Prologue


The basement in October.


Her mother lifted the ring in the door that was cut into the floor of the kitchen. The door opened to a dirt basement where she did the laundry with a wringer washing machine. Christine imagined the door led to a secret passage, a way to some magical place.


The only light that shone down there was the band of light from the kitchen. Illuminating the flimsy stairs, which were more like a ladder, leading straight down into the earth. Her mother descended into this place of dirt walls a wringer washing machine with a framework of shelves to hold the jars of canning she had put up. The smooth cold glass the thick silver lids tightened tightened tight.


Sometimes Christine was allowed to come down the stairs with her mother. The sound of water as the machine churned the clothes we were swimmers in the lake the smell of earth the dirt walls steam rising from the belly of the machine and there was the light on the rows of jars filled with colour with the red of raspberry jam with the blue-purple of chokecherry jelly the soft pink of crabapple jelly the complexity of relish. Surrounded by colour by earth by water by the smell of soap the taste of the colour the sweet taste of raspberries chokecherries. She inhaled and held her breath. Living in a secret painting underground undersea. The taste of colour the taste of red and pink and purple. She is happy. This day is full of colour and she can taste it on her tongue the sunlight red and yellow and orange so happy she is afraid to say anything. She doesn't want to open her mouth she wants to keep the taste of these colours on her tongue and this happiness inside her. She wants to keep this moment with the sun shining and her mother in the basement humming and the noise of the washing machine and the smell of earth and soap. She wants to be able to keep this moment forever somehow so the happiness can't get away from her and disappear the way it seemed to in this house.