encyclopedias, and she'd already ordered them, and money was nothing to her now, and maybe, just maybe, the grandfather really would die today or tomorrow, and she wouldn't need to rent an apartment, or buy a house.
She sensed my doubts.
Momma raised her head regally high and turned toward the door. We had not opened our gifts, and she wasn't staying to watch our reactions. Why was I crying inside when I hated her? I didn't love her now. . . . I didn't.
She said when she reached the door and had it open, "When you have thought about the pain you have given me today, and when you can treat me with love and respect again, then I will come back. Not before."
So she came.
So she went.
So she had come and gone and left Carrie and Cory untouched, unkissed, unspoken to, and hardly glanced at. And I knew why. She couldn't bear to look and see what gaining a fortune was costing the twins.
They jumped up from the table and came running to me, to cling to my skirts, and stare up into my face. Their small faces were fraught with anxieties, with fears, studying my expression to see if I were happy, so they, too, could feel happy. I knelt to lavish them with all the kisses and caresses she had overlooked--or just couldn't give to those she'd harmed so.
"Do we look funny?" asked Carrie worriedly, her small hands plucking at mine
"No, of course not. You and Cory just look pale, because you stay inside too much."
"Did we grow much?"
"Yes, yes, of course you have." And I smiled, even as I lied. And with a pretense of joy, and keeping that false smile like a mask to wear, I sat down on the floor with the twins and Chris, and we all four began to open our gifts like it was Christmas Day. They were all beautifully wrapped in expensive paper, or gold or silver foil, and sporting huge satin bows of assorted colors.
Tear off the paper, toss away the ribbons, the bows, rip off the lids of boxes, pull out the inside tissue . . . see all the pretty clothes for each of us. Glance at the new books, hooray! See the new toys, the games, the puzzles, hurrah! My, oh, my, what a big, big box of maple sugar candy shaped like identical leaves!
Here before us was the display of her concern. She knew us well, I admit, our tastes, our hobbies-- all but our sizes. With gifts she paid us for all those long empty months when we were left in the care of the witch grandmother who would quite willingly see us dead and buried.
And she knew what kind of mother she had--she knew!
With games and toys and puzzles, she sought to buy us off, and beg our forgiveness for doing what she knew in her heart was wrong.
With sweet maple sugar candy she hoped to take the sour gall of loneliness from our mouths, hearts, and minds. To her way of thinking, it was very obvious, we WERE still only children, though Chris needed to shave, and I needed to wear a bra .. . still children . . . and children she would keep us forever as the titles of the books she brought plainly indicated. Little Men. I'd read that years ago. Fairy tales by the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen--we knew them by heart. And Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre again? Didn't she keep a list of what we'd already read? What we had?
I managed to smile though as I pulled over Carrie's head a new red dress, and in her hair I tied a purple ribbon. Now she was dressed as she'd always wanted to be, in her favorite colors. I put purple socks on her feet and new white sneakers. "You look beautiful, Carrie." And in a way she did, she was so happy to own bright, grown-up, royally colored clothes.
Next I helped Cory on with his bright red short pants, and a white shirt monogrammed on the pocket in red, and his tie had to be knotted by Chris, the way Daddy had shown him how a long time ago.
"Shall I dress you now, Christopher?" I asked sarcastically.
"If that is your heart's desire," he said wickedly, "you can dress me from skin out."
"Don't be vulgar!"
Cory had another new instrument to play--a shining banjo! Oh, golly day, he'd always wanted a banjo! She'd remembered. His eyes lit up. Oh, Susannah, don't you cry for me, for I'm going to Louisiana with a banjo on my knee. . . .
He played the tune, and Carrie sang the lyrics. It was one of his favorite happy songs, and one he could play on the guitar, though it never sounded right. On the banjo it sounded right, as it should. God blessed Cory with magic fingers.
God blessed me with mean thoughts to take the joy from everything. What good were pretty clothes when no one ever saw them? I wanted things that didn't come wrapped in fancy paper, and tied around with satin ribbons, and put in a box from an expensive store. I wanted all the things money couldn't buy. Had she noticed my hair cut so short on top? Had she seen how thin we were? Did she think we looked healthy with our pale, thin skins?
Bitter, ugly thoughts as I pushed a maple sugar leaf into Carrie's eager mouth, and then a leaf into Cory's, and next one into my own mouth. I glared at the beautiful clothes meant for me. A blue velvet dress, such as should be worn to a party. A pink and blue nightgown and peignoir set, with slippers to match. I sat there with the candy melting on my tongue, and it had the acrid taste of the iron lump in my throat. Encyclopedias! Were we going to be here forever?
Yet candy made from maple sugar was my topmost favorite, always had been. She brought this box of candy for me, for me, and I could only swallow one piece, and that with great difficulty.
They sat on the floor with the candy box centered between them, Cory, Carrie, and Chris. They stuffed the candy in, piece after piece, laughing and pleased. "You should make that candy last," I told them with sour hatefulness. "That may well be the last box of candy you see for a long, long time."
Chris threw me a look, his blue eyes happy and shining. Easy enough to see all his faith and trust was restored by just one short visit from Momma. Why couldn't he see that gifts were just a way of hiding the fact that she no longer cared about us? Why didn't he know, as I did, that we weren't as real to her now as once we'd been? We were another of those unpleasant subjects that people don't like to talk about, like mice in the attic.
"Sit there and act dumb," said Chris, sparkling his happiness on me. "Deny yourself the candy, while we three satisfy our sweet tooth all at once before the mice come down and eat it for us. Cory, Carrie, and I will scrub our teeth clean, while you sit and cry, and feel sorry for yourself, and pretend by self-sacrifice you can change our circumstances. Go on, Cathy! Cry! Play the martyr. Suffer! Pound your head on the wall! Scream! And we'll still be here until the grandfather dies, and all the candy will be gone, gone, gone."
I hated him for making fun of me! I jumped to my feet, ran to the far side of the room, turned my back, and tried on my new clothes. Three beautiful dresses I yanked down over my head one by one. Easily they zipped up to the waist, and fitted there loosely. But try as I would, the zipper wouldn't close in back when it reached my bust. I tore off the last dress, looking for the darts in the bodice. None there! She was buying me little-girl dresses--silly, sweet little-girl garments that screamed out she didn't see! I threw those three dresses down on the floor and stomped on them, crushing the blue velvet so it could never be returned to the store.
And there sat Chris on the floor with the twins, looking devilish, and laughing with a raffishly wicked and boyish charm that would win me over to laughter, too--if I would let it. "Make out a shopping list," he joked. "It's time you started wearing bras and stopped bobbing up and down. And while you're at it, write down a girdle, too."
I could have slapped his grinning face! My abdomen was a hollowed out cave. And if my buttocks were rounded and firm, it was from exercise--not from fat! "Shut up!" I yelled. "Why should I have to write out a list and tell Momma anything? She'd know what clothes I have, and what I should be wearing, if she really looked at me! How do I know what size bra to order? And I don't need a girdle! What you need is a jock strap--and some sense in your head that doesn't come from a book!" I glared at him, happy to see his stunned expression.
"Christopher," I screamed, unable to control myself. "Some
times I hate Momma! And not only that, sometimes I hate you, too! Sometimes I hate everybody--most of all myself! Sometimes I wish I were dead, because I think we would all be better off dead than buried alive up here! Just like rotting, walking, talking vegetables!"
My secret thoughts had been thrown out, spewed forth like garbage to make both my brothers wince and go paler. And my small sister shrank even smaller as she began to tremble. Immediately after the cruel words were out of my mouth, I wanted them back in. I was drowning in shame, but unable to apologize and take it all back. I whirled about and ran for the closet, running for the tall, slender door that would take me up the stairs and into the attic. When I hurt, and I hurt often, I raced for the music, the costumes, the ballet shoes on which I could spin and twirl and dance away my troubles. And somewhere in that crimson-colored never-never land where I pirouetted madly, in a wild and crazy effort to exhaust myself into insensibility, I saw that man, shadowy and distant, half-hidden behind towering white columns that rose clear up to a purple sky. In a passionate pas de deux he danced with me, forever apart, no matter how hard I sought to draw nearer and leap into his arms, where I could feel them protective about me, supporting me. . . and with him I'd find, at last, a safe place to live and love.
Then, suddenly, the music was over. I was back in the dry and dusty attic, on the floor, with my right leg twisted beneath me. I had fallen! When I struggled to my feet, I could barely walk. My knee hurt so much, tears of another kind came to my eyes. I limped through the attic and on into the schoolroom, not caring if I ruined my knee forever. I opened up a window wider and stepped out onto the black roof. Painfully I eased my way down the steep incline, stopping only when I was at the very edge with the leaf-clogged gutters. Far below was the ground. With tears of self-pity and pain streaking my face and blurring my vision, I closed my eyes and let myself sway off balance. In a minute it would all be over. I'd be sprawled down there on top of the thorny rose bushes.
The grandmother and Momma could claim it was some idiot strange girl who climbed up on their roof and fell off accidentally, and Momma would cry when she saw me dead and broken and lying in a coffin, dressed in blue leotards and tulle tutu. Then she'd realize what she'd done, she'd want me back, she'd unlock the door to free Chris and the twins, and let them live real lives again.
And that was the golden side of my suicide coin.
But I had to turn it over, and see the tarnish. What if I didn't die? Suppose I just fell, and the rose bushes cushioned my fall, and I only ended up crippled and scarred for the rest of my life?
Then, again, suppose I really did die, and Momma didn't cry, or feel sorry, or any regret, and was only glad to be rid of a pest like me? Just how would Chris and the twins survive without me to take care of them? Who would mother the twins, and lavish them with the affection that was sometimes embarrassing for Chris to give as easily as I did? As for Chris-- maybe he thought he didn't really need me, that books and red-leather, gold- tooled, hubbed-spined new encyclopedias were enough to take my place. When he got that M.D. behind his name, that would be enough to satisfy him all his life through. But when he was a doctor, I knew it still wouldn't be enough, never enough, if I wasn't there, too. And I was saved from death by my own ability to see both sides of the coin.
I stumbled away from the edge of the roof, feeling silly, childish, but still crying. My knee hurt so badly I ascended the roof by crawling to the special place near the back chimney, where two roofs met and made a safe corner. I lay on my back and stared up at that unseeing, uncaring sky. I doubted God lived up there; I doubted heaven was up there, too.
God and heaven were down there on the ground, in the gardens, in the forests, in the parks, on the seashores, on the lakes, and riding the highways, going somewhere!
Hell was right here, where I was, shadowing me persistently, trying to do me in, and make me into what the grandmother thought I was--the Devil's issue.
I lay on that hard, cold slate roof until darkness came on, and the moon came out, and the stars flashed angrily at me, as if knowing me for what I was. I wore only a ballet costume, leotards, and one of those silly frilly tutus.
Goosebumps came and chicken-skinned my arms, and still I stayed to plan all my revenge, my
vengeance against those who had turned me from good to evil, and made of me what I was going to be from this day forward. I convinced myself there would come a day when both my mother and my grandmother would be under my thumb. . . and I'd snap the whip, and handle the tar, and control the food supply.
I tried to think of exactly what I would do to them. What was the right punishment? Should I lock them both up and throw away the key? Starve them, as we had been starved?
A soft noise interrupted the dark and twisted flow of my thoughts. In the gloom of early evening Chris spoke my name hesitatingly. No more, just my name I didn't answer, I didn't need him--I didn't need anybody. He had let me down by not understanding, and I didn't need him, not now.
Nevertheless, he came and lay close by my side. He'd brought a warm woolen jacket with him that he spread over me without saying a word. He stared as I did up at the cold and for- bidding sky. The longest, most fearful silence grew between us. There was nothing I really hated about Chris, or even disliked, and I wanted so much to turn on my side and say this to him, and thank him for bringing me the warm jacket, but I couldn't say a word. I wanted to let him know I was sorry that I struck out at him, and the twins, when God knows none of us needed another enemy. My arms, shivering under the warmth of the jacket, longed to slide around him, and comfort him as he so often comforted me when I woke up from another nightmare. But all I could do was lie there, and hope he understood that I was all tied up in knots.
Always he could raise the white flag first, and for that I'm forever grateful. In a stranger's husky, strained voice that seemed to span across a great distance, he told me he and the twins had already eaten dinner, but my share had been saved.
"And we only pretended to eat all of the candy, Cathy. There's plenty left for you."
Candy. He spoke of candy. Was he still in the child's world where candy stood for something sweet enough to hold back tears? I had grown older, and had lost enthusiasm for childish delights. I wanted what every teen-ager wants--freedom to develop into a woman, freedom to have full control over my life! Though I tried to tell him this, my voice had dried up along with my tears.
"Cathy . . . what you said . . . don't ever say ugly, hopeless things like that again."
"Why not?" I choked out. "Every word I said is true. I only expressed what I feel inside--I let out what you keep hidden deep. Well, keep on hiding from yourself, and you'll find all those truths turn into acid to eat up your insides!"
"Not once have I ever wished myself dead!" he cried out in the hoarse voice of one with an
everlasting cold. "Don't you ever say such a thing again--or think about death! Sure I've got doubts and suspicions hidden away in me, but I smile and I laugh, and make myself believe because I want to survive. If you died by your own hand, you would take me down with you, and soon the twins would follow, for who would be their mother then?"
It made me laugh. Hard, brittle ugly laughter-- duplicating my mother's way of laughing when she felt bitter. "Why, Christopher Doll, remember we have a dear, sweet, loving mother who thinks first of our needs, and she will be left to care for the twins."
Chris turned toward me then, reaching out to seize my shoulders. "I hate it when you talk that way, like she talks sometimes. Do you think I don't know that you are more a mother to Cory and Carrie than she is? Do you think I failed to see the twins only stared at their mother, like she was a stranger? Cathy, I'm not blind or stupid. I know Momma takes care of herself first, and us next." That old moon was out to sparkle the tears frozen in his eyes. His voice in my ear had been gritty, hushed and deep.
All of this he said without bitterness, only regret--just the flat, emotionless way a doctor tells his patient he has a terminal illness. br />
That's when it came over me in a cataclysmic flood--I loved Chris--and he was my brother. He made me whole, he gave me what I lacked, a stability when I would run off wild and fran- tic--and what a perfect way to strike back at Momma and the grandparents. God wouldn't see. He'd closed his eyes to everything the day Jesus was put on the cross. But Daddy was up there, looking down, and I cringed in shame.
"Look at me, Cathy, please look at me."
"I didn't mean any of it, Chris, really I didn't. You know how melodramatic I am--I want to live as much as anyone does, but I'm so afraid something terrible is going to happen to us, shut up all the time. So I say awful things just to shake you up, make you see. Oh, Chris, I just ache to be with lots of people. I want to see new faces, new rooms. I'm scared to death for the twins. I want to go shopping, and ride horses, and do all the things we can't do in here."
In the dark, on the roof, in the cold, we reached for each other intuitively. We clung as one, our hearts throbbing loud against each other. Not crying, not laughing. Hadn't we already cried an ocean of tears? And they hadn't helped. Hadn't we already said a zillion prayers and waited for deliverance that never came? And if tears didn't work, and prayers weren't heard, how were we to reach God and make him do something?
"Chris, I've said it before, and I'm saying it again. We've got to take the initiative. Didn't Daddy always say God helps those who help themselves?"
His cheek was tight against mine while he reflected for so darned long. "I'll give it some thought, though, as Momma said, we could come any day into that fortune."
Our Mother's Surprise