I heard the rip of my blouse as I fought. I felt my violet skirt ride up to my hips, but I only cared about my revenge! Blood from my scratches streaked his face, too, and the wind was in his hair and in mine. All around us beat the fury of nature gone insane, driving us both into more and more violence.
He slapped me twice. Like Papa had slapped Momma for the least little thing. He’d never done anything like that before. It made me even angrier, but I never felt the pain. I hit him back. He grabbed my hands again, seeming to realize that he couldn’t risk letting go of my wrists again.
“Stop it! Stop it!” screamed Arden above the shrieking wind. “I’m not going to let you do this to me, or to yourself. Audrina, if you have to see what’s in that grave, I’ll run back to the house for a shovel. Look at your hands, your poor, poor hands.”
Already he had my hands captured, but even so I tugged them free again, wanting to rake his eyes from his skull. Then he had them again and was pressing my filthy hands to his lips as his eyes turned soft and gazed down into the fury of mine. “You lie there, glaring hatred up at me, and all I can think is how much I love you. Haven’t you had revenge enough? What else do you want to do to me?”
“Shame you, hurt you, like you shamed and hurt me!”
“All right, go ahead!” He released my hands and crouched above me, putting his hands behind his back. “Go ahead,” he yelled when I hesitated. “Do what you want to. Use those ragged, dirty nails on my face, and jam your thumbs into my eyes, and maybe when I’m blind you’ll be satisfied!”
I slapped him repeatedly with my open palm, first with one hand and then with the other. He winced as his head was rocked from side to side from the force of my hard blows. My strength seemed that of a man from all the rage I felt. Adrenaline pumped through my body as I screamed and hit at him. “You beast! You cowardly brute, let me go! Go back to Vera—she’s the one who deserves you!”
As fiercely angry as I was, his amber eyes seemed to sizzle as they blazed down at me. Above us the sky split apart. Bolts of lightning zig-zagged downward and struck a giant oak that must have sent its roots into every Whitefern buried in this cemetery. The tree split open and fell with a tremendous crash just a few feet away, then began to burn.
We didn’t even turn our heads to watch the giant die. I kept on beating on his face and chest with my fists, which were raw and bleeding and beginning to weaken and hurt. Appearing so wild now, completely out of himself, Arden ruthlessly threw his weight flat down on me again, almost burying me in the soft and mushy ground. My arching back again tried to throw him off, but I was tiring. He cursed as I’d never heard him curse before, then lunged to crush his lips down on mine. I turned my head to the right, then the left, then right again, but try as I would, I couldn’t escape the brutal kiss that bruised my lips and caused my teeth to bite down into the tender flesh inside my mouth.
Then his ravishing hand was inside my torn blouse, unfastening my front-hook bra. Seeing his animal lust made me want to kill him. I writhed, twisted, turned and screamed as his hands ripped off my blouse and bra and threw them both away. In the end, every conflict between a man and woman came down to this. I hated him! Hated him with such a passion I wanted to kill him.
Even as I fought him, something just as ravenous as what had hold of him betrayed me and caught fire. I fought on, but between my blows I responded to his kisses, parting my lips even as my fists stopped flailing, and my arms suddenly grabbed him and drew his head down to mine. I bit his lip, daring him to draw away, but he kept on with that kiss until I, too, was kissing back, stroking him, loving and hating him, ripping off his wet clothes, too, until we were both naked on the grave of my dead sister.
In his arms, on that grave, while the storm beat into a wild crescendo, I surrendered to the greatest passion of my life. Not sweet, tender loving as it had been that one time, but brutal passion that devoured and demanded. Gasping and panting, I came back to reality time and time again to find myself jerking with one orgasm after another. Then he rolled off and came at me in a different way, making me into the animal he seemed. His hands reached beneath me and cupped my swollen breasts. He moaned.
Then it was over and we were both locked in each other’s embrace. Even so, we kept kissing, and I returned kiss for kiss, as if we hadn’t had enough and would do it all over again and never stop until we were both dead.
On shimmering hot waves of smoldering desire to do it all over again, out here in the storm when the world could end any second and no sin would matter, I drifted back to being me. Furious to find I’d lost again. I hadn’t meant to surrender.
“I won’t leave this place until I see her body,” I said as I rose to my feet and began to pull on my sopping wet, filthy, torn clothing … like hers, just like hers …
“If that’s what you want and need to convince you,” he said in an angry way, “I’ll run back to the house and get a shovel—but wait until I’m back!”
“All right. But run fast.”
Zipping his trousers as he ran off, Arden soon disappeared into the day that had turned into night. Perhaps it was six o’clock and twilight should have had the sky full of vibrant colors, but the night was black as tar, and the storm raged on full force, and I didn’t seek any shelter, just fell flat on the ground and cried.
In what seemed only a few minutes, Arden was back. He yelled at me to get out of the way, then put his foot on the spade and savagely shoveled down into the soggy earth. He heaved and panted as he threw out shovelfuls of dirt. Then he was gasping, “This ground is only six feet above sea level. The law insists on a concrete burial vault … so I should be hitting it soon.”
The rain had me almost blind. I crawled closer to where I could look down and see her vault. On and on Arden dug, until there was water in the deep hole. On my knees on the very edge, the mud began to slide. I yelped and grabbed for something to cling to as I slipped, unable to stop my momentum. Arden yelled, “Get back!” just as I fell on top of him and both of us slid down into her empty grave.
Bleakly I stared down into his eyes. “Arden … does this mean I really am the First, the Best Audrina?”
Sorrow was in his deep voice. “Yes, darling.” He threw out the shovel and embraced me. “Your father didn’t lie. He told you the truth.”
All the strength I’d felt before vanished. I went limp in his arms, drowning in the realization that it had been me who had been gang-raped when I was nine years old, and my entire family—Momma, Papa, Aunt Ellsbeth and even Vera—had connived to deceive me. What did they think I was, a weakling who couldn’t cope? Putting me in that damned rocking chair to gain peace and contentment, to find that special something they had called her “gift” when all along it had been me? I was the First, the Best Audrina, and to this grave they’d brought me, and forced me to put flowers into the urn that was really mine. Oh, God, they were the ones who were crazy!
Somehow Arden managed to hoist me out of the grave first, then he scrambled out of the hole. He wanted to carry me back to the house, but that would show Papa and Vera, again, that I just wasn’t strong enough. Devastated and wrung out, still I managed to walk beside Arden as the rain pasted our clothes to our bodies, our hair to our heads. Like war victims, we stumbled blindly forward, making that long trek back to that house of deceit. By the time we reached there, the rain had washed us both free of mud.
Once we were inside the house, Arden hurried me into the downstairs powder room and dried my hair. He stripped off my wet clothes as I stood there shivering, my teeth chattering, goose bumps rising up on my arms. He rubbed me down with a fresh towel before he pressed his face between my thighs. I jumped with the electrical thrill of his kiss put there—why hadn’t he kissed me there before?
“You’ve never allowed me to do anything like this,” he said as he took a white terry cloth robe from the linen closet and held it for my arms to slip into. His lips brushed over my shoulder before he pulled the robe on more snugly. “Don’t pull away from
me again. Scream and yell and fight back, but don’t freeze me out. I don’t know how to cope with you when you go silent and cold. Tonight when you fought and screamed, it seemed to me you were fully alive, and for the first time you had control of your life, and even if you thought you went down in defeat, you were the victor. You have made me see how wonderful our lives could have been, and how wonderful our lives will be from now on.”
I couldn’t decide anything now. I had to find Papa and confront him. I had so many questions. I’d force him to answer if I had to. I pulled from Arden’s embrace. “I need to see Papa, and then we’ll talk about us.”
Impatiently I waited for Arden to dry his hair and change from his wet clothes into a robe similar to mine, and then, with him beside me, I went to find Papa.
Papa’s Story
In the hallways the lamps threw shadows on the walls as Arden and I walked up the stairs to take us up to the attic and into the cupola … and even before we were halfway up the spiraling iron stairs, I heard Sylvia’s voice as she tried to talk to Papa.
“Aud … dreen … na …?”
“I don’t know where she is,” said Papa, as if beside himself. “That’s why I came up here. From this vantage point you can look for miles and miles … but I can’t see a damned thing!”
“I’m here, Papa,” I said as I came through the opening in the floor and stood again on the Turkey rug. Quickly he closed the window to keep out the wind and rain that had the wind chimes beating frantically.
My huge Papa looked exhausted, too weary to face all the questions I had to ask.
“What did you do to me? Why did you lie to me? Papa, we dug into her grave—it’s empty!”
Sagging, he slumped to the floor where his great head bowed low. “I did what I thought was best.”
How could he know what was best for me? He was a man. How could any man know what it felt like to be a woman or girl, used and defiled.
His head lifted and his dark eyes pleaded for understanding, telling me that he had tried, desperately tried to give me back the pride the boys had stolen. “They had left you so little, so little, and nine years old was a long, long way from dying,” he said in that gritty, hurt voice as I stared down at him and Arden’s arms came around me to give me additional strength. “And if your mother lied, and I lied, we both did what we could to make you believe there had once been a First Audrina, and it was she who was raped and not you.”
“But Papa!” I yelled. “How could you make me forget what happened? What gave you the right to take my mind and fill it with holes, so that I’ve gone through my life thinking I’m half crazy?”
“Love for you gave me that right,” he answered wearily. “It’s not difficult to deceive a child. Darling, listen to me and don’t close your mind. Your aunt said a hundred times we should be honest and help you cope, and sometimes your mother agreed with her. But it was I who didn’t want you to live with what had happened. It was I who made the decision to do what I could to erase that rainy day in the woods from your mind.”
I broke free from Arden’s arms and began to pace the Turkey rug, glancing at Sylvia, who backed up to a window and stared up at the wind chimes as if she were hearing them blow, when they just dangled now, motionless.
Papa went on, following me with his troubled eyes. “You are the only Audrina. There never was another. After you were… after what happened, I had a grave dug and a tombstone put there to convince you that you had an older, dead sister. It was my way of saving you from yourself.” His voice had turned very flat.
Had I known all along and hidden from the truth? The question badgered me. Had I known I was the first but no longer the best? I sobbed, feeling myself coming apart. Into my mind came a fleeting memory of staggering home that day, knowing the house was full of birthday guests, their cars had been parked in the drive … and inside the back door Momma had grabbed me, and in that scalding hot water she’d made me sit while I screamed, and she used that stiff, hard brush to scrub where already I was bleeding and hurting so much. My own mother hurting me worse than the boys had. Making all my skin raw and ready to bleed, trying to cleanse me of their filth, and at the same time letting me know I’d never be cleansed, for she couldn’t reach inside my brain and scrub there … and Papa wouldn’t want me now… wouldn’t want me …
Whirling, I confronted Papa again. “What did you do to make me forget? How did you do it?”
“Stand still and let me tell you then,” he said, his face going red. “And I’m going to confess something I’ve tried to hide from myself… I didn’t think you could cope with that gang-rape… because I couldn’t cope with it. To save myself and to save my love for you … I had to make you over into that same chaste little girl who’d never known an ugly deed. When you wouldn’t go back to school, and wouldn’t eat, and refused to look in a mirror because you didn’t want to see the face of a girl who’d been so brutally used, I took you to a psychiatrist. He tried to help you, but in the end he decided the best thing to do was give you electric shock treatments. I was there the day they strapped you down. You screamed as you were buckled down and a leather strap was put between your lips so you wouldn’t bite off your tongue. Inside I was screaming, too. Then they fired that electricity into your brain … and your back buckled up as you tried to scream. It came out a horrible gurgle that I can hear to this day … and I screamed, too. I couldn’t stand for them to do that again. I took you home, and decided that in my own way, I could do the same thing without all that torture.”
I stopped pacing and stared down at him. “But Papa, I do remember some things. My cat named Tweedle Dee … and I remember visiting the First Audrina’s grave … and I was seven then, Papa, only seven!”
Cynically he smiled. “You were a clever little girl I had to outsmart. But as clever as you were, you were only a child. It’s not difficult for an adult to tell a child anything and make her believe. And I wanted you to retain a few memories, so I planted them in your head piecemeal. You were seven the first day you met Arden; I let you keep that memory. I took you on my lap and as I sat in the rocking chair, I talked to you and told you about your older sister, and I remolded you, reshaped you into what you’d been before—clean and pure, sweet and loving. Yes, it was I who planted a great many notions in your head. I considered you an angel too good for this world where innocence is abhorred. You were to me everything that was sweet and feminine, and to have you raped was an abomination I couldn’t live with. I did what I did for myself, too, to convince myself that it wasn’t my daughter who’d been raped, not my beautiful, gifted, innocent child. And I did make you well, didn’t I? I did save you from thinking you were ruined, didn’t I? If I hadn’t done what I did, what would have become of you, Audrina? What?
“All your pride in yourself had vanished. You cringed in the shadows. You tried to live in them. You wanted to die, and die you might have if I hadn’t reconstructed you. I told you the good things about your life, and forced you to forget all the bad … all but a few. We need a few bad experiences to appreciate the good. You weren’t stupid; perhaps in your own way you were very clever.”
I nodded, almost absently, reliving it all over again, how he’d done his best to take away the horror of what those boys had done to me on that awful day in the rain.
“Didn’t I wash it from your memory?” he pleaded, his eyes shiny with tears. “Wash it clean away? Didn’t I build for you a fairy-tale castle to live in, and around you I put only the best? Not for your mother, Audrina, but for you I stole and cheated, to give you everything to make up for what had been stolen. Didn’t I do enough? Tell me what I didn’t do.” He swiped with his fist at his tears of self-pity, as if he’d suffered more than I.
“Day after day I held you on my lap and told you over and over again, it hadn’t happened to you but to your older sister, and they killed the First Audrina and left her on the mound under the golden raintree. I even tried to make her death pretty. Not you, I said over and over, it wa
s the other Audrina, the one dead in the grave. After a while you did seem to forget, and in your own mind you did something that surprised even me. You forgot the rape, and made it seem something mysterious had killed the First Audrina in the woods. On your own, you banished the knowledge of the rape from your memory.”
I shivered, then looked away from Papa, who was still talking. “I rocked you, cradled you in my arms and told you it was all a nightmare and you stared at me with those huge, tortured eyes, so hopeful, so wanting to believe it hadn’t happened to you. I guessed I was on the right track so I kept it up, day after day … in my own way I did for you the best I could.”
The best he could, the best he could …
“Are you listening, darling? I made you into a virgin again. Maybe I confused things for you a bit, but it was the best I could do.”
The rain on the pointed copper roof of the cupola made a loud steady staccato beat, drumming into me acceptance, telling me time and again that deep inside me I’d known all the time.
“Was it easy to shift time about, Papa, and make me forget even my right age?”
“Easy?” he asked hoarsely, rubbing at his tired eyes. “No, it wasn’t easy. I did everything to erase time, to make it unimportant. Because we lived so far from others, I could fool you. I had all the newspapers stopped. The newspapers that came were old ones that I stuffed in the mailbox. I made you two years younger. I put away all the calendars and told your aunt not to let you look at her television set. I set all the clocks in this house so they told different times. We gave you tranquilizers for your headaches and you thought it was only aspirin, so you slept often. Sometimes you woke up from a nap and you’d think it was a new day, when only an hour had passed. You were confused, and ready to believe anything I said that would give you peace. I made Vera swear she’d never tell you the truth or she’d be punished so severely that she’d never want to look in a mirror again—and not one red cent would she inherit if she betrayed what I was doing. Your mother and your aunt held Tuesday ‘teatimes’ twice a week so you’d think time really did move along swiftly. Always you kept asking what day it was, what week, what month. Even what year. You wanted to know your age, why you didn’t have birthday parties, why Vera didn’t have them. We lied and told you anything to make you unaware of time. Then a week later we’d convince you months had passed. And in seventeen months we convinced you there had been an older sister who died in the woods—that’s all the time it took. And your aunt and your mother tutored you and kept you up with your schoolwork, though I’d told you you’d never been to school at all. It seemed safer that way. When you went back, we sent you to a new school where no one knew your history.”