“You never know how to do anything properly,” Papa shouted. He had the kind of voice that could hurt your eardrums when he was angry, and a sweet soft voice to use when he wanted something from you. Why wasn’t he considerate of Momma when she was so obviously in need of his understanding? Didn’t he think at all of that little baby that might be hearing his rage?
Inside I was all aquiver, trembling with fear for Momma’s health. Was this the way love went, on and off like an electric switch? I went back to my bedroom and pulled a down pillow over my ears, and still I could hear them fighting. Sickened, I didn’t know what to do but get up again and go back to where Vera still leaned against the door. She, too, was trembling, but with suppressed laughter. Furious, I wanted to slap her.
“You flirted, Lucietta. Flirted and in your condition, too. You cuddled so close to that teenage piano player on the bench you seemed blended into one person. You jiggled! Your nipples could be seen.”
“Shut up!” she yelled. My hands rose to cover my mouth. I wanted to scream out and stop them.
“Damian, you’re a brute! An inconsiderate, selfish, contradictory boor. You want me to play, but you are enraged when you lose the spotlight. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again and again: you have no talent but the ability to run your mouth! And you’re jealous of mine.”
Now she’d done it! He’d show her no mercy now. Slowly, slowly, as in a nightmare trance, I sank to my knees beside Vera. She allowed me to peek through the keyhole just in time to see his stinging slap wham against Momma’s face. I cried out just as my mother did. Feeling her pain and humiliation as my own.
Vera started to laugh as she shoved me away and put her eye to the keyhole. “Audrina,” she whispered, “he’s taking off his belt. Now your mother is going to get what she deserves. And I’m glad, really glad! It’s time he punished her—as he ought to punish you!”
Furiously I slapped at her, my rage as great as Papa’s as I shoved her aside and clawed the door open. I fell into my parents’ bedroom, tripping over Vera’s sprawled form. Papa whirled around, shirtless, his trousers half unzipped. His face was a mask of rage. Momma was curled up on the bed, her arms hugged protectively over her protruding middle.
“What the hell are you two doing here?” roared Papa, throwing his belt to the floor and pointing to the door. “Get out! And don’t you ever spy on us again!”
Jumping to my feet and trying to make my voice as powerful as his, I yelled, “Don’t you dare hit my mother again, or use that belt to whip her! Don’t you dare!”
He glared at me. His dark eyes were wild and wide. He reeked of liquor. As I glared back, my eyes wide and wild, too, he began to simmer down. He wiped his huge hand over his face, glanced at his reflection in a mirror and seemed shocked. “I’d never strike your mother, you should know that,” he said weakly, as if afraid I’d seen, or ashamed that I’d seen, I didn’t know which. Out in the hall Vera tittered. He spun around to yell, “How many times have I told you that this part of the house belongs to me? Get the hell out of here, Vera!”
“Oh, Papa, please don’t yell at me. None of it was my fault. It was Audrina who came into my room and woke me out of a sound sleep and made me come with her. She’s always spying through your keyhole, Papa, when she can’t sleep.”
His head snapped around. I could tell he considered me too honorable to spy. “Go to your room, Audrina,” he ordered coldly. “And don’t you ever spy on me again. I thought better of you than that. It may seem to you that I’m a brute, but that’s only because I’m the only man in a house of women bent on destroying me. Even you try in your own way. Now, out! Both of you, out!”
“You won’t hurt Momma?” I held my ground and waited for an answer, though he took a step forward.
“Of course I won’t hurt Momma.” Sarcasm was in his voice. “If I hit her and hurt her, then I’d have to pay her doctor’s bills, wouldn’t I? My son is inside her, and I am thinking of him.”
Weakly my mother sat up to call me to her. Her arms opened as I approached. Her kisses felt wet on my face. “Do as your father says, darling. He won’t hurt me. He’s never really hurt me—in physical ways.”
Undecided, I looked from her to Papa as he shoved Vera out of the room, delivering a hard slap to her bottom as he did. Then he turned to me. I, too, feared a slap, but he took me into his embrace. “I’m sorry I woke you up. When I drink too much I look in the mirrors and see a fool who doesn’t know when to quit, and then I want to punish someone because I’ve failed myself.”
I didn’t understand any of that.
“Everything will be just fine. The party is over.” There was a sob in his voice, pain in his eyes, shame, too. “Go back to bed and forget all you heard and saw here. I love you and I love your mother, and tonight has seen the last of my parties. No more, ever.”
I lay on my bed torn with doubts about men, about marriage. I decided that night I’d never marry, not in one million years, not when all men could be like Papa, wonderful and terrible. Deceitful and lovable and cruel even when he loved, wielding the belt in private, screaming abuse, criticizing, stealing self-confidence and instilling self-loathing and a deep sense of shame for just being female.
Perhaps Aunt Ellsbeth was right. Men were king of the mountains, king of the woods, king of the home and office and everywhere—just because they were male.
The Nightmare in Daylight
That night when finally I fell into sleep I tossed and fretted and dreamed awful things, but I didn’t dare whimper or scream for fear Papa would come flying into my room to question me.
From now on, no matter what went wrong in my life, I’d handle it all by myself. How could I forgive him even one slap on my mother’s face?
Confusion was a daily state of mind for me, so why should I feel so depressed and disappointed by someone I loved when I’d known all along I could hate him, too? Baffled by my own contrariness, I somehow managed to slip into a light dream tortured by horrible visions of bony people ambling over a frail bridge into nowhere.
I willed myself to wake up and found tears had wet my pillow. I suspected the day would give me little pleasure, and the tears I’d cried without knowing would be tears for a very good reason.
Depression hung about me at dawn while I bathed, dressed and quietly crept down the stairs. The house was full of gloom; no sunlight came through the stained-glass windows. I didn’t have to step over the colors, but I wished the colors back to make this day seem brighter and more ordinary. One glance out of a kitchen window showed me a murky dark sky that threatened rain. Morning mists hung heavy over the River Lyle. Distant foghorns sounded sad and mournful, and far away ships putting out to sea sent back melancholy goodbyes. The seagulls that always hung over the place where Momma fed the ducks and geese could be heard but not seen. Ghostly and muffled their shrill, plaintive cries came to me and tickled goose bumps on my arms. On a day like this only awful things would happen.
Send out the sun, God, send out the light. It’s my ninth birthday, God, and on this day the First and Best Audrina died in the woods.
I wanted the fog to lift, to tell me this birthday of mine was not foreboding terrible things ahead just because it was so dreary. I stood near the back stairs waiting to hear my mother’s footfalls, or the sweet way she’d hum to herself as she dressed and moved about upstairs, her pretty satin mules clickity-clacking where the floors weren’t covered by rugs. Hurry up and come down, Momma, I need to see you. She’d take away my fears.
I left the kitchen, which seemed so bleak without Momma moving around in there, and went into the formal dining room. All its twenty chairs were lined up along a huge rectangular table. That table made a wonderful dancing floor when no one was around, and often I took off my shoes to just slide up there. But today the room was dreary and hardly a place for dancing. No one had pulled open the heavy green draperies to let in some light. Always Momma did that as soon as she reached the first floor. When I opened the draperies an
d looked around, the cheeriest room in the house still looked as grim as the others.
Somewhere there had to be a calendar to mark with a red circle this ninth birthday of mine. But I shouldn’t want a red circle, for this had been her birthday, too. On this day she would have been eighteen years old. How young Momma must have been when she married Papa. Looking out the window, I saw the first few drops of rain begin to fall. Oh, dear God, did it always rain on September the ninth?
Work. Aunt Ellsbeth was always saying that when she was working she didn’t have time to worry about anything. That’s what I’d do. I’d fry the bacon, whip the eggs, make the omelettes, scrape the dishes after the meal, and Momma could sit and feel pleased about how well she’d trained me. If only Aunt Ellsbeth and Vera would keep their mouths shut.
I’d no sooner put the frying pan on the gas range, very intent on starting the bacon off in a cold pan so it wouldn’t curl, when I was rudely shoved to one side. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?” barked my aunt.
“Helping Momma.”
Poor Aunt Ellsbeth couldn’t cook worth a darn. Nobody wanted her in the kitchen unless she was there to scrub the floor or clean the windows.
“What nasty thoughts are in your head?” barked my aunt, taking over the bacon. Right away she turned the heat up too high. She wouldn’t listen if I told her she should keep the flames low.
I pulled out what I’d need for five place settings, watching my aunt as I did. A cup slipped from my hand and fell to break on the floor. I stood there frozen. It was Papa’s favorite coffee mug. The only one he wanted to drink from. Now he’d have another reason to be angry with me.
My aunt threw me a disdainful glance. “Now look what you’ve done. You’d be a bigger help if you stayed out of the kitchen. That coffee mug was the last of a set given to your parents as a wedding gift. He’s going to blow when he knows what you’ve done.”
“What’s idiot Audrina done this time?” asked Vera, limping into the kitchen, falling into a chair and putting her arms on the table so she could rest her head on them. “I’m still sleepy. This is the noisiest house; you can’t ever get enough sleep.”
Setting the table was the one thing I thought I could do correctly, and now my aunt was shouting something about using too many plates. “Three place settings, girl, that will be enough.”
I turned to stare at her. “Why only three?”
She kept right on turning over the bacon. “Your mother’s contractions began just before dawn. It seems all her children have to come just when I’ve finally fallen asleep.”
“Do contractions mean Momma’s baby is on the way?”
“Of course.”
“But isn’t the baby coming early?”
“That’s the way it is sometimes. There’s no way of predicting exactly when a baby will come. She’s over six months, going on seven, so if the doctor can’t stop the miscarriage, it has a chance to live anyway.”
Oh, golly, I was hoping the baby would have plenty of time to be finished, with hair and little fingernails and toenails. “How long does it take for a baby to be born?” I asked timidly.
“No doubt it will take someone like Lucietta all day and most of tomorrow, knowing how she likes to make even the most simple and natural thing look very difficult and painful.” Aunt Ellsbeth stretched her thin lips into a mean spinster smile. “Spoiled, all her life spoiled, just because she happened to be born prettier than most girls.”
“Has Papa called to say Momma’s having lots of pain? Did he say she was losing the baby?” I wanted to scream at her for saying so little, when it was my mother and my brother or sister involved. The heavy knot in my chest began to weigh more as it grew larger. The rain was forecasting trouble. The nightmare flitted in and out of my thoughts. Those bony people …
“Audrina is spoiled, too,” Vera contributed, “and she isn’t even the prettiest daughter.”
I tried to swallow some awful stuff my aunt had thrown in a blender—a mixture she said would put meat on my gaunt bones and take the hollowness from my cheeks. Vera giggled when she said this.
The bacon was thrown down the garbage disposal, burned to such a dry crisp even my aunt wouldn’t eat it. Grouchy and irritable, Vera complained about the omelettes my aunt had tried to make tasty. “Gee, it’s sure going to be difficult to enjoy food now that Momma isn’t here to cook the meals.” Vera put great stress on Momma, just to watch her own mother wince. Aunt Ellsbeth tried to pretend she didn’t hear the barb.
It was me who cleaned up the kitchen when my aunt went to watch TV, and me who swept the floor as Vera hurried off to finish dressing for school. As I polished the stove, I wondered if I was prettier than Vera, and if I was even half as beautiful as that First and Best Audrina had been. I pessimistically guessed I couldn’t be from all the praise he gushed about her “radiant, transcendent, ethereal beauty.”
“Now you stay home and out of the woods,” warned my aunt from the other room when she heard the back door open. “It’s raining. And the last thing your father said was to keep an eye on you and not let you wander off. If the rain stops, you can play in the backyard—but go no farther.”
“What did he say about me?” asked Vera, all ready to hurry to where the school bus would pick her up. She wore a yellow rain slicker with a hood over her hair.
“Damian didn’t mention you.” How cold my aunt could make her voice when she wanted to. She didn’t care much for her own bastard daughter. I smiled to myself, for it sounded so silly. Many a time I’d sneaked to peek at the television my aunt selfishly kept for her own viewing pleasure, and I knew those soap people were always having babies “out of wedlock.”
“You can’t trust Audrina when it comes to Arden Lowe,” called Vera back hatefully. “You’d better lock the doors, bolt the windows or somehow she’ll slip over to see him. You just wait and see, and sooner or later she’s going to let him …”
“Let him what?” I asked, scowling at her.
“Vera,” called my aunt, “not one more word out of you! Get out of here before you miss the bus.”
Enviously I watched Vera stomp off toward the highway, making the water in every puddle splash. Just before she turned the bend, she looked my way and thumbed her nose. Vera disappeared, and still I stood on, thinking about Momma, hoping it wasn’t hurting too much and that there wouldn’t be a great loss of blood. All pain seemed to come with lots of blood, and lots of mental anguish, too. I already knew about that. Maybe that was the worst kind of pain, because nobody knew about it but you.
Why didn’t Papa call home and talk to me? I wanted to know what was going on. I hung around the telephone so long that the rain went away, and the gloomy quiet house began to wear on my nerves.
When the rain ended, I walked down by the river where our backyard ended. In the weak sunlight under the pale, washed sky, I tossed pebbles into the river as I’d seen Papa do. A week without Momma’s cooking was going to make me lose weight, and I was already skinny.
Papa didn’t call all day long. I worried, fretted, paced the floor, went often to the windows. Vera trudged home, complaining she didn’t like the vegetable stew Aunt Ellsbeth had prepared for dinner. Then I saw Arden come flying down our drive with a huge box fastened to his bike. I ran outside to meet him, afraid my aunt would report his visit to my father.
“Happy birthday!” he called, grinning as he left his bicycle and came running to me. “Haven’t got but a second to stay—I’ve brought you something my mother made for you, and a little something from me, too.”
Had I told him it was my birthday? I didn’t think I had. I hadn’t even known myself until yesterday. His eyes were warm and bright as I tore into the largest box. Inside was a wonderful violet dress with a white collar and cuffs. A small bouquet of silk violets was pinned at the neckline.
“Mom made it for you. She says she can measure anyone with her eyes. Do you like it? Do you think it will fit?”
Impulsively I threw my arm
s about him, so happy I wanted to cry. No one else had remembered my birthday. He seemed embarrassed and delighted with my reaction, then hastily handed me a smaller box. “It’s nothing much, really, but you told me you had difficulty remembering and were keeping a dated journal. I looked everywhere to find you one to match the color of the dress Mom made you, but journals don’t come in violet, so I bought you a white one with painted-on violets. And if you can slip over to our house around five, Mom’s got a birthday cake all decorated just for you. If you can’t come, I’ll bring it to you.”
I wiped my eyes and choked back my tears of gratitude. “Arden, the baby’s coming today. My mother’s been gone since before dawn, and we haven’t heard one word. I’ll come if Papa calls and tells me that Momma and the baby are okay. If he doesn’t, I can’t leave.”
Gingerly, as if afraid I might scream or resist, he hugged me briefly, then let me go. “Don’t look so worried. Babies are born every second of the day, millions of them. It’s a natural thing. I’ll bet your aunt forgot all about your birthday, didn’t she?”
I nodded and ducked my head so he couldn’t see the pain I felt. The pretty little diary he’d given me had a golden key to lock away my secrets. Oh, I had plenty of secrets, unknown even to me.
“I’ll be waiting on the edge of the woods after I deliver the newspapers. I’ll wait until the sun goes down, and if you don’t show up, I’ll bring your birthday cake here.”
I couldn’t let him do that. Papa would find out. “I’ll come tomorrow for sure, and we can celebrate then. Thank Billie for this wonderful dress. I just love it. And thank you for the beautiful diary, it’s just what I wanted. Don’t wait at the edge of the woods. Terrible things happen in the woods, especially on this day. I don’t want you there after dark.”
The look he gave me seemed haunted, strange and full of something I didn’t quite understand. “See you later, Audrina. I’m glad you’re nine years old.” Then he was gone and I was left feeling not so lonely and unhappy.