“Oh, Papa,” I whispered, “I know how she must have felt.”
“Yes, I’m sure you do. Then your mother made her second mistake, an even worse one. She took Audrina into the bathroom and filled the tub with scalding hot water, then forced my girl into that hot water. With a hard brush she began to scrub off the contamination of those boys. Already she was sore and cut and bruised, and her body had endured shock enough, but Lucietta went wild with rage and wielded that harsh brush with no mercy, as if she was ridding the world of all filth, all boys, never realizing what she was doing to her own daughter. It was degradation your mother was trying to remove, and if that brush took off a great deal of Audrina’s skin, she didn’t seem to notice.
“Downstairs, the kids who had come for the party were clamoring for ice cream and cake, and Ellsbeth dished it out, and told the guests that Audrina had come down with an awful cold and she wouldn’t be attending her own party. Naturally this didn’t go over very well, and soon the guests departed. Some left their gifts, others took theirs back, as if they thought Audrina was slighting them.
“Ellsbeth called me at my office and told me briefly what she thought had happened. My rage was so huge I felt I might have a heart attack as I ran to my car and drove home so fast it’s a wonder the police didn’t stop me. I reached home just in time to see your mother pulling a white cotton nightgown down over Audrina’s head. I glimpsed that small raw body, so red it seemed to be bleeding all over. I could have killed those boys and beaten your mother for being so cruel as to use that damned brush on that tender skin that had already endured enough. I never forgave her for doing that. I had little mean ways of throwing it back in her face later on. When she scrubbed Audrina down with that brush, she implanted the idea in her head that the filth would never come off, that she was forevermore ruined in my eyes, in everybody’s eyes. Then your mother went to the medicine cabinet and came back with iodine… not the kind we use nowadays, but that old-fashioned kind that stung like fire.
“I screamed at Lucietta, ‘No more!’ and she dropped the iodine, and Audrina broke away from her mother. She seemed terrified to see me, the father she’d always loved so much, and on bare feet she went flying up to the attic. I chased behind her and so did your mother. Audrina screamed all the way, no doubt from pain as well as from shock. She ran up these spiraling stairs to this room we’re in right now. She was young and fast, and when I came into the cupola she was standing on a chair and had managed to open one of those high windows.”
He pointed to the one. “That’s where she was, and the wind was howling in, and the rain, and the thunder was cracking, the lightning was flashing, and the colors in here were mind-boggling with the brightness the lightning caused. The wind chimes were beating frantically. It was pandemonium up here. And Audrina on that chair had one leg outside the window and was preparing to jump when I raced up and seized hold of her and pulled her back inside. She fought me, clawed at my face, screaming as if I represented to her all that was evil in every male, and if she harmed me, she’d succeed in harming them … the ones who’d stolen her pride when they ravished her body.”
I twisted about to stare up at the wind chimes that hung so still on their silken cords, yet I thought I could hear them faintly tinkling.
“There’s more, darling, much more. Do you want to wait for another day when you feel stronger?”
No, I’d waited too long already. It was now, or it was never. “Go on, Papa, tell it all.”
“I told your mother time and again she shouldn’t have given Audrina a bath. She should have comforted her, and later we could have gone to the police. But your mother didn’t want her shamed and humiliated by more men who would have asked her all sorts of intimate questions a child shouldn’t have to answer. I was so enraged that I could have killed those boys with my bare hands, wrung their necks, castrated them, done something so terrible no doubt they would have put me in prison for life … but my Audrina wouldn’t name them … or else she couldn’t name them for fear of their reprisal. Maybe they threatened her, I don’t know.”
And Arden had been there, too. Arden had been there and she had pleaded to him for help—and he’d run away.
“Where is she, Papa?”
He hesitated, turning me so he could look into my eyes, and up above the wind chimes began to clamor more, and I knew instinctively they’d keep on doing that until I knew the secret.
I stood in the circle of Papa’s powerful arms in the middle of the Turkey rug, where he’d pulled me so I wouldn’t stand too near the glass. “Why did you pull me from the windows just now, Papa?”
“The sky. Didn’t you notice the dark clouds? A storm is brewing, and I don’t like being up here when storms come. Let’s go downstairs before I tell you the rest.”
“Tell it now, Papa. This is where she always came to play. I always knew those paper dolls were her dolls.”
He cleared his throat, as I needed to clear mine. It was constricting, making me breathe too fast, making me feel panic was soon to make me scream. It was like being in the rocking chair again when I was seven, and I was scared, so scared.
Papa sighed heavily, releasing me long enough to put his large hands to his face, but only briefly, as if afraid to let go of me for too long. “I loved that girl, God how I loved her. She gave so much to those she loved, gave so much trust to me. She was really the only female who ever trusted me fully and I promised myself I’d never disappoint her. And it wasn’t only that she was an exceptionally beautiful child; she also had the ability to charm everyone with her warmth, her friendliness, her sweetness. She had something else, too, some indefinable quality that made her seem lit up from the inside with happiness, with a contagious exuberance for living that so few of us have. To be with her made you feel more vitally alive than you felt with anyone else. A trip to the beach, the zoo, the museum, a park, and she’d light up your life and make you feel a child again, too, seeing everything through her eyes. Because she saw wondrous things, you saw them as well. It was a rare gift worth more than anything money can buy. The least little present and she was delighted. She loved the weather, the good and the bad. Such rare qualities she had, so very rare.” He choked then, lowered his eyes briefly and met mine, then quickly looked away.
“Even your mother was happy when Audrina was near, and God knows Lucky had reasons enough to be unhappy; Ellsbeth did, too. I loved both of them. And I tried for both of them to be everything they needed. I don’t think I ever succeeded in making either happy enough.” His voice faded small then as his eyes swam with unshed tears. “But she should have obeyed our instructions. Time and time again we told Audrina not to take the shortcut … she should have known better.”
“Don’t stop now,” I said nervously.
“After your mother washed away all the evidence of the rape, we thought we could keep Audrina home and the secret would stay in this house. But secrets have a fast way of leaking out no matter what you do to keep them hidden. I wanted to find those boys and smash their stupid heads together. As I said before, she wouldn’t tell us who they were, nor would she return to school, where she might see them again. She didn’t want to go to any school. She refused to eat, to leave her bed, nor would she look in a mirror. She got up one night and broke every mirror in this house. She’d scream when she saw me, not as her father anymore but as another man who might harm her. She hated anything male. She threw stones and drove her poor cat away. I never allowed her to have a cat again, fearful of what she might do if it was male.”
Numb, I stared at him incredulously. “Oh, Papa, I’m so confused. Are you trying to tell me that Vera is truly the First Audrina, the one I’ve envied all my life? Papa, you don’t even like Vera!”
The strange light in his eyes frightened me. “I couldn’t let her die,” he went on, his eyes riveted to mine, pinning me to him like butterflies were pinned to a board. “If she died, part of me would have died, too, and she’d take that gift of hers into her grave and never
again would I have known one second of happiness. I saved her. Saved her in the only way I knew how.”
Like water sinking into concrete, something was trying to filter into my brain, some knowledge that hovered on the brink of being born. “How did you save her?”
“My sweet Audrina … haven’t you guessed yet? Haven’t I explained and explained and given you all the clues you need? Vera is not my First Audrina … you are. “
“No!” I screamed, “I can’t be! She’s dead, buried in the family cemetery! We went there every Sunday.”
“She’s not dead, because you are alive. There was no First Audrina, because you are my first and only Audrina—and if God strikes me dead for telling a lie, then let him strike me dead, I’m telling you the truth!”
Those voices I heard in my head, those voices that said, Papa, why did they do it? Why?
It’s only a dream, love, only a dream. Papa will never let anything bad happen to his Audrina, his sweet Audrina. But your older dead sister had the gift, that wonderful gift that I want for you now that she doesn’t need it any longer. Papa can use the gift to help you, to help Momma and Aunt Ellsbeth.
God wanted the First and Best Audrina dead, didn’t he? He let her die because she disobeyed and used the shortcut. She was punished because she liked feeling pretty in expensive new dresses, wasn’t she? That First Audrina thought it was fun for the boys to run after her and she could prove to them she could run faster than Aunt Ellsbeth. Faster than any other girl in school. She thought they’d never, never catch her, and God was supposed to be looking out for her, wasn’t he? She prayed to him and he didn’t hear. He just sat up there in his heaven and pretended everything was just fine in the woods, when He knew, He knew. He was glad another proud Whitefern girl was being assaulted because God is a man, too! God didn’t care, Papa!—and that’s the truth of it—isn’t it?
God is not that cruel, Audrina. God is merciful when you give him a chance. But one has to do what’s best for oneself when He has so many to take care of.
Then what good is He, Papa, what good?
I screamed and tore myself from his grasp. Then I raced headlong down the stairs at breakneck speed, not caring if I fell to my death.
The First Audrina
Out into the stormy, threatening afternoon I ran to escape Whitefern. I ran to escape Papa, Arden, Sylvia, Vera, and, most of all, I ran to escape the ghost of that First Audrina, who was now trying to tell me I didn’t exist at all.
The rape had happened to her, not me! I sped like a crazy woman, afraid all her memories were chasing after me, wanting to jump into my brain and fill all the empty Swiss cheese holes with her terror.
I ran, trying to run fast enough and far enough to escape what I was, to escape everything that had tormented me most of my life. Lies, lies, running to where they couldn’t exist, and at the same time not knowing where I was going to find such a place.
Behind me I heard Arden call my name—but that was her name, too! Nothing was my very own.
“Audrina, wait! Please stop running!”
I couldn’t stop. It was as if I were a spring-wound toy, twisted for years and years until now finally I had to let go or break.
“Come back!” Arden called. “Look at the sky!” He sounded desperate. “Audrina, come back! You’re not well! Stop acting crazy!”
Crazy, was he telling me I was crazy?
“Darling,” he gasped as he continued to chase me, sounding almost as panicked as I felt, “nothing can be as bad as you think.”
What did he know about me? Me, like a fly caught in Papa’s sticky web of lies, spinning round and round me, wrapping me in a cocoon so my life could be drained dry of pleasure. I threw my arms wide and screamed at the sky, at God, at the wind that rose up and tore at my hair and whipped my skirt wildly. The wind screamed back and came at me more forcefully, so fierce I felt I might fall. I yelled again, defying it to harm me. Nobody, nothing was ever going to tell me what to do, or what not to do, not ever again would I believe anyone but myself!
Suddenly my arm was seized. I was whipped around by Arden. I struck at him with both fists, battering his face, his chest, though as easily as Papa had, he caught both my hands in his and perhaps he might have dragged me back to the house—but fate was with me this time. He lost his footing and let go of my hands. I was free to run on.
The white marble headstones of the Whitefern cemetery came into view, stark against the gloomy, menacing sky. Lightning flashes in the distance heralded a big storm. Deep and ominous thunder grumbled beyond the treetops near the village church steeple. I was terrified of storms when I was outside Whitefern. Out here, God help me, for He hadn’t helped her, and probably wouldn’t help me, either.
Terrified, yet needing to find the truth, I whirled about and began to search for something to dig with. Why hadn’t I thought to bring a shovel? Where did the person who tended the graves leave his equipment? Somewhere I had to find something for digging.
Our family plot consisted of about one-half acre that was enclosed within a low crumbling brick wall with four entranceways. Red ivy crept along those walls, trying to choke the life from the masonry. Even in the winters when Papa had forced us to come here at least once a week, preferably on Sundays, rain or shine, sick or not, it had been a dreary, bleak place, with the trees clawing at the sky with black bony fingers. Now in September, when the trees were brilliant elsewhere, in the cemetery the leaves chased along dry and brown on the ground, sounding like ghosts tripping lightly back to their graves.
Stopping to look around, I began to tremble. I saw the grave of my mother, of Aunt Ellsbeth, and Billie. There was a space next to my mother’s grave where one day my father would lie, and beside him was the grave of the First and Best Audrina. Irresistibly she’d drawn me here. Inside her coffin she was now calling to me, laughing at me, telling me in all ways possible that I’d never equal her in beauty, in charm, in intelligence, and that her “gifts” were hers alone and never would she relinquish one to save me from being ordinary.
It was her tombstone that glittered the most. Rising up tall and slender and graceful, like a young girl itself, that single tombstone seemed brighter than all the others, catching all the ghostly light there was in the cemetery.
I told myself that we always saw what we wanted to see, and that was all. Nothing to be afraid of, nothing. Stiffening my resolve, I strode straight to that headstone.
How many times had I stood right where I was standing now and hated her? “And here is the grave of my beloved,” I imagined Papa intoning as I hesitated. “Here my first daughter sleeps in hallowed ground. In her place by my side, when the good Lord sees fit to take me.”
Oh! No more, no more! I fell on my knees and began to paw at the dying grass with my bare hands. My nails broke; soon my fingers were sore and bleeding. Still I dug on and on; at long last, I had to know the truth.
“Stop that!” roared Arden, rushing into the cemetery. He ran to pull me to my feet. Then he had to wrestle me to keep me from falling again to the ground and doing what I felt I had to do. “What the devil is wrong with you?” he shouted. “Why are you clawing at that grave?”
“I’ve got to see her!” I screamed. He looked at me as if I were crazy. I felt crazy.
The wind whipped up into a real gale. It tore more frantically at my hair, at my clothes. Frenzied, it beat the limbs of the trees so that they snapped almost in my face. Arden had me by my waist, trying to wrestle me into submission, when out of the sky came a deluge of hail pelleting down on both of us with stinging force.
“Audrina, you are hysterical!” he bellowed at me, sounding like Papa. “There isn’t any body down there!”
I screamed back, the wind deafening us both so we had to shout, even though our faces were only inches apart. “How would you know? Papa lies, you know that! He’ll say anything, do anything to keep me tied to him!”
Appearing to consider that briefly, Arden then shook his head before he shook me ag
ain. “You’re talking nonsense!” he shouted. “Stop behaving like this! There is nobody in that grave! There isn’t any older sister and now you have to face up to that!”
Wild-eyed, I stared at him. There had to be the first dead Audrina, otherwise my whole life would be a lie. I screamed again and fought him, determined to defeat him. Determined, too, that I would dig down into the grave and drag out her “gifted” remains. Yes, I told myself as I struggled with Arden, Papa was a liar, a cheat and a thief. How could anyone believe anything he said? He had constructed my whole life on lies.
My foot slipped in the mud then. Arden tried to keep me from falling. Instead, we both tumbled to the ground. Still I fought on, kicking, scratching, bucking and trying to do what that other Audrina hadn’t been able to do when she was nine. Hurt him!
Arden fell flat upon me, spreading his arms to pin mine to the earth. His legs twined around my ankles so I couldn’t even kick. His face hovered over mine, taking me back to her day when Spiderlegs had tried to kiss her in the woods against her will. I butted my head up with such force against his jaw that he swore when his teeth bit through his lower lip.
Blood on his face now—like it had been on theirs.
Rain beat down on my face. Rivulets streamed off him and onto me. I flashed in and out of that day in the woods, seeing him as Spencer Longtree… seeing him as all three of those boys, seeing him as every boy or man who’d ever raped a girl or woman—and this time for the First Audrina, for every woman since time began, I was going to get even and win.