She was bored.
Her chores were done, her homework finished, the potatoes peeled, salted, covered with water, and sitting in a pan on the back of the stove. She checked the three tiny rooms of the little flat again, just to be sure…every thing was clean, dusted, vacuumed, neat as a pin. She was bored.
She couldn’t go out…she had to have permission to go out and she wasn’t allowed to call Mother at work except in an emergency. A real emergency, like somebody had died on the porch steps…and even then, she was supposed to call the police, not bother her mother, who couldn’t do anything about it from halfway across the city, for God’s sake and what was she, a goddamned doctor or something? No, she couldn’t go out...
Maybe she could watch a little TV? If she only watched until 4:30 the set would have enough time to cool down before Mother got home, right? But she’d been busted that way before, turning on the TV without permission and being naïve enough to think she wouldn’t get caught. But Mother had put her purse on top of the set when she walked in the door and the rising warmth told the tale. No, she wouldn’t push her luck again…she didn’t know how long it took the set to cool down, so she wasn’t taking any chances.
But she was bored. She pulled out the battered little cardboard box from beneath her bed at the end of the kitchen, the place where the table was supposed to be. She sat on the neatly made cot and put the box in her lap, quickly rifling through its contents. A tattered crossword puzzle book briefly caught her attention, but it didn’t hold. Neither did anything else. She shoved the box back under the bed and stood up, absently tugging the almost imperceptible wrinkles from the thin coverlet. “Give her no reasons…” flitted through the back of her mind, but she dismissed the thought as disloyal. She was bored.
She absently opened the cupboards, the refrigerator…a sandwich! She’d have a sandwich! She could sit on the stoop to eat it and if she left the window over her bed open, she could hear the phone if it rang. God forbid she should miss a phone call and the instructions it was certain to bring. Even being in the bathroom was no excuse… A sandwich!
The bread was stale and she had to pick a furry green dot off one corner of the crust, but it would do. She opened the refrigerator and took out the mayonnaise and cold meat, careful to spread only the thinnest layer on the bread and to separate only one slice of meat from its brothers. She wrapped the sandwich in a paper towel and cleaned up the evidence of her illicit snack, then took a bite from the top. Eh. She wasn’t in the mood for bologna. She worked the bite until she could swallow it, then wrapped the remains of the sandwich in the paper towel and placed it near the back of the refrigerator…she would take it to school for lunch tomorrow.
It was an uneventful evening. She sat on her bed with the old bread board across her lap, eating dinner while her mother and step father ate at the coffee table as they watched TV. The sofa was too small for three and there was no other seating in the living room, so she either had to sit on the floor to watch, or stand in the hallway near the bathroom door, where she was “always underfoot, goddammit!” She opted for her bed and the books she checked out of the school library during her lunch break. Heaven forbid she should go after school and end up late coming home and checking in…her ears would burn and her face would smart for hours from the tongue lashing such defiant independence would surely provoke. She’d rather spare herself that, so she would bolt her sandwich and spend the rest of the lunch period in the warm embrace of the library, savouring the fusty, bookish smell, browsing the volumes and following her literary whims. Mary Poppins this week, Aldous Huxley next, perhaps Upton Sinclair after that. After dinner, when the dishes were washed and the pots scrubbed and the stove degreased, she would shower quickly…there would be no hot water in the morning by the time her turn at the bathroom came…and climb into her cot with the latest borrowed volume, block out the TV noise on the other side of the curtain separating the rooms, and read herself to sleep.
Mornings were hectic, with the three of them trying to use the same bathroom at the same time, but since she didn’t have to leave for school until after they had left for work, she would invariably be the last one in. She actually preferred it this way, even with the lack of hot water, since she didn’t have to hurry, there being no one waiting on her to finish. She was standing in her bathrobe, just rinsing her teeth, when her nerves stood on edge at the sound of her mother’s screech. All three of her names…dear God, she was in trouble up to her eyetops! But what on earth for?
She dried her mouth on her sleeve as she rushed to the kitchen from whence the screams emanated, lest she linger too long and find herself summarily dragged there by her hair. She’d been too slow before and the consequence had made brushing her hair a tender affair for nearly a week. She nearly skidded to a stop in front of the refrigerator where her mother stood with the door open.
“Just what in the name of God is this?” her mother demanded, shoving a paper-towel wrapped object so close to her face that she couldn’t focus on it. She felt suddenly cold inside. Her stomach pulled into a tight, agonizing knot. She could feel the colour drain instantly from her face.
“A s-s-s-sandwich,” she stammered. “Lunch today,” she managed to add before she unaccountably found herself sitting on the kitchen floor.
“Get up, you smart-mouthed little bitch, and don’t take that tone with me!”
She got up, carefully schooling her face into an expressionless mask until she knew whether she should look frightened or stoic…the right facial expression could shorten this. Her left ear was ringing and felt hot and fat. She looked up slowly and saw the glower on her mother’s face that meant an explanation…a good explanation…had better be forthcoming or there would “be more where that came from.”
“I was planning to take it for lunch today…” she began.
“There is a bite out of it,” her mother said without even moving her frighteningly red lips.
“I…I know…I took one bite and I…I…uh…I wasn’t hungry so I wrapped it up to take it for lunch today,” she finished in a rush.
Suddenly she was sitting on the floor again, seeing her mother through a kind of red haze, her ear ringing so badly she could barely hear “…times not to waste food…never listen to a thing…incorrigible brat…stop snivelling…stand up here…” She struggled to her feet, feeling a little dizzy, forgetting her facial expression.
“Aw, gee,” came the nasal, taunting sneer. “Now you’re gonna blubber, for God’s sake, over a couple of love taps. You want to bawl? I’ll give you something to bawl about!” She heard it, the cracking sound, but she neither saw nor felt it. One second she was leaning slightly against the refrigerator for support, the next second she was on the floor again. It needed mopping, she thought absently, seeing something that looked wet and sticky near her mother’s shoe. I gotta mop this up before she sees it, she thought dazedly, or I’ll be in big trouble when she does…
And suddenly it was very quiet. She stayed perfectly still, knowing that to move when motion was not commanded could earn another blow. She looked around carefully with her right eye…her face was on the floor such that the left one had no vantage. Mother’s shoes were gone…when had she left the room? She waited a bit longer, in case she had just moved out of sight and was waiting for her to move unbidden. But there was no sound save the ticking of her alarm clock. Slowly, carefully, she raised herself to a sitting position, noting the small puddle on the floor. Embarrassment flooded over her…she’d had a nosebleed! Not exactly the best time for that since it probably splattered on Mother’s blouse when she slapped her…there would be hell to pay for that! Was Mother in the bathroom, rinsing out the blood, ready to smack her again if she interrupted before the storm was over? Slowly, wondering why her stomach felt bruised, she pulled herself to a standing position gripping the edge of the sink and glanced over at the clock. 8:45. Dear God! Mother was at work by now…so was Frank…and she was late for school! Now she was really going to catch hell!
Showing posts with label intimidation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label intimidation. Show all posts
Friday, March 16, 2012
The Toothache
She had a toothache.
There was no way around it, the tooth just below her right eye was throbbing, sending thick waves of pain through the bridge of her nose. Just thinking about eating lunch made her stomach curl. She had to do something.
The thought of telling her mother crossed her mind, but was instantly dismissed. Not even getting this pain to stop was worth that…she could hear it now… “What? You haven’t been brushing your teeth, have you? I know you, this is just another attention-getting device, isn’t it? Where the hell do you think I’m going to get the money to pay for a dentist? Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know, and I’m not made out of it, either! Goddamned spoiled brat, just ‘gimme, gimme, gimme’ all the time!”
She bent to the water fountain to take a drink, but the cold water striking the tooth brought tears to her eyes. She had to do something, and soon, or she’d be crying without the impetus of the icy water on a bare nerve…and then there would be hell to pay for sure. She pondered going to the school nurse…a last resort, surely, because if Miss Connie slipped up and called her mother again, she’d be in for another horrifying week like the one she endured when the school called and told her mother to get her some glasses or else she would be turned in to the authorities for child neglect. The nearest appointment with the optometrist was a week out, and that had been one of worst weeks of her entire life. The screaming, the tantrums, the carrying on, the threats…in a week’s time she had gone from wishing she didn’t need glasses---what 12 year old girl wants them, after all?---to praying that she not only needed them, but that her prescription was stronger than her mother’s, so there would be no room for lingering accusations of malingering and attention-seeking. Her prayer had been answered, but only after enduring a terrifying ride to the clinic in which she was told she was about to be “found out,” that the doctors…unlike that gullible, bleeding-heart school nurse…could tell when you were faking, and when the eye test was over and she was revealed for the fraud she was, she was going to pay like she had never paid before. Maybe telling Miss Connie wasn’t the best idea, after all.
Her best friend came upon her leaning disconsolately against her locker, her right hand plastered tightly against her cheek. It took an exchange of fewer than ten words, and the next thing she knew, she was being propelled forcefully down the ancient, musty smelling hallway into the antiseptic-scented lair of Miss Connie, RN. She had known Miss Connie since she was five years old and she had administered the required booster shots for her to enter school…and had treated her feverish little body when it turned out she was allergic to at least one component of the shot. Miss Connie had comforted her when she fell from the jungle gym and split her chin open, necessitating stitches…and Miss Connie had defended her from her mother’s wrath “She’s not stupid or wilful,” she had responded to her mother’s furious accusation. “She’s six and these things just sometimes happen. It’s part of being a kid.”
“Toothache,” her best friend said, pointing out the obviously reluctant patient. “Thank you,” Miss Connie said to her friend, her tone of voice dismissing her. “Sit down, dear,” she said solicitously. “Open up and let me take a look.”
“You can’t tell my mother,” she muttered. “I got in lots of trouble over the glasses, Miss Connie. You can’t tell my mother about this. Just give me something to make the pain go away and I’ll be fine.”
“Mmmm,” Miss Connie said, peering inside her mouth, tongue depressor and little light in hand. “Mmmmm.” She put the instruments in her lap and sat back. “When was the last time you went to the dentist?” she asked.
“Uh…I dunno…I don’t think I’ve ever been…”
“How old are you now, dear?”
“Um…fourteen. And a half.”
“Fourteen and you’ve never been to a dentist?”
She shook her head “no.” And she didn’t want to go, either, to judge from her mother’s experiences. Teeth cleaning had to be the closest experience to torture allowable in this country! Not that cleaning them ever did any good…her mother’s teeth were still yellowed and stained with nicotine, even after a harrowing afternoon with the hygienist. All that pain and no visible improvement? No thanks!
Miss Connie was looking thoughtful. “You need fillings, dear. At least four of them.” She could feel her eyes widen with horror. Fillings! That meant injections in her mouth! She shook her head “no.” She would rather die that have a needle in her mouth! She shook her head again.
“You can’t tell my mother, Miss Connie. She’ll kill me for just coming here and if she has to pay for a dentist…she can’t afford to pay for a dentist.” She was speaking in a rush, her words tumbling over each other almost incoherently. “Please, please, don’t say anything to my mother…can’t you just give me something to make it better for a while?” she finished abruptly, unaware that her hands were so tightly clasped that her fingers were bloodless.
Miss Connie turned on her little swivel stool and opened one of the narrow glass-fronted cabinets that lined the wall of her consulting room. A strong spicy odour escaped as the door swung away, perfuming the room with its heady scent. Removing a small, dark brown glass bottle, a tiny vial, and a pair of long curved tweezers, she closed the cabinet door, leaving the fragrance lingering in the air. “This will only help for a little while,” Miss Connie warned her, extracting a tiny cotton pellet from the vial with the tweezers and dipping it into the dark bottle, the source of the pungent scent. “Open up,” she said and packed the little cotton bit, purple with the overpowering oil, into the cavity of the tooth.
“Yow!” she flinched. “Augh!” But the shock of initial contact quickly wore away, and a pleasant warmth began to soothe away the pain. Oil of Cloves the label on the little bottle read. “Better,” she said, tapping her cheek gently. “You won’t tell my mother, will you?”
Miss Connie shook her head. “But the pain will be back. Let me call the County. They have programs where you can get that taken care of for free. It won’t cost your mother anything…let me at least look into it for you…”
* * *
Miss Connie was right. The relief was only temporary. Mother would be home soon and she had the house tidied up, but she couldn’t concentrate on her homework for the throbbing under her eye. She heard the car door slam, uncharacteristically loud, she thought, but then the pain seemed to magnify everything. She swept her hair back from her face, put her sore cheek in her hand, and tried again to concentrate on the textbook in her lap. The front door slammed open and she was instantly afraid. Something was wrong. Really wrong.
“Where are you, you lying little bitch?”
Her stomach knotted and she felt suddenly cold all over. “I’m in the kitchen,” she called out. “What’s wrong?” She rose from the cot lest she be dragged to a standing position by her hair. She knew what she needed to do, and composed her face accordingly.
“What’s wrong?” came the mocking sing-song from the other side of the curtain just before it was swept open. “What’s wrong?” her mother roared. “How about you tell me how the County got the idea that I’m too poor to pay for my daughter to visit the dentist? Then we’ll know what’s wrong!”
Her hand had unconsciously crept up to cover the throbbing spot in her upper jaw, probably not the best action to take at that precise moment, as her mother grabbed her wrist in an iron squeeze and dragged it away. “Open up!” she commanded. “Open up, I said, and let me see this gaping hole that sent you whining to that busybody school nurse.” Reluctantly, she opened her mouth, her tongue involuntarily touching the throbbing spot. “Move your goddamned tongue so I can see!” her mother commanded and, after a moment, flung her wrist and numbed hand away.
“I do not know what to do with you,” her mother complained through gritted teeth, her eyes rolling skyward. “You have absolutely no sense at all. Why didn’t you just tell me you had a toothache so I could send you to the dentist? Why involve that big mouth nurse who had to go call the County? Now, thanks to you, Miss Troublemaker, a social worker is going to be here next week to check things out. If you dare put one foot wrong, you will rue the day you were born, do you understand me?” That last, spoken in a barely audible hiss, was more frightening than then the roaring bombast that has accompanied her mother’s entrance. Standing stock still, feeling like the mouse caught in a snake’s mesmerizing gaze, she nodded slowly. Yes, she understood. She understood very, very well.
There was no way around it, the tooth just below her right eye was throbbing, sending thick waves of pain through the bridge of her nose. Just thinking about eating lunch made her stomach curl. She had to do something.
The thought of telling her mother crossed her mind, but was instantly dismissed. Not even getting this pain to stop was worth that…she could hear it now… “What? You haven’t been brushing your teeth, have you? I know you, this is just another attention-getting device, isn’t it? Where the hell do you think I’m going to get the money to pay for a dentist? Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know, and I’m not made out of it, either! Goddamned spoiled brat, just ‘gimme, gimme, gimme’ all the time!”
She bent to the water fountain to take a drink, but the cold water striking the tooth brought tears to her eyes. She had to do something, and soon, or she’d be crying without the impetus of the icy water on a bare nerve…and then there would be hell to pay for sure. She pondered going to the school nurse…a last resort, surely, because if Miss Connie slipped up and called her mother again, she’d be in for another horrifying week like the one she endured when the school called and told her mother to get her some glasses or else she would be turned in to the authorities for child neglect. The nearest appointment with the optometrist was a week out, and that had been one of worst weeks of her entire life. The screaming, the tantrums, the carrying on, the threats…in a week’s time she had gone from wishing she didn’t need glasses---what 12 year old girl wants them, after all?---to praying that she not only needed them, but that her prescription was stronger than her mother’s, so there would be no room for lingering accusations of malingering and attention-seeking. Her prayer had been answered, but only after enduring a terrifying ride to the clinic in which she was told she was about to be “found out,” that the doctors…unlike that gullible, bleeding-heart school nurse…could tell when you were faking, and when the eye test was over and she was revealed for the fraud she was, she was going to pay like she had never paid before. Maybe telling Miss Connie wasn’t the best idea, after all.
Her best friend came upon her leaning disconsolately against her locker, her right hand plastered tightly against her cheek. It took an exchange of fewer than ten words, and the next thing she knew, she was being propelled forcefully down the ancient, musty smelling hallway into the antiseptic-scented lair of Miss Connie, RN. She had known Miss Connie since she was five years old and she had administered the required booster shots for her to enter school…and had treated her feverish little body when it turned out she was allergic to at least one component of the shot. Miss Connie had comforted her when she fell from the jungle gym and split her chin open, necessitating stitches…and Miss Connie had defended her from her mother’s wrath “She’s not stupid or wilful,” she had responded to her mother’s furious accusation. “She’s six and these things just sometimes happen. It’s part of being a kid.”
“Toothache,” her best friend said, pointing out the obviously reluctant patient. “Thank you,” Miss Connie said to her friend, her tone of voice dismissing her. “Sit down, dear,” she said solicitously. “Open up and let me take a look.”
“You can’t tell my mother,” she muttered. “I got in lots of trouble over the glasses, Miss Connie. You can’t tell my mother about this. Just give me something to make the pain go away and I’ll be fine.”
“Mmmm,” Miss Connie said, peering inside her mouth, tongue depressor and little light in hand. “Mmmmm.” She put the instruments in her lap and sat back. “When was the last time you went to the dentist?” she asked.
“Uh…I dunno…I don’t think I’ve ever been…”
“How old are you now, dear?”
“Um…fourteen. And a half.”
“Fourteen and you’ve never been to a dentist?”
She shook her head “no.” And she didn’t want to go, either, to judge from her mother’s experiences. Teeth cleaning had to be the closest experience to torture allowable in this country! Not that cleaning them ever did any good…her mother’s teeth were still yellowed and stained with nicotine, even after a harrowing afternoon with the hygienist. All that pain and no visible improvement? No thanks!
Miss Connie was looking thoughtful. “You need fillings, dear. At least four of them.” She could feel her eyes widen with horror. Fillings! That meant injections in her mouth! She shook her head “no.” She would rather die that have a needle in her mouth! She shook her head again.
“You can’t tell my mother, Miss Connie. She’ll kill me for just coming here and if she has to pay for a dentist…she can’t afford to pay for a dentist.” She was speaking in a rush, her words tumbling over each other almost incoherently. “Please, please, don’t say anything to my mother…can’t you just give me something to make it better for a while?” she finished abruptly, unaware that her hands were so tightly clasped that her fingers were bloodless.
Miss Connie turned on her little swivel stool and opened one of the narrow glass-fronted cabinets that lined the wall of her consulting room. A strong spicy odour escaped as the door swung away, perfuming the room with its heady scent. Removing a small, dark brown glass bottle, a tiny vial, and a pair of long curved tweezers, she closed the cabinet door, leaving the fragrance lingering in the air. “This will only help for a little while,” Miss Connie warned her, extracting a tiny cotton pellet from the vial with the tweezers and dipping it into the dark bottle, the source of the pungent scent. “Open up,” she said and packed the little cotton bit, purple with the overpowering oil, into the cavity of the tooth.
“Yow!” she flinched. “Augh!” But the shock of initial contact quickly wore away, and a pleasant warmth began to soothe away the pain. Oil of Cloves the label on the little bottle read. “Better,” she said, tapping her cheek gently. “You won’t tell my mother, will you?”
Miss Connie shook her head. “But the pain will be back. Let me call the County. They have programs where you can get that taken care of for free. It won’t cost your mother anything…let me at least look into it for you…”
* * *
Miss Connie was right. The relief was only temporary. Mother would be home soon and she had the house tidied up, but she couldn’t concentrate on her homework for the throbbing under her eye. She heard the car door slam, uncharacteristically loud, she thought, but then the pain seemed to magnify everything. She swept her hair back from her face, put her sore cheek in her hand, and tried again to concentrate on the textbook in her lap. The front door slammed open and she was instantly afraid. Something was wrong. Really wrong.
“Where are you, you lying little bitch?”
Her stomach knotted and she felt suddenly cold all over. “I’m in the kitchen,” she called out. “What’s wrong?” She rose from the cot lest she be dragged to a standing position by her hair. She knew what she needed to do, and composed her face accordingly.
“What’s wrong?” came the mocking sing-song from the other side of the curtain just before it was swept open. “What’s wrong?” her mother roared. “How about you tell me how the County got the idea that I’m too poor to pay for my daughter to visit the dentist? Then we’ll know what’s wrong!”
Her hand had unconsciously crept up to cover the throbbing spot in her upper jaw, probably not the best action to take at that precise moment, as her mother grabbed her wrist in an iron squeeze and dragged it away. “Open up!” she commanded. “Open up, I said, and let me see this gaping hole that sent you whining to that busybody school nurse.” Reluctantly, she opened her mouth, her tongue involuntarily touching the throbbing spot. “Move your goddamned tongue so I can see!” her mother commanded and, after a moment, flung her wrist and numbed hand away.
“I do not know what to do with you,” her mother complained through gritted teeth, her eyes rolling skyward. “You have absolutely no sense at all. Why didn’t you just tell me you had a toothache so I could send you to the dentist? Why involve that big mouth nurse who had to go call the County? Now, thanks to you, Miss Troublemaker, a social worker is going to be here next week to check things out. If you dare put one foot wrong, you will rue the day you were born, do you understand me?” That last, spoken in a barely audible hiss, was more frightening than then the roaring bombast that has accompanied her mother’s entrance. Standing stock still, feeling like the mouse caught in a snake’s mesmerizing gaze, she nodded slowly. Yes, she understood. She understood very, very well.
Long Way Home
“Your mother will be here tomorrow to pick you up,” Nana said offhandedly, her eyes carefully focussed on the dirty dishwater swirling down the drain.
The flimsy tin pie plate that she had been drying fell from her nerveless fingers, clattering noisily on the kitchen floor.
“No.” The word popped unbidden from her mouth. “No!’ This time it was more of a wail. “You can’t let her take me, Nana,” she begged, hands twisting the damp towel, knees threatening to buckle. “You can’t!”
“It’s the end of the summer, dear,” Nana said tonelessly, rescuing the towel from her torturing grasp. “Run along down to your room now and get your things packed up and ready. She won’t want to stay long.”
The cardboard boxes were nested in the cellar where she had stored them after unpacking three months ago. All of her efforts…desperate efforts…to dispose of them, as if destroying the cartons would somehow render her unable to be snatched back from her idyll and thrust again into the looking-glass chaos of her real life, had met with solemn resistance. And as much as she would pretend that this life of predictable, rational calm was her reality, her Nana knew better…the cartons had been relegated to a corner of the cellar where she did not have to endure their taunting presence daily, but they had never truly gone away.
She flung open her closet and drawers, stuffing the contents willy-nilly into the cartons until there was nothing left to fling. She couldn’t see to pack anyway, her vision obscured by the endless fall of hot tears, her head stuffed tight with silent sobs. It was not yet dark when there remained nothing to stuff into the betraying boxes, and she sat down on the pretty pink tufted chenille bedspread and buried her head in her hands. She would not give in to the sobs…if she gave voice to even one, they would swallow her whole.
“We can’t keep you, punkin,” her grandfather’s voice came from the door. “Much as we’d like to, we can’t.”
She looked up, unheeded tears cascading down her face. “I’d be good, Grandpa, I swear I would,” she pleaded, her voice choked and thick. “I wouldn’t get into any trouble, I promise! I’ll do good in school, I’ll go to church every Sunday, do my chores without reminding, help out more around the house…” His apologetic expression did not change. “Please, Grandpa,” she begged. Please don’t make me go back. You don’t know what it’s like…”
He shook his head, the few hairs combed over the top miraculously staying in place. “There is nothing we can do, honey. She’s your mother and she wants you back for the school year…”
She held his unwavering gaze a few seconds longer, then put her face back in her hands. Dread stole over her and settled on her shoulders, a dark, suffocating weight, and she suddenly felt inestimably old and incalculably tired. Raising her despairing eyes back up to the door, she saw her grandfather had gone as silently as he had arrived. She was now entirely alone, and there was nothing she could do to stave off the arrival of morning.
* * *
It was the smell of coffee that awakened her, although she was sure she had not really slept at all. Her throat was raw, her sinuses full, her eyes swollen nearly shut, her temples pounding. No…it was not the smell of coffee that had pulled her back to awareness, it was a voice. “Get out of that goddamned bed!” the sound slammed through the closed door to reverberate painfully through her aching head. Mother was here.
She considered pulling the covers over her head and pretending she didn’t hear, but experience told her that was not the wisest course of action. The presence of her own parents had only the barest mitigating influence on her mother, and once they were alone later, Mother would make her pay doubly. “Coming!” she called, her voice barely a croak. She groped for her bathrobe and trudged slowly to the deceptively sunny, plant-filled kitchen. She noticed the parakeet and his cage were missing…Mother detested birds and undoubtedly Nana had moved him on that account. She missed the cheerful distraction of his twittering.
“Well, there she is,” Mother’s voice boomed with false gaiety…there was an undertone of criticism that would be examined in excruciating detail later, when it was just the two of them, trapped in the car together for 24 hours. “Trying to sleep your life away?”
She shook her head and pressed her fingertips to her throbbing temple. “I woke up with a headache…” she began.
“What’s the matter with your face? Have you been bawling again? I don’t…”
“She had an allergy attack yesterday,” Nana interrupted quickly. “She was sneezing all day, isn’t that so, Grandpa?” He, who was constitutionally incapable of lying, gave a brief, stiff nod of consent as Nana’s penetrating look bored into him.
Mother was unconvinced, but declined to challenge her parents’ version of the tale. “Get dressed and get your things together, we’re leaving in half an hour,” she said curtly, turning back to Nana with a patently fake smile.
She silently rose to do Mother’s bidding, her last breakfast growing cold on the table as she slowly made her way back to her room. She had no appetite, no energy, no desire save to disappear. Why did it have to be this way? Why did each summer end in exactly the same way, like a recurring nightmare that could be neither avoided nor changed? A night spent sobbing into the silence, her gentle, nurturing grandparents suddenly turning into cold, unfeeling caricatures of themselves, light simply disappearing from her life as she was enveloped again in an evil miasma. What did she have to do to make it end differently?
“Let me help you with those,” Grandpa said as she dragged the boxes out to the car. It was a new car…she wondered if Mother had wrecked the last one or just got tired of it.
“It’s OK, Grandpa,” she said. “I can do it. Go on back to the kitchen where it is warm and visit with Mother. We’ll be gone soon.” Truth was, she could use the help, but she wanted some time alone with her thoughts, some time to prepare. She was resigned now to the return, but she needed time to toughen up, to don the armour of thick skin, to polish up the weapons of her perceptions so that even the most minute clue as to mood or direction would not go unheeded.
* * *
“Allergy attack, huh?” her mother finally said. They had been on the road for nearly a hour, a blessedly silent time during which she pressed her throbbing temple against the cool glass of the side window, praying for relief…and an infinite continuation of the peaceful silence. It was not to be.
She nodded her head. “Lots of sneezing,” she said, her voice still husky and thick. “Still got the headache.” Maybe Mother would have some sympathy for her pain and let her suffer in more of that blessed silence?
“What do you suppose you got a snoot full of?” Mother’s voice was deceptively smooth, almost sympathetic. Her radar went on instant alert…there was a trap in the making here, she could feel it...
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, as if being thoughtful. “We went out to Archie’s to get milk yesterday, maybe it was something out there…” she ventured.
“You sure you didn’t spend the night bawling again?” Mother asked pointedly. “I told you if you did that again, it would be a cold day in hell before you came back, remember?”
She nodded miserably. “I’m sure. I sniffled all night, though. The sneezing stopped before bedtime. So maybe it was something at Archie’s. The barn, maybe…or the cats. I played with the cats.”
Mother's face took on a deep scowl.
Success! She had given Mother something to latch onto and harangue her about, something that would distract her from the dangerous topic that could put an end to her only respite, her summers with Nana and Grandpa. “Playing with the cats!” her mother yelled. “Well, no surprise there! You know better than to play with a cat. I don’t suppose you washed your hands and changed your clothes right away afterwards, did you?” She shook her head “no” and Mother gleefully plunged on. “For a girl who is supposed to have a genius IQ, you are without a doubt the stupidest child anyone could ever be burdened with! You know you have to clean up after touching a cat or…are you listening to me, young lady, or should I pull this car over and give you a really good talking to?”
“I’m sorry, Mother,” she said softly, “My head hurts…”
“Be that as it may, you look at me when I am talking to you, do you hear me?”
She nodded slowly, so as not to jar her head too much. At least the subject had been changed…she could endure this…there was no implicit threat, only endless castigation.
“Now, what is this crap about you playing with Archie’s filthy cats? Out there on that farm, who knows what kind of disgusting shit they have been rolling around in…”
She settled her aching head against the cold relief of the window and slid her gaze to her mother’s rapidly moving lips, fuelled by strong black coffee and little white pills. It was going to be a long, long way home.
The flimsy tin pie plate that she had been drying fell from her nerveless fingers, clattering noisily on the kitchen floor.
“No.” The word popped unbidden from her mouth. “No!’ This time it was more of a wail. “You can’t let her take me, Nana,” she begged, hands twisting the damp towel, knees threatening to buckle. “You can’t!”
“It’s the end of the summer, dear,” Nana said tonelessly, rescuing the towel from her torturing grasp. “Run along down to your room now and get your things packed up and ready. She won’t want to stay long.”
The cardboard boxes were nested in the cellar where she had stored them after unpacking three months ago. All of her efforts…desperate efforts…to dispose of them, as if destroying the cartons would somehow render her unable to be snatched back from her idyll and thrust again into the looking-glass chaos of her real life, had met with solemn resistance. And as much as she would pretend that this life of predictable, rational calm was her reality, her Nana knew better…the cartons had been relegated to a corner of the cellar where she did not have to endure their taunting presence daily, but they had never truly gone away.
She flung open her closet and drawers, stuffing the contents willy-nilly into the cartons until there was nothing left to fling. She couldn’t see to pack anyway, her vision obscured by the endless fall of hot tears, her head stuffed tight with silent sobs. It was not yet dark when there remained nothing to stuff into the betraying boxes, and she sat down on the pretty pink tufted chenille bedspread and buried her head in her hands. She would not give in to the sobs…if she gave voice to even one, they would swallow her whole.
“We can’t keep you, punkin,” her grandfather’s voice came from the door. “Much as we’d like to, we can’t.”
She looked up, unheeded tears cascading down her face. “I’d be good, Grandpa, I swear I would,” she pleaded, her voice choked and thick. “I wouldn’t get into any trouble, I promise! I’ll do good in school, I’ll go to church every Sunday, do my chores without reminding, help out more around the house…” His apologetic expression did not change. “Please, Grandpa,” she begged. Please don’t make me go back. You don’t know what it’s like…”
He shook his head, the few hairs combed over the top miraculously staying in place. “There is nothing we can do, honey. She’s your mother and she wants you back for the school year…”
She held his unwavering gaze a few seconds longer, then put her face back in her hands. Dread stole over her and settled on her shoulders, a dark, suffocating weight, and she suddenly felt inestimably old and incalculably tired. Raising her despairing eyes back up to the door, she saw her grandfather had gone as silently as he had arrived. She was now entirely alone, and there was nothing she could do to stave off the arrival of morning.
* * *
It was the smell of coffee that awakened her, although she was sure she had not really slept at all. Her throat was raw, her sinuses full, her eyes swollen nearly shut, her temples pounding. No…it was not the smell of coffee that had pulled her back to awareness, it was a voice. “Get out of that goddamned bed!” the sound slammed through the closed door to reverberate painfully through her aching head. Mother was here.
She considered pulling the covers over her head and pretending she didn’t hear, but experience told her that was not the wisest course of action. The presence of her own parents had only the barest mitigating influence on her mother, and once they were alone later, Mother would make her pay doubly. “Coming!” she called, her voice barely a croak. She groped for her bathrobe and trudged slowly to the deceptively sunny, plant-filled kitchen. She noticed the parakeet and his cage were missing…Mother detested birds and undoubtedly Nana had moved him on that account. She missed the cheerful distraction of his twittering.
“Well, there she is,” Mother’s voice boomed with false gaiety…there was an undertone of criticism that would be examined in excruciating detail later, when it was just the two of them, trapped in the car together for 24 hours. “Trying to sleep your life away?”
She shook her head and pressed her fingertips to her throbbing temple. “I woke up with a headache…” she began.
“What’s the matter with your face? Have you been bawling again? I don’t…”
“She had an allergy attack yesterday,” Nana interrupted quickly. “She was sneezing all day, isn’t that so, Grandpa?” He, who was constitutionally incapable of lying, gave a brief, stiff nod of consent as Nana’s penetrating look bored into him.
Mother was unconvinced, but declined to challenge her parents’ version of the tale. “Get dressed and get your things together, we’re leaving in half an hour,” she said curtly, turning back to Nana with a patently fake smile.
She silently rose to do Mother’s bidding, her last breakfast growing cold on the table as she slowly made her way back to her room. She had no appetite, no energy, no desire save to disappear. Why did it have to be this way? Why did each summer end in exactly the same way, like a recurring nightmare that could be neither avoided nor changed? A night spent sobbing into the silence, her gentle, nurturing grandparents suddenly turning into cold, unfeeling caricatures of themselves, light simply disappearing from her life as she was enveloped again in an evil miasma. What did she have to do to make it end differently?
“Let me help you with those,” Grandpa said as she dragged the boxes out to the car. It was a new car…she wondered if Mother had wrecked the last one or just got tired of it.
“It’s OK, Grandpa,” she said. “I can do it. Go on back to the kitchen where it is warm and visit with Mother. We’ll be gone soon.” Truth was, she could use the help, but she wanted some time alone with her thoughts, some time to prepare. She was resigned now to the return, but she needed time to toughen up, to don the armour of thick skin, to polish up the weapons of her perceptions so that even the most minute clue as to mood or direction would not go unheeded.
* * *
“Allergy attack, huh?” her mother finally said. They had been on the road for nearly a hour, a blessedly silent time during which she pressed her throbbing temple against the cool glass of the side window, praying for relief…and an infinite continuation of the peaceful silence. It was not to be.
She nodded her head. “Lots of sneezing,” she said, her voice still husky and thick. “Still got the headache.” Maybe Mother would have some sympathy for her pain and let her suffer in more of that blessed silence?
“What do you suppose you got a snoot full of?” Mother’s voice was deceptively smooth, almost sympathetic. Her radar went on instant alert…there was a trap in the making here, she could feel it...
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, as if being thoughtful. “We went out to Archie’s to get milk yesterday, maybe it was something out there…” she ventured.
“You sure you didn’t spend the night bawling again?” Mother asked pointedly. “I told you if you did that again, it would be a cold day in hell before you came back, remember?”
She nodded miserably. “I’m sure. I sniffled all night, though. The sneezing stopped before bedtime. So maybe it was something at Archie’s. The barn, maybe…or the cats. I played with the cats.”
Mother's face took on a deep scowl.
Success! She had given Mother something to latch onto and harangue her about, something that would distract her from the dangerous topic that could put an end to her only respite, her summers with Nana and Grandpa. “Playing with the cats!” her mother yelled. “Well, no surprise there! You know better than to play with a cat. I don’t suppose you washed your hands and changed your clothes right away afterwards, did you?” She shook her head “no” and Mother gleefully plunged on. “For a girl who is supposed to have a genius IQ, you are without a doubt the stupidest child anyone could ever be burdened with! You know you have to clean up after touching a cat or…are you listening to me, young lady, or should I pull this car over and give you a really good talking to?”
“I’m sorry, Mother,” she said softly, “My head hurts…”
“Be that as it may, you look at me when I am talking to you, do you hear me?”
She nodded slowly, so as not to jar her head too much. At least the subject had been changed…she could endure this…there was no implicit threat, only endless castigation.
“Now, what is this crap about you playing with Archie’s filthy cats? Out there on that farm, who knows what kind of disgusting shit they have been rolling around in…”
She settled her aching head against the cold relief of the window and slid her gaze to her mother’s rapidly moving lips, fuelled by strong black coffee and little white pills. It was going to be a long, long way home.
Moving Day
At first she hadn’t liked the little room above the bar, but it didn’t take long to discern the advantages. Mother slept downstairs, in the rooms behind the bar, and because the bar was open until two in the morning, Mother was still sound asleep when she slipped into the makeshift kitchen for a quick breakfast and scrounged something to take to school for lunch. The downside, of course, was that Mother was there when she got home from school in the afternoon, but ordinarily she could quickly escape upstairs with the magic word: “homework.”
The room was tiny, dingy, shabby, and sparsely furnished. When they moved from the little flat, Mother had brought all the furniture, but she had crammed everything except the cot and a small chest of drawers into what was meant to be a storeroom behind the bar, and moved into the space herself. The bar had a sink and toilet for patrons, so Mother only climbed the steep, rickety wooden stairs that clung precariously to the outside of the weathered old building when she wanted to use the shower upstairs. It had turned out to be a heavenly arrangement, for although she spent most of her time alone, without even a television or radio, it was blessedly silent and solitary. She had her books and even though the room had no heat and it could get a bit chilly, being only half a block from the ocean and its brisk winter breezes, she could fold the blankets in half and snuggle beneath them to read. It was the most relaxed she had been in a long while.
OK, the noise from the bar downstairs was sometimes a bit loud and annoying, but it kept Mother well occupied, and that made the noise almost welcome. She stayed “out of sight, out of mind,” as her Grandpa liked to say. She would show up punctually at suppertime and make her way into the short-order kitchen to partake of whatever Mother had cooked up as the “Daily Special” for her customers, wash the accumulated pile of dishes, then unobtrusively melt out the door and back up the stairs. It was a peaceful time and she had come to almost look forward to the end of school each day, rather than to dread it.
Spring was in the air, the sharp nip of winter beginning to give way to warmer days, even while the mornings were still quite frigid. It was difficult to choose clothes appropriately, for that which was warm enough to withstand the chill ocean blasts at 7 am while standing on a street corner awaiting the school bus, was sweltering hot by midday, and heat stroke-inducing by afternoon. Her wardrobe was spare, but adequate, her thin cotton shift dresses working well in a layered arrangement to provide warmth in the morning and an armload of clothing to drag about in the afternoons. It could be a bit awkward, trying to carry an armload of books and another armful of jackets and jerseys, but she made it work. She needed the clothes for warmth, the books to while away the long, blessedly solitary and silent evenings, and having always been something of an outsider, she was inured to the sometimes odd looks she got from her peers as she carried around what looked to be the better part of her closet.
It was Friday, the Friday before Easter Vacation. She had gone to school chilly this morning so as to free her hands up to carry extra books on the way home. She had secured permission to visit the public library on the way home from school by saying she had to do a book report over the holiday and the book she needed as not in the school library. Not entirely untrue, as she had intentionally selected a book that was too new to be carried in the school library, her actual mission being to have access to the public library’s greater selection and bring home books from both libraries in sufficient quantity to get her through the week-long holiday. She struggled to carry the tall stacks of hardbound volumes from the bus stop to the stairs, reckoning she would have to make two trips to get them all to her room.
Her first inkling that something was wrong was that the bar was silent and the doors were closed. The bar always open in the afternoon and never, ever closed on a Friday…Friday was payday for a lot of folks and Mother wanted them to cash their pay checks in her bar and spend the proceeds before they went home. The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach told her something was wrong.
She put the books in two piles at the foot of the steps and climbed the swaying stairs two at a time. Her key still fit the lock to the hallway…it still fit the lock to her room…but her sigh of relief was premature, for when the opened the door, the room was bare. Everything was gone, the empty closet door gaping open, even the thin, faded curtains gone. She felt tears prickle the back of her nose as her breath came in short, sharp little gasps.
“You’re 16, you’re not a baby” she chided herself as she raced down the stairs and headed for the back of the bar. “Maybe something awful has happened and Mother needs help…”
But her mad dash through the alleyway ended at the storeroom door, padlocked as usual, with nothing appearing to be amiss. Except the curtain over the window in the door was askew and she could see that Mother’s quarters were also empty. Her stomach squeezed tightly and she gasped for breath. What on earth had happened? Mother, she who could pinch a penny until Lincoln screamed, would never close the bar on a payday unless something awful had happened, would she? Surely, if something had been planned for today, she would have been told before she left for school today, right? She hurried back to the front of the building and cupped her hands over the glass, trying to see inside. It was dark, but as far as she could tell, things looked neat and normal…and empty.
Puzzled, and growing more alarmed by the minute, she went to the side of the building and sat down on the steps. The clock on the parking lot entrance across the street gave the time as 3:30…she would ponder her options until 4:00 before taking any kind of action.
And then what? she asked herself. She had no money, not even a dime for the phone. She wasn’t allowed to have money except for her bus fare and six cents for milk doled out to her daily. And even if she did have money, who would she call? The whole family, except for her father, lived more than a thousand miles away. And her father? Would he help her? Yeah, he would, but calling him would just open up a whole new set of conflicts between the two of them, and she had seen the inside of the juvenile court enough times. She had no intention of going back.
Four o’clock. Still no word from her mother. She had walked around the building again, thinking that maybe, in her initial panic, she had missed the note that Mother must have left for her. Maybe the note had been blown away by the brisk wind…or stolen by some prankster? A few bar patrons came by, puzzling at the locked doors, but she could not answer their queries as to when the place would open and refused to respond to their less-than-proper queries otherwise. By five o’clock tears had begun to leak from her eyes, despite her efforts to withhold them, and she began changing her mind’s occupation from where was her mother to where was she going to spend the night. Upstairs, in an unfurnished room with no bed, no blankets, no heat? Definitely better than sitting outside in the cold. Her stomach rumbled. It was nearing time for dinner, and she was thirsty and needed to use the bathroom, but if she ran upstairs, even for a minute…well, what if her mother drove by and she wasn’t there? She squeezed her muscles, wrapped her arms around herself, patted her feet, and waited, wiping her cheeks on her shoulder every few minutes for the tears simply would not stop flowing.
As dusk began to fall and she could no longer read the clock across the street, the wind from the ocean picked up. She curled herself into a ball, huddled against the side of the building, and pulled her skirt down over her bare, goose-fleshed calves. Her hands were tucked up into her armpits for warmth and she had tried to construct a little wall with the books to deflect the brunt of the ocean wind, but to no avail. She was shivering in earnest now, hungry, and thirsty…but still did not know quite what to do. “I’ll wait until dark,” she promised herself, “Then I’ll go upstairs because it isn’t safe to sit out here after dark…”
Wiping her cheek against her shoulder and turning her face to the wall, she sighed and closed her eyes. Was she an orphan? Had someone killed or kidnapped her mother? What about her stepfather? Where was he? Should she go to one of the neighbouring bars and beg a coin or two to call her father? What was she going to do if her mother never came back?
Her ruminations were interrupted by the blare of a car horn. “Hey,” bellowed a familiar voice, “Miss Priss! Cut the daydreaming and get your ass into the car. I don’t have all night…”
Mother!
She leapt up, scooped up the books into a single precarious armload, and bolted for the car. Without a word, she took the passenger seat, the books spilling from her arms onto the floor and the seat space between them, causing her mother to give her a glaring look in the waning light. One look at her tear-stained face and Mother’s lip curled with disgust as she rolled her eyes skyward.
“Oh, Christ, bawling again. What is it with you, anyway?”
“I didn’t know where you were,” she said, a little catch in her voice.
“And so you were sitting out there on the steps bawling for everyone who came by? For Chrissakes, you have more attention-getting devices than Carter has little liver pills. You knew I’d be here eventually, didn’t you?”
She was silent a moment, pondering the consequences of either possible answer.
“Well?” her mother repeated, a menacing note having crept into her voice. “Didn’t you?”
She nodded her head quickly in assent, prepared to hear yet again the litany of her never-ending sins over the past sixteen years…which was seldom accompanied with slaps, smacks or punches, making it an infinitely preferable form of punishment.
“Where are we going?” she asked, hoping to put off the inevitable just a few moments longer.
“Home,” her mother said, and put the car in gear. “We moved.”
The room was tiny, dingy, shabby, and sparsely furnished. When they moved from the little flat, Mother had brought all the furniture, but she had crammed everything except the cot and a small chest of drawers into what was meant to be a storeroom behind the bar, and moved into the space herself. The bar had a sink and toilet for patrons, so Mother only climbed the steep, rickety wooden stairs that clung precariously to the outside of the weathered old building when she wanted to use the shower upstairs. It had turned out to be a heavenly arrangement, for although she spent most of her time alone, without even a television or radio, it was blessedly silent and solitary. She had her books and even though the room had no heat and it could get a bit chilly, being only half a block from the ocean and its brisk winter breezes, she could fold the blankets in half and snuggle beneath them to read. It was the most relaxed she had been in a long while.
OK, the noise from the bar downstairs was sometimes a bit loud and annoying, but it kept Mother well occupied, and that made the noise almost welcome. She stayed “out of sight, out of mind,” as her Grandpa liked to say. She would show up punctually at suppertime and make her way into the short-order kitchen to partake of whatever Mother had cooked up as the “Daily Special” for her customers, wash the accumulated pile of dishes, then unobtrusively melt out the door and back up the stairs. It was a peaceful time and she had come to almost look forward to the end of school each day, rather than to dread it.
Spring was in the air, the sharp nip of winter beginning to give way to warmer days, even while the mornings were still quite frigid. It was difficult to choose clothes appropriately, for that which was warm enough to withstand the chill ocean blasts at 7 am while standing on a street corner awaiting the school bus, was sweltering hot by midday, and heat stroke-inducing by afternoon. Her wardrobe was spare, but adequate, her thin cotton shift dresses working well in a layered arrangement to provide warmth in the morning and an armload of clothing to drag about in the afternoons. It could be a bit awkward, trying to carry an armload of books and another armful of jackets and jerseys, but she made it work. She needed the clothes for warmth, the books to while away the long, blessedly solitary and silent evenings, and having always been something of an outsider, she was inured to the sometimes odd looks she got from her peers as she carried around what looked to be the better part of her closet.
It was Friday, the Friday before Easter Vacation. She had gone to school chilly this morning so as to free her hands up to carry extra books on the way home. She had secured permission to visit the public library on the way home from school by saying she had to do a book report over the holiday and the book she needed as not in the school library. Not entirely untrue, as she had intentionally selected a book that was too new to be carried in the school library, her actual mission being to have access to the public library’s greater selection and bring home books from both libraries in sufficient quantity to get her through the week-long holiday. She struggled to carry the tall stacks of hardbound volumes from the bus stop to the stairs, reckoning she would have to make two trips to get them all to her room.
Her first inkling that something was wrong was that the bar was silent and the doors were closed. The bar always open in the afternoon and never, ever closed on a Friday…Friday was payday for a lot of folks and Mother wanted them to cash their pay checks in her bar and spend the proceeds before they went home. The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach told her something was wrong.
She put the books in two piles at the foot of the steps and climbed the swaying stairs two at a time. Her key still fit the lock to the hallway…it still fit the lock to her room…but her sigh of relief was premature, for when the opened the door, the room was bare. Everything was gone, the empty closet door gaping open, even the thin, faded curtains gone. She felt tears prickle the back of her nose as her breath came in short, sharp little gasps.
“You’re 16, you’re not a baby” she chided herself as she raced down the stairs and headed for the back of the bar. “Maybe something awful has happened and Mother needs help…”
But her mad dash through the alleyway ended at the storeroom door, padlocked as usual, with nothing appearing to be amiss. Except the curtain over the window in the door was askew and she could see that Mother’s quarters were also empty. Her stomach squeezed tightly and she gasped for breath. What on earth had happened? Mother, she who could pinch a penny until Lincoln screamed, would never close the bar on a payday unless something awful had happened, would she? Surely, if something had been planned for today, she would have been told before she left for school today, right? She hurried back to the front of the building and cupped her hands over the glass, trying to see inside. It was dark, but as far as she could tell, things looked neat and normal…and empty.
Puzzled, and growing more alarmed by the minute, she went to the side of the building and sat down on the steps. The clock on the parking lot entrance across the street gave the time as 3:30…she would ponder her options until 4:00 before taking any kind of action.
And then what? she asked herself. She had no money, not even a dime for the phone. She wasn’t allowed to have money except for her bus fare and six cents for milk doled out to her daily. And even if she did have money, who would she call? The whole family, except for her father, lived more than a thousand miles away. And her father? Would he help her? Yeah, he would, but calling him would just open up a whole new set of conflicts between the two of them, and she had seen the inside of the juvenile court enough times. She had no intention of going back.
Four o’clock. Still no word from her mother. She had walked around the building again, thinking that maybe, in her initial panic, she had missed the note that Mother must have left for her. Maybe the note had been blown away by the brisk wind…or stolen by some prankster? A few bar patrons came by, puzzling at the locked doors, but she could not answer their queries as to when the place would open and refused to respond to their less-than-proper queries otherwise. By five o’clock tears had begun to leak from her eyes, despite her efforts to withhold them, and she began changing her mind’s occupation from where was her mother to where was she going to spend the night. Upstairs, in an unfurnished room with no bed, no blankets, no heat? Definitely better than sitting outside in the cold. Her stomach rumbled. It was nearing time for dinner, and she was thirsty and needed to use the bathroom, but if she ran upstairs, even for a minute…well, what if her mother drove by and she wasn’t there? She squeezed her muscles, wrapped her arms around herself, patted her feet, and waited, wiping her cheeks on her shoulder every few minutes for the tears simply would not stop flowing.
As dusk began to fall and she could no longer read the clock across the street, the wind from the ocean picked up. She curled herself into a ball, huddled against the side of the building, and pulled her skirt down over her bare, goose-fleshed calves. Her hands were tucked up into her armpits for warmth and she had tried to construct a little wall with the books to deflect the brunt of the ocean wind, but to no avail. She was shivering in earnest now, hungry, and thirsty…but still did not know quite what to do. “I’ll wait until dark,” she promised herself, “Then I’ll go upstairs because it isn’t safe to sit out here after dark…”
Wiping her cheek against her shoulder and turning her face to the wall, she sighed and closed her eyes. Was she an orphan? Had someone killed or kidnapped her mother? What about her stepfather? Where was he? Should she go to one of the neighbouring bars and beg a coin or two to call her father? What was she going to do if her mother never came back?
Her ruminations were interrupted by the blare of a car horn. “Hey,” bellowed a familiar voice, “Miss Priss! Cut the daydreaming and get your ass into the car. I don’t have all night…”
Mother!
She leapt up, scooped up the books into a single precarious armload, and bolted for the car. Without a word, she took the passenger seat, the books spilling from her arms onto the floor and the seat space between them, causing her mother to give her a glaring look in the waning light. One look at her tear-stained face and Mother’s lip curled with disgust as she rolled her eyes skyward.
“Oh, Christ, bawling again. What is it with you, anyway?”
“I didn’t know where you were,” she said, a little catch in her voice.
“And so you were sitting out there on the steps bawling for everyone who came by? For Chrissakes, you have more attention-getting devices than Carter has little liver pills. You knew I’d be here eventually, didn’t you?”
She was silent a moment, pondering the consequences of either possible answer.
“Well?” her mother repeated, a menacing note having crept into her voice. “Didn’t you?”
She nodded her head quickly in assent, prepared to hear yet again the litany of her never-ending sins over the past sixteen years…which was seldom accompanied with slaps, smacks or punches, making it an infinitely preferable form of punishment.
“Where are we going?” she asked, hoping to put off the inevitable just a few moments longer.
“Home,” her mother said, and put the car in gear. “We moved.”
The Camera
“Ooooo, Mommy, you look just like a princess!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together with delight. “Or Marilyn Monroe, except her dress was white. You look so pretty!”
Mommy stood in the living room, patting her bleached platinum waves into place in the mirror above the old red plaid sofa and rubbing the Revlon Fire Engine Red lipstick off her nicotine-stained teeth with a forefinger.
“You two go to bed,” Mommy said without turning around. “I’m locking the door behind me. Don’t open it for any one and don’t answer the phone.” Turning away from the mirror, she picked up a glittery little evening purse and transferred a few items from her “everyday” purse, topping the cache with a pack of Pall Mall reds and her bejewelled Zippo. “I’ll be home before your Dad gets home from work.”
“Don’t wanna go to bed,” Brother said sulkily, his lower lip jutting out. “Wanna watch TV!”
Mommy almost smiled, she could see the momentary quirk of one corner of those brilliantly painted lips. “It’s your bedtime…off to bed with you,” Mommy said, turning the child about by his shoulders and gently patting his behind. “Go potty first…you don’t want to wake up to a wet bed in the morning.”
As Brother moped his way to the bathroom, Mommy fixed her with a steely stare. “You are the oldest,” she said sternly. “You are responsible. Get yourself and your brother to bed, don’t let anyone in, and do not answer the phone. It could be your father and I don’t want you blabbing to him that I went out, do you hear? I’ll be back before he gets home, so what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him and I won’t have you upsetting things with your big mouth. Is that clear, missy?” She nodded her head in silent affirmation.
“Now get to bed and stay there!” With that the front door swung open and Mommy stepped out into the night, her black taffeta skirts rustling, her Spring-o-lator pumps clicking a sharp tattoo as she strode down the cement walkway to her car. Stopping at the door of the car, Mommy turned back and looked at the house and the two small pale faces peering at her from the window. Scowling, the glare of the streetlight giving her made-up features an almost ghoulish look, she jerked her thumb towards the bedrooms and stood sternly beside the car until the little faces disappeared and the bedroom lights flicked off. Moments later the car roared away and quiet descended on the little tract house on the dirt road on the edge of the fashionable district of town.
She savoured the quiet. Mommy gone, Brother in bed, nothing to interrupt the fantasies she wove each night to put herself to sleep…she heaved a deep sigh and closed her eyes. She had just constructed the castle of which she would be the imperilled princess when the first sound intruded. Her eyes flicked open…what was that noise?
The muffled, irregular clicking sound continued until she simply had to investigate. Slipping out of bed, wincing as her bare feet touched the cold asphalt tiles, she crept to her bedroom door and silently eased it open. Oh no! Brother’s door was open! That could mean only one thing…he was into some kind of mischief and since she was responsible, she would be the one to get into trouble.
She ran out of her room, seeking the source of the sound. Her ears took her to the living room where she found Brother standing in front of the table beside the front door, his back to her. “What are you doing?” she barked in her best imitation of Mommy. Brother flinched and the object in his hand dropped to the floor with a “thud.” Daddy’s camera.
“Put that back!” she commanded, still imitating Mommy, “And go back to bed and stay there!” Brother put on a stubborn face, toed Daddy’s camera and said, simply, “Broke.”
She could feel her heart sink to her feet. “Let me see,” she said, panic rising. With relief she noted that it was not broken, that the side clamps had been loosened and the back was off the camera. But she’d seen it that way many times, when Daddy was changing the film…she just had to put the back on and snap the little clamps, then put it back where it had been and nobody would be the wiser.
Sitting crosslegged on the floor, she put the camera in her lap and carefully fitted the back of the camera to the front piece. It took some doing to get the clamp aligned and snapped, but when it clicked into place, she heaved a sigh of relief, warmth starting to flood back into her limbs. But the second clamp was not so cooperative, demanding a force that her seven-year-old fingers simply could not muster. Try as she might, she just could not force that perfectly aligned clamp to close. Heaving a sigh, she sat and contemplated the camera in her lap, pondering her various options, ultimately deciding to put the camera back where it belonged and simply hope no one noticed for a good long time. She rose and placed it carefully back on the bottom shelf of the little table.
“It’s still broke,” Brother complained. “Mommy will spank us!”
“Not if she doesn’t know anything happened,” she said. “Now you’ve made enough trouble for one night. Go to bed and stay there!”
He shook his head defiantly. “No! I don’t wanna go to bed and you can’t make me.”
“Fine,” she said dismissively and turned towards her bedroom door. “You can tell Mommy how you got out of bed and broke Daddy’s camera while I was in my room, asleep.”
“I will fix it,” Brother claimed. “I know how to do it.”
She had gone back to her room knowing that even though he was two years younger, he was taller and heavier than she was and there was nothing she could actually do to make him obey. He would do what he was going to do and she could only hope that she could carry off the “I was sleeping” defence. Before she could get back into bed, however, a loud cracking noise sent her scuttling back to the living room. There, her eyes wide with disbelief and her face white with horror, she saw the camera on the floor, its back smashed open. Brother stood with a puzzled, unbelieving look on his face, the claw hammer from the kitchen drawer clutched in his left hand. “It broke,” he said simply, looking up at her.
She panicked. There was a spanking in this, for certain, and the fact that Brother broke it wasn’t going to spare her. She picked up the pieces, returned them to the table yet again and took the hammer from Brother’s sticky hand. “Go to bed,” she said in a tight, strained voice. “Mommy is going to be very mad when she sees this.”
At that thought, his eyes widened and a shadow passed over his plump baby face. “Are we gonna get a lickin’?” he asked.
“Probly,” she responded, surveying the scene. “Go to bed. Pretend to be asleep when Mommy gets home. Maybe she won’t notice…”
Mommy noticed. As soon as she kicked off her Spring-o-lators and stepped a bare foot down on a shard of plastic lurking in the looped pile of the cheap carpet, she noticed. The blood-curdling sound of “Goddamn you kids!” echoed through the house, sending both of them deeper under the covers in their pretence of sleeping.
“I told you to stay in bed!” Mommy roared as she slammed open her bedroom door. “Don’t play-act sleep with me, Missy, I know you’re awake. If you know what is good for you, you’ll get your goddamned ass out of that bed and into the living room, toot-sweet!”
Mommy was eying the clock, changing her clothes and taking off her make up as she continued to bellow. “What in the name of hell has been going on here? I go out for a couple of hours and come home and almost get impaled on this…” she threw a sharp bit of plastic onto the blond wood coffee table. “Why don’t you tell me what that is and how it got in the carpet?”
She shrugged noncommittally, but her eyes must have told that she knew, for Mommy zeroed in on her instantly. “What about it, Missy?” her voice was soft with menace. “What is it and where did it come from?”
“Camera,” Brother said timorously from behind her. “Daddy’s camera broke.”
“Is that so?” Mommy said, her eyes flicking from one little face to the other like the tongue of a snake. “And how did Daddy’s camera break?” she asked, lowering her voice yet another notch, until it was barely above a whisper.
“Brother hit it with a hammer because he couldn’t get the back closed,” she said in a low voice. “I tried to put it back together when he took it apart but…”
“Get me the strap,” Mommy interrupted her, examining the pieces of the camera she had retrieved.
She went rigid and absolutely white. “Noooooo!” she cried, more a moan of expected anguish than a cry. “I didn’t do anything!” she protested, chafing her legs together in terrible anticipation. “It wasn’t me! Brother did it! He tried to fix it with the hammer when I went back to my room to sleep…”
Mommy’s jaw went stiff and tight. “Get…me…the…strap!” she commanded through gritted teeth. Even with the lipstick wiped away, her mouth was unnaturally, frighteningly red. “And…get…it…NOW!”
Tears already rolling down her cheeks, she ran to the kitchen to retrieve the thin leather dog leash, missing its clip, from its place hanging on the back of the kitchen door. She returned to the living room in time to hear Brother saying “Sissy broke it wif Daddy’s hammer from the kitchen,” and her mother reply “I know, Brother, I know.”
“That’s not true!” she screamed, her voice shrill with desperation. “I didn’t break it!” she sobbed, “I didn’t! I didn’t!”
Mommy was implacable. “I told you that you were responsible. Now give me the strap.”
She hid it behind her back. A completely crazy thing to do, calculated to make Mommy really mad, but she was beyond considering the consequences of her actions and operating on pure fear. “No!’ she cried. “You can’t spank me! I didn’t do anything!” She tried to dodge out of Mommy’s grasp, hiding the strap behind her back, but Mommy stuck her foot out and tripped her and she went down on the hard cement only millimetres below the thin, cheap carpet with a resounding “oof!.”
“Way to go, graceful,” Mommy said disdainfully, bending over to take the strap from her stunned fingers. “Now get your ass up off that floor and bend over the sofa. And take down those pajama bottoms while you’re at it.”
“You can’t!” she sobbed, taking as much time as she could to obey. “I didn’t do it! I didn’t!”
The first swing bit into the back of her thigh like a jaguar’s teeth. “Aigh!” she screamed in surprise, for she had not heard the telltale whistle through the air that usually gave her that infinitesimal fraction of a second, that minute window in time, that allowed her to brace herself for the strike. She bit down on her lower lip to stifle further sound, dreading the “you want to bawl, I’ll give you something to bawl about” rant that heralded an especially bad spanking. As the thin leather strap laid down stripe after glowing red stripe on the tender flesh of her buttocks and upper thighs, her mind floated free to contemplate the equally abhorrent obverse of that coin: “Stubborn little bitch today, aren’t you? Well, if it doesn’t hurt enough to make you holler, I must not be hitting you hard enough!”
And then there was a sound outside in the road, the blessedly familiar sound of Daddy’s car.
“Get your ass to bed,” Mommy said, stopping in mid-swing. “And if you say a word to your father about this, there will be a lot more where this came from, do you understand?” Scrubbing the tears from her face with the heel of her hand and nearly tripping over the pajama pants around her ankles, she nodded her assent and hobbled to her bedroom, closing the door softly behind her.
The walls were paper thin…she could not cry out loud or Daddy would hear her and come in to find out what was wrong. She buried her face in the pillow to stifle the shuddering sobs, her bare, hot bottom open to the soothing of the chill night air. She heard Mommy’s tinkling laughter through the wall as Daddy came in the front door.
“You’ll never guess what Brother got up to while you were at work,” she laughed. “While I was out back at the wash lines he decided to take your camera apart and when he couldn’t get it back together…”
She heard the rueful laughter and the blatant lies and did the only thing she could do...she closed her eyes and resumed her bedtime, sleep-inducing fantasy. Tonight, she was the imprisoned princess...
Mommy stood in the living room, patting her bleached platinum waves into place in the mirror above the old red plaid sofa and rubbing the Revlon Fire Engine Red lipstick off her nicotine-stained teeth with a forefinger.
“You two go to bed,” Mommy said without turning around. “I’m locking the door behind me. Don’t open it for any one and don’t answer the phone.” Turning away from the mirror, she picked up a glittery little evening purse and transferred a few items from her “everyday” purse, topping the cache with a pack of Pall Mall reds and her bejewelled Zippo. “I’ll be home before your Dad gets home from work.”
“Don’t wanna go to bed,” Brother said sulkily, his lower lip jutting out. “Wanna watch TV!”
Mommy almost smiled, she could see the momentary quirk of one corner of those brilliantly painted lips. “It’s your bedtime…off to bed with you,” Mommy said, turning the child about by his shoulders and gently patting his behind. “Go potty first…you don’t want to wake up to a wet bed in the morning.”
As Brother moped his way to the bathroom, Mommy fixed her with a steely stare. “You are the oldest,” she said sternly. “You are responsible. Get yourself and your brother to bed, don’t let anyone in, and do not answer the phone. It could be your father and I don’t want you blabbing to him that I went out, do you hear? I’ll be back before he gets home, so what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him and I won’t have you upsetting things with your big mouth. Is that clear, missy?” She nodded her head in silent affirmation.
“Now get to bed and stay there!” With that the front door swung open and Mommy stepped out into the night, her black taffeta skirts rustling, her Spring-o-lator pumps clicking a sharp tattoo as she strode down the cement walkway to her car. Stopping at the door of the car, Mommy turned back and looked at the house and the two small pale faces peering at her from the window. Scowling, the glare of the streetlight giving her made-up features an almost ghoulish look, she jerked her thumb towards the bedrooms and stood sternly beside the car until the little faces disappeared and the bedroom lights flicked off. Moments later the car roared away and quiet descended on the little tract house on the dirt road on the edge of the fashionable district of town.
She savoured the quiet. Mommy gone, Brother in bed, nothing to interrupt the fantasies she wove each night to put herself to sleep…she heaved a deep sigh and closed her eyes. She had just constructed the castle of which she would be the imperilled princess when the first sound intruded. Her eyes flicked open…what was that noise?
The muffled, irregular clicking sound continued until she simply had to investigate. Slipping out of bed, wincing as her bare feet touched the cold asphalt tiles, she crept to her bedroom door and silently eased it open. Oh no! Brother’s door was open! That could mean only one thing…he was into some kind of mischief and since she was responsible, she would be the one to get into trouble.
She ran out of her room, seeking the source of the sound. Her ears took her to the living room where she found Brother standing in front of the table beside the front door, his back to her. “What are you doing?” she barked in her best imitation of Mommy. Brother flinched and the object in his hand dropped to the floor with a “thud.” Daddy’s camera.
“Put that back!” she commanded, still imitating Mommy, “And go back to bed and stay there!” Brother put on a stubborn face, toed Daddy’s camera and said, simply, “Broke.”
She could feel her heart sink to her feet. “Let me see,” she said, panic rising. With relief she noted that it was not broken, that the side clamps had been loosened and the back was off the camera. But she’d seen it that way many times, when Daddy was changing the film…she just had to put the back on and snap the little clamps, then put it back where it had been and nobody would be the wiser.
Sitting crosslegged on the floor, she put the camera in her lap and carefully fitted the back of the camera to the front piece. It took some doing to get the clamp aligned and snapped, but when it clicked into place, she heaved a sigh of relief, warmth starting to flood back into her limbs. But the second clamp was not so cooperative, demanding a force that her seven-year-old fingers simply could not muster. Try as she might, she just could not force that perfectly aligned clamp to close. Heaving a sigh, she sat and contemplated the camera in her lap, pondering her various options, ultimately deciding to put the camera back where it belonged and simply hope no one noticed for a good long time. She rose and placed it carefully back on the bottom shelf of the little table.
“It’s still broke,” Brother complained. “Mommy will spank us!”
“Not if she doesn’t know anything happened,” she said. “Now you’ve made enough trouble for one night. Go to bed and stay there!”
He shook his head defiantly. “No! I don’t wanna go to bed and you can’t make me.”
“Fine,” she said dismissively and turned towards her bedroom door. “You can tell Mommy how you got out of bed and broke Daddy’s camera while I was in my room, asleep.”
“I will fix it,” Brother claimed. “I know how to do it.”
She had gone back to her room knowing that even though he was two years younger, he was taller and heavier than she was and there was nothing she could actually do to make him obey. He would do what he was going to do and she could only hope that she could carry off the “I was sleeping” defence. Before she could get back into bed, however, a loud cracking noise sent her scuttling back to the living room. There, her eyes wide with disbelief and her face white with horror, she saw the camera on the floor, its back smashed open. Brother stood with a puzzled, unbelieving look on his face, the claw hammer from the kitchen drawer clutched in his left hand. “It broke,” he said simply, looking up at her.
She panicked. There was a spanking in this, for certain, and the fact that Brother broke it wasn’t going to spare her. She picked up the pieces, returned them to the table yet again and took the hammer from Brother’s sticky hand. “Go to bed,” she said in a tight, strained voice. “Mommy is going to be very mad when she sees this.”
At that thought, his eyes widened and a shadow passed over his plump baby face. “Are we gonna get a lickin’?” he asked.
“Probly,” she responded, surveying the scene. “Go to bed. Pretend to be asleep when Mommy gets home. Maybe she won’t notice…”
Mommy noticed. As soon as she kicked off her Spring-o-lators and stepped a bare foot down on a shard of plastic lurking in the looped pile of the cheap carpet, she noticed. The blood-curdling sound of “Goddamn you kids!” echoed through the house, sending both of them deeper under the covers in their pretence of sleeping.
“I told you to stay in bed!” Mommy roared as she slammed open her bedroom door. “Don’t play-act sleep with me, Missy, I know you’re awake. If you know what is good for you, you’ll get your goddamned ass out of that bed and into the living room, toot-sweet!”
Mommy was eying the clock, changing her clothes and taking off her make up as she continued to bellow. “What in the name of hell has been going on here? I go out for a couple of hours and come home and almost get impaled on this…” she threw a sharp bit of plastic onto the blond wood coffee table. “Why don’t you tell me what that is and how it got in the carpet?”
She shrugged noncommittally, but her eyes must have told that she knew, for Mommy zeroed in on her instantly. “What about it, Missy?” her voice was soft with menace. “What is it and where did it come from?”
“Camera,” Brother said timorously from behind her. “Daddy’s camera broke.”
“Is that so?” Mommy said, her eyes flicking from one little face to the other like the tongue of a snake. “And how did Daddy’s camera break?” she asked, lowering her voice yet another notch, until it was barely above a whisper.
“Brother hit it with a hammer because he couldn’t get the back closed,” she said in a low voice. “I tried to put it back together when he took it apart but…”
“Get me the strap,” Mommy interrupted her, examining the pieces of the camera she had retrieved.
She went rigid and absolutely white. “Noooooo!” she cried, more a moan of expected anguish than a cry. “I didn’t do anything!” she protested, chafing her legs together in terrible anticipation. “It wasn’t me! Brother did it! He tried to fix it with the hammer when I went back to my room to sleep…”
Mommy’s jaw went stiff and tight. “Get…me…the…strap!” she commanded through gritted teeth. Even with the lipstick wiped away, her mouth was unnaturally, frighteningly red. “And…get…it…NOW!”
Tears already rolling down her cheeks, she ran to the kitchen to retrieve the thin leather dog leash, missing its clip, from its place hanging on the back of the kitchen door. She returned to the living room in time to hear Brother saying “Sissy broke it wif Daddy’s hammer from the kitchen,” and her mother reply “I know, Brother, I know.”
“That’s not true!” she screamed, her voice shrill with desperation. “I didn’t break it!” she sobbed, “I didn’t! I didn’t!”
Mommy was implacable. “I told you that you were responsible. Now give me the strap.”
She hid it behind her back. A completely crazy thing to do, calculated to make Mommy really mad, but she was beyond considering the consequences of her actions and operating on pure fear. “No!’ she cried. “You can’t spank me! I didn’t do anything!” She tried to dodge out of Mommy’s grasp, hiding the strap behind her back, but Mommy stuck her foot out and tripped her and she went down on the hard cement only millimetres below the thin, cheap carpet with a resounding “oof!.”
“Way to go, graceful,” Mommy said disdainfully, bending over to take the strap from her stunned fingers. “Now get your ass up off that floor and bend over the sofa. And take down those pajama bottoms while you’re at it.”
“You can’t!” she sobbed, taking as much time as she could to obey. “I didn’t do it! I didn’t!”
The first swing bit into the back of her thigh like a jaguar’s teeth. “Aigh!” she screamed in surprise, for she had not heard the telltale whistle through the air that usually gave her that infinitesimal fraction of a second, that minute window in time, that allowed her to brace herself for the strike. She bit down on her lower lip to stifle further sound, dreading the “you want to bawl, I’ll give you something to bawl about” rant that heralded an especially bad spanking. As the thin leather strap laid down stripe after glowing red stripe on the tender flesh of her buttocks and upper thighs, her mind floated free to contemplate the equally abhorrent obverse of that coin: “Stubborn little bitch today, aren’t you? Well, if it doesn’t hurt enough to make you holler, I must not be hitting you hard enough!”
And then there was a sound outside in the road, the blessedly familiar sound of Daddy’s car.
“Get your ass to bed,” Mommy said, stopping in mid-swing. “And if you say a word to your father about this, there will be a lot more where this came from, do you understand?” Scrubbing the tears from her face with the heel of her hand and nearly tripping over the pajama pants around her ankles, she nodded her assent and hobbled to her bedroom, closing the door softly behind her.
The walls were paper thin…she could not cry out loud or Daddy would hear her and come in to find out what was wrong. She buried her face in the pillow to stifle the shuddering sobs, her bare, hot bottom open to the soothing of the chill night air. She heard Mommy’s tinkling laughter through the wall as Daddy came in the front door.
“You’ll never guess what Brother got up to while you were at work,” she laughed. “While I was out back at the wash lines he decided to take your camera apart and when he couldn’t get it back together…”
She heard the rueful laughter and the blatant lies and did the only thing she could do...she closed her eyes and resumed her bedtime, sleep-inducing fantasy. Tonight, she was the imprisoned princess...
A Visit from Nana
Blackie was just the best dog! She was squatted down in the sand pile…not sitting because it might get her clothes dirty…an old tablespoon in hand and, one heaping spoonful at a time, was burying Blackie in the sand. All except his head, of course, because that might make it hard for him to breathe and she knew how scary it was when your head was covered up and it was hard to breathe.
She could see Mommy at the clothes line, hanging up washing. She had clothes pegs in her mouth and her eyes were all squinty, the way they got before she started yelling. But she wasn’t looking over at her right now, so there was no yelling. Brother was taking a nap in the house, so it was very quiet, only the sound of the spoon crunching into the sand pile and the regular snuffle of Blackie’s breathing as he lay patiently stretched out on the sand.
A peremptory wail from inside the house changed Mommy’s expression. From a rather wool-gathering daze, her face shifted to a frown, then a flash of resignation. She stabbed the clothes pegs onto the clothes line and responded to the imperious shrieks emanating from the house. Brother was awake.
“It’s OK, Blackie,” she said, pouring more sand with one hand and patting the dog awkwardly with the other. “He’s just a baby, he don’t know better.” But the dog took one look and the chubby toddler in Mommy’s arms as she emerged onto the porch and rose from the sand pile. Shaking the sand from his fur, he trotted off into the dense undergrowth at the back of the yard and disappeared. Even good old Blackie wasn’t terribly fond of Brother.
Last week was Brother’s second birthday and Mommy had bought him a big birthday cake with cowboys and chocolate frosting and two big candles on it. Mommy told her to stay clean and keep away from the cake because Nana and Grandpa and some of the cousins were coming to visit and she was not to get messy before they arrived. Brother pushed a chair up to the table and climbed up where he could reach the cake and, to her horror and amazement, began to dig his fingers into the icing and eating it! She couldn’t get him down…he was already bigger than she was…so she ran to Mommy. “He’s getting dirty! He’s sticking his fingers in the cake! He’s making a big mess!”
She wasn’t sure why, but Mommy yelled at her and called her a “tattletale” and told her that it was Brother’s cake and he could mess it up if he wanted. But if Brother could get messy, why did she have to stay clean? Because her awful cousin Sally, who liked nothing better than to pull her hair and tear the heads off her dolls, was going to be here? Sally never stayed clean…Sally hardly ever even wore dresses…she wanted to be a boy. She was sure there was something going on here that she simply did not understand and it frustrated her. Brother could make a mess, Sally could dress like a boy and sit in the dirt and get messy…why did she always have to be clean, keep her clothes clean, not get dirty?
So Brother messed up the cake so much that nobody wanted to eat any, and Mommy just laughed at his chocolate-encrusted face but scowled meaningfully when she dropped a bit of icing on the front of her dress. Luckily it picked off without leaving a spot and Mommy turned her attention elsewhere. Brother threw cake at Blackie and got him all sticky and Mommy even laughed when she had to put the hose on poor Blackie and get him clean. It was cold and the dog hid under the porch and shivered for the whole rest of the day.
She didn’t understand about Brother. Blackie understood, she thought, and whenever Brother came around, Blackie ran away. She wished she was a dog so she could run away. Mommy never spanked Blackie, either, no matter what he did bad, even that time he peed in the house. Brother peed in his bed and his pants, but she had better not have an accident or Mommy said there would be hell to pay.
She looked back up at the porch where mother was finishing wiping Brother’s face. She wondered how you paid hell. Grandpa said hell was the place bad people went after they died. Did they have to pay to go there? She didn’t have any money…would they let her trade her dolls? She watched Brother make his way down the porch steps and toddle over towards the sand pile, a grimly determined look on his chubby baby’s face. She sighed and started to stand up…once Brother was in the sand pile, she couldn’t play anymore, he would fling sand in her face and her hair and get her dirty. Mommy’s voice stopped her before she was two steps away.
“And just where do you think you are going, miss? Too good to play with your little brother?”
She shook her head. “I need to go to the bathroom,” she said, and did a credible imitation of the “gotta go potty” dance. She added a wince for effect and got the desired nod from Mommy.
“You come right back out here when you’re done,” Mommy’s voice followed her down the dark hallway that smelled faintly of decay and old shellac. Only a moment’s respite, then.
She returned to the back as her mother was lifting a basket of stiffly dried laundry. “Stay out here and keep an eye on him while I go fold these clothes,” Mommy said. She nodded her head and put a sweet, compliant look on her face, careful not to roll her eyes like she had the last time Mommy said something like that. There was a table on the porch where Mommy could fold clothes…where Nana folded clothes when she was here…and watch Brother at the same time. She didn’t want to watch Brother! He threw sand at her, he pulled her hair, he broke her toys, and he hit…hard! When she would complain Mommy would tell her not to be a tattletale and that he was “just a baby and doesn’t know any better,” but she didn’t care! He was as big as she was and he was heavy and he hit really hard!
Mommy held her with a long, penetrating gaze. “I don’t know what you’re cooking up, there, little girl, but you had just better be careful.” Mommy’s eyes flicked to Brother, who was happily bury her favourite doll in the sand. "You keep an eye on your little brother and don’t let him wander down the street like you did last week. You don’t want that to happen again, now do you?” Mommy’s eyes narrowed to tiny slits and the bruises on her bottom throbbed suddenly. She gulped and shook her head. “Good,” Mommy said as she turned and walked into the house.
Brother had taken all the clothes off her doll and was working on removing Dolly’s head. “Noooo!” she cried, rushing to the sand pile to rescue Dolly. “Give her to me! It’s my dolly!” She knew better than to try to wrench it away from him, she already had two limbless dolls in her room that Mommy would not get fixed as her punishment for fighting with her brother. “Give her to me!” she cried again, swatting Brother over the head with Dolly’s dress, its buttons gone missing, the lace hem now dangling loose. "Give her back!"
Abruptly Brother threw the doll at her and, putting his plump baby hands to the sand to assist him, he rose to his feet, his eyes focussed in the distance.
“Nana!” he crowed joyfully. “Nana! Nana! Nana!” and took off at an amazingly fast run, headed straight for the street.
“No! NO!” she cried, dropping poor, battered Dolly and taking off after him. “Brother stop! STOP!”
The massive flesh-pink Plymouth rolled inexorably up the street, almost in slow motion, gliding silently on its fat white-walled balloon tires. Brother’s plump little legs churned in a blue corduroy haze on a collision course. Even Blackie, roused by her shrieks of alarm, came out from his hiding place and added his muddy, furry bulk to the chase, his barks a piercing counterpoint to her screams.
“NanaNanaNana!” Brother cried, opening his arms to the approaching car just as she managed to snatch a fistful of his shirt tail and put a bit of a dent in his forward motion.
“No!” she cried, trying to stop their impetus while retaining her tenuous grip on the back of his shirt. “Brother, stop! Don’t run in the street! You’re going to get me in trouble!”
Brother rounded on her with all his two year-old fury and gave her a dirty, sandy, sticky...but smart...fist right in the middle of her face, sending her backwards to land on her butt on the damp lawn. She burst into tears thinking about the grass stain this would surely put on her panties and the spanking that would just as surely come of it. Blackie growled and, with his mud-encrusted paws, pushed Brother down in the grass before he could regain his momentum and reach the hewn granite curbstone. Nana’s car came to a halt just as she got a second grip on Brother’s shirt and Mommy came hurtling out of the house in a howling fury. Brother took one look at Mommy and started wailing.
“What in the name of holy hell is going on out here?” Mommy bellowed. “I cannot leave you alone for a minute, can I? And what happened to Brother? How did he get so dirty? What the hell have you done to him?” That last was punctuated by a sharp, resounding slap that spun her half way around and propelled her into Nana’s white linen skirts. “Oh, Jesus!” Mommy complained, rolling her eyes, “Now you’ve gone and got Nana all dirty, too. Whatever did I do to deserve you?”
“It’s all right, dear,” Nana said mildly to Mommy. “It will wash. Why don’t you take Brother in the house and see to him, while I clean her up?” It sounded very much like a question to her, but she was surprised to see Mommy obey like it was a command, picking up Brother and heading toward the front door of the house without another word. “Come along, dear,” Nana said to her softly, guiding her towards the back of the house. “Let’s get you cleaned up and then you can tell Nana what you meant when you said that Brother was going to get you into trouble…”
She could see Mommy at the clothes line, hanging up washing. She had clothes pegs in her mouth and her eyes were all squinty, the way they got before she started yelling. But she wasn’t looking over at her right now, so there was no yelling. Brother was taking a nap in the house, so it was very quiet, only the sound of the spoon crunching into the sand pile and the regular snuffle of Blackie’s breathing as he lay patiently stretched out on the sand.
A peremptory wail from inside the house changed Mommy’s expression. From a rather wool-gathering daze, her face shifted to a frown, then a flash of resignation. She stabbed the clothes pegs onto the clothes line and responded to the imperious shrieks emanating from the house. Brother was awake.
“It’s OK, Blackie,” she said, pouring more sand with one hand and patting the dog awkwardly with the other. “He’s just a baby, he don’t know better.” But the dog took one look and the chubby toddler in Mommy’s arms as she emerged onto the porch and rose from the sand pile. Shaking the sand from his fur, he trotted off into the dense undergrowth at the back of the yard and disappeared. Even good old Blackie wasn’t terribly fond of Brother.
Last week was Brother’s second birthday and Mommy had bought him a big birthday cake with cowboys and chocolate frosting and two big candles on it. Mommy told her to stay clean and keep away from the cake because Nana and Grandpa and some of the cousins were coming to visit and she was not to get messy before they arrived. Brother pushed a chair up to the table and climbed up where he could reach the cake and, to her horror and amazement, began to dig his fingers into the icing and eating it! She couldn’t get him down…he was already bigger than she was…so she ran to Mommy. “He’s getting dirty! He’s sticking his fingers in the cake! He’s making a big mess!”
She wasn’t sure why, but Mommy yelled at her and called her a “tattletale” and told her that it was Brother’s cake and he could mess it up if he wanted. But if Brother could get messy, why did she have to stay clean? Because her awful cousin Sally, who liked nothing better than to pull her hair and tear the heads off her dolls, was going to be here? Sally never stayed clean…Sally hardly ever even wore dresses…she wanted to be a boy. She was sure there was something going on here that she simply did not understand and it frustrated her. Brother could make a mess, Sally could dress like a boy and sit in the dirt and get messy…why did she always have to be clean, keep her clothes clean, not get dirty?
So Brother messed up the cake so much that nobody wanted to eat any, and Mommy just laughed at his chocolate-encrusted face but scowled meaningfully when she dropped a bit of icing on the front of her dress. Luckily it picked off without leaving a spot and Mommy turned her attention elsewhere. Brother threw cake at Blackie and got him all sticky and Mommy even laughed when she had to put the hose on poor Blackie and get him clean. It was cold and the dog hid under the porch and shivered for the whole rest of the day.
She didn’t understand about Brother. Blackie understood, she thought, and whenever Brother came around, Blackie ran away. She wished she was a dog so she could run away. Mommy never spanked Blackie, either, no matter what he did bad, even that time he peed in the house. Brother peed in his bed and his pants, but she had better not have an accident or Mommy said there would be hell to pay.
She looked back up at the porch where mother was finishing wiping Brother’s face. She wondered how you paid hell. Grandpa said hell was the place bad people went after they died. Did they have to pay to go there? She didn’t have any money…would they let her trade her dolls? She watched Brother make his way down the porch steps and toddle over towards the sand pile, a grimly determined look on his chubby baby’s face. She sighed and started to stand up…once Brother was in the sand pile, she couldn’t play anymore, he would fling sand in her face and her hair and get her dirty. Mommy’s voice stopped her before she was two steps away.
“And just where do you think you are going, miss? Too good to play with your little brother?”
She shook her head. “I need to go to the bathroom,” she said, and did a credible imitation of the “gotta go potty” dance. She added a wince for effect and got the desired nod from Mommy.
“You come right back out here when you’re done,” Mommy’s voice followed her down the dark hallway that smelled faintly of decay and old shellac. Only a moment’s respite, then.
She returned to the back as her mother was lifting a basket of stiffly dried laundry. “Stay out here and keep an eye on him while I go fold these clothes,” Mommy said. She nodded her head and put a sweet, compliant look on her face, careful not to roll her eyes like she had the last time Mommy said something like that. There was a table on the porch where Mommy could fold clothes…where Nana folded clothes when she was here…and watch Brother at the same time. She didn’t want to watch Brother! He threw sand at her, he pulled her hair, he broke her toys, and he hit…hard! When she would complain Mommy would tell her not to be a tattletale and that he was “just a baby and doesn’t know any better,” but she didn’t care! He was as big as she was and he was heavy and he hit really hard!
Mommy held her with a long, penetrating gaze. “I don’t know what you’re cooking up, there, little girl, but you had just better be careful.” Mommy’s eyes flicked to Brother, who was happily bury her favourite doll in the sand. "You keep an eye on your little brother and don’t let him wander down the street like you did last week. You don’t want that to happen again, now do you?” Mommy’s eyes narrowed to tiny slits and the bruises on her bottom throbbed suddenly. She gulped and shook her head. “Good,” Mommy said as she turned and walked into the house.
Brother had taken all the clothes off her doll and was working on removing Dolly’s head. “Noooo!” she cried, rushing to the sand pile to rescue Dolly. “Give her to me! It’s my dolly!” She knew better than to try to wrench it away from him, she already had two limbless dolls in her room that Mommy would not get fixed as her punishment for fighting with her brother. “Give her to me!” she cried again, swatting Brother over the head with Dolly’s dress, its buttons gone missing, the lace hem now dangling loose. "Give her back!"
Abruptly Brother threw the doll at her and, putting his plump baby hands to the sand to assist him, he rose to his feet, his eyes focussed in the distance.
“Nana!” he crowed joyfully. “Nana! Nana! Nana!” and took off at an amazingly fast run, headed straight for the street.
“No! NO!” she cried, dropping poor, battered Dolly and taking off after him. “Brother stop! STOP!”
The massive flesh-pink Plymouth rolled inexorably up the street, almost in slow motion, gliding silently on its fat white-walled balloon tires. Brother’s plump little legs churned in a blue corduroy haze on a collision course. Even Blackie, roused by her shrieks of alarm, came out from his hiding place and added his muddy, furry bulk to the chase, his barks a piercing counterpoint to her screams.
“NanaNanaNana!” Brother cried, opening his arms to the approaching car just as she managed to snatch a fistful of his shirt tail and put a bit of a dent in his forward motion.
“No!” she cried, trying to stop their impetus while retaining her tenuous grip on the back of his shirt. “Brother, stop! Don’t run in the street! You’re going to get me in trouble!”
Brother rounded on her with all his two year-old fury and gave her a dirty, sandy, sticky...but smart...fist right in the middle of her face, sending her backwards to land on her butt on the damp lawn. She burst into tears thinking about the grass stain this would surely put on her panties and the spanking that would just as surely come of it. Blackie growled and, with his mud-encrusted paws, pushed Brother down in the grass before he could regain his momentum and reach the hewn granite curbstone. Nana’s car came to a halt just as she got a second grip on Brother’s shirt and Mommy came hurtling out of the house in a howling fury. Brother took one look at Mommy and started wailing.
“What in the name of holy hell is going on out here?” Mommy bellowed. “I cannot leave you alone for a minute, can I? And what happened to Brother? How did he get so dirty? What the hell have you done to him?” That last was punctuated by a sharp, resounding slap that spun her half way around and propelled her into Nana’s white linen skirts. “Oh, Jesus!” Mommy complained, rolling her eyes, “Now you’ve gone and got Nana all dirty, too. Whatever did I do to deserve you?”
“It’s all right, dear,” Nana said mildly to Mommy. “It will wash. Why don’t you take Brother in the house and see to him, while I clean her up?” It sounded very much like a question to her, but she was surprised to see Mommy obey like it was a command, picking up Brother and heading toward the front door of the house without another word. “Come along, dear,” Nana said to her softly, guiding her towards the back of the house. “Let’s get you cleaned up and then you can tell Nana what you meant when you said that Brother was going to get you into trouble…”
Visiting Norma
Her arms were tired. The books were heavy. It was a long walk home from the public library and the books she had chosen were kinda big. But it was OK. She had Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Hans Christian Anderson and a Child’s Garden of Verse and a couple of other really swell books, too…she would have plenty to read for the next two weeks, until she was allowed to go to the library again.
But her arms were tired and the books were heavy and she needed to take a few minutes to rest. She looked around the neighbourhood and realized that although she was walking beside the main highway, she was actually only a block or two from Norma Begay’s house. She hadn’t seen Norma in a long time…not since Norma got transferred into the other fourth grade classroom and Mommy found out she was Indian and said she couldn’t play with her any more.
The books got heavier with every step, and she decided that if she stopped to visit Norma and rested, but only stayed a few minutes, she could still make it home on time. If Mommy didn’t know, she couldn’t get in trouble for it…and she hadn’t seen Norma in a long time.
Norma lived with her grandmother in a very small, very solid little house with a flat roof and a bare dirt yard. The garish turquoise paint was peeling from the few remaining slats in the porch railing and the screen door, holes torn to preclude its original function, was missing a hinge. Is this what Mommy meant by “dirt poor”? Hoping Norma was home and straining to keep from dropping the books, she knocked loudly on the dented and splintery front door.
Norma’s grandmother, seemingly bent with the weight of an enormously long and thick silvery braid, answered the door. Grandmother’s puzzled look changed to a wreath of smiles when she asked for Norma. Within seconds she was ushered into a tiny, spare, but immaculate room, her aching arms relieved of their burden, and Norma was chattering like a dark and glossy little bird in her delight at having a visitor. She was soon swept away to Norma’s room where she was to marvel at the kachina dolls and colourful, beautifully woven blankets. So lost in her fascination with Norma’s souvenirs from her original home that she lost track of time, only to glance out a window and realize in horror that dusk was gathering. Panicked, she looked at the alarm clock beside Norma’s bed and realized she had less than fifteen minutes to get home or Mommy would come looking for her…and that was something to be avoided at all costs!
“I’m sorry, Norma,” she said in a rush, “But if I don’t leave right away, I’m going to be late and then I’ll be in big trouble.” She was already gathering up the books and rushing to the door. “Can I come back another time to play?” Norma’s smile revealed perfect, pearly teeth and her black eyes glittered as she nodded happily. Grandmother lifted the latch and let her out into the late afternoon.
She couldn’t run with the books, but she could walk briskly. What kind of shortcut could she take to cut a few minutes? She couldn’t leave the books behind, but they were slowing her down... Reaching the edge of her school yard, she realized that if she cut diagonally across the school and went through the open corridor near the offices, she would come out at the path to the creek, and she would be only a couple of block from home. Dreading the consequences of being late and the discovery of her illicit afternoon visit, she headed across the school yard, knowing that getting caught crossing the creek was, in itself, forbidden and worth a serious hiding if she was found out. But if she could just get home before dark…if she could just get there before those street lights came on…everything would be OK.
Her legs churning in a brisk walk, she came to the open corridor that led past the school offices. At the other end was a small playground and the entrance to the creek. Her hateful, ugly red oxford shoes were chafing a blister on the back of her heels…the shoes were new and not fully broken in…but she didn’t care. A blistered heel was a small price to pay to avoid Mommy’s strap. She shuddered involuntarily and tried to pick up the pace a bit and skipped up the steps to the long open hallway.
Built in the Spanish style, the corridor had doors to the offices to her left, a broad roof overhang to protect those who walked down the hallway, as it was open to the weather, breeze and sun…and there were some feeble attempts at landscaping on the right side. Glancing worriedly at the darkening sky, she found herself wishing she hadn’t stopped at Norma’s house at all. Norma was really nice and her things were endlessly fascinating, but if she hadn’t stopped, she wouldn’t be late now. Her thoughts distracted, she didn’t notice where the man came from, but suddenly he was standing in the middle of the corridor, blocking her way.
She tried to go around him, but he stepped into her path, his arms outstretched as if to catch her. “Go away!” she cried, darting the other way, but he managed to grab one of her arms and her books fell to the ground. Oh no! she went rigid with panic. Now she was sure to be late and Mommy would make sure she regretted it. She shrieked and rounded on the man and bit him on the wrist where he was gripping her arm much too tight. Surprised, he released her and she took off running, heading straight for the creek. The man caught up with her, grabbed her by her ponytail and spun her around. It was then that she registered that below his tight white cotton T-shirt his jeans were open and something was sticking out of them. It looked kind of like Brother’s peepee, but it was much bigger and…well...different somehow. He reached his free hand near his open fly and while he was momentarily distracted, she kicked his nearest shin and bit down on his wrist again. With a bellow of outrage he released her, only to grab at her again as she ran away, this time holding her ponytail.
Driven by panic and terror, she sprinted to the end of the corridor, vaulted the steps and raced down into the creek bed. Paying no heed to the makeshift bridge she and the other children had constructed from rocks and planks, she splashed through the shallow water and clawed her way up the embankment on the other side, bolting out onto the asphalt of the dead-end street at the top. It was only when she saw one of her classmates, Donny Matthews, looking at her funny that she realized that she had been shrieking like a siren throughout her entire flight. Donny’s father stepped out of the garage where he was working on something, took one look at her terrified white face and stopped her in mid-flight.
“Hey! Hey! What the matter, honey? What happened?” he asked gently, taking her into his arms where she clung, trembling and hiccupping with fear. Gasping for breath she choked out her story, not sure how to explain what she had seen, but telling enough to see Mr. Matthew’s face change from one of gentle concern to one of anger. He took her in the kitchen for Mrs. Matthews to tend and began making telephone calls. Before her wet shoes and socks were off, men with flashlights started showing up in the Matthews’ garage and she realized with a sinking feeling that the street lights had come on. Oh, she was in serious, serious trouble now!
“I have to go home,” she said, sliding down from the stool where Mrs. Matthews had put her while she made some hot chocolate. “My mother will be very upset because I am late.”
“It’s OK,” Mr. Matthews said, lifting her back onto the stool. “Your parents are on the way over here right now.” Her heart sank sickeningly. Her life was over and she was only eight.
People gathered in the garage for a few more minutes until she heard the familiar sound of Mommy’s car. She began to tremble. Mommy rushed into the kitchen, looking stressed and worried and rushed to her side. “My poor baby!” Mommy exclaimed in a too-loud voice, hugging her close. “Are you OK?” She nodded silently, suspiciously. Mommy was hugging her…something was definitely wrong here.
Suddenly, the garage was empty, the men armed with flashlights, baseball bats, garden implements, and whatever else was close at hand, trooped across the creek and fanned out through the dark, deserted school. After a time they returned, one of them carrying her library books. There was, of course, no sign of a scuffle…only her word that there had been a man who had accosted her, but it was enough. Still unnerved, she at least felt validated, and the instant coalescence of a troupe of avenging fathers gave her a sense of security heretofore unfelt. Daddy picked her up in one arm, her books in the other, and carried her to the car. Mommy followed along with her wet shoes and socks, her face shuttered.
Mommy finished cooking supper and they ate in silence, and when she had finished washing the dishes and Daddy had gone off to his nighttime job, Mommy called her into the living room. Brother was not in his accustomed place, fidgeting on his stomach in front of the TV. An unexpected chill ran up her spine at his absence.
“Stand here in front of me,” Mommy said, lighting up a cigarette…she fought the urge to wave her hand in front of her nose to disperse the smoke…Mommy didn’t like it when she did that. Mommy put the bejewelled Zippo down on the coffee table beside her wet shoes and socks, her hand lingering near one ugly oxblood red wingtip oxford. “Tell me how your shoes got wet,” Mommy said in that soft voice that conveyed more menace that the most shrill of her shrieks.
“I was running away from that man and they got wet when I ran across the creek…”
“Why weren’t you on the bridge?” Mommy interrupted.
“I was late…I was taking a short cut through the school so I would be home on time…”
“And why were you late?” Mommy asked.
She hesitated. How much did Mommy know? Could she get through this without revealing her visit to Norma’s house? She put her head down in the best semblance of shame and guilt she could muster and said “I was dawdling…” One Mommy’s favourite indictments, surely this would ring true.
“That I can believe,” Mommy said, a sneer in her voice. “But what about the shoes?”
She looked up, puzzled. “What about she shoes?” she echoed.
CRACK!
She screamed in unexpected pain. When had Mommy taken the strap off the back of the kitchen door? When had she wrapped the handle end around her hand? Why had she hit her with it?
“Don’t you think to mock me, you little bitch,” Mommy hissed at her, drawing back her hand for another strike.
The thin leather strap curled itself around her thigh, burning like a brand. “Owwww!” she wailed, leaping on one leg. “What did I do?” she cried out.
“Like you didn’t know,” Mommy yelled, standing up. “Take down your panties and lay across the sofa and don’t you move or you’ll get twice as much!” She hurried to obey, knowing that when Mommy was in this mood, even the slightest perception of defiance would add stripes.
“I knew you didn’t like those shoes,” Mommy snarled, laying a lash across her bare buttocks. She flinched but lay rigid and silent across the sofa. “But I never thought you would be stupid enough to ruin them,” Whoosh! CRACK! Another welt began to rise up on the back of her thighs.
“And if you think this little stunt is going to get you a new pair,” Whoosh! CRACK! “Then you just think again, little missy, because you are going to wear these,” Whoosh! CRACK! “until your toes poke holes in the ends!” Whoosh! CRACK! “Do you understand me?”
She nodded silently, her teeth buried in her lower lip.
Whoosh! CRACK! “I said, do you understand me?”
“Yes, Mommy,” she cried out, hoping forestall another blow. “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again!”
Whoosh! CRACK! “You bet your sweet ass you won’t!” Mommy snarled. “Now get your oh-so-clever little butt to bed before I give you the rest of what you deserve!”
She was in her bed, sobbing silently in the dark, when the door snatched suddenly open. “And if you say one word about this to your father, I will beat you within an inch of your life, do you hear?”
“Yes, Mommy,” she said to the figure silhouetted in the doorway. Mommy paused there, as if pondering something else to say, but she must have thought better of it for she silently stepped back and shut the door.
And when the door was closed and the room was dark and quiet again reigned, she put the palms of her small, pale, nail-bitten hands together and began to whisper her nightly prayer:
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep,
Please let me die before I wake,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take.
But her arms were tired and the books were heavy and she needed to take a few minutes to rest. She looked around the neighbourhood and realized that although she was walking beside the main highway, she was actually only a block or two from Norma Begay’s house. She hadn’t seen Norma in a long time…not since Norma got transferred into the other fourth grade classroom and Mommy found out she was Indian and said she couldn’t play with her any more.
The books got heavier with every step, and she decided that if she stopped to visit Norma and rested, but only stayed a few minutes, she could still make it home on time. If Mommy didn’t know, she couldn’t get in trouble for it…and she hadn’t seen Norma in a long time.
Norma lived with her grandmother in a very small, very solid little house with a flat roof and a bare dirt yard. The garish turquoise paint was peeling from the few remaining slats in the porch railing and the screen door, holes torn to preclude its original function, was missing a hinge. Is this what Mommy meant by “dirt poor”? Hoping Norma was home and straining to keep from dropping the books, she knocked loudly on the dented and splintery front door.
Norma’s grandmother, seemingly bent with the weight of an enormously long and thick silvery braid, answered the door. Grandmother’s puzzled look changed to a wreath of smiles when she asked for Norma. Within seconds she was ushered into a tiny, spare, but immaculate room, her aching arms relieved of their burden, and Norma was chattering like a dark and glossy little bird in her delight at having a visitor. She was soon swept away to Norma’s room where she was to marvel at the kachina dolls and colourful, beautifully woven blankets. So lost in her fascination with Norma’s souvenirs from her original home that she lost track of time, only to glance out a window and realize in horror that dusk was gathering. Panicked, she looked at the alarm clock beside Norma’s bed and realized she had less than fifteen minutes to get home or Mommy would come looking for her…and that was something to be avoided at all costs!
“I’m sorry, Norma,” she said in a rush, “But if I don’t leave right away, I’m going to be late and then I’ll be in big trouble.” She was already gathering up the books and rushing to the door. “Can I come back another time to play?” Norma’s smile revealed perfect, pearly teeth and her black eyes glittered as she nodded happily. Grandmother lifted the latch and let her out into the late afternoon.
She couldn’t run with the books, but she could walk briskly. What kind of shortcut could she take to cut a few minutes? She couldn’t leave the books behind, but they were slowing her down... Reaching the edge of her school yard, she realized that if she cut diagonally across the school and went through the open corridor near the offices, she would come out at the path to the creek, and she would be only a couple of block from home. Dreading the consequences of being late and the discovery of her illicit afternoon visit, she headed across the school yard, knowing that getting caught crossing the creek was, in itself, forbidden and worth a serious hiding if she was found out. But if she could just get home before dark…if she could just get there before those street lights came on…everything would be OK.
Her legs churning in a brisk walk, she came to the open corridor that led past the school offices. At the other end was a small playground and the entrance to the creek. Her hateful, ugly red oxford shoes were chafing a blister on the back of her heels…the shoes were new and not fully broken in…but she didn’t care. A blistered heel was a small price to pay to avoid Mommy’s strap. She shuddered involuntarily and tried to pick up the pace a bit and skipped up the steps to the long open hallway.
Built in the Spanish style, the corridor had doors to the offices to her left, a broad roof overhang to protect those who walked down the hallway, as it was open to the weather, breeze and sun…and there were some feeble attempts at landscaping on the right side. Glancing worriedly at the darkening sky, she found herself wishing she hadn’t stopped at Norma’s house at all. Norma was really nice and her things were endlessly fascinating, but if she hadn’t stopped, she wouldn’t be late now. Her thoughts distracted, she didn’t notice where the man came from, but suddenly he was standing in the middle of the corridor, blocking her way.
She tried to go around him, but he stepped into her path, his arms outstretched as if to catch her. “Go away!” she cried, darting the other way, but he managed to grab one of her arms and her books fell to the ground. Oh no! she went rigid with panic. Now she was sure to be late and Mommy would make sure she regretted it. She shrieked and rounded on the man and bit him on the wrist where he was gripping her arm much too tight. Surprised, he released her and she took off running, heading straight for the creek. The man caught up with her, grabbed her by her ponytail and spun her around. It was then that she registered that below his tight white cotton T-shirt his jeans were open and something was sticking out of them. It looked kind of like Brother’s peepee, but it was much bigger and…well...different somehow. He reached his free hand near his open fly and while he was momentarily distracted, she kicked his nearest shin and bit down on his wrist again. With a bellow of outrage he released her, only to grab at her again as she ran away, this time holding her ponytail.
Driven by panic and terror, she sprinted to the end of the corridor, vaulted the steps and raced down into the creek bed. Paying no heed to the makeshift bridge she and the other children had constructed from rocks and planks, she splashed through the shallow water and clawed her way up the embankment on the other side, bolting out onto the asphalt of the dead-end street at the top. It was only when she saw one of her classmates, Donny Matthews, looking at her funny that she realized that she had been shrieking like a siren throughout her entire flight. Donny’s father stepped out of the garage where he was working on something, took one look at her terrified white face and stopped her in mid-flight.
“Hey! Hey! What the matter, honey? What happened?” he asked gently, taking her into his arms where she clung, trembling and hiccupping with fear. Gasping for breath she choked out her story, not sure how to explain what she had seen, but telling enough to see Mr. Matthew’s face change from one of gentle concern to one of anger. He took her in the kitchen for Mrs. Matthews to tend and began making telephone calls. Before her wet shoes and socks were off, men with flashlights started showing up in the Matthews’ garage and she realized with a sinking feeling that the street lights had come on. Oh, she was in serious, serious trouble now!
“I have to go home,” she said, sliding down from the stool where Mrs. Matthews had put her while she made some hot chocolate. “My mother will be very upset because I am late.”
“It’s OK,” Mr. Matthews said, lifting her back onto the stool. “Your parents are on the way over here right now.” Her heart sank sickeningly. Her life was over and she was only eight.
People gathered in the garage for a few more minutes until she heard the familiar sound of Mommy’s car. She began to tremble. Mommy rushed into the kitchen, looking stressed and worried and rushed to her side. “My poor baby!” Mommy exclaimed in a too-loud voice, hugging her close. “Are you OK?” She nodded silently, suspiciously. Mommy was hugging her…something was definitely wrong here.
Suddenly, the garage was empty, the men armed with flashlights, baseball bats, garden implements, and whatever else was close at hand, trooped across the creek and fanned out through the dark, deserted school. After a time they returned, one of them carrying her library books. There was, of course, no sign of a scuffle…only her word that there had been a man who had accosted her, but it was enough. Still unnerved, she at least felt validated, and the instant coalescence of a troupe of avenging fathers gave her a sense of security heretofore unfelt. Daddy picked her up in one arm, her books in the other, and carried her to the car. Mommy followed along with her wet shoes and socks, her face shuttered.
Mommy finished cooking supper and they ate in silence, and when she had finished washing the dishes and Daddy had gone off to his nighttime job, Mommy called her into the living room. Brother was not in his accustomed place, fidgeting on his stomach in front of the TV. An unexpected chill ran up her spine at his absence.
“Stand here in front of me,” Mommy said, lighting up a cigarette…she fought the urge to wave her hand in front of her nose to disperse the smoke…Mommy didn’t like it when she did that. Mommy put the bejewelled Zippo down on the coffee table beside her wet shoes and socks, her hand lingering near one ugly oxblood red wingtip oxford. “Tell me how your shoes got wet,” Mommy said in that soft voice that conveyed more menace that the most shrill of her shrieks.
“I was running away from that man and they got wet when I ran across the creek…”
“Why weren’t you on the bridge?” Mommy interrupted.
“I was late…I was taking a short cut through the school so I would be home on time…”
“And why were you late?” Mommy asked.
She hesitated. How much did Mommy know? Could she get through this without revealing her visit to Norma’s house? She put her head down in the best semblance of shame and guilt she could muster and said “I was dawdling…” One Mommy’s favourite indictments, surely this would ring true.
“That I can believe,” Mommy said, a sneer in her voice. “But what about the shoes?”
She looked up, puzzled. “What about she shoes?” she echoed.
CRACK!
She screamed in unexpected pain. When had Mommy taken the strap off the back of the kitchen door? When had she wrapped the handle end around her hand? Why had she hit her with it?
“Don’t you think to mock me, you little bitch,” Mommy hissed at her, drawing back her hand for another strike.
The thin leather strap curled itself around her thigh, burning like a brand. “Owwww!” she wailed, leaping on one leg. “What did I do?” she cried out.
“Like you didn’t know,” Mommy yelled, standing up. “Take down your panties and lay across the sofa and don’t you move or you’ll get twice as much!” She hurried to obey, knowing that when Mommy was in this mood, even the slightest perception of defiance would add stripes.
“I knew you didn’t like those shoes,” Mommy snarled, laying a lash across her bare buttocks. She flinched but lay rigid and silent across the sofa. “But I never thought you would be stupid enough to ruin them,” Whoosh! CRACK! Another welt began to rise up on the back of her thighs.
“And if you think this little stunt is going to get you a new pair,” Whoosh! CRACK! “Then you just think again, little missy, because you are going to wear these,” Whoosh! CRACK! “until your toes poke holes in the ends!” Whoosh! CRACK! “Do you understand me?”
She nodded silently, her teeth buried in her lower lip.
Whoosh! CRACK! “I said, do you understand me?”
“Yes, Mommy,” she cried out, hoping forestall another blow. “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again!”
Whoosh! CRACK! “You bet your sweet ass you won’t!” Mommy snarled. “Now get your oh-so-clever little butt to bed before I give you the rest of what you deserve!”
She was in her bed, sobbing silently in the dark, when the door snatched suddenly open. “And if you say one word about this to your father, I will beat you within an inch of your life, do you hear?”
“Yes, Mommy,” she said to the figure silhouetted in the doorway. Mommy paused there, as if pondering something else to say, but she must have thought better of it for she silently stepped back and shut the door.
And when the door was closed and the room was dark and quiet again reigned, she put the palms of her small, pale, nail-bitten hands together and began to whisper her nightly prayer:
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep,
Please let me die before I wake,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take.
The Apple
“There is a Goddamned apple missing!”
Mommy’s bellow could be heard throughout the house and out into the yard, and both she and Brother froze at the sound. A sly grin crossed Brother’s face as he went back to frying ants with his magnifying glass. She waited tensely for the inevitable summons.
“Both you kids get in here, right now!” Brother ignored the command in favour of crisping a few more ants, but she was taking no chances. Dropping her doll on the grass, heedless of its unsupervised proximity to Brother, she dashed into the house.
“What is it, Mommy?” she asked, skidding to a halt on the dreary streaked brown asphalt tile.
“ ‘What is it, Mommy?’ ” her mother mimicked in a sarcastic sing-song voice. “What, are you deaf? I said there is an apple missing! What do you know about it?”
No matter what she said, she was going to be in trouble…either for tattling on Brother or for not stopping him from eating the apple. She wondered which one would get the least punishment. Tattling, she decided. “Brother ate it,” she said simply.
“You knew this and you didn’t stop him?” Mother’s voice was eerily soft. She nodded silently.
“And you didn’t tell me?” Uh oh. Should have pleaded ignorance. She shook her head slowly from side to side.
“And why not, pray tell?” Mother asked.
Because she was afraid of being punished for tattling? Because she was afraid of being punished for not stopping him from eating the apple? Because she was afraid? None of those answers would work…they would make mother more angry, make her say something like “Afraid? Afraid? You want afraid? I’ll give you something to be afraid of!”
“Well, miss…” Mother said impatiently. “I am waiting for your answer. You are taking so long, I hope for your sake it is a really good one.”
What could she say? “I forgot. I was playing dolls and I…”
“Get me the strap,” Mother interrupted her.
“Nooooo, Mommy!” she wailed, her knees losing their integrity and putting her into a half crouch. “Noooo! I didn’t do anything!”
“Exactly,” Mommy said. “You didn’t stop him, you didn’t tell me, you just let it happen. Now get me that strap.” Mommy stood silently, hands on hips, unmoved by her sobbing pleas and promises to never again transgress. “If I have to get that strap myself,” Mommy interrupted, “You’ll get more for defying me.”
She took the two steps to the kitchen door and removed the thin length of leather…formerly a dog leash now devoid of its metal clip…and handed it reluctantly to her mother. “I didn’t do anything,” she sobbed. “It’s not fair. Brother did it, not me!”
“You didn’t tell me,” Mommy said. “Lay across that chair and take your pants down…all the way down…down to your ankles.” She complied, clenching her buttocks and her bladder muscles against the anticipated blows. “You are the oldest,” Mommy grunted with the first swing. A streak of liquid fire wrapped itself around her lower body as the thin lash curled around a pale, thin thigh. She clenched her teeth to contain the scream. “I can’t be everywhere,” her mother yelled, swinging again, raising a thin angry line across her upraised buttocks. “It’s your job to keep an eye on him and keep him out of trouble.” Swish! Crack! “I don’t know why you have to defy me at every turn! He doesn’t know any better but you do!”
Mommy’s invective continued unabated, accompanied by the raining blows until exhaustion set in. Her arm tired, Mommy threw the strap on the floor and looked at the pale little body quivering in front of her, raised red lash marks criss-crossing it like a dilapidated lattice. Mommy sighed. “Stop that blubbering,” she commanded, her voice tired. “Clean up.”
“I didn’t do anything,” came a thin, weak sob. “I didn’t do anything,” the sound repeated.
Mommy’s lips thinned. “Unless you want more where that came from, I suggest you shut your Goddamned mouth and get your ass out of this kitchen.” Mommy paused as she scrambled to obey. “And send your brother in to me.”
Leaving Dolly in the front yard with Brother had been a mistake, she saw upon entering the front yard. There were several small, black-rimmed pinholes in her pink rubber arms and legs and Brother was busily trying to burn a hole through Dolly’s belly button with his magnifying glass. She could just kill Uncle Pete for giving him that thing…one day he was going to set the house on fire, like he tried to set the school on fire with purloined matches when he was five. Brother had a fascination with fire that she thought was creepy, although nobody else seemed to think so. She ran to rescue her doll.
Experience told her that grabbing the doll and engaging in a tug-of-war with him would culminate only in a dismembered doll. He was bigger, heavier, stronger than she was, for all that he was two years younger, and in a physical contest with him, she invariably lost…sometimes quite painfully. Her backside still smarting, she called out to him “Brother! Mommy wants to see you in the kitchen, right now!”
He continued to concentrate on burning a hole in the doll’s belly. “Mommy says if she has to come get you, she’s bringing the strap!”
That got his attention and he looked up at her, paling when he saw her swollen, tear-stained face. “You better hurry,” she said, “Or you’re gonna get it too!”
She could see him weigh his options, then put down the doll and magnifying glass and head for the house with uncharacteristic slowness. Brother never did anything except at a frenzied rush. The moment he was out of sight she snatched up the magnifying lens and went into the flowerbed beneath the living room window and dug a small hole with her hands beneath the flowering maple. She shoved the offending piece of glass into the earth and covered it over, scattering leaf litter over it to disguise the little grave. Quickly, she darted out onto the lawn, snatched up Dolly, and hurried to her room, making soothing apologetic sounds to the abused doll. She should never have left Dolly out in the grass with Brother, she thought guiltily, and the doll’s injuries were her own fault.
She could hear Mommy hollering at Brother. “I am not made out of money!” Mommy yelled. “I buy exactly enough apples for each of you to have one in your school lunch every day. And now there’s one missing!” She waited for the tell-tale “thwack” of the strap, but no sound emerged from the kitchen save Mommy’s scolding voice, and soon enough, that ended. No spanking. She sighed and cuddled her battered doll closer. “He ate the apple but I got the spanking,” she said softly, looking into the blue glass eyes. “That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all!”
From outside an indignant bellow went up and she hugged the doll closely, smiling tightly with delight. Brother had discovered his evil glass was missing, she was sure. The front door banged as he re-entered the house, crying for Mommy. “Uncle Pete gave me that!” he wailed. “She took it, I know she did!”
Ah, her room was about to be tossed. She sometimes wondered if she was some kind of witch, with her uncanny ability to tell the future and, sure enough, her bedroom door slammed open and Mommy filled the portal like an avenging angel. “Where is it?” Mommy demanded, that dangerous “don’t you dare give me any crap!” look on her face. “What did you do with Brother’s magnifying glass?”
She shook her head and hugged the doll closer. “I don’t have it,” she said quite truthfully. "The last time I saw it, it was in the front yard.” Again, a true statement.
Mommy looked unconvinced and did not stay Brother’s hand as he pulled the contents of her closet floor out into the room and strewed them about, then ransacked her chest of drawers. It wasn’t until he started pulling the bed apart that Mommy stayed his hand. “Did you leave it in the front yard?” she queried. He nodded his head affirmatively. “Then maybe some kid picked it up while you were in the house,” she said. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times, don’t leave your toys outside!” Mommy shook her head and turned to leave, muttering “You kids never appreciate anything,” as she walked away, but then stopped and turned back momentarily. “Clean up this Goddamned mess.”
Brother followed Mommy down the hall, complaining bitterly about his missing instrument of destruction, leaving the carnage of her room behind. With a sigh she set about putting things to right, the labour of restoring the order of her room a small price to pay for the satisfaction of saving her little bit of the world from further predation. The telephone rang and she heard Mommy snap at Brother’s whining complaints, telling him if he couldn’t take care of his toys, it was not her problem.
“Hello?” she heard Mommy’s instantly cheerful voice. How did Mommy do that, she wondered? How did Mommy go from screaming and cursing at them to being sweet and cheerful to someone else in an instant? A shudder wracked her thin frame. It was scary, knowing that Mommy could go from a spitting rage to absolute calm and good humour in a single breath…because Mommy could take it the other direction, too…and often did.
“Bettie!” Mommy’s voice sounded delighted. “Oh, fine, fine. Settling a little problem with the kids, that’s all. You’d think I was made out of money, the way they eat me out of house and home!” There was a pause while Mommy listened to her friend’s chatter.
“Friday night? I’m sure I can make it. Eddie has to work, but I’ll tell him I’m going to your place for something. Can Nancy babysit? Eddie will get pissed if I leave the kids alone and he’ll get home before I do.” There was another pause.
“Oh, I just got this gorgeous silk cocktail dress that will be perfect!” Mommy almost giggled. “It’s peacock blue, embroidered all over, and looks Chinese, with that Mandarin collar…it should be a man-magnet!” Another pause, then the sound of Mommy’s voice became muffled, and then the conversation was over.
She continued sorting the jumbled piles of clothes and toys that had been her room when Mommy appeared suddenly in the doorway. “Don’t you say a word to your father,” Mommy warned. “Not one word, do you understand?”
She looked up, an uncomprehending expression carefully in place. “What?” she asked. Mommy stood there for a moment, examining her face minutely for signs of deception, and finally turned and walked away. She picked up a pajama top that Mommy had made, yellow flannel with fluffy little lambs on it, and resisted the urge to bite into it and tear it in half.
Mommy’s bellow could be heard throughout the house and out into the yard, and both she and Brother froze at the sound. A sly grin crossed Brother’s face as he went back to frying ants with his magnifying glass. She waited tensely for the inevitable summons.
“Both you kids get in here, right now!” Brother ignored the command in favour of crisping a few more ants, but she was taking no chances. Dropping her doll on the grass, heedless of its unsupervised proximity to Brother, she dashed into the house.
“What is it, Mommy?” she asked, skidding to a halt on the dreary streaked brown asphalt tile.
“ ‘What is it, Mommy?’ ” her mother mimicked in a sarcastic sing-song voice. “What, are you deaf? I said there is an apple missing! What do you know about it?”
No matter what she said, she was going to be in trouble…either for tattling on Brother or for not stopping him from eating the apple. She wondered which one would get the least punishment. Tattling, she decided. “Brother ate it,” she said simply.
“You knew this and you didn’t stop him?” Mother’s voice was eerily soft. She nodded silently.
“And you didn’t tell me?” Uh oh. Should have pleaded ignorance. She shook her head slowly from side to side.
“And why not, pray tell?” Mother asked.
Because she was afraid of being punished for tattling? Because she was afraid of being punished for not stopping him from eating the apple? Because she was afraid? None of those answers would work…they would make mother more angry, make her say something like “Afraid? Afraid? You want afraid? I’ll give you something to be afraid of!”
“Well, miss…” Mother said impatiently. “I am waiting for your answer. You are taking so long, I hope for your sake it is a really good one.”
What could she say? “I forgot. I was playing dolls and I…”
“Get me the strap,” Mother interrupted her.
“Nooooo, Mommy!” she wailed, her knees losing their integrity and putting her into a half crouch. “Noooo! I didn’t do anything!”
“Exactly,” Mommy said. “You didn’t stop him, you didn’t tell me, you just let it happen. Now get me that strap.” Mommy stood silently, hands on hips, unmoved by her sobbing pleas and promises to never again transgress. “If I have to get that strap myself,” Mommy interrupted, “You’ll get more for defying me.”
She took the two steps to the kitchen door and removed the thin length of leather…formerly a dog leash now devoid of its metal clip…and handed it reluctantly to her mother. “I didn’t do anything,” she sobbed. “It’s not fair. Brother did it, not me!”
“You didn’t tell me,” Mommy said. “Lay across that chair and take your pants down…all the way down…down to your ankles.” She complied, clenching her buttocks and her bladder muscles against the anticipated blows. “You are the oldest,” Mommy grunted with the first swing. A streak of liquid fire wrapped itself around her lower body as the thin lash curled around a pale, thin thigh. She clenched her teeth to contain the scream. “I can’t be everywhere,” her mother yelled, swinging again, raising a thin angry line across her upraised buttocks. “It’s your job to keep an eye on him and keep him out of trouble.” Swish! Crack! “I don’t know why you have to defy me at every turn! He doesn’t know any better but you do!”
Mommy’s invective continued unabated, accompanied by the raining blows until exhaustion set in. Her arm tired, Mommy threw the strap on the floor and looked at the pale little body quivering in front of her, raised red lash marks criss-crossing it like a dilapidated lattice. Mommy sighed. “Stop that blubbering,” she commanded, her voice tired. “Clean up.”
“I didn’t do anything,” came a thin, weak sob. “I didn’t do anything,” the sound repeated.
Mommy’s lips thinned. “Unless you want more where that came from, I suggest you shut your Goddamned mouth and get your ass out of this kitchen.” Mommy paused as she scrambled to obey. “And send your brother in to me.”
Leaving Dolly in the front yard with Brother had been a mistake, she saw upon entering the front yard. There were several small, black-rimmed pinholes in her pink rubber arms and legs and Brother was busily trying to burn a hole through Dolly’s belly button with his magnifying glass. She could just kill Uncle Pete for giving him that thing…one day he was going to set the house on fire, like he tried to set the school on fire with purloined matches when he was five. Brother had a fascination with fire that she thought was creepy, although nobody else seemed to think so. She ran to rescue her doll.
Experience told her that grabbing the doll and engaging in a tug-of-war with him would culminate only in a dismembered doll. He was bigger, heavier, stronger than she was, for all that he was two years younger, and in a physical contest with him, she invariably lost…sometimes quite painfully. Her backside still smarting, she called out to him “Brother! Mommy wants to see you in the kitchen, right now!”
He continued to concentrate on burning a hole in the doll’s belly. “Mommy says if she has to come get you, she’s bringing the strap!”
That got his attention and he looked up at her, paling when he saw her swollen, tear-stained face. “You better hurry,” she said, “Or you’re gonna get it too!”
She could see him weigh his options, then put down the doll and magnifying glass and head for the house with uncharacteristic slowness. Brother never did anything except at a frenzied rush. The moment he was out of sight she snatched up the magnifying lens and went into the flowerbed beneath the living room window and dug a small hole with her hands beneath the flowering maple. She shoved the offending piece of glass into the earth and covered it over, scattering leaf litter over it to disguise the little grave. Quickly, she darted out onto the lawn, snatched up Dolly, and hurried to her room, making soothing apologetic sounds to the abused doll. She should never have left Dolly out in the grass with Brother, she thought guiltily, and the doll’s injuries were her own fault.
She could hear Mommy hollering at Brother. “I am not made out of money!” Mommy yelled. “I buy exactly enough apples for each of you to have one in your school lunch every day. And now there’s one missing!” She waited for the tell-tale “thwack” of the strap, but no sound emerged from the kitchen save Mommy’s scolding voice, and soon enough, that ended. No spanking. She sighed and cuddled her battered doll closer. “He ate the apple but I got the spanking,” she said softly, looking into the blue glass eyes. “That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all!”
From outside an indignant bellow went up and she hugged the doll closely, smiling tightly with delight. Brother had discovered his evil glass was missing, she was sure. The front door banged as he re-entered the house, crying for Mommy. “Uncle Pete gave me that!” he wailed. “She took it, I know she did!”
Ah, her room was about to be tossed. She sometimes wondered if she was some kind of witch, with her uncanny ability to tell the future and, sure enough, her bedroom door slammed open and Mommy filled the portal like an avenging angel. “Where is it?” Mommy demanded, that dangerous “don’t you dare give me any crap!” look on her face. “What did you do with Brother’s magnifying glass?”
She shook her head and hugged the doll closer. “I don’t have it,” she said quite truthfully. "The last time I saw it, it was in the front yard.” Again, a true statement.
Mommy looked unconvinced and did not stay Brother’s hand as he pulled the contents of her closet floor out into the room and strewed them about, then ransacked her chest of drawers. It wasn’t until he started pulling the bed apart that Mommy stayed his hand. “Did you leave it in the front yard?” she queried. He nodded his head affirmatively. “Then maybe some kid picked it up while you were in the house,” she said. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times, don’t leave your toys outside!” Mommy shook her head and turned to leave, muttering “You kids never appreciate anything,” as she walked away, but then stopped and turned back momentarily. “Clean up this Goddamned mess.”
Brother followed Mommy down the hall, complaining bitterly about his missing instrument of destruction, leaving the carnage of her room behind. With a sigh she set about putting things to right, the labour of restoring the order of her room a small price to pay for the satisfaction of saving her little bit of the world from further predation. The telephone rang and she heard Mommy snap at Brother’s whining complaints, telling him if he couldn’t take care of his toys, it was not her problem.
“Hello?” she heard Mommy’s instantly cheerful voice. How did Mommy do that, she wondered? How did Mommy go from screaming and cursing at them to being sweet and cheerful to someone else in an instant? A shudder wracked her thin frame. It was scary, knowing that Mommy could go from a spitting rage to absolute calm and good humour in a single breath…because Mommy could take it the other direction, too…and often did.
“Bettie!” Mommy’s voice sounded delighted. “Oh, fine, fine. Settling a little problem with the kids, that’s all. You’d think I was made out of money, the way they eat me out of house and home!” There was a pause while Mommy listened to her friend’s chatter.
“Friday night? I’m sure I can make it. Eddie has to work, but I’ll tell him I’m going to your place for something. Can Nancy babysit? Eddie will get pissed if I leave the kids alone and he’ll get home before I do.” There was another pause.
“Oh, I just got this gorgeous silk cocktail dress that will be perfect!” Mommy almost giggled. “It’s peacock blue, embroidered all over, and looks Chinese, with that Mandarin collar…it should be a man-magnet!” Another pause, then the sound of Mommy’s voice became muffled, and then the conversation was over.
She continued sorting the jumbled piles of clothes and toys that had been her room when Mommy appeared suddenly in the doorway. “Don’t you say a word to your father,” Mommy warned. “Not one word, do you understand?”
She looked up, an uncomprehending expression carefully in place. “What?” she asked. Mommy stood there for a moment, examining her face minutely for signs of deception, and finally turned and walked away. She picked up a pajama top that Mommy had made, yellow flannel with fluffy little lambs on it, and resisted the urge to bite into it and tear it in half.
The Dress
It was her favourite dress.
She fingered the crinkly rust-brown cotton flounce at the bottom of the skirt and ran her fingers over the crocheted trim at the top of the flounce that looked like a string of white daisies. She knew they couldn’t afford to buy her clothes from the store and it was a good thing that Mommy knew how to sew, or she might be running around naked!
She tugged the dress down from its hanger, the soft green calico printed skirt spreading out like a parachute. Mommy had made the dress last year, for the school pageant. Every grade did a dance out on the lawn for the parents at the end of the school year and the fourth grade had done a square dance. All of the parents had been instructed to provide appropriate costumes for the children, and the girls were to have full-skirted dresses with crinolines beneath them, which excited her very much. She loved the fluffy look of the crinolines Janet’s and Megan’s older sisters wore underneath their felt poodle skirts, and now she was going to get one of her own!
Mommy had complained and complained and it had begun to look like she was the only girl in the fourth grade who wouldn’t have a square dance dress for the pageant…would they even let her dance if she didn’t have the dress? But at the last minute, Mommy stayed up all night sewing and the result was this beautiful dress with the full skirt that made a circle when she twirled, and with actual ruffles on the hem and at the edges of the sleeves…even if the ruffles were made of a kind of ugly rust brown. But the mint green of the bodice and the skirt and the delicate daisy trim made up for it, and even though she never did get the crinolines, the dress made her feel pretty when she wore it.
Retrieving the dress from the floor, she pulled it over her head and struggled with the zipper. She had only the one pair of shoes, the ugly brown and white saddle oxfords, and all of her socks were the same thin plain white cotton and she had nothing for her tortured, fried, sadly home-permed hair save a few bobby pins, but it didn’t matter. In this dress, she was pretty.
She had already eaten breakfast and made lunches for her and Brother. The dirty dishes were in the sink for her to wash when she got home. “Hurry up!” she urged Brother from the bedroom door. “I have to wake Mommy up for work in five minutes and you know she will light into you if you aren’t ready!”
“Light into you, you mean,” Brother said, lingering over a comic book when he should have been making his bed. He might only be six, but he was astute enough to know how things worked in this house. She stepped in and gave the blankets a few flips and twitches, giving the bed an appearance that at least an attempt at making it had been made. “Let’s go,” she said. “Your lunch is by the front door.”
Brother was no dummy. He tossed his comic into the jumble on his closet floor and slid the door shut, giving the room an appearance of tidiness, then ran out the front door, brown sack in hand. He did not want to be within earshot when she went in and woke Mommy up for work.
She gave a last look at the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, stopping to pick Brother’s wet towel up off the floor and hang it on the rack. She checked again that the percolator had coffee and water in it, ready for Mommy to turn on the stove and get the coffee going. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she opened her mother’s bedroom door and looked in.
She stood stock still. There were two people in the bed! But…Daddy didn’t live here any more… Her heart soared momentarily…had Daddy come back? She scrutinized the bit of face and hair she could see from the bedroom door…nope…not Daddy. The hair was too long, too dark, too curly. So what should she do now? She pondered for a moment, knowing that to fail to wake Mommy would make her late for work, a major crime by any standard. But she had a sense that her being in the room with that man was a serious invasion of Mommy’s privacy, another major crime. She mentally flipped a coin and decided getting Mommy up was the safest course of action.
Ten minutes later, after dodging half-waking blows and warding off a steady stream of curses, she heaved a sigh and headed out the front door for school. Mommy was in the bathroom, which meant it was safe for her to leave…once up, Mommy never, ever went back to bed. Mommy had said nothing about the strange man in her bed and she knew better than to ask. She hurried, fearful of being late, fearful of Mommy coming along behind her to snatch her back for something she had forgotten, and rushed for the shortcut across the creek, knowing she could not be seen from the roadway and that she would emerge safe in the embrace of the school grounds. She smoothed her hands down the soft pale green sprigged cotton skirts of her favourite dress. At least she felt pretty.
It had been a hard day at school. As usual, she was the last person picked for softball…and then she was put into a made-up position, “far right field.” Right field was the hinterlands, the furthest, most remote legitimate position into which the ball flew only at the hands of a left-handed batter. It was the place of the ostracized, the inept, the bungling sports incompetents. And her team captain had invented an even more remote position for her to play. Just as well, she shrugged, walking slowly alone towards the shortcut. Ever since she had been smacked in the face with that pop fly over the backstop one of the bigger sixth graders had hit, she was afraid of the ball and she preferred being sent out to the hard dirt badlands where no ball threatened her and no taunting classmates interrupted her daydreams.
Fractions weren’t making much sense, especially multiplying and dividing them, and she’d gotten a bad mark on her arithmetic paper today. Another one. She was going to get a bad grade in arithmetic this term and that was going to make Mommy mad. But she couldn’t help it! She didn’t know her times tables and that made it very hard! When she had skipped a grade, nobody thought to take a little time to teach her the stuff that she should have learned in that grade! Arithmetic was hard when you didn’t know your times tables and Daddy wasn’t there anymore to help you memorize them. She hadn’t wanted to skip that grade anyway, and leave all her friends behind and have to try to make new friends with older, bigger kids. But she was smart, the tests said so, and Mommy insisted so much the school gave in. Who listens to the objections of a seven-year-old, anyway? As always, she did as she was told, regardless of her own personal feelings in the matter. The grownups were in charge.
The weather was warm and the creek bed was almost dry. She skipped lightly over the exposed rocks and climbed the path up to the street ahead, passing Donny Matthew’s house. Donnie had died over the winter, from something they called “dip-thir-ee-uh.” She had no idea what that was or why a nice kid like Donny had to die from it. He was there when they went on Christmas Vacation, his desk was empty when they came back. She wondered if this mysterious disease was like polio. Every autumn there were empty desks where classmates went missing due to the dread scourge. Sometimes they came back later, in wheelchairs or on crutches, wearing clunking iron braces on their legs…sometimes they never came back at all. Nobody talked about it. She wondered why.
She walked along the sidewalk, past the small neat bungalows of the newer houses and the occasional large, older house that was surely the dwelling of the original owner of the land. She crossed the street to avoid walking past the “witch’s house,” a dilapidated old structure of peeling once-white clapboards half hidden behind an iron fence draped with the desiccated sticks of what must have once been a flourishing vine. A bent old woman with great streams of wild iron gray hair lived in the house, a vile tempered old woman who screamed at the children as they walked by and shook her walking stick at them. The old woman gave her the creeps.
At the next corner there was her favourite neighbourhood house. A retaining wall of black stone with white mortar surrounded the property and colourful flowers were planted at the edges and cascaded over. The house itself was an appealing mix of candy-pink stucco above a window-high façade of the same black stone with white mortaring. Often, as she walked by, the white-haired old man who lived there would be out in the garden and on occasion he would pick a stem of pretty geraniums and present them to her with a bow and a flourish, like she was a princess, causing her to giggle and blush before she took the flower and skipped home. Occasionally he had a sweet in the pocket of his bib overalls for her, and other times, just a friendly smile and wave. The neighbourhood knew him as “Grampa Flowers,” and many of the children, like her, loved him. Others, unaccountably, avoided Grampa Flowers’ house. She shrugged and continued on towards home, hoping Grampa Flowers would be digging in his garden as she came by…she could use a smile and a flower to cheer her up. Even her favourite dress was not doing the job.
Pink geraniums and petunias rioted in the flower beds at the edge of the retaining wall, and she was delighted to see Grampa Flowers on his knees, plucking out weeds with his gloved hands. “Hi, Grampa!” she called, waving, putting on a happier face than she felt.
“Hi, there, sweetie!” he replied, waving back. He stood up and, removing a glove, reached into the pocket where he usually kept little candies for the kids, but came up empty. He put on an exaggerated sad face, making her giggle, then held up one finger and lifted his white brows as if an idea had come over him. “Come up to the kitchen!” he said. “I know where Gramma Flowers keeps them!”
She skipped up the driveway and followed him to the kitchen door, where she stopped at the threshold. “It’s OK,” Grampa Flowers said, motioning her inside. He had a cupboard open, his hand inside a tin. “Ah ha!” he said triumphantly. “Got them!”
He pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down, complaining about his back, and held out a sweet for her. She stepped up and took the hard candy, unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth. “That’s a pretty dress,” Grampa Flowers said, “What’s this?” he pointed to the row of crocheted lace daisies above the flounce. “Flowers? You know I like flowers, don’t you?”
She nodded, sucking on the hard candy, as he examined the trim on her dress. “Come,” he said, and patted his knee. “Sit here so I can have a better look.”
He pulled her onto his lap, her legs astraddle one of his thighs, and lifted the hem of her skirt, peering at the decorative flowers. “Very pretty,” he said softly. “Pretty like you.” She blushed and giggled a little as one large warm hand covered her bare thigh. “Would you like another sweet?”
At her nod he handed her another candy and as she busied herself unwrapping the cellophane, his hand slid up her thigh until it touched the crotch of her panties. She wriggled, trying to get down, but he said “Be still!” rather sternly in her ear and, knowing she must not disobey an adult, she froze.
“Very pretty,” Grampa Flowers said, stroking the outside of her panties, allowing his fingers to test the tightness of the elastic. “How old are you, sweetie?”
“Eight,” she said. “I have to go home.” She tried again to get down, but somehow his other arm had come around her waist and she was caught on his lap.
“Just sit still,” he said softly, firmly, in her ear. “I won’t hurt you.” She froze again, wondering what to do. Mommy said never to touch herself there except in the bathtub, and then for just a second…it was bad to touch yourself there. And she was going to be late getting home and if she wasn’t home to answer the phone when Mommy called, she would get a spanking for sure.
She felt Grandpa Flowers' fingers inside the leg of her panties, touching her skin, pinching gently, probing. She wriggled again, trying to get down, and he gave a sighing sound in her ear. “That’s right, honey, move on them. Doesn’t that feel nice? It sure feels nice to me.”
“I have to go home,” she whined, his fingers chafing the dry, delicate flesh. She wriggled again, trying to get down and felt his finger actually slide a little ways into her body. Panic gripped her. “No!” she cried. “Let me down!”
His arm tightened around her chest, “It’s OK,” he murmured a little breathlessly in her ear. “Just relax and let it feel good.”
“It hurts!” she cried, and he pulled his fingers back to gently rub and soothe the chafed tissues, still stroking her and holding her tightly in his lap. He was breathing funny and rocking in the chair, restraining her with one hand and rubbing inside her panties with the other, his breathing getting harsher and more rapid as she struggled. “Let me go! Let me go!” she cried, twisting in his grip and flailing her legs, only to have his hand cup her entire crotch suddenly, tightly, with his fingers tightly pressing against the tiny opening he had tried to breach some minutes before. He stopped rocking suddenly and clasped her tightly to him, pressing her bottom into his lap, his breath coming in harsh gasps. His body stiffened and he released his grip momentarily and she bolted from his grasp and out the kitchen door, too frightened even to cry.
She ran to the end of the block and turned the corner to her street, streaked up to the house, let herself in and ran to the bathroom where she was violently, miserably sick. After retching repeatedly, she ran to her bedroom and stripped off her dress, put it on a hanger and hung it in the back of the closet, behind some of Mommy’s extra clothes, overflow from the master bedroom closets. She banged the closet door shut and stood there gasping, unable to find words...or even tears.
But she knew she never wanted to see that dress again. It was home made. It was ugly, that hideous brown colour, that stupid green. It made her feel dirty, ugly, soiled. She hated it!
She fingered the crinkly rust-brown cotton flounce at the bottom of the skirt and ran her fingers over the crocheted trim at the top of the flounce that looked like a string of white daisies. She knew they couldn’t afford to buy her clothes from the store and it was a good thing that Mommy knew how to sew, or she might be running around naked!
She tugged the dress down from its hanger, the soft green calico printed skirt spreading out like a parachute. Mommy had made the dress last year, for the school pageant. Every grade did a dance out on the lawn for the parents at the end of the school year and the fourth grade had done a square dance. All of the parents had been instructed to provide appropriate costumes for the children, and the girls were to have full-skirted dresses with crinolines beneath them, which excited her very much. She loved the fluffy look of the crinolines Janet’s and Megan’s older sisters wore underneath their felt poodle skirts, and now she was going to get one of her own!
Mommy had complained and complained and it had begun to look like she was the only girl in the fourth grade who wouldn’t have a square dance dress for the pageant…would they even let her dance if she didn’t have the dress? But at the last minute, Mommy stayed up all night sewing and the result was this beautiful dress with the full skirt that made a circle when she twirled, and with actual ruffles on the hem and at the edges of the sleeves…even if the ruffles were made of a kind of ugly rust brown. But the mint green of the bodice and the skirt and the delicate daisy trim made up for it, and even though she never did get the crinolines, the dress made her feel pretty when she wore it.
Retrieving the dress from the floor, she pulled it over her head and struggled with the zipper. She had only the one pair of shoes, the ugly brown and white saddle oxfords, and all of her socks were the same thin plain white cotton and she had nothing for her tortured, fried, sadly home-permed hair save a few bobby pins, but it didn’t matter. In this dress, she was pretty.
She had already eaten breakfast and made lunches for her and Brother. The dirty dishes were in the sink for her to wash when she got home. “Hurry up!” she urged Brother from the bedroom door. “I have to wake Mommy up for work in five minutes and you know she will light into you if you aren’t ready!”
“Light into you, you mean,” Brother said, lingering over a comic book when he should have been making his bed. He might only be six, but he was astute enough to know how things worked in this house. She stepped in and gave the blankets a few flips and twitches, giving the bed an appearance that at least an attempt at making it had been made. “Let’s go,” she said. “Your lunch is by the front door.”
Brother was no dummy. He tossed his comic into the jumble on his closet floor and slid the door shut, giving the room an appearance of tidiness, then ran out the front door, brown sack in hand. He did not want to be within earshot when she went in and woke Mommy up for work.
She gave a last look at the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, stopping to pick Brother’s wet towel up off the floor and hang it on the rack. She checked again that the percolator had coffee and water in it, ready for Mommy to turn on the stove and get the coffee going. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she opened her mother’s bedroom door and looked in.
She stood stock still. There were two people in the bed! But…Daddy didn’t live here any more… Her heart soared momentarily…had Daddy come back? She scrutinized the bit of face and hair she could see from the bedroom door…nope…not Daddy. The hair was too long, too dark, too curly. So what should she do now? She pondered for a moment, knowing that to fail to wake Mommy would make her late for work, a major crime by any standard. But she had a sense that her being in the room with that man was a serious invasion of Mommy’s privacy, another major crime. She mentally flipped a coin and decided getting Mommy up was the safest course of action.
Ten minutes later, after dodging half-waking blows and warding off a steady stream of curses, she heaved a sigh and headed out the front door for school. Mommy was in the bathroom, which meant it was safe for her to leave…once up, Mommy never, ever went back to bed. Mommy had said nothing about the strange man in her bed and she knew better than to ask. She hurried, fearful of being late, fearful of Mommy coming along behind her to snatch her back for something she had forgotten, and rushed for the shortcut across the creek, knowing she could not be seen from the roadway and that she would emerge safe in the embrace of the school grounds. She smoothed her hands down the soft pale green sprigged cotton skirts of her favourite dress. At least she felt pretty.
It had been a hard day at school. As usual, she was the last person picked for softball…and then she was put into a made-up position, “far right field.” Right field was the hinterlands, the furthest, most remote legitimate position into which the ball flew only at the hands of a left-handed batter. It was the place of the ostracized, the inept, the bungling sports incompetents. And her team captain had invented an even more remote position for her to play. Just as well, she shrugged, walking slowly alone towards the shortcut. Ever since she had been smacked in the face with that pop fly over the backstop one of the bigger sixth graders had hit, she was afraid of the ball and she preferred being sent out to the hard dirt badlands where no ball threatened her and no taunting classmates interrupted her daydreams.
Fractions weren’t making much sense, especially multiplying and dividing them, and she’d gotten a bad mark on her arithmetic paper today. Another one. She was going to get a bad grade in arithmetic this term and that was going to make Mommy mad. But she couldn’t help it! She didn’t know her times tables and that made it very hard! When she had skipped a grade, nobody thought to take a little time to teach her the stuff that she should have learned in that grade! Arithmetic was hard when you didn’t know your times tables and Daddy wasn’t there anymore to help you memorize them. She hadn’t wanted to skip that grade anyway, and leave all her friends behind and have to try to make new friends with older, bigger kids. But she was smart, the tests said so, and Mommy insisted so much the school gave in. Who listens to the objections of a seven-year-old, anyway? As always, she did as she was told, regardless of her own personal feelings in the matter. The grownups were in charge.
The weather was warm and the creek bed was almost dry. She skipped lightly over the exposed rocks and climbed the path up to the street ahead, passing Donny Matthew’s house. Donnie had died over the winter, from something they called “dip-thir-ee-uh.” She had no idea what that was or why a nice kid like Donny had to die from it. He was there when they went on Christmas Vacation, his desk was empty when they came back. She wondered if this mysterious disease was like polio. Every autumn there were empty desks where classmates went missing due to the dread scourge. Sometimes they came back later, in wheelchairs or on crutches, wearing clunking iron braces on their legs…sometimes they never came back at all. Nobody talked about it. She wondered why.
She walked along the sidewalk, past the small neat bungalows of the newer houses and the occasional large, older house that was surely the dwelling of the original owner of the land. She crossed the street to avoid walking past the “witch’s house,” a dilapidated old structure of peeling once-white clapboards half hidden behind an iron fence draped with the desiccated sticks of what must have once been a flourishing vine. A bent old woman with great streams of wild iron gray hair lived in the house, a vile tempered old woman who screamed at the children as they walked by and shook her walking stick at them. The old woman gave her the creeps.
At the next corner there was her favourite neighbourhood house. A retaining wall of black stone with white mortar surrounded the property and colourful flowers were planted at the edges and cascaded over. The house itself was an appealing mix of candy-pink stucco above a window-high façade of the same black stone with white mortaring. Often, as she walked by, the white-haired old man who lived there would be out in the garden and on occasion he would pick a stem of pretty geraniums and present them to her with a bow and a flourish, like she was a princess, causing her to giggle and blush before she took the flower and skipped home. Occasionally he had a sweet in the pocket of his bib overalls for her, and other times, just a friendly smile and wave. The neighbourhood knew him as “Grampa Flowers,” and many of the children, like her, loved him. Others, unaccountably, avoided Grampa Flowers’ house. She shrugged and continued on towards home, hoping Grampa Flowers would be digging in his garden as she came by…she could use a smile and a flower to cheer her up. Even her favourite dress was not doing the job.
Pink geraniums and petunias rioted in the flower beds at the edge of the retaining wall, and she was delighted to see Grampa Flowers on his knees, plucking out weeds with his gloved hands. “Hi, Grampa!” she called, waving, putting on a happier face than she felt.
“Hi, there, sweetie!” he replied, waving back. He stood up and, removing a glove, reached into the pocket where he usually kept little candies for the kids, but came up empty. He put on an exaggerated sad face, making her giggle, then held up one finger and lifted his white brows as if an idea had come over him. “Come up to the kitchen!” he said. “I know where Gramma Flowers keeps them!”
She skipped up the driveway and followed him to the kitchen door, where she stopped at the threshold. “It’s OK,” Grampa Flowers said, motioning her inside. He had a cupboard open, his hand inside a tin. “Ah ha!” he said triumphantly. “Got them!”
He pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down, complaining about his back, and held out a sweet for her. She stepped up and took the hard candy, unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth. “That’s a pretty dress,” Grampa Flowers said, “What’s this?” he pointed to the row of crocheted lace daisies above the flounce. “Flowers? You know I like flowers, don’t you?”
She nodded, sucking on the hard candy, as he examined the trim on her dress. “Come,” he said, and patted his knee. “Sit here so I can have a better look.”
He pulled her onto his lap, her legs astraddle one of his thighs, and lifted the hem of her skirt, peering at the decorative flowers. “Very pretty,” he said softly. “Pretty like you.” She blushed and giggled a little as one large warm hand covered her bare thigh. “Would you like another sweet?”
At her nod he handed her another candy and as she busied herself unwrapping the cellophane, his hand slid up her thigh until it touched the crotch of her panties. She wriggled, trying to get down, but he said “Be still!” rather sternly in her ear and, knowing she must not disobey an adult, she froze.
“Very pretty,” Grampa Flowers said, stroking the outside of her panties, allowing his fingers to test the tightness of the elastic. “How old are you, sweetie?”
“Eight,” she said. “I have to go home.” She tried again to get down, but somehow his other arm had come around her waist and she was caught on his lap.
“Just sit still,” he said softly, firmly, in her ear. “I won’t hurt you.” She froze again, wondering what to do. Mommy said never to touch herself there except in the bathtub, and then for just a second…it was bad to touch yourself there. And she was going to be late getting home and if she wasn’t home to answer the phone when Mommy called, she would get a spanking for sure.
She felt Grandpa Flowers' fingers inside the leg of her panties, touching her skin, pinching gently, probing. She wriggled again, trying to get down, and he gave a sighing sound in her ear. “That’s right, honey, move on them. Doesn’t that feel nice? It sure feels nice to me.”
“I have to go home,” she whined, his fingers chafing the dry, delicate flesh. She wriggled again, trying to get down and felt his finger actually slide a little ways into her body. Panic gripped her. “No!” she cried. “Let me down!”
His arm tightened around her chest, “It’s OK,” he murmured a little breathlessly in her ear. “Just relax and let it feel good.”
“It hurts!” she cried, and he pulled his fingers back to gently rub and soothe the chafed tissues, still stroking her and holding her tightly in his lap. He was breathing funny and rocking in the chair, restraining her with one hand and rubbing inside her panties with the other, his breathing getting harsher and more rapid as she struggled. “Let me go! Let me go!” she cried, twisting in his grip and flailing her legs, only to have his hand cup her entire crotch suddenly, tightly, with his fingers tightly pressing against the tiny opening he had tried to breach some minutes before. He stopped rocking suddenly and clasped her tightly to him, pressing her bottom into his lap, his breath coming in harsh gasps. His body stiffened and he released his grip momentarily and she bolted from his grasp and out the kitchen door, too frightened even to cry.
She ran to the end of the block and turned the corner to her street, streaked up to the house, let herself in and ran to the bathroom where she was violently, miserably sick. After retching repeatedly, she ran to her bedroom and stripped off her dress, put it on a hanger and hung it in the back of the closet, behind some of Mommy’s extra clothes, overflow from the master bedroom closets. She banged the closet door shut and stood there gasping, unable to find words...or even tears.
But she knew she never wanted to see that dress again. It was home made. It was ugly, that hideous brown colour, that stupid green. It made her feel dirty, ugly, soiled. She hated it!
Bus Money
“Frank,” she whispered. “Frank, wake up, please.” She was whispering so she wouldn’t wake Mother.
“Hmm?” Frank mumbled, opening his eyes to a squint. “What?”
“Frank, I need to borrow a dollar for bus fare. Can you loan it to me until I get paid?”
His eyes flicked in the direction of her mother, who lay snoring gently to his left, then back to her. “Sure,” he said softly, patting the bed beside him for her to sit down. “Hand me my pants.”
She sat. She had known Frank for ten years…since she was six. Frank had owned the house on the dirt road that Mother and Daddy bought as their first house when she was in the first grade. Frank sometimes used to come by the house to collect the house payment, and often he brought his little black poodle, Duchess, who was friendly to the point of sloppy affection. She liked Duchess, especially after Mother had given Duke away and there were no more dogs.
Mother and Frank had been friends for a long time…at least she had thought they were friends…hindsight being clearer, she was pretty sure now that they had been something more…probably much more. When Frank and his much younger, pretty-enough-to-be-a-model and smart-enough-to-hire-shark-lawyers wife, Marti, broke up he faced losing a great deal of property and several businesses in the divorce. She had often overheard Mother…who was a bookkeeper and who could be very creative when she needed to be…and Frank discussing ways for him to retain his assets while shedding the acquisitive, spendthrift Marti. And Mother, true to her conniving ways, had come up with a brilliant idea…and Frank happily jumped out of the frying pan into the fire by selling all of his assets to Mother for one dollar, thinking to save himself from Marti’s rapacious divorce attorneys. He hadn’t considered, apparently, that Mother would then own all of his assets, leaving him even more penniless than Marti’s attorneys were trying to make him. Mother, ever alert to an opportunity, had parlayed this one into what she believed was a financially secure marriage… and, of course, control of Frank’s little empire.
The one good thing, however, was that Frank didn’t have a lot of patience with Mother’s behaviour and, being twenty years older, was seldom intimidated by Mother’s temper and outbursts. She could thank him several times over for aborting Mother’s run up to a beating by saying “That’s enough, Georgia. Leave the kid alone.” He could shout louder than Mother could and didn’t seem to be the least bit phased by Mother’s control of his assets. She wasn’t sure, but she suspected Frank had resumed ownership at some point in the relationship…maybe when they got married... From what she heard when they argued, which, because of Mother’s contentiousness, was often, Frank had resumed ownership of at least some of the assets, but Mother had some kind of financial control. She shrugged inwardly…it didn’t matter, as long as Frank could loan her a buck until she got paid.
She had a job after school, working in a hospital kitchen. While the work was boring and repetitious, she now had a legitimate excuse for being out of the house from seven in the morning until after eight in the evening, which just suited her fine. She had a study hall in which to do her homework, no difficult classes to study for, and only had to be home to sleep and change clothes...she ate lunch at school and dinner was leftovers in the hospital kitchen. But she had to hand over her pay check to Mother, who would then give her $5 for bus fare and school lunches and keep the rest. When she had objected, Mother archly informed her that the law said a parent was “entitled to the fruits of a child’s labour,” which explained a lot of things to her, including why she could pick beans and strawberries all summer and never see a dime of the money once Mother got into the picture. Nana had taken her shopping at the end of this last summer, a week-long shopping orgy in which she bought everything from underwear to a new coat and everything in between. She had only $10 of her picking money left at the end of the summer and Mother was so mad she was almost cross-eyed with rage, especially since Nana destroyed the receipts and nothing could be returned for a refund. Now, Mother said that she was “saving” the wages she was confiscating for things like senior pictures and announcements and a prom gown, but she knew better. She would never see a penny of that money and although Mother would pay for those things items, Mother would keep all the left-over money for herself. She had no illusions about how Mother’s mind worked…she hadn't for a long while.
She bent and retrieved Frank’s trousers from the floor and twisted her body to hand them to him. “Take out my wallet,” he whispered. As she busied herself removing his wallet from the back pocket, she felt his hand slide up her skirt and rest on her bare thigh. Shocked, she sat stiffly still for a second, then tried to pull her leg away. His hand tightened around her thigh. “Sssst,” he hissed softly. “Sit still. You don’t want to wake up your mother, do you?” She shook her head. “Take the money you need,” he said, his hand sliding around to her inner thigh and moving upward to touch her panties.
She snatched a single dollar and tossed his wallet down on the floor next to the bed and tried to get up again, but his hand gripped her slim thigh tightly and his eyes flicked meaningfully over his shoulder. “What do you think she would say if she woke up right now?” he said softly. She ceased resisting and allowed his fingers to roam, frantically trying to think of something to say that would make him simply let her go without waking Mother. When she felt his finger start to penetrate her, she gasped, then blurted “I’m going to be late for school!”
His hand ceased its predations and she saw him look up at the clock. Nodding once in agreement, he withdrew his hand from under her skirt, but as she leapt up from the side of the bed he grabbed her wrist. “If you tell your mother, I’ll tell her you started it. She’ll believe me, too…you know that, don’t you?” She nodded mutely, straining against his grip.
He smiled, releasing her wrist slowly. “You don’t need to pay it back,” he whispered hoarsely as she hurried to the bedroom door. “And you can borrow money from me any time you want.”
“Hmm?” Frank mumbled, opening his eyes to a squint. “What?”
“Frank, I need to borrow a dollar for bus fare. Can you loan it to me until I get paid?”
His eyes flicked in the direction of her mother, who lay snoring gently to his left, then back to her. “Sure,” he said softly, patting the bed beside him for her to sit down. “Hand me my pants.”
She sat. She had known Frank for ten years…since she was six. Frank had owned the house on the dirt road that Mother and Daddy bought as their first house when she was in the first grade. Frank sometimes used to come by the house to collect the house payment, and often he brought his little black poodle, Duchess, who was friendly to the point of sloppy affection. She liked Duchess, especially after Mother had given Duke away and there were no more dogs.
Mother and Frank had been friends for a long time…at least she had thought they were friends…hindsight being clearer, she was pretty sure now that they had been something more…probably much more. When Frank and his much younger, pretty-enough-to-be-a-model and smart-enough-to-hire-shark-lawyers wife, Marti, broke up he faced losing a great deal of property and several businesses in the divorce. She had often overheard Mother…who was a bookkeeper and who could be very creative when she needed to be…and Frank discussing ways for him to retain his assets while shedding the acquisitive, spendthrift Marti. And Mother, true to her conniving ways, had come up with a brilliant idea…and Frank happily jumped out of the frying pan into the fire by selling all of his assets to Mother for one dollar, thinking to save himself from Marti’s rapacious divorce attorneys. He hadn’t considered, apparently, that Mother would then own all of his assets, leaving him even more penniless than Marti’s attorneys were trying to make him. Mother, ever alert to an opportunity, had parlayed this one into what she believed was a financially secure marriage… and, of course, control of Frank’s little empire.
The one good thing, however, was that Frank didn’t have a lot of patience with Mother’s behaviour and, being twenty years older, was seldom intimidated by Mother’s temper and outbursts. She could thank him several times over for aborting Mother’s run up to a beating by saying “That’s enough, Georgia. Leave the kid alone.” He could shout louder than Mother could and didn’t seem to be the least bit phased by Mother’s control of his assets. She wasn’t sure, but she suspected Frank had resumed ownership at some point in the relationship…maybe when they got married... From what she heard when they argued, which, because of Mother’s contentiousness, was often, Frank had resumed ownership of at least some of the assets, but Mother had some kind of financial control. She shrugged inwardly…it didn’t matter, as long as Frank could loan her a buck until she got paid.
She had a job after school, working in a hospital kitchen. While the work was boring and repetitious, she now had a legitimate excuse for being out of the house from seven in the morning until after eight in the evening, which just suited her fine. She had a study hall in which to do her homework, no difficult classes to study for, and only had to be home to sleep and change clothes...she ate lunch at school and dinner was leftovers in the hospital kitchen. But she had to hand over her pay check to Mother, who would then give her $5 for bus fare and school lunches and keep the rest. When she had objected, Mother archly informed her that the law said a parent was “entitled to the fruits of a child’s labour,” which explained a lot of things to her, including why she could pick beans and strawberries all summer and never see a dime of the money once Mother got into the picture. Nana had taken her shopping at the end of this last summer, a week-long shopping orgy in which she bought everything from underwear to a new coat and everything in between. She had only $10 of her picking money left at the end of the summer and Mother was so mad she was almost cross-eyed with rage, especially since Nana destroyed the receipts and nothing could be returned for a refund. Now, Mother said that she was “saving” the wages she was confiscating for things like senior pictures and announcements and a prom gown, but she knew better. She would never see a penny of that money and although Mother would pay for those things items, Mother would keep all the left-over money for herself. She had no illusions about how Mother’s mind worked…she hadn't for a long while.
She bent and retrieved Frank’s trousers from the floor and twisted her body to hand them to him. “Take out my wallet,” he whispered. As she busied herself removing his wallet from the back pocket, she felt his hand slide up her skirt and rest on her bare thigh. Shocked, she sat stiffly still for a second, then tried to pull her leg away. His hand tightened around her thigh. “Sssst,” he hissed softly. “Sit still. You don’t want to wake up your mother, do you?” She shook her head. “Take the money you need,” he said, his hand sliding around to her inner thigh and moving upward to touch her panties.
She snatched a single dollar and tossed his wallet down on the floor next to the bed and tried to get up again, but his hand gripped her slim thigh tightly and his eyes flicked meaningfully over his shoulder. “What do you think she would say if she woke up right now?” he said softly. She ceased resisting and allowed his fingers to roam, frantically trying to think of something to say that would make him simply let her go without waking Mother. When she felt his finger start to penetrate her, she gasped, then blurted “I’m going to be late for school!”
His hand ceased its predations and she saw him look up at the clock. Nodding once in agreement, he withdrew his hand from under her skirt, but as she leapt up from the side of the bed he grabbed her wrist. “If you tell your mother, I’ll tell her you started it. She’ll believe me, too…you know that, don’t you?” She nodded mutely, straining against his grip.
He smiled, releasing her wrist slowly. “You don’t need to pay it back,” he whispered hoarsely as she hurried to the bedroom door. “And you can borrow money from me any time you want.”
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