Dear Mama,
It is okay. We are taking care of it.
One, Two, Three
Three
Remember I told you this at the beginning.
That I can tell stories but slowly, more dripping faucet than rushing flow, more drizzle than hard, cleansing rain, but letter by letter I can get us there. And I was not in a rush, I said. I had plenty of time, I said.
That is no longer the case.
* * *
The metaphor is always David and Goliath.
Goliath is big and strong and well funded. He’s made so much money, either off your suffering or off not giving a shit about your suffering, that he can buy whatever and whoever he needs to ensure that his profiting off your suffering remains allowed or at least overlooked, which Monday would point out are not the same thing, but Monday would be wrong.
And then there is David. He is poor and small. He is weak, overmatched, underfunded, outclassed. But he is right and he is righteous, quick of wit, fast of finger, pure of heart, helping those whom Goliath has destroyed. The good guy.
And so it’s done in an instant. One well-placed rock, quick as a tick, and it’s over.
I hate this metaphor. It’s offered all the time, but it’s apt as balloons at a funeral, suggesting, as it does, that if only you were more nimble or more right or more good, you would prevail. Suggesting, as it does, that you are destroyed not by other people’s shortsightedness, other people’s greed, or other people’s deciding you’re disposable, but by being yourself too slow, morally compromised, wicked, and weak. Goliath is not at fault in this story. Goliath is just a giant, following his giant nature, laid low by nothing more than a lucky shot. And David, David’s just a boy with a sling and a stone, kind of whiny and moralistic, a little bit of a pissant.
In fact, I think it is a metaphor perpetuated by the Goliaths themselves.
Because really Goliath is not the size of a giant. Goliath is the size of the sky. Goliath is the size of a mountain from the base of it, so it takes up everything, everywhere you look, all the room, all the air, all the past and the future as well, until there is nothing anywhere but him, and you have no choice, can’t remember ever having had a choice, and this is just the way it is, unfortunate but inevitable, inarguable, like how someday we’ll all die, Goliath taking, and taking up, everything, including you, including yours, including even the whisper of a suggestion that he might not be right or fair (for a mountain is not right or fair, it just is), including even the whisper of a suggestion that this might not be good for us, for any of us (for a mountain does not care what’s good for us), including even the whisper of a suggestion that there might be a different future than this (for a mountain in the future is still a mountain, long after you’re gone, long after your descendants have forgotten why they tell this story, long after whatever comes after humans has forgotten our name).
Mountains change, it is true. Grain of sand by speck of dust by infinitesimal layer by drop of rain by whisper of current by time by time by time, a mountain is worn away over eons and ages and the unremitting change of seasons.
But we can’t wait that long.
Why did I tell River, when I knew it could cost us our head start and our upper hand and our stealth injunction and ruin everything, when I knew, unlike Mab, that his loyalties probably didn’t lie with her and definitely didn’t lie with me, when I knew, unlike Mab, that he is nothing but a sixteen-year-old, a boy, sheltered and privileged and nearly as naive about the ways of the world as we are? Why did I tell him, when I knew he would probably tell his father and we’d lose our desperately honed, two-decades-in-the-making edge of getting there first, and not just getting there first but crossing the finish line before they even arrived at the track or really realized they were participating in a race to begin with? Why did I tell, when I knew it would break my sister’s heart?
Because I am also sixteen, with all the vain hopes a teenager is due and all the good sense from which she is absolved.
Because it was my turn.
Because I have a heart as well.
And because I was tired of waiting. Because it is time.
This is what they say about justice too, by the way, that it is slow. So that’s the other reason I told. It has taken Nora sixteen years, but she has finally exacted justice—by raising daughters who will see it served. She doesn’t see that yet. I’m only just starting to see it myself, a revelation seeded by, of all people, Nathan Templeton. This was what I started slowly to realize the afternoon he confessed everything to Nora in therapy. He was just trying to do right by a fallible parent. Apple too, for that matter. And, I’m finally realizing, us as well. We’ve been gathering wood for Nora’s fire, fanning the embers of her desperate, righteous cause. It feels different because she’s so good and she’s so right. But even Apple couldn’t quite believe her father’s “good enough” was good enough. Even Nathan knew he was wrong to bow to his dad’s corruptions. And us, we’ve been pure of heart, yes, on the side of the angels, on the side of our mother who is even holier than angels, but we have also hewn too close to her side.
Now we’re on our way. Our own way. Monday is trying to be brave about it. Our new plan is incautious and impulsive and unstable as dynamite. Not that we have dynamite. We will have to blow everything up without it.
“How will we get in?” Monday demands as quietly as she’s able, which is not very quiet.
From under puffy eyes, Mab smiles, which an hour ago we all imagined she might never do again. “I have the key.”
“He gave you the key to the plant?” Monday can’t believe it. Me neither, actually.
We have bundled up because it is late now, and the temperature’s dropped. We have worn our darkest clothes, even Monday, who did have to borrow some from us but did not require much cajoling to see that it was necessary to blend in with the night as much as possible. We are all breathing great puffs of white in the darkness. And Mab is forgiving me. She has not forgiven me yet, but she is working on it. And I am working on forgiving her back.
“He didn’t give it to me,” Mab says. “I copied it. I pretended to lose it down my underwear when he was teaching me magic, and when I went in the church to get it out, I used Pastor Jeff’s key-cutting machine.”
“Why?” Monday asks.
“‘I have an ill-divining soul,’” Mab says.
“I do not know what that means,” Monday says.
“It’s Romeo and Juliet,” Mab explains.
“I do not know what that means anyway,” Monday says.
Mab looks at me, and I look at her. “Just in case,” she says.
There are Christmas lights winking cheerily from a few houses, our neighbors, our fellow citizens, survivors. I am praying no one will hear us, step out onto a creaking front step, turn on a porch light, and ask what the hell we think we’re doing in the middle of this night. But I am confident that if they do, and if we tell them, they will join arms and come along to help. We are all in this together now.
But Bourne sleeps on.
We cross Maple and the cemetery, and I find our father with my eyes. I wonder if he would applaud what we’re doing or chastise us for the foolishness we are about to undertake. If he were angry, I would remind him that the worst that can happen is we could all die, and then I’d ask him how it is, and if it isn’t after all worth it maybe for such a righteous cause. If we could sit and chat and compare stories, my father and I, reflect and philosophize, I am certain he would conclude what we have concluded, that there is nowhere his daughters could be right now but where we are.