He’d never left me alone in here before!
“No, Papa!” I screamed, panic in my voice, terror all around me. “Come back! Don’t make me stay in here by myself!”
“You’re not alone,” he called to me from the other side of the door. “God is with you and I am with you. I’ll stay and wait right here, watching through the keyhole, listening, praying. Nothing but good can come from rocking in that chair. Believe that, Audrina; nothing but good will fill your brain and replace your lost memories.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and heard the wind chimes clamoring louder, much louder now.
“Sweetheart, don’t cry. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Hold onto your faith in me and do as I say, and your future will shine more brightly than the sun above.”
Beside the chair was one of the night tables that held a lamp and a Bible, her Bible. I snatched up the black leatherbound book and held it close against my heart. I told myself, as I’d told myself before, that there was nothing to be afraid of. The dead couldn’t harm anyone. But if they couldn’t—why was I so terrified?
I heard Papa’s soft voice outside the locked door. “You do have her gifts, Audrina, you do. Even if you don’t believe, I believe. And I’m the one who knows. I’m sure the reason our previous efforts have failed is because I stayed in the room with you. It’s my presence that ruins your chances at succeeding. I know now it’s solitude, loneliness, that makes the process begin. You’ve got to wash your mind free of anxieties. Feel no fear, no joy, no confusion. Expect nothing and everything will be given. Feel nothing but contentment to be alive, to be where you are and who you are. Ask nothing, receive everything. Sit there and let go of whatever makes you afraid or worried. Let contentment loosen your limbs and relax your mind, and if sleep wants to come, then let it come. Do you hear me? Are you listening? No confusion. No fear. For Papa is here.”
All his words were familiar. Same old thing about not being afraid, when fear was almost choking me. “Papa,” I wailed for one last time, “please don’t make me …”
“Oh,” he said heavily, sighing, “why do I have to force you? Why can’t you just believe? Lean back in the rocker, put your head against the high back, hold the chair arms and begin to rock. Sing if it helps to wash your mind clean of fear, of worries, of desires and emotions. Sing and sing until you become an empty pitcher. Empty pitchers have room for many, many things, but full pitchers can hold no more …”
Oh, yes, I’d heard this before. I knew what he was doing. He was trying to turn me into the First Audrina—or maybe I was going to be the instrument through which he’d be able to communicate with her. I didn’t want to be her. And if ever I was her, I’d hate him, hate him. Yet, he kept soothing me, cajoling me, and if I didn’t want to stay in here all night, I’d have to do as he said.
First I stared around at the room again, memorizing again every detail. Little tickling sensations began to whisper, whisper, that I could be her, I was her, the dead Audrina, who was only bones in her grave. No, no, had to think the right thoughts and give to Papa what he had to have. I told myself this was only a bedroom filled with old toys. I saw a huge spider spinning a web from doll to doll. Momma didn’t like housework, even cleaning this room. Though it appeared a spotless spic-and-span shrine, it wasn’t anything but surface clean. For some reason that made me feel better—Momma was paying what Papa called “lip service” to reverent cleanliness. And Aunt Ellsbeth refused to clean this room.
Unconsciously I began to rock.
Into my head filtered an old, almost forgotten tune. The music and the lyrics played over and over again. The words lulled me, while the melody tingled my spine and slowed my pulse. Peace was coming unbidden to heavy my eyelids… and then vaguely I heard my frail voice singing:
Just a playroom, safe in my home,
Only a playroom, safe in my home,
Got no tears, no fears
And nowhere else to roam,
’Cause my papa wants me always to stay home,
Safe in my playroom, safe in my home.
The playroom of the First and Best Audrina. The Perfect Audrina who’d never given her parents the pain and the trouble I delivered daily. I didn’t want to sing her song. But I couldn’t stop. On and on I heard the singing, trying to keep my eyes open so they could see those elephants, bears and toy tigers on the toy shelves, all sweet and friendly looking until I glanced away. When I looked back, they were fiercely snarling.
The wallpaper was faded bluish violet, entwined with glittery silver threads to make spiderwebs on the walls. There were more spiders on the toys. A giant one began to weave more dolls together, and another came to rest in the eye socket of one doll that had hair somewhat the color of my own. How awful.
“Rock, Audrina, rock!” ordered Papa. “Make the floor-boards creak. Make the gray mists come. Watch the walls dissolve, hear the wind chimes tinkle. They’ll take you back, back to where you’ll find all your memories, all the gifts that were hers. She doesn’t need them where she is, but you do. So sing,
sing,
sing …”
Hypnotizing, like a singsong chant he, too, had to use, but he didn’t know the words I was saying. Papa loves me, yes he does. Papa needs me, yes he does.
Jesus loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so …
The shiny black button eyes of the plushy animals seemed to glitter and gleam with more knowledge than I’d ever have. Little pink or red tongues appeared ready to speak and tell me secrets Papa would never reveal. High above, the wind chimes were tinkling, and contentment was coming as I rocked and rocked and became more and more tranquil. Nothing wrong with me, for sooner or later I was going to be changed in some indefinable way for the better….
I grew sleepy, sleepier, unreal feeling. The orangey light from the gaslamps shivered, caught silver and gold threads in the wallpaper. All the colors in the room began to move, to sparkle like diamonds suddenly caught fire. The music of the cupola wind chimes was in my brain dancing, dancing, telling me of happy playtimes up there, slyly whispering of one terrible time up there. Who was flashing that crystal prism in my eyes? How did the wind get into the house to blow my hair when the windows were all down and locked? Were there drafts in the cupola, and ghosts in the attic? What made the hair on my head move, what?
Way back near the sane side of me, I wanted to believe all of this was hopeless and I’d never become an “empty pitcher” that would fill with everything wonderful. I truly didn’t want to be that First Audrina, even if she had been more beautiful, and more gifted, too. Still I rocked and sang, I couldn’t stop. Contentment was on the way, making me happier. My panicky heart slowed. My pulse stopped racing. The music I heard was beautiful as I heard behind me, or ahead of me, a man’s voice singing.
Someone who needed me was calling; someone who was in the future waiting, and dreamily, unquestioningly, I fuzzily saw the walls open as the molecules slowly, slowly separated, opened, and formed such grainy pores I could drift through them without difficulty. I was outside in the night that swiftly changed into day.
Free! I was free of the playroom. Free of my papa. Free of Whitefern!
I was skipping merrily home from school on my own special day. And I was me. Happily I danced along a woodsy dirt path. I’d just left school, and I didn’t question or wonder about this, even knowing I’d never been to school. Something wise was telling me I was inside the First and Most Wonderful Audrina, and I was going to know her as well as I knew myself. I was her, and she was me, and “we” were wearing a beautiful crepe de chine dress. I wore my best petticoat underneath it—the one with Irish lace and embroidered shamrocks near the hem.
It was my birthday and I was nine years old. That meant soon I’d be ten, and ten wasn’t so far from being eleven, and when I was twelve all the magic of becoming a woman was close at hand.
I spun in circles to see my accordian-pleated skirt flair up to my waist. I inclined my head and spun some mor
e to see my pretty petticoat.
Suddenly there was a noise on the path ahead. Someone giggled. Like black magic the sky abruptly turned dark. Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled deep and ominously.
I couldn’t move. Like a statue of marble I stood frozen. My heart began to beat wildly like a jungle drum. Some sixth sense woke up and screamed that something awful was soon to happen.
Pain, my sixth sense was beating out, shame, terror and humiliation. Momma, Papa, help me! Don’t let them hurt me! Don’t let them do it! I went to Sunday school every week, didn’t miss even when I had a cold. I’d earned my black Bible with my name on the cover emblazoned in gold, and I had a gold medal, too. Why hadn’t the rocking chair warned me and told me how to escape! God, are you there? Are you seeing, God? Do something! Do anything! Help me!
Out of the bushes they jumped. Three of them. Run, run fast. They’d never catch me if I ran fast enough. My legs unlocked, they ran … but not fast enough.
Scream, scream loud and louder!
I fought with kicks and scratches, I butted my head back against the teeth of the boy who pinned my arms behind me.
God didn’t hear me cry for help. Nobody heard. Scream, scream, and then scream again—until I could scream no more. Just feel the shame, the humiliation, the ruthless hands that ripped and tore and violated.
See the other boy who rose from behind the bushes and stood there paralyzed, staring at me with his hair pasted down on his forehead from the rain that came down hard now. See him run away!
My screams brought Papa flying into the room. “Darling, darling,” he cried, falling to his knees so he could gather me into his arms. He cuddled me against his chest and stroked my back, my hair. “It’s all right, I’m here. I’ll always be here.”
“You shouldn’t have, shouldn’t have,” I choked, still trembling from the shock.
“What did you dream this time, my love?”
“Bad things. Same awful thing.”
“Tell Papa everything. Let Papa take away the pain and shame. Do you know now why I warn you to stay out of the woods? That was your sister, Audrina, your dead sister. It doesn’t have to happen to you. You’re letting that scene into your head when all I want is for you to travel beyond the woods and take for yourself all the specialness she used to have. Did you see how happy she could be? How joyful and vibrant? Did you feel how wonderful it used to be for her when she stayed out of the woods? That’s what I want for you. Oh, my sweet Audrina,” he whispered with his face buried deep in my hair, “it won’t always be that way. Someday when you sit down to rock and sing, you’ll bypass the woods, forget the boys and find the beauty of being alive. Once you do, all the memories you’ve forgotten, the good things, will come flooding back and make you whole again.”
He was telling me, with good intentions, that I wasn’t whole now—and if that were so, what was I? Crazy?
“Tomorrow night we’ll do this again. I don’t think it was as bad this time as before. This time you pulled out of it and came back to me.”
I knew I had to save myself from this room and this chair. Somehow I had to convince him I had gone on beyond the woods and had already found the gifts the First Audrina no longer needed.
Tenderly he tucked me into bed, and on his knees he said a prayer to send me safely into sweet dreams, asking the angels on high to protect me through the night. He kissed my cheek and said he loved me, and even as he closed the door behind him I was wondering how I could convince him not to make me go to that room and sit in that chair again. How could I hate what he did to me, and love the idea of being what he wanted? How did I preserve me—when he was trying to turn me into her?
For hours I lay on my back staring up at the ceiling, trying to find my past in all the fancy swirls in the overhead plaster. Papa had given me many clues as to what would make him happiest. Papa wanted lots and lots of money, for himself, for Momma, for me, too. He wanted to fix up this house and make it like new again. He had to fulfill all the promises he’d made Lucietta Lana Whitefern, the heiress every worthy man on the lower East Coast had wanted until she married him. What a catch my mother had been. If only she hadn’t given birth to two Audrinas.
Tuesday Teatime
Christmas came and went, but I hardly remembered anything but a princess doll that had shown up under the tree, making Vera jealous, even though she often insisted she was much too old to play with dolls.
It scared me the way time moved along so swiftly, so that even before I knew what was happening, spring was on its way. Days were falling into the holes in my memory. Vera liked to torment me by saying that anyone who couldn’t keep track of time was insane.
Today was Tuesday, and Aunt Mercy Marie would visit again, even though it seemed to me only yesterday that Mercy Marie had been brought out for teatime.
Papa was taking his time about leaving this Tuesday morning. He sat at the kitchen table expounding on life and all its complexities, while Vera and my aunt consumed pancakes as if they would never eat again. Soberly my mother was preparing the canapés and other treats for teatime.
“They were the best of times; they were the worst of times,” began my papa, who loved to say that phrase over and over again. It seemed to grate on my mother’s nerves as much as it did on mine. He made it an awesomely fearsome thing to even think beyond tomorrow.
On and on he went, making his time to be young seem so much better than any time I was likely to know. Life had been perfect when Papa was a boy; back then people had been nicer; houses had been constructed to last forever and not fall apart as they did nowadays. Dogs, too, had been better when he was a boy, really reliable, sure to bring back every hurled stick. Even the weather was better, not so hot in the summers, nor so cold in the winters, unless there was a blizzard. No blizzard now had a chance of equalling the freezing ferocity of the blizzards Papa had to trudge home from school in.
“Twenty miles,” he boasted, “through the wind and snow, through the sleet and rain, through the hail and ice, nothing kept me home—even when I had pneumonia. When I was in high school on the football team and broke my leg, that didn’t keep me from walking to school every day. I was hardy, determined to be well educated, to be the best there was.”
Momma slammed down a dish so hard it cracked. “Damian, stop exaggerating.” Her voice was harsh, impatient. “Can’t you see what false notions you plant in your daughter’s mind?”
“What other kind of notions have either one of you ever planted?” asked Aunt Ellsbeth sourly. “If Audrina grows up to be normal it will be a miracle.”
“Amen to that,” contributed Vera. She grinned at me and then stuck out her tongue. Papa didn’t notice, he was too busy shouting at my aunt.
“Normal? What is normal? In my opinion normal is only ordinary, mediocre. Life belongs to the rare exceptional individual who dares to be different.”
“Damian, will you please stop expounding on your ideas to a child too young to understand that you are not an authority on anything except how to run your mouth all day long.”
“Silence!” bellowed Papa. “I won’t have my wife ridiculing me in front of my only child. Lucky, apologize immediately!”
Why was Aunt Ellsbeth smirking? It was my secret belief that my aunt loved to hear my parents argue. Vera made some gagging noise and then, with a great deal of difficulty, rose to her feet and limped toward the front hall. Soon she’d be boarding the school bus I’d sell my soul to ride on like every other child who wasn’t as special as I was. Instead, I had to stay home, lonely for playmates, with the kind of adults who filled my head with hodgepodge notions and then stirred them up with a witch’s stick of contradictions. No wonder I didn’t know who I was, or which day of the week, month or even year it was. I didn’t have any best or worst times. I lived, it seemed to me, in a theater, with the exception being the actors on stage were my family members and I, too, had a role to play—only I didn’t know what it was.
All of a sudden, for no reason at all
, I was looking around the kitchen and remembering a large orange cat who used to sleep near the old cast-iron stove.
“I wish Tweedle Dee would come home,” I said wistfully. “I’m even lonelier since my cat went away.”
Papa jolted. Momma stared at me. “Why, Tweedle Dee has been gone for a long, long time, Audrina.” Her voice sounded strained, worried.
“Oh, yes,” I said quickly, “I know that, but I want him to come home. Papa, you didn’t take him to the city pound, did you? You wouldn’t put my cat to sleep, would you—just because he makes you sneeze?”
He threw me a worried look, then forced a smile. “No, Audrina, I do the best I can to cater to all your needs, and if that cat had wanted to stay and make me sneeze myself to death, I would have suffered on in silence for your sake.”
“Suffered, but not in silence,” muttered my aunt.
I watched my parents embrace and kiss before Papa headed for the garage. “Have a good time at your tea party,” he called back to Momma, “though I wish to heaven you’d let Mercy Marie stay dead. What we need is someone to live in that empty cottage we own; then you’d have a nice neighbor-woman to invite to your teas.”
“Damian,” called Momma sweetly, “you go out and have your fun, don’t you? Since we’re held captives here, at least let Ellie and me have ours.”
He grunted and said no more, and soon I was at the front windows watching him drive away. His hand lifted in a salute before he drove out of sight. I didn’t want him to go. I hated Tuesday teatime.
Teatime was supposed to begin at four, but since Vera had started playing hooky to escape her last class in order to reach home by four, teatime had been moved up to three o’clock.
Wearing my best clothes, I sat ready and waiting for the ritual to begin. I was required to be there as part of my social education, and if Vera was incapacitated enough to stay home legitimately, then she was invited to the parties, too. I often thought Vera broke her bones just so she could stay home and hear what went on in our best front salon.
My Sweet Audrina Page 5