Page 43 of Nightwatching

“I love you,” she said. “I love you more than anything in the world. Mama is going to work so hard to come back to you. You smell smoke, see fire, you leave. Don’t come out for anything else.”

In rushed a vision of the Corner hurting her to lure them out. She heard how frantic, how desperate, her voice was becoming.

“Even if you hear Mama telling you to come out, don’t come out. Even if you hear Mama hurt, crying, don’t come out, okay? I’ll open the panel when I come back, all by myself, all right?”

Her daughter had the hem of the robe twisted tight in her hand. Her son was wrapped around her calf. It was as if they thought she was turning to smoke, and only their clinging was keeping her solid.

“Promise me!”

“Okay, Mama,” said her daughter.

“You, too, promise me!”

“Okay,” said her son, and nodded.

“You are the best and bravest and I love you. I’m so proud of you.”

She tried to turn to open the panel, but they wouldn’t release her. Little hands tightened, little arms gripped her the more she moved. Boa constrictors, settling themselves around her for more efficient suffocation. Instantly her mouth went tight, her vision thinned.

Why won’t they do what you say? Why won’t they just obey? You’re running out of time!

A parent’s a tyrant, a parent’s a dictator. If you just did exactly what I said right when I said it, there’d be peace.

“You promised! Let me go,” she said in that voice that verged on the edge of fury, the one that normally frightened them into obedience, a voice that now reminded her sickeningly of the Corner. “Let gorightnow.”

But they wound around her leg, her robe, her wrists, pulling her down, and she groaned with rage.

“There’s no time for this! Stop it!”

She shook them off, unlatching hands roughly, little fingers bending, gasps and crying. They still wouldn’t let go. Their hands kept refastening, their desperation letting them find new purchase the second she managed any movement, little voices calling out, “Mama!”

Too loud! They’re too loud.

“No!” she hissed. “No! Stop it, this is unacceptable. You’ve got to do what I say. Or the Corner will get us.”

With both hands she pushed her son hard in the chest, and hetumbled to the dirty floor. She saw the shock on his face as it hit. Heard a crunch she hoped was the grit of mortar dust skidding beneath him.

She yanked her daughter’s hands from her arm, her robe, held the girl by the wrists and shoved her backward against the chimney brick.

Laying violent hands on her children was so jarring, so unreal, that for a moment she was convinced she’d killed them.

Then they both started crying.

It’s for their own good, for them.

Her teeth ground in frenzied panic, at revulsion over what she’d done, making it difficult to talk.

“Quiet!No crying, no sound! Or the Corner will get you.”

Delicious.

They were scared of her. She’d never before raised a hand to them, and their baffled, scratched faces tried to reconcile all their memories, all her talk of love and safety and returning with how she’d hurt them. Instead of reaching for her, they picked themselves up and crawled to hold each other, watched her push the panel, watched it open into the dark office.

She clambered out, awkward in the robe and slippers. Turned around on hands and knees.

“Close it!”

They didn’t move.

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