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Borderland (cont'd)


And there the memory stopped. What had happened? Wait, she remembered finding bruised all over her body later. She thought she could be strong. She was so yound and weak, so foolish, so caught up in her defiant notions. She had tried to be independant. But in doing that she had neglected her daily duties. That was not being a "good wife." She was not supporting her husband. It was all her fault. She had not seen. He wanted to be rid of her, she was certain. He got his freedoom to find someone better. What did she get? Her freedom was gone. Her mind was gone. Had she made it all up?
She remembered that he had put her in here, trapped her here, gotten rid of her! Taken her there through this winter snow. But could she trust her memory? She did not dare. It was slipping out from under her fingers again; she was losing what she had remembered. Coughs racked her frail body, she shivered and traced design in the dust and dirt on the floor with her thin forefinger. Maybe she was exactly like the rest of them. No! He had put her in here to get rid of her! She was not crazy.
She started to giggle. She door creaked open, and the starched nurse stood there again.
"Anna? Your husband is here to see you." She laughed harder. Where was she? Ahhh, it did not matter. Nothing mattered. All that mattered was her voice filling up the room. Dark patterns on the floor, broken glass, red blood. Flying, flying...
Crazy...
For a moment she looked up. A foreign body was in her room, casting a shadow over her hunched body. She felt her hysterical laughs turn into sobs. She rocked herself back and forth, trying to make herself into a tiny, invisible ball. Away from the shadow looking overhead, away fromthe big hands, away from this place of people with wild eyes, away from her dirty white dress and the snow whirling in her mind...away from what she was becoming.

--S. Anderson


--Cathy Gaynor

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