Ghosts and Other Lovers Read Online Free PDF Page B

fair. Men didn't have to pretend they were made of porcelain, so why should women? Perfection was unnatural. The body was a messy thing.
    But not like this . This mess was not natural. Thank God, it proved to be easily washed away. Calming now that face and neck and hands were clean, Eustacia poured the last of the water into the bowl and tried to judge if there was enough to wash her hair.
    There was a knock at the door and before she could say anything to stop her, Mildred had entered.
    "Are you feeling better this morning? Ah!" Her sharp eyes saw something and the hidden worry on her face was transformed in an instant to something else, to understanding. "It's your sick time, of course."
    "No--" But before she could protest, Eustacia realized what she had been too preoccupied and frightened to notice earlier. She felt the wetness between her legs, twisted around and saw what Mildred had seen: the bloodstain on her gown, the unmistakable badge of her condition.
    "But what are you doing up? You'll only make yourself ill. You want to keep warm. I'll fetch some clean towels. Now, into bed with you. I'll tell Pa you're feeling poorly and won't be down today. I'll bring you up some toast and tea, and build up the fire in here. Well? What are you waiting for?"
    She made a gesture below her waist. "I . . . have to clean myself."
    "All right. But be quick about it, don't be standing about in the cold . . . you know a woman's constitution is at its weakest at these times."
    Left alone, Eustacia realized that Mildred had decided there was nothing seriously wrong with her. The strangeness of hands exuding mucus had been redefined as a side effect of menstruation. No matter how odd and unpleasant, because it was happening now, when she was bleeding, it was to be accepted as yet another symptom of the female sickness.
    She fashioned a toweling diaper for herself, put on a fresh nightgown, and got into bed. There was blood on the sheets, but it had dried. Why change them now, when she would surely soil them again? With five sisters she had seen how differently Eve's Curse afflicted different women, even women with the same parents and upbringing. She wondered: could Mildred be right?
    But Mildred didn't know what she knew -- that her hands had been cold and damp, sweating this strange substance not for just a day or two, but for more than a week.
    A hand went to her head as she remembered. Tentative at first, then, frowning with surprise, she combed her fingers through clean hair: not clotted, not matted, not sticky, not stiff. Clean.
    She got up to find the hand-mirror, to let her eyes confirm what her fingers told her. She picked her dress off the chair where she had hung it the previous night and examined the skirt. But although she remembered how often she had wiped her wet, sticky hands there, now she could neither see nor feel any trace of foreign matter. Her pocket handkerchief, too, was clean, although she could remember quite vividly the horrid slimy ball she'd made of it.
    All gone now. Gone to nothing. Was it over?
    She pressed her fingertips against her cheeks and brushed them against her lips. They felt cold and ever so slightly damp.
    So quickly it had become a habit to wipe her hands whenever she felt them becoming wet. Now, half-reclining in bed, propped up on pillows, she decided to do nothing and see what happened.
    Her hands rested on top of the blanket at chest-level. She felt a tingling sensation in the fingertips, and then she saw the stuff oozing out in faint, wispy tendrils.
    Her skin crawled at the sight, and a horrible thought occurred to her. What if those slimy tendrils were now emerging not only from her fingertips, but all over her body? Those prickling feelings . . . She gasped for breath and held herself rigidly still, fighting down the urge to leap up and rip off her gown. She would wait and see.
    The shining tendrils thickened and grew more solid. They took on the appearance of ghostly fingers.