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Back The Harpy Save as PDF
Chapters (52)
  1. The Harpy
  2. Also by Megan Hunter
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. The Harpy
  8. Part I
  9. 1
  10. 2
  11. 3
  12. 4
  13. 5
  14. 6
  15. 7
  16. 8
  17. 9
  18. 10
  19. 11
  20. 12
  21. 13
  22. 14
  23. 15
  24. 16
  25. 17
  26. 18
  27. Part II
  28. 19
  29. 20
  30. 21
  31. 22
  32. 23
  33. 24
  34. 25
  35. Part III
  36. 26
  37. 27
  38. 28
  39. 29
  40. 30
  41. 31
  42. 32
  43. 33
  44. 34
  45. 35
  46. 36
  47. 37
  48. 38
  49. 39
  50. Part IV
  51. Acknowledgments
  52. Back Cover

They will speak of the things I did: the time I laughed at a schoolmate’s tights wrinkling around her knees, laughed and pointed and told others to laugh. Boyfriends I dumped or ignored. Words of hatred written in my diary.

We always knew she was like that, they will say, afraid of the truth. They knew nothing.

~

26

26

It was a beautiful early spring, the most delicate since the months after Ted was born. That year, I thought the world would never be beautiful again. The winter went on for years, an endless circling of sleepless nights, stagnant, swamped days. Baby-­rearing, with the first child, had been a kind of somnolence, an amnesia in which I was happy to relent to the cow-­self for months, to find pleasure in the cleaning of shit, in the flow of milk from my breasts. The second time, it was a combat zone.

My caesarean scar became infected, leaked pus until I was certain my body would split in two, exposing me. I found it difficult to accept that so many had seen my insides: the surgeon, and his assistant, and her assistant. They’d had a view of myself that I would never have, the exact, endlessly personal nature of my organs, their strange shapes, their unique arrangement.

At thirty, I presumed my life to be over, to have been taken over by the qualities that were always promised to arrive one day: pain, work, exhaustion. But the things of spring came, eventually – dimmed evenings and broken soil, a quickening smell – and I discovered that they were real. They could be called names, and the names would stick, would hold fast, as though there was no separation between the object and its sound. Tree, I would think, looking at a tree, and nod. It was true: this was a tree. It was a tree fringed with pink froth, a ridiculous sight, but real anyway, pieces of tree floating to the ground, a rosy snow. I even showed the baby, showed Ted, pointed and spoke for him: Tree. And in this way we carried on, continued to live. Maybe I would never be young again. But I was alive anyway. I was there.

This spring, years later, was similar, just as clear in its colours, its surprise. I had forgotten how much the house enjoyed it, being bathed in a warmer light, for longer. We had daffodils on the kitchen table, something comic in their familiarity, the droop of their heads, like grumpy children dressed by their mothers.

But Jake kept sneezing. He was at home much more now: allergic to most flowers, he would look at me accusingly every time he covered his mouth with his hand, let out an enormous noise.