Despite her brimming confidence and unwavering self-assurance, Magdalena wrestled with doubt more often than she would like to admit. The noxious core of uncertainty was buried within her life-long question of whether she had been guided by her own will or the ever-hovering hand of the presence to which she was bound. However, like all things cancerous, that core had spawned roots, and they stretched into so many corners and crevices of Magdalena’s life that her doubt almost felt essential to her at this point – in a rather bitter, backwards sort of way.
Ruth’s inexplicable resentment towards her was one area that highlighted it quite sharply, and not in relation to Magdalena’s haunting, but rather something much more vulnerable and disarming – her perception of herself. Sometimes she doubted her impact as a spiritualist, and in turn doubted whether she was indeed as much of a good person as she believed herself to be.
After all, she touched so many lives and fates through her profession; shaped them in ways that were fleeting and irreversible alike yet equally tangible in both instances. As such, despite her unshakeable trust in her gift and intuition, she sometimes couldn’t help but wonder if she was truly offering guidance to others and not simply stringing them along her selfish fascinations and peculiarities. Was she even rightfully entitled to playing such a role in people’s lives? To fostering their dependency on her insight despite how it undoubtedly caused more harm than good at times?
Most of the time, the answer to those crucial queries came to her instinctively and with ease – that she wasn’t entitled to anything; that she merely possessed a gift that she believed shouldn’t go to waste and employed it with good intentions alongside her best attempt at good judgement. Yet there were times when that answer completely eluded her, leaving her at an utter loss as to her purpose and intent. It was for that reason that she often righteously, almost stringently, strove to do what was right, despite her belief in the grey area of things. She simply did all that she could to bring her writhing doubts to heel.
She supposed that must be the reason why she continued to offer Ruth mindless acts of kindness despite the woman’s ceaseless rejection of them. It must also be the reason why she always took that rejection to heart – just as she did now. Before Magdalena even realized it, her expression had fissured with hurt and confusion in the wake of Ruth’s words, and she could only stand silent for a long moment, wrestling with her emotions in the same fierce manner as the gnarling of her fingers into the blanket when she lowered her hand back to her side. “It’s not pity.” She firmly stated, realizing a little too late that her words had come off unintentionally sharp. Taking a deep breath and ensuring her tone was now lower and more even, she said, “I understand why you see it that way, and I don’t blame you for it. But I assure you, I don’t approach you out of pity. I would never disrespect you like that,” With a sigh and a hesitant shrug, she added, “At least not intentionally.”
Ruth wishes she got the chance to know her mother better. After her sister Violet came eight years ago, Roselie Leveen was almost gone, perhaps not in body but definitely in mind. Before that time came, the woman already had four children on her hands with little time to spare. The lamplighter knows almost nothing about her mother, about who she was before she became bound to her children and before she became lost to that which haunts her. Truly, she has no idea what sort of relationship her mother had with this woman, she just knows that nothing good resulted from it.
Despite the largely pleasant front she projects on a day to day basis ( and no, it does not always come naturally to her, often it’s more like a customer service persona ), behind the surface is an insecure, jaded individual. So much of Ruth’s life is clouded with darkness and hardship, so she tries to remedy that with how she presents herself.
As the lamplighter watches the other woman’s expression collapse into hurt, sadness, confusion, a fleeting thought passes by. A thought which encourages her to not be so hard on Magdalena. A thought which proposes the idea that she and the spiritualist may be more alike than Ruth previously dared to imagine. With that thought, an apology climbs up her throat, coating her closed mouth. It almost manages to make its way past her lips, her mouth opens, ready to spill, but that horrible grudge stops it in its tracks. That grudge seethes in her mind, reminding her of her mother’s horrible deterioration after Ruth found her at the spiritualist’s home. Her jaw snaps shut once again.
When she speaks again, her tone is firm, but not unkind. “When people look at me, usually one of two feelings come to mind: disgust or pity. Disgust at the sight of some unseemly girl walking their manicured streets, or pity at the sight of some poor, little soul slated to a job which makes them shudder to think.” If she is honest with herself, Ruth would love nothing more than to pick Magdalena’s mind, to find out just why her mother sought this woman’s company and to find out exactly what transpired on that fateful night. But a part of her is afraid of the truth. So instead of being direct, instead of asking her, she resorts to playing games.
“I have no patience for petty pleasantries. If you do not approach me out of pity, then why do you approach me at all?”
