Birthdays of a Princess

by Helga Zeiner

  She paused to steady her breath before she knocked on the warped entrance door. It took a while for Louise to open it, her eyes puffy from her afternoon nap.

  “Come on in,” she said. “I’ll make us coffee.”

  Melissa followed her into the kitchen and took a seat at the same dining table she used to do her homework on while growing up. It was dim and cold inside the house, nearly as cold as the early November air outside. The walk from the bus station had left her sweating, and she pulled her cardigan tighter to keep herself from shivering.

  “You look done in.” Louise poured water into the coffee-maker. “From that short walk? Really! You ought to—“

  “I’m here because I need your help,” Melissa said. “I think they’re on to us.”

  Louise turned to her daughter and sat down across the table.

  “Who?”

  “Detective Macintosh. He’s pretty sharp—Harding too, for that matter. They showed me a picture of Tiara after she’d won a pageant. They know she was registered under the name of Rodriguez.”

  “So what?” Louise got up and set out two mugs. “Since when is it a crime to send a pretty girl to beauty pageants?”

  “If they find out about Tony—”

  “Find out what?”

  “You can’t be that stupid. You know. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Louise poured coffee into the mugs, brought them over.

  “Excuse me, didn’t you say you came here for help? How am I going to help you if you refuse to tell me the whole story? Nothing makes sense inside my head, and I can’t give you any advice if I feel like that.”

  Melissa took a scalding sip of coffee. Not enough sugar.

  “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “You could begin by telling me the truth. Once and for all, did you have an affair with that creepy, greedy bastard?”

  “Look at me,” Melissa whispered. “What man would want me?”

  Louise wasn’t about to be thrown off track.

  “Tiara was about five or six then, right? That would have been about nine years ago. I assume you weren’t in such bad shape then, and some men—especially southern men—like their women shapely. Heck, you did most damage to yourself in the last three years since you came to Vancouver.”

  “All right! Tony and I did have a relationship. It started about a year after Gracie hired him.”

  “I knew it! Why the hell did you lie to me? You said he was just a dance teacher.”

  “Do you want the truth or not?” Melissa said.

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then shut up and listen.”

  “If I’d have known—”

  “I said, shut up! If you’d known it wouldn’t have changed anything. Tony betrayed me as a mother. He didn’t do what he did because he wanted me, he did it because he was a sick and greedy bastard. You said so yourself.”

  Louise pursed her lips, then nodded.

  “It went on until just before we left.” Melissa said. “We were very careful. I wanted to tell Gracie many times, but Tony said that if she found out he’d never get another job as a dance teacher.”

  “But you told me Gracie fired him after Tiara stopped doing pageants,” Louise said. “Why keep it a secret then?”

  “He was still worried—he mostly taught rich kids, and rich husbands don’t like to think their wives might be fucking their daughter’s dance teacher. Tony was scared.”

  “Which they’d only know if Gracie told them.”

  “Trust me, she would have.”

  Louise sighed and shook her head.

  “So you had an affair with your daughter’s dance teacher. Not very smart, but what’s the big deal here? What’s it got to do with Tiara?”

  “Tony was poor judgment on my part, they’ll say I was a bad mother. Don’t you get it?”

  Louise gave her a hard stare.

  “It was Tony, wasn’t it? Tony gave Tiara drugs? I bet it was him.”

  Melissa closed her eyes. Her mother wouldn’t see the truth if it spat in her face.

  “Do you think we should tell the detectives?”

  “Why?” Louise said. “It’s all in the past. The less said about that unfortunate time, the better.”

  All in the past? On the bus home, Melissa thought back. To the beginning. She closed her eyes and remembered the day Gracie introduced Inez’ brother, the day she met Antonio Alvares. Tall, lithe, hips thrust forward, legs wide—Tony asserted his superiority with every move he made. Similar to her Mike in appearance only with that smooth dark skin, sensuous mouth, the graceful lean body—but so different in character. Untamable, not to be domesticated. Dangerous.

  When Gracie introduced them, he took her hand—not a handshake but an intimate clasp, his fingers slipping into her palm, sending all sorts of sensations up her arm. By the time she sat down to watch him do a brief dance routine, she was madly in lust.

  He came by the house twice a week. She was craving those afternoons like an addict. Just to see him, to watch him work, to listen to his voice as he guided Tiara through the moves was enough.

  And nothing happened for one whole year.

  Tiara had come back from a photo session unusually upset. She had stopped throwing tantrums some time ago, now she just came home, crept into bed and pulled the blanket over her head.

  Gracie left as soon as she dropped Tiara off—said she had some errant to run. “Call Tony and cancel,” she said on her way out the door. The princess was too tired for a lesson.

  Melissa clutched the piece of paper with the scribbled phone number in her hands as if it was the Holy Grail, drawing out the moment she would speak to him. When she finally got the nerve to dial his number the call went straight to his answering service, shortly after that her doorbell rang.

  When she told him Tiara was indisposed, he looked disappointed—but only for a moment.

  “Never mind.” He smiled. “I’ll teach you instead.”

  Again, he took her by the hand and dragged her into the training room. She told him Gracie wouldn’t pay him for today. He said, he didn’t expect to get paid.

  “I would love to dance with you. It’ll be my pleasure.”

  They were alone for the first time ever. She was so self-conscious of her bulges that she didn’t want him to touch her. She was hot with excitement and worried over wet armpits, moist hands, glistening cheeks and fuzzy hair. She felt clumsy, heavy and graceless.

  He didn’t seem to mind her uncoordinated attempts to sway her body with the rhythm of the music. He was pulling her strings. And at some stage, he pulled her closer. It was the most natural movement to swing her into his arms until there was no space between them. She had no resistance in her, would not have wanted to, wanted only one thing, to crawl under his skin and stay there forever. Everything around her and in her stopped, including her pounding heart. It just stopped. Her lungs didn’t need air and her blood stopped flowing. He kissed her on the mouth.

  It was a moment she had not expected, had not imagined, had not hoped for. Yet she accepted it totally, succumbed to it with her whole being. She had never felt so grateful in her life.

  His lips slid down her throat while he opened her blouse. Once her breasts were fully exposed, he cupped them with his hands, took a step back and admired them with hungry eyes. She didn’t feel self-conscious—they were his to do what he wanted with. He kissed them tenderly first, then sucked her nipples until she couldn’t stand it any longer. Heat shot through her loins and cramped her vagina in her first orgasm since Mike. She doubled over with the pleasure.

  The bus stopped.

  Melissa checked herself quickly. The memory of that afternoon had left her dizzy, panting. She stood up and moved toward the door, feeling the eyes of the driver as she got off.

  Chapter 35

  After Stanley had reassured me at the last session that we had made huge progress, I got the flu, and I got it bad. My head throbbed, my throat constricted, my nose blocked, all my
mucous membranes worked themselves into a frenzy. I sneezed and spat and coughed and complained croakily.

  For several days and nights I was too survival-oriented to even think about why Stanley thought we’d made progress. In my ninth year I was full of anger and angst was stuck in my feverish mind. Couldn’t imagine why, could only repeat it over and over.

  In my ninth year I was full of anger and angst in my ninth year I was full of anger and angst in my ninth year I was full of anger and angst.

  Now I’m better. I lie on my bed in the hospital section of the holding tank they keep me in, drink the tea and chicken broth the overworked nurse supplies at regular intervals and think about a suitable line for my tenth year. What would be appropriate to sum up those twelve hectic months?

  Birthday Nine—or is it Ten?

  The year leading up to my tenth birthday was dominated by several pageants. Even at home everything revolved around the contests. I had to do my routines non-stop, and Tony poked his stick into me harder than ever to make up for lost time. Being away from home wasn’t any better. We spent endless hours cramped in the car, always in a rush to get to mediocre hotels with stuffy rooms, only to hang out in the corridors in front of hotel ballrooms, forever waiting to be called on stage.

  When Mom and Gracie weren’t yelling at each other, they fussed over me or my dress or my hair. Not my nails though. I had made a deal with her. If I let her photographer friend take his pictures, she wouldn’t put those nails on me ever again. I think she was glad this could be a point of negotiation. Although Gracie didn’t give up much with that promise; she’d tricked me.

  But I tricked her too. When I was on stage I always smiled, that’s very, very important. The judges want to see how happy you are doing your routine. For the pictures Gracie and her photographer friend made me do, I refused to smile, no matter how often he told me to look like I’m enjoying myself. Even the constant fear that the angels would make Gracie ill or strike us with a terrible disaster didn’t make me smile.

  It had been two years since Gracie had told me that I’d been responsible for the destruction Katrina had brought upon my home town. If I had done what was expected of me, Galveston would have been spared.

  Stanley comes visiting and I quickly close my journal and hide it under the covers.

  “Feeling any better?”

  I shake my head.

  “Still angry?”

  Can he read my mind?

  “At you?”

  “Were you angry at me?”

  Oh Christ, here we go again. I don’t know what it will achieve, but I decide to play nice.

  “Yeah, I was. But I’ve been thinking. It’s not your fault for not getting me. I don’t get me, so how could you?”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  The flu must have drained me. No energy left, no barriers up.

  “Where do we start?”

  “You were telling me about the time you were eight, when your internal anger had started to establish itself.”

  “Funny, that’s what I’ve just been writing about. Looking for a catch phrase, a one-liner to sum up the following year.”

  “And, did you come up with one?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  I start describing my year when I was nine. The crazy schedule, all the pageants Gracie had booked for me after the storm and its aftermath had passed and things had returned to normal. I tell him about the nails, and while I’m talking, something totally shocking comes back to me. Once I was back at the pageants, I never won! Stanley notices my perplexed pause and digs his heels in right away.

  “You didn’t win any contest?”

  “Not a single one. How could I forget that?”

  “But you had won just about everything before, didn’t you? That’s what you told me.”

  I nod, still confused, but already trying to sort the splinter images piercing into my consciousness.

  “Why do you think that happened? What went wrong?”

  A lot went wrong that year.

  I’m leaning against the wall of the auditorium of the Holiday Inn Express Hotel in Mcallen, next to Mom who is holding my hand. I dislike this immensely, her hand feels like a used diaper. Lately she made me wear them at night, so I do know what that feels like.

  We are waiting for the announcement.

  It’s my first contest after my birthday. I now belong to the difficult nine-year-old group. Difficult because at that age the girls are not considered children any longer, although deep inside they still are. They don’t know how to move, they suddenly feel awkward, develop small breasts, shoot up, need braces. Most—like me (Gracie’s girl)—feel awkward, the few who don’t are the winners. I was called out right away, a shock to Mom and Gracie. Got the Miss Prettiest Smile title, crap without any prize money attached to it. I didn’t even get a crown, and we couldn’t leave because contest rules specify every participant has to stay for the crowning ceremony. I didn’t understand what was happening. All those years, I had made it at least to the Supreme titles, a few times even to the overall Grand Supreme, and once I had captured the coveted Ultima Grand Supreme. I thought they’d call out my name later again, but they didn’t. Mom was already crying and Gracie was too stunned to cry. She stormed out of the room, leaving Mom and me standing against the wall.

  Later, days or weeks later, I can’t quite place the memory flashes on a timeline, Gracie and Mom are fighting.

  “She lost her moves! So many months without any ballet training will do that,” Mom said.

  Gracie pulled a face. “I couldn’t justify keeping Tony when there were no pageants. They wouldn’t have paid for him.”

  “You should’ve thought about that when you booked the contests! Tony can’t do miracles in such a short time. But you think you know everything. You’re so full of yourself, you think the sun shines out of your ass!”

  “Oh, shut up,” Gracie yelled back. “He’s lucky I’ve insisted on taking him back. But if she keeps losing, he’s out again like a flash! Christ, I’d give anything to see her win again.”

  “Then give Tony more time with her.”

  Gracie’s shoulders slumped.

  “It’s not that easy. The sponsor and her guys want to see a return on their investment! They’re tired of putting a lot of money in and getting so little back!”

  Mom’s bitter laughter made her bosom jiggle like jelly.

  “Oh yeah? Those greedy bastards didn’t see enough green yet? Every month you have her picture taken, and I never see any of that money! Oh, forgive me, I don’t see it because it’s hidden under your mattress! Getting rid of Tony? How ridiculous is that!”

  The fight goes on, or there are several fights and I muddle them all into one. It’s always about money. And Tony. Gracie insists that every dollar earned has been reinvested in me and that times are harder than Mom imagines. Mom keeps harping on about getting back on track with my pageant training—especially those all-important dance lessons. She wants more of those. More of Tony. A lot of it doesn’t make sense to me while I’m listening to them bickering and bitching. I cover my ears, only to drop my hands in the hope to hear the two words that would release me from my agony. No more.

  But neither Gracie nor Mom are saying it.

  “So we got a name now,” Stanley says.

  “A name?”

  “Tony! You said Gracie couldn’t justify keeping Tony on the payroll.”

  Did I say that? Yes, of course I did.

  “Tony. The Stick.” It’s kind of a relief to have found a name, even if it’s an unimportant one.

  “Did he ever come back to your house?”

  “At the end of the year, after I lost all the contests, Gracie fired him again.”

  Stanley shifts in his chair, always a sign that he isn’t giving up.

  “You’re aware that you have been brought up in an abusive environment.”

  “Nobody hurt me.”

  “I believe you were emotionally abused. C
orrect me if I’m wrong, but all signs point toward this. You were wetting your bed—”

  “I’d appreciate it, if you could keep this out of your notes.”

  “Sorry, can’t do that.”

  “Who will read that crap?”

  “The courts get a full report that outlines the information I have used to reach my conclusions. A copy goes to the Crown and the defense.”

  “Shit!”

  “I told you that when we moved on to the comprehensive assessment. You have committed a serious offense, and it’s my job to find out what made you do it and how responsible you are. It’ll determine if you should be tried as a juvenile or as an adult.”

  Saying so, he uses his puppy-dog voice. Softening the blow. I understand, he needs to establish the degree of my madness to determine how long I should be locked up. He needs to understand me and my motive.

  “Do you think you’ll ever find out why I did it?”

  “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  “And to help you, I have to let you dissect my childhood like a corpse in a morgue?”

  “More like a living human being.”

  “You can’t dissect a living human being. That would make you a murderer. Like me.”

  “Let me correct myself: I need to dissect—meaning to examine, not using the literal context of cutting apart piece by piece—the childhood of a living human being to determine if there had been a trauma.”

  “A trauma that may lead to committing a crime?”

  “Yes. In your case I suspect there has been more than one trauma.”

  I’m getting curious. “Wouldn’t it help me remember things better or faster if you give me a little heads up on those?”

  He ponders, takes out a kerchief, cleans his glasses, puts it back in his pocket.

  “Just look at all the people who were around you when growing up. Question their motives. You’re doing a great job piecing it together already. It’ll all come back to you eventually.”