If I Told You Once. Judy Budnitz

I scuttled away from her on all fours. Hush, she said as I tried to explain myself at the top of my voice.

      I quieted when the woman put away her horrible wire. She did not seem amused by the misunderstanding, but she gave me a bowl of soup and said I could sleep in the shed. I asked for her name; she told me to call her Baba.

      That night as I lay in the shed, warming myself beside Baba’s yellow-eyed goat, I wondered about this strange woman. I thought about the house, how it had appeared as I approached with the stone path and the two chimneys. I realized there must be a second room, a second fireplace I had not seen.

      

      I woke thinking of Ari, and found the goat nibbling my hair.

      I thought I would move on that morning, but Baba came to me with a cool assessing look and said she could give me work if I cared to stay on for a few days. She had wood that needed splitting, and there were errands I could do for her since she did not like to go down to the village. In return she offered me a place to sleep.

      I accepted, though I did not like or trust her. In the daylight her eyes took on a thick muddy color, like pus.

      I did not like to admit to myself that I had left my mother only to find another. A grim substitute. I tried not to think about it.

      So I spent days chopping. My father had taught me how to swing an ax. I worked myself into a rhythm and Baba stood by the back fence, watching.

      She needed a great deal of wood; it seemed she kept both fireplaces burning much of the time. By now I had noticed the door that led to the room I had never seen. Although Baba entered it several times a day, she never invited me in. She sometimes emerged with dirty dishes, stale bed linen. I sometimes heard her voice through the wall, mingled with another’s.

      From the village gossip I learned that Baba was the local herb woman, both midwife and doctor. There were whispers that she was a witch: some swore they had seen her flying through the air in a bucket; others insisted her house could raise itself up and walk about, on a pair of giant chicken legs.

      And they whispered about the girls from neighboring villages who came to Baba secretly in the night, hoping she could save them from disgrace with that piece of wire that made me think of a rabbit snare.

      One day a girl my own age beckoned me aside and told me something more, about the men of the village going to Baba in the dark hour before dawn, but her breath was so heavy in my ear that I could not understand what she said, and when I asked her to repeat it she blushed deeply and ran away.

      In the evenings, sometimes, Baba combed my hair. I did not like the way she gathered my hairs from the comb, so carefully, then balled them and slipped them in her pocket.

      I did not like her much.

      During the day I saw sick villagers come to her door for ointments and tonics. Sometimes at night there would come a knock at the door to the shed where I slept, and I would find a pale nervous girl shivering outside. I’d bring the girl through the connecting passage to the main room, to Baba, who would immediately send me back to bed. I sometimes lay awake listening for the cries, the sobs, and Baba’s stern, soothing tones. In the mornings the floor would be scrubbed and clean.

      Also at night came the older women worn out by childbirth. Baba gave them herbs to toughen their wombs, keep a new child from taking root. These women seemed more ashamed than the girls; they bowed their heads and gulped, these women who had borne ten or twelve children and felt guilty for calling a halt to it.

      I watched all these things and stored them away.

      One day in the village I heard rumors of a soldiers training camp nearby. The people spoke of a new recruit, a monstrous man of unnatural size and animal appetites, who ate flesh raw, wrestled bulls to the ground, and howled at the moon. The army officers hoped to train him, he would make a marvelous killing machine. The officers were having difficulty teaching him, he seemed not to understand their words and would sit moaning and scratching for hours. When provoked he went on rampages. People said he had already killed two men during one of his panics. But the officers would not give up, they would break him like a wild horse if necessary.

      As I heard the story, my heart leaped up, then dropped like a stone.

      It was Ari. I was sure of it. I would find him if I could, and take him with me wherever I went. It seemed an easy plan, in my head.

      I did not like the way people spoke of him. He was not the monster they made him out to be. The things they said were true and not true at the same time.

      Soon after, I was awakened late in the night by footsteps. The house was full of the heavy bumbling sounds of men. Their smell, manure and iron, reached my nostrils. I opened the door that connected the shed to the main room of the house, and peered in.

      More than a dozen men from the village crowded the room. Baba stood among them, yellow eyes unblinking. No one spoke. Each man handed her something: a bag of sugar, silver coins, a basket of eggs. The men seemed restless, shifting their feet, with sweat standing out on their faces and necks. When Baba had received all the gifts she went to the door of the secret room, unlocked it, and led the men inside.

      About fifteen minutes later they emerged. They seemed even more agitated than before and did not want to leave. But Baba herded them out and locked the door behind her. The men filed out into the snow.

      On subsequent nights I awoke more and more often, to hear the shuffling of heavy feet and to witness the silent ceremony of gifts and visits to the secret room.

      The next time I passed through the village I overheard the men talking in the blacksmith’s shop. They were talking in hushed tones of a love sickness, they spoke of going to Baba’s house to get the cure. It was a dangerous addiction, they said.

      One of these men passed me later in the street. He was black haired and red skinned; he gave me a mocking smile, touched his cap, and went on his way.

      I recognized him. He was one of Baba’s nighttime guests; his wife had borne him fourteen children and had recently come to Baba for an herb to stop a fifteenth.

      I chopped wood and great horny calluses rose up on my hands.

      One morning Baba was called away early to assist at a premature birth. When I was sure she had gone I began exploring her shelves, peering in boxes, holding jars up to the light. I heard a faint tune; at first I assumed it was something in my own head. But it did not go away, it went on and on and grew faintly annoying.

      It was coming from the secret room.

      It was the same voice I had heard many times before. But today it was clearer than ever.

      I turned to look and nearly dropped the bottle I was holding. She had forgotten to lock the door, it was slightly ajar.

      I put the bottle back on a shelf and walked toward the door as softly as I could, which was not soft at all, considering my cloddish shoes.

      I pushed at the door and stepped inside.

      The room was swathed in lace, yards and yards of it, the sort Baba spent hours knitting in the evenings. It draped the walls, hung in festoons from the ceiling. A fire burned brightly in a stone fireplace. The room was so warm I felt the sweat pop out on my face.

      An enormous bed filled most of the room, a high bed covered in more lace, finely woven shawls, and quilts. And on this bed lounged such a girl as I had never seen before.

      She lay sprawled in a loose robe, regarding me with unconcerned green eyes. She had the softest, whitest flesh I had ever seen; her face, her throat, her hands were smooth and unblemished. Her robe had fallen open in the front; I could see one of her breasts, a pale perfect mound. It looked like something rich and creamy you could eat with a spoon. Most extraordinary of all was her hair: somewhere between red and gold, it hung loose from her head, cascaded over the pillows, her shoulders, lay on the floor in a thick shining carpet. I was nearly stepping on it.

      That rotten sweet smell was even stronger here.

      Her face was pale and flowerlike; the cheeks