My Sweet Audrina

  My aunt’s dinner was so tasteless even she ate without much enthusiasm. Still Papa didn’t call. “That’s the kind of awful man he is,” said Vera, “selfish and without regard for anyone’s feelings but his own. I’ll bet you right now he’s in some bar, passing out cigars. And you can bet your bottom dollar, sweet Audrina, you won’t be his favorite once he brings home that baby … girl or boy.”

  That night I flitted in and out of nightmares. I saw babies waiting to be born floating around on clouds, all of them crying to be my momma’s child. I saw Papa use a huge baseball bat to knock all the girl babies out into the universe, and then he snatched one huge baby boy and called him “son.” The brother I thought I wanted grew up overnight to be a giant who stepped on me—and Papa didn’t even care.

  I woke up to see my room pale and foggy. The sun was only a rosy glow on the horizon. Still tired, I fell again into dreams, and this time Momma came and hugged me, and told me I was the best and most wonderful daughter, and she’d be seeing me some day soon. “Be a good girl, obey Papa,” she whispered as she kissed me. I didn’t hear her words, only felt that’s what she said. I watched her fade away, until she was part of one rose-colored cloud that shimmered like some of her fancy evening gowns.

  Strange to wake up and know my parents weren’t in our home. Even stranger to have dreamed about them. I never dreamed about anyone until they’d done something to hurt or disappoint me. I dreamed about Vera a great deal.

  All that day was more of the same. My agitation grew so great I called Billie and told her to hold the birthday party, for Papa still hadn’t called, and I had to be here when he did. “I understand, darlin’. Your cake will wait. And if need be, I’ll make you a fresh one.”

  Around four my aunt called me into the kitchen. “Audrina,” she began as she pulled out the blender, “your father telephoned while you were upstairs. The baby is born. She’s been named Sylvia.” Not once did she look my way, not once. I hated for people to talk to me without looking at me. Vera was busy for a change, peeling potatoes.

  “Now you’re in for it,” she said with a mean grin. “He’ll like her more than he does you, vacant head.”

  “Stop that, Vera! I don’t ever want to hear you call Audrina that name again.” It was the first time my aunt had ever defended me and I looked at her gratefully. “Vera, go upstairs and do your homework. Audrina can finish peeling the potatoes.”

  My gratitude vanished. Always I was doing Vera’s chores. It was like having a wicked stepsister, and I was Cinderella. I glowered as Vera smirked. “I’m sorry to do that to you,” said my aunt in what was for her a kind tone, “but I wanted to talk to you alone.”

  “Is Momma all right?” I asked cautiously.

  “Audrina, I have more to tell you,” said my aunt falteringly. Beyond the kitchen, I could see a lock of apricot-colored hair as Vera hid to eavesdrop.

  “It’s all right, Ellie,” said Papa, who was just then coming into the kitchen from another doorway. He fell wearily into a chair. “I’ll tell her in my own way.”

  He’d come so quickly and quietly out of nowhere that I stared at him as if at a stranger. I’d never seen him with so much beard stubble, never seen his clothes so rumpled. His eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, with dark circles underneath. He met my eyes briefly, then put his elbows on the table and bowed his head into his hands, covering his face as his shoulders trembled. Even more alarmed, I ran to him and tried to embrace him as he so often embraced me. “Papa, you look so tired.” My heart seemed to have dropped into my shoes. Why was he trembling? Why did he hide his face? Was he so disappointed the baby was a girl that he just couldn’t cope with the idea of another like me?

  He shuddered before he lifted his head and lowered his hands and clenched them into fists. He struck the table several hard blows, making the vase of flowers topple over. Quickly my aunt was running to stand it upright again. She went for a sponge to mop up the water, as I ran to fill the vase with water again. “Papa, hurry! Tell me about Momma. It seems she’s been gone a whole month.”

  His dark eyes were watery with unshed tears. He shook his head from side to side, with that same motion dogs used to throw off water. There was panic struggling to stay out of his eyes, and when he spoke I heard the heavy slowness of his words with dread. “Audrina, you’re getting to be a big girl now.” I stared at him, hating the way he’d begun. “Remember how you used to tell me about teatimes, and how Aunt Mercy Marie made life and death seem in a constant battle? Well, that’s the way it is. Life and death are as much a part of our human experience as day and night, sleep and wakefulness. One is born, another dies. We lose, we gain. That’s the only way you can look at life and stay sane.”

  “Papa,” I sobbed, “don’t you—”

  “Oh, enough of this!” cried my aunt. “Damian, why don’t you just come straight out and tell her? You can’t always shield Audrina from the harshness of life. The longer you put it off, the harder it will be when finally she has to face up to the truth. Stop putting this daughter of yours into a world of fantasy.”

  He listened to her harsh words and her brusque, abrasive voice and looked at me regretfully. “I suppose you’re right,” he said with a sigh. One of those tears that glittered in his eyes slipped to the corner and trickled down his face. He reached to draw me into his arms, then lifted me onto his lap and cuddled me close against his chest. Then he had to clear his throat. “Sweetheart, this isn’t easy for me to say. I’ve never had to give news like this to anyone, much less to the child of my heart. You may have heard in the past that your mother had a dreadful time delivering you.”

  Yes, yes, I had heard that before—but she’d had trouble with the First Audrina, too.

  “She had an even worse time with Sylvia.” He held me tighter, almost crushing my bones. “I think I explained to you some time ago how a baby comes through the mother’s birth canal and out into the world.” He hesitated, filling me with even more anxieties. “Poor Sylvia was caught in that canal—perhaps too long.” Again he paused. My heart was beating so loud I could hear the thudding. Vera had stepped into the kitchen and was listening, too. Her dark, dark eyes seemed already knowing.

  “Darling, hold fast to me now. I’ve got to say it, and you have to hear it. Your mother is gone, darling. Gone on to Heaven…. She died shortly before Sylvia was delivered.”

  I heard him say it, but I didn’t believe him. No, no, it just couldn’t be that way. I needed my mother. I had to have her, and God had already robbed Papa of his best Audrina. Was he so heartless he could hurt Papa again?

  “No, Papa. My mother is too young and pretty to die.” I sobbed. I was still a little girl. Who was going to help me grow up? I stared at him to see if he’d grin and wink and that would mean this was all some ugly trick dreamed up by Vera. I glanced at my aunt, who stood with her head bowed and her hands wringing out her apron that was spotlessly clean. Vera wore a peculiar look, as if she was just as stunned as I was. Papa’s head bowed down on my shoulder then, and he was crying. Oh, he wouldn’t cry if it weren’t true!

  I went numb inside and the tears in my brain flooded and washed my screams onto my face.

  “I loved her, Audrina,” sobbed my father. “Sometimes I wasn’t all I should have been, but I loved her just the same. She gave up so much to marry me. I know that I kept her from the career she wanted, and I told myself daily that she wouldn’t have amounted to anything, but she would have if I hadn’t come into her life. She was turning down one man after another, determined to be a concert pianist, but I wouldn’t let her refuse my proposal. I wanted her, and I got her, and then I told her she was only a mediocre musician, more to console myself than to console her. I wanted to be the center of her world, and she made me that. She gave so much of herself, trying to be all I wanted, even when what I wanted wasn’t what she wanted. She taught herself how to please me, and for that I should have been grateful. I never told her I was grateful …” He broke then and had to dry his eyes
and clear his throat again before he went on. “She gave me you, Audrina. She gave me other things, too, and now that it’s too late, I realize I didn’t appreciate her nearly enough.”

  Somewhere in my frozen panic I found visions of him standing above her wielding his belt. I heard her voice again, as she’d spoken on the last night I saw her alive. “He’s never hurt me … physically.” He must have hurt her emotionally. I felt rivers of hot tears flooding my eyes, melting my face. And why didn’t Papa mention how she’d given him the best of all daughters, that dead daughter in the cemetery?

  “No,” Papa repeated, quaking all over and trying to drown me with his grief, “I didn’t appreciate her nearly enough.”

  I was angry at Papa for starting that baby. Angry at God for taking her away. Angry at Vera and everybody else who had a mother when I didn’t. Now I had only an aunt who hated me, and Vera wasn’t one whit better, and Papa—what kind of love was his? Not the kind I really needed, the dependable, safe kind that never lied. Who would I have to confide in now? Not my aunt. She’d never want to hear what I needed to say, nor would she tell me all I needed to know about growing up. Who was there to teach me how to make a man love me? Papa’s kind of love was so selfish and cruel.

  Somehow I’d known since the moment I woke up this morning that something awful would happen. Something that was wise in me, all knowing, especially about tragedy, had prepared me in advance—and that’s why I’d dreamed of her this morning. Perhaps she’d even come to me and said goodbye before she faded into a rose-colored cloud. Why did somebody always have to die on my birthday?

  What if God took Papa, too, and I had only my aunt, who’d destroy the best in me?

  “Where’s the baby?” I asked, in a thin, brittle voice.

  “Darling, darling,” began Papa, “it’s going to be all right, really it is.” Backing away and glaring at him, I could tell he was lying. His wide shoulders drooped. “All right, let me try to help you understand. Newborn babies are always frail. Especially those who are premature. Sylvia is very small, only three and a half pounds. She’s not a finished baby like you were. No hair, no fingernails or toenails, so she needs a great deal of professional attention. It’s not possible to give that to her here. She’s in an incubator, Audrina, a heated glass case where the doctors and nurses can keep a vigilant watch over her. That’s why Sylvia will have to stay in the hospital a while longer.”

  “I want to see her. You take me to the hospital so I can see her. Why, for all I know Momma might not have even had a baby but died from … from …” and so help me, as much as I wanted to tell him, I couldn’t say he’d killed her.

  “Sweetheart,” he went on in his heavy flat voice, his dark eyes so tired, “Sylvia is a tiny, tiny baby. The nurses take care of her around the clock. They wear masks over their faces to keep her atmosphere sterile. Children your age carry many germs around; they wouldn’t let you near her. She may not even live, so you must prepare yourself for her death, too.”

  Oh, God! If that happened, then Momma’s death would be meaningless—if death could ever be meaningful. I told myself that Sylvia would live, for I was going to pray morning, noon and night until the day she came home to me and I’d be her mother.

  “So little to have caused so much trouble and pain,” murmured Papa wearily, once more putting his head onto his folded arms on the table. He closed his eyes and seemed to sleep. Aunt Ellsbeth hovered over him, seemingly wanting to console him and not knowing how to do it. Once she even started to touch his face, but quickly she snatched her hand away, and only her eyes lingered to caress him.

  She was blaming him just as I was, I thought, never thinking perhaps Momma just wasn’t built right to bear babies easily. Then, as if Papa felt my aunt hovering over him, he lifted his head and stared straight at her with some unspoken challenge in his tired but steadfast gaze.

  “I hope you can afford to hire a nurse to take care of Sylvia when she comes home,” said Aunt Ellsbeth in a flat, uncaring tone. Her dark eyes confronted him, challenged him right back. “If you think I’m going to throw away the rest of my life staying on here and taking care of two children who aren’t mine—then think again, Damian Adare.”

  For long moments their dark eyes fought in a silent battle of wills, and only when her eyes dropped first did Papa answer. “You’ll stay,” he said tonelessly. She looked up then, meeting his steady gaze squarely, defiantly. “Yes, Ellie, you won’t leave because you’ll be mistress of Whitefern and all it contains.”

  Did he put some special emphasis on all? Perhaps it was only my imagination. And I did have a lively one, even at that time when I was in shock.

  Vera slipped into my bedroom that night while I cried to whisper in my ear that Papa could have saved my mother’s life if he hadn’t wanted the baby. “But he didn’t love your mother enough,” she went on cruelly. “He wanted that baby he was positive would be his son. You can bet your bottom dollar if he’d guessed it would be only another girl like you, he would have told the doctors to let the baby go and save your mother.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I sobbed. “Papa didn’t tell me there was any choice to make.”

  “Because he didn’t want you to know. You see, he didn’t even tell you your mother had a bad heart, and that’s why she lay around so much on that purple sofa and on her bed. That’s why she was always tired. After you were born, her doctor told them that she shouldn’t have another baby. So when Sylvia was caught in what your father calls the birth canal, he could have told the doctors to go ahead and save your mother’s life and Torget the baby. But he wanted that baby. He wanted a boy. All men want a son. That’s why your mother is lying right this moment on a hard, cold slab in a huge refrigerator in the hospital morgue. And tomorrow morning early they will open the drawer and pull her out, and transfer her remains to a mortuary, where men will come and draw out all of her blood. They’ll sew her lips and eyelids together so they won’t open during the viewing of the deceased—and they will even stuff cotton into—”

  “Vera!” roared my father, striding into the room and seizing her by her hair. “How dare you come into my daughter’s room and fill her head with awful tales. What kind of sick mind do you have? What kind?”

  It rained the day of my mother’s funeral. It had been raining intermittently for three days. Our small family grouped under a drab canopy. The drizzle misted and ran in rivulets to drop on my mother’s casket covered with a huge spray of red roses. Standing at the head of that casket was a cross of white roses with a violet ribbon that bore my name in gold. “To Momma, from your loving daughter, Audrina,” it read. “Papa,” I whispered, tugging on his sleeve, “who sent that cross for me?”

  “I did,” he whispered back. “The red roses that she loved best are from me, but I thought it more appropriate for white roses to represent a child’s love for her mother. Our city friends sent all the other flowers.”

  I’d never seen so many beautiful flowers gathered together in such a dismal place. Around us somber-clothed people crowded with sorrowful faces, and still I felt so alone, even though I clung to Papa with one arm, and Arden on the other side kept tight hold of my hand.

  “Dear friends,” began the minister of the church we attended every Sunday, “we are gathered together on this rainy day to pay our last respects to a dear and beloved member of our society. A beautiful and talented lady who could light up a day like this with the sunshine of her presence. She graced our lives and made them better. Because she lived we are made richer. Because she was generous there are children in the village of Whitefern who had toys and new clothes under their Christmas trees when there would have been none. There was food on the tables of the poor because this lady cared …” On and on I heard of all the good deeds my mother had done. Never had she hinted that she contributed to any of the many charities the church sponsored.

  And so many times my aunt had called my mother selfish and spoiled when she’d always been giving and wearing her old c
lothes she made look new. The wind began to blow, and I swear it felt like snow. Cold, I felt so cold. Clinging closer to Papa I squeezed hard on his gloved hand that gripped mine. I heard words then that I had known that minister would say sooner or later, even though this was my first funeral: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me …”

  It seemed I stood there forever with the rain coming down hard and splashing in the puddles it made. Behind my eyes I pictured my mother singing in her clear, soprano voice, “I come to the garden alone… while the dew is still on the roses …” and now I’d never hear her sing or play anything again.

  Now that hydraulic lift was going to pick up her casket and lower her into the hole. I’d never see her again. “Papa!” I wailed, letting go of Arden and turning to press my face against his jacket front. “Don’t let them put Momma down in that wet hole. Let’s put her in one of those little houses made of marble.”

  How sad he looked. “I can’t afford a marble mausoleum,” he whispered back, telling me not to make a spectacle of myself. “But when we make it rich, we’ll have a fine one designed, a temple for your mother—are you listening, Audrina?”

  No, I wasn’t listening with both ears. My mind was busy with thoughts as I fixed my eyes on the tombstone of the First and Best Audrina. Why weren’t they putting my mother beside her? I asked Papa why. His square chin thrust forth. “I want to lie when I am dead between my wife and my daughter.”

  “Where will I lie, Papa?” I asked with pain in my heart that must have shone from my eyes. Even in death I didn’t really belong anywhere.

  “You’ll know your place sooner or later,” he answered in a tight voice. “Say no more, Audrina. The villagers are staring at you.”

  What he said made me gaze around at the Whitefern villagers, who never came to call, who never spoke or waved when we drove through their streets. They hated us for too many reasons, said my father, even though none of what had been done in the past was our doing. Yet they came to see my mother buried. Were they the poor she’d fed and clothed and donated money to? If so, why weren’t they crying, too? Still, I swallowed my tears, straightened my spine, raised my head in imitation of Papa and knew Momma would approve, wanting me to be brave and strong. “Cultured people never show their feelings; they save them for when they are alone.”