Then, to illustrate that she wasn't just talking, she leaned over, opened her night-table drawer, and took out a very sharp kitchen knife. "I'll cut my wrists so fast and so deep there'll be no chance of saving me."
I couldn't speak. It felt as if someone were squeezing my neck. She put the blade against her skin.
"Okay, okay. I believe you. I swear, I won't say a word to anyone."
She studied my face until she was confident I meant it, put the knife back, and closed the drawer. Why was she keeping such a knife in her night-table drawer? She sat back again. I saw how hard it was for her to tell me why it was worse, so I just sat quietly and waited. She took a deep breath, sounding like someone who was about to go underwater.
"He comes into my room at night," she said. "At night? You mean, after you go to sleep?" "Yes."
"What does he do?"
"What do you think?"
It suddenly felt as though we were sitting in an oven. I shook my head. I was afraid to think, to imagine. The expression on my face made that clear. I could feel the heat in my cheeks as my blood rose through my neck.
"What?" I managed.
"See? It's upsetting you. I told you not to come in.
I told you to go home. You should have listened to me and stopped being my best friend. I wasn't being snotty. I was only thinking of you."
"I'm all right. Just tell me, and don't worry about me or my feelings or anything," I said firmly.
"Is that right?"
"Yes. Don't leave out a detail."
"Okay, big shot," she said, as though I had challenged her. "I won't. He opens the door very slowly and comes in so quietly it's more like a dream--a nightmare, I should say. First, he gracefully peels the blanket off me. Then he sits beside me and he puts one hand gently over my mouth' and his other hand under my nightgown. The first time he did it, I was so shocked and frightened I couldn't speak, much less yell, so don't ask me if I did. The first time, that was all he did. Then he took deep breaths, put the blanket back, and left the room as quietly as he had come in."
"You didn't tell your mother about that?" I asked incredulously.
"No."
"Why not? Karen!"
"You don't understand how it is. I already explained how it is when I complain about anything. I was afraid she just would accuse me of lying because I didn't like him She would have said I dreamed the whole thing. I was afraid she would accuse me of making trouble for her and for us, and so I hoped it would never happen again."
"How can she not know herself, especially since he's doing something like that at night?"
"I guess I have to tell you, now that you've made me tell you this."
"What?"
"They don't sleep together anymore," she said. "Don't sleep together? What do you mean?"
"It's not brain surgery, Zipporah. They don't sleep in the same bed."
"Then . . . where does he sleep?" I asked, terrified that she was going to say he slept with her.
"At first, I think he just slept on the sofa in the living room. Lately, he's been sleeping in the apartment."
"Oh." That answer brought some relief. "I can't imagine my father leaving my mother at night and her not becoming very disturbed about it. Your mother hasn't said anything?"
"Not to me. Maybe she is happy about it. I can understand it if she is. I pretend I don't know. That's another reason it's so hard to talk to her about it all."
"You can't lock your door?"
"He's the only one with keys to doors other than the front door in this house."
"That night I saw you walking in the village, crying. Was it because of this?"
"Yes. I knew he would be coming to my room later. I was thinking of just walking forever, but I had no place to go, and it got cold."
"You could have come to my house."
"And then everyone would know, Zipporah. How would you like people to know that was happening to you?"
"Well, he should be arrested or something!"
"Oh, that would be just great. That would solve everything. The drugstore would go out of business, and we'd definitely be out on the street. Besides, how do you think people would treat me, look at me? I can tell you. Remember when we all learned that Paula Loomis's brother might have raped her? Remember how everyone treated Paula, stayed away from her? It was as if it was all her fault and she was dirty or something. It's why she dropped out and went to live with her aunt in New York City. Not that I really care what people here think of me," she said. "It's what would happen to my mother here. She would only blame me and hate me."
"Well, what are you going to do, Karen?"
"I don't know. Most nights, I lie here terrified and can't sleep. It upsets my stomach and gives me headaches."
"How many times has he come into your room?" "Enough."
"Did he do anything else?"
"What do you think?"
I shook my head. Dared I ask more, pursue, force her to give me the grisly details?
"I'll draw a picture for you. He comes in here with just his bathrobe on. He's naked beneath it."
"Oh," I said. Actually, it was more like a sigh of horror coming up out of my lungs. "I' m sorry," I said.
"Forget it. I don't want to talk about it. Don't ask me anything else. I'm getting sick again just telling you about it, and it's making my headache even worse."
"Doesn't your mother want to know why you're not feeling well?"
"She thinks it's just my time of the month. It's never been easy for me to have a period. She knows that, so she accepts that excuse."
I nodded. "Are you going to go to school tomorrow?"
"Probably."
A multitude of things ran through my mind, especially when I recalled my conversation with my mother. Karen could get pregnant. What should I do, say?
"And you still don't want to tell your mother about Harry and what he's doing?"
She looked away.
"Karen?"
"I said I was finished talking about it! I told you, it's making me sick to my stomach."
"Okay, okay. Do you want to know the homework assignments for tomorrow?"
I felt silly even mentioning it, but it was the fastest way to change the topic.
"Yeah, I'm dying to know," she said.
I looked down at my hands again.
"I wish I could help you," I said. "I really do. I wish there was something I could do."
"Well, there isn't, so stop thinking about it. Okay, what were the homework assignments for tomorrow?" she asked, and got up to get her notebook.
None of it seemed very important now, but I rattled it all off for her.
"I can help you with anything."
"I'll do it later," she said.
"You want to come over to do it? Ride your bike? Maybe you can come to dinner."
"No. My mother thinks I'm still not feeling well. I'll have to stay here tonight. Maybe tomorrow night," she added.
"Okay. Great."
I stood up and looked at her bedroom door.
"Why don't you put a chair up against it?" I suggested. "You know, brace it under the doorknob and . . ."
"Just go home, Zipporah," she said, and sighed as if I were a child "I'll see you on the bus in the morning."
"Right," I said. .I started out.
"Thanks for insisting on being my best friend," she said when I opened the door.
"You don't have to thank me."
"Okay, so I take it back," she said, and laughed.
Just like that, we were back to being who we were. It was as if we had both detoured through a nightmare and awoken together.
"Mindy Sages has a pimple the size of a pebble on the tip of her nose. You should see her. She walks around like this," I said, putting my hand over my face.
"She oughtta get one of those face masks that Arab women wear."
"Or just wear a bag over her head."
"Or wrap herself like the Invisible Man."
"Right. When you see her, you can
ask her who's her friend."
We laughed. Mindy Sages was one of the zeros Karen had identified from day one. She was always very snobby, especially to us.
"I'll walk you to the door," she said, suddenly full of happy energy. She followed me down the stairs.
Just as we opened the front door and I stepped out, her mother drove in.
"If you're sick, Karen, why are you having friends over?" she demanded after she rolled down her window.
"She brought me the homework, Mother. Is that all right?"
"Oh," her mother said, and rolled her window up before driving the car into the garage.
"See what I mean?" Karen said. "She would have had a fit if I even mentioned going to your house tonight. We all have to play our parts here," she said. "This is the Pretend Central System, WPCS. See you," she said, and closed the door.
I felt as if she had died. Now I was the one who felt sick to her stomach. I couldn't look at her mother. Why didn't she have the same built-in sensitivity to Karen that my mother had to me? Why didn't she realize something terrible was happening in her own house to her own daughter? And then I had a more terrifying thought: What if she did, and she didn't care?
I hurried down the walk to start my trek home.
What would I do about all this now? If I didn't keep her secret, do what I promised, she might just kill herself as she had threatened to do. On the other hand, I hated not being able to help her. How easy it would be for me to go to my mother and tell her and get her to do something. My father was a lawyer. He could get Mr. Pearson put away, I thought. That was where he belonged.
But then, what if Karen was right, and things became impossible for her at school and in the community? All I would have succeeded in doing would be to drive her and her mother away. She'd hate me forever.
I was so frustrated and angry I wished Mr. Pearson was dead, and then I immediately felt guilty for wishing that on someone, even someone like him.
Another thing worried me. My mother was liable to look at me and know something terrible was wrong. She was already suspicious about Karen because of the things I had told her. How could I carry such a dark secret inside myself and not show it on my face? I would fail. I would let Karen down because I couldn't help it, and she would hate me anyway.
It all buzzed around in my head, and I didn't realize where I was walking or how long I had been walking. Suddenly, I heard a very loud horn and nearly jumped out of my skin at the metallic scream of automobile brakes. Mr. Bedick, who owned an egg farm down the road from us, was waving his fist angrily at me. He looked as if he had been standing on his head. That's how red his face was. I glanced down and saw that the bumper of his car was only inches from me.
"I'm sorry!" I cried. "I'm sorry."
I had stepped too far to the left and put myself right in his path.
"Your parents are going to hear about this," he threatened, and drove away.
"Great," I muttered. "I'm already in trouble."
I hurried home so I could get into my room and settle down before my parents got home. That was an impossible task. The moment I closed the door and sat there in the quiet of my own room, everything Karen had told me came rushing back. I saw the most horrible images and knew I would probably have my own nightmares about it now. She was right to warn me away, to tell me I'd be better off not being her best friend. I wasn't just sharing her pain and suffering.
Because we were so close, it was easy to imagine it happening to me, too.
How horrible, I thought, and imagined her lying there too terrified to raise her voice in protest, too terrified to tell her mother. She was trapped and at the mercy of someone who was . . . who was what? The story she told me about Mr. Pearson having conversations with his dead mother and now going into her old apartment to sleep was even more frightening in some ways. Did he see a ghost?
How would this all end? There had to be something we could do. I sat there feeling so helpless and trapped myself until my gaze fell on my bookcase, and a collection of short stories popped out at me. It really wasn't meant for me. It was Jesse's book, but it had gotten mixed up and put in my room. From time to time, I read some of it. The collection was called Campfire Chills. It was supposed to be a collection of scary stories told around a campfire. Most of them were silly to me, but there was one that sprang to mind as if it had been written on springs.
I jumped up and pulled the book off the shelf, turning to the story quickly and rereading it with the speed of someone looking for a word clue.
Yes, I thought. Why not? It was easy to substitute Mr. Pearson for the character in the story and easy to substitute Karen and myself for another. We would do the same thing. I practically lunged at my phone to call her.
Her mother answered.
"You were just here, weren't you?" she asked me. "Yes, Mrs. Pearson, but there was one important thing about the schoolwork I forgot to tell Karen."
"Oh," she said. "Just a moment."
I waited, knowing Karen would have to come down the stairs to talk to me unless her mother permitted her to pick up the phone in her and Mr. Pearson's bedroom. She apparently didn't, because it took a while for Karen to pick up.
"What?" she finally said.
"I have an idea, a solution to your problem," I said. "It could really work."
She was silent.
"And what would that be?" she finally asked.
"I have something for you to read tomorrow, and then we'll talk about it, okay?"
"I see. Yes, thanks for calling. I'll see you on the bus," she said, and hung up.
That's all right, I told myself. I wasn't upset at all at how abruptly she had ended our conversation. It didn't mean she was angry or upset at me for still talking and thinking about the things she had told me. It probably just meant her mother was standing close by and listening to our conversation.
I put the short story collection into my school bag so there would be no chance of my forgetting it in the morning.
She'll like this idea, I thought. After all, she was the one who called her home Pretend Central, wasn't she?
I felt relieved, excited. I fit the definition of a best friend, after all.
I could help her.
5 All Alone at the Bates Motel
"I understand what you're suggesting," she told me on the bus after school. I had given her the book in the morning, and she had read the story during a study hall period. "I think it's dangerous."
She looked out the window. When I had awoken in the morning, it was the first thing that came into my mind, and the light of morning, the beginning of a new day, had a way of making exciting ideas a lot less exciting. It's as if the sunlight illuminates all the obstacles you missed in the darkness.
And as she said, the dangers.
"I know," I said in a loud whisper. "I'm sorry. I just hate seeing you upset and frightened and when this came to mind, I had to call you."
She spun around, her eyes narrow and cold.
"I didn't say I wouldn't do it. I just said it's dangerous. It might not be a bad idea."
She looked out again.
I could feel the blood rushing into my face. She would actually consider doing it? Of course, I would help in any way I could, but now that I had proposed it and she was actually considering it, fear and terror were like leeches on my body, sucking out my courage.
"Really?"
"We'll talk about it later. Can you come to my house tonight?"
"Absolutely," I said. "I'll come over right after dinner."
"Good," she said, and continued to look out the window. "Good," I heard her whisper.
What have I done? I suddenly wondered. Maybe I was giving her false hope. Maybe I was getting myself into deep trouble. If it all went wrong, my parents would be devastated. My brother would hate me, too. A part of me wanted to pull back, to say it was really just a silly idea, we couldn't do this, but another part of me was truly impressed that I had come up with something that might actually help Karen
. I had to firm up my nerve, be brave. This was no time to be a child or even a teenager. What was happening to Karen wasn't meant to happen to children and teenagers. It wasn't meant to happen to anyone, but adults were better equipped to handle it than we were, I thought.
Whether we liked it or not, Mr. Pearson had seized us by the neck and ripped us out of our youth. We would still laugh, we would have fun, but there would always be that quiet moment, that look between us that reminded us where we had been.-Funny, I was already thinking in terms of we when it was all really happening to Karen and not to me. I am her real friend, her sister, after all, I thought.
She rose when the bus pulled in front of the stop in Sandburg.
"See you later," she said. She patted the short story collection. "I'll hold on to this and keep thinking about it and how we could apply it."
"Okay."
She started away and then paused and returned.
"When you come over, Zipporah, you have to be sure you don't look strangely at Harry or talk to him any differently from the way you did before. We mustn't give him even a hint that I told you anything, understand?"
"Yes"
"If it's too hard, just ignore him, pretend he's not there. That's what I do half the time."
"Okay," I said.
Now I was really nervous again. I wanted to suggest she just come to my house, but I knew why she wanted me at hers. We had to plan and think of ways to do what we had to do. It was as if we were looking over a prospective battlefield.
She flashed a smile and started away. I watched her get off the bus and walk in the direction of her house. The bus continued toward Church Road. I didn't realize that I was trembling until the bus stopped in front of my house and I rose to get off. My legs wobbled. I sucked in my breath and hurried down the aisle.
I couldn't remember if my mother was on the day shift or the night shift that day. I was so distracted by Karen's problems that I didn't listen when she had told me, so I entered the house quietly in case she was sleeping. My parents' bedroom door was open, and I could see she wasn't home yet. She probably was doing the late afternoon shift, which wouldn't end until eleven p.m. I checked the kitchen and, sure enough, found instructions for preparing my father's dinner. She had already made a meat loaf. I just had to warm it up along with the mashed potatoes and vegetables. I'd make my father and me a nice salad, too. There was still half of my father's favorite pie in the refrigerator, chocolate cream.
Secrets in the Attic Page 6