Denial is at the core of narcissism. Without it, Narcissistic Personality Disorder simply could not exist.
“Denial (also called abnegation) is a defense mechanism…in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.” Simply stated, denial is lying to yourself and believing the lie.
Brought down to its very essence, denial is expressed in two basic forms: lying to oneself about others (the woman who cannot admit her man is cheating on her, for example, even though there is ample evidence of his perfidy) or lying to oneself about one’s own self (the jowly, bloated, middle aged matron believing she looks “hot” in fashions better suited to her 13-year-old daughter). One need not be a narcissist to engage in denial—we all do it from time to time, whether it is in reference to romance or fashion or health. But while not all deniers are narcissists, all narcissists are deniers—narcissism could not exist without the ability to deny reality and believe that denial.
When you are in denial about yourself it can take more than one form: it can be as superficial as believing you look really good with a trout pout or as deep as believing that you are entitled to whatever it is you want by whatever means you must employ to get it. You can deny what the mirror tells you, substituting in your vision what you want to see; you can deny that the rules of society and law apply equally to all of us and behave—without qualm—in a way the rest of us believe to be unethical.
Denial with respect to others is something you see all the time: people who essentially bury their heads in the sand rather than acknowledge unpleasant truths they don’t want to deal with. But there is a deeper, more pernicious kind of denial with regard to other people: the refusal to acknowledge the feelings of others and the substitution of something less true but more palatable to the denier.
The narcissist engages in denial that serves him, that allows him to always be right, that allows him to feel good about himself, no matter the cost to others. The narcissist’s lack of empathy allows him to look at someone who is crying as a result of some cold or cruel remark he made and believe she is not really hurt, she is trying to manipulate him. Or, if acknowledging she is hurt, she is hurt not because of something he said or did but because she has chosen to be hurt by his words or deeds.
Because a narcissist does not live in reality, however, sometimes his denial backfires on him and causes problems—but don’t think for a minute the narcissist learns anything from it. The boyfriend of a friend of mine now has a partially crippled hand due to his denial: he got an infection and refused to see a doctor about it, saying it was “fine.” Eventually, pain (and his girlfriend) drove him to see a doctor but by then the bones were involved and some of them eventually fused. His denial of the severity of his injury—whether because he subconsciously thought he was Superman or whether he was afraid to see a physician—caused a far-reaching consequence. Did he learn from this? No—he blamed the cat that scratched him and the next time he got really sick, he refused treatment until he was so sick he had to be admitted to a hospital in critical condition.
Unfortunately, most narcissistic denial doesn’t have the outcome of the narcissist being the only one injured. My mother denied I needed glasses—my science teacher sent me to the school nurse because I could not read the blackboard from the front row. The nurse checked my eyes and told my mother I needed glasses. When my mother said I was “faking it,” the nurse gave my mother the choice of taking me to the optometrist herself or she would call in CPS and lay a charge of neglect (she had been dealing with my mother for years by this time and was not fooled by her at all). All the way to the optometrist’s office I was harangued, terrorized and screamed at, accused of faking, and promised the beating of my lifetime after the doctor’s tests proved it. The drive home was absolutely silent—I needed glasses stronger than hers—but no apology was forthcoming for her tirade en route. Her denial of the reality of my needs took the form of believing me to be a “drama queen” and a “hypochondriac.” Even when I was truly sick, like when I had pneumonia or an allergy attack that swelled my eyes completely shut, I was accused of “playing up” my symptoms and pretending that I was sicker than I was. My mother’s denial of my medical needs not only caused me unnecessary pain and suffering, it set the stage for me neglecting my medical care: without my mother responding to my needs appropriately, I learned to endure long past the time I should seek treatment, because I was never sure when I should seek it.
The narcissist lives in denial about himself as well as others. To himself, a narcissist is special, talented, entitled, better than everyone else. He may be a short, plain, social bumbler, but in his mind, he is the superior being deserving of a supermodel girlfriend and a rich man’s lifestyle. That he doesn’t have it is not his fault—it is the fault of those who are jealous of his abilities, who don’t like him because of his colour, who won’t give him a chance because of his origins or religion or the school he went to (or didn’t go to) or his parents because they denied him those things that would have given him entrée into that to which he believes he is entitled.
In the narcissist, denial can be applied to any and everything. Laws? For the narcissist, they only apply if he is caught—but you had better abide by them! We must all be predictable so that the narcissist can anticipate what we will do and make his plans accordingly. It’s OK if he fails to return something borrowed—even money—but you have no such leeway. His front yard can be an overgrown mess and his house need painting, but you had better keep yours up or you’ll lower his property values!
James, my N ex-husband, was famous for his denial of economic reality—and when caught out, he was invariably angry with those whom he identified as the cause of the problems that cost him money. He, of course, never included himself among those at fault.
When I met James, he had about $3000 (about $16,000 in today’s money) invested in a company called Bowmar. “In 1971, Indiana-based Bowmar Instruments introduced the first hand-held LED (Light Emitting Diode) calculator. The “Bowmar Brain” was a huge success. Other manufacturers developed cheaper calculators, and when the company could no longer compete, it went bankrupt in 1976.” As Bowmar’s share price sank, James refused to acknowledge the company was crashing and he needed to sell out to minimize his losses. His denial of the reality of Bowmar’s decline—he kept telling me “it will go back up…then I’ll sell…”—caused him to ride Bowmar right down to the bottom. And then he got mad. He got mad at Bowmar for crashing, he got mad at the stock market, and he got mad at me for being right…so much so that when, a few years later, I suggested he buy a new stock called Redken, he got mad all over again and refused to invest a penny. Redken, of course, went on to be a huge success in its market.
The narcissist can sink himself into denial and hold fast to it, no matter how much reality may attempt to batter him. When James and I divorced, I retained possession the family home for a few years (and had to make the mortgage payments), after which we were supposed to sell it. I called in a real estate agent who had worked my neighbourhood for many years and asked her to get a comprehensive report of sales in my neighbourhood against which we could compare my house in order to set a selling price. Considering the age, condition and location of the house, she set the optimum selling price at $215,000, telling me to be prepared to accept offers at $200,000. But when I tried to get James to sign the sales authorization papers, he refused. He wanted to sell the house for $279,000, significantly more than the house was worth, and some $60,000 more than the best house on the street had sold for! And ours was far from the best house on the street.
I couldn’t imagine why he was fixating on this figure and eventually had to drag him back to court to get a judge to set a price and authorize the sale. I took my agent with me and she carefully explained to the judge why she had recommended her price and presented charts and other research of the sales of similar homes in my area over the previous year. When it came James’ turn to speak, he had no supporters, no presentation, no statistics. What he had was this: He wanted to by a house in Colorado, where he was currently living. He needed $90,000 cash to buy the house free and clear. So, he did calculations determining how much he would have to sell the California house for and, after taxes, commissions, paying off the old mortgage and splitting the proceeds with me, have that $90K left over. And the figure the house needed to sell for, in order for James to realize his $90K profit, was $279K.
He was in complete denial of the reality of the property market and sales. He was livid with the judge when he set the listing price at $215K and ordered we accept any offer of $200K or more. He was incandescent with fury when the judge stuck him with my lawyer’s bill and court costs for the hearing, saying if he had been reasonable, the hearing would never have been necessary. He fully expected the judge to side with him despite our research and the figures my estate agent had presented (and all of this had been presented to James before we decided to go to court—he simply denied their veracity). Interestingly, after being on the market for seven months at $279K and not a single showing, when the house was reduced to $215K it sold for $200K within a month.
James saw himself as a victim—he was my victim in the divorce, the victim of sandbaggers and backstabbers at work, the victim of the police who gave him citations for doing things (like speeding, running red lights, driving on the shoulder during commute traffic) that he considered harmless—speeding was OK because he was “in control”; blowing a red light was ok because he “looked and no traffic was coming”; driving the shoulder was OK because there was plenty of room and why should he wait with all those other morons who weren’t smart enough to take an opportunity when it presented? He was the victim of my “rapacious attorney” for taking him to court every month and sticking him with her bills—even though we only took him to court when he was in violation of court orders for things like support and maintenance costs for the house. He simply could not face that the trouble that were costing him so much money were of his own doing. So, instead of making his support payments on time, instead of paying half the bill to fix the furnace and the roof, instead of giving me half of the joint tax return, he viewed the situation as him being victimized by a greedy ex-wife, her voracious attorney and biased judges. Had he not been mired so deeply in denial he would have seen that on-time payments of both support and household repairs and refraining from forging my signature on a government check would have kept him out of court and my attorney’s fingers out of his wallet. He was so invested in his victimhood that he spent four years creating situation after situation that forced me to drag him back to court for redress...and every one cost him money and left him feeling further victimized.
My mother was no less in denial about most aspects of her life. When I was about 10, she told my father that she was going to start “seeing other men,” and that she might bring some of them home with her…and if he didn’t like it, he could leave. This was the 1950s and she was in complete denial about the moral strictures of the day. She didn’t need to adhere to a moral code she didn’t like (although the rest of us damn sure had to!). One of the clearest examples of her denial was how she treated my growing, developing body. As my breasts grew and my height increased, instead of taking me shopping to buy me appropriate undergarments and school clothes, she took my little girl dresses (size 12 or so) and let the seams out as far as they could go, let the hems down and even stitched a band of lace to the bottom of the dresses to lengthen them. I just thought she was cheap, but my stepmother remarked that she was doing an awful lot of work just to be cheap—it was her opinion that I was becoming competition for male attention and by keeping me looking like a little girl, NM could not only deny her own advancing age, but keep me a child and not a rival. In context of the way she lived and thought, it made perfect sense.
Denial is always self serving. There are a lot of people in America who are unwilling to admit even to themselves that they are racist. Rather than admit, for example, that they simply do not want what they secretly consider to be a sub-human to dictate to them as the ruler of their country, they will come out with incredibly outlandish ways to try to discredit the black guy in the Oval Office and get him evicted, without dirtying their reputations by revealing their closet racism. Chief among these are the “birthers,” those who refuse, no matter what kind of evidence is presented, to believe that Obama is a natural born American citizen. His birth certificate was released from the state archives of Hawaii—and they called it a forgery. The governor, who was personally acquainted with Obama’s parents at the time of his birth, has attested personal knowledge of the man’s birth in Hawaii—they refuse to believe him. Not even the fine point of law—the technical meaning of “natural born”—sways them from their denial (there are two kinds of citizens—natural born and naturalized; if either one of your parents is a US citizen at the time of your birth, it does not matter where in the world you are born, you are a “natural born” US citizen). Their denial of the incontrovertible facts of Obama’s citizenship serves them—it gives them hope that they can remove this person from the presidency and allows them to avoid accepting that their leader is a man of what they secretly consider to be a member of an inferior race.
Denial is a peculiar thing but it always serves the denier. My daughter, despite authentication from half a dozen people in the family who were—or became—aware of my mother’s plot to steal my children and give them to her brother for adoption, has consistently refused to believe the truth. NM told her that I had abandoned her, that I didn’t want her anymore and as proof, cited that I did not make any attempt to contact her for the whole eight years she was gone. No amount of logic or proof to the contrary has swayed my daughter from believing that despite knowing that I didn’t know where she was, despite a large kraft envelope of cards and letters I sent to her and her brother over the years (in care of my grandmother), despite my father, my uncle, and even my grandparents telling her I did not abandon her and that I had made regular attempts to locate her and they blocked me.
How did this denial serve her? It gave her a safe target for her anger: if she got mad at NM or some other family member, they might reject her but since she believed I had already done so, there was nothing to lose. By siding with NM and becoming virtually her only ally, she became NM’s new Golden Child. When she needed a fat loan for a down payment on her first house, Dear Daughter approached her grandmother (who was flush with cash inherited from her own parents) for a loan. Several years later, when NM wrote her will, she told DD that I was being written out of it in her favour, a fact DD could not wait to impart to me over the phone.
“Do you think that’s fair?” I asked.
I could hear the dismissive indifference in her voice, “Well, you and Grammi never got along, anyway.”
Not only was she in denial about whether or not it was fair for my mother to disinherit me in her favour, she saw nothing at all wrong with her two brothers being disinherited right along beside me. Her denial netted her a fortune…literally…and then she lied to her brothers about it, saying Grammi had left the money to all three of them but she was to administer it.
Like the trusting idiot I can be, I believed that foreshadowed her intent to split the money with her brothers. Since this is what I would have done in my own will—split my estate evenly among my kids—I was somewhat mollified at the money having gone to her. If she was sharing it her brothers, then I could go along with that. But it didn’t work out that way—when my oldest son, who was disabled, approached her for the money to buy a car, she refused because she had already spent it all buying herself a new house—a McMansion in a neighbouring town, a huge overgrown monstrosity of a place for her family of three (she had empty rooms that she had no purpose for!). And when asked why, she denied any intent to share with her brothers—it was her money and she could do what she wanted with it.
Denial is at the absolute core of narcissism. Without the ability to deny one’s own feelings of inadequacy and shame, without the ability to deny how one’s self-serving actions affect others, without the ability to deny that one is part of a whole rather than an isolated entity, narcissism is simply not possible. When you deal in reality you hear the note of hurt in another’s voice and respond to it viscerally, you wince with another’s pain—even today I cannot watch my husband inject his insulin without feeling a little twinge in my belly as the needle pierces his flesh, and he has been a diabetic for a decade.
Denial is at the heart of every narcissist, it is at the centre of their being, it is what allows them to live conscience-free, to truly believe in their superiority over us lesser mortals, to be blameless in all things. Without denial, narcissists simply cannot exist.
Next up: Selective memory
Showing posts with label neglect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neglect. Show all posts
Sunday, May 6, 2012
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.
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...
New Beginnings
They were moving again.
She sat on the front stoop as Daddy folded up the louvered flaps over the engine and peered into the hot, dark cavern that contained the rattling beast that made the car go. Mommy was fussing about something in the back of the car while she was supposed to be watching Brother who, blessedly, seemed to be very engaged in tormenting a line of ants that were attempting to march up the sidewalk to the house. The ants would find easy pickings in just a few minutes, she mused, because once the car pulled away from the cracked and grass-studded driveway, Mommy would no longer be there to stomp and spray them with the Flit.
She wondered what the new house would be like, thinking back to the places she had already lived in her four short years. She liked the wide open spaces at Gramma Janssen’s farm. She liked the chickens and Mike, the dog that never barked except when something was really wrong…you could trust Mike, Gramma said…and she liked the little goats and that her cousins lived just across the field and that they were all girls so they could play dolls all day, once the chores were done. She didn’t like going outside to go to the toilet, though…the outhouse was stinky and scary…she was always afraid she was going to lose her balance and fall through the hole into the dark and smelly pit. She didn’t like going to the woods, either, unless Daddy or Grampa was with her. Mommy said there were bears in those woods, and bears eat little girls. The shack at Gramma’s was very cold, even when there was a fire in the stove, and she hoped the chickens that lived there now had enough blankets to be warm.
She had liked living at Nana’s house. Nana had a big back yard where she could play all day, just as long as she stayed out of the flower beds. But that was OK. Nana had planted a flower bed just for her where she could pick all the flowers if she wanted, and she got to choose what had been planted there. She had pansies that looked like they had little faces, and snap dragons that had “jaws” that moved if you pinched the blooms just right. And she had fragrant tiger lilies, her favourite, and buttercups that would leave bits of yellow on your chin when you played with them. She liked living with Nana…Mommy came to visit once in a while but Nana never left them alone together and Daddy came to visit and took her out for ice cream. Nana let her pick the quince and the blueberries and Grandpa let her pull carrots and radishes from his vegetable garden for a snack if she was hungry. She was never hungry at Nana’s. She absently rubbed her grumbling stomach. It had been a long time since breakfast.
She thought she had lived some other places, but her memories were hazy, just out of grasp. Nana said she should forget about those things, but it bothered her that she could not recall. Remembering was very important. Forgetting things got you in trouble, and Mommy always had a shoe or a hairbrush or a stick nearby to “help you remember.” She had a vague notion of a dark place with a powdery smelling lady standing silhouetted in a doorway, and a tantalizing glimpse of a large room full of wood desks and chairs and brusque, businesslike people whispering words like “abandoned” and “adoption,” but she didn’t know what those words meant. She thought they were bad things, from the way people glanced at her and tried to keep her from hearing, the way grownups often did.
Then there was this house. She didn’t like it. It was creaky and smelled old. Mommy didn’t like the red and white linoleum floors, or the old stove in the kitchen or the sand pile at the side of the house, which she thought was silly because the sand pile was the best part of the house. Her lower lip quivered as she thought of Blackie and how she loved burying him in the sand and how still he would lay for her. Nana was taking Blackie to her house so he would be OK, but she missed him already.
“What in God’s name are you blubbering about now?” Mommy snapped at her from the car. “Get your brother and get in the car. It’s time to leave.”
…*… …*… …*…
She was hot. She was tired. Her back ached and her bottom hurt from sitting on the hard little wooden chair in the back of the car where the back seat should have been. Brother was sprawled out on a pallet of blankets on the floor beside her, his flushed, chubby little face glistening with a sheen of fine perspiration. They were stuck and Mommy was mad.
The old car that someone had painted green with a paintbrush so the brush strokes still showed, had overheated. She wasn’t surprised because she felt overheated. Who would have believed it could be so hot so high up on a mountain?
Daddy was hurt but Mommy was too mad at him to do anything but yell about “this old piece of shit,” and “if you were any kind of a man,” and something about Godforsaken places, but she wasn’t sure if Mommy meant this place or the house with the sand pile. When the car had clattered to a rattling, shuddering stop, Daddy had set the handbrake and jumped out to put the rock behind a tire just to make sure the car stayed in place on the incline. He went to the front of the car while Mommy sat in the front seat, eating an apple and reading a movie magazine. But by standing on her little wooden chair in the back of the car and looking over the front seat, she could see through the windshield and watch Daddy try to fix the car. He put a rag over the top of the cap on the front of the car and the next thing she knew pink water was spewing up into the air like a fountain and Daddy was backing away shaking his right hand and cursing like the devil himself. She sat back down in her chair and picked up her doll when Mommy got out of the car and started cursing, too, and hollering at Daddy. It was best to be very busy doing something else at such times.
Daddy climbed down the hillside into the ravine below carrying a little trash can with him. He was going for water, he said, but as soon as he was out of sight, she became frightened. What if he got lost? What if he ran away because Mommy was hollering at him? What if he got more hurt? She bit her lower lip to stop its quivering and sniffed as quietly as she could, but she was not quiet enough.
Mommy’s head swivelled around as if it was on a pivot. “What in the name of Christ are you blubbering about now?" she yelled. “Jesus, aren’t things bad enough without you bawling your head off?”
“There’s something in my eye,” she lied, inspired by the dustmotes dancing in the hot shaft of sunlight that filled the back of the car. “It’s making me water.”
Mommy grabbed her chin roughly and tilted her face up to the light, then thrust her away. “I don’t see anything,” she said suspiciously, her eyes becoming mere slits. She blinked rapidly and reached up to rub, but Mommy struck her hand away. “Keep your dirty paws away from your eyes! All I need now is a doctor bill on top of everything else!’
Daddy’s face appeared suddenly in the window. The oval-shaped tin trash can, painted pink with brilliant red roses on it, was in his hand, one of the sharper curves of the oval somewhat smashed into a point to provide a pouring spout. Obviously, Daddy had found water and he set about pouring it into the car. He made several more trips down the steep slope, sliding with the dirt the whole way and working his way back up carefully so as not to spill a precious drop. When the car was full again and the engine started, she heaved a sigh of relief and sat back down in her little wooden chair.
“You stink,” Mommy said from the front seat and she looked up, sniffing the air slightly. Had Brother done a nasty in his pants while he slept? Mommy was talking to Daddy. “For Chrissake, Eddie, the least you could do is rinse off a little and dust yourself off. Now I have to ride with your stink for another…what?...four hours?”
Four hours? They would be there in four hours? She felt her stomach knot with anticipation and dread as the old car clattered and banged its way back on to the highway and began its slow chugging ascent of the long hill ahead.
“I’m hot,” she whined from the back of the car, the sun beating down through the open window. “Can I have a drink of water?”
“Well, la-de-dah!” Mommy snapped from the front seat. “Like the rest of us aren’t hot, too. No, Miss Princess, you can’t have a drink of water. If the radiator blows again, we’ll need every drop of water we have to get us out of this Godforsaken place! Now find yourself something to do and knock off that whining!”
She sat back down on the little chair, the sun-baked seat scorching the tender backs of her thighs. She couldn’t see anything to use to wipe the sweat from her face, so she surreptitiously lifted a corner of her hem and blotted her brow and upper lip, watching to make sure Mommy didn’t catch her. But Mommy was busy yelling at Daddy again. She wondered briefly why Mommy yelled so much, why she didn’t just talk.
She looked down at the floor of the car by her feet. Brother was still sleeping…he could sleep through anything…a damp halo darkened the blanket beneath his head. She wished she could sleep, but once awake in the morning, she was unable to sleep again until it was dark…unless she was sick. But the motion of the car was making her drowsy…she blotted her face with the hem again. Her stomach was a little queasy…but she never got carsick like her stupid cousin Sally…except that one time in Nana’s car. Her face reddened with remembered humiliation. She slid off the hard little chair and lay down beside Brother, hoping he would not kick or punch one of her bruises in his sleep…they were sore enough already. She closed her eyes, thinking about the cold glass of water she would ask for…in four hours…when they got there…wherever “there” was.
She sat on the front stoop as Daddy folded up the louvered flaps over the engine and peered into the hot, dark cavern that contained the rattling beast that made the car go. Mommy was fussing about something in the back of the car while she was supposed to be watching Brother who, blessedly, seemed to be very engaged in tormenting a line of ants that were attempting to march up the sidewalk to the house. The ants would find easy pickings in just a few minutes, she mused, because once the car pulled away from the cracked and grass-studded driveway, Mommy would no longer be there to stomp and spray them with the Flit.
She wondered what the new house would be like, thinking back to the places she had already lived in her four short years. She liked the wide open spaces at Gramma Janssen’s farm. She liked the chickens and Mike, the dog that never barked except when something was really wrong…you could trust Mike, Gramma said…and she liked the little goats and that her cousins lived just across the field and that they were all girls so they could play dolls all day, once the chores were done. She didn’t like going outside to go to the toilet, though…the outhouse was stinky and scary…she was always afraid she was going to lose her balance and fall through the hole into the dark and smelly pit. She didn’t like going to the woods, either, unless Daddy or Grampa was with her. Mommy said there were bears in those woods, and bears eat little girls. The shack at Gramma’s was very cold, even when there was a fire in the stove, and she hoped the chickens that lived there now had enough blankets to be warm.
She had liked living at Nana’s house. Nana had a big back yard where she could play all day, just as long as she stayed out of the flower beds. But that was OK. Nana had planted a flower bed just for her where she could pick all the flowers if she wanted, and she got to choose what had been planted there. She had pansies that looked like they had little faces, and snap dragons that had “jaws” that moved if you pinched the blooms just right. And she had fragrant tiger lilies, her favourite, and buttercups that would leave bits of yellow on your chin when you played with them. She liked living with Nana…Mommy came to visit once in a while but Nana never left them alone together and Daddy came to visit and took her out for ice cream. Nana let her pick the quince and the blueberries and Grandpa let her pull carrots and radishes from his vegetable garden for a snack if she was hungry. She was never hungry at Nana’s. She absently rubbed her grumbling stomach. It had been a long time since breakfast.
She thought she had lived some other places, but her memories were hazy, just out of grasp. Nana said she should forget about those things, but it bothered her that she could not recall. Remembering was very important. Forgetting things got you in trouble, and Mommy always had a shoe or a hairbrush or a stick nearby to “help you remember.” She had a vague notion of a dark place with a powdery smelling lady standing silhouetted in a doorway, and a tantalizing glimpse of a large room full of wood desks and chairs and brusque, businesslike people whispering words like “abandoned” and “adoption,” but she didn’t know what those words meant. She thought they were bad things, from the way people glanced at her and tried to keep her from hearing, the way grownups often did.
Then there was this house. She didn’t like it. It was creaky and smelled old. Mommy didn’t like the red and white linoleum floors, or the old stove in the kitchen or the sand pile at the side of the house, which she thought was silly because the sand pile was the best part of the house. Her lower lip quivered as she thought of Blackie and how she loved burying him in the sand and how still he would lay for her. Nana was taking Blackie to her house so he would be OK, but she missed him already.
“What in God’s name are you blubbering about now?” Mommy snapped at her from the car. “Get your brother and get in the car. It’s time to leave.”
…*… …*… …*…
She was hot. She was tired. Her back ached and her bottom hurt from sitting on the hard little wooden chair in the back of the car where the back seat should have been. Brother was sprawled out on a pallet of blankets on the floor beside her, his flushed, chubby little face glistening with a sheen of fine perspiration. They were stuck and Mommy was mad.
The old car that someone had painted green with a paintbrush so the brush strokes still showed, had overheated. She wasn’t surprised because she felt overheated. Who would have believed it could be so hot so high up on a mountain?
Daddy was hurt but Mommy was too mad at him to do anything but yell about “this old piece of shit,” and “if you were any kind of a man,” and something about Godforsaken places, but she wasn’t sure if Mommy meant this place or the house with the sand pile. When the car had clattered to a rattling, shuddering stop, Daddy had set the handbrake and jumped out to put the rock behind a tire just to make sure the car stayed in place on the incline. He went to the front of the car while Mommy sat in the front seat, eating an apple and reading a movie magazine. But by standing on her little wooden chair in the back of the car and looking over the front seat, she could see through the windshield and watch Daddy try to fix the car. He put a rag over the top of the cap on the front of the car and the next thing she knew pink water was spewing up into the air like a fountain and Daddy was backing away shaking his right hand and cursing like the devil himself. She sat back down in her chair and picked up her doll when Mommy got out of the car and started cursing, too, and hollering at Daddy. It was best to be very busy doing something else at such times.
Daddy climbed down the hillside into the ravine below carrying a little trash can with him. He was going for water, he said, but as soon as he was out of sight, she became frightened. What if he got lost? What if he ran away because Mommy was hollering at him? What if he got more hurt? She bit her lower lip to stop its quivering and sniffed as quietly as she could, but she was not quiet enough.
Mommy’s head swivelled around as if it was on a pivot. “What in the name of Christ are you blubbering about now?" she yelled. “Jesus, aren’t things bad enough without you bawling your head off?”
“There’s something in my eye,” she lied, inspired by the dustmotes dancing in the hot shaft of sunlight that filled the back of the car. “It’s making me water.”
Mommy grabbed her chin roughly and tilted her face up to the light, then thrust her away. “I don’t see anything,” she said suspiciously, her eyes becoming mere slits. She blinked rapidly and reached up to rub, but Mommy struck her hand away. “Keep your dirty paws away from your eyes! All I need now is a doctor bill on top of everything else!’
Daddy’s face appeared suddenly in the window. The oval-shaped tin trash can, painted pink with brilliant red roses on it, was in his hand, one of the sharper curves of the oval somewhat smashed into a point to provide a pouring spout. Obviously, Daddy had found water and he set about pouring it into the car. He made several more trips down the steep slope, sliding with the dirt the whole way and working his way back up carefully so as not to spill a precious drop. When the car was full again and the engine started, she heaved a sigh of relief and sat back down in her little wooden chair.
“You stink,” Mommy said from the front seat and she looked up, sniffing the air slightly. Had Brother done a nasty in his pants while he slept? Mommy was talking to Daddy. “For Chrissake, Eddie, the least you could do is rinse off a little and dust yourself off. Now I have to ride with your stink for another…what?...four hours?”
Four hours? They would be there in four hours? She felt her stomach knot with anticipation and dread as the old car clattered and banged its way back on to the highway and began its slow chugging ascent of the long hill ahead.
“I’m hot,” she whined from the back of the car, the sun beating down through the open window. “Can I have a drink of water?”
“Well, la-de-dah!” Mommy snapped from the front seat. “Like the rest of us aren’t hot, too. No, Miss Princess, you can’t have a drink of water. If the radiator blows again, we’ll need every drop of water we have to get us out of this Godforsaken place! Now find yourself something to do and knock off that whining!”
She sat back down on the little chair, the sun-baked seat scorching the tender backs of her thighs. She couldn’t see anything to use to wipe the sweat from her face, so she surreptitiously lifted a corner of her hem and blotted her brow and upper lip, watching to make sure Mommy didn’t catch her. But Mommy was busy yelling at Daddy again. She wondered briefly why Mommy yelled so much, why she didn’t just talk.
She looked down at the floor of the car by her feet. Brother was still sleeping…he could sleep through anything…a damp halo darkened the blanket beneath his head. She wished she could sleep, but once awake in the morning, she was unable to sleep again until it was dark…unless she was sick. But the motion of the car was making her drowsy…she blotted her face with the hem again. Her stomach was a little queasy…but she never got carsick like her stupid cousin Sally…except that one time in Nana’s car. Her face reddened with remembered humiliation. She slid off the hard little chair and lay down beside Brother, hoping he would not kick or punch one of her bruises in his sleep…they were sore enough already. She closed her eyes, thinking about the cold glass of water she would ask for…in four hours…when they got there…wherever “there” was.
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