Jane Lee's Book of Door - A Work in Progress
art by rafael desoto jr.
Door, Virginia, clings resolutely to the banks of the ever-rising Door River. Made famous by my father’s documentaries for NET Journal back in the 60’s the town was cleared of its population by the federal government in the year 2012. As ever it was about the rich doing whatever it is the rich needed to do to stay rich and get richer. That a vibrant town and her equally vibrant people were destroyed was simply the cost of doing business.
This is the story of what happened as written by Door Survivor and Oracle author Jane Lee Randall. For those of you too young to remember, or reading history books that are little more than state propaganda, Oracle, was banned by the church and denounced on the floor of the Senate. Jane, who had done little more than speak the truth, went underground. It took me close to fifteen years to track her down and over a year and a half to convince her to write this story. It has been an honor. Zen Burns Jr. Bovina, NY
And on the eighth day man created money
and man so loved his bloodless creation
he ordered the world accordingly, to support and feed it.
Jane Lee Randall — Oracle
Chapter 1
The biggest obstacle to Door, Virginia, becoming a wise investment was Gabriel Aloysius Randall, so his older brother, the very rich Julian Scutter Randall, hired the bandy-legged masked men to kill him. His niece, Jane Lee, found him shot between the eyes and nailed to a cross someone had rigged up on the deck of his giant fishing boat, the splintery Plurabelle. The curse he spat at his killers hung ragged, there on the breeze, thin, black, and filmy. Jane wrapped it round and would wear it like a cape for as long as it took. It was her birthday. She was thirteen years old.
A few minutes later, a timing the preternaturally suspicious Jane Lee found remarkably suspicious, she heard Garrett Newsome yelling from the waters below, “Dammit Gabe you can’t anchor that boat there, you’re right in the middle of the Goddam channel!” He waited. “Gabe!” He waited some more. “That’s it you stubborn son of a bitch, drop a ladder I’m coming aboard!”
Jane Lee was not about to let anybody near her beloved Uncle, least of all Hamster Balls Newsom, so she picked up Gabriel’s shotgun and shot the water on either side of him — once, twice, three times. Garrett jumped and flapped his arms.
“I am the law round here Jane Lee! Lay down your weapon and allow me to board the boat!”
She loaded the flare gun, aimed close enough to scare him, and fired. Garrett high-tailed it back to Door dock and called in the Three City (Door, Tap Town, and Strange) Swat Team.
Ears to the ground, the Scrub Witches heard what was going on and called Hattie, Jane Lee’s Great Aunt. Hattie motored over to Door Dock in her Boston Whaler and suggested to Garrett that before he shot a thirteen-year old girl perhaps they should find out what was going on. At that point no one knew Gabriel had been murdered, only that the Plurabelle was anchored in the middle of the channel. Garrett was in a lather, and getting more lathered up with every passing minute, re: what to do in case a Panamanian barge heading for New Jersey carrying a cargo of bananas was unable to get by. What if Jane Lee shot at the barge? What if she blew up the barge? Who’s to say she didn’t have a bomb on the Plurabelle?
“Dock the boat Hattie,” Garrett ordered. “I’ve outlawed all traffic on the river and I am the law round here.”
“Oh my goodness, you could have an international incident on your hands, Garrett,” Hattie said. “Are you going to warn Washington?”
Garrett had not considered warning Washington but now that Hattie had mentioned it, it made perfect sense. He zipped into the dock keeper’s office and Big Betty, the Commander in Chief of the Three City Swat team, motioned Hattie to go. Hattie sped out the inlet towards the Plurabelle; the dread she‘d kept down since the witches’ phone call a live and strangling thing.
Sixteen-year old Vincent Bull Black sat on the furthest point of Door River beach in a patch of scrub pine, smoking his daily ounce of pot, and listening to Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall,” full blast on his Walkman. A truly gifted and eccentric young man, Vincent was in the process of actively destroying all that was unique and different about him so he could fit into his family. The Plurabelle was in his direct line of vision but he was so stoned that it took him a full minute to realize he was watching an old, round woman in a pink madras skort crawl like a spider up the side of the giant boat. He blinked, re-focused, she was still crawling, and then she was over the side. He knew this was something he needed to forget or he might start to ask questions.
Hattie landed on deck with a gentle thud. Jane Lee, shot gun in hand, was marching back and forth in her pink bunny slippers directly in front of the crucified Gabriel. She’d been asleep below deck when the murder happened and would suffer from insomnia for the rest of her life.
“Hut two three four, got one Joe get one more.” She turned. “Hut two three four, got one Joe, get one more.” She turned. “Hut two three four, got one Joe get one more…”
Hattie’s eyes filled with tears. Something disembodied whispering in her ear, “They knew exactly what they were doing, they knew exactly what they were doing.” She swatted it away like a gnat.
“Jane,” she said. “Honeybun.”
“Hut two three four, got one Joe, get one more….”
Hattie snaked an arm out, caught the beloved child by her shoulders, and brought her in close. She was a chunky, stalwart girl with wavy red hair, just like her drunken bitch of a grandmother, Hattie’s sister. Jane Lee twisted free, glaring at her great aunt, her gray-green eyes hard and shiny like marbles.
“I’m awake, aren’t I?”
“Yes.”
“So this is real, this is happening.”
“Yes. I need you to help me cover him and get him out of here. We need to move fast Janie.”
“Satan was here, Hattie. He wants my soul. He said if I give him my soul he’ll bring Uncle Gabriel back.”
“He‘ll do no such thing, Satan’s the worst kind of liar. Now put the gun down and get me a tarp. Please.”
Garrett was not having a good day. Washington had laughed at him, Big Betty refused to order her team out to the Plurabelle until she heard back from Hattie, and now his older brother, Gilbert, the Mayor of Door, was yelling at him on the phone to get in his own fucking boat, with his own fucking ladder, and drive out to the Plurabelle and BOARD IT! He was the CHIEF OF POLICE for God’s sakes! This was too much for Garrett.
“WHO THE FUCK d’you think you are?!” He hollered. “The FUCKING KING of the world?!?!?”
Gilbert hung up the phone. Garrett slammed down the phone.
Hattie started the Plurabelle, made a wide right, and started down river towards Tap Town.
“Shit,” Gilbert whispered, lowering his binoculars.
Aware of the probably future, the Scrub Witches filled their koi pond with little wind-up toy boats, kicked off their boots, and dropped their feet into the sweet cool of the water. They chanted slow, “Cop boat, cop boat, go so slow; cop boat, cop boat, go so fast; cop boat, cop boat, chase your ass.”
Vincent Bull Black reached for his joystick, closed his eyes, and thought about the youngest of the Scrub Witches, the one with the red hair. The one who’d kissed him the afternoon Hattie half carried, half dragged Maria out of Door River. Vincent was confused for weeks, not because old Hattie came out the water a mere slip of a young woman, or Maria was a mermaid bored through by barnacles and mostly dead, or that he’d found the Scrub Witches as Hattie had ordered, which no one else in Door Proper, Pond, or Scrub had managed to do. Vincent was confused because right after the youngest witch had rubbed her voluptuous, little body against his and kissed him a long and lingering kiss, she leaned back in his arms, placed her hands on either side of his face, and said,
“Do you remember me, my love?”
He shook his head no, which he would never have done if he’d known she was going to go berserk on him and jerk herself away like that. He’d of lied if he’d known that.
“You forgot who you are! You forgot who we are! How could you forget?!” She slapped him hard across the face and yelled, ‘WAKE UP!!!!!’ And he did. In the room he shared with his two brothers, his ribs taped from the latest beating his father had gifted him.
Vincent sat up on the beach so fast he etched space. “It was real it never happened,” gripped his body and shook him like a chew toy.
Jane Lee squinted her eyes. She was pretty sure the guy who just sat up sharp on the beach was that stoner ‘Duh’ Vin Black. He was standing now, jumping off sand, so she waved, not because she knew him, or was even remotely interested in knowing him, but because Hattie’d told her they needed to act perfectly normal, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
“You mean like there isn’t dead guy nailed to a cross and covered with a tarp,” Jane said.
“That would be right,” Hattie said. “Come here smart-mouthed child and give me a hug.”
“No.” Jane Lee sat on a coiled pile of rope. “I keep hearing they knew what they were doing.”
“They did. They waited till Esmerelda was out of town.”
Hattie?”
“What child who won‘t hug me?”
“Why can’t I cry?”
“You will baby, you will.”
Esmerelda was in the Bronx, sound asleep on the second floor of Italian Anna’s brick, three-family home, in Italian Anna’s niece’s king-sized bed, when her beloved Gabriel poked her awake and showed her his hands. Thick rusty nails were still in the palms, the blood caked red and black. She sat up, drew a banishing symbol on the apparition, and went back to sleep. Italian Anna, her best friend for over forty years, woke her the next morning. Esmerelda took one look at her face, knew the truth, and started to scream. Italian Anna held her. Then she smacked her, and held her again.
“You’ve got to focus,” she said. “Dolly called. Hattie’s taken off for Swivet Bay with Jane Lee and the body.”
“It’s started, hasn’t it,” Esmerelda said.
Italian Anna studied her friend. “Yes,” she said, “it’s started.”
Gilbert placed the call he didn’t want to make. When Jane Lee’s very rich Uncle Julian answered, he told him Hattie was driving the Plurabelle down river towards Tap Town, and his niece was with her. Julian put in a call to Dirk Rackintack, the Pulitzer Prize winning editor of the Door Gazette. Dirk said he had people in Tap Town, who’d keep an eye out and intercept the boat. “I’ve got this, Julian,” Dirk said.
The Scrub witches kicked harder, chanted faster, “Cop boat, cop boat go so slow, cop boat, cop boat, go so fast. Cop boat, cop boat, chase your ass.” "EA EA Morrigan," the oldest of the Scrub witches muttered, rocking away on the back porch. "EA EA Morrigan." Emerelda sat like a statue in the back of a yellow cab, stuck in traffic on Grand Central Parkway. “EA EA Morrigan,” she whispered, over and over. “EA EA Morrigan.”
Dirk’s people reported the Plurabelle was heading for Swivet Bay. Swivet Bay was an inchoate mess of vicious rip tips, bottomless pools, and sulfur belching whirlpools the size of football stadiums. No reasonable person would head into Swivet Bay but Hattie, like the rest of the old women of Door, wasn’t reasonable.
“Stop them!” Dirk ordered the hawk-nosed-without-body-fat Captain of the aptly named Mercenary Boat Brigade. “Do whatever it takes.”
“Full throttle,” the hawk-nosed-without-body-fat Captain said into his walkie-talkie. “Guns ready.”
A thick, undulating snake of fog rose out of the waters of Door River. The snake coiled and yawned, ribbons of mist streamed out its fanged maw.
“Fire!” The captain ordered.
Red eyed and wasted, Vincent Bull Black heard the gunshots, looked up from where he was taking a leak in the bayberry. The Plurabelle shot out the butt of a snake of fog right as the mercenary boat brigade drove in. The Plurabelle make a hard, fast left into Swivet Bay. Swivet fucking Bay. Whoa.
Jane Lee closed her eyes, trying desperately to put herself to sleep. She didn’t much care if she died in Swivet Bay, she just didn’t want to feel it, if it was going to hurt.
The Mercenary Boat Brigade crashed into each other, again and again. Men pitched overboard were hauled back on deck. No one died, but all in all there were three broken collarbones, one broken rib, one broken nose, and one badly jammed thumb. The Captain's face would remain permanently frozen with surprise for the rest of his life.
The Scrub Witches roared with laughter, kicking the water to froth, and the joyous koi arced through the splash like dolphins. The oldest witch rocked on the porch, smiling at the antics of the young ones. She sigiled the youngest witch, closed her eyes, and rocked faster. The youngest of the Scrub Witches, naked and in the pond, hurried to get her sisters out and away from the water before the lightning hit.
Vincent drove slow on the pock-marked roads of Door Scrub leading away from the river. The storm came up out of nowhere and it was hard to see through the giant tears running down the windshield. Giant tears. For sure he was smoking too much pot. Glancing in the rear view mirror, he saw Gabriel sitting in the back seat. Gabriel held up his nailed hands and Vincent drove the car off the road, into a tree, knocking himself unconscious..
Esmerelda, ever in black, her auburn hair unruly, de-planed from the Eastern Shuttle. She wore Jackie O sunglasses; rock star, black suede, platform boots, and carried a USMC M1941 haversack slung over her right shoulder. On the flight down she’d scrawled “Semper Fi” nine times on the haversack with black magic marker. She scrawled with such intensity and so scared the man in the rust-colored leisure suit in the window seat next her that after she de-planed he waited for the rest of the passengers to disembark before he made a move to leave.
Esmerelda, a noticeable, middle-aged woman of spare and precise movement, walked through the main terminal of National Airport, and out the wheezing mechanical doors. Curbside she glanced left, saw Dolly’s old blue impala pacing, veered into angels hovering, and knew herself to be carried. That’s what she said.
“I knew myself to be carried.”
Like any statement of woman’s truth, it would be used against her at the Trials.
and man so loved his bloodless creation
he ordered the world accordingly, to support and feed it.
Jane Lee Randall — Oracle
Chapter 1
The biggest obstacle to Door, Virginia, becoming a wise investment was Gabriel Aloysius Randall, so his older brother, the very rich Julian Scutter Randall, hired the bandy-legged masked men to kill him. His niece, Jane Lee, found him shot between the eyes and nailed to a cross someone had rigged up on the deck of his giant fishing boat, the splintery Plurabelle. The curse he spat at his killers hung ragged, there on the breeze, thin, black, and filmy. Jane wrapped it round and would wear it like a cape for as long as it took. It was her birthday. She was thirteen years old.
A few minutes later, a timing the preternaturally suspicious Jane Lee found remarkably suspicious, she heard Garrett Newsome yelling from the waters below, “Dammit Gabe you can’t anchor that boat there, you’re right in the middle of the Goddam channel!” He waited. “Gabe!” He waited some more. “That’s it you stubborn son of a bitch, drop a ladder I’m coming aboard!”
Jane Lee was not about to let anybody near her beloved Uncle, least of all Hamster Balls Newsom, so she picked up Gabriel’s shotgun and shot the water on either side of him — once, twice, three times. Garrett jumped and flapped his arms.
“I am the law round here Jane Lee! Lay down your weapon and allow me to board the boat!”
She loaded the flare gun, aimed close enough to scare him, and fired. Garrett high-tailed it back to Door dock and called in the Three City (Door, Tap Town, and Strange) Swat Team.
Ears to the ground, the Scrub Witches heard what was going on and called Hattie, Jane Lee’s Great Aunt. Hattie motored over to Door Dock in her Boston Whaler and suggested to Garrett that before he shot a thirteen-year old girl perhaps they should find out what was going on. At that point no one knew Gabriel had been murdered, only that the Plurabelle was anchored in the middle of the channel. Garrett was in a lather, and getting more lathered up with every passing minute, re: what to do in case a Panamanian barge heading for New Jersey carrying a cargo of bananas was unable to get by. What if Jane Lee shot at the barge? What if she blew up the barge? Who’s to say she didn’t have a bomb on the Plurabelle?
“Dock the boat Hattie,” Garrett ordered. “I’ve outlawed all traffic on the river and I am the law round here.”
“Oh my goodness, you could have an international incident on your hands, Garrett,” Hattie said. “Are you going to warn Washington?”
Garrett had not considered warning Washington but now that Hattie had mentioned it, it made perfect sense. He zipped into the dock keeper’s office and Big Betty, the Commander in Chief of the Three City Swat team, motioned Hattie to go. Hattie sped out the inlet towards the Plurabelle; the dread she‘d kept down since the witches’ phone call a live and strangling thing.
Sixteen-year old Vincent Bull Black sat on the furthest point of Door River beach in a patch of scrub pine, smoking his daily ounce of pot, and listening to Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall,” full blast on his Walkman. A truly gifted and eccentric young man, Vincent was in the process of actively destroying all that was unique and different about him so he could fit into his family. The Plurabelle was in his direct line of vision but he was so stoned that it took him a full minute to realize he was watching an old, round woman in a pink madras skort crawl like a spider up the side of the giant boat. He blinked, re-focused, she was still crawling, and then she was over the side. He knew this was something he needed to forget or he might start to ask questions.
Hattie landed on deck with a gentle thud. Jane Lee, shot gun in hand, was marching back and forth in her pink bunny slippers directly in front of the crucified Gabriel. She’d been asleep below deck when the murder happened and would suffer from insomnia for the rest of her life.
“Hut two three four, got one Joe get one more.” She turned. “Hut two three four, got one Joe, get one more.” She turned. “Hut two three four, got one Joe get one more…”
Hattie’s eyes filled with tears. Something disembodied whispering in her ear, “They knew exactly what they were doing, they knew exactly what they were doing.” She swatted it away like a gnat.
“Jane,” she said. “Honeybun.”
“Hut two three four, got one Joe, get one more….”
Hattie snaked an arm out, caught the beloved child by her shoulders, and brought her in close. She was a chunky, stalwart girl with wavy red hair, just like her drunken bitch of a grandmother, Hattie’s sister. Jane Lee twisted free, glaring at her great aunt, her gray-green eyes hard and shiny like marbles.
“I’m awake, aren’t I?”
“Yes.”
“So this is real, this is happening.”
“Yes. I need you to help me cover him and get him out of here. We need to move fast Janie.”
“Satan was here, Hattie. He wants my soul. He said if I give him my soul he’ll bring Uncle Gabriel back.”
“He‘ll do no such thing, Satan’s the worst kind of liar. Now put the gun down and get me a tarp. Please.”
Garrett was not having a good day. Washington had laughed at him, Big Betty refused to order her team out to the Plurabelle until she heard back from Hattie, and now his older brother, Gilbert, the Mayor of Door, was yelling at him on the phone to get in his own fucking boat, with his own fucking ladder, and drive out to the Plurabelle and BOARD IT! He was the CHIEF OF POLICE for God’s sakes! This was too much for Garrett.
“WHO THE FUCK d’you think you are?!” He hollered. “The FUCKING KING of the world?!?!?”
Gilbert hung up the phone. Garrett slammed down the phone.
Hattie started the Plurabelle, made a wide right, and started down river towards Tap Town.
“Shit,” Gilbert whispered, lowering his binoculars.
Aware of the probably future, the Scrub Witches filled their koi pond with little wind-up toy boats, kicked off their boots, and dropped their feet into the sweet cool of the water. They chanted slow, “Cop boat, cop boat, go so slow; cop boat, cop boat, go so fast; cop boat, cop boat, chase your ass.”
Vincent Bull Black reached for his joystick, closed his eyes, and thought about the youngest of the Scrub Witches, the one with the red hair. The one who’d kissed him the afternoon Hattie half carried, half dragged Maria out of Door River. Vincent was confused for weeks, not because old Hattie came out the water a mere slip of a young woman, or Maria was a mermaid bored through by barnacles and mostly dead, or that he’d found the Scrub Witches as Hattie had ordered, which no one else in Door Proper, Pond, or Scrub had managed to do. Vincent was confused because right after the youngest witch had rubbed her voluptuous, little body against his and kissed him a long and lingering kiss, she leaned back in his arms, placed her hands on either side of his face, and said,
“Do you remember me, my love?”
He shook his head no, which he would never have done if he’d known she was going to go berserk on him and jerk herself away like that. He’d of lied if he’d known that.
“You forgot who you are! You forgot who we are! How could you forget?!” She slapped him hard across the face and yelled, ‘WAKE UP!!!!!’ And he did. In the room he shared with his two brothers, his ribs taped from the latest beating his father had gifted him.
Vincent sat up on the beach so fast he etched space. “It was real it never happened,” gripped his body and shook him like a chew toy.
Jane Lee squinted her eyes. She was pretty sure the guy who just sat up sharp on the beach was that stoner ‘Duh’ Vin Black. He was standing now, jumping off sand, so she waved, not because she knew him, or was even remotely interested in knowing him, but because Hattie’d told her they needed to act perfectly normal, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
“You mean like there isn’t dead guy nailed to a cross and covered with a tarp,” Jane said.
“That would be right,” Hattie said. “Come here smart-mouthed child and give me a hug.”
“No.” Jane Lee sat on a coiled pile of rope. “I keep hearing they knew what they were doing.”
“They did. They waited till Esmerelda was out of town.”
Hattie?”
“What child who won‘t hug me?”
“Why can’t I cry?”
“You will baby, you will.”
Esmerelda was in the Bronx, sound asleep on the second floor of Italian Anna’s brick, three-family home, in Italian Anna’s niece’s king-sized bed, when her beloved Gabriel poked her awake and showed her his hands. Thick rusty nails were still in the palms, the blood caked red and black. She sat up, drew a banishing symbol on the apparition, and went back to sleep. Italian Anna, her best friend for over forty years, woke her the next morning. Esmerelda took one look at her face, knew the truth, and started to scream. Italian Anna held her. Then she smacked her, and held her again.
“You’ve got to focus,” she said. “Dolly called. Hattie’s taken off for Swivet Bay with Jane Lee and the body.”
“It’s started, hasn’t it,” Esmerelda said.
Italian Anna studied her friend. “Yes,” she said, “it’s started.”
Gilbert placed the call he didn’t want to make. When Jane Lee’s very rich Uncle Julian answered, he told him Hattie was driving the Plurabelle down river towards Tap Town, and his niece was with her. Julian put in a call to Dirk Rackintack, the Pulitzer Prize winning editor of the Door Gazette. Dirk said he had people in Tap Town, who’d keep an eye out and intercept the boat. “I’ve got this, Julian,” Dirk said.
The Scrub witches kicked harder, chanted faster, “Cop boat, cop boat go so slow, cop boat, cop boat, go so fast. Cop boat, cop boat, chase your ass.” "EA EA Morrigan," the oldest of the Scrub witches muttered, rocking away on the back porch. "EA EA Morrigan." Emerelda sat like a statue in the back of a yellow cab, stuck in traffic on Grand Central Parkway. “EA EA Morrigan,” she whispered, over and over. “EA EA Morrigan.”
Dirk’s people reported the Plurabelle was heading for Swivet Bay. Swivet Bay was an inchoate mess of vicious rip tips, bottomless pools, and sulfur belching whirlpools the size of football stadiums. No reasonable person would head into Swivet Bay but Hattie, like the rest of the old women of Door, wasn’t reasonable.
“Stop them!” Dirk ordered the hawk-nosed-without-body-fat Captain of the aptly named Mercenary Boat Brigade. “Do whatever it takes.”
“Full throttle,” the hawk-nosed-without-body-fat Captain said into his walkie-talkie. “Guns ready.”
A thick, undulating snake of fog rose out of the waters of Door River. The snake coiled and yawned, ribbons of mist streamed out its fanged maw.
“Fire!” The captain ordered.
Red eyed and wasted, Vincent Bull Black heard the gunshots, looked up from where he was taking a leak in the bayberry. The Plurabelle shot out the butt of a snake of fog right as the mercenary boat brigade drove in. The Plurabelle make a hard, fast left into Swivet Bay. Swivet fucking Bay. Whoa.
Jane Lee closed her eyes, trying desperately to put herself to sleep. She didn’t much care if she died in Swivet Bay, she just didn’t want to feel it, if it was going to hurt.
The Mercenary Boat Brigade crashed into each other, again and again. Men pitched overboard were hauled back on deck. No one died, but all in all there were three broken collarbones, one broken rib, one broken nose, and one badly jammed thumb. The Captain's face would remain permanently frozen with surprise for the rest of his life.
The Scrub Witches roared with laughter, kicking the water to froth, and the joyous koi arced through the splash like dolphins. The oldest witch rocked on the porch, smiling at the antics of the young ones. She sigiled the youngest witch, closed her eyes, and rocked faster. The youngest of the Scrub Witches, naked and in the pond, hurried to get her sisters out and away from the water before the lightning hit.
Vincent drove slow on the pock-marked roads of Door Scrub leading away from the river. The storm came up out of nowhere and it was hard to see through the giant tears running down the windshield. Giant tears. For sure he was smoking too much pot. Glancing in the rear view mirror, he saw Gabriel sitting in the back seat. Gabriel held up his nailed hands and Vincent drove the car off the road, into a tree, knocking himself unconscious..
Esmerelda, ever in black, her auburn hair unruly, de-planed from the Eastern Shuttle. She wore Jackie O sunglasses; rock star, black suede, platform boots, and carried a USMC M1941 haversack slung over her right shoulder. On the flight down she’d scrawled “Semper Fi” nine times on the haversack with black magic marker. She scrawled with such intensity and so scared the man in the rust-colored leisure suit in the window seat next her that after she de-planed he waited for the rest of the passengers to disembark before he made a move to leave.
Esmerelda, a noticeable, middle-aged woman of spare and precise movement, walked through the main terminal of National Airport, and out the wheezing mechanical doors. Curbside she glanced left, saw Dolly’s old blue impala pacing, veered into angels hovering, and knew herself to be carried. That’s what she said.
“I knew myself to be carried.”
Like any statement of woman’s truth, it would be used against her at the Trials.
