“Were they taken apart like this? But they seemed to be able to function after, though I couldn’t imagine how we would. We clung to each other. After a while I started to cry. Annalise held me. “‘In the book,’ she said, ‘they say that after fucking one is omnivorously sad.’ “‘It’s not that.’ “‘What then?’ “‘It’s so easy for you.’ “‘Easy?’ She looked at me and her grin slipped off, right off into nowhere. ‘Easy? We could die of this. Don’t you feel it? Right now, we could be dying of each other. How do you think that feels, when I could be thrown out like garbage any day? And you, you are the heir to everything.’ “She had never talked about it before. Now I was so far into my own fear that it took me time to realize they were the same fears. We lay in silence, holding each other tight, until I caught up to it and passed ahead. “‘How can she hurt them?’ I said finally. ‘What if…?’ “‘You are not her,’ said Annalise, which she had said before, but now, she took my shoulders fiercely and held me so she could look into my face. ‘You are not hers,’ she said. The difference was immense, and she struck my fear away easily. I was washed with gratitude, relief. ‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘You never cry.’ “‘I never knew stuff before,’ I said. ‘How this changes everything. How it’s full of fear. In the books I read, it’s full of joy. In the books you read, it shows you how to put your hands into me and pull my heart out.’ “‘Poor princess,’ she said. ‘And what have you done with mine heart? You have eaten it all up.’ “After that we were shy and had to start to make stupid jokes, though I could not imagine ever seeing the light of day again, I felt so different.” LoveFearFriendshipHealingTraumaDevotion Book:Black Wine Source: Black Wine
“Until now I didn’t dare say anything like the word ‘home,’ though when I saw this valley, I thought I must stay here. It is too perilous to hope for something as impossible as a home, and we both know it.… There will come a time when it is all shattered—by something we find out that makes us realise we are living in fool’s heaven, or by something—or someone—from outside, bringing our past along to catch us. It’s bound to happen. It’s only a matter of time.… “Can’t seem to forget the time when I was a child that I had my nanny beaten because she—I can’t remember. She never came back. I thought she died of it. She was old. All I remember is my triumph. This was my world and I knew how to manage it. My grandmother gave me a present then…I have it with me still. Brought it to remind myself that I am what I despise. Or have been. That kind of blood doesn’t wash off. “I have wondered why I stay alive. I ran away. I stayed away. I told myself there was nothing I could do. I just survive to spite them, to make them fear something at least. Certainly not because I love myself as they seem to do here, without lives and torture on their conscience. What does it mean to be good? Everywhere I go there is a different answer. * “I am tired of the pain of this. There are people all around me in these mountain towns who have not had a life of such pain. I am starting to hate on account of it. Hate them for their happiness. Hate my family, even my parents, for the kind of world they made and live in. Hate myself, I suppose, too, for being trapped here. In these mountains, in this body, in this life. “I cannot imagine, right now, why I stay alive. I never questioned it in the years of struggle: life justified itself. But now that I am safe and sitting in these gardens, living in these easy households, playing with these carefree children, I cannot bear to live like this. I am a twisted creature without merit.… “But here in the mountains they have names for the things I want to become: happy, secure, gentle, kind, good.… “Can someone so hurt—here they call it ‘abused’—be good?” FearHealingChildhoodAbuseTraumaPtsd Book:Black Wine Source: Black Wine
“Never mind,’ says the old woman. ‘It won’t hurt for long. You’ll go crazy, or they’ll hang you. Easy as that, really.” AgeCrazyYouthMadnessMurderFeministTrauma Book:Black Wine Source: Black Wine
“It’s about…’ but there isn’t a word for it in a language he knows. “He makes the sign again, two hands intertwined. “‘Fucking?’ “His face darkens. He makes the sign for fucking. It is different. He pushes his hands away and apart. Then he says, =Not fucking. That we have to do for them. Something we do for ourselves. Because we—= and he makes a strange sign, which she does not understand, then spells it out, *love*, repeating afterward his hands-on-heart sign. “=Do we ‘love’?= she signs back, because she doesn’t know a word for it in the spoken language he knows.… “She pulls off her shift and sits naked before him. He puts a hand up, halfway. Her hand meets his. Later she is not sure who first pulled the other closer, even though it all happens very slowly.… “Suddenly, an unfamiliar and terrifying feeling mounts through her belly to the top of her head. It seems to spread in circles, like the concentric circles at the servants’ ritual, but spreads and spreads. She cries out, ‘What is it?’ but her voice is wild and she doesn’t know what language she has used. Suddenly she cannot bear his hand any more: she clasps it to her belly and pushes against him and he comes into her harder, comes with a ragged shout of his own which he later tells her would have been words if he hadn’t, so many years ago, had his words stolen away. “They lie down then, touching over more surface than she has touched anyone in her short life, and sleep entangled like his fingers were when he made the sign for this, for whatever this has been, this that they have done together.” LoveSexHealingTrauma Book:Black Wine Source: Black Wine
“What in heaven’s name do you mean?’ “=Not the name of heaven. Just the place you come from.= “‘You don’t know anything about the place I come from.’ “=It is true I don’t know the place. But I know a great deal about the place now, after learning to know you. I know what kind of stories—not the stories themselves, mind you, but the kind of stories—they tell their children. I know what the children are led to expect from the world. Fair treatment. A happy life. Even that question you ask comes out of the mountains.= “‘Is there anything wrong with that? You make it look stupid.’ “=There is nothing wrong, and there is something wrong. There is nothing wrong with making a place where children can be safe. I can hardly imagine it myself, but it sits on the edge of my vision like a small sun. It’s a blinding glimpse of something. Safety. So very odd. And I suppose there’s nothing wrong with a modicum of safety, though I think my way one at least learns how to react quickly. But there is something wrong in the kind of complacency…= his sign is complicated: a cat after cream, a fat despot =…which lets you think you have a right to a happy life just because you can think of the idea.= “‘I don’t agree with you. Everyone should be able to be complacent in that way!’ As she speaks she illustrates the way by repeating the cat-with-cream sign. ‘But that other, that arrogance, I don’t think we are arrogant, in the mountains, like that—do you?’ “=Arrogant? I don’t know. Arrogant? A curious word. The arrogance of privilege. You had safety. That’s a privilege.=” ChildhoodAbuseSafetyPrivilegeTrauma Book:Black Wine Source: Black Wine