After begins as quickly as Before ended. Raging fire is traded for cooling water, feral hands grasping, choking, slicing, kind hands washing, soothing, taking (there is a similarity between the two in that- whether feral or tamed, people take. One way is simply considered to be more dignified)
The nurse does not say a word when your teeth bare, just enough to be visible as her hand comes close to your mouth. She seems almost eager to see what moves the newest act is willing to do to entertain her- but a good dog does not bite the hand that feeds it, and you manage to convert it into a bland smile that seems to delight Mrs. Taylor. She begins praising your manners as fervently as she had when you dragged yourself to the kitchen table after a sleepover, mumbling thanks for the breakfast. She had always loved you more according to Jackie. Mother, like daughter, had no clue what they meant loved- could one claim to love that which doesn’t exist? A Shauna for Jackie, a Shauna for Mrs. Taylor, split, split, split with nothing left for yourself.
Jeff hangs around the hospital like an apparition, managing bereaved glances towards Mrs. Taylor within one moment and secretly taking your hand beneath the blanket in another. It’s almost impressive how quickly he hides himself, and for the first time since your rescue you’re interested in something beyond how the blood they washed off of you melds with the water. Perhaps if two chameleons meet, they can finally coax true colors out of one another.
You agree on a timeline, written within your journal. Neat, efficient, everything that had died within the wilderness. Within a year, you’ll allow yourselves to get “caught” hugging by Jackie’s grave, perhaps a chaste kiss. A memoir worthy story, Saint Jackie’s ghost guiding those who loved her to one another. In truth you’d already accepted the promise ring he’d bought within a month of your return, babbling about the preciousness of time. You suspect though, it is what you hold that is precious. He seeks out Jackie like a hound, seems to recognize her presence within you. You can provide, you realize then, and what he asks is bloodless
(boring). But you were at the feast first, and it makes you kind, as you allow him to partake (don’t all dogs get scraps they believe to be a meal?)
Mrs. Taylor insists you take the money for the dress, and you know it will come at the cost of her input, input she would have given for Jackie. But aren’t you Jackie now as well, with her within you? So you take the dress that was not intended for you, gratefully accept the gift she gives to a ghost, sure to show how oh so very grateful you are. You’re like a daughter she murmurs, and you don’t bother telling her that you are her daughter now in every way that matters.
In 2001 you die, and it is a funeral grander then any other. Look Jackie, you want to laugh. She got flames that were tamped down by the snow, you are celebrated where she was mourned. You know she is looking, and the smugger part of you is satisfied to know as you waltz within Jeff’s arms, Jackie observes. You’d given him the first piece of cake, daintily balanced on the fork, screamed light hearted threats as he moved to mush the piece he goes to give you in your face. You had your piece of Jackie already, and marriage is a partnership, now Jeff must have his. You don’t decline a slice of your own- there is Jackie aplenty within the room, within the cake, within your bones. More then enough for all.
Jeff insists upon buying the home himself, carries you over the threshold with a laugh. You are Shauna and he is Jeff in these years, chameleons no longer. Shauna Shipman’s death was a birth, and Shauna Sadecki is fun, so very fun. Shauna Sadecki was born in civilization, with none of the wilderness within her. As a treat, you allow yourself to watch a rabbit hop through your garden, stand until your hands no longer tremble with the urge to kill. Shauna Sadecki is a vegetarian within the first years, after all.
It is Callie who ruins it as she does everything else, brings Shauna Shipman back from the grave along with a harsh craving for meat. Jeff dutifully runs to the store, grabs chunks of roast and packages of chicken without a word about the sudden end of your diet. You’d tried so very hard after all, and isn’t that something? It’s good for the baby, he says the few times you cry into his shoulder about it. Nothing to be ashamed of. But it is not shame you cry out of, but a deep sense of relief.
They hand you a baby that comes into the world howling, and she’s almost likeable in the first hour. She takes and eats and breathes unapologetically, and you can see that at her core she understands you, would forgive Shauna Shipman for what she had to do out there. You hold her all the closer when a nurse comes in prepared to teach you how to help her latch- confident you can make it, just the two of you. Sure enough, she knows, snuffling faintly and taking to the milk immediately. You could almost call it kinship, an instinctual understanding of what the world requires for survival. For a moment, you can swear you could try to love her.
It lasts until the morning, when you go to take her out of the bassinet and she turns up her nose, howling all the louder for something she refuses to communicate. It’s an hour of frenzied crying (on two ends), of coaxing and coaxing her to take something she knows she needs (stubborn like the one who came before her). After the hour you set her still screaming into the bassinet, inviting anybody, somebody, to come and take her, relieve the burden.Within a few minutes a chill fills the air, and she turns to you, clearly expecting something of you. The chill grows, you remain in deadlock with the baby, and for the briefest moment disgust fills you. Does she not know, to feed? To seek something warmer? It is almost begrudgingly that you take her within your arms again, share the blanket around the both of you. She will have to learn, eventually.
Jackie had a doll that she kept in her closet, that she kept in her closet for fear it would watch her through the night. Ridiculous, you’d laughed. You wonder now, what Jackie’s accusing eyes are attempting to say when her mother offers it to you years later for a daughter of your own, as you put it into your own closet kept nestled within careful confines of fabric. Callie finds it eventually, as she finds everything, refuses to sleep without its watching gaze. Tragic, how quickly it slips from her bed and shatters on the ground as you tuck her in later that night. But such is the way of the world- beautiful things break.
Mrs. Taylor replaces it with a ‘far more appropriate’ stuffed rabbit. You contemplate its untimely demise in the washer, merely fluffy guts and torn fabric. Perhaps consumed in the dryer, no evidence of its existence besides near ash. Even the dog buries it within the backyard, though it quickly finds its way back onto Callie’s pillow that night. The washer, disappointingly, spares it, though you notice puncture marks where the dog’s teeth cut into its neck. For a moment, you almost smile.
The excitement is confined to this, to occasional proof that life is being lived. The slice of a knife into meat of the animal kind, the growl of the dog at anything that dares to encroach upon it. Callie has a vegetarian phase Jeff insists you both support, the dog runs one night through the door you’d left open only to return with its tail between its legs.
Shauna Shipman claws at you through photo albums the Taylors dutifully drag out, her and Jackie, her and Jackie, a singular picture of Jeff with a chaste hand on Jackie’s back that makes him flush as Mr. Taylor teases, her and Jackie (whose eyes are Jeff on in the background?), her and Jackie. No Shauna Sadecki and Jackie, the thought is a contradiction. One had to die for the other to be here, and you think it was quite kind of you to kill her, to spare her from being Jackie Sadecki. She doesn’t see it that way, but the fun part of being the survivor is that the final word will always be yours.
So as you lay back at night, you exercise that survivor’s right, repeating the words into the air, bite them into Jeff’s skin on the days he feels “frisky” (allows a hickey in a concealable spot), scrawl them onto the haphazard notes you toss into Callie’s lunch bag before Jeff brings her to school
“I finally figured out where I begin, Jackie. At the end of you”