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queenlucythevaliant · 11 months ago

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Heartstrings

Written for the @inklings-challenge Christmas Challenge 2023.

It is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

The string was still there, knotted beneath Rose’s left ribs. She was driving 75 miles an hour down the freeway in her ten-year-old Carolla, the radio on at a buzz. Outside the window, miles and miles of monotonous New York forest passed by.

Her sister Joan was asleep in the passenger's seat, medical gauze still visible beneath her pale pink blouse. She dozed uneasily, turning her head occasionally from side to side, or else sniffling faintly. Rose hummed along to the radio and tried not to focus on the pulling sensation in her chest.

Everyone has a heartstring that leads them home, which for Rose meant Eastledge Church in the Massachusetts town of the same name. Heartstrings are thick and fibrous, made of many smaller cords all twisted together. Rose's string had been wrapped round her heart in many tight loops over the course of her childhood, constricting her cardiac muscle while simultaneously holding it safe and secure. She didn’t know if her heart could beat without it.

So: she drove. Exit in 143 miles, rest stop in ten.

Eastledge Church was rotten. It had black mold in the walls and liars in the pulpit. Rose knew she should cut the string that tied her there. She wanted to. Joan had managed to yank out her own heartstring, but it had bled and bled and she’d needed two trips to the ER before it was safe for her to travel. Even now, she was pale and weak from the bloodloss.

Still, Rose knew she should cut the string. She kept a pair of scissors in the glove box, in case she ever got up the courage to do it.

“Where are we?” murmured Joan. She stirred a little, carefully shifting her weight away from the left side of her body.

“You missed the Erie Canal– or, well, the picnic area anyway. There’s a rest stop with an Arby’s in like ten miles if you want dinner.”

They arrived at their hotel in Buffalo just after two in the morning. Rose had an ache in her hamstring from working the gas pedal, but it was nothing compared to a chest wound. Both she and Joan had forgotten to call ahead from the road, so they had to wait while the front desk concierge went to find the manager and ask if he could still check people in once they’d started the night audit. The manager appeared at the front desk a few minutes later and told Rose curtly that it would be a while yet.

“It’s standard practice at hotels.”

“I know,” said Rose. “I’m sorry. There’s a problem with my heartstring, see? And my sister’s got ripped out. We had other worries. I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” the manager answered dubiously. “Well, make yourself comfortable in the lobby and we’ll let you know when we can check you in.”

It was three by the time Rose finally stumbled into the room and collapsed onto the hard mattress. Joan came in behind her, barely coherent through the fog of her exhaustion. The light in the bathroom was flickering, but Rose didn’t care. Her heartstring hummed with promises of rest. Turn around, it seemed to say. You know you won’t be able to sleep the night until you’re back home.

“Screw you,” Rose said aloud.

“Hmm?”

“Not you. The church, Pastor Mark, and this stupid string in my chest.”

“Hmm,” agreed Joan.

Rose indulged herself for a long moment in imagining the violent demise of an elder who had taught her to play Go in the welcome room once, and who had made excuses for the rot in the walls many years later. Her heart thrummed like a violin string. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

The next day, they drove as far as Gary, Indiana. Rose could feel her string getting tangled whenever she got on another exit; she worried about it even changing lanes.

“Mind if I put on something a little more upbeat?” said Joan when Rose winced on a long merge. “I think we could both use it.”

“I don't think it'll help, really.”

“Alright, but maybe it'll get us singing along?”

Rose waved her hand in a way that meant “fine.” She bobbed her head to the peppy pop song her sister selected and tried to enjoy the drive. It was pretty country, a sunny day, and they kept passing signs for different scenic lakes along the way.

“Finger Lake, Elbow Lake… do ya think we're building an arm?” she quipped, feeling lighter.

But when Rose tried to start the car outside the diner where they’d stopped for lunch, her key wouldn’t turn in the ignition. Joan was paying for parking, but when she slid into the passenger's seat, careful not to jar her stitches, Rose threw her head down on the steering wheel and sobbed. She turned to her sister, questions about oil cans and engines on the tip of her tongue, but right then her heartstring yanked so hard on her heart that all she could manage to say was, “It hurts.”

“I know Rosie. I know it does,” Joan said back. “Mine does too.”

Fortunately, there was an Ace Hardware half a mile away. Rose left Joan with the car and walked there, then paid for the lubricant Google said she needed and headed back. There were still so many miles to drive that day, so much string left to unspool.

On the way to St. Cloud, they changed time zones. Rose felt it deep in her chest when they passed from Eastern to Central time: a jolt on her string, like lightning down a kitestring.

“Did you feel that?”

“I didn’t feel anything,” said Joan.

“No, I guess you wouldn’t.” Rose stared at the glovebox a long moment before she remembered to keep her eyes on the road. There was only an hour difference between Eastledge and here, but with all that time pulling steadily against her ribs, Rose could feel every minute of it.

Joan suggested calling their parents when they reached their hotel that night, before both sisters remembered that they would be asleep by now. Rose wondered if Pastor Mark was sleeping too. She hoped he had nightmares. She hoped he woke up with guilt pressing hard on his chest.

They drove past Chicago in a heavy drizzle and spent two hours sitting in traffic. Joan tried calling their parents again, since there was nothing else to do. “I don’t know how you and Dad stand it,” she murmured. “Staying in town with your strings half-frayed. Isn’t it killing you?”

“Sometimes,” said their mother. “But your father and I have spent our whole lives reorienting our hearts. We've had to do it many times, and it never gets easier, but we get better at it.”

“Do you blame Rose and me at all– for leaving?”

“Of course not. But we'll miss you at Christmas.”

That night, Rose and Joan snuggled up together on a hotel room queen bed and watched the second half of some Julia Roberts movie that was playing on cable. Joan cracked jokes about the female lead's neuroses and by the time the credits rolled she was lying half on top of Rose. Their hearts were beating in time, and suddenly Rose was grateful, so grateful not to be alone with this grief.

They'd been traveling for days now and Rose's heartstring grew more and more taught by the mile. Now, if she touched it, blinding agony would shoot through her chest. Even just the glancing brush of a fingertip over the fibers squeezed her heart until all she could think of was the place under the stairs where she’d hidden for hours once when she was eight, sleeping bags spread out across the sanctuary floor, or sneaking into the kitchen during summer VBS.

“Do you remember those lantern light picnics they used to do for a while? Right as summer was ending, you know, and the whole congregation came out for it, and it was just kind of magic?”

“Yeah. I also remember ditching it that one time and running out to the creek with Olivia and Liam.”

“What about that tea and testimony women’s event when they asked me to be on the panel?”

“Don’t remember that one. I didn’t think you ended up doing it?”

“I didn’t. Prior commitment. But it felt nice to be asked.”

“Mmm. I felt the same way when they asked me to do the layout for the new photo directory.”

“Teaching Sunday School. Nursery. Organizing the craft closet and going crazy with the label maker.”

“Mmm. Food drives, clothing drives, and silly little theatricals.”

“Remember when I got to sing ‘Do You Hear What I Hear?’ at the Christmas pageant? And the year you were Mary? And that one play after I aged out where you spray dyed your hair gray?”

“Some of it. I was pretty young for the first one. And I’m trying to forget as much about church plays as I can. Mr. Pierce directed them all, and I don’t want to think about him at all if I can help it. Not after what he said to Mom.”

Rose sighed.

“Yeah, that's true. It's a bad lot, top to bottom. Anyway. How’s your heart?”

“It’s doing better, I think. The wound’s not seeping anymore. Sometimes, it barely hurts at all.”

It was Christmas Eve when they arrived in Helena. A Wednesday. Rose pulled into their aunt’s driveway and parked, then they both went inside to greet the extended family. Joan called their parents to tell them she and Rose had arrived safe.

They had dinner with the family, but then the sisters went and sat together on the guest bed for an hour trying to figure out what came next. Rose pulled at the string beneath her left ribs until she could barely stand it, trying to decide if she could bear the Christmas Eve service her aunt and uncle attended. Joan just sat scrolling mindlessly on her phone, trying to forget for a while.

They both wanted to go to church on Christmas Eve. That was maybe the cruelest part. Rose’s heart longed for carols and Scripture readings with a tender ache altogether different from the ever-present, stripped-raw yanking of the string. Joan was healing, and didn’t want to dwell on losing Eastledge any more than she’d already done.

“I’m going, I think,” Joan said finally. It was nine p.m. and the service began at eleven.

“I’m not,” whispered Rose. “I just can’t. It hurts too much.”

She made an apology to her relatives while Joan went to get dressed, gesturing vaguely at the place beneath her left ribs. Once the house was empty, she resigned herself to the tinny sound of carols played over her phone speaker and a few whispered prayers. When she prayed, Rose heard Pastor Mark’s voice as often as her own. Sometimes he told the truth, but most of the time he lied.

Oh God. This time back home, they’d be singing “The First Noel.” They’d be lighting candles soon, and the upstairs sanctuary under whose stairs she used to hide would glitter when they turned off the lights.

When the churchgoing party got home, half an hour after midnight, Joan found her sister in the guest bath. She was sobbing and covered in blood.

“I cut it,” Rose whispered. “I cut my heartstring. I couldn’t bear not being at the service–not the one here and not the one at home– so I cut it out of me. I took the scissors and I just– I– I think I’m bleeding.” She looked up. “I am bleeding, right? This is all my blood.”

There was blood oozing out of the wound in her chest, but it was on her hands too. It was on her lips, her nose, and how had even that happened? “I’m bleeding,” Rose said again. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop.”

Joan called an ambulance, but first she reached back and unzipped her dress. She pulled it over her head and stood there, in her bra and black tights and nylon slip in front of her bleeding sister. “Mine stopped,” she said, slowly peeling back the gauze that covered her heart. The wound was shut, though the scar was still red and angry. “It hurt a lot tonight, Rosie, but it’s not bleeding. Yours will stop too. I promise.”

They spent Christmas night in the ER. “It’s a busy night in this ward,” one of the nurses remarked. “Lots of people pick tonight to tear away their heartstrings. It’s the worst night of the year for people who can never go home.”

The Sunday after Christmas, Rose felt light-headed as she stepped into her aunt and uncle's church. She’d missed the carols, but some of the decorations were still up. The altar cloth was still white and gold, and so it would remain for a few days yet.

Everything was either an echo or a contrast to Eastledge. “I wish they wouldn’t sing this song,” said Rose in her sister’s ear, pressing a hand to the place beneath her ribs where her heartstring had been.

After the service, Rose went up to the front of the church and stood in front of the altar. She reached out and ran her fingers over the scalloped edge of the cloth, wanting to salvage some Christmas joy but instead only able to imagine the corresponding cloth a thousand miles away in Eastledge, Massachusetts.

No, no, none of that. Rose screwed her eyes shut and she forced her thoughts back into something like order. She thought about Christ Incarnate leaving his home in heaven. Which way had his heartstring pulled him, she wondered. Had it tied him back to the Father, or had his heartstring led him straight to the cross?

“Eastledge Church broke my heart,” she didn't quite whisper. “You broke my heart, God, and I don't know what comes next.”

There was no immediate answer, but the gold threads against her fingertips were rough and scratchy. They ran along the white cloth in embroidered images of starbursts, crowns, and crosses. Her fingernail caught on a loose end, which unraveled a little when she drew her hand away.

Before Rose quite understood what was happening, that loose end of golden thread had disentangled itself from the altar cloth and was hanging in the air before her eyes. As she watched, one glittering end wove its way towards her chest, underneath the bandage and through her skin. With a strange gentleness, the thread wound its way past her left ribs and tied itself, she was certain, in a knot around her heart. The string gave a little tug, but it didn't hurt her; Rose felt only a delicious warmth that began in her heart and seemed to radiate all through her body, from the hairs on her head to the tips of her toes.

For an instant, Rose assumed that the other end of the thread was still embedded in the altar cloth; that this was God's way of telling her that she belonged here, at this church. Yet as her eyes traced the length of golden thread, they found themselves gazing up, where a faint shimmering was just visible high up in the rafters.

“It doesn't end there,” she realized. With that, Rose turned and sprinted down the aisle and out of the church.

The gray December sky was dotted with snowflakes. When Rose raised her head, they fell in her lashes and she had to blink them away. Yet there, high above her, she could see her golden heartstring vanishing into the clouds.

“It leads to the Throne Room,” said a voice beside her. Rose turned and saw Joan standing beside her, with Rose's own coat draped over her arm. “I think it must.”

“Yours too? I mean, did your heartstring–”

“Yes. Christmas night, in the hospital with you. I looked up and it seemed to be unfurling down from the ceiling like Jacob's Ladder.”

“You never said.” Rose sniffed hard, not sure if it was the cold or the overwhelming emotion that caused it.

“I don't think it's the sort of experience you can talk about, much. Put on your coat, Rosie. I won't say let's go home, not now– but the car is warming up, and I bet I can get Auntie to make us some cocoa.”

#inklingschallenge #this is a weird one gang #hopefully I was able to convey my thoughts in an eloquent way but i guess we'll see #it was cathartic to write at any rate #and! i did work in the twelve days of Christmas in that the climax occurs the sunday after Christmas (does that day have a name? idk)#anyway #here's what i got hope you enjoy #taking one line from Jane Eyre super literally and transposing it into a completely different context #pontifications and creations #leah stories #unto us a child is born #inklings challenge

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