Mill Ruins Ondine

“My earring,” she said, leaning forward into the rectangular slot of earth before us. The old woman straightened out with some difficulty and the wrinkles in her face deepened with the effort. The soil was dry and our trowels made a grating noise as we scraped an outcropping of stone. Her skin was dry too, despite the blazing afternoon sun above us.

“So, you are…were an archaeologist then?” I asked.

“No, no,” said the woman, “I volunteer with the park board sometimes. An old woman needs something to do with her time – my son’s grown, doesn’t want me around anymore. I’ve got to do something with my time. I’m Ondine, by the way.”

“Like the play?”

“Hmm? That’s right. Like the play.”

“Sarah.”

Ondine held the dustpan for me while I swept loosened pieces of limestone and dirt out of the corners. She transferred the debris into the empty bucket next to her.

A mother with two young children approached and nodded silently. She looked tired. “See what they’re doing?” she said to her children, “Wanna do some digging? Or do you want to do the art project instead?” The children responded with a dumb stare.

“The art project?” prompted the mother. She shrugged her shoulders in our direction and said, “Family Days” as if it explained everything. Then she prodded the children back towards the entryway, where flickering flags had been strung to draw attention to the open-dig day.

“What about you?” Ondine asked, “How did you hear about this?”

“Oh. I saw an ad in the paper and thought it would be fun. When I was a kid, I wanted to study archaeology, I guess. But you know, I got married right out of high school, had kids of my own, and it just didn’t work out that way.”

Just then, my trowel scraped across something metal. Ondine slid her legs painfully over into the hole, bowing the single strand of twine that demarcated the area. Her ankles were swollen and dotted with liver spots. With a hand-held whisk, she brushed my arm away and plucked what looked like an old timepiece out of the dirt.

I leaned forward to see, but Ondine quickly pocketed the object and said, “Looks like garbage. We’ve been finding a lot of garbage. We’re not that far down yet.”

“Uh..I don’t think you’re supposed to keep anything that you find, though.” I said uneasily, “I mean, shouldn’t we put anything man-made that we find in that bag? The Level 4 bag. See it?”

Ondine looked at me blankly. She seemed confused and put her hands down on the cracked ground to steady herself.

“You ok?” I asked.

She shook her head, seemed stunned. I moved across the hole to sit beside her and her body leaned heavily into mine. She was older than I had initially thought. I could see patches of scalp beneath her stiff thinning hair.

“You ok?” I asked again, “Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

She jerked her head upwards to face mine. Her eyes weren’t focusing correctly, I could see. “No, no.. just help me down there, into the shade.”

Her hand waved faintly at a square of excavated earth nearby. It had been dug about three feet down, and a metal shaft protruded from one corner. It was rusted through and a sign posted next to it indicated that it had been the chute through which the eight or so mills on site had shared water at the turn of the century.

We rose with great difficulty, my arm supporting her corseted waist, and stumbled toward the hole together. I managed to lower her down onto the ground, and together we slid inside. It was cooler in there, and mostly shaded from the sun.

We sat there for a while. I listened to her shortened breaths and groped in my bag for a water bottle. She took a shallow sip from me and leaned the side of her face against the cool earthen wall.

“My son,” she said, “This is where his father died. Lawrence. It was his watch.”

“Do you want me to call your son and have him come pick you up? I think you really need to go home and lie down for a while.”

“The earring wasn’t mine, though. My ears aren’t even pierced, see?” She pulled back her hair. “Mama wouldn’t let me pierce my ears.”

“What’s your son’s number? I’ll call him and tell him to come pick you up.”

“Lawrence fell asleep one night. Had been carrying on with one of the mill girls. I never even found out what her name was.”

“Ma’am? Ondine? Your son..?”

“Everyone thought it was the flour, you know - Miller’s Lung. He couldn’t sleep and he was so tired and he tried so to keep his eyes open. Then Lawrence just closed his eyes and fell asleep. And stopped breathing.”

Ondine’s own breathing had slowed, but her eyes remained closed. “It broke my heart, the way he carried on with that girl, but there was nothing else I could do. By then, it was too late for me to go back to Mama. It was getting late. I was getting old. My son…”

“Mama?” A man’s voice called out sharply, “Mama?” A shadow crossed the lit portion of the hole and I looked up to see an old man at the ridge.

“For God’s sake, Mama. Miss, would you be so kind as to help me get her up out of there? Mama, let’s take you back now.”

Ondine’s son must have been in his eighties, but his grip on her was surprisingly strong.

“She hasn’t been quite right since Daddy died,” he said, “’Ondine’s Curse’ is what they call it at the center. They give her too much freedom there. Mama, you can’t just wander off like that anymore.”