Work Text:
To Patricia, at first, the cigarette feels like winning.
She inhales; the smell and taste of it always makes her feel strong, independent—a man’s habit, unladylike. She likes, too, the casual rapport of smoking with strangers, the thrill of asking for a light from someone she would otherwise avert her eyes from on the sidewalk.
Put it out, says Mrs. Trefoile, and Patricia blows smoke in her direction.
Shall I have Anna put it out? she asks.
Patricia casts her eyes on the housekeeper, stepping out of the shadows into full view—serious, ominous, hands shoved in her pockets. Recklessly Patricia puffs on the cigarette again, lets the smoke escape her mouth and dissipate into the air. Her heart pounds as Mrs. Trefoile nods at Anna, but she tries not to show it. She takes another puff before she’s ready, and her lungs burn as Anna stalks toward her, suppressing the urge to cough, backing away erratically. She stumbles backwards against the desk chair, giving Anna enough time to step into her space and snatch the cigarette from between her fingers.
Patricia’s light-blue blouse has the top button undone, something she knew would anger Mrs. Trefoile. Now her eyes widen as Anna glances at the triangle of skin there. Her heartbeat feels out of control, a runaway vehicle with a brick on the gas pedal, thudding hot and panicked all through her body.
Anna looks Patricia in the eye for just an instant, and then she presses the burning end of the cigarette into Patricia’s bare sternum.
Patricia screams. She doesn’t think she’s ever screamed like that; it sounds like it’s coming from someone else, but the pain is unlike anything she’s felt before. Anna is gripping her shoulder so she can’t pull away, and she’s pushing the cigarette into her skin until it’s gone out. When it’s removed, Patricia can’t help but look down: an angry red wound is seared into her skin, perfectly round. She smells burning flesh, like a pig roast gone wrong.
“You’re insane,” she shrieks, “you’re all insane!”
Mrs. Trefoile tilts her head thoughtfully. “Go through her luggage,” she says to Anna.
Anna releases her grip on Patricia’s shoulder. Patricia feels manic, hysterical. She stands stunned for a moment as Anna opens her suitcase, pulling out a red negligee and presenting it to Mrs. Trefoile in a wad of scarlet fabric.
Mrs. Trefoile practically snarls at the forbidden color. “Destroy it.”
Anna produces a large pair of shears, but as she brings them to the garment, Patricia—practically without deciding to—launches herself at the woman, reaching frantically over her shoulder for the shears. She doesn’t know if she’s just trying to save her clothes, or if she’s prepared to use the blades as a weapon. She feels crazed enough; she thinks she could slit both their throats.
The struggle is awful. She’s at a disadvantage, and Anna manages to throw her off for a moment, but when Patricia attacks again she just manages to wrest the shears from her grasp. But Anna shoves her, and she loses her balance, and—
It happens so fast that she doesn’t realize for a moment, but yes: she’s been thrown to the ground. It’s only when she sees one of the blades buried in the flesh above her breast that she feels the pain. Blood blooms over her shirt—scarlet, she thinks deliriously. Mrs. Trefoile won’t stand for that.
There’s an awful resistance when she pulls the blade from her chest. She stumbles to the bathroom and tries to clean the wound—Mrs. Trefoile appears in the doorway—and then the blood loss makes her dizzy. The fight drains out of her, and she submits.
—
The burn on Patricia’s chest is becoming infected, she thinks. The edges of the wound are red and tender, and the scabbing in the middle is tinted yellow. The stab wound by her shoulder is painful, worse when she moves her arm, but at least it isn’t weeping pus when Anna or Mrs. Trefoile changes the bandage.
She needs a doctor, but that would never be permitted. She hasn’t even eaten in days—four, she thinks, though she’s starting to lose track as her body and mind grow weak. She can tell, occasionally, that delirium is setting in: she sees glimpses of Stephen’s face in the wallpaper, and then he morphs into his mother, and then the image is gone and she’s trembling, face wet with tears she hadn’t realized were falling.
She grows frail. Her limbs feel heavy even as they waste away, her strength fading fast. Her waking moments feel less and less clear, and she struggles to distinguish sleep from waking.
So at first she’s not sure if it’s a dream when Mrs. Trefoile enters wearing all white, like a nurse or a doctor, or an infant at her baptism. Or an angel in Heaven.
Mrs. Trefoile smiles at her kindly, and then pushes aside the covers on the bed, and lifts the skirt of the plain frock she’s dressed her in. (It was yesterday that she slipped it over her head, maybe, or was it the day before?) She’s put Patricia in plain white cotton panties too, though until now she’s allowed Patricia to change them in private. They’re old-fashioned, the kind of thing she used to see in her mother’s dresser as a child: extending over the tops of her thighs, loose around the wasting flesh there, elastic waist high and close to her belly button.
Today seems to be different, because Mrs. Trefoile is dragging the underpants down Patricia’s legs. Her fingertips hook under the waistband and tug; Patricia is weak enough that she doesn’t resist as the older woman lifts her by the hips to finish undressing her. Patricia feels exposed, cold, humiliated. She presses her thighs together, but Mrs. Trefoile tsks at her.
“Now, now,” she says. “I know you can’t be so shy as that.”
She forces Patricia’s legs apart. It’s not difficult, in her state. She flushes hot and ashamed, and hopes desperately that this is just an awful dream. Mrs. Trefoile’s face shifts and blurs in her vision.
“The Lord is powerful and forgiving,” Mrs. Trefoile intones. “He can restore the holy maidenhead of a fallen woman, if she is truly purified.”
Patricia shudders. Her fuzzy thoughts can’t connect the words with what’s happening, but dread fills her belly all the same.
Then Mrs. Trefoile is touching her, right there at the apex of her thighs, and she understands. She tries to close her legs again, the touch startling and invasive, but her weak efforts don’t stop the aged fingertips from feeling at her entrance, roughly seeking something she won’t find.
Patricia tries to twist away, but Mrs. Trefoile’s free hand presses her hips downward. One finger pushes inside her by perhaps an inch, firm and insistent against the resisting, unprepared flesh. It makes a slow circle around the perimeter of her, then withdraws. Mrs. Trefoile makes a disapproving sound. “God can tell when you aren’t sincere in your repentance,” she says solemnly. “In due time He will heal you, but only if you ask with contrition.”
She covers Patricia again, and calls Anna into the room to deliver the tea. Patricia knows hazily that she needs to drink it, that she can’t risk dehydration, but it’s like her throat is closed—her first sip burbles back out of her mouth and spills down the front of her dress.
“Careless,” Mrs. Trefoile hisses.
She stays until Patricia has drunk what she deems to be enough of the tea. Each sip is a struggle, but finally Mrs. Trefoile removes the mug from her hands.
“I pray daily for your immortal soul,” she tells Patricia, and it sounds like a curse.
In her increasing delirium, Patricia does begin to pray. It’s not that she’s not a Christian, exactly. It’s just...more of a Christmas and Easter thing for her. She prays in times of stress, like many people, guiltily resolving to become more observant if her prayers are granted, then letting her attendance lapse again as life returns to normal. But she prays now not with a bargain, but with simple regret. She begins to feel—in flashes—sincere, when she whispers that she’s sorry for her indiscretions, that even though she’s only slept with the two men she’s been engaged to, she knows she should have waited until they were married in the eyes of God.
In her right mind she would not hope for God to perform the miracle that Mrs. Trefoile expects. But something in her starved brain begs with sincere belief that her body might return to its unsullied form.
Sometimes her thoughts are more clear, and she thinks the idea absurd, tries to plot her escape. But she’s weaker all the time, and the prospect begins to feel hopeless.
The following day Mrs. Trefoile returns. She’s going to touch me again, Patricia knows, from the moment the door opens. Her heart pounds hard enough that it feels like it might shatter her frail body, and she feels sick with miserable anticipation.
Again there’s little prelude. The covers are pulled away—the absence of their weight, the slip of fabric against her. Then Mrs. Trefoile lifts her skirt and parts her knees. Pliant, Patricia yields to her this time, as if to a lover; her legs fall to the sides, revealing the core of her. Mrs. Trefoile seems to look longer than before, of maybe it’s just that Patricia’s perception of time is slipping. Either way she shrinks under the scrutiny. Even doctors don’t look for so long.
Finally Mrs. Trefoile moves to touch her, fingers pressing flat against her, tracing a circle. Patricia can’t suppress a startled gasp, though she knew it was coming. The touch against her tenderest parts feels somehow more than she can bear today.
Mrs. Trefoile gives her a stern look, and then moves to enter her with one fingertip, as before.
The finger slips inside more easily—surprisingly so—and immediately Patricia knows that this is wrong, she’s done something wrong. She goes very, very still. Mrs. Trefoile’s finger makes the same circular motion as before, all the way around, but when she removes it she looks dangerous.
“Dirty,” she hisses. She points the finger she used in Patricia’s face, scolding like a schoolteacher.
The fingertip glistens, and Patricia can faintly perceive the scent of her body’s betrayal. She shudders.
“You must pray for salvation,” Mrs. Trefoile says. “There is evil inside you.”
Then Anna brings her tea. Patricia allows herself the illusion of fullness that it provides, and she wonders how long a person can survive without eating. Surely longer than this, she thinks, and feels a terrible dread at the prospect of living.
—
It’s another day, maybe two, before Mrs. Trefoile brings her a bowl of oatmeal.
Patricia swallows eagerly from the spoon that’s offered to her, Mrs. Trefoile’s firm hand holding it steady. Something hot rushes through her; she trembles. Mrs. Trefoile scoops another spoonful from the bowl, and Patricia opens her mouth, accepting the intrusion with a wave of awful pleasure.