Many times Papa had told me I was smart, that I could do anything I set my mind to. Soon he was saying I’d have Sylvia potty-trained in no time at all. Love could do more than professional expertise. I continued to stare at him with wide eyes as he went on to say I’d also teach her how to focus her eyes, control her lips, how to walk properly, talk well. I couldn’t stop watching Sylvia awkwardly backing down the five steps on her hands and knees. Then she got up to wander about in the yard. Several times she made an attempt to pull a camellia from the bush. The color seemed to attract her, and when she finally had it in her small hand, she tried to hold it to her nose and sniff. She didn’t know exactly where her nose was, or if she did, she didn’t know how to aim precisely. I was touched, horrified and full of pity. In the short time she’d been here, she’d managed to dirty her dress and scuff her shoes beyond repair, and her pretty hair was hanging in her face.
I was in turmoil. I pitied Sylvia. I wanted her and I didn’t want her. I loved her, and maybe I was already beginning to hate her a little, too. Weeks later I was to suspect that if given a choice at that moment, before she had a chance to seize my heart, I would have sent her back to where she came from.
But Sylvia was here and she was my responsibility. Maybe I didn’t want her or need her, but for my beloved dead mother I would take care of Sylvia, even if it meant denying myself the freedom I might have had if she’d never been born.
As I stood at the age of almost twelve watching her, something tender and loving came and hurried me along the path toward maturity. I rushed down the stairs so I could snatch her up into my arms. On her round chubby cheeks I planted a dozen or more kisses. I cupped her small head in my hand and felt the soft silky baby hair.
“I’ll love you, Sylvia! I’ll be your mother. You’ll never be mistreated from now on. I’ll teach you one day how to control your bladder and how to use the toilet. I’ll save you, Sylvia. I’m not going to believe you’re retarded, only physically undertrained. Each morning when I wake up I’m going to tell myself to find new ways to teach you what you need to know. There is a way to make you normal, I know there is.”
Sisters
That very same evening Papa held me on his lap for the last time. “You’re growing up, Audrina. Each day sees you more and more a woman. I see the changes taking place in your body, and I certainly hope your aunt did a good job of instructing you on how to handle certain situations. From now on I won’t be able to cuddle you like this. People often presume ugly things—but even if I don’t hold you, it won’t mean I don’t love you.”
His hands were in my hair as I pressed my face against his shirt front. At that moment all I felt was his love.
“I’m proud and very glad you promised to take care of Sylvia,” he went on in an emotional voice, as if at last I was proving myself to be very like his First and Most Beloved Audrina. “It is your duty to take care of your unfortunate sister. You must agree never to put her in a mental institution where she’ll be abused by other patients; by the attendants who are not honorable when it comes to pretty young girls. And she will be beautiful; even now you can see it. She won’t have any mental capabilities, but men won’t care. She’ll be used by them, abused by them. By the time she reaches puberty some boy will steal her virginity, perhaps make her a mother. And God help her child, which will then become your responsibility, too. Don’t look at me like that and think I’m putting my burden on your young shoulders. Sylvia will outlive me, just as you will. I’m preparing you for the time when I’m gone and your Aunt Ellsbeth is, too.”
I sobbed on his shoulder, thinking of the heavy cross Sylvia was.
Papa carried me up the stairs for the last time and tucked me into bed, and maybe for the last time he kissed me good night. Vague images came of all the times he’d put me to bed and kissed me good night, and heard my prayers, and taken me to the First Audrina’s room to rock and dream. He was telling me as he stood in the doorway, looking at me sadly, that from now on he expected me to be an adult.
“It’s all right, Papa,” I said in a strong voice. “I’m not afraid to walk the halls at night now. If Sylvia cries out in her sleep, I’ll run to her and you won’t have to bother. But you love her, too, and do for her all that you did for me. I’m not even afraid to sit in the rocking chair anymore. When you don’t stay outside the door, I do become the empty pitcher that fills to overflowing with everything beautiful. The boys in the woods don’t bother me now, for I’ve learned not to fear them like I used to. Thank you, Papa, for helping me overcome my fear of boys.”
He stood there silent for long, long moments. “I’m happy to hear your empty pitcher has filled.”
“When I rock in the chair now I can find Momma and talk to her … is that crazy, Papa?”
Some shadow came to darken his eyes even more. “Stay out of the rocking chair, Audrina. It’s done all it can for you now.”
What? How surprising. I knew now I wasn’t going to give it up. Papa was protecting me from something he didn’t want me to know, and that very something was what I had to know.
He left me then and closed the door and I was alone. I lay so still in the gloom I could hear the house breathe, and the boards of the floors whispered, conniving a way to keep me here forever.
In the dimness of my shadowed room with all the ghosts of previous Whiteferns murmuring, I heard the creak of my door as it opened and softly closed. It seemed a wraith straight from hell came through. Its hair stood on end. The long white garment it wore trailed on the floor. I almost screamed!
“Audrina … it’s only me … Vera.”
My heart pounded so fast from the fright she’d given me that my voice quivered when I asked what she wanted. Weak and faltering her words came to dumbfound me. “I want to be your friend … if you’ll have me. I’m tired of living in a house where everybody hates me, even my own mother. Audrina, I don’t have anybody. Teach me how to make people love me like they love you.”
“Your mother doesn’t love me,” I choked.
“Yes, she does. At least, she loves you more than she loves me. She trusts you with the best china and crystal—and that’s the real reason she lets you take on most of my chores. I’m not good enough to be a kitchen slave. Audrina, have you noticed how often she throws that into Papa’s face? It’s her weapon to beat him with, like she knows it hurts him when she says that. For that’s what he made your mother—his kitchen and bedroom slave.”
I didn’t like this kind of talk, it seemed disloyal. “My mother loved him,” I said defensively. “When you love I suppose you give up what you want for yourself.”
“Then give up something for me, Audrina. Love me as you are willing to love Sylvia, and she’s retarded and stupid, even if she is little and pitiful and kinda cute. I’ll be your best sister. I will. From now on, I swear never to be mean or hateful to you again. Please be my friend, Audrina. Please trust me.”
Vera had never come near me before without making some attempt to harm me or my possessions. She trembled as she stood near my bed, seeming pathetically vulnerable in her long white nightgown with her strange hair that rose straight up and made her look frightful. Yet I couldn’t help understanding. It was terrible to be unloved by your own mother … and if she wanted my love, I’d give it a try.
Less than eagerly I allowed her to crawl into my bed, and, locked in each other’s arms, we were soon fast asleep.
I never questioned why, on the very day that Sylvia came home, Vera decided she needed me. I was only grateful.
Soon Vera and I were very close and having so much fun together it seemed impossible that a short while ago I’d felt she was my worst enemy. Though she studied with Mr. Rensdale once a week, she began to come with me every day to my music classes. Very proper and subdued, she’d sit on his sofa and listen to me play. Arden whispered that he was happy that Vera and I were friends at last. “That’s the way it should be with sisters—or first cousins. Families should stick together.”
&nbs
p; “It’s all right to say she’s my sister. Everybody thinks she is anyway.”
Now that I was seeing Vera and my music teacher together, I thought I could judge from their behavior just what lies, or truths, Vera had told me. Were they really lovers? One hot summer afternoon Vera wore nothing but a brief white piqué bra with her bright green shorts. I had on a white blouse and skirt that Papa approved of for music lessons. The way Vera was dressed (or undressed) he’d think was indecent—for me.
As I earnestly tried to play with the sensitivity of a promising artist, Vera sprawled in one of Mr. Rensdale’s chairs, one leg thrown over an arm. Her fingers indolently traced circles over her breasts to define her nipples, which were already protruding. Mr. Rensdale couldn’t keep his eyes from wandering her way. No matter how beautifully I played, or how many mistakes I made, he didn’t notice. What good had eighteen hours of practice on one piece done when Vera was there to distract him? Thoughtlessly, Vera would hug herself, caress her thigh, her arms, jiggle her breasts as if to shake crumbs out of her bra. It was amazing how she kept so busy doing things to her body.
“Vera, for God’s sake, what’s wrong with you?” snapped Lamar Rensdale.
“A bee stung me in the most embarrassing place, and it hurts,” she wailed, looked at him beseechingly. “I need to pull out the stinger, but I can’t see it. It’s on the bottom side of my—”
“I know where it is,” he said shortly. “You’ve been trying to pull it out for half an hour. Audrina, go into my bathroom and help your sister pull out the stinger.”
Mr. Rensdale had his back turned to her and was looking at me pleadingly. Behind him Vera was violently shaking her head, telling me no, she didn’t want my help. I got up anyway and went into the bathroom to wait for Vera. Minutes passed. “Hurry up, Vera. Soon Arden will be coming back to take us home.”
“It’s all right,” sang out Vera cheerfully. “I just now managed to pull out the stinger myself.” As I came back into the living room, she smiled and tugged down her brief bra. “All I needed was a good magnifying mirror. Thank you for letting me use your tweezers, Mr. Rensdale.”
Why was he looking so red-faced? Then I saw Vera’s smug look and guessed she’d pulled up her bra, and in front of him had pulled out the stinger—if there had been one there in the first place.
From that day forward I began to notice the little exchanges between them. For my sake, it seemed, he wanted to show decorum, but for my sake, too, Vera wanted to reveal just what their relationship was. When it was her time to play at the piano, she struggled to produce some childish tune that made him wince … and yet her halter top would come untied, or her tennis dress would show her panties. She flirted with her eyes, with her gestures, with the way she sat carelessly, invitingly, telling him in all possible ways that she would be free with herself—if and when he wanted. I began to dislike her again. She told jokes that made me blush, and he sat with his eyes down cast, seemingly very tired. Always he looked so tired. “It’s the heat,” he explained when I questioned. “The mugginess drains me of energy.”
“Oh, save a little, Mr. Rensdale,” crooned Vera. “Save just enough for the sake of pleasure.”
He said nothing, only got up and handed me my assignments. “I hope your house isn’t as humid as this one.”
He didn’t assign anything to Vera, but they exchanged some secret message with their eyes.
“The downstairs rooms are wonderfully cool,” chimed up Vera, “but upstairs it’s just as hot and muggy as this. I’d go naked all the time if Papa and my aunt didn’t have a fit.”
I stared at Vera. Once in a great while, during a long hot spell, our upstairs was stuffy, but seldom so hot anyone would need to stay nude.
As the summer days stretched long and sultry, the beach was an occasional treat with Arden beside me and Papa keeping a watchful eye on what we did together. Vera refused to go anywhere with Papa, and my aunt had too much to do to have any time for fun. Sylvia toddled on the sand, looking pitifully different from other children her size and age. She couldn’t fill her sand bucket, though she tried diligently; she didn’t have enough sense to run from the waves that could have caught her in the undertow and carried her out to sea. It was Arden and I who ran to save her time and again. Papa sprawled under a huge, colorful umbrella, eyeing all the pretty girls.
Soon I learned that Sylvia would eat anything, even grass. She crawled outside the house, inside the house, got up to stumble around, bumping into things. Miraculously, after the first day she never broke anything. Left alone in the garden for only a few seconds, she meandered off and became lost. Once, after an hour of frantic searching and calling, I found her sitting under a tree eating wild strawberries, looking as innocent as a cherub without sense. She screamed during the nights, proving she did have active vocal cords and could one day speak if ever I could activate her dormant brain. She fed herself by clumsily picking up her food after many fruitless attempts, then shoving whatever it was in her hand toward her mouth. Unfortunately she never managed on the first try and would miss at least twice before she centered her hands on her mouth.
Each meal ended with Sylvia looking a dreadful mess, with food plastered all over her face, in her hair, in her nostrils. A bib did no good at all. She dropped, she spilled, she threw up often, especially after eating grass. Worst of all—worse than anything—she still had no control over her body’s elimination functions.
“She’s not three years old yet,” encouraged Papa when I put away an old potty seat in disgust. “Even you weren’t out of diapers at her age.”
“Yes, she was,” disagreed my aunt. “Audrina was always painfully aware of being messy. She trained herself as Lucietta read nursery rhymes and showed her pretty pictures and rewarded her with cookies when she performed well.”
Papa scowled disapprovingly, then proceeded to ignore her. “And you will have to keep her cleaner, Audrina, or she’ll end up with a red, raw bottom that will be the devil to heal—that’s why she cries out in the night. That diaper rash hurts.”
“Damian! Stop it! You cannot expect a young girl like Audrina to take full responsibility for a retarded child. Put her back in that place or hire a nurse.”
“I can’t afford a nurse,” added Papa sleepily, yawning and stretching out his long legs, ready to nap on the porch chaise. “I’ve got you, Ellie, and that daughter of yours to support. That takes all my cash.”
I stared at Papa, hating the way he could take the truth and twist it.
Half an hour later I tried the potty seat again, tying Sylvia to it so she wouldn’t wiggle off. For an hour I read to her from Mother Goose, but to no avail. The moment I had Sylvia dressed again in clean diapers with plastic panties over them, she was soiled. Vera came in just in time to see me change her again. She laughed scornfully. “Boy, I’m glad she’s not in my charge, or she’d stay filthy.”
“A fine nurse you’ll make,” I said angrily. Then I snapped my head around to glare at her. “Where’ve you been?” Sometimes when I thought Vera was in her room reading, she wasn’t there at all. She wasn’t anywhere where I could find her. Usually she’d show up just before six, when Papa was due home.
Yawning sleepily, she fell into one of my bedroom chairs. “I hate summer school. I hate winter school. I know school ends at twelve, but I do have a few friends in the village, even if you don’t …”
Smiling and mysterious looking, she tossed a Hershey bar my way. “A gift. I know you like chocolate.”
Something was going on in Vera’s life, but I didn’t pry. Though she no longer openly tormented me, she still didn’t help with the housework, or the dishes, or with Sylvia. “I’m pooped, Audrina, really pooped.” She yawned and curled up in the chair like some slinky, sensuous cat. I could almost hear her purring.
As my aunt and I prepared the meals and cleaned the house and changed bed linens together, some kind of closeness developed between us as we worked, doing all the many things Vera refused to do. Occasiona
lly, now, she even let me call her Aunt Ellie. Oh, how she struggled to cook as well as Momma had cooked. It was her desire (though she never said this to me, I sensed it) to cook even better than my mother. She wanted Papa to have all his favorite dishes. Sometimes it was two o’clock in the morning before she went to bed.
Perhaps it was six months after Sylvia came before finally one day Papa smiled after he wiped his mouth and put down his napkin and said, “Well, Ellie, you really outdid yourself this time. No one could have done better. That was a superb meal, really superb.”
Who would have ever thought I’d be happy to hear him say my aunt could match my mother in anything? I appreciated his compliment so much that tears came to my eyes—perhaps because they came to hers, too.
A different kind of life developed for me. A frantic life that stole my summer; stole three afternoons a week from taking music lessons, leaving me little time for Billie and Arden. In the fall it forced me to race home from where the school bus let me off, arriving to search breathlessly for Sylvia, who had the worst habit of wanting to hide herself away somewhere.
It was a thankless task I’d set for myself, truly an impossible task to try and train Sylvia in the same way you would a child of normal intelligence. Her attention span was exceedingly short. She couldn’t sit still. She couldn’t focus her eyes or her mind on anything but movement. The worst of it was that no sooner did Papa drop Sylvia into my lap than he forgot her existence. Desperately I turned to my aunt and pleaded for help. “All right,” she agreed reluctantly, “I promise to do what I can while you’re in school, but the moment you come home and on the weekends and school vacations, Sylvia is yours—all yours.”
Many times I rescued Sylvia from some horrible punishment my aunt felt perfectly justified in delivering. “No!” I yelled, racing into the kitchen and throwing down my schoolbooks, “don’t use that switch on Sylvia! She doesn’t know it’s wrong to pull up all the chrysanthemums. She thinks they’re pretty, and she likes pretty, colorful things.”