Writers on the Storm

by Christy Cauley

When Cornelia arrived home, she said good-bye to Admeta and the cab sped off. That’s when she saw Chad standing by her front door.

  “CC!” Chad shouted as Admeta drove off in the cab.

  “Chad, what are you doing here?”

  “Brad Jenkins said you were in the hospital. I called your house and no one answered, so I came over here and no one was home. I was so scared. I just decided to sit and wait,” he said approaching her on the sidewalk. “I’m so glad you’re alright,” he said, kissing her on the forehead.

  “I’m fine,” Cornelia said, exhausted. “It wasn’t me who was sick,” she continued but then she stopped when she remembered her promise not to tell anyone about Mrs. Hakim’s illness.

  “Who was then?” Chad asked, taking her hand and walking her to the door.

  “Umm,” Cornelia began. Her first instinct was to lie but she couldn’t imagine lying to Chad’s sweet face. She figured he would hear something about Mrs. Hakim in school the next day anyway, so she just decided to tell the truth while leaving a few things out.

  “Mrs. Hakim fell and hit her head during our Writers on the Storm meeting,” she said. Adding, “It was no big deal,” for effect.

  “Oh my gosh, is she alright?” Chad asked. This was one of the things Cornelia loved about Chad. He didn’t even know Mrs. Hakim and yet he was genuinely concerned about her wellbeing. He was always showing concern for people he didn’t know, just like the people at The Family Connection; just like Admeta; just like Mrs. Hakim.

  “She will be,” Cornelia said as she turned her key in the deadbolt lock on the front door.

  “I guess I’d better go. If your mom catches me here she’ll ground you for another month.”

  “No, it’s o.k. She’s out. She told me not to wait up. Come on in,” she said and opened the door. The couple walked inside. Cornelia’s house was a two-story mini-mansion. It was the same cookie cutter mold they used for every house on her street. In fact, it was the same as every other house in her subdivision. The outside was brick with stone accents and brown shutters. The inside was big and airy with vaulted ceilings and skylights in the living room and dining room.

  Every room was a different color, always a warm, pastel color. The dining room and kitchen had huge sets of doors that led to a patio surrounding the in-ground swimming pool. Past the kitchen was a hallway that led to Veronica’s bedroom, a bathroom, the work-out room and a room that Veronica now called her “sewing room,” although Cornelia had never seen her mother sew anything in her life. When Cornelia’s father lived with them, that room was his den. He had an entire library of legal books in there, but when he left, Veronica removed every remnant of Harrison Drake, Esquire from their house.

  Cornelia hung her coat on a hook in the foyer and then led Chad up the grand staircase in the front of the house to the second floor and they walked to her room. There were four bedrooms and two bathrooms on the second floor. Cornelia was in the master bedroom. She had her own private bathroom. The other bathroom was down the hall between two rooms that were being used for storage. One room still had a lot of boxes that Cornelia’s father needed to pick up.

  The fourth room had been used as Harrison’s home office, but that of course was gone as well. Cornelia surmised that her father put his office upstairs in order to get as far away from Veronica as he could. Cornelia now used that room as a library. She put up some bookcases with all of the books she could find. She even took a few of her father’s law books and other books he left behind to give the room character. Her father left his desk which Cornelia used for her desktop computer. She usually used her laptop in her bedroom, but sometimes when she wanted to feel close to her father she would just go and sit behind the desk in the library. She had many good memories of interrupting her father in there when she was little. That was before Brandy. Before the divorce. Before the death of Cornelia’s grandmother. And before the death of their family.

  When Cornelia got to her room she immediately grabbed her childhood teddy bear, Scottie. He was a light brown bear that her father had given her for her fifth birthday. He has rested on her bed ever since. Her father used to speak through Scottie, using a Scottish accent. This was especially funny considering that Scottie has always worn lederhosen. Cornelia cherished those memories before her parents grew bitter. She gave Scottie a bear hug and sat down on her bed. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Daruma was looking at her with his one beady eye.

  “What’s going on, CC?” Chad asked.

  “Nothing,” Cornelia protested.

  “Come on CC,” Chad said, closing the door. “I know you better than that.”

  “I know you do,” Cornelia admitted. “I apologized to Mrs. Hakim today.”

  “That’s great, CC. Why would you be glum about that?”

  “I don’t know,” she lied as she began pulling at Scottie’s ears. “I guess it was just something I should have done a long time ago and I’m disappointed in myself that it took this long. In fact it’s something I shouldn’t have had to do at all because I should never have done what I did. I’m a horrible person, Chad,” she said, with tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “No you aren’t, CC; you’re just someone who made a mistake,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “It’s too late to cry about it now, CC. What’s done is done and you apologized. I assume she accepted?” he asked, pulling back to look her in the eyes. Cornelia was too upset to answer, so she just nodded. Chad pulled her closer.

  “Well, see, then? It’s over. It should be a time of celebration, not a time to cry.” Normally Cornelia loved Chad’s optimism, but she was beside herself at that point.

  “You don’t understand, Chad. I am a horrible person!” Cornelia yelled and stood up, releasing herself from Chad’s grasp.

  “Do you see this doll?” she asked, pointing to Daruma who just looked on as if he were amused by the whole situation.

  “Of course,” Chad began, but Cornelia interrupted.

  “Do you remember that day you gave him to me? You came here and painted on the eye and told me to make a wish?”

  “Yes, I told you to ask for leniency.”

  “Yeah, I know. But that’s not what I asked for, Chad. I told you, I’m a horrible person. Do you know what I asked for that day?” she asked and then started rummaging through the drawers in her vanity.

  When he didn’t answer she yelled, “Do you?!”

  “Jeez, CC, no I don’t” Chad was affronted.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to yell at you. I never mean to yell at you. You’re the best thing in my life and I would never want to hurt you. Do you see? I don’t want to hurt you and I am. What’s wrong with me?!” Cornelia was bordering on hysteria and the tears were flowing like a rushing creek on a stormy day.

  “CC..” Chad began but was again interrupted.

  “It was a rhetorical question, Chad. I know what’s wrong with me,” she said, now throwing things all over the place searching for something in her drawers.

  “Aha!” she exclaimed, pulling a black Sharpie out of her drawer and slamming it shut.

  “What’s wrong with me,” she began as she grabbed the Daruma doll off the shelf, “Is that I’m a stuck-up, spoiled rotten little hooligan who will amount to nothing in this life.”

  “CC, what are you doing?” Chad asked, standing up.

  “I’m doing what you told me to do, Chad!” Cornelia yelled.

  “What?” Chad asked as he watched Cornelia feverishly scribble on the Daruma doll. With tears still streaming down her face, she tried to steady her hand.

  “When you gave me this doll you told me that you’re supposed to paint on one eye when you make your wish and paint on the other eye only after your wish has been granted, right? Isn’t that right, Chad?!”

  “CC, you’re starting to worry me,” Chad said, afraid to get closer in case he might spook her.

  “I should worry you, Chad! I should!” she yelled, looking up for a moment
to meet his eyes.

  “Stop looking at me! I don’t deserve to have you looking at me,” she wept as her hand was still hard at work on Daruma.

  “That day, when you gave me this doll, you told me to ask for leniency, but I didn’t. No, not me. Not a stuck-up, spoiled rotten little hooligan who will amount to nothing in this life. No, sir,” Cornelia’s face was as red as a tomato as she continued to scream and cry at the same time.

  “No, I had to wish for the most spiteful, most disgusting thing I could wish for, Chad! Look. Look here. There he is,” she said, showing Chad the Daruma doll, who now had two eyes. One was carefully hand-painted by someone with the skill of a master craftsman, and the other was scribbled on by a trembling hand using a permanent marker. The new eye looked as if it were drawn by a five-year-old. It was uneven and distorted and it was placed in the center of the eye, unlike the eye that Chad had painted, which touched the bottom outline of the eye. Daruma now looked like a crazed madman. Cornelia was staring down at her creation, still weeping.

  “CC, why did you do that?” Chad asked, stepping closer and placing one hand on her shoulder. Cornelia shrugged his hand off her shoulder and put the Daruma back on the shelf.

  “No, I don’t deserve pity. Not from you. Not kind, virtuous, Chadwick. I don’t deserve your pity or your kindness and I especially don’t deserve your love,” Cornelia said in a calmer voice, staring up at Daruma with one hand on her hip as if she were checking to see if he was sitting up straight.

  “You see him, there, Chad? Do you?” Chad nodded and looked away from his hysterical girlfriend long enough to glimpse the now grotesque face of Daruma. Chad could have sworn Daruma would have jumped off the shelf and killed them both with an ax if he could only become animated long enough.

  “He has two eyes now,” she continued. “He can truly see, just as you should truly see me for what I really am. A stuck-up, spoiled rotten little hooligan who will amount to nothing in this life. That’s me. And do you know why?” Cornelia asked, sniffling but not waiting for an answer.

  “Because that day when you told me to make a wish,” she paused, seemingly ashamed of what she was about to say.

  Her voice quivered with her next line, “I wished that Mrs. Hakim would get what was coming to her.” There was a long pause before Cornelia continued. “And she did, Chad, she finally did! That’s why Daruma has two eyes. My wish came true! She got hers. She really got hers,” she said, thinking about the cancer that was eating away at Mrs. Hakim’s body. Chad stood quietly, thinking that Cornelia was talking about Mrs. Hakim getting injured. He was afraid to touch his distraught girlfriend as she sobbed even harder. Her chest was going in and out rapidly as Cornelia began to heave. Chad decided something needed to be done.

  “CC, let me help you,” Cornelia was too upset to refuse Chad’s help as he put his arm around her shoulder and led her to edge of her bed where he sat next to her.

  “You need to calm down, CC. First of all, it’s just a stupid superstition. It doesn’t mean anything. Secondly, you made that wish a long time ago. You told me yourself you apologized to Mrs. Hakim today and she accepted your apology. You weren’t wishing that she would ‘get hers’ today, were you?” he asked, patting Cornelia on the back lightly.

  Cornelia sniffed, and then said very quietly, “No.”

  “See? Here’s a tissue,” he said, pulling a Kleenex out of the box on her vanity and handing it to her.

  “Dry your eyes, CC,” Chad said and Cornelia blew her nose. “O.k., that works too,” he said, trying to make her laugh. It didn’t work.

  “Look, CC, when Mrs. Hakim forgave you, your wish was forfeited,” Chad said, trying a different route.

  Cornelia looked up at Chad, sniffling. “It was?” she asked as if she was a five-year-old asking her father if she was a good girl.

  “Yeah, CC. Totally. Once you apologized you weren’t at the same point you were at when you made that wish, so it doesn’t count. We’re going to have a do-over.”

  “What?” Cornelia asked, a little bit louder and a little less sniffly.

  “It’s something my dad says all the time. We’re going to do have a do-over. We’re starting fresh. Do you have any white nail polish?” Chad asked.

  “Over there on my vanity,” Cornelia pointed to a little white bottle that was sitting in the middle of a bunch of other colors and Chad got up to fetch it.

  “O.k.,” he said as he grabbed the nail polish and took the deranged Daruma off of his shelf. Chad sat in the vanity chair and carefully painted over Daruma’s eyeballs with the white nail polish as Cornelia looked on in silence. She stopped crying and wiped her eyes and nose with the tissue Chad had given her as she watched him make gentle and precise strokes.

  “There!” he proclaimed after applying the last stroke. He then turned the eyeless Daruma to face Cornelia.

  “He’s as good as new,” Chad said as he picked Daruma up and put him back on the shelf looking much less deranged. Then Chad put Cornelia’s nail polish back where he found it and sat next to Cornelia on the edge of the bed.

  “See?” Chad asked. “Now when you’re ready you can make a new wish and color in one of his eyes, then you can color in the second eye when that wish comes true. If what you say is true then this is a powerful Daruma and your new wish has to come true, doesn’t it?”

  Cornelia was well aware that Chad was patronizing her, but she didn’t care. She loved him for his kindness, especially after he heard about the terrible thing she had wished for. She looked up into his striking blue eyes and Chad leaned down to kiss Cornelia gently on the mouth. Just then they heard a car pull up in the driveway.

  “Oh my god, it’s my mom!” Cornelia yelled.

  “I’m on it!” Chad shouted and shot off the bed in a flash. “I’ll see you in school tomorrow,” he said and flew out of the room and down the stairs in a flash.

  Cornelia didn’t even get the chance to say good-bye or to thank Chad for his kindness. She walked to the stairs to be sure Chad was able to get out the back door before her mother opened the front door. She heard the back door close just as Veronica was putting her key in the front door. She was saying something to someone, but Cornelia could not hear what she was saying. Cornelia decided to go back in her room and close the door. With any luck Veronica would go straight to bed and Cornelia wouldn’t have to explain the evening’s events.

  Cornelia was right. Veronica didn’t stop up to see her before retiring to her room on the first floor. As Cornelia heard the sound of her mother’s bedroom door closing, she picked Daruma off of his shelf and sat down at her vanity. She sat motionless for a moment, staring into the empty slots that used to be Daruma’s eyes. She felt like he could still see her despite the fact that he was missing eyeballs. This time she didn’t think he was sadistic or taunting. For the first time, she felt Daruma was feeling compassionate.

  She sat the little monk on her vanity and picked up a bottle of black nail polish. This time she painted on one eyeball in the left socket with precision. It wasn’t a nice as the one Chad had painted, but it was a lot better than her last attempt with the Sharpie. She made it perfectly centered and made it touch the outline of the eye on the bottom, just as Chad had.

  After she made sure the eye was filled in just right, she closed her eyes and silently made another wish.

  Chapter 14

  Getting to Know You