Austin wrapped up the gory sheet that had received the contents of my womb. I felt as if I had been struck all over, equally. Though my thoughts were disordered, I understood that this was the good part. When rational thought came, it would bring suffering of an as yet incalculable size. After what could have been a minute or an hour, Mrs. Austin re-entered the cabin with a bucket, a scrub brush, and some rags. Without giving me so much as a glance, she got on her knees—that good woman, that good, stupid, honest Christian woman—and, with her fat bottom a little higher than her head most of the time, she scoured a place on the floor where a puddle of my blood had left a residue. When she was done and had left, the spot was noticeably cleaner and lighter than the surrounding wood; and when feeling came back to me, it came back first through that tawny light patch, which delivered a stab of grief whenever I looked at it. Gradually, it became a symbol of everything I wished not to think about: of the unborn child and all it would never be; of its absent father, who had spurned us both; of the future that had been proved a silly daydream, the impossible things I had wished for with my poisoned heart’s last ounce of innocence.
