The title comes from the quatrain used at the opening of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, "Self-Reliance" (which frames the development of an individual's internal resources in terms of a child abandoned in the wilderness and forced to take advantage of/learn from hir surroundings for survival):
"Cast the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat,
Wintered with the hawk and fox,
Power and speed be hands and feet."
The first time, it was her own fault. Mostly.
She knew better. Knew that when Ed was in that mood she'd better snap to it, whatever it was, but she was distracted. Trying to get the tray of Sophia's high chair slid into place so the fussy toddler could get at the pieces of potato set out for her. And she didn't think before she responded.
All she'd said was, "Just a second, Ed," and the next thing she knew she was skidding across the kitchen floor, one arm arched backward and over her head as her weight tore her wrist from his grip. It took a moment for the abused nerves to catch up, a white-hot razor slashing across her shoulder, chest, neck, as tendons and muscles tried and failed to hold their proper positions. When she fetched up against the cabinet, her vision gone hazy gray, it was all she could do to keep the cup of tea she'd grabbed earlier from rushing up and out of her mouth.
The arm fell against her ribs and lay inert. Just the tiny shift when she tried to sit up sent another wave of nausea through her, but Ed was talking again, and she knew if she didn't pull it together it was going to be bad this time. She couldn't simply lie there and breathe and try not to cry.
"Get the fuck up offa there. You ain't hurt. Not like you're gonna be if you don't get me my goddamn beer like I said."
The process of getting her feet beneath her took a hundred years under the weight of his eyes, every moment knowing his tolerance could snap. First cautiously pushing herself up on her good arm so she could sit back against the cabinet. Then turning, curling one leg under her and planting the other foot solidly on the floor. She wanted to use her hand to brace the opposite forearm, but it needed to be free in case she had to catch herself. She pressed up, reaching to grasp the edge of the counter, and the elbow of the injured arm banged against a drawer handle. She bent over the sink and bit the inside of her mouth to smother the scream. Managed not to retch.
"Jesus, you whine worse than the kid," Ed said, watching her from his seat at the table.
Three steps to the refrigerator.
Three steps back to the table.
Sophia had mashed a chunk of potato into her hair and was staring at her mother with wide eyes. She would have to see if their neighbor could take the baby for a couple of hours while she went to the emergency room.
"You didn't ask me if I wanted a glass," Ed said, his piggy eyes malicious with glee.
He never wanted a glass. "You never want a glass," she said, careful to keep her voice neutral and steady.
"Well, maybe today I want a glass," he said. "Maybe I think your daughter needs to learn to act like she wasn't born in a barn."
It was no use trying to parse out his logic when he got like this. She turned, carefully, took two steps to the cabinet where the glassware was kept. Leaned her hip, also carefully, against the rim of the counter so she could reach over her head for one of the pilsner glasses they never used. Steeled herself to the thought that she'd have to raise up on tip-toe to get it in hand, risk losing her balance and jostling the arm.
"Never mind," Ed said abruptly. "Come to think of it, I like it better out of the can."
Later, when he was snoring in the recliner, her neighbor drove her to the hospital and waited with Sophia while brisk, efficient people with censure in their eyes insisted on performing tests she couldn't afford and eventually manipulated the shoulder joint back into place. The relief when their hands came away and all that remained was a dull ache was the greatest pleasure she could remember having from her body in years. It was almost worth what she knew would come with the arrival of the emergency room bill.
A round woman with warm brown eyes came and asked her probing questions, and finally went away, leaving behind her a tri-fold card with names and phone numbers of organizations that "might be able to help. When you're ready."
She discarded the card and the hospital sling in the trash before she even went inside the house. Thank goodness Sophia could walk on her own now and didn't need to be carried every minute.
The second time, it really was a fall down the stairs. The way Ed told it credited her natural clumsiness for the injury. He knew she'd never correct him.
One of the keys to successful deception is keeping track of the stories you've told. The other is including as much truth as you can afford. Ed wasn't smart enough to do either, so he kept repeating his bare-bones story of "She fell." Even seven-year-old Sophia was better at covering for herself, not that Carol found that reassuring or any reflection of good parenting on her part. If she had been conscious when they'd brought her in, she would have come up with a different story than she'd used when they'd seen her before.
He'd been infuriated by the way the ER staff eyed him, and what their questions implied. She'd paid for that later, too, although first she'd had to endure the flutter of hope she felt on the drive home, when he looked at her with wet eyes and promised never to let her be hurt like that again. (As if he hadn't laid his very own hand on her chest and shoved her against the wall. He'd had no way of knowing she would stagger off-balance and step back into the open stairwell. So she couldn't actually hold him responsible, could she. No, of course not.)
"You're going to need to be careful with that shoulder, Mrs. Peletier," the resident had said, holding her X-ray up to the light. "With repeated dislocation like this, you can end up where it'll pop out of place from something as simple as shrugging, or bumping it into a door frame. You don't want to be running in here every whipstitch to have us reduce it." From the cheerfulness of his tone, Carol was willing to bet he hadn't read the admission notes too thoroughly. Or maybe it was just easier for him to overlook what was between the lines.
The third time, she watched herself do it, ripping her arm away in pure instinctive refusal, even as a distant part of her mind thought, oh, no, Carol, now you've done it, and she wasn't even sure whether she meant the way her arm dangled useless at her side or the flicker in Ed's eyes, from fury to astonishment to fear and back to rage.
She'd taken the resident seriously, though, and had studied up on what you could do if you found yourself in that situation without access to medical care. It had been only a matter of time before she'd need it, and Ed's increasing fixation on his orderly little empire pretty well ruled out another trip to the ER.
She didn't know the people next door to speak to anymore, but Sophia was old enough to help her. Lock her hands around her knee, and keep them in place as she leaned back, letting gravity and her own body weight pull things into their proper alignment. Focusing on keeping her daughter from fretting made it easier to just let it happen, instead of obsessing over any lack of progress. Afterward, when it had finally worked and the arm moved more or less normally again, she held her girl awkwardly in her lap and stroked her hair, telling her how proud she was, how strong Sophia had been, how she couldn't have done it without her.
When Ed came back from wherever it was he'd gone, she was in the kitchen fixing a pot of chili, his favorite. He didn't ask, and she didn't offer.
There are many kinds of protective coloration.
The only thing that surprised her, when it came, was how Rick had taken her by surprise. She honestly believed if he were going to do anything, he'd kill her outright. She wasn't expecting to be offloaded like so much unwanted cargo, sent out with a few days' worth of essentials to make her own way.
A hunter respects the tides of life enough not to set a wounded animal free. There's no kindness in it.
For about ten minutes she was borne along by sheer righteous fury. Just fixed what needed fixing. Then the sun slipped behind a cloud, and she felt the chill it left behind to her very marrow. Brought the car to a stop in the middle of the road and let it all wash over her, the odds that faced her. Exile.
She wept.
All she'd ever wanted was to make a home, a small, quiet life, a child, a warm and welcoming spot amid the chaos the world outside could bring. I didn't think I could be strong. She hadn't known a thing about true chaos back then.
You're gonna start over, find others, people who don't know, and you're gonna survive out here.
Rick brought a civilized man's mind to a world gone mad. She wondered what it would take for him to understand what she already knew.
One way or another, she wouldn't be around to witness it.
The law office was made of brick, built more than a hundred years ago and likely to go on for a hundred more, with or without human intervention. Not as easily defended as she'd like, but she didn't plan on staying long enough to attract attention. It was as good a place as any to lie in the dark and consider her life. What had come before. What was important.
I could have pretended that everything was gonna be fine.
I didn't know-I already was.
Just fixed what needed fixing.
She'd given enough time to letting a man define her choices.
When the smoke showed on the horizon the next day, she turned the car for home.
End Note: The self-administered method described above of resetting a dislocated shoulder is called the Boss-Holzach-Matter technique, and has about a 60-65% chance of success without further intervention by a professional. It is not the way Carol approached Sam's dislocation, but one can assume she read up on/practiced a number of different ways of accomplishing the task. In Carol's case, she did not have a second adult around to help her (I can't honestly see her soliciting Ed's help in this.) In my mind, she would have studied most closely those techniques she could at least try to do without assistance.