“You call me husband and yet do not allow me into your chambers, woman. What kind of husband is that?”
It had never crossed my mind that the man wanted into my chambers. Our child was missing—how could any other words escape his mouth? All these months of not so much as a kiss between us, I had assumed his transgressions with the women of the night had satisfied whatever urges a man like John Rimbauer has—substantial urges indeed. But now I saw before me another man altogether, pitiful, and I wondered (a deeper, darker thought) if some curse had not befallen my husband, some curse that is said to afflict some men, and that if, in his twisted, self-centered way, he had attributed that curse to Sukeena, and that this explained her abduction by the police and therefore, quite possibly, my missing daughter. Had John not dared to harm Sukeena himself, because of her substantial powers? Had he concocted the disappearance of our daughter as a means to rid himself of my maid with the help of the police? Or had he spent time in secret observation of my bedroom and the acts that have taken place there between me and my friend? Was jealousy his master now? Had I somehow risen to a level of power over him that to this moment I had been unaware of?
“I was unaware you had interest in my bedroom, John. I have not heard your knock upon my door for many months.”
Or (I was thinking) had the act of man with woman become meaningless without the sense of love? Had the only curse upon my husband been a curse he had brought upon himself? Perhaps he was now incapable of the other kind of love and in need of the love he and I had once shared, however briefly. Perhaps April’s disappearance had something to do with this—making John aware of external powers that he could not, in fact, control; powers he associated with Sukeena, and hence his lashing out at her. Perhaps this man was boy again, and in me sought a mother to whom he could turn.
It was everything I could do, Dear Diary, to remain composed under the weight of Sukeena’s prolonged absence and the disappearance of my lovely daughter. For these were the only two subjects of my inquiry, and I found John’s diversions annoying and entirely self-centered, which should not have surprised me one bit.
“I believe you’ve had other interests,” he said. “You’ve been preoccupied with April and Sukeena.”
And they were both gone. This fact did not escape me. I shuddered, head to toe. Had my husband conceived of this grand plan to remove my two loves and refocus my ardor upon himself? Had I misread him all these years—was he, in fact, more deeply in love with me than I’d ever understood? I prayed for composure, understanding fundamentally that these next few minutes were to determine the fate of my maid. In truth, I feared the fate of my child had already been decided, and that my husband had had nothing to do with it (no matter how my mind schemed!). My discovery in the attic, the voice in the wind telling me of the tower—it all made so much sense to me now: John was jealous, and so was Rose Red. I swallowed my pride and said, “My bedroom door is always open to you, dear husband. You will find me a most needing and willing partner, in this regard.”
“Will I?”
“Oh, yes.” I hated him for this. Me, picturing Sukeena being beaten, or worse, while my husband negotiated his visitation rights—and my obligations to his depravity. Always the businessman. John Rimbauer got what he wanted, and he played any card necessary to that end.
“I know you’ve been with her,” he said. I lowered my head in shame. I could not look at him. Why, I wondered, did this man—this man in particular—possess the power to make me feel guilty? How could such an exaggeration be allowed? I nodded, acknowledging his accusations.
My lips quivered, my breath drew short. “Your needs are physical,” I whispered dryly. “I need love, John.”
“And you’ve found it?”
I said nothing. I felt afraid. So terribly afraid. Not of him, this weak excuse of a man. But afraid of losing both April and Sukeena—afraid of being driven to a place where my only friend might turn out to be this witch of a house, Rose Red herself. I could see myself driven to torment over her construction—my hands raw, my eyes filled with sawdust, my clothes dirty and dusty, as I worked furiously to build her bigger and stronger. I feared the future. I wished then—wished with all my heart—that I had been brave enough to jump those several nights earlier. Only death would offer silence. Sanctuary. I knew this absolutely.
I said, “I’ve found companionship. Solace. I’m at peace, John.” I lied.
“I will taste this peace as well,” he said, stepping up to me. He’d been drinking. Heavily, I thought. Another consideration entered me, flooded me with possibility: he was tormented himself. He’d not been sleeping. I knew this. Had been drinking too much of late. Perhaps his past sins had finally caught up to this man in the late stages of middle age. Perhaps he saw that the end was near—at least nearer than the beginning—and that he had isolated himself in a place where peace was only a word, not a form of existence, a concept, not a reality. Mistakenly (as always) he thought this peace could now be negotiated—bought, instead of earned. “You, and this woman,” he said. He could rarely bring himself to say her name. “I will join you in your chambers.”
The rumblings of a drunken man? I wondered. Or had he witnessed the affection, the kindness, the pure love that transpired between my maid and me and believed he could include himself in this exchange?
Shaking from fear, I stepped even closer, my voice now more like that wind I’d heard whispering in my ear. “Whatever you want, John. It’s yours for the asking.” I felt nauseous. I wasn’t going to make the mistake Douglas Posey had made. I said, “I am here to serve you.”
He took his hands and placed them on my shoulders. His fingers extended like antennae, they gently rained down my body, lingering over my breasts, my waist, and hugging the curve of my hips. He let his hands once again hang at his side. He looked pale, and quite frightened. Later, I would realize it was excitement at the thought of his proposal. His touch was eerily electric—I felt it like a poison running through my veins.
“I believe I can help her,” he said.
He stormed from the room and back out the house. I heard his car sputtering toward the gates. I fell to my knees, and I retched.
Regardless of the price I had just paid, my Sukeena was coming home.
22 FEBRUARY 1917—ROSE RED
John has worked tirelessly to free Sukeena and at last has brought her home. To see her, my dear friend, in such a state as this brought me to tears and for a time threatened to return me to fever and the echo of my African illness, but to my credit I held these symptoms at bay, determined to be of help. Part of the long delay in my receiving her was John’s delivering her to the hospital for the setting of bones and the mending of wounds. She is missing three front teeth and has a broken left wrist and a bandaged nose. In the privacy of her room, as Donna and I help her out of her bloodied and torn clothes and into a nightdress, we are painfully aware of the other atrocities that did befall her—atrocities that a woman readily recognizes and that need no detailed explanation here in these pages. Suffice it to say her black skin is deeply bruised from ribs to loin, from her breasts to the soles of her feet, and there is tearing and bleeding in places that make childbirth appear tame. I weep openly at the sight of what they’ve done to her, the uniformed men assigned to protect us. What cowards. They should all be made to hang for these crimes. Instead, they will return home to their wives, a bit weary, explaining away their fatigue as just another day on the beat.
For her part, Sukeena is sanguine as usual. She stops short of making jokes about her condition but manages to impress us with a wincing smile, half pain, half delight, at her return to those who care for her. Donna is eventually replaced by Carol, a nurse that John has hired specifically to care for my maid in her weeks of recovery. Carol changes dressings on Sukeena’s wounds, applies ointments and feeds her medicines. Sukeena tolerates these efforts but bids me to prepare her own herbal treatments, which include the burning of ropelike grasses, teas and salves made from a vari
ety of herbs she keeps in a rosewood chest in her changing room. I try to follow her instructions, requiring her to repeat them several times. I touch her all over, applying these African remedies, and reel when she winces in pain. There are clearly broken ribs and, I fear, the bruising of internal organs, for her abdomen is quite enlarged on her right side, and she is refusing all food.
Hours on end I pray for her, reading scripture aloud. She seems soothed by this, and we’ve talked about how Christian scripture can heal given devotion and faith behind the words. Morning comes, another day passes.
13 MARCH 1917—ROSE RED
There is little doubt that April (whose month approaches with great sorrow) is not coming home. John did not hide her in some pretense or scheme. She is gone, lost to the walls of this place. Her residence here ensures that I shall never leave this place, never leave my child, not for more than a luncheon or dinner in town. (I wonder if Rose intended this fate for me, thinking back to Sukeena’s claims that the house was jealous of my devotion to my daughter, and knowing that a mother would never leave her child when distant hope is held that my April may someday walk right out of the walls that have apparently claimed her. If, indeed, there was method to this house’s madness, it has won that battle: I am here to stay!)
Sukeena’s recovery impresses me greatly, and I attribute that recovery in no small part to both her herbs and my prayer. Some of the bruising remains. Bandages have been removed from her nose, and other areas as well, and she is able to spend some time on her feet now and to tend to her toilet herself. Her wrist remains in plaster, her breathing shallow and quite evidently painful. She chants herself to sleep in that singing language of hers, almost like humming as it resonates inside her. I brush her hair and pat her head and rub her limbs when her legs go numb. She smiles and climbs to her feet and struggles around the room slightly bowlegged. I wince, unable to conceive of the awful things they did to her during her days in captivity.
A policeman, a detective, returned to our home, ostensibly to follow up on April’s disappearance, and upon sight of him, I ordered him from our home. I shouted, quite undignified, until the man, paralyzed with fear, fled from this place, hat in hand. No policeman shall ever set foot in this house again. Not without proper paperwork and the order of a judge. I’ve had quite enough of the “protection” the police provide us. If they think they’ll ever figure out Rose Red, they are fooling themselves. There is no earthly explanation for the events of this place. I have lived within these walls more than eight years now, day in and day out, I have consulted Madame Lu and Madame Stravinski, and I am wont to explain the goings-on. Young women disappearing. Men, dead of everything from suicide to murder. My daughter claimed. My husband now tortured with sexual inadequacy.
I shudder with this last thought, recalling my negotiations to win Sukeena’s release, and dreading the day I must report to my maid the price we both must pay for her freedom. Dreading even more the moment of payment itself. When will my husband come to my chambers? When will that demand be met?
1 APRIL 1917—ROSE RED
A grim mood envelops us all as we mourn the loss of my dear daughter on this, her day. The staff feels this loss as painfully as John and I. (The house maids elected to forgo their white aprons today, leaving them in all black as they mourn.) For the most part the house is quiet and the only activities amount to the bare necessities to keep it operating. Construction, for the first day since Christmas, has been suspended. About the only occurrence of note was a shuddering growl heard by all sometime around 1 P.M. this afternoon. There was no mistaking the source: this house.
This same time of day—1 P.M.—has lately been the hour of my retiring after lunch for “rest.” In fact, I have used these two hours to tend to my carpentry in the attic, making good headway on the stairs that are to lead to the Tower. Only Sukeena has noticed the splinters and callouses on my hands—and in typical fashion has thought better than to ask me their source. I wonder now, has this sound we all heard anything to do with my absence from the attic on this day? Is Rose Red so “alive” that she can even sense time and absence? If so, what is it she demands of me, and what am I to do to appease her?
I take a late tea at four o’clock in the Parlor, at first made weary by the unexpected arrival of Tina Coleman, but then made happier as I realized how badly I needed this distraction. Tina is very much aware of the significance of this day and comes to help me forget. (She even brings a flask of alcohol, and laces my tea with same!) As our discussion wanes, I note that she can’t take her eyes off the large leather globe in the corner of the room, recalling perhaps the stories of one of our first disappearances here. Do I see temptation in her eyes? Does she too want to spin this globe and see if Rose Red will claim her? (She could try if she liked, but the truth is I had one of the staff place a screw into the globe to prevent its spinning many years ago. Each and every time Sukeena identifies what she believes to be a portal into this house, I order it closed or shuttered. The stall in the Carriage House, for instance, had been nailed shut following Daniel’s brutal stomping.)
I must admit to a sense of melancholy and distress as the afternoon wore on. All the small talk in the world could not rid me of memories of my sweet little girl, and I fear the alcohol only served to increase my unease. Finally, too late, I’m afraid, Tina excused herself and took her leave, returning home by chauffeured motorcar.
I skipped dinner, filled with scones, and headed to my rooms to write here in your pages.
2 A.M.
Do I dare write openly and honestly of the events of this evening—the evening anniversary of the birth of my missing child? If I do not, I fear that I shall carry this with me to my detriment, for I experience such relief when applying my pen to your pages. But oh, Dear Diary, so private are these words, so frightening, that I scarcely dare repeat what has happened. Unable to sleep, unable, barely, to sit down, I have paced my chambers for the last hour debating whether to share here in your pages the events of the past several hours, and now, alas, I take to your pages like the sinful to the confessional.
It was shortly after eleven o’clock when I heard a knock on the outer door to my chambers. I had already let the staff go and so was made to answer this inquiry myself. Believing it to be Sukeena, who has found it difficult to sleep since her ordeal with the police, I approached in my nightgown, not bothering with a robe.
To my great surprise it was my husband. Further to my surprise was his apparent sobriety. I had not seen him since before tea, and had presumed him to be drinking quite heavily on this day.
“Ellen,” he said, his voice barely a whisper, “the pain is too great.” I admitted him and we embraced—hugged each other in a way we have not done in years. I cried. My husband remained stalwart, though was visibly shaken. As we hugged, his large hands held me from behind, rubbing me and pressing me to him, and I sensed immediately he had turned his grief into need—he wanted physical soothing.
He kissed my neck, my throat, and I confess I shuddered with apprehension. I, too, needed this expression of love, needed some escape from my grief. He stopped my heart with his next words. “Send for her.”
I stammered, unable to draw a breath. There was no question to whom my husband referred. “John …,” I pleaded, but he pressed his finger to my lips and repeated himself, and I knew there was to be no arguing.
I approached the door, preparing to summon one of my staff. I turned to him again, one final attempt to win favor. “John, dear husband, I offer myself in whatever regard you do wish. You may dress, undress me. Position me any way you like, ask anything of me you so choose—but do not ask this. I have yet to inform her of our … negotiations. I dare not tell her this way.”
Clearly, he considered my offer thoughtfully. He touched me—touched me as only a husband may touch a wife. Then he stopped abruptly and bid me to summon her. “Send for her,” he repeated.
I knew better than to challenge him, especially in the face of his rescue, which may
have saved Sukeena’s life. “Very well,” I said. “But leave my chambers for a time. Let me speak to her in private. Grant me this favor, my only request. Return in thirty minutes. You shall have what you wish.”
Sukeena arrived quite promptly—never one to dismiss a summons from her mistress. I sat her down and spoke quite plainly of the arrangements I had made to secure her release from jail and torture. I informed her of my discovering of John’s viewing hallway, and how I believed he watched every woman in this house from similar vantage points. I had no doubt whatsoever that he’d visited Sukeena in this regard for several years now.
“You ask me to do this thing for you, ma’am, you know I do.”
“You loathe him, I know, sweet friend.”
“He bad man, Miss. Not bad in soul, but bad in action. Bad for the children, bad for you, Miss Ellen.”
“We must do this thing,” I bid her. “We must grant him this whenever he asks, and he has asked for to-night to help rid him of the haunting that results from the loss of sweet April.”
“You ask me do dis, I do dis.”
I kissed her, kissed her on the lips long and tenderly. “I had hoped nothing might ever spoil our privacy, dear friend.” Her eyes burned into mine and I felt her displeasure with me—perhaps she would rather have died in jail than take to bed with my husband. I didn’t blame her for this.
“This one night, he never forget,” she said. “Sukeena make sure of that.”
“It’s a night none of us shall forget,” I said.
“Oh, no,” she contradicted. “Me, ma’am? I forget this before I return to my own room.” And she smiled.
When Sukeena smiled—missing teeth and all—the whole room grew brighter. She slipped out of her robe and nightdress and stood before me naked, a powerful and wildly attractive female form. “Take off the nightie, miss.” She stepped forward and helped me out of my nightgown. “You say he coming,” she said. “Then we give him an eyeful.” With that, she took my hand and led me toward my bed.
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer Page 19
