Gedi Puniku- Cat Eyes

by Jeanie P Johnson

  “Your figure has quite improved over the last few weeks,” Patrick told me as he helped me up in the buggy.

  He hadn’t asked for a driver since he wanted to drive himself. On the way, we stopped at a little house, in a part of town where the less fortunate lived, from the looks of the buildings there. Patrick got down and knocked on the door. I was a little surprised when I saw Megan answer the door. He was probably stopping by to see how she was fairing, now that she was no longer at McGovern Court.

  He spoke to her for a few minutes and then she turned from the door and, seconds later, reappeared, wearing a shawl. Patrick led her to the buggy and helped her up, having her sit between me and himself.

  “Megan can help you with choosing clothes,” Patrick told me.

  I knew he was using this as an excuse to have Megan with him, without anyone suspecting it was anything more than a maid helping choose clothing for a lady. I noticed how he put one hand on her waist and idly moved it against her side, as we rode the rest of the way into the city.

  My interest in buying clothes was nonexistent. I was happy to let Megan do all the choosing. Both she and Patrick seemed anxious to have the shopping done with, and so was I. When we were finished, Patrick took us to a small café where we ordered a meal. I knew he wanted to prolong his visit with Megan, and now I knew why he had not engaged one of the drivers to take us into town.

  Once the meal was over, we returned to Megan’s little house. I thought he would drop her off there, but he stepped down with her and indicated I come with them, and bring the packages in, so none of the underhanded neighbors would steal them from the buggy. I shrugged as I grabbed the boxes and parcels, following the two into the house.

  The house was small. A single room that served as kitchen, living room, and bedroom.

  “Sit in the chair,” Patrick said, pointing to a single, tattered chair next to the bed. “It is a shame that you must be here to intrude on our private time together, but I can’t have you sitting out in the buggy in this kind of neighborhood, and it is so seldom I am able to be with Megan, now that she no longer is under our roof. Since Gavin so boldly pointed out your entertainment at viewing Megan and myself, I do not believe your sensibilities will be shattered too deeply if you witness it again.”

  My eyes widened.

  “You don’t expect me to sit here while you and Megan…”

  “You didn’t seem to have any reserve when watching unnoticed,” he accused. “Why start fussing now? So hypocritical of you!”

  “It is indecent!” I exclaimed.

  “And what you and Gavin were doing, when watching us, wasn’t? Buck up, Helen. You can close your eyes if you must, but be prepared to remain for as long as we wish to be together.”

  With that, he turned from me and began removing his clothes. Once they fell to the floor, he walked boldly up to me, standing before me as though he wanted me to judge his masculine endowment. He merely laughed when I looked disgusted at his act of being so bold to bring himself inches away from my eyes. Megan giggled, coming over to drag him to the bed.

  “Don’t forget about me,” she pouted. “Your sister is a prude, and doesn’t deserve to lay her eyes upon your jewels.”

  “She’ll get a good eye-full soon enough,” he promised, as he went to her and started repeating the scene I had watched before Gavin found me and joined me in the hall. He wanted to embarrass me, to punish me for being the reason Megan was sent away or maybe because he wished he had never brought me back in the first place.

  He constantly turned to see if I was watching, his green eyes meeting mine, daring me to look away and act timid. I knew if I did, he would chide me about it all the way home, calling me a hypocrite for having watched before, yet refusing to watch now. However, if I watched, boldly on, he would also have something to say about my brazen, wicked, disposition. Either way, he would enjoy berating me.

  Therefore, my gaze remained steady. I was as intrigued now as I had been when I happened upon them before, only this was so much more personal. He was daringly demanding I watch, appearing excited, knowing I was in the room. The chair was right against the bed and my view was not hampered by the narrow opening of a door. I could tell Patrick enjoyed performing in front of me, making sure I was privy to every aspect of his talents. He moved decisively to afford an unhampered view, as he smiled smugly at me, catching my eyes when I least expected it. There was a crudeness about Patrick that was set free when he was not in the presence of his family. I realized it was his way of rebelling against the proper way his parents expected him to behave.

  He had done the same thing with me, impressing upon me the proper way of doing everything to his approval. Only now, it was like he was inviting me to become a part of his rebellion. He knew I would never say anything. If I did, it would be only to Gavin.

  To add to the uncomfortable situation, Patrick made a point of expressing his pleasure verbally, telling Megan how much he enjoyed it when she did certain things. She responded in like manner when he pleased her. There was no exchange they did not try to engage in, as Patrick worked to expand my education beyond what I wished to learn. In fact, he constantly labored at trying to shock me with his exploits. I wanted it to be over with, yet I knew that Patrick was prolonging it on purpose, taking pleasure in watching me squirm. Eventually, Megan began crying out in rapture, and Patrick was working harder to bring her pleasure to a peak, so I knew the show would be over soon.

  However, I had not anticipated the ending, where Patrick pulled away, looking directly at me as he displayed his potent virility where I could witness it fully. It was in that split second, when he saw my face and heard me gasp, that he got total revenge for me and Gavin having threatened to describe his tryst with Megan and exposing him to his family. I started to pull my skirt away from where the evidence of his masculinity was intent on landing, only I was not fast enough.

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” he said, gruffly, and then started laughing. “That should teach you not to go spying where your nose doesn’t belong!”

  I took my hanky from my pocket and started swiping at my skirt.

  “Don’t!” Patrick growled. “I want you to hold this in your memory like a medal of honor, little virgin that you are! You shall wear this dress to dinner tonight, displaying the stains of your curiosity!”

  I started ranting at him, but Patrick told me to stop blubbering. He said if I refused, he would come up to my room and repeat the procedure, forcing me to participate in his lewdness.”

  My first instinct was to bolt from the house, jump in the buggy and leave Patrick and Megan stranded. Only I knew that Patrick could hire a hack, and I would be punished in some other diabolical manner once he returned home. I was not prepared to escape McGovern Court yet, so I sat stiffly, and watched as he instructed Megan to wash him and then clean up what aftermath was on the sheets. As he got dressed, he kept turning and grinning at me, glancing down at my skirt with a satisfied smirk on his face. My hatred of Patrick grew ten fold. I didn’t know if I would be able to be in his presence without doing something drastic, such as killing him?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Although, as we rode home, my skirt dried and the evidence was not as noticeable, I knew what clung to the material. I was mortified and humiliated. I couldn’t stop crying as the buggy got closer to our destination. Patrick pulled the buggy to the side of the road and turned to me, impatiently.

  “I thought you were braver than that?” he grunted, glaring at me. “Whatever happened to that spunky young woman who disguised herself as a boy and crossed to Wyoming to find a father who wasn’t even her real father? You wanted to pretend like you were a boy, and now you know what being one is all about. You should thank me for the education so you won’t be so squeamish on your wedding night!”

  I wanted to yell at him that I never planned to have a wedding night, since the prospects of being with someone like Patrick, sickened me, and Wawee’ne was already lost to me. Only if I said it out l
oud, Patrick would punish me all the more. He wanted to force me to marry while making me feel revolted by what I had to look forward to. He wanted to make me be like Loretta, who shunned his advances, so my husband would look for a mistress the same as he had. I began to realize why Loretta shunned Patrick’s advances. No telling what Patrick requested of her in the privacy of their bedroom?

  No wonder the marriage rules forbade the husband or wife to look at each other, and do everything in the dark, I thought to myself. Perhaps a proper woman should not be exposed to the knowledge of what I had witnessed. I wished I was still that innocent girl Mama had given those rules to in an effort to prepare me for marriage, so long ago. It certainly was not enough preparation, I frowned inside. What Gavin and I had witnessed between Patrick and Megan was a quick exchange of frustrated need, only lasting around ten minutes. It was the mingling of two bodies, and then it was over with. What Patrick had forced me to witness was a depravity of the act of love, and he wanted me to feel disgusted by it.

  “Stop your crying at once!” he demanded, which just made me cry all the more. “If you don’t stop this instant, I will make you wish you had never started!” he threatened.

  The look in his eyes stilled me. He almost looked like a madman, as he glared at me. Maybe he was a madman. Everything he had done since I met him seemed to point to it. I wondered if madness ran in the family, and I would become mad as well? He reached out his hands and grabbed my shoulders, shaking me, to try and get me to stop crying. His fingers bit into my skin, and now I was crying in pain.

  “Shut up!” he bellowed, landing his hand across my face.

  I pulled back and jumped down from the buggy.

  “I prefer to walk the rest the way,” I screamed up at him.

  “I won’t have it!” he roared, as he jumped down and grabbed my arm, trying to drag me to the buggy.

  As we approached the buggy, I was grabbing onto it, trying to keep him from putting me back in. I found my hand wrapping around the whip in its holder. I pulled it free and lashed out with it across Patrick’s face. Patrick felt the sting, reaching his hand to his cheek and seeing the blood on his gray kid gloves. His eyes became enraged, as he jerked the whip from my hand.

  At that point, I turned and ran, knowing I could not out run him, but hoping he would just give up trying to chase me down. Of course, I knew he wouldn’t. He was determined to catch me and punish me for my own rebellion over his demented ways. I looked over my shoulder to see him gaining, and leaped over a low rock wall. As I went over the wall, my skirt caught on it and caused me to trip forward. I could see Patrick approaching the wall, as I tried to scramble to get up, but my skirt was caught fast. I was going to have to face whatever Patrick had in store for me.

  Then, to my relief, I saw Patrick catch his foot on a rock which had fallen from the wall at one point and rolled to the ground. He lost his balance and started falling forward, the same as I had. This was my chance to escape, I told myself as I yanked at my skirt. Just as I did so, Patrick fell toward the wall and then landed with a sickening thud, his head hitting the wall. Blood started gushing from his forehead, and I was frozen in place.

  “Patrick?” I said, softly at first. “Are you all right?” I asked a little louder, only he was not moving.

  I had managed to disentangle my skirt, and got to my feet, coming to where Patrick lie.

  “Patrick!” I cried when I saw his eyes staring, blankly at me. Those same cat green eyes that had been taunting me earlier, but now they held no expression.

  I realized he wasn’t breathing. I scrambled to his side, and put my finger to the vein in his neck, but felt nothing. The blood was covering the rock wall, dripping off onto the grass, and I knelt there shaking in horror and confusion. I had hated Patrick. I had vowed to kill him myself, but I hadn’t expected this to happen. I thought of God and wondered if He had answered an unasked prayer? If that was the case, why had God allowed Patrick to misuse me in the first place? I would never understand God, I realized.

  It was really Patrick’s own fault, I kept telling myself. He was a despicable person and wanted me to suffer at his hand. That brother who was supposed to dote on me when I was little had become a monster in disguise. Now my tears started afresh, not because of a sense of loss, but out of fear and confusion.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, trying to decide what to do? How was I going to explain it? Should I try to drag Patrick back to the buggy or leave him and rush home? I knew I could never get his lifeless body in the buggy, and besides, I did not want to touch him!

  I ran to the buggy and picked up the whip that was on the ground. Then I climbed up inside. It was not that far to the house. I would find Gavin and ask him what I should do? I cracked the whip over the horse’s back and the buggy lurched forward, both hooves and wheels spitting up pebbles behind us.

  What was going to happen, I asked myself? It was a sure thing we couldn’t’ have a Ball now, only how were we going to inform people not to come, since it was scheduled to be given the next night? Maybe my parents would just turn it into a funeral instead, I reasoned.

  When the buggy reached the drive, I slowed my pace. The footman looked at me questioningly, when he saw I was driving.

  “Go fetch Gavin,” I told him. “I need his help. Patrick has been hurt.”

  “Should I inform your parents?” he asked.

  “No. We will return as soon as we discover his condition,” I said, as though I did not know Patrick was dead.

  He nodded and ran to get Gavin. When Gavin saw the look on my face, he knew it was serious. He didn’t say anything, though. He merely jumped up into the buggy and turned it around, heading back down the road I had come on.

  Once we got out of earshot of the house, Gavin turned to me. He could see me shaking, and noticed the red mark on my face.

  “What did he do this time?” Gavin asked, gritting his teeth in preparation of my answer.

  Only I don’t think he was prepared for what I was about to tell him. As we traveled back to the place where Patrick fell, I hurriedly gave him an account of what happened at Megan’s house.

  Gavin’s brows drew together in anger, but he didn’t seem very surprised.

  “How can he treat you that way?”

  His eyes could not resist looking down at my skirt and viewing the evidence.

  “Where is he? Did you run away from him, and that is why you have returned on your own?”

  “It is worse than that, Gavin. I did run away from him, after I had hit him with the whip, only he chased me. There has been an accident.”

  “What sort of accident?”

  The fear in Gavin’s face started to match mine, as I pointed to the wall where Patrick’s body was sprawled, and Gavin stopped the horses.

  “He tripped and fell! I was just trying to get away.”

  “Stay in the buggy,” Gavin instructed and jumped down.

  I watched him inspect Patrick’s body, feeling for a pulse, the same as I had. Then he came back to the buggy, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “We don’t dare move the body. We have to allow the authorities to inspect the scene first, to conclude that Patrick actually fell, and you did not smash his head in.”

  “I would never…!”

  “I know, but they don’t. I hate to ask this of you, but you need to remain here, while I go into the city and report the accident. If anyone stops, you can tell them that is what I am doing.”

  I did not want to remain there, looking at Patrick’s staring eyes. Staring the way he had stared at me while he forced me to watch him perform. Only now he looked blankly into nothingness.

  Gavin gave me a quick hug.

  “Will you be all right, staying here alone? If not I could take you back to the house and send someone out to remain with Patrick.”

  “I will be fine,” I said in a quivering voice. It is best if I am here when the constable comes to ask questions so I can answer them where my parents can’t watch on,
or try to blame me for my brother’s death.”

  “I will try and hurry,” he promised, and then I heard the hooves of the horse clattering down the road, as dust rose in the buggy’s wake.

  I sat on the other side of Patrick, where his staring eyes could not touch me, and leaned against the wall, hugging my knees to my chest. I couldn’t stop shaking. What would my parents do, once they learned the news? This couldn’t’ be happening, I kept telling myself. It must all be a bad dream. Everything that just happened at Megan’s house must be a bad dream. I wanted to strike it all from my brain, but I knew I couldn’t. It would be seared in my memory forever, causing nightmares to haunt me in the future.

  I should have followed my first instincts and fled from Megan’s place before Patrick could catch me. Then, even though I would have faced the consequences of Patrick’s wrath later, this would have never happened.

  Mama always said there was no use crying over spilled milk, only this was worse than spilled milk! Patrick was supposed to be the next in line to run the estate. Gavin was merely adopted. He didn’t carry the McGovern name. It would have to fall to Patrick’s son, I thought, a son who would never be raised to adulthood by his father. Only maybe that was a good thing, I tried to tell myself. At least Ian would never discover the kind of person his father actually was. For all I knew, he would treat Ian the same way his own father treated him and beat him in a temper. Maybe he already had. If not, Ian could hold him in his memory as the father he wanted to remember. Loretta would inherit Patrick’s money, which would be passed on to Ian when he became twenty-one.

  I wondered if Loretta would be happy Patrick had died, or would she miss him in spite of the person he had revealed to me, that he was? Maybe she didn’t know the real Patrick? I found it hard to believe, though. It did not take him long to show his true colors to me. He most likely showed them to his wife long ago. Unless…unless I was the one who drove Patrick to his madness. Gavin had said ever since I disappeared Patrick had developed a bad temper. Maybe all of this was my fault, and like Patrick, I wished he had never found me and brought me to this place.