Men and Angels by Mary Gordon

later, Anne had said, the crocuses would come, and then there would be daffodils. Anne asked Laura if she was interested in gardening. She lied and said she was. She would learn to be. Her mother had not been. She would know more than her mother. Of course she already knew more of the Spirit. But Anne would teach her something (the flowers in the garden, the herbs in their clay pots) that her mother wanted to know but did not. Wanted to do but could not.
    It was in a garden that the Spirit had first come to her.
    The first coming of the Spirit had been beautiful. She was at her grandmother’s. Her grandmother was good at gardens. Laura was in her grandmother’s garden. Her mother had just been unkind to her. What was it she had said, “Go outside and blow the stink off you”? It was because her sister Deborah had taken the blouse she had wanted to wear that morning. Laura had planned the clothes that she would wear each day on their visit to their grandmother. Debbie had taken her blouse. It was pink with embroidered flowers on it. Laura had embroidered them. She washed the blouse by hand and ironed it. She particularly wanted to show it to her grandmother. Then her sister came down wearing it. Debbie looked just like their mother. She was beautiful, just like their mother. And their mother loved her best, loved her only.
    Her sister Debbie walked into their grandmother’s kitchen wearing Laura’s blouse. Even now, even though she no longer felt anger because the Spirit lived in her, Laura could remember how she felt that day. Behind her eyes were dark things, sea creatures, the roots of trees uprooted, buildings falling on buildings. She ran toward her sister and hit her hard across the back.
    “It’s mine,” she said. “You can’t wear it.”
    Her mother came toward them. She pulled Laura away from Debbie. With the back of her hand she struck Laura. The large ring that their father had bought her for their fifteenth anniversary hit Laura in the eye. Her mother kept on hitting her. Four times she hit her in the face.
    “How dare you touch that child,” their mother said. Debbie was fourteen, three years younger than Laura. She was not a child.
    Laura remembered how her teeth felt on the inside of her lips. She had bitten her lips until they bled. The blood was salt and thick, her teeth were dry against the sore flesh she had bitten. She stood before her mother. She was bigger than her mother. She could feel her eyes were wild.
    “It’s my blouse, and she can’t have it.”
    She was standing above her mother. Then she realized that she could kill her. It was possible; it might be easy. In a minute it could happen, and it would be done. And she knew her mother knew. With small steps, frightened, Laura’s mother moved toward her own mother, Laura’s grandmother.
    “You don’t deserve this family,” her mother said. “I don’t know where you came from. You can’t be my child.”
    “Cecilia,” said the grandmother.
    Her mother was not afraid any longer. She knew that Laura was not going to kill her. The skin around her eyes looked bruised; her dark eyes, swelling with her anger, were a monster’s eyes. They reached out, as if they were hands, as if they could choke her daughter. She walked close to her.
    “You great big ugly clod. You might as well let your sister have all your clothes. You’ll never be anything. You’re not my child, you never were. Get out of here. I can’t stand the sight of you. Get out and blow the stink off you. Don’t come back till you’re fit to be a member of this family.”
    Even now, even now that she no longer felt anger, she remembered. She had run to the end of the garden. Her tears were splitting her body, as if lightning had split her, as if her veins were fire, as if the nerves that spread out from her spine were wires, cutting her hot flesh. She lay down on the grass. She pressed her eyes into the flesh of her arms. She was thinking that she wanted her mother to