Chapter Text
Instead of holding her pewter spoon in her hand, Catherine gripped the rough lip of her chair. Underneath the table, she could feel the grainy wood chafe against the peach-soft skin of her thumb, but instead of relaxing her hand, she flexed her thumb down against it, silently working the pad of her finger back and forth. The friction mounted, her flesh heating in protest until she felt the bite of a splinter, sinking its way into her. She pressed her molars together, feeling the muscle in her jaw flutter at the tension, feeling the pad of her thumb sting, and yet she did not stop. For if she stopped her own self-constructed distraction, her self-constructed mutilation, she would scream. And she was not sure if she would ever stop.
“Oh, Catherine, don’t just sit there with such a sour puss while your food gets cold,” Her father all but spat at her from where he sat at the edge of the table, to her left. His disposition was especially awful that evening, as it was nearly every time he appeared at the Heights for supper. On the best of days, Catherine could spend nearly a full day without her father’s vitriol leeching into the room. When he drank himself into a stupor before supper, it was good fortune, and when he couldn’t sit up on horseback to even ride back from the inn, it was nothing short of a blessing.
That night, the Lord, whom Joseph so reverently waxed on about, had turned his face away from them; Catherine was sure of it. When she thought about the hours that Joseph had subjected them to sermons and condemnations, her lower back twinged - a phantom pain hammered into her bones from sitting in a hard-backed chair while Joseph hammered the fear of the Almighty and eternal damnation into their hearts. She cast a fleeting glance toward him, wondering if perhaps he was pleased that all of her childhood petulance and misbehavior had brought forth the ultimate divine punishment in the form of her father and his words, his strength.
Her father had returned from town in time for supper, but Catherine was unsure how he’d even managed that. She could smell the ale on him, a sickly, sour scent that made her stomach roll, even though she’d spent most of the day trying to ignore the gnaws of hunger in her gut. The intoxication oozed from his pores, from his breath, poisoning the air, the room. It was all she could do not to shift her chair away from him. She was all too familiar with the acrid smell, with the sound that her chair would make as it scraped across the floor, with the sound of dishes clattering to the ground, with the feeling of her father’s open palm meeting her cheek, her ear, with the feeling of his fingers around her wrist, her upper arm, her elbow, a solid wall of strength no matter how valiantly she tried to wrest herself from his grasp.
“Sorry Papa,” she said evenly, trying to force calm into her voice, schooling her face into a close-lipped smile and sitting up in her chair, ever the attentive daughter. Even now, a lady, she sat in terror of her father. Her heart hammered wildly against her ribs, so much so that she feared her father would be able to see her bodice flutter in the flickering light. She forced herself to meet his eyes, tilting herself toward him, as if her interest and adoration could protect her in the end.
“I was just thinking about your visit to town today. Was it very exciting?” Her own forced enthusiasm filled her with shame. Who was she, to be cowering like this before her father? To be so untruthful to the emotions that roiled inside her? She prayed that her own cowardice and self-disgust weren’t evident in her face, even as she felt a panicked sweat break across her skin, her chemise sticking to her lower back uncomfortably. Her smile still in place, she drove her thumb even harder back and forth against her chair, reveling in the pain it caused. Let the wood break her bone for all she cared, let it tear her flesh. She was coming apart at the seams as it was. “Please have enjoyed town,” She begged silently, although she wondered if the Lord ever really listened to her. “Please, please be in good spirits.”
“Come off it, ungrateful wretch,” Her father all but hissed at her, drops of spit visible in the dimness. “I work to put food on the table for your undeserving mouth, and you sit and let it get cold. All the way to town to sell wool and work to make sure you have a warm home and plenty of food, and you flout it all like a spoiled brat, Catherine, like I need another burden to bear.” He paused in his verbal assault to reach forward for the jug of ale, and, despite herself, she reached forward with both hands to pass it to him, to help, to be obedient despite the way her hands shook, despite the way her thumb ached.
“Enough of you,” Her father grunted, pulling the handle of the jug into his grip and out of hers, “it’s too late to pretend to be helpful now. To pretend to care about me and how hard I work for all of you. Eat or get out of my sight, I can’t stand your company.” As if to reward himself for his performance, her father topped off his cup with a heavy pour that would make him sick later, she knew. Catherine watched, silently, knowing begging for forgiveness would only make it worse. The jug tilted, ale poured forth, and a faint smear against the pottery caught her eye. A smudged maroon thumbprint, near the base, the blood smeared when her father yanked the jug away from her. Fleetingly, Catherine wondered how much blood was in her body, how much would spill if her father’s words could make her bleed. She pictured the stains against the table, her chair, the floor. What a mess for Zillah that would be.
Beside her sat Nelly, silent as she cut her food methodically, eating with a stillness Catherine knew she’d mastered years ago, in their youth. Across from Nelly sat Joseph, eating all the same, shifting in his chair, and clearing his throat. And across from Catherine – Heathcliff, his hulking form nearly dwarfing the table. She didn’t cast a glance his way, returning her eyes to her own plate, lest her father see her gaze and unleash a tirade on Healthcliff. He ate with the others, silent, curled in on himself to a near impressive degree, as if he could vanish from the room, make himself small enough for Earnshaw’s gaze to skip over him entirely. The thought of it made Catherine’s heart fracture. The three of them ate, focused on their own meals as if they were the most compelling form of entertainment. No one looked up from their plates at Catherine or her father. They could not save her or themselves, and their best course of action was to continue eating as if nothing was the matter at all, as if their master would not continue drinking all through the evening and be just as vitriolic in the morning, grumpy and sick.
Swallowing, Catherine drew her hands back, fisting the napkin in her lap. Her eyes flicked down, watching the blood from her thumb bloom crimson across the linen. She felt a perverse sense of satisfaction as she watched the fabric stain. She couldn’t bring herself to care that Zillah would have to deal with it, wrapping her thumb even tighter in the napkin. If she must sit at this table and suffer, let Zillah suffer too. After a moment, she quickly picked up her fork and knife, not wanting to let time pass and give her father another chance to comment on her complacency and retaliate. She ignored the way the metal utensil bit into the tender, wounded flesh of her thumb. It was, she supposed, a small victory that she hadn’t been banished from the table without dinner, that the plates of food had remained on the table, that her father had remained seated and temperate, if the loud debasing of her character could be called temperate. Her eyes prickled, and she nearly scoffed at herself, fed up with her own showing of emotion, committed to acting like it was no matter, even though everyone at the table, herself included, knew how she quaked at her father’s tirades. Cutting the boiled vegetables on her plate, she didn’t dare chance a look up at her father, determined to survive the meal with as little conflict as she could manage, listening as her father droned to Joseph about the livestock.
And then, a nudge. Against the inside of her right ankle. At first, she thought it was her father’s boot, his limbs kicking out as he shifted in his chair, drunk and unaware of the depth of his surroundings. But the placement was wrong, the nudge pressing against her right anklebone instead of the outside of her left foot, which sat closer to her father. It was too soft, too slow, intentional. Pushing against the hem of her skirts, her wool stocking, intent that she feel it. It was Healthcliff, she knew. The stout leather of his boot seeking her out under the table, to bolster her, to comfort her in the most invisible way possible, in the only way that he could. As she ate, making sure to clean her plate of limp vegetables and bland mutton and dense bread, she glanced up toward Healthcliff. Her father, now consumed by his conversation with Joseph as his words progressively slurred, had forgotten his rage entirely and paid her no mind at all. Healthcliff didn’t return her stare, using the crust of his bread to sop up the mutton juice, a hank of his hair hanging in his eye. He seemed utterly disinterested in them, in her, but his boot stayed firmly in place between her feet, against her ankle, intentional. It was a moment of tenderness, a moment of softness when she felt so, so raw, and her chin nearly trembled at the comfort of it. At the comfort of him. Sitting there across the table, a solid, stoic strength to the storm that was battering around inside of her. The boot, placed so simply against her stocking. It was a drink of cool water against the fire that burned in her throat; it was the fabric of her handkerchief, worn and loving, scratching against her cheek; it was the dull warmth of the fire against fingers so frozen that they’d gone stiff; it was the tickle of the grass against the soles of her bare feet, sinking into the soft earth.
It was, above all, a reminder. A reminder that she had survived her father, had survived this cold, sour-smelling Hell all of her life, and she would not stop now. It was, above all, a reminder. That she was not alone. That he, Heathcliff, was there, with her. If she was in this dark and icy Hell, at least she would not freeze alone.