Read Online The Untold by Courtney Collins - Free Book Online Page A

more sugar, lard and spices—until she was turning over a soft dough in her hands. And then she rolled it out with a glass jar and stretched it over a pie dish and layered it with apples and bustled around the kitchen, piling up the wood in the stove.
    Jessie found it all mesmerizing, the music especially. She had heard big bands, trumpets and drums play carnival music, but this was different. It was gentler, unfolding in layers of sound. She did not know why but she felt like weeping and she bit into the enamel cup to stop herself. She wondered why she had found the old woman so distasteful at first and why things of beauty made her so sad.
    Jessie did not at first notice that the old woman had gone but just as she did the old woman reappeared with a pair of boots.
    Here
, she said.
Put these on. There is something I want to show you.
    The old woman charged outside and Jessie followed her up towards the first ridge that overhung the property.
    The old woman scrambled over the incline and the ledges until they came to a place where three rocks were lined up in a row, each with a small cross carved into it.
    Beneath those rocks are my babies
, said the old woman.
I couldn’t carry any of them for long. I could carry those rocks up a cliff face better than I could carry the babies. My body got to a certain stage each timeand then expelled them. Except for this last one—I held him in my arms for three days. I called him Jude, after St. Jude, the hope of the hopeless. I thought, if Jude cannot save him, nothing can. And Jude could not save him.
    I’m sorry
, said Jessie.
    When I was younger, about your age, I spent days and weeks and months up here, praying for their little souls, praying they were not lost in limbo. Because limbo is a terrible place, it’s like a void for the soul.
    Do you dream of them?
asked Jessie.
    Sometimes.
Sometimes they are babies and sometimes they are fully grown as if they survived to be good strong adults and it is me who is in their arms, it is me they are holding.
The old woman laughed
. But that’s just dreams, isn’t it?

W hen the old man returned in the early evening his mood seemed improved. The old woman fussed about him, hand-feeding him and massaging his feet. Jessie was surprised at the change in the old woman but she guessed this was her way of restoring some peace between them. He did not say where he had been and the old woman did not ask him. Jessie watched the old man’s mouth uncrease as he relaxed and his eyes roll back in his head. She did not trust him.
    The old woman had put the gramophone away when she heard the sound of the old man and the dog moving up the hill and now the only sound was the wind hurtling down the mountains and the spitting of the fire, which Jessie tended.
    There’ll be another storm tonight
, the old man said. Jessie did not care for an evening filled with the old man’s pronouncements but soon he was asleep in the chair and snoring.
    The old woman said,
There’s no point in moving him
and she wrapped herself in a shawl, put her hand on Jessie’s shoulder and said, ’
Night, love. Best sleep with a pillow over your head ’cause this one’s snore can travel through walls.
Then she left my mother sitting by the fire.
    Jessie stoked the coals against the unburnt wood and wondered where exactly the old man had traveled to that day, if he had caught word of Fitz’s death, if it was thought to be an accident, if she was deemed to be missing or dead. The wondering made her anxious.
    She knew she had recovered well enough now to head up intothe mountains but she must choose her moment so as not to attract more suspicion or bad feeling. She pulled the grate over the fire. She thought
a way out might come with sleep and she tiptoed towards her room. As she was moving past the old man he began making choking noises that woke him. He sat up. For the first time he looked like a frail thing to her, clutching