Cinnamon

  I didn't want to sit, but my legs felt like they might simply melt beneath me, so I moved to the small imitation leather sofa and sat, staring at the elevators. Finally, one opened and a short, stocky woman with dark brown hair looking like it had been trimmed around a bowl, came out and hurriedly walked toward me. I rose.

  "You're Mrs. Carlson's daughter?"

  "Yes," I said. "What's wrong? Isn't she getting well?"

  "I'm Mrs. Fogelman. The doctor was here earlier today and left instructions that I should personally greet any immediate family. There's been a little setback." she said.

  "Setback? What does that mean?"

  "Isn't your father with you?" she asked instead of answering.

  I felt myself tighten like a wire being stretched to its limit. She actually looked past me toward the door.

  "Unless he's invisible. I'd have to say no," I told her sharply. "What's wrong with my mother?"

  "She's drifted into a comatose state," Mrs. Fogelman revealed after a moment of indecision. "However, the doctor feels it is only a temporary condition. We've moved her to our intensive care area and we're monitoring her carefully. I thought the doctor had reached your father and that's why you were here," she added.

  "No, I think my father is unreachable at the moment." I muttered. "Can I see her, please?"

  She nodded.

  "Yes, that might be very good. She should hear your voice," Mrs. Fogelman decided. She smiled and we walked to the elevator.

  "Are you in high school or college?" she asked me when the doors closed.

  I hadn't been in many elevators in my life, but I always hated the deep silence, the way everyone avoided looking directly at anyone else, and waited uncomfortably for the doors to open again. The quiet moments seemed to put everyone on edge as if being closed in a small area with other human beings was alien to our species.

  I barely heard Mrs. Fogelman talking.

  "High school," I muttered. Who cares? I thought. What difference did that make now? What difference did anything make now?

  She smiled at me and the doors opened mercifully one floor up. She led me down the corridor to the ICU ward and then to my mother's bedside. Her eyes were shut tight, the corners wrinkled..

  "She looks like she's in great pain," I moaned. Mrs. Fogelman didn't deny it.

  "Mental pain," she said, trying to make it sound like it wasn't as bad as physical pain, but there was no hiding the truth. Mommy was in agony.

  I reached for her hand and held it tightly in mine. Then I leaned over the bed railing and wiped some strands of hair from her forehead.

  "Mammy, it's me, Cinnamon. Please, wake up. Mommy. Please."

  Her face seemed frozen in that grimace of anguish. Her lips were stretched and white.

  "What are you doing for her?" I demanded.

  "We've got to be patient," Mrs. Fogelman said. "She'll snap out of it soon."

  "What if she doesn't?"

  "She will," she insisted, but my urgency and concern made her sound less confident.

  "Do they always snap out of it?" When she didn't respond. I said. "Well?"

  "Let's not think the worst. dear. The doctor is watching her closely. Keep talking to her," she advised and walked away quickly to seat herself behind the sanctity of the central desk where she busied herself with other things and glanced my way only occasionally.

  "Mammy," I pleaded. "please get better. You've got to get better and come home. I need you. We've got to be together again.

  "Grandmother is taking over the house, just as you always feared. I want you to come home and make her put everything back the way it was. Please. Mommy. Please get better."

  I sat there pleading with her until I felt my throat dry up and close. Then I kissed her on the cheek and looked at her face. Her eyelids fluttered and stopped.

  "How are you doing, dear?" Mrs. Fogelman asked, coming up behind me.

  I shook my head.

  "Is your father on his way?" she asked.

  I stared at her, bit down on my lip, and then smiled.

  "The moment he gets an opportunity," I told her. "He'll rush right over."

  She stared at me. Hadn't I said it right?

  Or was it the rapid and constant flow of tears over my cheeks and chin that confused her?

  I flicked them off, smiled at her again, looked back at Mommy and fled.

  Clarence was so involved in his reading he didn't hear or see me until I opened the car door. By then, I had stopped crying, but he couldn't miss my red eyes.

  "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "She's worse. She's in a coma."

  "Oh no. What do they say?"

  I looked at him.

  "They say what they're supposed to say. They say, 'Don't worry.' They say pretend this isn't happening. They say go on with your life and ignore it, ignore all of it, put on a good act, recite your lines, stay in the spotlights so you can't see the audience."

  I started the car.

  I saw rather than heard him mouth a curse.

  I drove him home. He kept asking me what I was going, to do now and I kept saying, "I don't know." He especially wanted to know if I was going to confront my father with what we had seen today,

  "Would you?" I asked him.

  He thought a moment and shrugged.

  "I probably wouldn't be as surprised by it as you are," he finally replied. ''But I'd like to help you." he said when I pulled up to his house. "Just don't be afraid to ask me for anything."

  "Thanks, Clarence."

  "Am I still coming over tomorrow night to meet your spirits?" I smiled at him.

  "Sure," I said. "We'll talk about it in school."

  "I'll call you later," he promised. He leaned over to kiss my left cheek and then got out. I watched him walk away. He paused at his front door to wave goodbye and then I drove home. I don't know how I managed it. The car must have known the way by itself. One moment I blinked and the next I was pulling up the driveway.

  The house never looked as lonely and dark to me as it did now. I didn't go inside. Instead. I walked around to the rear and then up to the knoll where the Demerests were buried. I stood before the old tombstones remembering the times Mommy and I were here.

  The wind was blowing harder, the sky looking more bruised and angry, reflecting my mood. I could feel the cold rain threatening. We might even have flurries tonight. I thought. but I ignored the frigid air. Anger made my blood hot anyway. I could never understand the rage Medea felt toward her husband. Jason, when he betrayed her in the Greek tragedy, Now, I thought I could.

  I charged toward a broken tree branch, scooped it up and dug into the ground, scratching away the earth like some madwoman searching far buried treasure. Finally, exhausted. I stopped. The hole, was big enough for what I wanted anyway.

  I reached around my neck and undid the charm necklace Daddy had bought me on my sixteenth birthday. I dropped it into the hole and covered it up.

  It was as if I was burying him.

  I jammed the stick into the ground like a grave marker and then I walked away without a backward glance.

  5 Surprised by Love

  The stillness in the house greeted me like a slap in the face. Grandmother Beverly's car was here, which meant she was home, but I didn't hear the television droning or any sounds coming from the kitchen. Was she already asleep? Good, I thought. I didn't want to face her at the moment. I started up the stairs, my head down, and lifted it only when I turned the knob on my bedroom door and was shocked to discover it wouldn't open.

  It wouldn't open because a lock and a hasp had been installed and the lock was closed.

  Both amazed and confused. I stepped back and cried. "What?" I had to touch it to believe it was really there. A lock on my own door?

  "Grandmother!" I screamed. I spun around, but she didn't appear. I marched to her bedroom door and threw it open. She wasn't in her room, so I charged back to the stairway and pounded my way down, spinning at the bottom and rushing to the living room
door.

  There she was, seated comfortably like some queen mother, waiting for me.

  "Why is there a lock on my door?"

  She glared at me, her eves small but so full of anger they looked capable of shooting out small flames in my direction.

  "Where have you been today-- and don't make up any ridiculous story about going to the hospital to be with your mother," she quickly warned. "I'm talking about the whole day from the moment you rushed out of this house without breakfast until now. Well?" she demanded, holding her body stiffly forward.

  "Why are you asking me that and how dare you put a lock on my bedroom door?" I flared back at her, flashing my eyes with temper as hot and red as hers.

  She sat back, a cold twisted smirk on her face.

  "First. I'm asking because the school called here looking for you. Apparently, someone there was concerned about you and wanted to know how you were and why you weren't at school," she revealed.

  Miss Hamilton. I thought to myself.

  "Can you even begin to imagine how embarrassed I was when I had to reveal you weren't home and I didn't have any idea where you were?

  "I called your father." she added, nodding. "I had to, of course."

  "Really?" I replied, folding my arms under my breasts and placing my weight on my right foot. "and what did he have to say?"

  "Fortunately for you. I was unable to reach him at the time."

  "Is that so? Why? What did they tell you? Was he with a client, at a meeting, what?"

  "That has nothing to do with our situation," she said.

  "Where were you?"

  "Why is there a lock on my door?" I asked instead of answering.

  "I put that lock on your door so you couldn't do what you always do when I question you or try to guide you... run off to your room and lock yourself inside. I'll unlock it when you tell me the truth. Now, where were you?"

  "How dare you do this. Grandmother? That's my room!" I shouted at her, tears burning my eyelids.

  "Until your mother returns. I have to be the one in charge of you, responsible for you. You are still a minor and your father is a very busy man with a great deal on his mind these days."

  "Oh, yes," I said shaking my head. "my father is a very, very busy man. He's too busy to visit my mother. He's too busy to know she's fallen into a coma. That's a very busy man." I said.

  "Mothers and daughters have to realize that their husbands and fathers can't be at their beck and call every minute. They're out there in the hard, cold world trying to make a living, trying to earn enough to provide and keep you comfortable. Who do you think pays the mortgage on this ridiculous relic of a house, and who pays for the food you eat and the gas you waste driving around in that car of yours, and who gave you that car and who--"

  "And who cares?" I shouted, covering my ears with my hands. "Take it all back, everything!"

  I turned and fled from her. When I reached my bedroom door again, I tried to pull the lock off. but I couldn't do it. Who could have ever imagined her doing something like this? Did meanness make people more inventive?

  Instead of continuing my confrontation with her. I went up to the attic and threw myself on the small settee where I curled up in a fetal position and closed my eyes. My pounding heart calmed. The emotional tension had drained my body of all of its energy. I pulled the old afghan over myself, closed my eyes and almost immediately fell asleep.

  The sound of my name hours and hours later woke me, but not abruptly. For a few moments it was as if the sound was inside me, m some dream. echoing. I groaned. my eyelids fluttered and then I felt someone touch my shoulder and I opened my eyes to see Daddy.

  "Cinnamon. What are you doing?" he asked. "What in the world is going on here?"

  I stared at him. Was this a dream? He had been in this attic so rarely that the sight of him here was more like a phantom of my imagination.

  When I was a little girl. I could look at him and think my daddy was the perfect daddy, so handsome and warm, so loving and full of magic. There was magic in those hazel eyes. They could twinkle and make sickness go away, aches and pains flee, colds disappear and most of all, sad moments pop like bubbles. I remember his laughter. It was more like a song and whenever he said my name, it sounded like poetry. But that all seemed so long ago, truly like a dream, a fantasy. The memories were challenged now, cross-examined and scrutinized through my older, far more critical and discerning eyes.

  His smiles were not as warm and held as long as I had thought. His words were not as soft and as comforting as I had wished. His promises were often forgotten, words written in the snow, melted and erased by the first touch of probing sunlight. He was merely a man.

  I sat up, grinding my eyes to pull back the veil of sleepiness. "Grandmother put a lock on my bedroom door." I said.

  He stood up.

  "I know. She told me about your not attending school today. Where were you? What did you do?"

  "She put a lock on my bedroom door." I repeated, annoyed by the quivering in my voice.

  "It's off," he said, "I unlocked it and took it off. Now, tell me where you were. What's going on with you?"

  I looked up at him. The words were there, waiting to be born, launched at him like tiny knives. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it because saying them, sending them at him would cut me to pieces as well. I could only tremble at the thought of what it would all be like afterward with all of the ugly truth spilled before us.

  "Don't you feel well?" he asked.

  "No," I said.

  "Well, why didn't you just tell Grandmother that?"

  "She put a lock on my door," I muttered.

  "I told you. I took it off," he said. "Where did you go?"

  "Mammy's in a coma. Do you know that?" I snapped back at him. He closed his eyes and nodded.

  "I know, That's where I've been since I left work. The doctor assures me she will recuperate. He thinks it's just a temporary thing. She could be very much better tomorrow,"

  "Could she?"

  "Yes. Now what did you do today. Cinnamon?"

  "I had to be by myself today," I lied.

  "We're all going through a very difficult time. Cinnamon. We've got to be strong, strong for Mommy," he said.

  I couldn't look at him. I kept my eves fixed on the floor. I thought I could hear my spirits, the Demerest women, all laughing at him. I guess it made me smile.

  "-Why are you laughing at what I'm saying?" he demanded. "Cinnamon, if you persist in this behavior, have to have you examined by a doctor, too." he threatened.

  That really made me laugh and made him furious.

  "Go to your room." he ordered. "and you had better be in school tomorrow and behave or I'll take the car away from you. I mean it."

  "Who pays for the mortgage and for the food and for the as I waste..."

  "What? You're not making any sense. Cinnamon. Go to bed," he ordered and turned away quickly.

  I think he was actually afraid of me.

  I sat there for a while, listening to the soft murmuring of the voices in the walls, the comforting rhythm of their words. A hundred years ago they came up here to escape from sadness too. I thought.

  How little really has changed.

  Daddy did take the lock off, but the hasp remained as a reminder of my grandmother's fury and power. She muttered around me all throughout breakfast the next day and followed me out of the house with a trail of warnings and threats, trying to make me feel guilty for putting more pressure and turmoil on our family at a difficult time.

  "You're not the only one who's suffering here. Cinnamon. Think of your father having all this on his head and having to have to do a good job at work at the same time. I know it's difficult for young people to be considerate of others these days. They've been spoiled and turned into self-centered little creatures. but I expect more from you."

  Before I left, I couldn't resist turning on her and saying, "I'm not the self-centered one here.

  Grandmother. You should direct
yourself more at Daddy," I fired. She raised her eyebrows and chased after me, out of the house and to the car.

  "And what is that supposed to mean, young lady? What are you saving now? How can you say such a thing? Well?"

  "Ask him," I said and got into my car. I left her standing there, fuming.

  Clarence was waiting for me at the lockers in the hallway when I arrived at school. One glance at his face told me something was very wrong.

  "What?" I asked instead of saying hello or goad morning.

  "They called my mother at work." he said. "Told her I wasn't at school. She called my father and I'm grounded for a month. I can't go anywhere on the weekends."

  "Oh. Sorry," I said. They called my house too. Who knew they cared?' I added and pulled what I needed from my locker.

  Clarence smiled.

  "Get ready for the wisecracks," he said. 'My sister already warned me they're talking about us."

  "Good." I put my arm through his. "Let's give them something to really talk about then."

  He looked surprised, but happy.

  There wasn't an eye not directed at us as we made our way to homeroom. And that was the way it remained most of the day. We could see them all whispering, giggling, rotating their eves with their fantasies and stories about us. I could tell Clarence was becoming more embarrassed by it than I was, but whenever he was embarrassed, his earlobes would turn red. The rest of him would grow pale and he would keep his eyes down, his lower lip under his upper.

  None of the girls in my classes had the nerve to confront me directly. Even the girls who were so much bigger physically shied away from any face-toface confrontation. Everyone was afraid of the evil eye, as my penetrating dark glare was called. The boys, however, were different. Eddie Morris, who liked to tease Clarence anyway, was full of witty remarks like. "Viagra Boy, can you keep up with her?"

  Before lunch, Eddie and his buddies surrounded Clarence and tormented him with questions about our relationship. I was a little late because Miss Hamilton approached me in the hallway and practically shoved the script of her new school play into my hands.

  "I want you to try out for the lead," she insisted. "Don't say no or anything until you read the play and see the part. Cinnamon. Please," she cajoled and I nodded and took it.