Heaven

  I made new friends who didn't understand, as my old friends hadn't, why I couldn't invite them home.

  "What's she like, that mother? Boy, she sure is stacked. And yer father--wow! What a man!"

  "Isn't he wonderful?" I said with pride. Funny the way they looked at me. The teachers treated me with special consideration, as if Kitty had told them I was a dimwit hill girl who couldn't have much sense. I studied like crazy to prove her wrong, and soon enough I earned the teachers' respect. I was especially good at typing. I spent hours and hours typing letters--when Kitty wasn't home. When she was, the clickity-clack of the typewriter made her head ache. Everything made Kitty's head ache.

  Cal saw to it that I had dozens of pretty dresses, skirts and blouses, slacks, shorts, swimsuits, clothes that Cal and I selected when we went shopping in Atlanta, clothes that he kept locked in one of his basement lockers that Kitty thought held only dangerous tools. Kitty feared his electronic equipment almost as much as she feared insects. In a small hall closet meant for storing cleaning equipment my toolarge ugly dresses, selected by Kitty, hung with the vacuum cleaner, the mops, brooms, pails, and other clutter. There was a closet in my bedroom, but that was kept locked.

  Even though I had the clothes, still I had to decline the invitations that came my way, knowing I had to scurry home and finish cleaning that white house that needed so much everlasting care. Housework was robbing me of my youth. I resented the hundreds of houseplants that needed so much attention; resented the ornate elephant tables with their silly fake jewels that had to be carefully washed and polished. If only one tabletop weren't cluttered I could have made one clean swipe with my dustcloth, but I had to lift and move, shift and be careful not to scratch the wood; then run to fold Kitty's underwear, hang her dresses, blouses, put the towels in the linen closet and be sure only the folded ends showed in front. A thousand rules Kitty had to keep her house a display piece. And only her "girls" ever came to admire it.

  Saturday afternoons more than made up for all the abuses Kitty felt were my due. The hard, brutal slaps that came so readily over any trifling mistake, the cruel words meant to destroy my self-confidence, were more than paid for by the movies, by delicious restaurant meals, by trips to amusement parks when the days weren't rainy or cold. In the park Cal and I threw peanuts to the elephants, and scattered cracked corn to the wild ducks, swans, and geese that came running up from the zoo lake. I'd always had a way with animals, and Cal was charmed with my ability to "talk" to chickens, ducks, geese, even elephants.

  "What's your secret?" he teased when I had a wild-looking zebra nuzzling my cupped palm looking for treats. "They don't come running to me as they run to you."

  "I don't know," I answered with a small, wistful smile, for Tom used to ask the same thing. "I like them, and maybe they can tell in some mysterious way." Then I told him about the days of stealing, when a certain farmer's dogs hadn't been charmed with my abilities.

  Real autumn came with brisk cold winds to blow away the leaves, and wistful thoughts of the hills and Grandpa kept coming back. A letter from Logan had given me the address of where Pa had put him, and that was enough for me to write Grandpa. He couldn't read, but I thought someone might read my letter to him. I wondered if Fanny ever visited him, if Pa went to Winnerrow now and then to visit her and his father. I wondered so many things I sometimes walked around in a daze, as if the best part of me were still in the Willies.

  I planted tulips, daffodils, irises, crocuses, all with Cal's help, as Kitty sat in the shade supervising. "Do it right. Don't ya mess up my six hundred dollars' worth of Dutch bulbs. Don't ya dare, hill scum."

  "Kitty, if you call her that again, I'll dump all these worms we've dug up in your lap," Cal

  threatened.

  Instantly she was on her feet and running into the house, making both Cal and me laugh as our eyes met. With his gloved hand he reached out and touched my face. "Why aren't you afraid of worms, roaches, spiders? Do you speak their language, too?"

  "Nope. I hate all those things as much as Kitty does, but they don't scare me nearly as much as she does."

  "Do I have your promise you will call me at work if things get rough here? Don't you allow her to do one more thing to you--do I have that promise?"

  I nodded, and for a brief moment he held me tight against him, and I could hear the loud thumping of his heart. Then I glanced up and saw Kitty at the window staring out at us. Pulling away, I tried to pretend he'd only been comforting my wounded hand. . . .

  "She's watching us, Cal."

  "I don't care."

  "I do. I can call you, but it takes time for you to drive home, and by that time she could peel the skin from my back."

  For the longest time he stared at me, as if all along he'd not believed she was capable of that and now he did. The shock was still in his eyes when we put our gardening tools away and entered the house to find Kitty sound asleep in a chair.

  Then came the nights. Eventually I didn't have to try not to listen, for eventually Cal stopped making any attempts to reason with Kitty, and stopped kissing her passionately, only pecks on her cheek, as if he no longer desired her. I felt his inner rage and frustration building, too. Along with mine.

  Thanksgiving Day I roasted my first storebought turkey so Kitty could invite all her "girls" and brag about her cooking. "Weren't nothin fit," she said over and over again when they praised all her housekeeping and cooking skills. "An I've got so little time, too. Heaven helps some," she admitted generously as I waited on the table, "but ya knows how young gals are . . lazy, an interested in nothin but boys."

  Christmas came with stingy gifts from Kitty, and expensive secret gifts from Cal. He and Kitty attended many a party, leaving me home to watch TV. It was only then that I learned that Kitty had a drinking problem. One drink started off a chain reaction so she'd have to drink more, more, more, and many a time Cal had to carry her in the door, undress her, and put her to bed, sometimes with my help.

  It felt odd to undress a helpless woman with the help of her husband, an intimacy that left me feeling uneasy. Still, an unspoken but strong bond united Cal and me. Cal's eyes would meet mine . . . mine would meet his. He loved me, I knew he loved me . . . and at night when I snuggled down in my bed, I felt his protective presence guarding my sleep.

  One fine Saturday in late February he and I celebrated my sixteenth birthday. For one year and more than one month I'd been living with him and Kitty. I knew Cal wasn't quite like a real father, nor quite like an uncle, nor quite like any man I'd ever known. He was someone who needed a friend and family to love as badly as I did, and he was settling for the closest, the most available female. He never scolded or criticized me, never spoke harshly to me as Kitty usually did.

  We were friends, Cal and I. I knew I loved him. He gave me what I'd never had before, a man who loved me, who needed me, who understood me, and for him I would gladly have died.

  He bought me nylons and high-heeled shoes for birthday gifts, and when Kitty wasn't home, I practiced wearing them. It was like learning to walk all over again on longer, newer legs. With nylons on, and high heels, I was very conscious of my legs, thinking they looked great, and unconsciously I'd stick them out so everyone could admire them. It made Cal laugh. Of course, I had to hide the shoes and nylons along with all my other new clothes down in the basement where Kitty never went alone.

  Spring came quickly to Atlanta. Because of all the effort Cal and I had put into the yard, we had the most spectacular garden in Candlewick. A garden that Kitty couldn't enjoy because honeybees hovered over the flowers, and ants crawled on the ground, and inchworms swung from fine gossamer threads to catch in her hair. Once Kitty almost broke her neck brushing one from her shoulder, screaming all the while.

  Kitty was afraid of dim places where spiders or roaches might hide. Ants on the ground sent her into panic; ants in the kitchen almost gave her heart attacks. A fly on her arm made her scream, and if a mosquito was in the bedroom she didn't sleep
a wink, only kept us all up, complaining about the buzzing of that "damned thin!"

  Afraid of the dark, was Kitty. Afraid of worms, dirt, dust, germs, diseases, a thousand things that I never gave a thought to.

  When Kitty grew too overbearing with her many demands, I escaped to my room, threw myself down, and reached for a book brought home from the school library . . and lost myself in the world of Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights. Over and over I read those two books before I went to the library and hunted up a biography of the Bronte sisters.

  Bit by bit I was edging back Kitty's parade of tiny ceramics with my treasured collection of books. I'd brought the doll up from the basement, and every day I took her out of the bottom dresser drawer and stared into her pretty face, determined one day to find my mother's parents.

  Once in a while I even wore a few of my mother's clothes, but they were old, frail, and I decided it was better to leave them stretched out as flat as possible, and save them for the day when I went to Boston.

  Tom wrote long letters, and Logan wrote now and then, hardly telling me anything. Still I kept writing to Fanny, even if she didn't respond. My world was so tight, so restricted, I began to feel strangely out of touch with everyone. . . everyone but Cal.

  Yet in many ways my life had become easier. Housework that had terrified me once with all its complexities of instructions was no longer so overwhelming. I could have been born with a blender in one hand and a vacuum in the other. Electricity was part of my life now, and honestly, it seemed it always had been. Every day Cal seemed more and more my savior, my friend, my companion, and my confidant. He was my tutor, my father, my date to the movies and restaurants; he had to be now that the boys in the school had stopped asking me to dances and movies. How could I leave him alone when once he had said: "Heaven, if you have movie dates who will I go with? Kitty hates movies, and I enjoy them, and she hates the kind of restaurants I like. Please don't abandon me in favor of kids who won't appreciate you as I do . . . allow me to take you to the movies. You don't need them, do you?"

  How guilty that question made me feel, as if I were betraying bim even to think about having a date. I tried many a time to think that Logan was as faithful to me as I was to him. . . and yet I couldn't help but wonder--was he? After a while I just stopped looking at boys, knowing better than to encourage them and perhaps alienate the only truly dependable friend I had.

  To please Cal, I did as he wanted, went where he wanted, wore what he wanted, styled my hair to please him. And all the time my resentment against Kitty grew and grew. Because of her he was turning to me. He was wonderful, and yet it made me feel strange, guilty, especially when that odd burning look came into his eyes, as if he liked me so much-- perhaps too much.

  My school chums began to look at me in odd ways. Did they know Cal took me out? "Ya got a boyfriend on t'outside?" asked Florence, my best chum. "Tell me bout him--do ya let him, ya know, go all t'way?"

  "No!" I stormed. "Besides, there isn't anyone."

  "There is too! Kin tell from yer blush!"

  Had I blushed?

  I went home to dust and vacuum, to water the hundreds of plants, to do endless chores, and all the time I thought about why I'd blushed. There was something exciting going on in my body, waking it up, sending unexpected thrills to my groin at the most unexpected moments. Once I glimpsed myself in the bathroom mirrtor, wearing nothing but a bikini bra and panties, and that alone sent a sexual thrill through me. It scared me and made me feel unwholesome that I could be thrilled just to see myself scantily clad. I'd never have the enormous bosom Kitty was so proud of, but what I had seemed more than adequate. My waist had slimmed down to a mere twenty-two inches, though it seemed I'd never grow any taller than five feet six and a half. Tall enough, I told myself. Plenty tall enough. I didn't want to be a giant like Kitty.

  Months ahead of her dreaded thirty-seventh birthday, Kitty started staring at calendars, seeming so cursed by the onset of middle age that she sank into a state of deep depression. When Kitty was depressed, Cal and I had to mirror her feelings, or be accused of being insensitive and uncaring. He was wild with frustration from wanting her all the time, as she provoked and teased him and then yelled NO, NO, NO! "Nother time. . . tomorra night. . ."

  "Why don't you tell me never, for that's what you mean!" he shouted. He stalked off, down to the basement to whir his electrical saw, to do damage to something instead of to her.

  I followed Kitty into the bathroom, hoping I could talk as one woman to another, but she was preoccupied with staring into the mirror. "Hate gettin old," she moaned, peering closer into a hand mirror, while the theatrical lights all around showed every tiny line she considered very noticeable.

  "I don't see any crow's-feet, Mother," I said quite honestly, liking her much better now that she was acting more or less like a normal human being. If sometimes I slipped up and called her Kitty, she didn't demand that I correct myself. Still, I was warily suspicious, wondering why she didn't demand my respect as she had before.

  "Got ego home soon," she murmured, staring more intensely into the mirror. "Ain't right t'Cal what I'm doin." She grinned broadly to see all her teeth, checking for yellow, for bad gums, going over her hair carefully looking for gray. "Gotta put my feet on home ground--let em all back there see me again while I still look good. Looks don't last foreva like I used t'think they would. When I was yer age, I thought I'd neva grow old. Didn't worry bout wrinkles back then; now all I do is think about em, look t'find em."

  "You look too closely," I said, feeling sorry for her. I also felt edgy, as I always felt when I was shut up in a room alone with her. "I think you look ten years younger than your actual age."

  "BUT THAT DON'T MAKE ME LOOK YOUNGA THAN CAL, DO IT?" she shouted with bitterness. "Compared t'me, he looks like a kid."

  It was true. Cal did look younger than Kitty.

  Later that same day, when we were eating in the kitchen, Kitty again spoke mournfully about her age. "When I was younga, used t'be t'best-lookin gal in town. I was, wasn't I, Cal?"

  "Yes," he agreed, forking into the apple pie with a great deal of enthusiasm. (I'd studied

  cookbooks for months just to make him his favorite dessert.) "You certainly were the best-looking girl in town."

  How did he know? He hadn't known her then.

  "Saw a gray hair in my eyebrow this mornin," Kitty moaned. "Don't feel good about myself no more, don't."

  "You look great, Kitty, absolutely great," he said, not even looking at her.

  How terrible she was making middle age seem even before she got there. Truthfully, when Kitty was all dressed up, with her makeup on, she was a magnificent-looking woman. If only she could act as pretty as she could look.

  I'd been with Kitty and Cal for two years and two months when she informed me: "Soon as ya finish school this June we'll be headin back

  t'Winnerrow."

  It thrilled me to think of going back where I happily anticipated seeing Grandpa again, and Fanny. And the prospect of meeting the strange, cruel parents of Kitty intrigued me. She hated them. They had made her what she was (according to Cal), and yet she was going back to stay in their home.

  In April Kitty came from a shopping trip bearing gifts for me--three new summer dresses that fitted this time, expensive dresses from an exclusive shop, and this time she allowed me to select really pretty new shoes, pink, blue, and white, a pair to match each dress.

  "Don't want my folks thinkin I don't treat ya right. Buyin em early, for t'best is all picked ova. Stores rush sununa at ya in winta, shove winta at ya in summa; ya gotta move quick or be left out altogetha."

  For some reason her words took the thrill away from the beautiful clothes that were bought only to prove something to parents Kitty said she hated.

  Days later, Kitty took me to her beauty salon in the big hotel for the second time, and introduced me to her new "girls" as her daughter. She seemed very proud of me. The shop was larger, more elaborate, with crystal chandelier
s, and hidden lights to make everything sparkle. She had European ladies who gave facials in tiny cubicles, using magnifying optical glasses through which the specialists could peer and find even the smallest flaws in the clients'

  complexions.

  Kitty put me in a pink leather chair that raised and lowered, tilted back, and swiveled, and for the first time in my life I had a professional shampoo, trim, and set. I sat there with the plastic apron about my neck and shoulders, staring into the wide mirror, scared to death when Kitty came in to inspect me that she'd say I looked horrible, and pick up the shears and make my hair even shorter. I sat tense and ready to jump from the chair if she chopped off too much. All eight of her "girls" stood around to admire Kitty's artistry with hair. She didn't hack it up. She carefully layered, snipped, and when she was done, she stood back and smiled at all her "girls."

  "Didn't I tell ya my daughta is a beauty? Ain't I done improved on nature? Hey, ya, Barbsie, ya saw her when she first came--ain't she done improved? Kin't ya tell she's been fed right, treated good? She's my own kid, an mothers like me shouldn't brag bout their own, but jus kin't help it when she's so

  beautiful--an mine, all mine."

  "Kitty," said the oldest of her girls, a woman about forty, "I didn't know you had a child."

  "Didn't want any of ya t'disrespect me fer marryin so young," Kitty said with the sincerity of truth. "She's not Cal's, but don't she look like him, though, don't she?"

  No, I didn't look like him. I took offense, and added another block to my tower of resentments that was bound to topple one day.

  I could tell from all the faces of her girls they didn't believe her, yet she went on insisting I was hers, even when she'd told them differently before. Later, when I had the chance, I told Cal about that. He frowned and looked unhappy.

  "She's slipping, Heaven. Living a fantasy life. Pretending you are the baby she destroyed. That baby would have been only a little older if she hadn't aborted it. Be careful to do nothing to set her off . . . for Lord knows she's unpredictable."