Bertha Speaks

Warning: This one is long, but I have no idea how to do a cut-text like in Livejournal. My HTML is really, really limited. . .so, sorry.

Today I assigned my seniors to rewrite a scene from Jane Eyre from the perspective of the "madwoman in the attic." I never assign something I'm not willing to do. . .and in fact, I have done this one in the past. . .but today I was inspired, and this is what came of it. Trash or treasure. I wrote this in sixth and seventh periods today, after throwing out what I started in fifth. Writing is a recursive process; this still needs work.

Bertha Speaks

He said he’d come for me last week; like everything else he’s ever said, it was a lie. His lies tasted like truth but over time the voices have confessed what they were afraid to tell me at first: Like all men, he lies. Now I just long for the balm of sleep.

And so it’s been a lonely week, many days and nights of sorrow during which my hair grew gray and my nails became talons. The wretch who brings my meals stinks of whiskey, and she never speaks or looks directly at me, but in some ways her voice is loudest of all.

On the first day, I stare out the small garret window in disbelief at the grayness and overwhelming oppression of what he jovially called the English sky. How I miss the colors of home—the bright plumage of the parrot who used the sing me songs of the sea, the green grasses that seemed to catch fire in the morning light. Here it is dreary and cold, and even the birds circle aimlessly over the browns and grays and beige washes of the land below me. The first day seems to go on forever; I feel like I take meals over and over, and scarcely sleep. He would come for me, restore me to my rightful place at his side, and we would go back home to the islands. I scream a lot the first day, until my broken voice finally silences the angry chorus in my head. How I hate him, this first day of imprisonment.

The second day is much easier; I laugh and chat for hours, it seems, and Grace—a name unbefitting a wretch of her stature—gives me thread and a needle. By the dim light of the oil lamp I ply my needle, dying the muslin reddish with my efforts. I remember feeling immense satisfaction that I created so moving a gift for my lord, my Edward. I laugh until my sides hurt, and don’t notice until nightfall that my one small window now hides behind bars. Despair sinks over me and I sleep, curling my battered fingers into fists like an angry infant.

Day three dawns cold and fair, with shafts of light peeking in through the slats on my permanent shutter. I yawn and stretch, alone for once, and observe my reflection in the mirror over my bureau. I hadn’t noticed it before, but someone has apparently broken the edges, leaving an uneven border and patches where the mercury glass had been scratched viciously, but if I lean to the left I can discern my visage, and I frown at the facsimile staring back at me. I decide that I am too fine for the attic, but too poor a guest for the parlor, so I set about with my morning toilette, combing my hair and smearing rouge on my pale cheeks. The guests below wouldn’t want a pale specter such as myself casting a pall over the evening games. Now I would just wait for an invitation.

Hours pass. Grace appears with a tray, and calls me a fool. She doesn’t appreciate my sartorial efforts. Grace is a fool. Edward just forgot. He will come for me, and we will play charades, and he will hold me enclosed in his powerful arms and croon promises of love and recompense for his shabby treatment. All will be well. I fall asleep, still besmeared with makeup I crafted myself from soot and candle wax, waiting for him.

Much time seems to pass after the third day; I rage and scream and break the shutter in an attempt to assuage my grief at my husband’s apparent forgetfulness. I thought the fourth day would never come; caught in a limbo between days for an unsupportable passage of hours and minutes and weeks, I feel the dread growing within me. And amid that dread, I formulate a plan. Mohammed will go to the mountain. I have read of such things, such Eastern religions, in my youth. Mohammed will go to the mountain since the mountain will not visit the lonely prophet.

Each new day brings me closer to my wedding night. Or has it already passed, and I missed it? The fourth day finally comes, after much waiting and plotting, and my keeper falls asleep by the hearth late in the afternoon, her keys dangling from her scabbed fingers. I idly wonder who had bitten her thus; I can’t imagine that she tastes sweet. Those wounded fingers yield the keys quickly enough, though, thanks to the brownish amber she’d drunk, and I smooth down my hair to make myself more presentable for my journey. Grace snores fitfully as I work key after key in the old brass lock until the tumbler turned and I stealthily push open the oak door that stands between my reality and my hopes.

Four days he had left me upstairs, and I had aged a decade! How unfair it is for women. Men age so slowly, it seems, and every element of suffering is etched permanently into our faces and our bodies. I catch a glimpse of my shadow, hunched and timid, a ghost of what I once was. My joints ache from disuse, but I manage the stairs easily enough, looking in every open doorway for my lord and master. Voices rise from below—a child’s singsong cadence in a tongue I do not understand, the gruff remonstrations of that devilish housekeeper, the dulcet tones of another unknown to me. These sounds comingle with the voices in my head, distracting and jarring me. I do not hear Edward, or what I remember of Edward. Four days is a long time. Anger wells up within me as I reached for the burning tallow. Four days is forever.

A cacophony assaults my ears, and I pull at my hair in a vain attempt to stop the flames from spreading. I have been listening so intently to the voices that the room has become engulfed in orange, red, vibrant hues of flickering flames when I fail to keep watch. The heat rises as live sparks dance from the duvet to the pillows to the tufted rug below the bed, but for a moment, lost in thought, shreds of hair in my hands, I feel the warmth of Jamaica in my bones. The fire gives such lovely light—casting away the endless gloom of this so-called country that will never be my own. A roaring scream, astonishingly from my own throat, draws the old woman from below. I am smothering, dying, wrapped in coarse serge, hands beating at my head and arms, smoke everywhere.

“Grace Poole!” she shrieks. “You have quite forgot yourself!”

Ahh—so I am Grace, and the wretch upstairs had been mistaken. But it is not to be; the familiar, sour smell of drink reaches my nostrils, even amid the acrid smoke, and my keeper stands in shame at my side.

“You can’t leave her be, for even a moment!” the housekeeper cries. “And to get into the bottle again—fie, for shame!”

I tremble. He had left me for so many days, recoiled from my touch, and now he would never come upstairs again. You don’t understand, I want to say, but the voices have to be heard first. The fire is my only joy.

“See? Gibberish. She’s a savage, the poor creature.”

No, you don’t understand. He is my husband, and we’re going to be married. Just as soon as I can cool my fiery skin and sleep.

Firm hands guide me back to my chamber, bathe me, dress my wounds, speak in soothing tones barely audible above the ongoing clamor between my ears.

“We musn’t tell the new girl; he would be ever so angry!”

Hungry for even a mention of him, I gaze up at my keeper, and her keeper. “Edward?” I ask plaintively.

“She’s muttering again. Best let her sleep. We’ll clean up his bedchamber by morning and add a lock here, lest she get out again. Pay mind to her, Grace. Don’t trust her for a second.”

I want to cry, want to let them know that he promised to come for me last week. I know it’s only the fourth day but I can wait no longer. He promised me kindness and companionship and safety, and I can wait no longer. We are married. We are to be married. We are married, yes? Yes, I thought so.

The voices slip into a dull roar, and I close my eyes in hopes of sleep. I am Mrs. Rochester, not Grace. I am the lady of the house. Tomorrow I will be stronger, and tomorrow I will make myself known to him. He lies and breaks promises, but he is my husband and I can wait no longer. Four days is forever.