Her laughter echoed through the plantation house. It was the kind of laughter that found a welcome home in the dark corners of this old mansion. I was positive it was the sort of evil that had lived so well within its walls.
15
BAD TO THE BONE
ALTHOUGH IT WAS A BRIGHT, SUNNY MORNING WITH only puffs of clouds that appeared to be pasted against the deep blue sky here and there, I was so unhappy I might as well have opened the door and stepped into a gray, overcast day. Even the chirping of the sparrows and robins seemed dull, their music sadly off-key to me. A large, black crow, perched on the back of an old wooden lawn chair, stared at me with what looked like morbid curiosity. It barely moved and resembled a stuffed bird more than a live one. Instead of being greeted by the aroma of freshly-cut grass and the blossoms of wild flowers, I inhaled the musty scent of rotting wood beams in the porch floor. Flies danced in the air around the house as if they were celebrating the discovery of a huge carcass on which they could feed forever.
I sighed, realizing I was tuned into only what would make me uncomfortable and sad; I was in the mood to see only what was ugly and bleak, no matter how wonderful the day really was. I used to think it was the weather that would put me into one state of mind or the other, but now I realized it was far more than that. It was Mommy and Daddy who made the world bright and wonderful for me. Their smiles and happy voices created the sunshine. Beauty without people you loved or people who loved you was incomplete, unappreciated, missed.
And just as loving and gentle people could make your world brighter and happier, so could selfish and cruel people, people with hearts made of granite and veins filled with ice water, make your world dismal and gray. Aunt Fern was like a sooty, dark gray cloud hovering over my head now, threatening to drop a hard, cold rain over me and drench me in even more misery. In my flight from the horror my home had become, I had scooped up my little brother and taken Gavin's helping hand, dragging them both along on what seemed now to be a journey into hell. I had taken refuge in the old plantation, but in doing so, I had only pet witted the curse to enter the lives of two simple, but gentle, people.
I felt like Typhoid Mary, a Jonah. If I boarded a ship, it would sink; if I got on a train or a plane, it would crash. Maybe, if I ever reached Heaven, the angels would lose their melodious voices. I couldn't recall a time in my life when I felt more sorry for myself and the people who loved me. As I stood there filled with these dark thoughts, I considered running down the driveway and disappearing. Without my being here to torment, Aunt Fern would get bored and leave; Gavin could take Jefferson home with him and have a happy life, and Charlotte, Luther and Homer could return to the idyllic, simple world they once had.
I took a few steps forward, my eyes fixed on the broken and chipped driveway. In the strong breeze, the trees and bushes seemed to be beckoning to me. The voice in the wind whispered "Run, Christie, run . . . run." What difference did it make where I went, what turns I made, or where I ended up?
People might miss me for awhile. For awhile Gavin's heart would be heavy, but time would embroider me into the fabric of his memory and he would turn to happier and more hopeful things. Living in a world where fires could steal away two people as wonderful as Mommy and Daddy, where people as evil as Charlotte's sister Emily thrived and lived to a ripe old age, where diseases and poverty coexisted alongside the healthy and the fortunate, striking without rhyme or reason to steal away happiness at any moment, was difficult enough. Why add the leaden weight of a curse, too?
My steps grew bolder, longer, faster. Perhaps I would hide in the bushes and watch to be sure Aunt Fern and Morton left and Gavin soon followed afterward with Jefferson. Then I would feel better about my decision. Yes, I could. . . .
"HEY!" I heard. I stopped and turned to see Gavin walking quickly toward me. His dark eyebrows were raised in confusion. "Where do you think you're going?" he demanded.
"I was just . . . "
"Just what, Christie? This driveway takes you back to the road. You were running off, weren't you?" he asked perceptively. "Fern did something else," he followed before I could utter a reply. "What did she do?" he demanded. "I'll 'go back in there and I'll . . ." He turned toward the house.
"No Gavin, please," I said, seizing his forearm. -Don't do anything. I wasn't running away," I said. He looked at me skeptically. "I was just going to take a walk and I thought this would be the easiest way," I said flatly, hoping that he wouldn't see the pain that was in my eyes. But that was what he saw.
"Christie, I told you I would keep anyone from hurting you, didn't I?" he said.
"I know. I know. Is Jefferson all right?" I asked quickly, hoping to get him off the topic so he would calm down.
"He's in seventh heaven alongside Homer smearing paint over the barn walls. I've been waiting for you all morning. What did she have you do after you brought her coffee?"
"Nothing terrible. I helped her bathe and shampoo her hair and then I made them some breakfast. It will be all right," I promised, even though I wasn't confident. "I'm sure they'll grow bored today and leave."
"Um," he said, nodding, his eyes small. "Maybe."
"Of course, they will, Gavin. What's here for them? You know how Fern's used to a lot of excitement. Why, she always complained about being bored at the hotel with all the activity in full swing."
In trying, to convince him, I was helping to convince myself. But it was as if the horrid fates that haunted me had heard my protests of hope and were determined to stifle even the smallest notes of optimism. Aunt Fern and Morton came bursting out of the house, laughing as they pounded over the porch floor and down the steps to their car.
"Could they be leaving?" Gavin muttered.
He and I stepped to the side to watch them back up and then come down the driveway. They stopped alongside us and Aunt Fern rolled down her window.
"Where the hell are you two going . . . back to your love nest at the lake?" she asked and laughed.
"We're just taking a little walk, Aunt Fern," I replied sharply.
"Sure, sure. Anyway, we're going into town to buy some things. Morton wants steak for supper and we want some decent things for our other meals. Also, I don't like the soaps and shampoo you have here."
"Don't forget the fresh whiskey," Morton quipped and they both laughed.
"Yeah, there's no gin and we both like gin. You better go back and clean up the kitchen," she added. "We've got to keep our little hideaway clean. Which reminds me, I want to get some other rooms in shape, make them liveable. We'll do a tour later and I'll show you what I want done."
She rolled up her window and Morton drove on. My heart contracted and my throat closed.
"So much for your belief that they will leave today," Gavin said. "I swear, if she does any more mean things to you, I'll grab her by the scruff of her neck and boot her out the door."
"Let's just humor them a little longer, Gavin. They'll grow bored soon," I promised. "Please," I pleaded. "I don't want to make any more trouble for anyone else."
His eyes grew small.
"All right," he said, "but I don't want to see you walking away from this house ever again without me. Promise? Promise me you won't do anything stupid, Christie," he insisted.
I lowered my eyes and nodded, but he wasn't satisfied. He reached out and lifted my chin so I would have to look into his eyes.
"Christie?"
"All right, Gavin," I said. "I promise." "Good," he said, satisfied.
"I'll go in and clean up the kitchen. No reason why Charlotte has to have extra work," I told him and started back for the house.
Aunt Fern and Morton returned with bags filled with the things they liked to eat. They had two quart bottles of gin and a dozen small bottles of tonic water. Almost immediately, Morton made them drinks. I was ordered to unpack the bags and organize the dinner. While I did so, Aunt Fern made her promised tour of the plantation house. A short while later, I heard her shouting for me. Charlotte had returned to prepa
re lunch for Luther and the others.
"Oh dear, why is she screaming so loud? What does she want?" Charlotte wondered behind me. We found her standing at the top of the stairway, her drink in one hand and the doll from the crib in the old nursery in her other. Charlotte froze.
"Be careful, please," she cried up to Aunt Fern.
"Be careful? Be careful of what? What is this? Why is there a doll in a crib?" she demanded.
"Please put it back, Aunt Fern," I said, starting up the stairway toward her. "It's Charlotte's."
"She still plays with dolls?" she asked incredulously.
"No, but it has important memories for her and . . ."
"This is ridiculous. What a ridiculous place," Aunt Fern declared.
"Please," Charlotte said. "Put him back. We don't take him out of the nursery."
"Oh we don't?" Aunt Fern teased. "What do you think will happen? Will he cry?" She held up the doll by its feet and bounced it up and down over the railing, threatening to drop it.
"Stop!" Charlotte cried and started up the stairs behind me.
"Aunt Fern, don't tease her."
Fern took another gulp from her gin and tonic and laughed.
"Morty," she called. "You've got to come out and see this. You won't believe it. Morty!"
"Put him back! Please, put him back," Aunt Charlotte begged, stepping faster.
Morton came out of the sitting room where he had been drinking and relaxing and looked up.
"Let's play monkey-in-the-middle," Aunt Fern declared and held up the doll for Morton to see. Aunt Charlotte reached out for it and Aunt Fern threw the doll down to Morton, who caught it.
"STOP!" Charlotte cried, her palms pressed against her temples.
"Aunt Fern, how could you do that?" I turned and started toward Morton, who was smiling up at Fern. "Give me the doll, please," I pleaded. He laughed and just as I reached him, tossed it back up to Fern. She dropped it, but before Charlotte could get to it, Fern scooped it up and threatened to throw it back to Morton.
Charlotte screamed again. Fern giggled and charged away. I looked at Aunt Charlotte's face and saw the pain and fear in her eyes. In her mind once again someone was taking away her baby, I thought. How dreadful and how cruel of Fern to do something so obviously painful to Aunt Charlotte.
"Aunt Fern," I called and stormed up the stair-way. I chased after her with Charlotte right behind me. But when we turned the corner at the end of the corridor, she was nowhere in sight.
"Where is she? Where has she taken the baby?" Aunt Charlotte asked.
"Aunt Fern?"
We heard giggling to the right and started slowly in that direction. But before we reached the doorway of the room Aunt Fern was hiding in, we heard the glass she was carrying shatter on the floor and then we heard her scream. A moment later Homer appeared with the doll cradled in his arms as if he were carrying a real baby. He walked over to Charlotte and gingerly transferred the doll into her arms. She stroked its head and face gently and then headed for the nursery.
"What's he doing here!" Aunt Fern demanded from the doorway. "He scared the hell out of me."
Homer turned and glared furiously at her.
"I told you to keep him out of the house," Aunt Fern said. "He popped out of nowhere and grabbed that stupid doll out of my hands."
"It's all right, Homer," I said. "Everything's all right. Go on back to the others." He continued to stand there, his eyes fixed hatefully on Fern, his large hands clenched into mallets. "Go on, Homer," I said more firmly. He looked at me and then turned and headed away.
"Where the hell did he come from?" Aunt Fern asked, strutting toward me bravely now that Homer had gone.
"He must have heard Aunt Charlotte's scream and climbed in through a window," I said. "Why did you do that, Aunt Fern? You could see how much it bothered her."
"Well, what is she, nuts? At her age crying over a doll?"
"It's the doll she had when she was a little girl," I said. "It means a lot to her."
"Weird," Aunt Fern declared. "This whole place and everyone in it." Her face was swollen with anger and frustration. She didn't like being forced to stop teasing Charlotte and me. She was indignant and embarrassed.
"Why don't we just leave, Fern," Morton said. He had heard the commotion and had come up the stairs behind us.
"No," Fern replied. She was fuming, her eyes hot, the tips of her ears red. She hated to be thwarted and defeated and she was going to get her revenge somehow. "We bought all that food and all this booze to have a good time here, and we will," she said with determination. She fixed her eyes on me. I had become her whipping boy.
"Let's begin by fixing up that living room downstairs. I want to have a party tonight. Get the floor swept, the windows washed and the furniture polished."
"Fern, let's just leave," Morton implored. Why didn't he just demand? I wondered. What sort of a man was he? How did she get men wrapped up so tightly in her grip? How did she get so firm a hold over them? Was it just the promise of sex? Morton was the one with the car and the money, but Fern decided everything.
"Relax, Morty," she said, calming down and returning that icy smile to her face. "First, we'll have a great dinner and then Christie will give us a concert. After that, we'll play some games . . . one of the games you like," she told him coyly. Whatever she was promising him, pleased him, for he smiled and then laughed.
"Okay," he said.
"Then it's all settled. Get working on the living room, princess. We want to have a good time tonight, don't you?"
"None of us will have a good time as long as you tease and torment people here, Aunt Fern," I told her.
"Oh stop whining. I'm having fun and I like it. Either your mother or my brother were always putting an end to my fun. Well, they're not here now. I'm the adult in charge, understand?"
"Then act like an adult," I said unable to stop myself. Her face flamed red and before I could see it, her hand flew up and slapped me across the cheek, the blow so hard, I stumbled back. My face stung and my eyes burned with tears. She came at me again and I raised my arm instinctively to protect myself.
"You little bitch! Don't you ever talk back to me like that again!" she fumed. "Do you hear me? YOU?" She seemed to swell up to tower over me, her black eyes like hot coals, her nostrils wide, resembling those of a mad bull. Every feature in her face became distorted with her rage. I couldn't help but cower. I felt my own blood drain down into my feet; a stinging sensation began behind my ears as my strength grew small, and I stared at the woman who seemed a stranger now.
"I ought to bind you and gag you and just march you down those stairs and throw you into the back of Morton's car and drive you right back to Philip," she spat through her clenched teeth. "Why he could have these people committed to an insane asylum. Yes," she said nodding. "He could.
"And once I testified to finding you living in sin here with Gavin, no one would believe your story about Philip. With Philip as trustee of the estate in control of everything . . ." She looked around. "He might just give me this place as a reward. Morty and I could tear it all apart and have a hell of a good time here, couldn't we, Morty?"
"It's got potential," he agreed quickly. I had the feeling he was just as afraid of her as I was.
"Yes," she said, nodding, "you see? Morty knows about such things and he says it has potential."
She glared down at me. I shielded my eyes from hers. My heart was pounding so hard, I thought I might faint. The storm of horror she had threatened to burst over me had started. My legs felt as if they were shrinking and I was sinking to the floor.
"I'd like to hear an apology," she said. "I don't know how many times my brother made me apologize to your mother for one thing or another. Well?"
I felt trapped, pinned down by her hate and rage. Who knew what terrible things might be done to Charlotte and Luther and even Homer if she carried out her threats.
"I'm sorry," I muttered.
"What? I didn't hear you," she said, h
er hands on her hips.
"I'm sorry, Aunt Fern," I said loud enough for Morton to hear as well. I knew that was what she wanted.
"Good," she said, smiling. "Now all can return to normal and we can be friends again. You've been doing so well up to this point, too. Hasn't she, Morty?"
"She's been a fine host," he said, nodding.
"Yes, right, a fine host. All right," she said, turning back to me, "now let's just continue it all. Fix up the living room so we can have our party tonight," she concluded. Then she started away.
"How about another drink?" Morton asked her, holding up his arm for her to put hers through.
"Good idea. I need one after this. Oh, princess," she said, turning. "You'd better go into that room and sweep up the glass that imbecile made me drop. Be careful. Don't cut yourself," she added. "If something bad happened to you, I could never forgive myself." Her peal of laughter trailed after her and Morton as they went down the corridor, both behaving as if nothing horrible had occurred.
I should have run away before, I thought. I shouldn't have been so indecisive about it. I should have flown down the driveway and disappeared. If I had, she wouldn't have tormented Aunt Charlotte.
With my head bowed, my heart feeling as if it had been turned to stone, and my legs moving as if on their own, I followed in Aunt Fern and Morton's wake to begin my work on the living room so she would be pleased. I still clung to the hope that after a while, she would grow bored with these games and move on into oblivion, for I pledged to myself and took an oath on all that was sacred that once she was out of my life, I would never permit her to enter it again, even if she became destitute and was begging on the streets.
That's how hateful I had become.
That's how hateful she had made me.
At dinner that night, Aunt Fern and Morton were downright disgusting and obnoxious. Without warning, they would break into these silly games. I think she was just trying to demonstrate to us how much control she had over this poor excuse for a man. She would declare something as if she were his master and he would have to obey.
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