Original subtitles

MEREDITH: The memories bleed together.

But that's because so much of the time was the same.

The days all one spinning image.

A child assumes that her life is normal,

that everywhere children like her exist in similar conditions.

I believed that.

Until I learned that things could change, that I could change.

And then I began to look forward.

I watched Mother's face alternating between hard

and soft, like a picture in a book I had as a child.

Light to dark.

Depending on how I held my head.

I am doomed to make the same mistakes, the same missteps Mother took.

The end unavoidable.

I never turn in time.

We didn't worry about clothes.

It seemed we could just dance out of bed and across the bare-

boarded floors right into fabric, disappear.

Blending into the white of the walls.

This swirling, arching creature wasn't my mother.

She was a ballerina with a bird flapping along the wall

then toward a window. A trapped and beautiful,

nearly extinct species.

[Tender Piano Music]

We don't know why we are sent out into relentless rain.

We're accustomed to doing what we don't understand.

The man says, 'Go, wear a bucket on a rope around your waist.'

We do not point out that we could collect rainwater just as easily

without ever setting foot outside.

The Man would never let me out.

Not without at least one of the women and a baby.

He has this way of looking me in the eyes when he gives me direction.

He can tell my thoughts, but he cannot punish me for what I hide deep inside.

Frustrated, he clamps his gray lips shut and stomps his foot.

I would prefer to be sent out on a sunny day.

Or when the houses are all the same shade of gray.

The kind of gray I could step into

and disappear forever.

They know who we are.

They've all come close enough to the house where the oaks lean and the bushes thicken.

Perhaps they think they should do something.

Call someone.

They won't.

They never will.

Rain or not, I am out of the house.

A treasure, no matter how black skies.

Pick up a foot and set it down.

Repeat on the other side.

I could go on like this forever if needed.

I could take more without breaking.

I do this because I can.

I do this to show him how much stronger I am than Ruth.

[Ominous String Music]

He will see us coming down the trail to the house

and he will realize my ability to survive.

My overwhelming strength,

greater than he imagines.

I stand dripping.

Rain runs off my legs and feet as he picks up the bucket of water

we've collected. A measure of our sin.

♪ [Low Strings] ♪

I hope the rain the Lord poured down

has rinsed you girls clean.

♪ [Low Strings] ♪

I used to think

if I heard nothing behind me, there was no one there.

That if I went to sleep in an empty room, I'd wake up in one.

I was wrong.

I used to believe in sleep.

My dreams, the only tranquility.

Once I believe that when I went to sleep, life was on hold.

The house suspended, nothing moving, nothing kicking but my heart.

All those years I was oblivious to the bear prowling the house at night.

No one else believed in him.

But I see the bear climbing from the closet.

I smell him in my room.

♪ [Childlike Music] ♪

♪ [Childlike Music] ♪

♪ [Sincere Strings] ♪

Did you hear him last night?

Him who?

The bear.

He was in my room

and then I heard him on the third floor.

I told you there are no bears this far south.

Besides

I keep this place bolted shut.

Top to bottom.

You know that.

You imagine too much.

You're just like your mother.

Bring me some more lemonade.

♪ Tense String Music ♪

[Bear Growling Ferociously]

[Meredith Screaming]

[Screaming and Growling Continues]

[Screaming and Growling Continues]

[Meredith Sobs Quietly]

There is no bear.

You were dreaming. Now go back to sleep.

I believe in the bear.

I know the feel of his weight on top of me.

The smell of his bear breath.

The satisfaction in his bear grunts.

If it were a dream, would I have felt real sweat wiped on my neck?

Would the blood in my wrist pound where his weight held me pinned?

How did you sleep?

What do you mean?

I slept.

The world was gone and now it's back again.

What did you dream?

I don't dream.

♪ Melancholy String Music ♪

I dreamt about you last night.

I dreamt

you were smothered by the weight of the great bear.

And we found you

frozen on your back.

Your clothes missing.

Your bed full of blood.

♪ Melancholy String Music Continues ♪

♪ Gentle Piano Music ♪

How many things would you die for, Mother?

And where are all the other people?

Where does that door lead?

Our doors lead nowhere.

Except for that one.

MEREDITH: Just that quickly

everything changed.

The floor gave me a splinter, and Mother wanted to use the door.

What do you see, Mother?

I see freedom.

I see heaven.

♪ Mysterious Music ♪

[ Insects Sing ]

In the garden, Mother warned me about the berries that grew around the house.

Telling me they were mostly poisonous.

Mother didn't seem to need me to be silent anymore,

so I sang away, running through my dictionary of terms

MEREDITH: Worm, beetle, soil.

Root. Seedling. Potato. Dark.

Tree. Oak.

Pine. Flower.

Vegetable.

Ground.

Leaves.

Rocks.

♪ Somber Piano ♪

We can't leave.

So don't even ask.

[Thunder Rumbles]

♪ Eerie String Music ♪

[Thunder Rumbles]

I know you want out.

But it's not safe.

Now, I will find a reason to send you out.

But if you leave without my knowledge -

I promise you...

I know, I know. I promise.

Danger is coming, Meredith.

I know how to survive.

I will protect you and the others.

I will teach you.

[Music Fades]

♪ Childlike Music ♪

Ruth used to treat me

like a child, and Alicia talked to me as if I were a sister.

But I am neither.

When I was a child here,

when my mother was here, the Man never got so crazy.

When my mother lived here, she was the only woman and I the only child.

The space seemed much more open then.

My mother would dance on the bare-boarded floors.

She would float, twirl, and leap in her white nightgown.

If the Man took Alicia and Ruth into the woods and left them,

they would follow him back, begging to be locked up again,

promising anything if only he would remove the burden of their freedom.

I am different.

I wear my restriction like a cloak.

I have hope and this is what keeps the light behind my eyes.

♪ Childlike Music Continues ♪

[Baby Sobs]

[Baby Sobs]

[Insects Sing]

I must be patient

in watching him, learning which tools do what.

I wonder if I could bolt into the gray distance and disappear

along the tree line.

But there is still much more I must learn.

[Birds Chirp]

♪ Gentle Piano Music ♪

The weeks accordion into months.

In and out, as I sit heavy with the bear's child.

Ruth and Alicia only sit and reproduce.

They eat like birds and flit about as if they were shadows or ghosts.

When I think of them, I am reminded of wild animals kept caged

who come to love the safety of the bars and the regularity of the food bowl.

The tension between my legs is a moss-covered rock.

A bowl of fruit...

a secret letter.

Someday, somehow, this sorrow will be appeased.

This gaping wound inside patched.

He believes he can shackle us by giving his children

whom he thinks we cannot leave nor live without.

Is that true?

I must keep asking myself.

I've only live this way, in this house.

But couldn't it be another way?

The day has finally come for me to go out beyond the farm.

I am to carry a bag of potatoes through the woods

and to the stream where I must wash each carefully.

The man has sent Ruth and

Alicia with me to learn the way.

Finally,

I can take long, full breaths without crying.

I can stretch my spine and flex my feet.

It was dangerous of him to let me out.

♪ Pensive Strings ♪

I memorize the lists, the tricks I need to know

which roots, which berries, the stations of the sun.

[Rush of Stream]

Hello, friend.

[Girls Giggle]

How do you survive alone?

That's the second most important question.

These are no good, Meredith.

Do you see?

See?

♪ Melancholy Strings ♪

[Musical Voices] ♪ Oh, Oh, Oh ♪

♪ Melancholy Strings ♪

[Musical Voices] ♪ Oh, Oh, Oh ♪

[Porch Swing Creaks]

♪ Ominous Strings ♪

When the man returns from town with razors, the women know what to do

with them.

On the third floor, I help them shave up and down their legs.

Up and down their arms.

Under their arms, even across the knuckles of their toes.

♪ Ominous Strings ♪

♪ Ominous Strings ♪

Once they have finished shaving the women

they look deep into my eyes with that secret look they give me.

What is it they think I don't know?

♪ Playful Piano ♪

The part I enjoyed the most is when mother would talk of

being in a world where she could move independently up and down streets.

Somewhere, the man who would become my father watched too.

He looked at mother and knew she was an able woman.

A woman who could do necessary work.

Some days I would turn around to face Mother

and she would have gone dark again.

I remember before you were born.

I woke with dread.

I went to bed with dread.

I slept with it.

♪ Sorrowful Piano ♪

Meredith.

Thank you, Lord, for the bounty laid before us.

May we use it to nourish our bodies and thee to nourish our souls.

Make us ever mindful of the needs of others

and the needs of our survival.

Through Christ Our Lord.

Amen.

Aren't you hungry?

You don't eat.

You don't live.

You don't eat, the baby doesn't eat.

Do you understand?

[Strong Wind]

♪ Melancholy Strings ♪

After all these years

she's been gone, I can still smell the lavender sent in her clothes.

If I were to run, to make my escape,

I could never take all of Mother's things with me.

They would be left behind here to rot or be used

by some new woman.

I think of what I will have if I find a way to leave

these feet, these hands, my hair and eyes, my rotten tomatoes.

And this baby, which will be half-bear, half-me, and everything I come from.

I don't know which is worse.

My window of escape narrows.

If I don't leave soon, the door will shut

and I will have no choice but to join Ruth and Alicia at their dressing tables.

I cannot pretend any longer.

Not with this belly.

I do not know how to leave.

How to snap the only band that connects me to anything.

I don't know how to set down this baby and walk out the way

my mother left me.

♪ Beautiful Strings Build to a Crescendo ♪

[Musical Voices] ♪ Oh, Oh, Oh ♪

[Musical Voices] ♪ Oh, Oh, Oh ♪

[Musical Voices] ♪ Oh, Oh, Oh ♪

[Musical Voices] ♪ Oh, Oh, Oh ♪

how perfect calm

When I think about leaving,

I realize it's a kind of love I feel for all of them.

And it's the worst kind because it's so unbreakable and horrible.

And you stalwart for pain melancholy when I should be enraged.

My love is fractured all around the house

And I can't gathered up in my skirt or sneak it into my pockets

if I leave, I will leave my love behind.

If I stay, I am a collaborator in my own

betrayal.

If I stay,

I will be answered no to the most important question

in the mornings I do my planning.

I diagram the house on one sheet, writing out all the things

I must leave behind.

I am meticulous about every detail of the rooms.

I record their colors, textures, smells.

I chart everything that happened in this house.

So I will remember marking my life in the small squares that delineate

each room

on the back of the paper.

I draw the yard and barn.

I plot the garden and show how the backfield ends in a forest of trees.

This will be my anchor when I am beyond the forest.

The town myself and a

larger city to the northeast.

East has become my magic word

The last sheet of paper

is reserved for my list, the supplies I will need for

the baby, food that will travel without spoiling a record.

When the man sleeps deepest, which nights the bear comes

in, from which direction

Over the months, I have taken dried pieces of meat,

candles, two bottles of water, from a special room in the cellar.

I did it gradually so you wouldn't notice

I have learned of sleeping habits.

This is when I rummage through supplies.

I know him better than anyone I might love

I've learned to be clever and unhurried.

I must be just as smart as he is and twice as watchful.

Survival.

This has become my mantra.

Survival is all that matters.

Some days, I fear I have waited too long to escape.

That I'm no different from Ruth and Alicia.

Can I leave?

If given the opportunity, would I be able to leave the only floors,

the only smells I have ever known

I learn new facts and lessons,

recipes, family stories, dreams and reality.

Known together.

Voices are whispered in my ear.

I turned to them only to find shadows.

I'm often confused, being told one thing then another.

'Meet me in the field' one voice says.

'Roll over' says another.

[Bear Grunting]

Bear: Meredith.

Don't call me that.

Call me midnight.

Call me dirt.

[Bear Grunts Fade Away]

Mother had told me

what to expect from my body, and I watched as it happened.

I felt myself pulled heavy in the pelvis and saw how much my body could support.

♪ Ethereal Music ♪

[Inaudible Whispering]

Mother (whispered): Now you're a young woman.

Mother (whispered): Now you're a young woman.

Mother (whispered): Now you're a young woman.

♪ Ethereal Music ♪

Those were the quiet years.

The room no longer spun through space in a white blur.

We only got older. We no longer sang or danced.

The room lived without sound.

Sometimes it got so quiet

I could hear the interchanging of my heartbeat with Mother's.

The thud channeling back and forth through the floorboards.

Meredith: Let's imagine where we'll be in ten years.

Mother: You'll be ten years older.

♪ Tense Strings ♪

Where will I be tomorrow?

One day older.

Where was I yesterday?

You were sitting in front of me in your yellow nightgown

while I braided your hair and sang Frère Jacques.

Mother...

that was years ago.

♪ Tense Strings Build ♪

♪ Percussive Knocking ♪

♪ Percussion Builds to Climax ♪

♪ Percussion Builds to Climax ♪

♪ Percussion Builds to Climax ♪

[Birds Chirp]

Meredith: ♪ Give me a rose in the winter time ♪

♪ For it's hard to find ♪

♪ Give me a rose in the winter time ♪

♪ I've got roses on my mind ♪

[Crow Caws]

[Meredith Hums]

My little baby.

My little crooner.

My little Meredith.

No, Mother, those are bad!

Come with me.

No.

[Mother Chokes on Poison Berries]

Meredith: No. Mother: Say 'yes'.

Meredith: No...

It's okay.

Mother: My sweet baby. Meredith: Don't ever leave me.

- My little baby. - My ballerina.

My purple flower.

- Say 'yes'. - Don't ever go.

Say 'yes'.

I'll go.

My little girl.

Mother!

No!!!

No!!!

♪ Melancholy Strings ♪

[Inaudible Screams]

[Birds Chirp]

[Wind Blows]

♪ Tense Music ♪

♪ Tense Music ♪

♪ Tense Music ♪

♪ Tense Music ♪

In the morning, he will find my footprints

but I will have vanished.

I will be forgotten the way they forgot my mother.

Over time, the babies will stop asking for me.

♪ Haunting Music ♪

♪ Haunting Music ♪

I have traveled east.

East so far now that I am off the edge of my map.

Already I wish it were more beautiful.

My mother had a Bible and she would read to me.

She told me prayers when we were alone.

Whispering them into my ear with her dry voice, saying, 'Someday you'll need this, Meredith'.

She was right.

I need a prayer now.

I whisper to myself to just keep moving.

My arms and legs keep moving somehow.

In spite of the cold.

East, I think, with every kick.

East, I think, instead of remembering my blanket

in the quiet darkness of the house on the warm bear-less nights.

I try to remember the discomfort.

I imagine the absurdity of raising my baby in that house.

I force myself to picture my half-bear infant sequestered on the third floor.

My hair growing long enough to reach my feet.

Instead, I choose freedom.

[Wind Blows]

♪ Voices ♪

♪ Voices ♪

♪ Voices ♪

[Infant Sobs]

♪ Ominous Strings ♪

♪ Ominous Strings ♪

[Infant Sobs]

♪ ♪

If I take this child to my breast just once, she will be mine forever.

[Infant Cries Quietly]

♪ Intense Music Elevates ♪

♪ Intense Music Elevates ♪

♪ Haunting Music Builds ♪

If the man were here, I would tell him that survival is simple.

Survival is in the body.

It is faith I am choking on.

My body...

ravenous and empty, feels as weightless and unbreakable as a ghost.

♪ Triumphant Music ♪

If the man were here now,

I would tell him that survival is easy.

It is nothing but a serrated stone that you must swallow,

cough up, and swallow again.

♪ Triumphant Music Intensifies ♪

From where I sit...

from where she must have sat...

I see a tiny p