Relief, like a river dammed and released, caused tears to stream down Momma’s beautiful face. She drew Chris close against her breast, kissing the top of his head. Then she cupped his face between her palms, stared deep into his eyes, ignoring the rest of us. “Thank you, my son, for understanding,” she said in a husky whisper. “Thank you again for not condemning your parents for what they did.”
“I love you, Momma. No matter what you did, or do, I’ll always understand.”
“Yes,” she murmured, “you will, I know You will.” Uneasily she glanced at me who stood back, taking all of this in, weighing it, and her. “Love doesn’t always come when you want it to. Sometimes it just happens, despite your will.” She bowed her head, reaching for my brother’s hands, and clinging to them. “My father adored me when I was young. He wanted to keep me always for himself. He never wanted me to marry anyone. I recall when I was only twelve, he said he’d leave me his entire estate if I stayed with him until he died of old age.”
Suddenly, she jerked up her head and looked at me. Did she see something doubting, something questioning? Her eyes shadowed, grew deep, dark. “Join hands,” she ordered forcefully, bracing her shoulders, releasing one of Chris’s hands. “I want you to repeat after me: We are perfect children. Mentally, physically, emotionally, we are wholesome, and godly in every way possible. We have as much right to live, love, and enjoy life as any other children on this earth.”
She smiled at me, and reached for my hand to hold in her free one, and asked that Carrie and Cory join the family chain. “Up here, you are going to need small rituals to get you through the days, little stepping stones. Let me lay down a few for you to use when I’m gone. Cathy, when I look at you, I see myself at your age. Love me, Cathy, trust me, please.”
Haltingly, we did as she directed, and repeated the litany that was ours to say whenever we felt in doubt. And when we had finished, she smiled at us with approval and reassurance.
“There!” she said with a happier look. “Now don’t think I have lived through this day without the four of you constantly on my mind. I have thought and I have thought of our future, and I’ve decided we cannot continue to live here, where all of us are ruled over by my mother and father. My mother is a cruel, heartless woman who just happened to give birth to me, but who’s never given me an ounce of love—she gave all of that to her sons. It was my foolish belief, when her letter came, that she would treat you differently from the way she treated me. I thought by now she would have mellowed with age, and once she saw you, and knew you, she would be like all grandmothers and welcome you with open arms, and be charmed and delighted to have children to love again. I so hoped once she got a look at your faces . . .” She choked up, near tears again, as if no one with good sense could help but love her children. “I can understand her dislike for Christopher”—and here she hugged him tightly, and kissed his cheek—“for he looks so much like his father. And I know she can look at you, Cathy, and see me, and she never liked me—I don’t know why, except, perhaps, my father liked me too much, and that made her jealous. But never did it cross my mind that she could be cruel to any of you, or my little twins. I made myself believe people change with age, and they realize their mistakes, but now I know how wrong I was.” She wiped away her tears.
“So, that is why tomorrow morning, early, I am driving away from here, and in the nearest big city, I will enroll in a business school that will teach me how to be a secretary. I’ll learn to type, take shorthand, do bookkeeping and how to file—and everything a good secretary has to know, I’ll learn. When I know how to do all of these things, I’ll be able to find a good job that will pay an adequate salary. And then I’ll have enough money to take you all out of this room. We’ll find an apartment somewhere nearby, so I can still visit my father. Soon, we’ll all be living under the same roof, our roof, and we’ll be a real family again.”
“Oh, Momma!” Chris cried happily, “I knew you would find a way! I knew you wouldn’t keep us locked up in this room.” He leaned forward to give me a look of smug satisfaction, as if he’d known all along his beloved mother would solve all problems, no matter how complicated.
“Trust me,” said Momma, smiling and confident now. Again she had kisses for Chris.
I wished somehow I could be like my brother Chris, and take everything she said as a sacred vow. But my treacherous thoughts were dwelling overlong on her words of not being strong-willed or a self-starter, without Daddy nearby to give her support. Dejectedly, I put in my question. “Just how long does it take to learn how to be a good secretary?”
Quickly—I thought too quickly—she answered. “Only a little while, Cathy. Perhaps a month. But if it takes a bit longer, you have to be patient and realize I’m not too smart about things like that. It’s not really my fault,” she went on hastily, as if she could see I was blaming her for being inadequate.
“When you’re born rich, and you’re educated in boarding schools only for the daughters of the extremely rich and powerful, and then you’re sent to a girls’ finishing school, you are taught polite rules of social etiquette, academic subjects, but most of all, you’re made ready for the whirl of romance, debutante parties, and how to entertain and be the perfect hostess. I wasn’t taught anything practical. I didn’t think I’d ever need any business skills. I thought I’d always have a husband to take care of me, and if not a husband, then my father would—and besides, all the time I was in love with your father. I knew the day I turned eighteen we’d be married.”
She was at that very minute teaching me well. Never would I become so dependent on a man I couldn’t make my way in the world, no matter what cruel blow life delivered! But most of all I felt mean, mad, ashamed, guilty—feeling she was to blame for everything, and how could she have know what lay ahead?
“I’m going now,” she said as she stood to leave. The twins burst into tears.
“Momma, don’t go! Don’t leave us!” They both wrapped their small arms around her legs.
“I’ll be back early tomorrow morning, before I leave for that school. Really, Cathy,” she said, looking straight at me, “I promise to do the best I can. I want you out of this place just as much as you want to be out.”
At the door she said it was a good thing we’d seen her back, for now we knew how heartless her mother could be. “For God’s sake, keep to her rules. Be modest in the bathroom. Realize she can be inhuman not only to me, but to those who are mine.” She held out her arms to all of us, and we ran into them, forgetting her whip-lashed back. “I love all of you so much,” she sobbed. “Hold on to that. I’ll apply myself as never before, I swear. I feel as much a prisoner as you do, just as trapped by circumstances as you are, in a way. Go to bed tonight with happy thoughts, know that no matter how bad it may seem, seldom is anything that bad. I am likable, you know that, and my father did love me extremely well once. So that will make it easy for him to love me again, won’t it?”
Yes, yes, it would. To love anything once extremely well made you vulnerable to another loving attack. I knew; I’d already been in love six times.
“And while you’re in your beds, and in the dimness of this room, remember that tomorrow after I enroll in that school, I’ll go shopping for new toys and games to keep your hours up here busy and happy. And it’s not going to be a long time until I have my father loving me again, and forgiving me for everything.”
“Momma,” I said, “do you have enough money to buy us things?”
“Yes, yes,” she said hurriedly, “I have enough, and my mother and father are proud people. They would not have me seen by their friends and neighbors looking shabby, or ill-groomed. They will provide for me and they’ll provide for you, as well. You’ll see. And every spare minute I have, and every spare dollar I don’t use, I’ll put away, and I’ll plan for the day when we can all be free to live in our own home, as we used to, and be a family again.”
Those were her parting words before she blew us kisses, and then she closed
and locked the door.
Our second night behind a locked door.
Now we knew so much more . . . maybe too much.
After Momma had left, both Chris and I settled into bed. He grinned over at me as he curled his body against Cory’s back, and already his eyes were sleepy, too. He closed his eyes and murmured, “Good night, Cathy. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
As Christopher had done, I curled around Carrie’s small warm body, and she was cupped spoon-like in my arms, and my face lowered into her sweet, soft hair.
I was restless, and soon enough I was supine, staring upward, and sensing the great silence of this huge house as it settled down, and went to sleep. I heard not a whisper of movement in the huge house; not the faint shrills of a telephone ringing; not a kitchen appliance could be heard switching on and off; not even a dog barked outside; nor did a car pass to throw light that might, hopefully, penetrate through the heavy draperies.
Snide thoughts came and told me we were unwanted, locked up . . . Devil’s spawn. Those thoughts wanted to lounge around in my head and make me miserable. I had to find a way to drive them out. Momma, she loved us, she wanted us, she’d try hard to be a good secretary to some lucky man. She would. I knew she would. She would resist the ways the grandparents sought to turn her away from us. She would, she would.
God, I prayed, please help Momma learn quickly!
It was horribly hot and stuffy in that room. Outside, I could hear the wind rustling the leaves, but not enough of it came in to cool us off, only enough to hint that it was cool out there, and would be in here if only we could open the windows wide. Wistfully, I sighed, longing for fresh air. Hadn’t Momma told us mountain nights, even in the summertime, were always cool? And this was summertime and it wasn’t cool with the windows down.
In the rosy darkness, Chris whispered my name. “What are you thinking?”
“About the wind. It sounds like a wolf.”
“I knew you’d be thinking something cheery like that. Gosh, if you aren’t the one to take the cake for depressing thoughts.”
“I’ve got another goodie—whispering winds like dead souls trying to tell us something.”
He groaned. “Now you listen to me, Catherine Doll (the stage name I planned to use one day), I order you not to lie there and think your kind of scary thoughts. We will take each hour as it comes, and never pause to think ahead to the next one, and by using this method, it will be much easier than thinking in terms of days and weeks. Think about music, about dancing, singing. Haven’t I heard you say you never feel sad when music is dancing in your head?”
“What will you think about?”
“If I were less sleepy, I would pour out ten volumes of thoughts, but as it is, I’m too tired to answer. And you know my goal, anyway. As for now, I’ll just think of the games we’ll have time to play.” He yawned, stretched, and smiled over at me. “What did you think of all that talk about half-uncles marrying half-nieces, and creating children with hooves, tails, and horns?”
“As a seeker of all knowledge, and a future doctor, is it medically, scientifically possible?”
“Nope!” he answered, as if well-educated on the subject. “If so, the world would abound in freaks resembling devils and to tell you the truth, I would like to see a devil, just once.”
“I see them all the time, in my dreams.”
“Hah!” he scoffed. “You and your crazy dreams. Weren’t the twins something, though? I was really rather proud of them when they faced up to that giant grandmother so defiantly. Gosh, they got spunk. But then I was afraid she’d really do something awful.”
“What she did wasn’t awful? She picked Carrie up by her hair. That must have hurt. And she slapped Cory and sent him reeling, and that must have hurt. What more did you want?”
“She could have done worse.”
“I think she’s crazy herself.”
“You may be right,” he mumbled sleepily.
“The twins are only babies. Cory was only protecting Carrie—you know how he is about her, and she is about him.” I hesitated. “Chris, did our mother and father do right by falling in love? Couldn’t they have done something to stop it?”
“I don’t know. Let’s not talk about that; it makes me feel uneasy.”
“Me, too. But I guess that explains why we all have blue eyes and blond hair.”
“Yeah,” he yawned, “the Dresden dolls; that’s us.”
“You’re right. I’ve always wanted to play games all day long. And just think, when our mother does bring us that new deluxe Monopoly game, we will at last have time to finish a game.” For we had never finished a game. “And Chris, the silver ballerina slippers are to be mine.”
“Right,” he murmured, “and I’ll take the top hat, or the racing car.”
“The top hat, please.”
“Right. Sorry, I forgot. And we can teach the twins to be bankers and count out the money.”
“First we’ll have to teach them to count.”
“That will be no trick at all, for Foxworths know all about money.”
“We are not Foxworths!”
“Then what are we?”
“Dollangangers! That’s who!”
“Okay, have it your way.” And again he said good night.
Once more I knelt by the side of the bed and put my hands in prayer position under my chin. Silently I began: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep . . . But somehow I just couldn’t say those words about taking my soul if I should die before I wake. Again I had to skip that part, and again I asked blessings for Momma, for Chris, and the twins, and for Daddy, too, wherever he was in heaven.
Then, when I was back in bed again, I had to go and think of the cake or cookies, and the ice cream the grandmother had half-promised last night—if we were good.
And we had been good.
At least until Carrie started cutting up—and still the grandmother hadn’t come into the room with desserts.
How could she have known that later on we would be so undeserving?
“What are you thinking now?” asked Chris in a sleepy monotone. I thought he was already asleep, and certainly not watching me.
“Nuthin’ much. Just little thoughts of the ice cream, and cake or cookies the grandmother said she’d bring if we were good.”
“Tomorrow’s another day, so don’t give up on treats. And maybe tomorrow the twins will forget about outdoors. They don’t have very long memories.”
No, they didn’t. Already they’d forgotten Daddy, and he’d been killed only last April. How easily Cory and Carrie let go of a father who had loved them very much. And I couldn’t let him go; I was never going to let him go, even if I couldn’t see him so clearly now . . . I could feel him.
Minutes Like Hours
All the days dragged by. Monotonously.
What did you do with time when you had it in superabundance? Where did you put your eyes when you had already seen everything? What direction should your thoughts take, when daydreams could lead you into so much trouble? I could imagine how it would be to run outside, wild and free in the woods, with dry leaves crackling under my feet. I could picture swimming in the nearby lake, or wading in a cool mountain stream. But daydreams were merely cobwebs, easily torn into shreds, and I’d quickly be dropped back into reality. And where was happiness? In the yesterdays? In the tomorrows? Not in this hour, this minute, this second. We had one thing, and one thing only, to give us a spark of joy. Hope.
Chris said it was a deadly crime to waste time. Time was valuable. No one ever had time enough, or lived long enough to learn enough. All about us the world was on the way to the fire, crying, “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” And look at us: we had time to spare, hours to fill, a million books to read, time to let our imaginations take wing. The creative genius begins in the idle moment, dreaming up the impossible, and later making it come true.
Momma came to see us, as she promised, bearing new games and toys to occupy our time. Chri
s and I adored Monopoly, Scrabble, Chinese checkers, plain checkers, and when Momma brought us a double deck of bridge cards, and a book on how to play card games, boy, did we become the card sharks!
It was harder with the twins, who weren’t old enough to play games with rules. Nothing held their interest for long, not the many tiny cars Momma bought, nor the dump trucks, nor the electric tram that Chris hooked together so the tracks ran under our beds, under the dressing table, over to the dresser, and under the highboy. No matter where we turned something was underfoot. One thing for sure, they did hate the attic—everything about it seemed scary to them.
Every day we got up early. We didn’t have an alarm clock, only our wristwatches. But some automatic timing-system in my body took over and wouldn’t let me sleep late, even when I wanted to.
As soon as we were out of bed, on alternate days, the boys would use the bathroom first, and then Carrie and I would go in. We had to be fully dressed before the grandmother entered—or else.
Into our grim, dim room the grandmother would stalk, while we stood at attention, waiting for her to put down the picnic basket and depart. Seldom did she speak to us, and when she did, it was only to ask if we had said grace before every meal, said prayers before retiring and had read a page from the Bible yesterday.
“No,” said Chris one morning, “we don’t read a page—we read chapters. If you consider reading the Bible a form of punishment, then forget it. We find it fascinating reading. It’s bloodier and lustier than any movie we ever saw, and talks more about sin than any book we ever read.”
“Shut up, boy!” she barked at him. “I was asking your sister, not you!”
Next she was asking me to repeat some quote I’d learned, and in this way we often had our little jokes, at her expense, for when you looked hard and long enough, you found words in the Bible to suit any occasion. I answered on this particular morning, “Wherefore have you rewarded evil for good? Genesis 44:4.”
The Flowers in the Attic Series: The Dollangangers: Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and a New Excerpt! Page 11