But to be discovered suggests one never existed in the first place. I had a life. I was a girl who played with dolls, who wanted to be a ventriloquist. On Saturdays I helped my mother stir the batter for the cakes she’d sell at church.More sugar.All these years later, I stood before Bertie with a different kind of understanding. I was solid. I was liquid. I was gas. I was the tail of a comet, threatening to choke the atmosphere.
I let go of her hand. I owed her nothing.
“It really is you,” Bertie said.
“Who?” Bianca asked.
“Her brain has been deprived of oxygen for too long,” said Vincent.
Someone’s arms wrapped around my middle and began pulling me back. It was Celeste herself, strong from years of Jazzercise.
But Bertie—she had real power. She didn’t need a microphone. When she spoke, everyone listened. “My Earthshine Girl,” Bertie said.
Then I turned toward the camera. A red light blinked, an angry eye. I was in your living room. I was boxed into your TVs.
I tore at my dress. I stripped to my bra and underwear. Beneath my breasts I’d tucked that formulary. On my body, in paint, I’d written her name:OPAL DOUCET.The red paint had dripped down my leg, like blood, like what those Jane Does described, like a period, like afterbirth, like what whooshed from me now, like the kind of blood nobody wants to acknowledge, and so we keep it discreet, to ourselves, sometimes for years, sometimes against our better judgment. Elliot looked horrified.
I stared into the camera and projected my voice loudly enough to be picked up by the boom mic: “I am not your Earthshine Girl.”
The tabloids would later describe what happened next as a meltdown. Melting suggests a gradual shrinking, like a candle that can burn for hours. However, my meltdown did not last for hours. It lasted seven seconds. A burst of rage. Seven seconds of, first, staring just past the camera, followed by a teeth-gritted wail. I was holding that formulary Halley had left me. Halley, who loved me enough to tell me the truth. Halley who, even in death, held up a mirror so I could finally see myself.Reallysee myself. I howled, and I sounded like I was in labor. I felt my vocal cords pop. I screamed, with Opal’s voice, which I now recognized in my head, and then I screamed again with my own, because screaming seemed the only useful thing I could do with my body, an action of last resort.
1910
Opal staggered from the burning building, sooty, her dark shawl draped over her face. She was accustomed to over-warmth, to shortness of breath. She reached for the handrail to brace her weight.
“Somebody, help her!” a voice yelled, a woman’s voice in front of her, one of the Earthshine workers.
Opal rasped. Her throat felt like she’d swallowed walnut husks.
“Take deep breaths. Keep breathing.”
She thought of her laboratory now, engulfed in flames, the vat of powders turned black with smoke and heat. She imagined the combustion, the explosion. She thought of the times she helped Jagr with his work, how he cautioned against breathing in the vapors. Opal had become accustomed to working with a handkerchief tied about her face, her breath held, so her memories of helping Jagr were ones of lightheadedness.
Her skirt was soaked. Her body cramped. The baby was here.Stay with me, stay with me, stay with me, Opal silently commanded.Just a while longer.If she ever held the ability to commune with the Other Side, let her child hear her words and listen. The police officers were forming a barricade around the scene. She searched for the Colonel in the crowd, but she didn’t see him.
Flames now escaped from windows, licking at the brick. TheEARTHSHINE SOAPsign toppled. Her legs wobbled like a foal’s.
“Madame Doucet, sit. Sit!”
Opal gasped and held her stomach. The smoke had stolen her air. Her eyes stung with needling dryness. Kneeling in front of her now was Ruth. In a horseshoe behind her stood other Earthshine workers. Their outlines glowed from the fire. Their white uniforms were sooty from ash.
Then, the sound of bursting glass. Fragments of crystal rained to the ground. Opal felt her body being lifted again, moved back, away from the building and the heat, which was making her feel fevered. A tightness seized her belly. Where was Amanda? Maria? Gilly? The others? Opal allowed the women to help her to her feet again. She wished she were like the great Houdini who could escape even a sunken milk can. She’d seen advertisements:Failure means drowning to death.
She had to hurry.
She searched again for the Colonel, for his hat with a small blue feather she assumed was from a grouse.I will not lose you twice, he’d told her. Now he was the one who was lost.
Opal tried to stand, but Ruth wouldn’t let her. “You must sit,” she was saying.
She tried to see past the row of Earthshine Girls gathering around her, but more immediate concerns drew her attention to her body, to the pain now searing through her, threatening to cleave her in two.
A newspaper man stood too close to the building, taking photographs. A burst of glass drew him back. The world was no longer silent. The sound boomed in layers: the crackling of fire, the chants of the crowd, the wailing of sirens drawing nearer.
Another explosion. Then soon an automobile, then two, then three. A fire engine. The flash of a camera. Maria hung from the window, screaming.
“Save her!” someone yelled.
Opal knew she couldn’t save her—or the others—and she couldn’t run. She doubled over. A pain seared through her middle and would not release, not until the baby came.
