“What will we do, Chris, if she never comes back?” I asked dully. “She will let us starve to death.” Meaning the grandmother, of course, whom we hadn’t seen in two weeks. And Chris had exaggerated when he said we had a full pound of cheddar cheese stashed away. We baited our mousetraps with cheese, and had been forced to take back the bits of cheese to eat ourselves, when everything else was gone. Now we’d been without one bit of food in our stomachs for three whole days and four days with only a little cheese and crackers. And the milk we saved for the twins to drink—gone ten days ago, too.
“She won’t let us starve to death,” said Chris as he lay down beside me and took me into his weak embrace. “We’d be idiots, and spineless, to allow her to do that to us. Tomorrow, if she doesn’t show up with food, and our mother doesn’t show up, we’ll use our sheet-ladder to reach the ground.”
My head was on his chest and I could hear his heart thumping. “How do you know what she’d do? She hates us. She wants us dead—hasn’t she told us that time and time again we should never have been born?”
“Cathy, the old witch is not dumb. She’ll bring food soon, before Momma comes back from wherever she’s been.”
I moved to bandage his slashed wrist. Two weeks ago Chris and I should have tried to escape, when both of us had the strength to make the perilous descent. Now, if we tried to make it, surely we’d fall to our deaths, what with the twins tied to our backs to make it even more difficult.
But when morning came, and there was still no food brought up to us, Chris forced us into the attic. He and I carried the twins who were too weak to walk. It was a torrid zone up there. Sleepily, the twins sagged in the corner of the schoolroom where we put them down. Chris set about fashioning slings so we could attach the twins securely to our backs. Neither of us mentioned the possibility that we could be committing suicide, and murder, too, if we fell.
“We’ll do it another way,” said Chris, reconsidering. “I’ll go first. When I reach the ground, you’ll put Cory into a sling, tie him in fast so he can’t kick free, and then you’ll lower him down to me. Next, you can do that for Carrie. And you can come down last. And for God’s sake, put forth your very best efforts! Call upon God to give you the strength—don’t be apathetic! Feel anger, wrath, think of revenge! I’ve heard great anger gives you super-human strength in an emergency!”
“Let me go first. You’re stronger.” I said weakly.
“No! I want to be down there to catch in case anyone comes down too fast, and your arms don’t have the strength mine do. I’ll brace the rope about a chimney so all the weight won’t be on you—and Cathy, this is really an emergency!”
God, I couldn’t believe what he expected me to do next!
With horror I stared at the four dead mice in our traps. “We’ve got to eat these mice to gain some strength,” he said to me grimly, “and what we have to do, we can do!”
Raw meat? Raw mice? “No,” I whispered, revolted by the sight of those tiny stiff and dead things.
He grew forceful, angry, telling me I could do anything that was necessary to keep the twins alive, and myself alive. “Look, Cathy, I’ll eat my two first, after I’ve run downstairs for salt and pepper. And I need that coat hanger to tighten up the knots—leverage, you know. My hands, they’re not working too good now.”
Of course they weren’t. We were all so weak we could barely move.
He shot me a quick appraising glance. “Really, with salt and pepper, I think the mice might be tasty.”
Tasty.
He sliced off the heads, then skinned and gutted them next. I watched him slice open the small bellies and withdraw long, slimy intestines, little bitty hearts, and other miniature “innards.”
I could have vomited if there had been anything in my stomach.
And he didn’t run for the salt and pepper, or the coat hanger. He only walked, and slowly at that—telling me in this way he wasn’t too eager to partake of raw mice, either.
While he was gone, my eyes stayed glued to the skinned mice that were to be our next meal. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself into taking the first bite. I was hungry but not hungry enough to enjoy the prospects.
I thought then of the twins, who sagged in the corner with their eyes closed, holding each other, their foreheads pressed together, and I thought they must have embraced like that when they were inside Momma’s womb, waiting to be born, so they could be put away behind a locked door, and starved. Our poor little buttercups who once had known a father and mother who loved them well.
Yet, there was the hope the mice would give Chris and me enough strength and we could take them safely to the ground, and some kind neighbor who was at home would give them food, give all of us food—if we lived through the next hour.
I heard the slow returning steps of Chris. He hesitated in the doorframe, half-smiling, his blue eyes meeting with mine . . . and shining. In both of his hands he carried the huge picnic basket we knew so well. It was so filled with food the wooden lids that folded backwards couldn’t lie flat.
He lifted out two thermos jugs: one with vegetable soup, the other with cold milk, and I felt so numb, confused, hopeful. Had Momma come back and sent this up to us? Then why hadn’t she called for us to come down? Or why didn’t she come looking for us?
Chris took Carrie and I took Cory on our laps, and we spooned soup into their mouths. They accepted the soup as they had accepted his blood—as just another event in their extraordinary lives. We fed them bits of sandwich. We ate most sparingly, as Chris cautioned, lest we throw it all up.
I wanted to stuff the food into Cory’s mouth, so I could get around to ramming food into my own ravenous stomach. He ate so darned slow! A thousand questions ran through my brain: Why today? Why bring food today and not yesterday, or the day before? What was her reasoning? When finally I could eat, I was too apathetic to be overjoyed, and too suspicious to be relieved.
Chris, after slowly eating some soup, and half a sandwich, unwrapped a foil package. Four powdered-sugar doughnuts were disclosed. We, who were never given sweets, were given a dessert—from the grandmother—for the first time. Was this her way of asking our forgiveness? We took it that way, whatever her purpose.
During our week of near starvation, something peculiar had happened between Chris and me. Perhaps it became enhanced that day when I sat in the hot tub of concealing bubble bath, and he toiled so valiantly to rid my hair of the tar. Before that horrible day, we’d been only brother and sister, play-acting the roles of parents to the twins. Now our relationship had changed. We weren’t play-acting anymore. We were the genuine parents of Carrie and Cory. They were our responsibility, our obligation, and we committed ourselves to them totally, and to each other.
It was obviously drawn now. Our mother didn’t care anymore what happened to us.
Chris didn’t need to speak and say how he felt to recognize her indifference. His bleak eyes told me. His listless movements said more. He’d kept her picture near his bed, and now he put that away. He’d always believed in her more than I, so naturally he was hurt the most. And if he ached more than I was aching, then he was in agony.
Tenderly he took my hand, indicating that now we could go back to the bedroom. Down the stairs we drifted as pale sleepy ghosts, in subnormal states of shock, all of us feeling sick and weak, especially the twins. I doubted they weighed thirty pounds each. I could see how they looked, and how Chris looked, but I couldn’t see myself. I glanced toward the tall, wide mirror over the dresser, expecting to see a circus freak, short-cropped hair on top, long, lank pale hair in back. And lo, when I looked, there was no mirror there!
Quickly I ran to the bathroom to find the medicine cabinet mirror smashed! Back I raced to the bedroom, to lift the lid of the dressing table that Chris often used as a desk . . . and that mirror, too, was broken!
We could gaze in shattered glass and see distorted reflections of ourselves. Yes, we could view our faces in faceted broken pieces as a fly wou
ld, one side of the nose riding up higher than the other. It wasn’t pleasant viewing. Turning away from the dressing table, I put the basket of food down on the floor where it was coldest, then went to lie down. I didn’t question the reason for the broken mirrors, and the one taken away. I knew why she’d done what she did. Pride was sinful. And in her eyes Chris and I were sinners of the worst kind. To punish us, the twins would suffer, as well, but why she brought us food again, I couldn’t guess.
Other mornings came, with baskets of food carried up to us. The grandmother refused to look our way. She kept her eyes averted and swiftly retreated out the door. I wore a turban made of a pink towel around my head which revealed the front portion over my brow, but if she noticed, she didn’t comment. We watched her come and go, not asking where Momma was, or when she was coming back. Those so easily punished learn their lesson well, and don’t speak unless spoken to first. Both Chris and I stared at her, filling our eyes with hostility, with anger and hate, hoping she’d turn and see how we felt. But she didn’t meet a pair of our eyes. And then I would cry out and make her see, and make her look at the twins, and see for herself how thin they were, how shadowed their large eyes were. But she wouldn’t see.
Lying on the bed beside Carrie, I looked deep into myself and realized how I was making all of this worse than it ought to be. Now Chris, once the cheerful optimist, was turning into a gloomy imitation of me. I wanted him back the way he used to be—smiling and bright, making the best out of the worst.
He sat at the dressing table with the lid down, with open medical books before him, his shoulders sagging. He wasn’t reading, just sitting there.
“Chris,” I said, sitting up to brush my hair, “in your opinion, what percentage of teen-aged girls in the world have gone to bed with clean, shining hair and awakened a tar baby?”
Swiveling around, he shot me a glance full of surprise that I would mention that horrible day. “Well,” he drawled, “in my opinion, I suspect you might well be the one and only . . . unique.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Remember when they were putting down asphalt on our street? Mary Lou Baker and I turned over a huge tub of that stuff, and we made little tar babies, and put black beds in black houses, and the man in charge of the street-repair gang came along and bawled us out.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I remember you came home looking filthy-dirty, and you had a wad of tar in your mouth, chewing to make your teeth whiter. Gosh, Cathy, all you did was pull out a filling.”
“One good thing about this room, we don’t have to visit dentists twice a year.” He gave me a funny look. “And another nice thing is to have so much time! We’ll complete our Monopoly tournament. The champion player has to wash everyone’s underwear in the bathtub.”
Boy, he was all for that. He hated bending over the tub, kneeling on the hard tile, doing his wash and Cory’s.
We set up the game, and counted out the money, and looked around for the twins. Both had disappeared! Where was there to go but up in the attic? They’d never go there without us, and the bathroom was empty. Then we heard some small twittering noises behind the TV set.
There they were, crouched in the corner in back of the set, sitting and waiting for the tiny people inside to come out. “We thought maybe Momma was in there,” explained Carrie.
“I think I’ll go up in the attic and dance,” I said, getting up from the bed and moving toward the closet.
“Cathy! What about our tournament Monopoly game?”
Pausing, I half-turned. “Oh, you’d only win. Forget the tournament.”
“Coward!” he taunted now, the same as he used to. “Come on, let’s play.” He looked long and hard at the twins, who always acted as our bankers. “And no cheating this time,” he warned sternly, “if I catch one of you slipping Cathy money when you think I’m not looking—then I’ll eat every one of those four doughnuts myself!”
I’ll be darned if he would! The doughnuts were the best part of our meals, and saved for nighttime dessert. I threw myself down on the floor, crossed my legs, and busied my brain with clever ways in which I could get to buy the best property first, and the railroads, and the utilities, and I’d get my red houses up first, then the hotels. He’d see who was good at doing something better than him.
For hours and hours we played, stopping only to eat meals or go to the bathroom. When the twins grew tired of playing bankers, we counted out the money ourselves, closely watching each other to see if any cheating was going on. And Chris kept landing up in jail, and had to miss out on passing Go and collecting two hundred dollars, and the Community Chest made him give, and he had to pay inheritance tax . . . and still he won!
* * *
Late in August Chris came to me one night and whispered in my ear, “The twins are sound asleep. And it’s so hot in here. Wouldn’t it be just great if we could go for a swim?”
“Go away—leave me alone—you know we can’t go swimming.” I was, of course, still sulky from always losing at Monopoly.
Swimming, what an idiotic idea. Even if we could, I didn’t want to do anything in which he excelled, like swimming. “And just where are we going to swim? In the bathtub?”
“In the lake Momma told us about. It’s not far from here,” he whispered. “We ought to practice reaching the ground with that rope we made, anyway, just in case there’s a fire. We’re stronger now. We can reach the ground easily, and we won’t be gone long.” On and on he pleaded, as if his very existence depended on escaping this house just once—just to prove that we could.
“The twins might wake up and find us gone.”
“We’ll leave a note on the bathroom door, telling them we’re up in the attic. And besides, they never wake up until morning, not even to go to the bathroom.”
He argued, and pleaded until I was won over. Up into the attic we went, and out onto the roof where he fastened the sheet-ladder securely to the chimney closest to the back side of the house. There were eight chimneys on the roof.
Testing the knots one by one, Chris gave me instructions: “Use the large knots as a ladder rung. Keep your hands just above the higher knot. Go down slowly, feeling with your feet for the next knot—and be sure to keep the rope twisted between your legs, so you can’t slip and fall.”
Smiling with confidence, he held to the rope and inched his way to the very edge of the roof. We were going down to the ground for the first time in more than two years.
A Taste of Heaven
Slowly, carefully, hand under hand, and foot under foot, Chris descended to the ground while I lay flat on my stomach near the roof’s edge watching his descent. The moon was out and shining brightly as he lifted his hand and waved: his signal to send me on my way. I had watched the way he handled himself, so I could duplicate his method. I told myself it was no different from swinging on the ropes tied to the attic rafters. The knots were big and strong, and we had judiciously made them about four and a half feet apart. He had told me not to look down once I left the roof, just to concentrate on notching one foot securely on a lower knot before I reached with my other foot to find an even lower knot. In less than ten minutes, I was standing on the ground next to Chris.
“Wow!” he whispered, hugging me close. “You did that better than me!”
We were in the back gardens of Foxworth Hall, where all the rooms were dark, though in the servants’ quarters over the huge garage every window was brightly yellow. “Lead on, MacDuff, to the swimming hole,” I said in a low voice, “if you know the way.”
Sure, he knew the way. Momma had told us how she and her brothers used to steal away and go swimming with their friends.
He caught my hand as we tiptoed away from the huge house. It felt so strange to be outside, on the ground, on a warm summer night. Leaving our small brother and sister alone in a locked room. When we crossed over a small footbridge, and knew we were now outside the realm of Foxworth property, we felt happy, almost free. Still we had to be cautious and not let anyone see us.
We ran toward the woods, and the lake Momma had told us about.
It was ten o’clock when we went out on the roof; it was ten-thirty when we found the small body of water surrounded by trees. We were fearful others would be there to spoil it for us, and send us back unsatisfied, but the lake water was smooth, unruffled by winds, or bathers, or sailboats.
In the moonlight, under a bright and starry sky, I looked on that lake and thought I’d never beheld such beautiful water, or felt a night that filled me with such rapture.
“Are we going to skinny-dip?” asked Chris, looking at me in a peculiar way.
“No. We are going to swim in our underwear.”
The trouble was, I didn’t own a single bra. But now that we were here, silly prudery wasn’t going to stop me from enjoying that moonlit water. “Last one in is a rotten egg!” I called. And I took off, on the run toward a short dock. But when I reached the end of the dock, I somehow sensed the water might be icy cold, and most gingerly I cautiously stuck a toe in first—and it was ice cold! I glanced back at Chris, who had taken off his watch and flung it aside, and now he was coming at me fast. So darned fast, before I could brave myself to dive into the water, he was behind me, and shoved me! Splash—flat down in the water I was, soaked from head to toe, and not inch by inch, as I would have had it!
I shivered as I came to the surface and paddled around, looking for Chris. Then I spied him crawling up a pile of rocks, and for a moment he was silhouetted. He lifted his arms and gracefully made a swan dive into the middle of the lake. I gasped! What if the water wasn’t deep enough? What if he hit the bottom and broke his neck or back?
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 25