“I guess I really would have benefited from a brother or sister.”
We paused. We could see the house now. It looked as quiet as ever. Grandmother Myra was not out on the back porch waiting for me. After my afternoon, it really looked more like a prison.
“I hope we can figure out some way soon to let me visit and take you out,” Mason said. “Maybe I can be just walking by with Claudine or something.”
“I don’t know. I’ll think about it. I’ve got to go slowly with them, or my grandmother will put an end to my going to public school, Mason.”
“Okay. I won’t give up. I’ll be watching for that ribbon,” he added, then kissed me quickly and started away.
I knew he was getting frustrated with meeting me secretly all the time. I wondered how much longer it would last. Both depressed and excited by the afternoon, I headed for the house.
The first thing that struck me after I entered was the same silence. I went into the living room, saw that no one was there, and put my things away as quietly as I could, assuming that they were both taking naps now. I hid the bathing suit and then sat on my bed thinking. It was getting to the time when Grandmother Myra would begin working on dinner and having me do things.
I rose and went to the stairway to listen. There were no sounds coming from upstairs. Quietly, I walked up the stairs and went to their bedroom. Surprisingly, the door was open. I peered in and saw no one there. Confused now, I hurried back down the stairs and looked in the garage. Grandfather Prescott’s car was not there. They had gone somewhere.
I wandered back to the kitchen and stood wondering if I should start preparing a salad. Wherever they had gone, when they returned, Grandmother Myra would be very happy I had. I started for the refrigerator and stopped. I didn’t know how I had missed it. I had walked through the kitchen, but there it was.
A note.
It read, “Taking your grandmother to the hospital in an ambulance. I’ll call when I know more. Grandpa.”
16
The thing that struck me most was his using the word “Grandpa” instead of “Grandfather.” Never in my life did I call him Grandpa or Papa. Grandmother Myra always made a point of calling him “your grandfather.” I especially never called her “Grandma.” The formality seemed very important to both of them.
Not now.
I stood staring at the note as if the words might change, like words on a television screen. Very rarely was either of my grandparents sick. Oh, they had their colds and aches, but never once did either of them spend any time at a hospital. Consequently, it was likewise very rare for me to be home alone and not to anticipate hearing or seeing Grandmother Myra at any time. During my early years, she would hover over me or surprise me as if she believed she was stopping an evil thought or action from occurring.
The silence around me suddenly made me aware of sounds usually floating beneath the surface in the house. It wasn’t only the familiar creaks in the wooden structure that were heard at night. It was the ticking of clocks, a small drip in one of the kitchen-sink faucets, and the tapping of tiny birds as they strutted on the porch floor just outside the back window. I heard the swish of automobiles passing by on the road, but most of all, I heard the trembling of my heart. I could almost feel it cringing under my breast, folding over itself because of the blanket of fear that had fallen over me.
I wasn’t sure what frightened me most.
Was I afraid my grandmother would die or afraid she wouldn’t?
Was I frightened by the possibility that if she died, my grandfather would claim that he couldn’t be responsible for me any longer, that it was too much for an elderly man to raise a teenage girl and perhaps it was better if some social agency took control and placed me in a foster home? Or perhaps even worse, send me to live with my mother, something I once dreamed of doing and now feared?
I turned slowly to look through the house, to study every shadow, listen to every creak, so I could distinguish the ordinary from something new. Was Satan himself there with me? Grandmother Myra claimed that death came into the world when Adam and Eve committed original sin. I imagined it to be like a great dark cloud that swirled over us all, everywhere, and when it sensed an opening, it pounced. Was something seriously wrong with Grandmother Myra? Had death taken a firm grip on this house? Could I smell it, feel it, or see it?
Throughout my childhood, Grandmother Myra had molded so many different terrifying creatures, children of Satan and sin, for me to visualize. She had me watching for them constantly. She designed them, the seven deadly sins and their offspring, grotesque imps, spidery dark shadows, just waiting to embrace me and make me one of their own. She would categorize something I had done, pointing her finger of accusation at me.
“That’s lust.”
“That’s sloth.”
“That’s wrath.”
I was on constant alert all my waking hours. Just think a bad thought, just weaken once to the temptation of cheating and lying, and one of them would seize me. If they didn’t do it right away, she told me, they would come at night when I was asleep and helpless. They would crawl into my bed beside me, and slowly, like a paper towel absorbing something spilled, my body would absorb them.
And when I woke in the morning, I wouldn’t even know it had happened, she said. But she would know. She would be able to take one look at me and see immediately that one of Satan’s own was inhabiting not only my body but my very soul. During those early years, I would look anxiously at her to see what she saw in me. She kept the warnings warm and frequent.
“And once they get a grip on your soul, only God’s deific forgiveness could rescue you from the fires below.”
I walked out of the kitchen and sat on the sofa, thinking. Shouldn’t I start preparing dinner? If they returned from the hospital, Grandfather Prescott would probably be hungry, even if Grandmother Myra wasn’t. Both of them would be very impressed that I had done what had to be done and not waited for instructions.
But as the minutes passed, contrary to what I anticipated in myself, I didn’t continue to worry about Grandmother Myra’s condition or what would become of me if the worst happened. I couldn’t stop it. What came over me was not continued and increased fear but a warm excitement. I closed my eyes and actually moaned, recalling the passion between Mason and me on that tiny beach. Those images and feelings swept everything else aside.
Once again, I felt the electric moist warmth of his lips on my neck, my breasts, and my stomach. I replayed his hands gently widening my legs and his fingers moving under the bottom of the bathing suit, inching it down. It excited me more to remember it all in my grandparents’ living room, on the sofa. It was more than simply sex. It was defiance, and that defiance heightened the passion, quickened my breath, unfolded my fearful heart so it could beat to a different rhythm, a rhythm that began between my legs and thumped up my body until I couldn’t restrain the cry of pleasure that reverberated under my breasts and made my body tremble and tremble until I could feel it explode.
The relief that followed was welcomed, but it was as if I had been lowered back into my body, into the house, and into all the rules and restrictions that had kept me caged for so long. I looked around fearfully, expecting to see some distorted, slimy creature smiling licentiously and joyfully at me.
“You’re one of us now,” it would say. “Welcome to your destiny.”
But there was nothing there, nothing in any shadow, and nothing hovering in any corner. There was only that silence. Passion between two people wasn’t the doorway to hell after all, I thought. It was something wonderful, something that made us feel alive. Yes, it opened doors but not the doorways to death and damnation. God didn’t do this to us to test us and then punish us. He did it so we could enjoy the full blessing of the gift of life. Yes, you could misuse it. Yes, you could ruin your life the way my mother had, but it didn’t have to be that way, to cause that dreadful destiny. This didn’t confirm any prophecy. I was strong enough when I had to be. I wi
ll be the master of my own fate, the captain of my own soul.
It was truly a liberation. I laughed in defiance and stood up slowly but confidently. There was nothing there to fear; there never was. This was simply the home of people who had become afraid and who had tried to impose that fear on me. Why couldn’t they understand that by doing all this, they had permitted my mother, my self-centered, rebellious mother, to win, to control their lives, and almost to control mine, too?
Still riding on that stallion of defiance and new confidence, I practically galloped up the stairway. I had wanted to do this for a long, long time. I went into their bedroom and began to search drawers, not taking great care to cover up that I had done so. That was part of my new defiance.
I found it under Grandmother Myra’s Bible, the key to my mother’s bedroom, the forbidden room. I hurried out and went to the doorway eagerly, but when I faced it, I hesitated. Had I overestimated the strength of my defiance? Could I do this? Wasn’t I still afraid? Suddenly, for me, that door was more than a door; it was a barrier that for all my life had separated me from myself. What had my grandmother shut away from herself? What did she fear that I would see, and why?
My fingers trembled as I inserted the key into the lock. For a few moments, that was all I did. Then I turned it, heard it click open, and reached for the door handle after taking a deep breath.
The afternoon sun set on the side of the house. It was low but still very strong, so that it leaked in around the closed curtains enough for everything in the room to be seen. I was anticipating a room completely stripped down, only a mattress on the bed and nothing on the walls or on the dresser. I didn’t expect the light switch to illuminate the room through two bedside lamps with pretty pink shades, each with a cute ceramic girl in a pink and white dress and funny red shoes and a purplish table with an orange-striped cat sitting on it.
The queen-size four-poster bed was in antique white. The canopy had scrolls that matched the scrolls on the headboard and footboard, with flowery tops. The side tables matched. Each had one drawer and two open shelves with what looked like fresh tissues popping out of tissue boxes, stacks of children’s picture books, and, on the right-side table, a wooden jewelry box. The floors of the room were a polished light maple, with an antique white fluffy area rug that was so spotless that it looked brand new.
On the left was a desk that matched the bedroom set. There was a scrolled desk chair with a pink soft cushion. To my surprise, there was a computer on the desk. It was not very old-looking, either. I had seen some pictures of earlier computers. They were large and bulky, but this one was slim.
Because the room was so immaculate, I was hesitant to enter, but I finally took the first step, moving like someone navigating over jagged rocks that jutted out of a raging current. As I became more courageous, I touched things, looked at and fingered the toys, petted the doll with almost human hair on the bed, noting how lifelike it seemed with its soft blue eyes and simulated wet lips. I examined some of the games and then opened the closet door, expecting an empty space, but I saw instead racks full of dresses and skirts and blouses. On the right were two shelves of shoes, many obviously bought to match outfits.
Anyone who looked at this room would swear someone was still living in it. I was stunned and confused. My attention went to the pictures displayed on the dresser and the two side tables. They were framed photographs of my mother when she was nine or ten, with my grandparents. Everyone looked happy, buoyant, and, most of all, loving.
I turned around and around, repeatedly looking at everything. It was as though time had not stopped in this room. It was still the way it had been when my mother was a little girl, yes, but it did give the sense of being a living shrine to hope and happiness. In this room, there were no heavy religious icons and no framed biblical sayings. The room was an island in a house filled with religious warnings, threats of damnation, and reminders of our spiritual weaknesses.
As I stood there, a realization took form in my mind. This room wasn’t simply my mother’s old room. It was Grandmother Myra’s dream, her respite, a cathedral, the place she came not to pray but to hope. She wanted to return to this moment, to begin again, and to prevent the darkness from coming into their lives. It was where she admitted to herself that she was warm and loving once, when she was optimistic and trusting.
Whenever she wasn’t in it, absorbed by all that was there, she saw it as sinful. She probably asked God for forgiveness after every time she visited the room. There was a child, however, whom she loved and cherished in this room, a child she dreamed of having again. In her mind, that was some sort of defiance, too. Maybe she sat in there alone and asked herself a thousand times, “What did I do wrong? Was all this too hedonistic? Did I give my child too much love, instilling the conceit and arrogance and thus the tragic flaw in her? Did I turn her into a creature of comforts and luxury and make her weak and selfish?”
Was this a question most parents asked themselves? “Are we giving our child too much? Are we teaching him or her the wrong things? Are we failing to instill a respect for others and values in our child? It brings so much pleasure to us and to our child to give him or her things and see the joy in his or her face.” How did you know when you’d gone over the top? How did you hold back when so many other parents were bestowing so much on their children? If you didn’t give your child just as much, would your child resent you, perhaps resent everything and turn mean and self-centered?
Yes, it was in this room where Grandmother Myra could whip herself, could cry, could pray for forgiveness, and could remember when she was a different person, someone who saw more to love and take pleasure in than who she was now, fearful of every laugh, distrusting of every warm feeling, and condemning of every small promise.
I thought I was going to discover more hate in the room. I even imagined I would see things deliberately broken, dolls smashed, maybe even a mattress slashed in rage. I certainly anticipated religious icons and framed sayings covering the walls. I wanted the room to reinforce all the anger I had toward my grandmother. I wanted everything confirmed, but instead, I felt tears come into my eyes.
I stood there feeling sorry for her, imagining the pain she had endured, the nights she had spent crying, and the great disappointment she felt in herself and in my mother. This was where she bore her cross and carried herself to her own Golgotha to be crucified and someday, somehow, resurrected, if only in a dream.
Slowly, I left the room, the way you would leave a sacred place, silent, respectful, and in awe of God’s power. I closed the door softly and locked it again. After I put the key back under Grandmother Myra’s Bible, I descended and went to the kitchen to work on dinner preparations.
A little more than an hour later, after I had set the table and breaded some chicken cutlets, Grandfather Prescott came home. He looked peaked, tired, and much older. I quickly looked to see if Grandmother Myra was with him, perhaps just behind him, but he was alone.
“She’s had a stroke,” he said. “She’s lost the power of speech and movement on her right side.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was crying, maybe for him more than for her, or maybe for myself.
“We’ll see how she is tomorrow.”
“Can I go with you to the hospital, Grandpa?”
He nodded.
“I have dinner prepared, Grand . . . Grandpa,” I said.
He smiled. “I told her you would,” he said. “I’ll just go wash up.”
I returned to the kitchen.
When we sat down to eat, he described what had happened. “I saw she was awake, but she wasn’t moving, and then she started making this horrible noise. She was trying to speak. From the way she was trying to move, I could tell that she was suffering some paralysis. I called the paramedics immediately, and after they loaded her into the ambulance, I followed in my car.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here, Grandpa.”
“Yes. I looked out the back window twice before rushing out, but th
ere just wasn’t time for me to go looking for you, so I wrote the note.”
He ate some more and then paused.
“Maybe I should go back tonight.”
“You can’t exhaust yourself now, Grandpa. You’ll know more in the morning.”
He nodded. “This will be the first night I’m not with your grandmother in more than forty years,” he said.
After dinner, he went to the living room to watch television, but when I looked at him, he seemed dazed. I couldn’t help but be surprised. So many times, I had looked at both of them and wondered if there had ever been any real affection between them. Did they love each other or just become dependent on each other? Was it easy to look at other couples and know the difference? Did they know the difference? Did you really fall in love with someone or just become very comfortable with him or her? Maybe if love itself wasn’t such a mystery, there wouldn’t be so many mistakes.
I sat on the sofa where Grandmother Myra usually sat and watched some television with Grandfather Prescott. For a while, I didn’t think he even noticed I was there. Then, suddenly, he turned to me and said, “If you don’t like this, change the channel.”
Suddenly, even though I was being given new privileges and powers, I decided I really wasn’t interested.
“I think I’d rather go work on my picture, Grandpa. It’s coming along.”
He nodded. “Bring it out here,” he said. “There isn’t enough good light in that room.”
“Okay.”
I brought everything out to the living room, something Grandmother Myra would certainly forbid, and began working on some details in the picture. He watched me for a while and then began dozing off. When he opened his eyes again, I stopped painting.
The Unwelcomed Child Page 22