The Eye Unseen

by Cynthia Tottleben

  I could spot the three trees in our front yard. Every year Brandy, Mom and I had had an autumn contest to see who could decorate their tree the best. Our family competition had gathered quite the following in town. Friends from church would cruise past our old white two-story on their Sunday afternoon drives to see what we had accomplished. Some of our teachers and those of Brandy’s friends who had cars and could navigate the country roads would pause and wave as their tires kicked up the gravel dust that coated all the vegetation girding our lawn.

  They were never allowed to stop and join us, even if we promised not to venture off the front porch or take our conversation across the road where the Hanleys kept their cows. Mother wouldn’t allow it. Instead, Brandy and I stood right at the edge of the terrace, giddy with all the attention, gesturing as the cars passed and worked their way back to the paved road, the four miles back to town.

  Mom usually lost the contest; she liked corn stalks and pumpkins, which we girls thought pretty boring. My decorations usually centered more around Halloween, with ghosts and bats hanging from the branches.

  But Brandy always put us to shame.

  She worked on her tree plans for months. Sometimes she would ask me for my input, but often Brandy didn’t involve me until she needed someone nimble to climb the tree and help her drape or dangle things. Mom gave her free rein with her creativity and even footed the bill for supplies without question.

  Last year—when I was still alive to the outside world—my oak had held fifteen cardboard bats and two dozen fabric ghosts. I had had a fantastic time pulling myself as high as I could, balancing against the sturdy trunk as I tied my creations to branches and watched as they instantly spooked about in the breeze.

  I loved being so high up I could spy on all our neighbors, even the Millers, who were never home. From my vantage point I could see they had added an old bath tub to the collection of trash strewn between their outbuildings. If I looked the other direction, and really strained my eyes, I could see the blacktop and the occasional car that cruised along it like a tiny ant. This high up, I felt close to God.

  As Halloween neared, I carved three pumpkins (one for each of us!) and lit them every evening around my tree. At night the bats could barely be seen. But I knew they were there, floating about like the faintest of whispers.

  Brandy’s tree usually attracted the most attention. Last year her theme had been a bonfire. She managed to get the Thompsons, who went to our church and owned the feed store close to town, to donate a dozen huge pumpkins for her display and spent two months’ allowance on orange and yellow fabric at Joanne’s in town.

  We had fun that day. Buying her cloth. Mom tucking the cash in Brandy’s hand. The two of us getting on our bikes and pedaling the four miles to town.

  Closing my eyes in the kitchen, I could jump into that earlier me. I could feel the sting of the wind as it hit my face and caused tears to cloud my eyes, the absolute freedom of my hair flying behind my head as I raced down the road. Brandy was always ahead of me, turning back to check and make sure no one had clobbered me with their John Deere, smiling in anticipation of her great plan.

  We were not only sisters then, but co-conspirators. Brandy’s look of unfettered joy, the devotion with which I shared her secret, made us members of a special club that no one else was allowed to join.

  When we arrived we were breathless. I propped my bike next to the Hallmark store and had to lean over for a second to catch my breath.

  “That was a great ride!” Brandy, as always, hadn’t even seemed to break a sweat.

  We left with two big bags of cloth, then rode straight to the hardware store to pick up nails and a little rope.

  “You’ll have to drive by. If it goes as planned, I’m going to call the paper to have them come take pictures.” Brandy bragged to the clerk, her confidence amazing. Her project was still only in the planning stage, but already she considered herself successful.

  “I shore will, honey. I shore will.” Mrs. Leighton told my sister as she bagged our goods.

  The woman never even glanced my way. But I was the quiet one and used to being ignored. Brandy, on the other hand, was the center of attention everywhere we went. Not one person we passed didn’t know her name. I felt like a wilted flower beside her.

  The ride home was never as long or as exciting as the trip to town. Our dreaded return to Mother dampened even the best excursions. Now the road seemed bumpier, the weather colder, my nose running as well as my eyes. Yet I could barely contain my excitement. I couldn’t wait to help my sister assemble her masterpiece.

  We carved pumpkins for two days. Even Mom entertained us by adding some flames to the front of a gourd, then taking all of our seeds and cleaning them for later. She encouraged our artwork, brought us cider and leftover cornbread for a snack.

  “This has been a great weekend,” I told Brandy as we dragged hay bales to her oak tree, which towered over the others in the yard. The leaves were a brilliant red, in stark contrast to the yellow of the hickories by the creek. Brandy was lucky hers still retained most of its leaves. Mine was nearly bald.

  “Yeah. Who needs to hang out at the movies when we get to be so…organic?” Brandy winked and started aligning her pumpkins around the edge of our hay circle.

  We didn’t finish until Sunday evening. Brandy assigned me the task of attaching the fabric to the uppermost part of the tree. I didn’t really want to nail it in and had to apologize to the tree for hurting her. Brandy crossed the road and yelled directions to me.

  “Move the part by your knee to the left about six inches,” she bellowed.

  Mom heard us and came outside to join the fun.

  The finished piece created the illusion of a giant bonfire. Each pumpkin had flames carved into its face, and they were stacked three levels high. The top pumpkins almost met the fabric, giving the illusion that the fire practically touched the sky, the wind moving the cotton like unencumbered flames.

  We watched from the porch after we had lit all of the pumpkins. My tree looked pathetic next to my sister’s, but I was fine with that. I just enjoyed having fun with my family, carrying out our traditions, knowing that Brandy’s tree would cause townspeople to drive past our house and see how creative we were.

  Pretty soon one car paused as it sped past, then another. The third stopped, driver and passengers staring with delight, and by nightfall we had a steady stream of visitors past our house. Brandy loved the attention.

  But this year Mom had decorated all three trees. I ached for my sister. For her goofy smile, the hee-haw of her laughter, the warmth of working together in the kitchen.

  “When did you do the trees?” I asked, forgetting that she didn’t want me to speak.

  “Last week. It’s never autumn unless we decorate the yard,” Mom said, agreeing with me. For once.

  Three trees. Three sets of cornstalks tied around the trunk, with pumpkins stacked at the bottom. Boring. How I lusted after the fun I could have had outside, playing in the leaves with Tippy, laughing with my sister as we took in the comforting scent of fall decay.

  “Your time is up. Go back upstairs,” Mom said as she put her dishes in the sink.

  Tippy and I ran up. Mom followed, shutting the door, turning the deadbolt wordlessly.

  I missed my sister. Finding her stuffed bunny, I curled up with him on my bed and hugged him close to my chest.

  * * *

  On day twelve of my bedroom confinement, I started counting corn.

  Row after row. Over two miles worth, thirty thousand seeds an acre. Three hundred fifty acres between my room and the Hanley’s house. Despite the wicked storm that had rolled in, I could still see each row, nearly ready for harvest.

  Mr. Hanley had told me years before that this crop was feed corn. Next year he would raise soybeans on this same field, planting them in the opposite direction to ensure that the earth maintained her integrity.

  I waited until late in the afternoon, when the sun stopped blocking m
y view. By that hour I was usually consumed with boredom, having read in the morning and done a limited exercise routine after lunch. I perched on the floor with my eyes just over the sill and gazed out at the fields that surrounded our house. Even my bedroom detention could not diminish the beauty of an Iowa autumn.

  The squall kept my window at a constant staccato, rain pat-pat-patting against the wooden frame. The corn danced to this same rhythm, the stalks waving and rippling like water, almost flattening in spots. I could hear the branches from the magnolia tree bang against the side of the house like they were knocking for me to let them inside. The sky started its night ritual of casually darkening, with chasers of flamingo shooting across the horizon.

  My spirit needed this. To crack the window and let the outside trickle in, absorb the snappy scent of the crisp air, imagine myself buried in the leaves Mom still hadn’t raked. I could close my eyes and see my sister traipsing around the back line of our property, picking up pine cones to decorate for Christmas, singing to herself as she twirled and danced through the fields. She always made me carry the bucket, but I didn’t mind.

  This afternoon brought magic. I had occupied myself with the corn again, starting on the west side of Mr. Hanley’s crop, working my way toward the edge of the house.

  Row 2254. I counted in patterns, imagining a giant grid and multiplying the vertical rows that I could see by the horizontal ones that I could only imagine.

  The deer shot out of the field and seemed surprised to find themselves in an open garden, our back yard. Nine of them stood, looked about, mellowed. I was fascinated by the silent signals they gave each other, one keeping guard while the others looked for food. Eyes catching bits of sunlight glowed back at me. I tapped my window, hoping they would hear and look my way, but the creatures simply helped themselves to my mother’s mums and then ambled out of view.

  I strained to see them. If Mother weren’t due home at any moment, I was tempted to fling the window open and stick my head out, but I stopped myself.

  “Look, Tippy. Aren’t they beautiful?” We both felt an instant kinship to the animals. In my heart I even hoped that they would somehow rescue me.

  Chapter 6

  Joan

  Your infancy dragged on forever.

  Some days I could barely haul myself from bed, and there you were, screaming for food, a diaper change, and someone to hold you. You demanded attention. You demanded clean clothes. The neighbors could hear you wailing. But I didn’t care.

  Instead, I cradled the paring knife I’d received years earlier as a wedding gift. Made it my constant companion. While your eyes begged me to release you from your crib, I just stared back. Literally clawed my own skin to keep myself from smothering you, the lines from the blade almost as thick as the scars the devil had left to haunt my skin, the night he had created you. But what does a mother do if she doesn’t want to touch her own child? I would gawp at you for hours, and all I could think was red hair, red hair, red hair and how to eradicate it.

  I had even attempted it, once. My ultimate fantasy. I grabbed your stupid, kicking feet, my blood as hostile as your hair, and fancied myself a Nazi soldier. Walked you toward the wall, where I planned to swing your legs and beat your head repeatedly until the blessed moment when I could hear your skull crack and feel the warmth of your blood spray my face. I could see myself, licking the fluid that had splashed against my lips, wiping the gray matter off my shoes once your body had been discarded.

  But someone else could see me, too.

  When I noticed Brandy in the doorway I pretended to be playing, gently swaying you back and forth, even though you were upside down and no mother would hold her daughter in such a way.

  I would take deep breaths and run movie images in my mind of eight hundred ways to kill you and eventually I would calm down. You would stop with the freight-train racket, your wails giving way to gaspy sobs, until you gave up and realized that I wasn’t going to come for you. Disappointing, wasn’t it? You should have been in my shoes. I had nowhere to push my rage but into tiny boxes I stacked deep in the closet. You, on the other hand, could cry all you wanted and no one batted an eye. Except, of course, for Brandy.

  When I looked at you, at the blood dotting the floor around your prison and the fresh wounds overwhelming my arms, I knew that I had to do something to control myself. Or else you would die. And while that concept really didn’t faze me, I certainly didn’t want to go to prison. What would happen to Brandy? She would become a foster kid and wind up being adopted by some ratty rednecks who kept sixteen other kids in their trailer and only ate meat when someone ran over a possum on the way home from the bar at night. I couldn’t paint that picture.

  Church really helped me. While I couldn’t reconcile the thought that you were my child, I was able to see you as a kid that needed altruism. My daughter? No. Brandy’s young friend who had a bad home life and needed to crash here 99.99% of the time? Yes. I could envision that.

  Even before you could walk I had two dozen stories for your birth family. These untruths comforted me, put a healthy distance between us. You became the discarded child of my meth addicted neighbor, a girl from Brandy’s daycare who was starving and needed a good home, an infant I picked up at the local shelter like some forlorn, forgotten dog and brought home to be a playmate for my real daughter.

  Of course I never shared these stories with Brandy or anyone else. But they soothed me. One time you were sick and screaming in a fevered rage. I had gotten dressed and put on my face, ready for work. The look of you made my stomach churn. You had vomit streaked all over your cheeks and in your hair. The stench of shit surrounded you. Worst of all, I knew that the sitter wouldn’t come if you couldn’t hold down food.

  I didn’t want to miss a day’s pay wiping away your filth. To be honest, I didn’t want to miss a day’s pay doing anything with you. And your constant bawling drove me over the edge. What, exactly, did you want from me? What did you think I could possibly give you? Why had I ever brought you home in the first place?

  I was six seconds from leaving you alone in the crib while I went to work.

  But then I looked again, and you were Patty, the neglected child my pastor had asked me to watch while her parents were in rehab. It tore me apart to see you so ill with no one to pick you up. No one to hold you or love away your discomfort. God, my heart ached for you and your vomit-encrusted soul. I couldn’t begin to fathom your loneliness, how desperately you needed a good mother.

  I dropped my shoulder bag and grabbed a dishtowel. Except for a few minutes to call my boss and let her know of your sickness, I spent the entire day rocking you and singing soft songs that had always helped Brandy fall asleep. You perked up after your bath, and it thrilled me when your little head nuzzled against my chest, your tiny fingers wrapped around my own.

  I cursed your immature, irresponsible mother and truly bonded with you that day. How easily I allowed concern to consume me, as long as you were her child and not my own. Without that permanent tie I could walk away from you at whim, I didn’t have to vow my life to protect you, I could care about you without being forced by societal rules to love you. Your red hair wasn’t a barrier between us. Some other mother would carry that burden.

  But once I set the vehicle in motion I also had to deal when it backfired.

  The looks at the park when I accidentally called you “Brandy’s little friend.” The night when, after working a twelve-hour waitressing shift and my muscles were as flexible as a brick wall, Brandy referred to “her sister,” and I argued with her for five minutes. The times I wished you away and literally waited for your negligent crack head mother to come back and fetch you. Stood by the door, even. Put out because that horrible woman had abandoned you with me. Again.

  We had to move after the day-care incident.

  I was proud of Brandy on her first day of school. She wore her hair braided and carried a small backpack full of crayons and craft-making materials. We took pictures, had a special
chocolate chip pancake breakfast, and I bawled in my car after dropping her off.

  Afterward I picked her up for a mother/daughter excursion. I had the entire day off work and planned a glorious afternoon, just the two of us. We went to a local pizza place for lunch, complete with six rounds of PacMan and enough breadsticks to feed her entire class. I could barely contain my joy.

  We went shopping for more school clothes and then hit a three o’clock matinee. We chowed down on popcorn and soda, held hands while the animated movie played and all other children fidgeted and talked and constantly left the theater to go pee. But Brandy was transfixed. I loved her silence, the stoic way she sat upright and ate her snack one kernel at a time, eyes glued to the Disney characters she loved so much.

  We ran a couple of errands for me, grabbed a burger about five thirty, and headed home.

  Of course this was before everyone had a cell phone or pager.

  The day care had left three messages on my answering machine. The first one asked if I was running late; my daughter was hungry and needed picked up. While I listened I stared at Brandy, wondering what the idiot woman was talking about. The second one said that they were closing in fifteen minutes and that I really needed to contact them. The third expressed great concern for my safety, since I had never been less than diligent with picking up my child on time. The owner also informed me that she had called the police to come get my daughter.

  If she hadn’t said my name I would have assumed she had dialed a wrong number. Brandy had her toys out and was playing with them when she looked up at me and asked, “Where’s Lucy?”

  My pleasant day soured instantly: It hit me that I had forgotten you at daycare. I cursed the stupid teenager from the clinic where I volunteered, since if she hadn’t abandoned you with me, I wouldn’t be embarrassed by this mistake.

  I didn’t know where to begin. I honestly thought about just getting in the car and slinking away, leaving you behind so your birth mother could parent you. But Brandy wouldn’t let it drop.