crosses and the Bibles.
Is this an exorcism? I asked Jenny.
She must have heard me, because she lifted her left index finger and wrote a letter Y in the air.
“What’s she doing with her finger?” one of the ladies whispered.
I wanted to slap those stupid women, but I remembered my promise to be careful. There’s nothing wrong with you, I whispered to Jenny. In case she couldn’t hear me, I wrote on her arm: no fear.
“Deliver us, O mighty God, from all evil,” the woman with the pitcher intoned. She dipped her fingertips in the pitcher and lifted them out, dripping with water. She flicked an angry splash into Jenny’s chest.
“Deliver us,” the ladies chanted, “O mighty God, from all evil.”
I drew the shape of a heart on the back on Jenny’s hand and felt her relax a bit more, just enough to take in another slow breath. Her spirit was still weighed down, though. Even if she agreed with me that there was nothing to fear in the room, something on the inside of her was holding her captive.
Are you still frightened? I asked her.
She nodded.
“She’s agreeing,” said one of the women.
Jenny lifted her finger and painted the air with a Y. But she was answering my question, not agreeing with the text of the ceremony.
I stood in front of Jenny’s chair, right beside the woman with the pitcher of water. I held my hand out to Jenny and said, Take me to see what frightens you.
To my surprise, Jenny’s chin began to quiver. She still had her eyes closed, but she turned toward me, I knew it. She shook her head no.
“She’s saying no,” one of the women whispered.
The woman with the pitcher hushed this woman.
When James was afraid to remember what had happened at his death, I had gone with him into the memory and witnessed his most painful moment—I wanted to do the same with Jenny, but she was scared.
Take hold of me, I told her. I leaned down and wrote on her arm: Show me.
“Drive out all unclean spirits,” the woman beside me chanted.
I ignored her and held out my hand to Jenny. We’ll look together, I told Jenny.
Still she shook her head.
It’s easy, I told her. Like the flood I showed you. That was my hell.
I decided to show her my own scars again before demanding to see her wounds.
I reached down and slipped my hand into hers, lifting her mind into my memory. My death scene closed around us, the flood was up to our chins. Jenny’s spirit appeared with me in this reimagining of my death. She held my hand tightly and opened her eyes. She turned to me, astonished, shivering. The scene was active again—time had found its legs again.
Look, I whispered. I pointed to the hole in the cellar door, no bigger than a cat, and showed her my daughter’s tiny fingers holding the jagged wood and then disappearing. There was a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning. We heard my baby shriek, which made Jenny cover her ears.
It’s all right, I told her.
Jenny tilted her head back, trying to keep her face above the surface. She spit out a mouthful of water that sloshed over her chin. Finally the flood overtook us completely. We stared at each other through the dark water.
In that moment, seeing the reflection of my face in Jenny’s eyes, a tiny angel in the blackness, seeing Jenny’s willingness to stare into the face of a ghost, I was changed. My hell was reimagined. I no longer dwelt on how terrified my baby must have been to leave me in the cellar and escape. Instead I was overwhelmed with pride—my baby had run away from death and saved her own life.
I thought I killed her, I told Jenny, but look . . .
I pulled her by the hand up through the cellar roof and higher, to the top of the house’s roof, where we sat in the remembered storm and watched what I’d never been able to see before: my little girl making her way to safety. Whether I was imagining it or whether we were somehow able to look back at what really happened, I didn’t know. But what a brave girl she was, picking herself up twice when she slipped in the mud, crying to wake the dead but still marching up the road, holding on to fence posts and blowing clumps of weeds, calling for help, not in words, but with all