Page 130 of If Looks Could Kill
“Evening, dearie,” said the voice of Mother Rosie.
Jack’s Ophelia—(Early Morning, Tuesday, December 4, 1888)
Pearl falls limp against Jack’s rib cage. He scoops her up in his arms.
His failing heart is alive tonight, thumping in his chest. The heat is on him. The wolf hunts once again. The lion stalks his prey.
What to do first? He is giddy, not quite thinking straight. When she wasn’t asleep in her bed, he nearly panicked. He waited so long for her return that he nearly gave up. Now he is stunned by his good fortune. He dumps the girl onto her cot and heads to his room for his things.
Returning to her room, he finds her struggling to breathe. She is face-down in her pillow. He turns her head to one side.Not yet, little Pearl. Your time is soon, but it isn’t yet.
He hasn’t ever known his victim’s names beforehand.
He makes two trips: one to set up his surgery in the cellar and another to bring down the specimen. A knocking at the rear kitchen door nearly makes him drop his things, but he ignores it and continues his work. His hosts are blithely unaware. He left them a bottle of wine—one of Pearl’s errands—which he had doctored with his powders, just as he did for theFrench maid aboard the ship. They will sleep the sleep of the dead until lunchtime, if he’s not mistaken.
His brew is warm. His knives are sharp. He has worried open the gap between the houses somewhat. All is ready. His blissful dreamer sleeps on a sheet he’s spread on the basement floor.
He takes a deep breath, and cuts.
Pearl—What We Owe a Body(Early Morning, Tuesday, December 4, 1888)
Pearl walks through an unfamiliar landscape. She comes to a garden in early springtime, soft with dewy blossoms and fluffy leaves. Five women stroll the garden’s grassy lanes, each with a bundle in her arms. Mothers, holding babies, carefully bonneted and wrapped against any chill.
Pearl draws closer. She loves babies. She loves the dense softness of their brand-new skin, the dimpled plumpness of their sticky-bun cheeks and their kicking, waving limbs. She pauses to admire one baby, a girl, whose cheeks are especially pink. The young mother allows Pearl to hold the child and watches, beaming, as Pearl coos to the little brown-eyed dumpling.
A graceful woman appears at Pearl’s side, dressed in a simple robe of blue.
“These are our bodies,” she tells Pearl.
Pearl senses confusion floating by, but she pays it no mind. She would like to hold each infant in turn, but before she knows it, she is in another garden, and it feels like May Day, with summer roses starting to come in. Five little girls of six or seven years are seated around a small table, playing with dolls and a wooden Noah’s ark with animal figurines. Pearl crouchesto watch them more closely. They wear sprigged dresses with white pinafores. Their hair is neatly parted and plaited in braids. Their eyes shine. Their new teeth do not quite fit their mouths. They have a great deal to say. One girl sings a tune while sorting animals. Another strokes her dolly’s hair. Two girls have a small argument over a wooden crocodile, until peace is restored when the other crocodile is found.
A woman in a rose-colored robe appears next to the woman in blue. “These are our bodies,” she tells Pearl.
What is going on? Pearl wonders.
In another blink, she stands in a flower garden in high summer, bursting with blooms. Five girls of thirteen or so years of age are there, with their long hair flowing in the warm breeze. They talk and laugh as they pick flowers and weave them into wreaths for their hair. They have a coltish, leggy look, their limbs elongating before the rest of them can grow.
Pearl sits and hands the nearest girl flowers from piles of cut dahlias, sweet peas, and cornflowers. The girl accepts them without a word or a second glance.
A woman in a bright green robe appears next to the first two women.
“These are our bodies,” she tells Pearl.
“Who are you, please?” Pearl asks them. “I don’t understand.”
It is autumn now, and the garden is a park with a clear-glass river winding throughout it and boaters punting across its glassy surface like water bugs on a pond.
Five boats. Five full-grown girls, around Pearl’s age, trailing their fingers in the water. Five grown-up lads, perspiring as they ply their rods, pushing off against the riverbed.
The boats come ashore, and the wobbling couples make it safely off their boats to solid ground. The girls are bonny and young, dressed in their newest “grown-up best.” They have womanly figures now. Two by two, the couples venture off to shady spots to hold hands.
“These are our bodies,” says a woman in a violet gown.
A sense of dread envelops Pearl.
The four women, each in their colored robes, begin to speak all at once. They each repeat a question that, at first, Pearl cannot make out.
“Who will plead for the worth of our bodies?”
