“South,” I said, “down to some warm, sunny beach, where the waves wash in gentle and low . . . don’t want high surf with white caps . . . don’t want the gray sea chafing against big rocks . . . I want to go where the wind never blows, I just want soft warm breezes to whisper in my hair and on my cheeks, while I lie on pure white sand, and drink up the sunlight.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, sounding wistful, “sounds nice the way you say it. Only I wouldn’t mind a strong surf; I’d like to ride the crest of a wave on one of those surfboards. It would sort of be like skiing.”
I put my scissors down, my magazines, my pot of rubber cement, and laid aside the magazines and scrapbook to fully concentrate on Chris. He was missing out on so many sports he loved, shut up here in one room, made old and sad beyond his years. Oh, how I wanted to comfort him, and I didn’t know how.
“Come away from the windows, Chris, please.”
“Leave me alone! I get so damned sick and tired of this place! Don’t do this, don’t do that! Don’t speak until spoken to—eat those damned meals every day, none of it hot enough, or seasoned right—I think she does it deliberately, just so we’ll never have anything to enjoy, even food. Then I think about all that money—half of it should be Momma’s, and ours. And I tell myself, no matter what, it is worth it! That old man can’t live forever!”
“All the money in the world isn’t worth the days of living we’ve lost!” I flared back.
He spun around, his face red. “The hell it isn’t! Maybe you can get by with your talent, but I’ve got years and years of education ahead of me! You know Daddy expected me to be a doctor, so come hell or high water, I’m getting my M.D.! And if we run away, I’ll never be a doctor—you know that! Name what I can do to earn a living for us—quick, list the jobs I can get other than a dishwasher, a fruit-picker, a short-order cook—will any of those put me through college, and then through med school? And I’ll have you and the twins to support, as well as myself—a ready-made family at age sixteen!”
Fiery anger filled me. He didn’t give me credit for being able to contribute anything! “I can work, too!” I snapped back. “Between us we can manage. Chris, when we were starving, you brought me four dead mice, and you said God gives people extra strength and abilities in the time of great stress. Well, I believe He does. When we leave here and are on our own, somehow or other we will make our way, and you will be a doctor! I’ll do anything to see that you get that damned M.D. behind your name!”
“What can you do?” he asked in a hateful, sneering way. Before I could reply, the door behind us opened and the grandmother was there! She paused without stepping into the room and fixed her glare on Chris. And he, stubborn and unwilling to cooperate as before, refused to be intimidated. He didn’t move from the window, but he turned to stare out at the rain again.
“Boy!” she lashed out. “Move away from that window—this instant!”
“My name is not ‘boy.’ My name is Christopher. You can address me by my given name, or don’t address me at all—but never call me ‘boy’ again!”
She spat at his back: “I hate that particular name! It was your father’s; out of the kindness of my heart, I pleaded his cause when his mother died, and he didn’t have a home. My husband didn’t want him here, but I felt pity for a young boy without parents, or means, and robbed of so much. So I kept nagging my husband to let his younger half-brother live under our roof. So your father came . . . brilliant, handsome, and he took advantage of our generosity. Deceived us! We sent him to the best of schools, bought him the best of everything, and he stole our daughter, his own half-niece! She was all we had left then . . . the only one left . . . and they eloped in the night, and came back two weeks later, smiling, happy, asking us to forgive them for falling in love. That night, my husband had his first heart attack. Has your mother told you that—that she and that man were the cause of her father’s heart disease? He ordered her out—told her never to come back—and then he fell down on the floor.”
She stopped, gasping for breath, putting a large, strong hand flashing with diamonds to her throat. Chris turned away from the window and stared at her, as did I. This was more than she had said to us since we came up the stairs to live, an eternity ago.
“We are not to blame for what our parents did,” Chris said flatly.
“You are to blame for what you and your sister have done!”
“What have we done so sinful?” he asked. “Do you think we can live in one room, year after year, and not see each other? You helped put us here. You have locked this wing so the servants cannot enter. You want to catch us doing something you consider evil. You want Cathy and me to prove your judgment of our mother’s marriage is right! Look at you, standing there in your iron-gray dress, feeling pious and self-righteous while you starve small children!”
“Stop!” I cried, terrified by what I saw on the grandmother’s face. “Chris, don’t say anything else!”
But he had already said too much. She slammed out of the room as my heart came up in my throat. “We’ll go up in the attic,” said Chris calmly. “The coward is afraid of the stairwell. We’ll be safe enough, and if she starves us, we’ll use the sheet-ladder and reach the ground.”
Again the door opened. The grandmother came in, striding forward with a green willow switch in her hand, and grim determination in her eyes. She must have stashed the switch somewhere nearby, to have fetched it so quickly. “Run into the attic and hide,” she lashed out, reaching to seize Chris by his upper arm, “and none of you will eat for another week! And not only will I whip you, but your sister, as well, if you resist, and the twins.”
It was October. In November, Chris would be seventeen. He was still only a boy compared to her huge size. He was considering resistance, but glanced at me, then at the twins, who whimpered and clung to each other, and he allowed that old woman to drag him into the bathroom. She closed and locked the door. She ordered him to strip, and to lean over the bathtub.
The twins came running to me, burying their faces in my lap. “Make her stop!” pleaded Carrie. “Don’t let her whip Chris!”
He didn’t make a sound as that whip slashed down on his bare skin. I heard the sickening thuds of green willow biting into flesh. And I felt every painful blow! Chris and I had become as one in the past year; he was like the other side of me, the way I’d like to be, strong and forceful, and able to stand that whip without crying out. I hated her. I sat on that bed, and gathered the twins in my arms, and felt hate so large looming up inside of me that I didn’t know how to release it except by screaming. He felt the whip, and I let loose his cries of pain. I hoped God heard! I hoped the servants heard! I hoped that dying grandfather heard!
Out of the bathroom she came, with her whip in her hand. Behind her, Chris trailed, a towel swathed around his hips. He was dead-white. I couldn’t stop screaming.
“Shut up!” she ordered, snapping the whip before my eyes. “Silence this second, unless you want more of the same!”
I couldn’t stop screaming, not even when she dragged me off to the bed and threw the twins aside when they tried to protect me. Cory went for her leg with his teeth. She sent him reeling with one blow. I went then, my hysteria quelled, into the bathroom, where I, too, was ordered to strip. I stood there looking at her diamond brooch, the one she always wore, counting the stones, seventeen tiny ones. Her gray taffeta was patterned with fine red lines, and the white collar was hand-crocheted. She fixed her eyes on the short stubble of hair the scarf about my head revealed with an expression of gloating satisfaction.
“Undress, or I will rip off your clothes.”
I began to undress, slowly working on the buttons of my blouse. I didn’t wear a bra then, though I needed one. I saw her eyeing my breasts, my flat stomach, before she turned her eyes away, apparently offended. “I’m going to get even one day, old woman,” I said. “There’s going to come a day when you are going to be the helpless one, and I’m going to hold the whip in my hands. And there’s going t
o be food in the kitchen that you are never going to eat, for, as you incessantly say, God sees everything, and he has his way of working justice, an eye for an eye is his way, Grandmother!”
“Never speak to me again!” she snapped. She smiled then, confident there would never come that day when I was in control of her fate. Foolishly, I had spoken, using the worst possible timing, and she let me have it. While the whip bit down on my tender flesh, in the bedroom the twins screamed, “Chris, make her stop! Don’t let Cathy be hurt!”
I fell down on my knees near the tub, crouching in a tight ball to protect my face, my breasts, my most vulnerable areas. Like a wild woman out of control, she lashed at me until the willow switch broke. The pain was like fire. When the switch broke, I thought it was over, but she picked up a long-handled brush and with that she beat me about the head and shoulders. Try as I would to keep from screaming, like the brave silence Chris had kept, I had to let it out. I yelled, “You’re not a woman! You’re a monster! Something unhuman and inhumane!” My reward for this was a belting whack against the right side of my skull. Everything went black.
I drifted into reality, hurting all over, my head splitting with pain. Up in the attic a record was playing the “Rose Adiago” from the ballet The Sleeping Beauty. If I live to be a hundred I will never forget that music, and the way I felt when I opened my eyes to see Chris bending over me, applying antiseptic, taping on adhesive plasters, tears in his eyes dropping down on me. He’d ordered the twins up into the attic to play, to study, to color, to do anything to keep their minds off of what was going on down here. When he had done for me all that he could with his inadequate medical supplies, I took care of his welted, bloody back. Neither of us wore clothes. Clothes would adhere to our oozing cuts. I had the most bruises from the brush she’d wielded so cruelly. On my head was a dark lump that Chris feared might be a concussion.
Doctoring over, we turned on our sides, facing one another under the sheet. Our eyes locked and melded as one set. He touched my cheek, the softest, most loving caress. “Don’t we have fun, my brother . . . don’t we have fun?” I sang in a parody of that song about Bill Bailey. “We’ll hurt the livelong da-ay . . . you’ll do the doctoring and I’ll pay the rent . . .”
“Stop!” he cried out, looking hurt and defenseless. “I know it was my fault! I stood at the window. She didn’t have to hurt you, too!”
“It doesn’t matter, sooner or later she would do it. From the very first day, she planned to punish us for some trifling reason. I just marvel that she held back for so long in using that whip.”
“When she was lashing me, I heard you screaming—and I didn’t have to. You did it for me, Cathy, and it helped; I didn’t feel any pain but yours.”
We held each other carefully. Our bare bodies pressed together; my breasts flattened out against his chest. Then he was murmuring my name, and tugging off the wrapping from my head, letting loose my spill of long hair before he cupped my head in his hands to gently ease it closer to his lips. It felt odd to be kissed while lying naked in his arms . . . and not right. “Stop,” I whispered fearfully, feeling that male part of him grow hard against me. “This is just what she thought we did.”
Bitterly, he laughed before he drew away, telling me I didn’t know anything. There was more to making love than just kissing, and we hadn’t done more than kiss, ever.
“And never will,” I said, but weakly.
That night I went to sleep after thinking of his kiss, and not the whipping or the blows from the brush. Swelling up in both of us was a turmoil of whirling emotions. Something sleeping deep inside of me had awakened, quickened, just as Aurora slept until the Prince came to put on her quiet lips a long lover’s kiss.
That was the way of all fairy tales—ending with the kiss, and the happy ever after. There had to be some other prince for me to bring about a happy ending.
To Find a Friend
Somebody was screaming on the attic stairs! I bolted awake and looked around to see who was missing. Cory!
Oh, God—what had happened now?
I bounded from bed and raced toward the closet, and I heard Carrie wake up and add her yowls to Cory’s, not even knowing what he was yelling about. Chris cried out, “What the hell is going on now?”
I sped through the closet, raced up six steps, and then stopped dead and just stared. There was Cory in his white pajamas, yelling his head off—and darned if I could see why.
“Do something! Do something!” he screamed at me, and finally he pointed to the object of his distress.
Ohhh . . . on the step was a mousetrap, the same place we left one every night, set with cheese. But this time the mouse wasn’t dead. It had tried to be clever, and steal the cheese with a forepaw instead of his teeth, and it was a tiny foot caught beneath the strong wire spring. Savagely, that little gray mouse was chewing on that trapped foot to free itself, despite the pain it must have felt.
“Cathy, do something quick!” cried Cory, throwing himself into my arms. “Save his life! Don’t let him bite off his foot! I want him alive! I want a friend! I’ve never had a pet; you know I always wanted a pet. Why do you and Chris always have to kill all the mice?”
Carrie came up behind me to beat on my back with her tiny fists. “You’re mean, Cathy! Mean! Mean! You won’t let Cory have nothin’!”
As far as I knew, Cory had just about everything money could buy except a pet, his freedom and the great outdoors. And truly, Carrie might have slaughtered me on the stairs if Chris hadn’t rushed to my defense and unhinged the jaws clenched on my leg, which was fortunately well covered over with a very full nightgown that reached my ankles.
“Stop all this racket!” he ordered firmly. And he bent over to use the wash cloth he must have gone for just to pick up a savage mouse, and save his hand from being bitten.
“Make him well, Chris,” pleaded Cory. “Please don’t let him die!”
“Since you seem to want this mouse so badly, Cory, I’ll do what I can to save his foot and leg, though it’s pretty mangled.”
Oh, what a hustle and bustle to save the life of one mouse, when we had killed hundreds. First Chris had to carefully lift the wire spring, and when he did, that uncomprehending wild thing almost hissed as Cory turned his back and sobbed, and Carrie screamed. Then the mouse seemed to half-faint, from relief, I suppose.
We raced down to the bathroom, where Chris and I scrubbed up and Cory held his near-dead mouse well wrapped in the pale blue washcloth, as Chris warned not to squeeze too tight.
On the countertop I spread all the medication we had on a clean towel.
“He’s dead!” yelled Carrie, and she struck Chris. “You killed Cory’s only pet!”
“This mouse is not dead,” said Chris calmly. “Now please, all of you, be quiet, and don’t move. Cathy, hold him still. I’ve got to do what I can to repair the torn flesh, and then I’ll have to splint up that leg.”
First he used antiseptic to clean the wound, while the mouse lay as if dead, only its eyes were open and staring up at me in a pitiful way. Next he used gauze that had to be split lengthwise to fit such a tiny foot and leg, and then over that he wrapped cotton and for a splint he used a toothpick, broke it in half and taped that in place with adhesive.
“I’m going to call him Mickey,” said Cory—a thousand candles behind his eyes because one small mouse would live to become his pet.
“It may be a girl,” said Chris, who flicked his eyes to check.
“No! Don’t want no girl mouse—want a Mickey mouse!”
“It’s a boy all right,” said Chris. “Mickey will live and survive to eat all of our cheese,” said the doctor, having completed his first surgery, and made his first cast, and looking, I must admit, rather proud of himself.
He washed the blood from his hands, and Cory and Carrie were lit up like something marvelous had finally come into their lives.
“Let me hold Mickey now!” cried Cory.
“No, Cory, let Cathy hold him fo
r a while longer. You see, he’s in shock and her hands are larger and will give Mickey more warmth than yours. And you might, just accidentally, squeeze too much.”
I sat in the bedroom rocker and nursed a gray mouse that seemed on the verge of having a heart attack—its heart beat so fiercely. It gasped and fluttered its eyelids. As I held it, I felt its small, warm body struggling to live on, I wanted it to live and be Cory’s pet.
The door opened and the grandmother came in.
None of us was fully clothed; in fact, we still wore only our nightclothes, without robes to conceal what might be revealed. Our feet were bare, our hair was tousled, and our faces weren’t washed. One rule broken.
Cory cringed close at my side as the grandmother swept her discerning gaze over the disorganized, (well, truthfully,) really messy room. The beds weren’t made, our clothes were draped on chairs, and socks were everywhere.
Two rules broken.
And Chris was in the bathroom washing Carrie’s face, and helping her put on her clothes, and fasten the buttons of her pink coveralls.
Three rules broken. The two of them came out, with Carrie’s hair up in a neat ponytail, tied with a pink ribbon.
Immediately, when she saw the grandmother, Carrie froze. Her blue eyes went wide and scared. She turned and clung to Chris for protection. He picked her up and carried her over to me and put her down in my lap. Then he went on to where the picnic basket was on the table and began to take out what she had brought up.
As Chris neared, the grandmother backed away. He ignored her, as he swiftly emptied the basket.
“Cory,” he said, heading toward the closet, “I’ll go up and find a suitable birdcage and while I’m gone, see if you can’t put on all of your clothes, without Cathy’s help, and wash your face and hands.”
The grandmother remained silent. I sat in the rocker and nursed the ailing mouse, as my little children crowded in the seat with me, and all three of us fixed our eyes on her, until Carrie could bear it no longer and turned to hide her face against my shoulder. Her small body quivered all over.
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 27