from her, felt the comfort of its weight. ‘And then I will know.’
We fell back into silence, passing the river stone back and forth between us.
‘You will come, won’t you? You will leave a sign telling me if we are to remain together? In this new place . . . this new life . . .’
Thea rested against me. I could feel her breath against my neck and felt rather than heard her response. ‘Yes.’
I could not fall asleep that night. My body took up my mind’s anxiety and I could not keep still, rolling in my blanket until my bedclothes were twisted, fingers worrying at a hole in the mattress until husks spilled out across the sheet. Hermine, perhaps sensing my restlessness, woke often, and when my mother came in to feed her, she placed a hand across my forehead and asked if I was unwell.
‘No,’ I said.
‘You feel warm.’
I leaned into her palm. Part of me wanted to confide in her, but I had the feeling that she already knew of my distress and did not entirely understand it.
‘You picked at your dinner.’
‘I wasn’t hungry.’
Mama sighed in the darkness over the sound of Hermine swallowing. ‘It is a great change,’ she said. ‘It is natural to be nervous about the new life that awaits us.’ She paused. ‘And the journey, too. So long.’
She pulled her hand away to adjust my sister and I lay down, my legs pressed against her warmth. When Hermine fell asleep and Mama carefully laid her in the crib, her hand sought out my forehead once more. I breathed in the smell of baby, of sleep and the caraway seeds that had studded our evening’s bread.
‘Come sew with me,’ she said. ‘We can have some milk.’ When I hesitated she bent down and kissed me. ‘Have faith,’ she whispered. ‘For nothing will be impossible with God.’
That night, relieved to have something else to focus on, I finished the last details on a tablecloth. I shook it out across my lap, noting how the beauty of the pattern only revealed itself at an intimate distance. ‘There is something secretive about whitework,’ I murmured.
Mama shook her head. ‘No, not secretive. Modest.’
‘Why else embroider white thread upon white cloth?’
Mama scraped the ash back into the fire with her clog. ‘It befits the godly woman,’ she said.
We were cocooned against the darkness of the house by the orb of our lamp, absorbed in our work and our thoughts.
‘Thea is like whitework,’ I mused.
‘How so?’ asked Mama. ‘Because of the colour of her hair?’
‘Because you have to draw close to notice her beauty,’ I said. ‘She has little flowers around each pupil, little yellow petals, but the rest of her eye is blue.’
Mama said nothing. When I glanced up, she was giving me a peculiar, searching look.
‘Have you noticed?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said, eyes returning to the work in her lap.
I remember wanting to say more to my mama. I wanted to tell her that there was a small freckle on the side of Thea’s index finger, quite hidden from view. That she had a scar under her ear. I knew it was a burn, a splash of hot oil. I remember realising, in that moment, that I wanted to tell Mama all the strange, small things I found pleasing about Thea, and simultaneously understanding in some deep, un examined way that I must never tell her, that I must hold these tiny things under my tongue and keep them to myself. I did not know what it meant that I had noticed the deep beds of her fingernails, the downy hair that always escaped at her neck. But I knew it meant something. Why else did I stop myself?