All Fall Down Read online

  The blemished.

  Months and months had passed, and she still thought of them that way. She didn’t say it out loud, not to Chris or Liesel and not even to Dr. Braddock, who’d made it so clear Sunny could tell her anything, no matter what. Sunny told Dr. Braddock a lot of things, but she never said aloud that she still thought of herself as something separate from the rest of them.

  With the baby on her hip she leaned close to her window, open though she knew Liesel didn’t like it that way even when Sunny carefully closed all the vents in her room and kept her door closed so she wasted as little electricity as possible. It was the air-conditioning that was really wasteful, not Sunny’s open window, but still, she closed it before she went out, just in case Liesel came in.

  Liesel liked to say she respected Sunny’s privacy and would never go into the room they’d given her without Sunny’s permission, but that was silly and not completely true. Sunny knew Liesel went inside to gather laundry or for other reasons she didn’t know or care about. Sunny knew something Liesel didn’t—privacy was something Sunny appreciated but didn’t necessarily expect. She was glad for it certainly, especially when it came to things like the bathroom. Not having to share a shower with anyone was wonderful, even though she knew it was just as wasteful to spend half an hour in the hot water as it was to use the AC. Maybe even more, because it was not just a waste of energy but of water well beyond what was necessary to keep her vessel…her body…clean.

  But expect? No. In fact, since Peace and Happy had moved into their own rooms, the space left for Sunny and Bliss seemed way too big. The bed, too huge. She stretched out in it every night like a starfish, arms and legs reaching to all four corners yet unable to touch. There were many nights she took Bliss into bed with her even though the baby no longer even woke at night to nurse.

  But what could she say?

  Please put us all back in the same room because it’s too hard for me to sleep by myself. Please inspect my room to see if I’ve disobeyed you by opening the window though you’ve asked me not to, because if I made a report to you on myself, you’d just look at me like I was crazy.

  Dr. Braddock had said, over and over again, that Sunny was not crazy. She had not said that Papa was crazy, but Sunny knew that’s what Dr. Braddock thought. It’s what everyone thought on the TV and in those articles in the magazines Liesel had thrown in the trash but Sunny had seen anyway.

  John Second. He was crazy. And cruel. Dr. Braddock had convinced Sunny of that. All the things he’d done to her, those bad things when she was a child and even later…and finally the bad thing he’d made the rest of them all do…he was crazy. He’d taken his father’s words and ruined them, Sunny had no doubts about that. But some of Papa’s words, the things he’d taught them about respecting and loving the earth and taking care of their vessels, most of that still felt right to her. Even if her mother had gotten cancer. Even if instead of vessel she was supposed to think “body.”

  “By calling it a vessel, Sunshine, it makes it too easy to believe that taking your own life is a valid choice.” That’s what Dr. Braddock said. “When you call your body a vessel, you separate yourself from it like it’s an object you can easily replace. When the truth is, your body is as much a part of your existence as your soul. You need your body.”

  Her body. Sunny looked down at her wrists and hands exposed below the buttoned sleeve of her lightweight blouse as she quietly pulled her door closed. Liesel had picked out this blouse, which was so pretty and yet still in keeping with the family’s ideas of modesty that Sunny wanted to wear it every single day. She would’ve, too, but Liesel frowned on that. More waste, washing clothes after wearing them only once, though Sunny couldn’t deny she loved being able to slip into fresh clothes smelling of laundry detergent.

  Sunny could no longer deny a lot of things.

  Every day that passed took her further away from her life in Sanctuary. Some days it was almost as if she’d dreamed all those years living there. The things that had happened. Certainly her dreams were full of memories that Dr. Braddock had encouraged her to explore, remember. Write down. Talk about.

  Purge.

  So it wasn’t any wonder that with all that talk and the dreams that lingered occasionally after she’d woken, Sunny had trouble being certain of what was real and what was memory. When she felt as if she’d always lived here, it was so much easier to pretend everything else that had happened to her was like something from a movie or a book.

  Except…that was a lot like saying vessel instead of body, wasn’t it? Calling people blemished. Making it easy to keep it separate from herself. From the truth.

  She still needed the silence she found in meditation. Without Papa’s words to rely on for comfort, she had to find some other way to keep anxiety from overwhelming her. She’d never floated again the way she had in those first few days. It was the weight of the hot showers, the sweets, the mindless television, the dozens of wasteful, wordly things she allowed herself that kept her stuck so firmly to the ground. But she didn’t give up. She listened with her heart as often as she could, even when for days and days the voice never spoke a word.

  Sunny paused first at Peace’s door to peek inside. Her small daughter slept sprawled the way her mother did, but not because she was trying to take up as much space as possible. Peace loved her white bed frame with the princess canopy of mesh Chris had hung for her. She slept there without any sort of self-consciousness or even fear—Peace would forget her life in Sanctuary sooner rather than later. Sunny saw it in her already.

  Happy’s room wasn’t quite as decorated as his sister’s. Liesel had offered to paint it for him, to buy him the same sort of wall stickers Peace had picked out at the local Lowe’s, but in a boy-friendly pattern. He hadn’t wanted it. He’d hung his walls with his drawings, instead, and slept in plain blue sheets with a matching blue comforter that was all he wanted from the store. It would take him longer to forget.

  Bliss batted at the front of Sunny’s shirt, and for a moment she considered unbuttoning it and allowing the baby to nurse, but the fact was, Bliss really didn’t need breast milk anymore. She was entirely on solid foods now, fruits and veggies and pasta. No meat yet, but she’d been making grabby hands at the meatballs Liesel had made for dinner a few nights before, and it wouldn’t be long before Bliss was eating everything along with all of them. Sunny slipped a finger in Bliss’s mouth, felt the tiny nubs of teeth both top and bottom that were trying to break through.

  “You,” she said to the baby, “are growing up so fast.”

  Sunny grabbed a few slices of bread and spread them with organic strawberry jelly while Bliss made grabby hands at those, too. Then a glass of her favorite orange juice—she still couldn’t get used to knowing that she could eat or drink whatever she wanted from the fridge whenever she wanted to. It was wrong to steal food from the cupboards and hide it away, she knew that, but her stomach still too well remembered being empty. And it wasn’t for her, she thought. It was for the children. If something went wrong, she couldn’t let them go hungry. Bliss’s feet drummed on Sunny’s thighs as she reached for the jelly toast, and Sunny broke off a small piece for the baby to gum.

  “Hush,” she said to the baby, who didn’t hush the way both Happy and Peace would’ve. Well, Happy would. Peace was her own girl, and while part of Sunny was proud to see her young daughter so independent and sure of herself, another part reminded her that it was good for children to obey their parents.

  Outside, the sun had risen higher, but the grass indeed was wet on her bare feet as she made her way across the yard. She left footprints behind her as she went, though Sunny didn’t bother looking over her shoulder to where she’d been. Only where she was going.

  Liesel had always wanted a garden, she’d said. She just didn’t have the time for one. The soil in this neighborhood was rocky, thick with clay