In the Image of Grace

by Charlotte Ann Schlobohm

  That was the last time a photographer ever came. None of us were very cooperative. Our father got mad because none of us would smile. After that for pictures of us we’d rely on an occasional one that would pop up in a newspaper from some sort of event for our father. It was always the same picture; we’d just occasionally get older. We were always standing side by side according to height, in the same khaki clad outfit as in the newspaper picture that Elizabeth left for us.

  Isabelle and Clarissa came out into the lobby area with me and we all went outside and stood on the front curb and waited until it was all over.

  ………………………………………

  A couple days after Elizabeth’s funeral our father announced that we were going downtown to get new clothes, it was the first time he took us shopping. At first I thought it was an odd way to show affection seeing that we have never been shopping before and he has never shown affection either. It was a Sunday morning when he told us all to get dressed because we had to go buy school clothes.

  All the clothes that we owned were ones that our father cataloged ordered and we always matched, wearing what seemed almost like a uniform. The three of us got dressed in matching khaki pants, black flats and a navy overcoat and we walked with our father over to the EL station.

  We stood on the EL platform waiting for the train, shivering from the breeze and extra wind the expressway on either side yielded. It was about the middle of fall, so it was starting to get cold and all the leaves were slowly changing colors. The middle of the horizon past the expressway was speckled in golds, reds, oranges and what remained of the greens. Above that was an overcast sky and below laid the city, the tops of all the brick apartment buildings and farther off in the distance the city skyline.

  There was a crisp clean smell to the air and we stood in silence. Our father wasn’t one for talking. Whenever we were around him there was an awkward silence. I don’t think I even heard a word from him until that morning. The train rattled up and we all got on. We got off at Washington and went to a department store called Marshall Prairie’s. Our dad took us to the junior department and told us to select several outfits each. It was quite overwhelming. Since we were shut up in the house most the time we weren’t too up on the fashion trends. I mainly got jeans, sweaters and tee-shirts, mostly plain in color, but a few stripes here and there. We also got to get some new shoes and coats.

  Many teenage girls I’m sure would have been ecstatic at the opportunity we had, but it didn’t thrill us all that much. Our sister just died. We were there with our father who really didn’t seem to care for us all that much. There were other things I would have preferred to do. It was that weekend when our father made the announcement about us going to school.

  Chapter Two

  After Elizabeth’s death we were allotted about a couple weeks for grievances and we were then expected to bounce into school, not even a private school; a public school. I only say that because we had a private tutor. Public school seemed like a step in the opposite direction. The last time we saw our tutor Mr. Carl was at Elizabeth’s funeral. He sat in the back wearing a suit that looked too large on him. We didn’t know for certain why all of a sudden we were going to school. Perhaps the death of Elizabeth showed our father that we needed to be socialized.

  ………………………………………

  We stood there, Isabelle, Clarissa and I on the threshold of real live actual high school. We had the slightest idea what to expect. We were to arrive to the school’s doorstep by way of the city bus. The three of us stood perfectly dressed with our messenger bags at our sides with all the other teenagers hoping to be delivered to the same location in which we were going. We were disguised in our brand new school clothes we got from our downtown trip, trying to look the part of normal happy teenagers.

  I stood at the bus stop in jeans, a plain gray sweater, with a brown buttoned down coat and over the coat a navy messenger bag stocked with new notebooks and pens. Some canvas gym shoes called Buck Baylor’s on my feet. I liked the simplicity the Bucks had to offer. Isabelle had on pretty much the same thing, but in varying shades of depression. Clarissa wore color. Somehow the pink she wore added a nice soft color to her cheeks. None of the other kids at the bus stop looked very enthused. They all swore under their breath because the bus was late. There was a cold wind that kept knocking into my ears making me wish I had worn a hat. The bus pulled up and screeched to a halt and everybody made a mad dash to get on.

  The three of us waited and then got on. There was definitely nowhere to sit yet alone barely any room to stand. Everybody was squished on that bus like sardines in a can. I think a few of the kids were even splat against the bus’s windows looking like they were bugs squished on a car’s windshield. The bus sped down the busy city street cutting off whoever it felt like, every so often screeching to a halt to force another passenger on. When we finally got to school the bus doors opened and everybody kind of fell out on top of each other.

  A large dark brick building stood in front of us with an immense green lawn spreading all around it. It looked like part of a university and not a high school. The building had many gothic structures, from the windows and doors to the spires on the roof. A large cement stadium sat next to the school. Supposedly it had been used in a couple movies. I didn’t know movies very well, so I wasn’t able to verify people’s claims. We walked up to the school where there were pools of students waiting at the entrance doors. We went in through the main entrance because we had to get our schedules and such.

  In the main office we were given our schedules by a woman with a nasally voice and given some guidelines and directions. We were then set off to fend for ourselves. The bell rang and the hallways sprung to life. In an instant people were shoving past us to get to their lockers. Clarissa, Isabelle and I stood in the middle of the main hall in everybody’s way. I was taking it all in. I was quite pleased with my first impression of the school. The main hallway and entrance was covered in a dark oak wood paneling with proud pictures and plaques hanging on the walls. A glass trophy case was filled with glories from the past. The front hall had an air of academia and sophistication to it.

  The floor had has these colored stripes running up and down the sides. At one time the school was a very crowded prep school and I was told that the lines were used for crowd control. One color meant one direction and so and so forth. It made sense, but they weren’t used anymore. There was a flourish of teenage bodies swimming all over the halls. We walked down the main hall and turned left, where much to my disappointment the hall looked more like a typical high school hall, but I didn’t have much to go on. That was the first high school hallway I had ever been in.

  Either side of the hall was lined with brown lockers. There were some pendants up on the wall. Some lockers were open with kids in them pulling stuff out, some had paper sticking out the cracks, others had kids leaning on them. Isabelle, Clarissa and I congregated in a small alcove where there were doors that led into the girls’ locker room. We looked at our schedules trying to figure out where to go. Isabelle had to go to history on the third floor, I had to go to American literature on the second floor and Clarissa had to go geometry which was also on the second floor.

  The day had just begun, but I felt I was enjoying it already. I liked all the commotion and noise and people everywhere. It was a far different atmosphere than what I was used to. My sisters and I parted ways. I found my literature class and cautiously walked in. There were about six rows of desks lined up across the classroom. They were the kind that were really chairs and had a small writing surface attached. I soon found out they were barely big enough to hold anything. The wall directly across from the door was lined with windows that went almost up to the ceiling. Light spilled into the room leaving streaks of yellow across the old worn wood floor.

  I wasn’t sure if I should sit down or not. I didn’t know if there were assigned seats or what. I was one of the first people there. There was one other kid
sitting in the back corner of the classroom. He had a baseball hat pulled down over his eyes and his arms were hugged around his body. I was pretty sure he was asleep. Somebody else shoved past me and went and sat in the third row. It was a girl with her hair pulled back in a tight black pony tail. Her facial features seemed to of been pulled back with her pony tail making for one taut looking face.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the girl. She didn’t answer. “Excuse me, Miss,” I said pensively thinking my phrasing was quite improper for high school. The girl quickly picked up on that.

  She sharply looked up at me. “What do you want Miss Merry Sunshine?” She asked raising her eyebrows like they were saying, hello, why are you bothering me?

  “Are the seats assigned?”

  “No,” she answered.

  “All right,” I responded shaking my head as other students started to filter into the classroom. I choose a seat in front so the teacher could see me when she entered. The bell rang and about a minute after that the teacher arrived. The teacher was a curious looking woman in probably her sixties, close to retirement. She hunched in way where it looked almost like she had a hump. Her shoulders were draw up and her head was pulled in, kind of like a vulture. She had on some khaki slacks with a blue denim collared shirt and a vest with cats embroidered on it. Behind her she pulled a crate on wheels. She stopped at the podium that was in front of the class, bent over and pulled out an attendance book that was in the crate. She stood up quickly, scanned the room to check that she had everyone and then her eyes stopped on me.

  “Ah yes, you must be the new student,” she declared giving me the once over.

  “Yes ma'am,” I replied as politely as I could. I did want to make a good impression.

  “Mrs. Brown would do just fine,” she answered. “What was your name again?”

  “Charlotte Ann Schlobohm,” I stated properly annunciating because my name was a mouthful.

  “Uh huh,” came from Mrs. Brown as she wrote in her attendance book. “And spell that last name for me.”

  So I spelled the whole thing out.

  “German?” She asked about my name.

  “Correct.”

  “All right,” Mrs. Brown said. “Pull out your copies of The Pendulum. Charlotte you will need to obtain a copy, for now you can look at Mr. Russo’s. He is to your right.”

  I looked over to my right to see who Mr. Russo was. He was this tall kid who was smiling at me goofily with what seemed like too many teeth in his mouth. Mr. Russo, who I would later learn was named Lawrence, scooted his desk over to mine and opened his book and folded it back to the appropriate spot. He smiled and nodded his head at me like he was somehow satisfied. I tried not to lean in too close.

  Mrs. Brown had students read excerpts and they discussed this and that and my mind started to wander. I started to think about Elizabeth and how she would have probably really enjoyed school. She was always trying to find ways to get out of our house and interact with people. She only got free on a few occasions, mainly a couple times when Ms. Dunderfeltz sent her to the store to get something.

  If our father ever found out, Ms. Dunderfeltz would have been out of a job, so it was just another secret in our house. Elizabeth would always come back with exciting reports about what we called the outside world. She’d tell us about the people in line at the grocery store and the cashier that rung her up and anybody or thing she’d see on the street. Isabelle, Clarissa and I would hang onto every detail. And there I sat surrounded by all these different people, so many possible stories, the girl with the face, the teacher, that Mr. Russo kid, but I wouldn’t be able to share any of it with her.

  After literature I was off to what was called division, many call it home room. I was in division 533. There were about thirty-three kids in there, all of which were also juniors. I received a more formal reception than I had in my literature class. Mr. Alvarez my division teacher called me up front and introduced me. I looked out on to everyone. They all just stared blankly at me. I stared back at sixty-six eyeballs. Mr. Alvarez stopped talking and there was an awkward silence. Then he asked if I had anything to say and I said no, then sat down. I sat down next to a girl who smiled kindly at me. She had very bad acne, but you could tell underneath there was a cute face there.

  I looked around the room. It looked like it was a geography classroom. There were maps all over the wall and a few globes on shelves. Some announcements were then given and then after about fifteen minutes a bell rang and everybody was on their way again.

  I had a couple more classes and then lunch. Lunch was an interesting observation of the teenage species. I had a packed lunch in a brown paper bag and I think I was the only one in the school besides my sisters with a lunch like that. It seemed almost everybody bought lunch or just ate candy bars, chips and pop. I wasn’t too sure where to sit, so I found a table in a corner facing the whole cafeteria with nobody sitting at it and took a seat.

  The only teenage socialization I had observed was in the couple of movies that I had actually seen re-ran on GWN and it was nothing like what I was observing. We didn’t have a TV, but Ms. Dunderfeltz had a portable one. She would bring it with her and watch TV in the laundry room while she washed and folded all the clothes. We’d always slip in there with her when we had the chance, but anyways there wasn’t the stereotypical table of jocks with cheerleaders flocked around and the table of freaks and preppies and so on and so forth. It kind of looked like everybody intermingled. I watched the flurry of activity until the bell rang and it was yet again on to my next class.

  After school I met Isabelle and Clarissa by the main entrance so we could go home together, the sophomore, freshman and I the junior. I felt satisfied with my day, but then that made me feel kind of sad because I wasn’t sure if that was what I should have been feeling at that time. It hadn’t been that long since Elizabeth’s death, just a matter of weeks really. Satisfaction did not seem appropriate at the time.

  Chapter Three

  That night after the first day of school I had a dream. It might have been the same one Elizabeth was having because the screaming was there. It was a terrible sounding scream coming from a female. It sounded like she was being murdered, or she was witnessing someone being murdered. All I remember seeing in the dream was a dark room or something and before I woke up I heard Elizabeth say, “Find mother.”

  I didn’t want to open my eyes at first after I woke up. For a moment I thought Elizabeth was in my room with me. I was able to hear someone breathing very softly and in the distance I heard the screaming. Slowly I opened my eyes to my darkened bedroom. I appeared to be the only one in there. My dream left a lingering feeling of uneasiness and anxiety. I pulled my blanket up to my chin and lay in place for awhile. I couldn’t shake the feeling, so I got up and walked down the hall to Isabelle’s room. I went over to her bed and climbed in.

  “Move over,” I whispered giving her a little shove. Whenever one of us would get scared or lonely we’d crawl into bed with each other. Just the presence of another person seems to make everything better. Isabelle mumbled and rolled over onto her side. I lay on my left side and stared into the dark. I didn’t want to close my eyes again because I was scared I’d still hear the screaming. I tried to let my mind drift off to other things, to Isabelle sleeping next to me.

  Isabelle was always the most sensitive out of us all. She’d cry when she read a sad book, or even when one of us would say something sweet to her. She generally only spoke when the occasion desperately called for her words. She was always observing though. You could tell because her eyes were always looking around for something to affix too. She had a very keen sense of observation. She was probably the most like Elizabeth. Elizabeth was also quite quiet. She was always very focused on her duties of tending to us. Nobody ever told her she was to act as our care giver. She saw a need for it and it came natural to her. We never got to feel the love of our real mother or father. Our father was there, but he never gave us any inclination that he
actually loved us. We had each other and that got us through the days, but we no longer had the love of Elizabeth, just the memory of it.

  Isabelle and I were awoken by her alarm clock. Our father got us each one that past weekend when we also got our clothes. She rolled over and seemed surprised to see me there. “When did you mosey in here?” She queried rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

  “Around midnight I think,” I responded sitting up.

  Isabelle raised her eyebrows asking me why.

  “I think I had Elizabeth’s dream or nightmare or whatever you call it.”

  “What!” Isabelle shouted.

  I nodded.

  “What was it like?”

  “Well, I don’t remember seeing anything, but there was definitely screaming in a dark place and it was awful, like someone was being killed or something.” I paused, bit my lip and looked at Isabelle. “I think it’s still there too, somewhere in the distance I can still faintly hear it.”

  Isabelle looked very worried. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was drawn in. “You can’t be next. I would simply die myself.”

  “No, I think Elizabeth wants me to do something.”

  Isabelle raised her eyebrows again.

  “Right before I woke up she told me to find our mother.”

  Isabelle’s eyes got even wider and her mouth dropped open. I bit my lip, raised my eyebrows and shook my head yes.

  “It was like she was there with me when she said it.”

  “How do we find her?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. I had the slightest idea.

  “Hey,” Isabelle and I heard across the room. It was Clarissa. She walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. Isabelle and I filled her in.

  “Where do we even start?” I sighed.

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