“I’m so sorry, my love. It is the same for all women.”
“If you were stone, I would chisel them off,” he said. Then he turned and left, and after a little while the doctor came with the tea.
THE THING IS, I don’t think my husband expected me to be able to talk. I don’t blame him for this exactly, since he had known me only as a statue, pure and beautiful and yielding to his art. Naturally, when he wished me to live, that’s what he wanted still, only warm so that he might fuck me. But it does seem foolish that he didn’t think it through, how I could not both live and still be a statue. I have only been born for eleven years, and even I know that.
I conceived that very first time, a moment after I was born. And though I had been stone, and though the goddess made me, my pregnancy was real enough, and I was tired and sick and my feet were too swollen for the delicate golden sandals he liked to see them in. It made him angry, but it did not stop him from pushing me onto the bed or up against the wall, and I worried that because of it I would have not one child, but a whole litter, like the cats in the street.
My daughter was beautiful and stone-pale and born in a summer that was so viciously hot the calves died in the fields. But she and I were always perfectly cool, rocking in our chair together. When we would go walking, everyone whispered but no one would speak to us, except once an old woman touched Paphos’ foot and asked for my blessing. I murmured something, and she touched my arm in thanks. Her fingers were strange, like twigs on bare trees, but her skin was very soft.
Sometimes, when my husband was working, we were allowed to go as far as the hillsides. Paphos was older by then, and she would pretend to be a shepherd and I would pretend to be her sheep. She liked that. She liked it even better when I was a goat, and leapt barefoot from rock to rock, and never wobbled. When she got older still, I insisted on a tutor, though my husband thought that would ruin her. No, I said, she will be useful to her husband, as I am not. And he had smiled at me. You are useful enough. But he hired the tutor in the end, because I fawned on him every time he mentioned it.
In the countryside, Paphos would teach me. Look, she would say, you can use sticks for the letters, and I would say, But some of them are round. And she frowned and said, You’re right, shall we go to the beach and use sand? So we did, and it was better than sticks, and even better than the tutor’s tablet, because the sea washed it for you. She was a smart girl, very smart, and I didn’t have to tell her to say nothing to her father.
At night, my husband sent her to bed. He would say, “And you too, wife, are you not sleepy?” And I would know it was time to go arrange myself in bed so that we might pretend again that I was waking from the stone to him.
When Paphos was eight, he sent the tutor away. “He was looking at you,” he said to me.
I was distracted that day, thinking of Paphos and the letters, and I said, “Of course he was.” Everyone looked at me, because I was the most beautiful woman in the town. I don’t say this to boast, because there is nothing in it to boast of. It was nothing I did myself.
My husband stared at me, and said, “You knew?”
I tried to explain, but it was too late. We were not allowed to walk anymore, and Paphos was given a governess instead of a tutor, and her tablets were taken away, and during the days my husband sulked over his marble and did not work. At night, he was rougher than he had been and would not stop asking, Would you be like the rest of them? And I knew to say No, no, darling, never.
Paphos was impatient—she hated our house and wanted our old adventures in the country. She wasn’t quiet when her father wished to brood, which was always, and as the days passed she grew more impatient still. I took her to our room and we made the letters with our fingers. She was laughing, and I was too, and we did not know how loud we were.
My husband came to the doorway. “Why are you laughing?”
Paphos said, “Why not?” She was taller than the other girls, and long-limbed. She wasn’t afraid of him.
I said, “Darling, I’m so sorry we disturbed you.”
“She does not say she is sorry.”
“She is still a baby,” I said.
“I’m not a baby,” Paphos said.
“Then apologize,” he said.
“You poor thing, you look half-starved,” I said to him. “Have you not eaten? Paphos, sweetheart, let me talk to your father a moment.”
She left, and I saw him grind his teeth at how obediently she did it. He said, “You love her more than me.”