In the small English village, the neighbours had been told lies about her daughterlies born of shame. Among the items carefully arranged for her passing was a bundle of letters from her daughter. Hattie pulled them out and tucked them beneath the pillow of the deceased. Let them be buried with her, along with that terrible, aching shame…
*From the Untold. A Mothers Shame.*
Eileen had always believed in dreams, even as a young girl. It was just the way things were. Sometimes, one of the women in the village would describe a dream, and Eileen would ponder it before explaining its meaning. She was rarely wrong. Her own dreams, she always interpreted herself. And sometimesshe flew in them! Truly flew, lifting above the rooftops, soaring until her breath caught in her chest. One dream returned often while her husband, Albert, was still alive: white horses with dappled grey coats, harnessed to a sleigh, and there they wereher and Albert, holding the reins. The horses sped up, faster and faster, until they took off into the sky! The rush left them breathless. Theyd drop the reins, huddle together in the sleigh, and fly That dream came again and again while Albert lived. After he was gone, she still “flew” with the horses, but he stood beside her now, never taking the reins just smiling. She loved those midnight flights, even knowing that dreaming of horses meant illnessor even death. After such nights, shed wake to find her blood pressure spiking or her heart fluttering.
That night, they stood together in the sleigh again. But no one held the reins. The horses climbed higher and higher, up into the clouds. There, on a wisp of cloud, sat a little angel with tiny wings, smiling down at them. “Lottie! My Lottie!” Eileen cried out so loudly in her sleep that she startled herself awake.
“Its time Its time for me to go,” she whispered to herself. No sorrow, no despair.
She had always kept a tidy home, so she swept the floors and shook out the handwoven rugs. Then she fetched the bundlethe one shed long prepared “for the end”unwrapped it, and even wrote notes explaining where everything should go. No one else would know what to do. Strangers would rummage through her things unless Hattie came, and who else would? She was the only one who still visitedfriend, sister, all in one. Most of her old friends had passed, and no one else would make the trip now, not with her aching legs. But Hattie was spry. Shed come running.
Eileen took out a school notebook and pen and began to write.
“Forgive me, Hattie. Youre the closest thing to family I have left. Weve lived like sisters Dont tell a soul, I beg youmy terrible shame. It wont hurt me anymore when people talk, but still, I ask For years, I lied to everyoneeven you, my sisterpretending I had a loving daughter who couldnt visit because she was ill. The truth is, I dont know where she is. I think shes alive, but she left me long ago. And to spare myself the shame, I spun stories even to you. Dont wait for my daughter. Dont search for her. Bury me beside Albert, in the plot I saved. The cottage and everything in it is yours. Maybe your children can make use of it. I failed to raise my girl right That shame is mine to carry. Let it go to the grave with me Please, dear sister”
Eileen stoked the hearth and the stove, closed the flue, and lay down to sleep
Hattie had noticed the night before that her friends windows were dark, but how could she have guessed?
“Did she leave any note?” asked the constable who came to record the death of the lonely woman.
“Nothing Nothing at all. The loneliness was too much, thats all,” Hattie murmured, crumpling the farewell letter in her pocket.
* * *
Her Lottie had grown up beautiful and clever. Her only, her beloved. Albert, a married farm manager, had fallen for a simple farmhand. By the laws of the time, he shouldve been sacked, expelled from the partybut somehow, he was only reprimanded, and then forgotten. He and his wife had no children, but now a farm girl bore his illegitimate child! Rumor had it the village chairman had his own secrets, so he hurriedly arranged a divorce and marriage to Eileen. “No need to raise a fatherless child,” hed thundered. Alberts ex-wife moved to the city and remarried, while he and Eileen lived happilybut not for long.
Horses, just like the ones in her dreamsbut realbrought the tragedy. Albert was cycling home late from the fields when they struck him in the dark. The rider was drunk and never saw him. If only someone had found him sooner! Eileen waited all night, sleepless. They discovered him at dawn already gone. He mightve lived, had anyone seen him in time. Such was fate.
There were suitors afterward but Eileen paid them no mind. She lived only for her daughter. And the girl was everything a mother could wantbright in school, singing and dancing in the village performances, even winning county competitions! Everyone said she was gifted. Lucky, tooshe got into a prestigious London arts college on her first try!
Eileen doted on her child, bringing her food, visiting whenever she could. The first year, Lottie welcomed her, even came home at every chance. But slowly, she grew distant. Sharp-tongued. Nothing pleased her. Eileen arrived once, twiceno sign of her daughter at the dorm. They said shed taken up with some foreigner. Soon, she was expelled. Former classmates whispered the foreigner had gotten her hooked on drugssomething unheard of in their village. The shame! The unbearable shame! A year after their last meeting, Lottie wrote: “Forget me. Dont look for me. I have my own life now.”
Eileen bent over the beet fields, each row stretching endlessly, wishing they were longeranything to avoid lifting her gaze, to hide from eyes that might see her tears falling onto the soil
Then, one harvest season, she gathered the courage to tell the women in the fields that her Lottie had married. A week earlier, shed gone to London, and now she declared, “I was at my daughters wedding! Didnt say a worddidnt want to jinx it! Shes found a good man. Some high-up official. Travels the world for work. Ill hardly see her now But Ill treat you all!”
And she did. As was tradition, the women celebrated every occasion, but Eileen outdid herself. Shed brought tinned fish from London, sausages her friends had never tasted. “From my son-in-law,” she said. Of course, the whole village buzzed. Over the years, she took trips to the capitalsupposedly to visit. In truth, she wandered the streets, hoping to glimpse her daughter in the crowd.
As she aged, the trips grew rare. Lottie “wrote” lettersthough Eileen had to collect them from the post office in town, lest they go missing.
“Sit down, Hattie, let me read you Lotties latest,” shed say, glowing. “Shed visit if she werent so poorly Poor lamb. No children either. But her husband spoils hersends me parcels!”
Then shed pull out treats from the iceboxluxuries Hattie had never seen. “Ive eaten real sausages!” Hattie would later gossip outside the shop. “Melt in your mouth! And yoghurtdo you even know what that is? Bananas, too! Eileens got them all the time!”
Year after year, the village read envious birthday notices in the county paperLotties lavish words for her mother. What a devoted daughter!
In time, no one cared whether Eileens daughter existed. The woman aged quietly, alone, her secret buried.
* * *
Hattie read the letter again and again. “Dear God,” she cursed herself silently. “I ate those treats, never once thinking she bought them with her pensionjust to fool me, so Id believe and spread the lie. If only shed told me the truth! It mightve eased her heart Id never have done such a thing.”
“Well bury her without her daughter,” she told the villagers entering the cottage. “The girls too illcant even climb down from her tenth-floor flat Her husbands abroad. Well manage” Her voice broke. She grieved as if for her own.
In the bundle prepared for death lay the letters from the daughter. Hattie tucked them beneath the pillow. Let them go into the earthalong with that terrible, aching shame.
