Petals on the Wind

  While I could greet her pleasantly, "Good afternoon, dear Grandmother. How very nice to see you again. Remember me? I'm Cathy, one of the grandchildren you helped hide away, and each day you brought us food in a picnic basket--every day by six-thirty you were there, with your gallon thermos of milk, and your quart thermos of lukewarm soup--and canned soup at that. Why couldn't you have brought us hot soup at least once? Did you deliberately heat that soup to only warm? I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. And only then did she see the willow switch I'd hidden behind my back.

  Casually I tapped the switch on my palm. "Grandmother," I said softly, "remember the day you whipped our mother? How you forced her to strip in front of her father, and then you whipped her, and she was an adult--a shameless, wicked, evil deed, don't you agree?"

  Her terrified gray eyes fixed on the switch. A terrible struggle was going on in her brain--and I was glad, so glad Bart had told me she wasn't senile. Pale, watery, gray eyes, red-rimmed and crinkled all about with deep crow's feet, like cuts that never bled. Thin, crooked lips now shrunken to only a tiny buttonhole and puckered about by a radiating sunburst of deep lines, etching beneath her long hooked nose a spiderweb design of crosshatch lines. And, believe it or not, to the high and severe neckline of that yellow cotton jacket was fastened the diamond brooch! Never had I seen her without the brooch pinned to the neckline of her gray taffeta dresses with the white crocheted collars.

  "Grandmother," I chanted, "remember the twins? The dear little five-year-olds you enticed into this house, and not once while they were here did you ever their names--or any of our names. Cory's dead, and you know that--but did my mother tell you about Carrie? Carrie is dead too. She didn't grow very tall because she was robbed of sunlight and fresh air in the years when she needed it most. Robbed too of love and security and given trauma instead of happiness. Chris and I went onto the roof to sit and sun ourselves, but the twins were afraid of the high roof. Did you know we went out there and we'd stay for hours and hours .. . no, you didn't know, did you?"

  She moved a bit, as if trying to shrink into the thin mattress. I gloated to see her fear, rejoiced that she could move a little. Her eyes now were as mine used to be, windowpanes to reveal all her terrified emotions-- and she couldn't cry out for help! At my mercy. "Remember the second night, dearest, loving Grandmother? You lifted Carrie up by her hair, and you must have known that hurt, yet you did it. Then you sent Cory spinning with one blow, and that hurt too, and he was only trying to protect his sister. Poor Carrie, how she grieved for Cory. She never got over his death, never stopped missing him She met a nice boy named Alex. They fell in love and were going to be married when she found out he was going to be a minister. That shook Carrie up. You see, you made us all deeply fearful of religious people. The day Alex said he was going to be a minister Carrie went into a despairing depression. She had learned the lesson you taught very well. You taught us that no one can ever be perfect enough to please God. Something dormant came to life the day Carrie was weakened by shock, depression and the lack of the spirit to go on. Now listen to what she did--because of you! Because you impressed on her young brain that she was born evil and she'd be wicked no matter how much she sought to be good! She believed you! Cory was dead. She knew he had died from the arsenic put on sugared doughnuts. . . . So when she felt she could no longer put up with life and all the people who expected perfection, she bought rat poison! She bought a package of twelve doughnuts and coated them with that rat poison full of arsenic! She ate all but one--and that had a bite mark. Now . . . shrink into your mattress and try and run from the guilt that is yours! You and my mother killed her as much as you killed Cory! I despise you, old woman!"

  I didn't tell her I hated my mother more. The grandmother had never loved us, so anything she did was to be expected. But our mother who, had borne us, who had cared for us, who had loved us well when Daddy lived--that was another story--an unbearable horror story! And her time would come!

  "Yes, Grandmother, Carrie is dead now too, because she wanted to die in the same way Cory had and be with him in heaven."

  Her eyes squinched and a small shudder rippled the covers. I gloated.

  I brought from behind my back the box containing a long length of Carrie's hair that had taken me hours to arrange and brush into one long, shimmering switch of molten gold. At one end it was tied with a red satin bow, and at the other, a bow of purple satin. "Look old woman, this is Carrie's hair, some of it. I have another box full of loose, tangled strands, for I can't bear to part with a piece of it. I saved it to keep not only for Chris and myself, but to show you and our mother . . . for the two of you killed Carrie as surely as you killed Cory!"

  Oh, I was near mad with hate. Revenge blazed my eyes, my temper, and shook my hands. I could see Came as she lay near death, turning old, withered, bony until she was only a little skeleton covered by loose, pale skin, so translucent all her veins showed-- and the remains had to be sealed quickly in a box of pretty metal to shut away the stench of decay.

  I stepped nearer the bed and dangled the bright hair with its gay ribbons before her wide and frightened eyes. "Isn't this beautiful hair, old woman? Was yours ever so beautiful, so bountiful? No! I know it wasn't! Nothing about you could ever have been pretty, nothing! Not even when you were young! That's why you were so jealous of your husband's stepmother." I laughed to see her flinch. "Yes, dear Grandmother, I know a lot more about you now than I did. Your son-in-law has told me all the family secrets my mother told him. Your husband Malcolm was in love with his father's younger wife, ten times more beautiful and sweeter than you ever were! So when Alicia had a son, you suspected that child was your own husband's, and that's why you hated our father, and why you sent for him, deceiving him into believing he'd found a good home. And you educated him and gave him the best of everything so he'd have a taste of the good, rich life and be more hurt and disappointed later on, when you threw him out and left him nothing in your wills. But my father fooled you instead, didn't he? He stole your only daughter, whom you hated too, because her father loved her more than he loved you. And half-uncle married half-niece. Yet how wrong you were about Malcolm and Alicia, for my father's mother despised Malcolm! She fought him off time and again--and the baby she had was not your husband's son! Though he would have been, if Malcolm had had his way!"

  Blankly she stared at me, as if the past was of no importance to her now. Only the present mattered, and the switch in my hand "I'm going to tell you something now, old woman, that you need to know. There was never a better man born than my father, or a more honorable woman than his mother. But don't lie there and think I've inherited any of Alicia's or my father's godly traits--for I am like you! Heartless! I never forget, never forgive! I hate for you killing Cory and Carrie! I hate you for making of me what I am!" I screamed this, out of control, forgetful of the nurse napping down the hall I wanted to feed her arsenic by the handfuls and sit to watch her die and rot before my eyes, like Carrie had. I pirouetted around the room to release my frustrations, lashing my legs, showing off my fine young body, and then I drew up short and snapped in her face, "Ail those years you locked us up, you never said our names, never looked at Chris because he was our father all over again--and your husband too, when he was young, and before you made him evil too. You blame everything wrong with human beings on their evil souls, and ignore the truth. Money is the god who rules in this house! It's money that's always made the worst things happen! You were married for your money and you knew it! And greed brought us here, and greed locked us up and stole three years and four months from our lives, and put us at your mercy and you didn't have any, not even for your grandchildren, the only grandchildren you'd ever have, and we never touched you, did we? Though we tried in the beginning, remember?" I jumped up on the bed and lashed at her with the length of Carrie's golden hair. A soft whip that didn't hurt, though she cringed from the touch. Then I tossed Carrie's precious hair to her bedside table and snapped the switch before
her eyes. I danced and whirled on her bed, over her frozen body, displaying my fine agility as my long hair flared in a golden circle.

  "Remember how you punished our mother before we grew to hate her too? I owe you for that," I said, legs apart and straddling her covered body. "From your neck down to your heels, I owe you that, plus the whip lashes you gave Chris and me, I owe you that too. And all the other things, each one of them is etched in my memory. Didn't I tell you there would come a day when I held the switch in my hand, and there would be food in the kitchen you'd never eat? Well. . that day is here, Grandmother."

  The sunken gray eyes in her gaunt face sparkled hate, malicious and strong. Daring me to strike her-- daring me!

  "What shall I do first," I said as if to myself, "shall it be the switch, or the hot tar in your hair? Where did you get the tar, old woman? I always wondered where you got it. Did you plan it way in advance and wait for an excuse to use it? I'm going to confess something now you don't know. Chris never cut off all my hair, only the front part to fool you into thinking I was baldheaded. Beneath that towel I wrapped on my head was all the long hair he saved. Yes, old woman, love saved my hair from being cut off. He loved me enough to work for hours and hours to save what hair he could--more love than you've ever known, and from a brother."

  Deep in her throat she made a strangling sound, and how I wished she could speak!

  "Grandmother darling," I taunted, hands on my hips as I leaned to look down on her, "why don't you tell me where to get the tar? I haven't been able to find any. No road construction going on anywhere near-- so I guess I'll have to use hot wax. You could have used melted wax, for it would have done the job just as well. Didn't you think of melting a few of your candles?" I smiled, menacingly, I hoped. "Oh, dear Grandmother, what fun you and I are going to have! And nobody will know, for you can't talk and you can't write, all you can do is lie there and suffer."

  I didn't like myself or what I was saying or what I was feeling. My conscience hovered near the ceiling, looking down with shame at this released fury that was me in white tights. Aghast, I was up there feeling pity for this old woman who'd suffered through two strokes-- but on the bed was another kind of me. A vicious, mean, vindictive Foxworth, with blue eyes as cold as hers used to be as I stared her down, and then suddenly, cruelly I bent; I yanked down the sheet and blanket that covered her and she was exposed. Her garment was like a hospital jacket that was slit and tied down the back, for there was no front opening. Just a plain yellow cotton thing with that incongruous diamond brooch at the throat. No doubt they would attach that brooch to her funeral' garments.

  Naked. She had to be stripped, as Momma was, as Chris had been, as I had been too. She had to suffer through the humiliation of being without clothes while contemptuous eyes made her shrivel even smaller. Relentlessly I seized hold of the hem of her stingy, cheap cotton garment and without compunction I yanked it upward to her armpits. In rumpled, unironed folds it half-hid her face, and carefully I pulled back the cloth that could hide from me any expression she might manage to reveal. Then I stared down at her body, expressing scorn and revulsion as she had expressed it with her hard eyes and knife-slashed lips when I was a child of fourteen and she had caught me looking at myself in the mirror, admiring the beauty of a figure I'd never seen before nude.

  The body in its youth is a beautiful thing . . . a joy to behold, the sweet young curves, the smooth unblemished skin, firm and taut flesh, but oh, to grow old!

  Those twin hills of concrete were flabby loose udders that sagged to her waist, and the nipples were at the very bottom, large brown, mottled and bumpy. The blue veins of her breasts stood up like thin ropes covered by a translucent sheath. The pasty whiteness of her skin was dimpled, furrowed, creased by stretch marks from childbirth, and a long scar from navel to her almost hairless mound of Venus showed she'd either had a hysterectomy or a caesarean section. It was an old scar, pale and shinier than the doughy, white, wrinkled skin around it. Her thin, long legs were gnarled old branches of a tired tree. I sighed-- would I someday look like this?

  Without pity or an attempt to be gentle I rolled her over and yanked her back into the center of the bed. And all the while I was babbling on of how Chris and I had joked she either nailed on her clothes or glued them in and never, of course, did she take off her underclothes unless she was in a closet with the light out. Her back showed fewer ravages than her front, though her buttocks were flat, flabby and too white.

  "I'm going to whip you now, Grandmother," I said tonelessly, my heart gone out of this now. "I promised a long time ago I was going to do this if ever I had the chance and so I will do it!" And closing my eyes and, asking God to forgive me for what I was about to do, I lifted my arm high and then brought down that willow switch as hard as I could, and flat on her bare buttocks!

  She shuddered. Some noise came from her throat. Then she seemed to sink into unconsciousness. She relaxed so much she released her bladder. I began to cry. Terrible sobs from me as I ran to the adjoining bath to find a washcloth and soap, and back I hurried with toilet tissue to clean her. Then I washed her and put salve on the awful welt I'd made.

  I turned her over on the bed, straightened out her gown so she was covered modestly, neatly, and only then did I check to see if she was alive or dead. Her gray eyes were open and staring at me without expression as tears streaked my face. Next, slowly, as I sobbed on, her eyes began to gleam in unspoken triumph!

  Mutely she called me coward! I knew you couldn't be anything but a soft weakling! No spine, no starch! Kill me. Go on, kill me! I dare you, do it, do it go on!

  Down from the bed I jumped, and I ran fast into the library and on into the parlor I'd seen. In a frenzy of anger I grabbed up the first candelabra I saw and dashed back to her--but I didn't have matches! Back again to the library where I rummaged through the desk Bart used. He smoked; he'd have matches or a cigarette lighter. I found a book of matches from a local disco.

  The candles were ivory colored, dignified, like this house. Terror was in her iron eyes now. She wanted that bit of tufted hair tied with a pink ribbon. I lit a candle and watched it flame, then I held it angled over her head so the melting wax dribbled down drop by drop onto her hair and her scalp. Maybe six or seven drops fell before I could stand no more. She was right. I was a coward, I couldn't do to her what she'd done to us. I was a Foxworth twice over, and yet God had changed the mold so I didn't fit.

  I blew out the ivory candle, replaced it in the candelabra, then left.

  No sooner was I in the ballroom than I remembered I'd forgotten the precious length of Carrie's hair. I raced back to get it. I found the grandmother lying as I'd left her, only her head was turned and two huge glistening tears were in her eyes that stared at the switch of Carrie's beautiful hair. Ahh! Now I had my pound of flesh!

  .

  Bart spent more time at my small home than at his huge one. He plied me with gifts, as he did my son. He ate his breakfast, lunch and dinner with us on the days he didn't spend in his office, which I privately believed was more a facade for appearing useful than a functioning law office. My dancing school suffered from his attention, but it didn't matter. I was now a kept woman. Paid to be his mistress.

  Jory was delighted with the little leather boots Bart gave him. "Are you my daddy?" asked my son who would be four in February. "No, but I sure wish I was and I could be."

  As soon as Jory was out in the yard, tromping around and staring down at his feet that fascinated him now that they sported cowboy boots, Bart turned to me and flung himself wearily down in a chair. "You'd never guess what happened over at our place. Some sadistic idiot put wax in my mother-in-law's hair. And there's a long welt on her buttocks that won't heal. The nurse can't explain it. I've questioned Olivia, and asked if it was anyone she knew, one of the servants, and she blinked her eyes twice, meaning no. Once is for yes. I'm mad as hell about it! It must have been one of the servants, yet I can't understand why one would be so cruel as to torment a h
elpless old woman who can't move to defend herself. She refuses to identify anyone I name. I promised Corrine I'd take good care of her, and now her bottom is such a raw mess she has to lie on her stomach two to four hours each day, and she is turned during the night."

  "Oh," I breathed, feeling a bit sick. "How awful-- why won't it heal?"

  "Her circulation is bad. It would have to be, wouldn't it, since she can't move about normally?" He smiled then, brilliantly, like the sun coming out after a storm. "Don't concern yourself, darling. It's my problem, not yours--and, of course, hers." He held out his arms and I went quickly into them to snuggle in his lap, and he kissed fervently before he carried me into my bedroom. He laid me down and began to undress. "I could wring the neck of the fiend who did that to her!"

  We lay entwined after our lovemaking, listening to the wind blending with Jory's shrill laughter, racing after the toy poodle Bart had given him. A few snow flurries were beginning to fall. I knew I had to get up soon so Jory wouldn't run in and catch us, just to tell us it was snowing. He couldn't remember other snows, and barely would the ground be sugar-coated than he'd want to make a snowman. Sighing first, I kissed Bart, then reluctantly pulled from his embrace. I turned my back to pull on bikini panties as he propped up on an elbow and watched. "You've got a lovely behind," he said. I said thanks. "What about my front?" He said it wasn't bad. I threw a shoe at him.

  "Cathy, why don't you say you love me?"

  I whirled about, startled. "Have you ever said it to me and meant it?" I snapped on a tiny bra.

  "How do you know I don't mean it?" he asked with anger.

  "Let me tell you how I know. When you love, you want that person with you all of the time. When you avoid the subject of divorce, that alone is an indication of how much you care for me and just where I belong in your life."