“They should not interfere in a house of power,” the Overseer said urgently. The others listened to this therapist, and she must tell them. “Wolves belong to wolves, not sheep. They should forget Cathy’s family. They should tell her not to come to their house anymore, for wolves may eat sheep.”
“You sound worried. Do you think they could get in trouble?”
He thought that her face would not be so calm if she could see the danger. “They must stop therapy.” He raised his voice so that the loudness of it could penetrate where the meaning of words did not. “Things must be restored to the way they were. They do not obey.”
“Rules are important to you,” the woman said as if she understood at last.
For a moment he hoped that she would return the others to their proper place inside, return all of them to where they belonged. “Yes.” On the outside he was contained, on the inside a furnace. He shifted for a brief moment, allowing his strength to show. She did not flinch or look away.
“I don’t know all of your family’s rules,” she said. “But I do know about families who have those kinds of rules. It’s difficult to grow up in such a family.”
“It’s an honour,” he said. “One they have forgotten. People die for less.”
“You worry that they might get hurt.”
He shook his head no, protesting, for he could not care about the fate of weaklings.
“I would like to ask you something if I may. Would that be all right with you?”
He considered her request. The old woman was respectful and not entirely stupid. “Yes,” he said.
“Would you want your children to go through what you did?” she asked.
“No.” The word came forth quickly, and once spoken, couldn’t be retracted. An image rose before him: a knife, large, sharp, the point on a belly. Then his father’s shadow on the floor, and the hiss of a thousand whispering wings.
There were scattered feathers amid pieces of broken glass catching the light. A voice. The father said, You shall come to me. And the child walked, naked, across the broken glass.
Father said, Sit here with me. The child’s feet stuck out over the edge of the couch as they sat side by side, the father a giant, cheeks bristled with what he called a five o’clock shadow. The child wished for his cheeks to have this shadow, too. The wallpaper was striped. The child knew how many stripes there were. He could count all the way to a hundred.
Father said, The first rule is obey. You’re my favourite. I know I can depend on you to do your duty. At this, his hand rested on the child’s head. For a moment, wanted. Beloved. Then the hand withdrew. The second rule is never talk about our business to strangers. If you do I will know and the punishment will be what you deserve. Remember that there are no second chances. A child is always the father’s. Nature is red in tooth and claw. We are wolves.
The Overseer returned his gaze to this room. Everything was wrong. The objects, the smell. The wrongness tore at him, ripped at him with claws. This was not the place they were meant to be. “The child belongs to the father. We should not interfere with Cathy’s family.”
“And yours?” Brigitte asked.
“In Sharon’s house the children belong to their father. To the sheep.”
“They belong to you, too. This life is yours.”
He shook his head. If he could not go home, he was nothing. He should be nothing. A spectre haunting a basement. He had been allowed to emerge so that, at last, he’d learn there was no hope for him.
“You have your own house now and you make the rules in it. Look around and see for yourself if what I’m saying is right.” But even as she spoke, he was turning back inside, leaving her words in his wake.
“Hi.” The voice was high, the face rounder.
“Who’s here now?” the lady asked. She didn’t sound like bad peoples. She had lots of fishies. They was all shiny colours.
“Ally.” One time the lady let her hold the cat. The cat was fat, too. He was soft. She wished the lady would let the cat in. She wished the lady was her real mommy. “I got Echo with me. He hurts. Can you fix him?”
“Could Echo talk to me?”
Ally tried, but she couldn’t get Echo out. “No. He won’t come.”
“Could Echo talk to you and you tell me what he says?”
“Uh huh.”
“Good. Can you tell me where he hurts?”
“Uh uh.” Ally couldn’t say more. It was starting to hurt her too. It hurt a lot.
“Can you show me?”
She pointed to the feet. Tears ran down her face. “It hurts,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry it hurts.” The lady’s face looked sad. Ally wanted to reach up and touch the face, make it not sad anymore. “Can you tell me how the feet got hurt?”
“Cut,” Ally whispered. “All cut. Ugly feet.”
The therapist got up out of her chair, slowly so as not to scare them, watching Ally. She sat very still, watching back. The lady is nice, the lady is nice, she said to herself and Echo. The therapist kneeled in front of them. A nice fat lady. She looked funny kneeling on the floor. “May I see the feet?”
Ally reached down, pulling off the shoes and the socks. “See?” she asked, lifting the feet so the bottoms showed.
“Can you tell me how they were hurt?”
“Walkin’ on glass,” Ally said. “The daddy made us.”
“He was a bad father,” the lady said. Ally breathed out. Daddy was bad. He was.
“And he was friends with bad peoples,” Ally said, looking down at her feet and up at the lady under her eyelids so the lady wouldn’t see her eyes in case that made her mad. Children wasn’t supposed to look.
“Nobody is allowed to hurt children here,” the lady said. Her voice was mad. Was it mad at Ally? Maybe she should run away. But the feet didn’t work good. “I don’t allow it,” the lady said, softer. Ally looked up. She looked through the lady’s eyes and inside her head, cuz if there was mad and bad in there she would know. But there was a lady inside the lady, and she was looking through the eyes at Ally and her face was even nicer than the outside face showed, and for sure she would never be friends with bad peoples.
Their eyes closed and opened. Blink blink. She went in but nobody wanted to come out. Eyes closed. Everybody arguing. You go, no you go. Uh Uh. Not me no. Somebody gotta get out and take us home. Let’s push out Sharon! The eyes opened.
Sharon sat quite still, her eyes on the therapist’s print of water lilies at dusk. Upstairs the cat mewed in loud round ow’s, wanting to be with his person. Or maybe eat the fish in her aquarium. That was the instinct for life, so strong that most people would endure almost any pain to get a little more of it. Did animals ever know that they could end their own pain? Or did they, too, wait it out because they loved their children more?
“I don’t understand how Heather could do it,” she said. “We were talking about baby clothes and the high chair and next thing you know, she shot herself.”
“It does sound like there is more to the situation than meets the eye when you consider everything they said.”
“They! There is no ‘they’!” Sharon snapped.
“I see that denial is rearing its head, again,” Brigitte said. “So can you tell me why your feet hurt so badly when there isn’t a mark on them?”
“I’m a bored, crazy housewife imagining crap that nobody could believe.” Sharon pulled on her socks. Why ever did she buy yellow socks with duckies on them? She put on her sneakers, tying the laces clumsily with hands that were cold and sweaty.
“This is hard work, Sharon. I’m not surprised that you’d want some distance from it. And that’s all right as long as it’s temporary.” Brigitte eyed the clock. “We’re about out of time, but we’ll talk more about this next week. If anything comes up, remember you can call.”
“Fine.” Sharon unsnapped her bag with such venom that everything fell out in a heap and she blushed as she gathered it up, writing a cheque for the session, th
inking that therapy really was a waste of time and money. No wonder she felt queasy, shelling out a fortune for nothing. It was all ridiculous, fantastical, revolting nonsense with no foundation whatsoever. Except that the soles of her feet still hurt. There was that.
Welcome to multiples-chat, a supportive chat room for people who have DID or DDNOS. Visit our homepage at www.multiplesweb.com.
*S&All has joined multiples-chat
*S&All is now known as Sharon
Sharon› hi everyone
Janet› hi sharon how’s it going
Sharon› i hate therapy
Sharon› i mean what they said in the session today i can’t believe it about me, my parents
Janet› (((((sharon))))
The washing machine was spinning, 1200 rotations per minute, the floor under her feet trembling. The first load was done and in the laundry basket. One of Dan’s shirts lay on the ironing board, the collar pressed. It must be the endless laundry and ironing that had spurred her imagination. Cathy switching? What an idea!
Sharon› and then they get going on my son’s girlfriend
Sharon› i mean really, they even think they might have seen her switch can you believe that? isn’t it ludicrous?
Janet› no but it’s serious
Sharon› it’s one thing to say things to my therapist, i mean does it really matter what i make up? but when it goes beyond that
Janet› what if they’re right and she’s in trouble?
Janet› sharon—you are the mom
Janet› don’t be one of those that close their eyes
Janet› trust the inside, they’ve been watching your whole life
Janet› watch with them, you’ll know
Sharon› and then what?
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Four kinds of popsicles somehow ended up in the grocery cart on Saturday. There was a list, Dan put it on the fridge, but Sharon didn’t take it. Best Foods was right across the road from Magee’s. Walking up and down the aisles, Sharon realized that she was nearly out of shampoo, you can’t ever have too much toilet paper or tampons, stir fry would be good for supper, maybe a turkey for tomorrow, there was a sale on potted plants. And suddenly the store had become, not the usual eight aisles, baking items in number seven, meat at the back, eggs and cheese across from the ice cream freezers, but an entrancing mystery of stuff. Even the ceiling. Balloons! Wow! A Dora balloon and a Spider-Man balloon. She looked up sideways, eyelids shielding her childish glance while, on the inside, Alec was right behind her, ready to move out if she needed help. So many treats! A table of bunnies, chickies, and chocolate. Boxes and boxes and boxes of chocolate. Humungous chocolate eggs. A basket with a bunny. It had a button so she pressed it and the bunny sang a song. That was funny! Oh look at the teeny chickie all fuzzy and yellow. It was so little even littler than her hand and she could put it in her pocket but no you aren’t allowed you have to put it in the cart and pay for it. A lady said, “Excuse me.” She had a little boy sitting up in her grocery cart. The boy had a ice cream cone.
A mischievous grin appeared on her face, her gait slightly pigeon toed as she pushed the grocery cart. Nobody knowed that a kid was out cuz she was big! Hahahahaha. She pushed the cart some more, leaning on it and sliding. Fairies can fly. What do they do when it rains? Maybe they have fairy umbrellas. Ohhhhh. Pretty flowers over there. Smelly ones. They made her sneeze. And right next to the flowers was the freezers. Look at ALL the popsicles. There must be a gazillion kinds. Banana for her and grape for Echo. Why was a chocolate one called a Fudgesicle? She put a box in the cart. Everybody liked chocolate. And Creamsicles, next time she’d eat the orange outside first and the vanilla last. Echo was missing everything. He was scared of Easter stuff so he was hiding.
At the checkout the lady said, “How are you today?” and she said, “Fine.” That’s what you’re supposed to say. Then she gave the lady lots of money from the wallet and the lady gave her some money, too. She pushed the cart to the car and she put the groceries in the car and she pushed the cart to the cart place. She could do lots of stuff. But in the car she waited for a big because lils was not ever ever allowed to drive. It was a rule. It was number infinity. That’s how big a rule it was. Uh oh. She had the chickie in her pocket. Uh oh. Maybe they was in trouble. Maybe they was going to jail.
Sun flashed through the dust on the windshield. It needed washing. In the spot beside her, a mom juggled her keys, a toddler, the sliding door of a minivan. Sharon looked at the toy in her hand. It was unbelievable. She’d just lifted a ninety-nine-cent toy. If anybody saw her … She put the key in the ignition, opened the window to toss the damning ball of yellow fluff, then paused. A train was moving along the railroad tracks behind the parking lot. It came from the direction of her hometown, bringing goods from west to east. In her grandfather’s day, the trains had supplied parts to the Ford factory at the corner. But now good coffee was served there, and the train carried products made in China, like this tiny toy, which she would never have received as a kid, considered undeserving of even that. She took the key out of the ignition and a dollar from her wallet, and walked back through the parking lot.
When she got home, Dan and Josh were in the living room playing Stratego while in the kitchen Emmie and Cathy—who’d been invited for brunch—were waving their hands in the air, fingernails painted in an assortment of colours. Polish and polish remover, nail hardener and cotton balls were spread across the table. Blowing on her nails, Cathy sat in Sharon’s chair, facing the backyard. Her eyelashes and eyebrows had been subjected to mascara and pencil, her lips shimmering as she blew. Tips for spring: wear bold lipstick with soft eye makeup, or bold eyes with natural lips. The magazine was on the table.
“Where’s Nina?”
“Upstairs,” Cathy said, looking at Emmie and shaking her head because Emmie was giggling. “She’s sleeping.”
“Isn’t she feeling well? I’d better check on her.”
In the girls’ room, Sharon climbed up the ladder to the upper bunk where her daughter was under a hump of blankets, nothing sticking out but the ends of her black hair because she liked to sleep with her head covered, in a cave of warmth. Still, it wasn’t like Nina to nap. Maybe she was coming down with something. Sharon reached out to gently pat her daughter’s back, her other hand pulling the blanket down a bit so she could check Nina’s forehead for fever.
Just as her mother lifted the blanket, Nina popped out from behind the closet door. “April Fool’s!”
“Nina! You scared me.” Sharon laughed, throwing aside the blanket. Under it were pillows, stuffies and Emmie’s Chinese dolly arranged so that just the dark hair showed.
“Did you really get tricked, Mommy? Did you really believe it?”
“I did,” Sharon said, climbing down and putting an arm around her daughter, kissing her definitely cool forehead.
“It worked, it worked,” Nina yelled, pulling away, running down the stairs to the kitchen.
“I helped.” Cathy grinned.
“It was my dolly!” Emmie said.
Nina was in overalls, Emmie with half a dozen hairclips pinning back her curls. A stranger might not even know they were sisters, they looked so different, Nina all chocolate and mochaccino, Emmie a freckled rose. Not like Cathy’s family, all cut from the same gold cloth. When she was four and Heather six, they used to wear ridiculous matching dresses, the nanny complaining to Sharon about the nuisance of washing and ironing. And the ribbons in their hair! Cathy would lose hers in the sand and more than once Sharon dug it out while Cathy was playing in the sandbox with Josh. Her sister, with the same hair and eyes and chin and hands, would scold her for acting like a boy until Cathy jumped into the sandbox on top of the sand cakes beautifully decorated with twigs carefully selected for leafiness and height, pebbles arranged just so. “My beeuteeful cake. You ruined it! Clumsy oat!” Heather would cry. That was what sisters did. What would one sister not do to another? For the other? Sharon thought of h
er own sister, how each of them had begged the other, how she had been the one to leave her sister behind.
The first summer she was back from university, Sharon had slept in the bedroom they had always shared. There was no art on the wall, no posters or mementos, just their childhood locked in with the white and gold French provincial furniture that had held her clothes and her books and her schoolwork. They’d never been allowed to put anything on the walls, though an empty birdcage made of red wire still hung from the ceiling. Shelves held a dictionary, a book of quotations, and a thesaurus. There was a globe on her sister’s desk, on hers a radio. When she was little she’d sometimes plug in earphones and listen to the radio at night just to know there was a world outside her head. The window faced the backyard where a skinny maple tree grew, not much more than the sapling it had been when they’d moved into the house, not big enough to climb. Every backyard had one maple tree in it. Every front lawn had a garden with tulips. The lots were big enough so that nobody could hear their neighbours.
One night, she woke up and saw her sister lying on her side, eyes open. Pauline was five years younger yet fuller in the chest, her breasts round. Sharon could legally drink but she was the one who’d be asked for ID, not Pauline who plucked her eyebrows, shaved her bikini line to make a neat triangle. She sneezed in a genteel and musical choo. Her nails never broke.
“Paulie?”
“Yes?”
“How long have I been back?”
“A month,” her sister said as if it was a normal question, as if it was one that Sharon had asked before and she had asked Sharon, a question between sisters losing a battle with sneaky time, which hid and then jumped out at them.
“I thought it was longer.”
Pauline smiled. It was her nighttime smile, sweet, young. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too, sweetie. But I need to leave. When school starts, I’m not coming back again.”
Pauline sat up. “No!”
“Shh. You’ll wake Dad.”
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