Beth Brown
Editor’s note—this selection is an excerpt from a novel called Saint Jane, which will be published in 2025
It was your idea, Jennie, the séance, amidst the high tide, white caps, the maddening, wild gusts of wind; the match refused to stay lit, and we’d burst out in feigned anger and hysteria, rush to the edge of the water and retreat, fists raised and aimed at the water gods, possessed. The adults circled the bonfire, dark shapes in a blood orange glow, the blaze of flames, the crackle of wood, the leaping, lashing, tongues, the embers wafting, a cacophony of shrieks and hysteria, the frenetic delirium, crazed spirits in the night. You were incensed, Jennie, trying to organize, eager to catch a glimpse of a father you lost before you could crawl, convinced you saw him in an upstairs window of the cottage. John agreed, just to placate, as he never liked seances, or anything of supernatural origins. I preferred not to join hands on this particular night. I stood at the edge of the water, besieged, bewildered, before being lured away to the creek by some ethereal force. I would have walked past the fire, trancelike, barely cognizant of the clinking bottles and glasses, the belligerent bellows, a call out to me, just before scaling the jetty to arrive at the creek. I have no memory of it, or falling over the side, only the revival and transformation. I was declared dead by paramedics, and then resurrected. John dismissed it. You were resigned.
Now I hear the creak on the attic stairs!
***
I was right. It was John, as I suspected. He only stayed but a few minutes to tell me he'd be with patients and Maribel would be here for me. John noticed the journal and inquired, seeming perturbed, but, thankfully, Maribel interrupted with breakfast. He gave me a peck on the cheek and he was gone. Just hearing the door close dampens my spirits.
I should be content here in the attic, our hideaway, Jennie, and once our favorite place to be, and John did touch it up so nicely, so I shouldn’t complain.
I need to eat. Maribel records my meals.
***
I’m weak, Jennie, and lacking, and thirsty for us, for our childhood. I want to be humbled. I want to be courageous, anything but this. I’ve fallen short, Jennie. I’m falling, a slow descent, alien to myself, teetering on the edge of a precipice. John has me here propped up in bed, lonely and vacuous. I forgive him. I do. He tries, and I love him, dearly, but he tells me I’m sick and taxed. Rest, Jane. Rest, he insists, and he’s caring and was careful not to disrupt the steam trunk full of our dress-up clothes, and the bookshelf we painted with stencils of rabbits, birds, ferns, and flowers, all of which sadden me.
***
Today John surprised me with lunch. I felt brazen, tempted to speak my mind, insist he move me to the downstairs bedroom, closer to the Sound.
I confess, Jennie, love tethers me, weakens me. I can barely speak in your brother’s presence. He set the broom in the closet, and I became subdued, silenced, reminded of how he places me here or there. Am I not more than a broom? Oh, the simplicity of a broom, unfettered, unthinking. In my final week, the baby has sapped my energies. Get some rest, he says. Promise me. I promise. I promise. But I’m unable to clear my mind. I’m at my worst, Jennie. I don’t know that I trust him like I should. He claims my issues are hormonal, of a physiological origin. I want to trust him. But my soul feels depleted and restless.
***
Oh, time ticks away. Soon. Soon. Jennie. Senses are heightened. I should be prostate, thankful. Instead, I’m despairing. It was the fall. I was in such a hurry that morning. It was Just one slip, and I went down on my back. One slip down the stairs was all it took. My soul thirsts for the sensual pleasures. I confess, as much as I love him, John can be somewhat obsessive and boorish in his ways. He's convinced it's a necessary arrangement for me, and the one time in my life I should feel doted on and unfettered from daily toils and worries. And he always adds how it’s best for the baby. It’s only for a week or so. And I wonder why it bothers me so, my submission, my resignation, my obedience, my willingness to stay here. Once we loved our hideaway, Jennie, to be away from the sea, but not too far. If you were here, I know I’d be okay and I wouldn’t feel so far from the Sound and the sand and the jetty, which is abstract and distant and muffled, so much so I forget where I am.
***
My mind roams, unguarded, to strangeness, to oddities. I consider the barnacles stuck to the rocks, satiated in their soulless state, and I envy them, and the crabs hiding between the rocks, then I fall into deep meditation and succumb to phantoms of the mind. I envision two versions of John. The John before the pregnancy. The John now. And the times before John, before the marriage, and the pregnancy, when we were unblemished and the sand was everything and we buried each other’s feet in the sand. I’d lift my toes and the sand cracked, and it was like an earthquake, the tectonic plates shifting, ancient times, the reorganizing times, and the desire to bask in it, in the power of it, the small dominion, the breaking apart. We had endless time, Jennie, endless. We had time to ponder the number of mountains beneath our soft, unmarred feet, to suspend time, to consider the smoothing downy way about it moving over our skin.
I don’t doubt his love for me. I watch him when he’s not aware. He takes to sitting in the wicker chair by the bookshelf, one leg folded over the other. He has a perpetual habit of lifting his chin, aiming it at the window as if to catch the sun. A beam of sunlight touches the top of his head and the side of his face. And his hands…oh, how adorable his hands, the way he moves one so deftly along the spine of books, pausing, now, as if a bird as caught his eye, or some soaring spectacle. It’s as if he’s trapped within himself, his soul crying for release, the old John, the one I long for now.
How long will you stay with me, John? How long will I wait for your return?
***
Oh, I take it all back, Jennie. I rescind my earlier comments. Give me fire to burn these words, these unholy pages! Oh, the doubt that depletes me, wears at my soul! It’s John, all John sustaining me with just a light touch and cool lips pressed against mine, And his hand, ah, the healing hand that mends and revives so many dying hearts and minds. I ached to grab his hand, Jennie, to keep him, and he intuited my insatiable need, and he said, I love you, Jane, and he said it, what I suspected all along, how he’s saddened and worried, very worried. He says I’m taxed. He’s right. I’m depleted, worn, wasted. Yet, I assured him I’m fine. But then he patted my stomach, and I caught it, the furrowed brow, and I’m troubled…intensely troubled.
***
A dark pall lingers about me. How can one fall so horribly? I’m rooted, grounded, bedridden, pained, breathless, all carnality. If I should fall asleep, I wake soaked, trembling at some foreign entity. Dark shapes, serpentine and ungodly, swirl and dance about me. I want to believe it’s a holy divination, a testing of sorts commissioned by God. But if it were His doings, why should I be so unsettled? How long? How long? Below me the waves are a watery rage, breaking in fitful ways. And I wait for sunrise, for the tides to turn, for the lull. I wait an interminable amount of time, while the tumult persists, and then morphs in my imaginings, and it is no longer the tide and breaking waves but a plane, plummeting, bellowing, the hollow sound of descent, a whale’s cry as it careens downward, a sinister leviathan, a metal bird aimed at the attic, predatorily, intending to seer off the top of the cottage, taking the attic in its talons. And to think once the Sound was music, pacifying, lulling me to blissful sleep—all trickery! I try to turn away from the fecundity, from the slosh and the mire of temptation, the lustful and maligned, and well I should. I will my eyes upward to escape the steamy vapors; the marsh moans in protest, moans and wails like souls stewing and bubbling up to the surface, and I gasp for air, my mouth opening in a silent howl, an eternal agony affixing to my face.
Outside, the wind whips furiously against the mad rush of water. All I can do is pray, Jennie. Oh, merciful God, free me from the wiles of my enemies, from those who seek to ruin my soul!
***
I see it now, Jennie—the wallpaper. It hangs in strips, hangs like peeling flesh. How is it I didn’t notice? It’s worse than I recall, dingier from decades of dank air. The one window is nailed shut due to some longstanding issue with critters gnawing the wires. All is outdone by the decadence of the wallpaper. It’s peeling more aggressively, hanging more horridly.
***
The unborn screams to be born. I feel it in waves of pain. I freeze, lest I move and it stops my breath, my heart, and ends me. If only I could tell you, Jennie. You’re my confessor, my confidante. I yearn to tell you how my soul aches from the pain. I’ll give birth any day now, God’s creature, and all I desire is the raft, the silence, the whistle of air from our noses, the soft breaths, and I’d confess to you now, if I could, how alone, how scared, the fear I have for the baby inside me, and, oh, how it loathes me, kicks me, fiercely, sharply as if it detests its prison-like womb.
Soon, it will come. Soon, John says, and Maribel nods her head, solemn in her eyes and mouth. Even she is affected. She hides her hair behind a scarf. Her wrinkled eyes are glazed. Such strange solemnity, as if from a secret, something unholy and dark when these times should be revered and joyous. And if you were here with me, Jennie, it would be as it should be, joyous, a time of elation, celebration.
Oh, Jennie! I can hear you in my head, my counsel, my spirit, saying chin up, and you have your family, and John loves you. Yes, and he does care. I can tell in the way he tends to me, and gives me a pill or two to sleep. I resist falling asleep, where once I’d craved it. I like to imagine you in a swirl of aquamarine waters, the South Pacific, the Galapagos and Easter Island, exotic places, the shimmer of colors, the trillions of coral and sea creatures of magnificent form, ones I can’t now define, and the glow of a purer sun than mine. My waters are murky, darker, colder. We wanted so badly to see our feet, remember? Do you think of me? I took two white pills, and now I’m lax, sluggish, and soon enough I’ll return, against my wishes, to sleep, to the marsh and mire.
***
The foghorn bellows a long slow cry, as if to ask, where, in a new voice, lifeless, flat against the thick grass, and the silence afterwards is forlorn.
Time is endless, incalculable in this attic. My mind roams, and I conjure up the wet and grass until it binds my mind, my hands, my feet. Beyond the marsh and grass is a dense fog. Directly in front is the tall cordgrass, swaying, as if parted by a creature of ungodly stature and gait.
Now it’s John at the door, and the howling wind, the piercing pain, the crack of old wood and glass panes.
I asked about the nursery, and he said it’s lovely.
I should go. I should go. I envision the descent, my body wracked and reeling, the creak of the stairs, traversing the labyrinth-like space. John assured me a few more days. When he left, I rubbed my stomach, felt a tiny heel kick my side, and it dawned on me, soon enough I’ll be pushing a life out of me, the flesh and bones, the sinew, the screams, a blast of atoms. I want to be far from myself, far from this attic, to find new air, like you, Jennie. Even you knew it was best to move far away from here. John tried to make it brighter, added a fresh coat of paint along the molding and in other parts. But the wallpaper remains, taunting me with its sickly, yellow pall, the faded, stale yellow with its indiscernible patterns and shapes. A soul aches for symmetry. I should suffer the ills of others. I should suffer the torments like the Passion. I should delve into the pattern, into the swelling yellow and swim in the madness. With each jolt of pain, it seems to intensify, enlarge itself on my retinas, weave here and there, infinitely, in a sort of forlorn and lost way. I know too well the despair of the wallpaper. I so wish you could be here with me to see it. But you’re with Maxwell, assuaged by the tides. You noticed it first, Jennie. You made me hate it, too. You were compelled to pick at it, to peel it, whenever we were plotting or dreaming. We were naïve, unsuspecting.
How a place can change in gruesome ways. Where once it was a refuge from storms and sand and sea, our blessed hideaway, a respite from the relentless scratch of sand and shells, the rough weather and crash of waves, the grating sneers of adults. We’d wait for John. He’d come get us. And the look in his eyes, envy, and something else. I still wait for John. I wait and wait. The wallpaper knows, as if it’s sentient.
Now the pain again. It’s time. Like he says, almost time, Jane. I pray you’ll come to me, Jennie. I don’t like his eyes when he says, almost time.
***
Oh, Jennie! Now I’m crippled by pain. Maribel brings me more of the pills. I don’t mind her scarf so much. And I can sleep, dreamless.
The pains are closer together…a sharp one throttles me, brings on an array, a kaleidoscope of reds and violets and yellows, all shades. I hear, Maribel say, Jane, it’s time. Breathe.
***
I slept on the floor, Jennie. The wallpaper was teeming with centipedes and fat beetles creeping out of every crevice. Repulsed, I lunged at it and scraped and clawed at it, and the bugs crawled on my hands and up my arms and in my hair and one in my ear, and when I swatted at it, I fell backwards onto the ground. I stayed there, Jennie, considered creation, the variety of things, the multitude, the beauty and the light and the fixtures, all things made for us. And I thought of you, Jennie, After warming ourselves by the fire, when the morning fog lifted, and the seagulls screeched overhead, and our raft bobbed up and down over the waves, and we watched the light play off all forms, the jetty, the cottages, the shore, the hairs on our heads, our arms. I’d go alone, drift off into the silence, past the dock, past the jetty, to vast places beyond the smallness, and you’d stayed back on the shore, fading faster, mouth open in a howl, arms gyrating, frantically, as if to lose me would be to lose your soul.
The pain returns, sharp and relentless, and I’m breathless.
I was in and out. I heard them on the stairs like a thundering herd.
***
It’s done. An oddness pervades. Mirabal leaves food on trays and sneers. The silence is palpable. My eyes rest on the wallpaper. It peels and flakes and mocks and swirls, pointed and sharp like fangs. I’m easier prey now. The sacred is out of me. It could eat me if it wanted. It could take me into its folds, ravage me. Yet, I’m numb but for the paper, mesmerizing, bewitching. I’ve taken to staring at it for inordinate amounts of time. God’s wrath is upon me. I’m in purgatory awaiting judgement. Women die from childbirth. Am I dead, Jennie? It happens. But then how could it be that I’m still here in such a physical state, reeling from aches and pains.
***
Jennie something is terribly wrong. John came to me and stood over me with a bundle in his arms and said, Our baby girl, Jane. Look what you did, Jane. Look what you did.
I covered my eyes. I couldn’t look. I shook, uncontrollably.
What did I do, Jennie? I asked but my voice quivered. He stared back at me, puzzled, and then I heard screams from him, or me, or somewhere, and they were like the screams of agony from an unthinkable region, one in which I’d never been, one in which I’m sure, in short time, I’ll be sent to. What did I do? He stepped back towards the door, clutching the bundle, horror painted on his face, and I imagined how I must appear to him, disfigured, maligned, revolting, and I shrunk further into myself and for something I can’t fathom. It is not for me to know what God has in store for me.
He left me, and now it’s the final wrung, Jennie, and I feel it taking hold, a slight inkling, an itch, like a slight fever, a chill at the base of my neck working its way down. It will never be as it once was before the deed, whatever it was I did.
***
Oh, Jennie, I have news! I was so wrong! Helen is alive and perfectly healthy! John blamed it on my pills and hormone fluctuations. I fed her for the first time. I allowed her to cling, tug, pull from me a source of milky life.
He sat across from us in the wicker chair. All is not well. He worries. I think maybe it’s from some involuntary countenance.
I’ll be back, he said, standing, abruptly. Maribel will sit with you.
I apologized.
No, stop, darling, he said, and It’s not your fault. I love you. You know that, right?.
Yes. Of course, I told him. I love you too! And I do, Jennie. I do love him.
He kissed my cheek and moved my hair away from my face, so gently, and it thrilled me.
Motherhood is pure bliss.
***
Bliss is fleeting, Jennie. The wallpaper has ruined me. I heard a rustling and looked over at it. Soon after, Helen became distraught and pulled away. I hugged her tightly to me and apologized, profusely. At that point, John was at my side, prying her out of my arms, telling me I needed to rest, and she’s had enough to eat, and anything he could say get her away from me.
***
I’m so relieved, Jennie. He brought her to me. I tried, Jennie. I tried to keep my eyes fixed on her, despite the dark presence, the pricking of a presence of the wallpaper. It watches me and waits for me to notice. If I’m brave enough, I glance over at it, but only when Helen is not with me. I try to see beneath and am convinced it’s an anomaly, cleverly orchestrated. The lines move and twist, as if they are tangling themselves, purposefully, to confuse me. I’ve considered there’s a catalyst, some force within it, compelling it, feeding it.
***
Jennie, I’m taking every precaution. I tacked a sheet up over the wallpaper. When Helen is brought to me for feedings, I keep her hidden beneath the blankets, lightly enough so she can breathe, of course. I need to protect her from all evil. She’s easy prey and so small and helpless. She nurses voraciously, and is pure and angelic and rarely makes a whimper. If she does, I hum to her and she calms right away.
***
A heavy presence feasted itself onto her and worked its way into the purest interiors of her essence. I could see it in her eyes, the way they popped open from their quiet slumber. I thought I was clever in covering up the wallpaper. I was no match for it. I was foolish to think I could eliminate the darkness. When Maribel initially placed Helen into my arms, all anxieties melted and my heart softened. Yet some unearthly force compelled me to look at the sheet, and that’s when I noticed it move, ever so slightly, as if a breeze caught it. I attributed it to the door shutting and returned my eyes to Helen, settled into feeding. I was enamored by her soft, rounded cheeks, her tiny fingers, the downy tuft of hair on her head, skin so translucent showing tiny veins carrying fresh, rich blood. Oh, my beautiful Helen, I muttered, and she seemed to purr with delight. But then the slight brush of air, and I was drawn to the sheet. And this time it was undeniable, the way it blew outward, billowed as from some invisible, vile gust.
***
After Maribel took Helen, I settled my gaze on the pattern, seeking to understand it. Jennie, it consumes me, reminds me, a thorn pricking me, my broken cistern, my shameful iniquities blazing, exposing, glaring back at me in unholy eyes of fire. Jennie, I pray you hear these words in your soul.
***
Maribel brought her to me, crying. She latched on quickly and she drifted off to sleep. But too soon she woke. Poor Helen, the look on her face, the wide-eyes were too much to bear. Her cries pierced my soul. Maribel rushed in and pried her out of my arms, insisting she take my sweet, Helen, as if I meant her harm. I’m overcome, distraught, and some part of my psyche realizes my fears are irrational, go against all physical logic. Oh, if I could think like John, be John. But who can deny the ways of the apostate angels, the militant, relentless, immortal, thriving on pain and suffering. Maybe when we were young and unsuspecting, Jennie, when our souls were unmarred, it crept beneath the walls, waiting for the right moment. Maybe that’s why I’m back here to suffer for it.
***
I see it now, strips sway in strange motion. How can it be when the window is nailed shut and there is no breeze? Air moving of its own accord. An invisible strangeness, illogical, disordered, of an apostate angel’s nature, one that basks in the impurity of chaos. I should rip the paper off. But I’m weak, shaking. I hear Helen crying somewhere beneath it. Do they have her? No. No. It’s not right. I need to remain very still, quiet, unthinking, lest my imaginings take hold. Oh, Jennie, I pray the soul-driven purpose of these words reach you and like a prayer of sorts, inebriated with the divine, protected, pierce your soul, and compel you to sail home.
The air is still but falsely calm, tainted with an insidious source, one who hides and pounces, disguises itself in earthly costumes. It traverses within the patterns compassed by a sick yellow, a desperate flicker of light, weakened in ways, as if it would douse itself if it were able. The lines are sharply defined and bold like deep carvings, and they’re sprawled out in optical horror as if piercing one’s soul is the main intent. I can only imagine what is beneath, the malefactor, the entities hiding in the wallpaper.
I must always be on high alert.
***
I feel as if days have passed since I last saw Helen. When I inquired, Maribel stared back, strangely, with a sort of pity. Perhaps I’m slipping down into the abyss, to that dark night, where light is hidden, where the soul is purged of all senses and pleasures, where I’ll lose all hope and all track of time, so that it will seem, for me, an eternal despair, where the soul is emptied.
I hear her small whimpering in the stairwell.
***
She never came. I imagined it. The room is dark and the sheet has fallen. The wallpaper blows, erratically, insultingly, as if it intuits my desire for purity. The resistance will be fierce, I expect. I should be armed with the shield of prayer and faith. Instead I’m weak, left with residue of verses and faint inclinations. I’m all physical, tethered to my aches and pains and emotions. The tiniest flutter of the paper sends me reeling.
When will I see her?
***
Maribel hides her hair. Her gaze is averted. She speaks to me it’s in hushed tones. I think she fears me, but what she really fears is the evil source behind the wall. It’s saturating the perimeter of the room, spilling out into all corners. I noticed the window, too, is milky, opaque, as if from a perpetual fog. When I inquired, Maribel said not to fret about those matters. Is it my soul? Am I simply ruined? Am I being forewarned like some presage? Once we were young, Jennie, untethered, unblemished. Now I’m abandoned, left to crawl along the floors of this dark cavern.
Now lumbering footsteps.
***
He brought her to me, Jennie! My sweet, sweet Helen! Her cheeks were flushed and her skin like lamb’s ears, and she smelled like the most fragrant flowers, roses or hyacinths come to mind. I’m convinced she’s impervious to all evil energies. And she was completely content in my arms, and latched on, immediately. My love for her is boundless, and it compelled me to speak my mind. Yes, Jennie. I confessed to John. I told him I was done resting and was ready to be with her. I explained how it can’t be true, as I can’t recall a fever or any kind of ailment that would be contagious enough to keep me from my baby. I demanded to be closer to Helen. I did it, Jennie. And John was patient with me. When I finished my soul felt lighter. And even the window cleared and a ray of sun shone in and settled on the foot of my bed, as if a power returned to me, a divinity manifesting. John apologized, said he understood and that he’d make sure Maribel was bringing Helen to me for feedings. And he even tacked the sheet up for me. Oddly, he seemed somber, and even put his hand to his cheek as if wiping a tear. I wonder if he’ll dismiss Maribel.
Jennie, I will write more when I am calm. My hand trembles from the new information. And nothing is certain. Even now, as I complete this entry, I hear a rustling behind the sheet, and the fog returns.
Where will I hide Jennie? Where? My soul is troubled.
8:30 a.m.
Maribel was in the laundry room. I swaddled Helen and I crept down the stairs and slipped out the side door. I stood at the water’s edge, calmed by the salt air and soft winds, the gentle waves breaking at my feet, until the weather turned. Gusts of wind moved over us and rough waters broke and soaked us.
We are safe in the attic, now, armed, and ready for battle.
Words can’t articulate, Jennie, so I end here.
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