Chapter 7: Morning Devotions
The dawn was a pale, watercolor wash over the garden, bleeding into a sky the color of a fresh bruise. Dew clung to spiderwebs strung between the apple trees, each droplet catching the first feeble light. It was cold. The kind of damp, creeping cold that seeps into bones.
Agnes stood naked between the two oldest trees, her back to the trunk of one, her wrists loosely tethered with soft, cotton clothesline to low branches on either side. The ropes were not tight; they were suggestions, a framework. She could have slipped free with a determined shrug. That was the point. The submission was in the stillness, not the restraint. Her skin was a landscape of goosebumps, her breath pluming in the quiet air. She stared straight ahead, through the kitchen window where a light had just flickered on.
Emily emerged first, carrying a thick wool blanket which she spread on the damp grass. Gudrun followed with a tray holding a French press, steam curling from its spout. Then came Hanna and Berit, their footsteps crunching lightly on the gravel path, voices hushed in the morning hush. Anette, the new one, brought up the rear. She’d been briefed, but her eyes were wide, taking in the scene: the pale, aging body tethered like a nautical figurehead, the severe beauty of the trees, the mundane domesticity of the coffee tray.
“It’s bracing,” Hanna whispered, hugging her cardigan around herself.
“She’ll warm up,” Emily said, her voice carrying clearly in the stillness. She placed a small wooden table on the blanket, and Gudrun began unloading the breakfast: a pot of ruby-red strawberry jam, a slab of butter on a china dish, a bowl of green grapes, a loaf of crusty bread, a knife.
The ritual was wordless at first. The women settled on the blanket, pouring coffee into mismatched mugs. The normal sounds—a spoon clinking, a cup being set down—were absurdly loud. Agnes watched them, her expression serene, distant. The cold made her nipples hard and dark against the sagging paleness of her breasts.
Emily buttered a slice of bread thickly. She then dipped the knife into the jam, scooping up a generous, glistening mound. She didn’t look at Agnes as she stood and walked over. “Breakfast service,” she announced, her tone conversational, as if discussing the weather.
She used the knife to smear a cold, sticky stripe of jam from Agnes’s collarbone down over her left breast. Agnes flinched at the sudden chill, a sharp intake of breath hissing through her teeth. Her breast trembled.
“Now, Anette,” Emily said, stepping back. “The first serving is for our guest. A proper hostess samples the offerings.”
Anette froze, her mug halfway to her lips. She looked from Emily’s expectant face to Agnes’s jam-smeared flesh. A slow blush crept up her neck. This wasn’t a theoretical discussion in a warm living room. This was the raw, morning reality of it.
“Go on,” Gudrun said, not unkindly. She sipped her coffee. “It’s just jam. And she’s the table.”
Anette set her mug down. She moved awkwardly, kneeling on the blanket first, then shifting forward onto the grass until she was close to Agnes. The older woman’s smell—sleep, cold skin, laundry soap—mixed with the sweet, synthetic scent of the strawberries. Anette leaned in, her breath warm on Agnes’s skin. She extended her tongue, tentatively licking at the sticky mess.
The contrast was grotesque and intimate. The warm, living muscle against cold, granulated sugar and age-softened skin. Anette licked, her movements becoming less hesitant, more purposeful, cleaning the red smear. Agnes’s eyes had closed. Her head leaned back slightly against the tree bark.
“Good,” Emily said. “See? It’s just fruit.”
Hanna, emboldened, was next. She didn’t wait for instruction. She took a grape from the bowl, walked over, and pressed it gently between Agnes’s lips. “Open.”
Agnes’s mouth opened. Hanna placed the grape on her tongue. “Don’t swallow,” Hanna commanded, a new authority in her voice. She then leaned in and, with her own teeth, plucked the grape from Agnes’s mouth. Her lips brushed Agnes’s. She chewed, smiling. “Sweet.”
Berit followed suit, feeding Agnes a grape, then taking it back with her teeth. It became a game. A grape for Agnes, a grape for the taker. Agnes’s mouth became a transfer point, a living conduit. Her jaw grew slack, her mouth held open between offerings, a faint glisten of saliva at the corner.
Gudrun watched, her coffee cooling in her hands. She saw not her mother, but a function. A centerpiece. The theory from her seminar made flesh, or rather, made utility. The positions had been about form. This was about purpose.
Emily took the knife again. This time, she smeared butter on Agnes’s other breast, a pale, greasy yellow contrast to the white skin. “Gudrun. You’ve done the diagrams. You do the honors.”
Gudrun put her mug down. She felt the eyes of the neighbors on her. This was a test, not of Agnes, but of her own resolve. She walked over. The butter was already beginning to melt from body heat, turning slick. Gudrun leaned in and licked it off, her movements slow, methodical. It tasted of salt and fat and something indefinably, essentially other. It was a violation so complete it circled back to a strange kind of tenderness. She was maintaining the system. She was cleaning her tool.
When she finished, Agnes’s eyes fluttered open. They met Gudrun’s. In them was no shame, no plea. Only a deep, abiding acknowledgment. A gratitude for the use.
“The table has been satisfactorily utilized,” Emily declared, brushing crumbs from her hands. “But a good servant also tends the garden.”
She stood up and walked a few paces away, to a patch of soft earth near the rose bushes. She unbuttoned her jeans. The sound of the zip was obscenely loud.
Hanna understood first. A slow smile spread across her face. Berit’s eyes went wide, then crinkled with a kind of shocked amusement. Anette just stared.
“Come on,” Emily said, looking over her shoulder. “We’ve all had coffee. Water the garden. It’s the most natural thing in the world.”
Agnes’s head turned. She saw Emily’s stance. Understanding dawned. A new tension entered her body, not of resistance, but of acute, focused readiness.
“Position,” Gudrun heard herself say, her voice hoarse. “The base. For… for receiving.”
Agnes moved. She sank from her tethered stance, the ropes going slack, and knelt on the damp grass, facing Emily. She placed her hands palm-up on her thighs and bowed her head, presenting the crown of her grey-haired skull.
Emily’s stream was strong and arcing. It hit Agnes’s head, a sound like rain on dry soil, and coursed down through her hair, over her face, her shoulders, her breasts. It was warm. Steam rose faintly in the cool air. Agnes didn’t move. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her lips pressed tightly together, then opening slightly as the warm liquid traced her mouth.
Hanna was next, giggling nervously as she fumbled with her own trousers. “Oh god, I hope I can go.” Her stream was weaker, splattering on Agnes’s back and shoulder. Berit, after a moment’s fierce internal struggle, joined in, adding her own trickle to the mix, aiming for the bent back.
Anette was last. She was crying, but she was also laughing, a high, unhinged sound. “This is insane,” she whispered, but she knelt and added her own contribution to the ritual watering.
Gudrun did not move. She watched. She saw the yellow trails cutting through the jam residue and butter slick on her mother’s skin. She saw the urine darken the grey hair, matting it to the scalp. She saw Agnes’s body, kneeling in the sullied grass, receiving it all. Not enduring. Accepting. A living sacrament to their collective will.
The streams ceased. The garden was quiet again, save for the distant chirp of a bird. The smell was acrid, human, cutting through the floral scents.
Emily zipped her jeans. “Alright. Clean-up protocol. Gudrun, the hose is by the side of the house. Use the cold setting. It’ll be bracing.”
Gudrun moved mechanically. She fetched the green hose, turned on the outside tap. The water shot out, icy from the morning pipes. She walked back to the blanket, the hose heavy in her hand.
Agnes still knelt, head bowed, dripping. The women had retreated to the blanket, watching silently.
Gudrun aimed the jet of water at her mother’s back. The cold was a shock. Agnes gasped, her body convulsing, but she held the base position. Gudrun hosed her down methodically, starting at the head, washing the urine and the sticky sweetness away, sluicing it down onto the grass. The water ran in rivulets over the wrinkled skin, the sagging breasts, the knobby spine. It was clinical. It was a baptism of pure utility.
When she was done, Agnes was clean, shivering violently, her skin flushed pink from the cold. Gudrun turned off the hose. The silence returned, deeper now.
“You may dry and dress,” Emily said to Agnes, as if dismissing her from a meeting. “Then come in and prepare a proper breakfast. The real one. We’re still hungry.”
Agnes rose, stiffly, her joints protesting. She untied the loose ropes from her wrists with numb fingers. She did not look at any of them. She walked, barefoot and dripping, across the lawn towards the back door, a pale ghost vanishing into the dark interior of the house.
On the blanket, Hanna let out a long, shuddering breath. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” Berit said, picking up her cold coffee and staring into it.
Anette was wiping her eyes, her earlier laughter gone. “I don’t know what I feel.”
“You feel powerful,” Emily said, sitting down and picking up a piece of bread. “And you feel sick. It’s supposed to be confusing. That’s how you know it’s real.” She took a bite, chewing thoughtfully. “She’ll make us scrambled eggs. They’ll be the best eggs you’ve ever tasted.”
Gudrun stood holding the limp hose, water dripping from its nozzle onto her shoe. She looked at the spot where her mother had knelt. The grass was flattened, darkened. She looked at the apple trees, their branches innocent in the growing light. The system was no longer lines on a diagram. It was written on the earth itself, and it was growing.
It was written on the earth itself, and it was growing. The damp, darkened patch of grass where Agnes had knelt seemed to pulse like a fresh tattoo on the lawn.
Inside, the kitchen was a capsule of warmth and normalcy. The scent of brewing coffee, now a fresh pot, and sizzling butter filled the air. Agnes, dressed in a simple linen shift, her hair damp but neatly combed, moved at the stove. The rhythmic scrape of her spatula against the skillet was the only sound. She did not look up when they filed in from the garden.
“Smells good,” Hanna ventured, her voice too bright. She slid into a chair at the oak table.
Agnes merely nodded, her focus on the curds of egg forming in the pan. Her movements were efficient, practiced. There was no tremble in her hands. It was as if the morning had been washed away with the hose water, leaving only the imperative of service.
Gudrun watched, leaning against the doorframe. Her mother’s calm was a mirror, reflecting her own disquiet back at her. She felt hollowed out, scraped clean by the cold spray. Anette silently began setting out plates, avoiding everyone’s eyes. Berit poured the coffee, her hands steady.
“These are the eggs from the Hendersons’ farm,” Agnes said, her tone conversational, almost pleasant, as she divided the fluffy yellow scramble onto five plates. “The yolks are so much richer.”
She carried the plates to the table, setting each down with a soft click. She returned with cutlery rolled in napkins. Her bare feet were pale on the terra-cotta tiles. A faint, clean smell of lavender soap clung to her, overlaying a deeper, more stubborn scent of earth.
They ate. The eggs were, as Emily had predicted, perfect. Creamy, lightly salted. The ordinary act of chewing, of swallowing, felt surreal. Sunlight streamed through the window, illuminating motes of dust dancing above the table.
Berit took a sip of coffee, cleared her throat. She looked around at the others, a tentative, searching smile on her face. She needed to name the thing, to make it manageable with words.
"The old slave is so obident to us," Berit said with a smile, mangling the word. She let out a little laugh, a release of nervous energy.
The clatter of cutlery stopped. Gudrun’s fork hovered. Anette stared into her plate. The word, wrong and right at the same time, hung in the sunny air like a wasp.
Agnes, who had been standing at the counter waiting, her hands folded, did not react to the label. She only gave a small, deferential nod towards Berit, acknowledging the statement as one might acknowledge a comment on the weather.
Emily, however, put her own fork down carefully. She looked at Berit, her gaze flat and appraising. “Obedient, Berit. The word is obedient. If we’re going to use the vocabulary, we should use it correctly.” Her correction was gentle but absolute, a teacher’s tone. It shifted the power in the room instantly, away from Berit’s clumsy claim and back to Emily’s calm authority.
Berit flushed. “Right. Yes. Obedient.”
“She is,” Hanna agreed, jumping in to save Berit from the silence. “I mean, the… the garden. She just took it.” She shoved a large bite of egg into her mouth.
“It’s what she wants,” Gudrun heard herself say. The words tasted like ash. “It’s what she’s always wanted. To be… utilized. Completely.” She was trying to convince herself, stitching the morning’s brutality into the narrative of her mother’s desire.
Agnes’s eyes met Gudrun’s across the room. In them was a profound and unsettling approval. Gudrun had articulated the creed.
“It’s fascinating,” Anette murmured, finally speaking. Her voice was low, thoughtful. “I’ve never seen a person so… present in their own absence.”
Emily smiled, a genuine one that reached her eyes. “That’s it exactly. You get it.”
The meal continued, the conversation turning to mundane things—a planned grocery trip, a leaky tap in Hanna’s bathroom. Agnes refilled coffee cups without being asked. The ordinary world was stitching itself back together, but the fabric was altered. The pattern had changed.
When the plates were empty, Agnes began to clear them. She stood at the sink, her back to the room, running hot water. The steam rose around her.
Emily pushed her chair back. “The seminar was theory. The garden was practical application. Now we move to integrated daily maintenance.” She stood, walking to the sink. She placed a hand on Agnes’s shoulder, feeling the old muscle beneath the linen. Agnes stilled, her hands in the soapy water.
“Gudrun, come here,” Emily said, not turning around.
Gudrun’s heart thumped once, hard. She rose and went to them.
“Your mother’s obedience is a resource,” Emily said, her voice low, meant only for the two of them. “But it needs direction. A taskmaster. I think it’s time you moved from diagramming positions to issuing direct commands. Starting now. Tell her what to do next. Not a suggestion. An order.”
Gudrun looked at her mother’s back, the curve of her spine, the damp hair at her nape. The words stuck in her throat. This was the precipice. In the garden, she had acted from a shocked, procedural instinct. This was cold. This was choice.
She inhaled. The air smelled of lemon soap and wet stone.
“Leave the dishes,” Gudrun said. The command was quiet, but it didn’t waver.
Agnes’s hands stopped moving. She pulled them from the water, dripping suds onto the stainless steel.
“Turn around.”
Agnes turned. Her expression was open, waiting. Water dripped from her fingertips onto the floor.
Gudrun stepped closer. She could see the faint blue veins in her mother’s temples. “The floor is wet from your hands. Clean it. Use your tongue. Do not get a cloth.”
A sharp, collective intake of breath came from the table behind them. Gudrun didn’t look away from her mother’s face. She saw the flicker there—not of resistance, but of deep, shuddering recognition. This was the language she truly understood.
Agnes slowly sank to her knees on the kitchen floor. She bent forward, her spine a pronounced curve. She extended her tongue and began to lap the tiny puddle of soapy water from the tiles.
The sound was soft, animal. Berit made a small, choked noise. Emily’s hand tightened on Gudrun’s shoulder, a signal of fierce approval.
Gudrun watched, her own breath shallow. This was different. This was hers. The system wasn’t just growing on the earth outside. It was taking root inside her, too, a dark and flowering vine.