Page 2 of The Bane Witch

2

Acacia

The mouth of the Atlantic is right there, waiting to swallow me whole. I’d swim farther, but I can’t risk it.

I come up near the Charleston Harbor Marina, the bridge still hovering in the growing sunlight behind me. The boats are lined up like prize Thoroughbreds in a stable, bobbing gently on the surface, white and guileless. It’s a dangerous move coming into these narrow, crowded channels. I could be spotted, and I can’t afford any miscalculations. Henry can’t know I climbed out of this river. But I’m still too stunned to think and driven by a survivalist instinct to leave the city while I have time. The clock is ticking, and every second counts. Once my absence is discovered, I won’t be safe in Charleston.

I paddle down a central channel toward the shore. A dockhand in khakis and a faded T-shirt is helping a man pump out the holding tank on his boat despite the early hour. I hear the clipped stream of their conversation and try to make myself smaller in the water, moving closer to the boat bows, ducking between them to pass undetected. I want to sink beneath the surface, but the life vest makes that impossible. Unzipping my raincoat, I make quick work of the vest’s plastic buckles and pull both pieces off. I leave the vest on a nearby cross dock—we’re in a marina after all—but hold on to the raincoat. Henry’s seen it before. The less I leave for him to piece together, the better.

“Thanks again for meeting me,” the older man is saying with an entitled tone, as if he expected it. “I want to get an early start.”

“No kids this time, Tom?” the young man asks.

“The wife took ’em to her sister’s place in Summerton,” the other replies flatly.

I freeze as their voices near, but the water laps softly, pushing me into their field of vision. I dip low, so only my eyes are above the surface. They’re across the dock from me, angled toward the craft, but any sudden movement could garner unwanted attention. I pull my arms carefully to my sides and hold my breath, my gaze steady on them as the wavelets push me by. My heart pounds erratically, tripping over fear.

“Carol’s always saying she wants to come, but then she always makes plans,” the man begins complaining. “If it were up to her, I’d never get out on the water. You have to put your foot down,” he says to the boy, instructive. “Can’t let ’em boss you. Understand?”

The kid nods, disinterest hidden behind the reflective lenses of his polarized sunglasses.

I drift by, disembodied, unattached. A phantom of the harbor. For once, I enjoy being invisible.

Just as I think I am free, the kid yawns and turns his head in my direction. I drop below the surface, praying he doesn’t notice the ripples. Through the murky waves I see him stand. My lungs burn but I don’t dare come up until I’m hidden on the other side of a large deck boat. I push my face toward the sky and take a deep breath.

“I thought I saw a head, a woman. But it went down again,” I can hear the kid explaining.

“Manatee,” Tom says with confidence, clapping the kid on the back so hard I can hear it. “You’re not the first to be fooled, son.”

Grateful, I don’t wait to hear the rest. I slip back under and carefully propel myself forward, coming up only when they are far enough behind for me to not be heard as I move. I swim between pilings to the bank. The light is spreading, but colors blend together, lacking sharpness. I pass through the marsh grass and drag myself onto the scrubby shore undetected. I fall onto my back and breathe, my eyes searching the sky for a portent that might tell me if I’ve pulled this off. But the clouds stretch long and thin, diluting the blue in meaningless smears, giving nothing away. I still have a very long way to go before I’m safe.

Now the pain begins to register. A terrible ache is radiating up the outside of my bare right foot. The first thing I did as the shock of my plunge gave way, and I began to rise toward the surface, was kick my shoes off into the water. I sit up to examine my foot, and a sharp pain pierces my left side. I bite back a cry. I’ve cracked a rib. Maybe two.

Carefully, I study the rest of my body. My jaw aches where my teeth ground together, and my chin is rubbed raw from the impact forcing the life vest up. My nose still stings from the water that rushed into it. Water I coughed out as I first cleared the surface, the taste of mud scrubbing the pokeweed from my mouth. But I am whole, if broken in a few places. The rib will heal. The foot worries me more. It is already swelling. There’s no apparent bruising yet, but it will come. I press gently along the side and wince as I near the fracture. I’m lucky this is the worst of it, lucky the force of the impact didn’t blow my hips out of their sockets. But a broken foot is not a triumph. I have a long way to walk.

I press myself up on my hands, gathering my good foot below me. Wrapping my arms around my middle protectively, I turn and start toward the beach club, keeping low so as not to be noticed. The pool will soon be full of shrieking kids and women working on their tans. I crouch so the boardwalk will shield me from view of early risers. Every other step is agonizing, and yet I delight in the pain. It is the first thing that’s truly mine in two years’ time. And I’ve had worse.

The street is quiet when I cross, the fine hairs around my face already drying out. Red has begun gathering beneath the skin of my foot. By tomorrow, it will turn purple-black.

I pick my way across the golf course to the nature trail, skirting the greens to remain inconspicuous. I came here three weeks ago, stopping at a local breakfast place in case he asked, making sure to bring back his favorite for an unconventional dinner that night. Henry has always taken a guilty pleasure in biscuits and gravy, though he rarely indulges in food he considers lowborn. I took him to a Waffle House on our second date. I don’t think he ever forgave me for it.

It’s not much, this park. A few trees and some lookout towers. But it’s enough. There’s a small culvert running under the trail. I watch an errant dog walker pass before ducking down and poking my head in. The backpack I taped under here on my last trip is thankfully still waiting. It takes a moment to peel the duct tape away. I rip it from the pack once I manage to free it, stuffing the tape inside. The trees and scrub provide some cover as I tug the raincoat and tank top off, stuffing them into an empty trash bag I had waiting. I pull on the Miami T-shirt I bought with some cash at Goodwill a few weeks ago, its faded pink and turquoise design a welcome sight. Bending down, I peel off my drenched leggings and pull on the dry underwear and jeans I packed. Everything wet goes into the trash bag, which I tuck inside the backpack. I find a hair tie inside and knot my damp, blond hair behind my head, pulling a bucket hat down over it. Next are a pair of slip-on sneakers, also purchased at Goodwill. They’re a size and a half too big—an issue I thought would be problematic. Now, I’m thankful. It’s the only reason I get the right one on at all.

I emerge from the park looking for all the world like just another tourist on a hike, but I keep my head down. There’s a grocery store near the bridge. I’ve shopped in it before. I follow the road for nearly a dozen blocks and take a cross street over. Whenever possible, I walk behind the lampposts, hoping to avoid CCTV cameras. By the time I make it to the shiny, automated doors, I’m rigid with pain. I beeline for the pharmacy and find a walking boot in the first-aid aisle. It’s one of those conspicuous Velcro numbers that doubles the size of your leg, but it’s my only hope of healing this right without going to a hospital. I grab a pair of compression socks, a super-size bottle of aspirin and some water, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and a hair-coloring kit in Cinnamon Kiss. I pay at the pharmacy window with cash I hid in the lining of my pack and make my way behind the store to put the sock and boot on.

The relief is instant. I slide down the painted block wall to the sidewalk and stretch my leg out before me, popping three aspirin and drinking half the water in one long gulp. The sun glares off the shiny green paint of the dumpster behind the store. I want to sit here for the next several hours, a nobody behind a nameless grocery store, close my eyes, and bask in the lightheadedness that comes with total anonymity. As if the last two years of my abusive marriage are just a bad hangover I need to sleep off. But I can’t rest yet. The more physical distance I create, the safer I become. I took the thing Henry valued most with me over that bridge. Not my life, but my death. I stole his moment. He’ll hunt my corpse, but there won’t be one. And that will leave him restless.

There’s a boutique hotel a few blocks away on the other side of Highway 17. I stayed there for a friend’s bachelorette party before Henry and I met. I remember the posh, private restrooms with wide pedestal sinks and doors that lock, and I need a place to dye my hair. Maybe I can catch a ride with someone leaving town. Pulling out the nineteen dollars I have rubber-banded together—what’s left after paying for the post office and Goodwill clothes, weeks of bus fare, the fake IDs, the life vest, and the drugstore items—I realize I’ll have to. I couldn’t risk Henry seeing these purchases, couldn’t pay for them with one of our many credit or debit cards. Without the benefit of my career, my own money and accounts—all things Henry saw fit to talk me out of over our time together—I could no longer buy things without them being watched or questioned.

That cash—four hundred fifty-eight dollars—was all that was in my mother’s bank account when she died, the tiny apartment she’d been renting bare except for two folding chairs, a glass frying pan and some basic utensils, a closet of old clothes, and a twin mattress neatly made up on the floor. Where the rest of her life had gone, I couldn’t say. Though I suspected Gerald had a role in it.

I didn’t need the money then. So I stashed it in the pocket of her favorite cardigan, the one she always used to wear when I was growing up—green with little lily of the valley flowers embroidered on the front. I would take it out from time to time and press the soft fibers of the sweater to my nose, smell her there, thick like woodsmoke, roll the dollars between my palms, and wonder where it had all gone wrong. After I left at eighteen? When I first ate the berries at five? Before I was born? Were we always destined for this—a long disappointing road winding toward fallout? If I retraced my steps, could I piece us back together, keep her here, understand? I would always put the money, the sweater, back with a shake of the head and the heavy knowing that whatever power had been required to repair our relationship, or even give us one in the first place, I didn’t possess it. But I could never bring myself to spend the money. Until now.

I push up and limp over to the dumpster, tossing the trash bag of wet clothes inside. The city is waking up, and it’s time to go. Returning to my pack, I take stock of my worldly possessions. A second compression sock. A bottle of aspirin. A toothbrush. A tube of Colgate. A plastic comb. An army-green bucket hat. A Rhode Island ID and its duplicate.

I pick up one of the IDs and stare at it. The face looking back at me is a woman I don’t recognize. She is a free woman. A lone woman. She has no past, no future. She exists only in this moment. I am her now. Acacia … I check the ID. Acacia Lee. I remember choosing it for the meaning ascribed by the website I was on— clearing in the woods.

Sighing, I drop the ID next to the wad of money and zip up my backpack. Until today, when I ate a jarful of deadly berries and threw myself over a bridge, this was the riskiest part of my escape plan.

Two months ago, the paper ran an article about university students overrunning the local bars with fake IDs bought from China. I read it on my phone in the passenger seat of Henry’s Jaguar on our way to the Dock Street Theatre. They were putting on a production of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie. Henry favors stories that feature fragile women.

“What are you reading?” he asked.

“Something about Bitcoin,” I said, taking my cue from the article, which indicated that’s how some students were paying for the IDs. “I don’t really understand it.” I killed the screen and laid the phone in my lap.

His eyes slid to mine. “You shouldn’t read things over your head,” he told me. “Let me handle the investments.”

It was a quiet warning. He didn’t like me straying into subjects more strenuous than fashion or diet trends, anything that could lead to independent thought.

“Of course,” I replied. But I read the article again that night in the bathroom, and once more the next day while he was at work. It was like a toxic seed that once ingested burrowed deep inside, sprouting against my will. I had thought about leaving before. One hundred thousand times I’d fantasized about it. But Henry controlled our life together, and if I left, he would find me. Not to mention the women, the ones I saw percolating in the dark folds of his mind, the ones he would kill once I was out of the way, once he stopped fighting his urges and gave over to the monster within. As long as I was here and breathing, so were they. It wasn’t enough to leave Henry. I needed to stop him.

But if I became someone else entirely. If I didn’t just leave but was dead already… Suddenly, the world was colored with possibility. I couldn’t save this life, but I could find my way to a new life altogether. And in the process, I could hold him accountable, put him where he belonged. I could save the others. The cogs of my mind whirred day and night, plotting. I memorized the name of the website listed in the article, but I was too afraid to use it. Instead, I rolled it over and over in my brain when I lay next to him at night, a private affair I was having with an idea. If he hadn’t driven me to the woods, I might never have used it.

It was a warm night in June. He didn’t come home after work. I waited up, like he wanted. I made dinner but didn’t eat it. Henry never liked for me to eat without him in the evenings. If he was late, I was to wait. I decanted the wine and sat beside the fireplace watching the flames flicker across the leaded crystal, orange on burgundy. It reminded me of something I couldn’t quite place. Eventually, I dozed off and dreamed of pokeweed berries.

When I woke, it was dark, the fire was out, and Henry was standing over me. “Get up,” he said with bared teeth.

I did as he asked, the wine still sitting in its open decanter, dark like dried blood. Maybe it was that he didn’t find me waiting. Maybe I had been snoring. Maybe something went wrong at work. Maybe the men in the break room made him feel inferior. I would never know. In the end, he didn’t really need a reason beyond that he liked it.

He led me by the hair to the car and told me to get in. We drove for hours, until the houses and stores and lights grew thin and there was nothing but trees and night. It was well after midnight when he pulled off down a dirt path, stopping before a chained swing barrier. “Get out.”

I didn’t have any shoes on, but I knew better than to argue. He walked me up the road and had me turn onto a narrow game trail. We followed it deep into the woods to a small meadow with a stand of pines on the other side. He pointed to the ground between the trees. “Here,” he said.

I stared at him. Tears striped my cheeks despite my efforts to hold them in, but I bit back any sound. I didn’t know this place or how he knew it.

“This is where I will bury you,” he told me. “Your body will rot here, and no one will ever find you.”

I looked down at my future grave, a patch of quiet earth. If he had picked a place and dared to show it to me, we were close, much closer than I realized. I might not make the drive home. I could only hope he’d want to torture me with the knowledge first, like a cat toying with a mouse.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what I was apologizing for, but knowing better than to say anything else. Correcting me was Henry’s favorite hobby—the way I dressed, the way I spoke—but what he really loved was hurting me for no reason. When his control slipped and the monster slunk out of its cage and my humiliation had no bearing, that was what he lived for.

He caressed my face, then pinched my bottom lip until I cried out. “Of course, you are. Because you are a foolish, bovine woman and a sorry fuck. Now lie down.”

He raped me there, on my future grave, two hands on my throat. The last thing I saw before blacking out were the red stems of a pokeweed bush nearby.

I was surprised to wake the next morning, back under the crisp sheets in our bed, the house silent around me. Henry had already gone to work. My mouth and neck were badly bruised, and it hurt to swallow. He was getting careless.

The next week, I used the computer at our local FedEx to place my order for a Rhode Island ID. Taking the picture should have been hard, but it wasn’t. The side of the building was white as a sheet. I asked the young man behind the counter to come out with me and snap my photo with my phone. He didn’t even question what it was for. I had to wire the cash through a Western Union in a nearby bank.

I watched the mailbox for weeks. Henry liked to bring the mail in when he came home from work, but packages were left at our door. Because he didn’t want them stolen, he’d have me set them in the foyer until he could open them. A month after my trip to FedEx, we got a small box wrapped in brown paper. I brought it in and opened it in my closet. The IDs were tucked neatly behind a set of decorated chopsticks. I pulled up the carpet in the back corner and slid them underneath. When Henry came home later, he asked about the package. He’d seen it on the door camera he had installed the year before. I showed him the chopsticks. “They’re a gift,” I said. “I thought you’d like your own for when we go to Izakaya.” We ate sushi regularly. Henry called it “civilized food.”

He backhanded me and the chopsticks went flying. “They’re beautiful,” he said. “Never open my mail again.”

The slam of the dumpster lid jars me from the memory. I spin to see a young man in the grocery store uniform brushing his hands off. “You need help or something?” he asks.

“No,” I quickly answer. “Just resting.”

“We don’t let homeless sleep back here,” he says.

“I’m not homeless,” I try to explain, thinking how I must look. “I’m leaving anyway.”

I’ve scooted past him when he stops me. “Hey, don’t I know you?”

My heart throbs once, twice, then goes alarmingly still. “I don’t think so.”

He walks around to face me, cheeks lifting, suddenly friendly. “Yeah, you’re that woman. You saved the guy from choking last year, the cop. They put you on the news.”

Fear skates down my throat and hits my stomach with a thud. I’d acted on pure instinct that night. Adrenaline driving me out of my chair before I knew what was happening. When it was over, I’d even felt proud, believing that maybe balance had been restored. That by saving this one, I’d undone that terrible day when I was five. That there was something salvageable in me, something worth loving. But Henry was so enraged by the attention it brought, he beat me senseless later. I close my eyes. This cannot be happening. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Course you do,” he says undeterred, his smile sure as the sun. “I remember your eyes. Greenest I’ve ever seen before or since.”