The Robber Bride

Charis’s history with Zenia begins at the dawn of the 1970s when Charis and Billy move into their house on the Island. Charis teaches yoga, barters lessons for goods and services, plants a vegetable garden, and redecorates the house to the extent that she can. On a misty November morning, Charis gets up, lights the wood-burning stove, and feeds the chickens. Then, she goes upstairs to wake Billy but instead just watches him sleep. Awareness of her gaze wakes him. He calls her to their bed and embraces her, breaking the lone egg she stashed in her pocket.

Charis doesn’t enjoy sex, but she tolerates it out of love for Billy. Later, when their lovemaking becomes less frequent, Billy doesn’t cajole her about it; he accepts it as normal. In return, Charis cares for Billy, a draft dodger from the United States whom she fears could be deported if he doesn’t keep a low profile. He has also committed acts of violent protest in the past for which he could be extradited if the government finds him. Despite her guarantees to protect him, Charis fears that Billy’s presence is only temporary.

Billy comes to Charis as part of a local peace movement which finds homes for draft dodgers fleeing to Canada. She takes Billy in temporarily, but he stays on. As he confesses to Charis his complex tangle of emotions—conviction that he’s made the right choice tempered by guilt over betraying his friends and his country—she cannot help offering him comfort.

Charis and Billy’s home acts as a safehouse and meeting place for other draft dodgers who gather and discuss vague plans, including militant action, a newsletter, and secret coded names for each other. Charis is tolerant as these men bring their girlfriends who bathe in her tub and eat her food. On the day she meets Zenia, Charis teaches two yoga classes in a studio above a food co-op. A new student appears in her second class; she is rail-thin, pale, and wearing sunglasses. She emits an unhealthy energy, and when Charis asks her to remove her sunglasses, she lowers them to reveal a bruised and swollen eye. The woman introduces herself as Zenia.

As they sip juice from the juice bar after class, Charis remembers Zenia from her college days in McClung Hall, the dorm she shared with Tony, Roz, and Zenia. Zenia, beautiful and confident in college, is now a shell of her former self: “[C]owed somehow, beaten, defeated” (243). Zenia claims to have cancer, and the yoga class is an attempt to heal herself. She says she tried a completely holistic approach involving retreat to the mountains, a vegetarian diet, solitude, and meditation, but the cancer returned after she beat it once before. Now, living with West again, she tells Charis that he leads an unhealthy lifestyle of eating copious amounts of animal fat and tries to foist it upon her. She adds that he is responsible for her black eye. Zenia staggers out the door, and when she fails to show up for the next yoga class, Charis frets that she should have done more to help Zenia. That evening, Zenia shows up at Charis and Billy’s door, soaking wet from the rain and with a fresh cut on her lip. “‘He [West] threw me out,’ she whispers. ‘I don’t want to disturb you…I just didn’t know where else to go’” (246). Charis welcomes Zenia into her home.

A week later, Zenia is still living in Charis’s house—sleeping on her sofa, eating her food, and strolling along the shore—much to Billy’s chagrin. She is a stranger to him, and he does not trust her. Zenia says she understands Billy’s misgivings, which prompts Charis to tell her Billy’s whole backstory, including his draft dodging and setting off a bomb in protest of the war. Zenia doesn’t understand why Charis—seemingly so apolitical back in college—is “mixed up” with Billy, but Charis ignores the criticism, so impressed and flattered that Zenia even remembers her. Additionally, Zenia’s health seems to be improving after Charis’s ministrations, which include fruit drinks, yoga, and supervised walks. Zenia heaps praise and gratitude on Charis, which makes Billy resent her even more. Slowly and subtly, Zenia creates distance between Charis and Billy, and she moves in to fill the void. She claims Billy, despite his antipathy, is sexually attracted to her, adding that all men only want sex, an assertion that fills Charis with dread and self-doubt. That night, Charis dreams of an approaching presence—Karen, the embodiment of her former identity and everything she wants to leave behind—coming back to reassert herself.

As a young girl, Charis—then Karen—goes to her grandmother’s farm for the summer. Karen’s father was killed in World War II, and she implicitly understands that her mother’s stress from raising a daughter alone is somehow Karen’s fault; everyone seems to suggest that. Karen’s sleepwalking, attunement with nature, and almost psychic ability to see auras and sense things before they happen give her an ethereal nature that unsettles and angers her mother, often resulting in beatings. Karen normally stays with her Aunt Viola and Uncle Vern when her mother needs a “rest,” but they are on vacation, thus the visit to the farm.

Karen’s grandmother is a tanned, jovial, and plainspoken woman. She picks Karen and her mother up at the train station and drives them back to the farm, a muddy, chaotic scene of free-roaming animals and old, rusting farm equipment. Karen’s mother is disgusted by the squalor—pigs allowed in the house, animals licking clean the dinner plates—but her grandmother is nonchalant: “Anyways, this my house. You can do what you like in yours. I didn’t ask you to come here and I won’t ask you to leave, but while you’re here you take things as you find them” (264). The next day, her mother takes the train back to the city, leaving Karen in her grandmother’s care.

The next day, Karen helps her grandmother with farm chores. Despite the heat, she wears long pants to cover the scars from her mother’s beatings. They collect eggs from the henhouse, but the pain from Karen’s legs coupled with the heat causes her to pass out. She wakes up in the house, her grandmother tending to her wounds. She understands where the welts have come from, and she is fatalistic: “I wasn’t the right mother for her,’ said her grandmother. ‘Nor she the right daughter, for me. And now look. But it can’t be helped” (269). Karen sleeps the rest of the day and wakes up in the evening, standing in the yard flanked by her grandmother’s two dogs who guide her back to the house. Her grandmother is waiting by the door without anger or judgment, unlike her mother. Karen senses that her grandmother sleepwalks also, and in that moment she feels at home in a way she’s never felt before. The welts on the backs of her legs have nearly healed.

Karen’s grandfather, a Mennonite, died years ago in a tractor accident, but her grandmother still talks about him in the present tense. Karen wonders if he—or some part of him—may still be alive somewhere in the house. In the afternoon, her grandmother naps, and Karen occupies herself with drawing, but she often hears noises in the house. She imagines she hears footsteps, and the sounds chill her with fear.

One day, a pickup truck swerves wildly up the gravel road. Ron Sloane, a neighboring farmer, jumps out, his arm dripping blood. Karen’s grandmother runs over, examines the arm, lays her hands on him, and speaks words Karen can’t hear; she sees a blue light coming from her grandmother’s hands, and the blood stops. It is only temporary, though, and she drives Ron to the hospital. Then, she and Karen drive to Ron’s farm to tell his wife what happened. She thanks Karen’s grandmother who responds, “Don’t thank me. It isn’t me does it” (275). Despite their gratitude and hospitality, the Sloanes are afraid of Karen’s grandmother; she can discern their fear in their auras.

Karen realizes in retrospect that her feelings for her grandmother are complicated. The farm feels safe to her, and her grandmother is kind, but there is a hard edge to her also. One morning over breakfast, her grandmother tells her that the bacon they are eating came from one of her pigs. Karen is shocked and saddened and refuses to eat bacon ever again. Her grandmother doesn’t understand. Killing for food is a necessary part of the life cycle; all animals do it, and humans are no different. The matter-of-factness with which her grandmother kills colors Karen’s view of her, adding shades of darkness to the welcoming light.

On Labor Day, Karen’s mother is scheduled to pick her up, but her Aunt Viola calls and says she will be staying with her grandmother a little longer. They pick tomatoes, and Karen’s grandmother pulls out the Bible for her weekly ritual: choosing passages at random and trying to intuit their meaning. Karen chooses a passage about Jezebel, “which callest herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication” (281). Her grandmother finds this strange but is also amused by it. She thinks Karen must be “living ahead of yourself” (281).

A month later, Viola takes Karen back to the city, but not home. Her mother is ill, so she stays with her aunt and uncle. They take Karen to visit her mother, and she looks different: less manicured and polished. Her face seems void of light and energy, as if she is a spiritless woman in a housecoat. On the drive back, Viola says Karen’s mother tried to overdose on pills, and so she had to hospitalize her. As time passes, her mother’s health declines, and Karen realizes she doesn’t want her mother to live in her current condition. She passes her school days staring out the window and trying to remain invisible. She longs for summer when, she hopes, she will be able to return to the farm.

On her eighth birthday, Viola and Vern give her a new bicycle. Their forced cheer and the shiny new bicycle convince Karen that her mother is dead, though she dies three weeks later. Karen’s grandmother does not attend the funeral.

Later, during the summer months, Karen sits in Viola and Vern’s converted basement watching TV. Vern comes in, hot and sweaty from mowing the lawn. He beckons Karen to sit on his lap, at which point he begins to sexually abuse her. Over time, the abuse gets worse, but Karen is convinced that telling her Aunt Viola would be worse than enduring it. When Viola questions her about her lack of appetite, she finally confesses, but Viola calls her a liar, ordering her to never repeat the accusations again. Now, Vern feels emboldened to continue the abuse without the pretensions of love. One night, he enters her bedroom and rapes her: “He splits her in two right up the middle and her skin comes open like the dry skin of a cocoon, and Charis flies out” (290). Karen/Charis floats above her body watching the entire scene, her own body gasping under the weight of her uncle. Vern pulls out and climbs off the bed, threatening to kill Karen if she doesn’t “shut up.” Karen vomits, which brings Viola into the room, but Vern claims she has the flu.

Karen wishes for her grandmother, and she sees a vision of her, bestowing some of her healing power upon her granddaughter. When she dies, she leaves Karen the farm, but she is too young to claim it. She must remain with her aunt and uncle until she is an adult. As she goes through puberty, Vern stops abusing her. He now fears her steely eyes and her hatred of him. When she turns 18, she uses some of her inherited money to pay for college. She is Charis now, split off from Karen, the victim of all the trauma and heartache of her youth. She never finishes college and never claims her inheritance. She travels and works various odd jobs, and eventually she buries Karen—spiritually and metaphorically—deep in Lake Ontario; but Karen is always inside of her, “down deep.”