During January, February, and most of March the attic was much too cold to enter. A frigid vapor hung in the air up there, eerily misting everything over, and it was scary, you bet. And miserable; even Chris had to admit that.
All of this made us very content to stay in the warmer bedroom, cuddled close together as we stared and stared and stared. The twins adored the TV so they never wanted to turn it off; even at night while we slept they wanted it on, knowing it would then wake them up in the mornings. Even the scramble of dots after the late-late shows was better to them than nothing at all. Cory, in particular, liked to wake up and see the little people behind the desks giving the news, talking about the weather; for certainly their voices welcomed him more cheerfully into another day than did the covered, dim windows.
The TV shaped us, molded us, taught us how to spell and pronounce difficult words. We learned how important it was to be clean, odorless, and never let wax accumulate on your kitchen floor; never let the wind muss your hair, and God forbid if you had dandruff! Then the entire world would hold you in scorn. In April I’d be thirteen, approaching the age of acne! Each day I examined my skin to see what horrors might pop up any moment. Really, we took commercials literally, believing in their value as a book of rules to see us safely through the dangers life held.
Each day that passed brought about changes in Chris and in me. Peculiar things were happening to our bodies. We grew hair where we hadn’t had hair before—funny looking, crispy, amber-colored hair, darker than what was on our heads. I didn’t like them, and I took the tweezers and plucked them out whenever they appeared, but they were like weeds: the more you plucked, the more came back. Chris found me one day with my arm upraised, seeking diligently to grasp one single, crinkly amber hair and ruthlessly yank it out.
“What the heck are you doing?” he shot out.
“I don’t want to have to shave under my arms and I don’t want to use that depilatory cream that Momma uses—it stinks!”
“You mean you’ve been pulling hairs from your body wherever they appear?”
“Sure I do. I like my body nice and neat—even if you don’t.”
“You’re fighting a losing battle,” he said with a wicked grin. “That hair is supposed to grow where it does—so leave it alone and stop thinking about looking childishly neat, and begin to think of that hair as sexy.”
Sexy? Big bosoms were sexy, not crinkly, wiry hair. But I didn’t say this, for little hard apples were beginning to poke out my chest, and I just hoped Chris hadn’t noticed. I was very pleased I was beginning to swell out in front—when I was alone, in a private place—but I didn’t want anyone else to notice. I had to abandon that forlorn hope, for I saw Chris glance quite often at my chest, and no matter how loosely my sweaters or blouses fitted, I believe those little hills betrayed my modesty.
I was coming alive, feeling things I hadn’t felt before. Strange achings, longings. Wanting something, and not knowing what it was that woke me up at night, pulsating, throbbing, excited, and knowing a man was there with me, doing something I wanted him to complete, and he never did . . . he never did . . . always I woke up too soon, before I reached those climactic heights I knew he would take me to—if only I wouldn’t wake up and spoil it all.
Then there was another puzzling thing. It was me who made up the beds every morning, as soon as we were up and dressed, and before the witch came in with the picnic basket. I kept seeing stains on the sheets, and they weren’t large enough to be another of Cory’s dreams of going to the bathroom. They were on Chris’s side of the bed. “For heaven’s sakes, Chris. I sure hope you don’t take to dreaming of being in the bathroom while you’re still asleep in bed.” I just couldn’t believe his fantastic tale of something he called “nocturnal emissions!”
“Chris, I think you should tell Momma, so she can take you to a doctor. Whatever you have might be contagious, something Cory could catch, and he’s messy enough already in the bed without adding more.”
He threw me a look of contempt while red color heated his face. “I don’t need to see a doctor,” he said in the stiffest way. “I’ve heard older boys talk in the school restrooms, and what is happening to me is perfectly normal.”
“It cannot be normal—it is much too messy to be normal.”
“Hah!” he scoffed, flashing his eyes with hidden laughter sparkling them. “Your time to mess up your sheets is coming.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ask Momma. It’s about time she told you. I’ve already noticed you’re beginning to develop—and that’s a sure sign.”
I hated that he always knew more about everything than I did! Where did he learn so much—from nasty, idle talk in the boy’s room? I’d heard some nasty, idle talk in the girls’ room too, but darned if I was gonna believe one word of it. It was all just too gross!
The twins seldom used a chair, and they couldn’t loll about on the beds, for that would make them rumpled, and the grandmother insisted that we keep everything “shipshape.” And though they liked the soaps, they still kept on playing as they occasionally glanced up to see the most spellbinding scenes. Carrie had that dollhouse, with all its little people and its many small fascinations, to keep her constantly chattering in a singsong, lilting way that could grate on your nerves. Many an annoyed glance I’d throw her way, hoping she’d shut up for two seconds, and let me hear and enjoy without all the chitchat—but I never said anything to her, for that would bring about howls worse than the low murmur of her back-and-forth conversations.
While Carrie moved the dolls about, and conversed for male and female, Cory would fiddle with his many boxes of Tinker-toys. He refused to use the directions that Chris tried to teach him how to follow. Cory would design whatever suited his needs most, and what he constructed was always something he could beat upon to make musical notes. With the television to make noise and give a constantly changing variety of scenes, the dollhouse with its many charms to please Carrie, and the Tinkertoys which happied away the hours for Cory, the twins managed to make the best of their confined lives. The young are very adaptable; I know that from watching them. Sure, they complained some, about two things the most. Why didn’t momma come as often as she used to? That hurt, really hurt, for what could I tell them? And then there was the food; they never liked the food. They wanted icecream cones that they saw on TV, and the hot dogs TV children were always eating. In fact, they wanted everything that was aimed at a child’s appetite for sweet things, or toy things. The toys they got. The sweets they didn’t.
And while the twins crawled about on the floor, or sat crosslegged making their particular kind of annoying racket, Chris and I tried to keep our minds concentrated on the complicated situations that unfolded daily before our eyes. We watched unfaithful husbands deceive loving wives, or nagging wives or wives too concerned with their children to give the husbands the attentions they deemed so necessary. It was vice-versa, too. Wives could be just as unfaithful to husbands good, or husbands bad. We learned love was just like a soap bubble, so shining and bright one day, and the next day it popped. Then came the tears, the woebegone expressions, the anguish over endless cups of coffee while seated at the kitchen table with a best friend who had her own troubles, or his own troubles. But, no sooner was one love over and done with, then along came another love to start that shining soap bubble soaring again. Oh, how very hard those beautiful people sought to find the perfect love and lock it away, keep it safe; and they never could.
One afternoon in late March Momma came into the room with a large box tucked under her arm. We were accustomed to seeing her enter our room with many gifts, not just one, and the strangest thing was she nodded at Chris, who seemed to understand for he got up from where he sat to study, caught hold of the small hands of our twins, and he took them up into the attic. I didn’t understand in the least. It was still cold up there. Was this some secret? Was she bringing a gift just for me?
We sat side by side on the bed Carrie and I shar
ed and before I could have a look at the “gift” meant especially for me, Momma said we had to have a “woman-to-woman” talk.
Now, I’d heard about man-to-man talks from watching old Andy Hardy movies, and I knew these particular kinds of discussions had something to do with growing up and sex, so I grew thoughtful and tried not to show too much interest, which would be unladylike—though I was dying to know at last.
And did she tell me what I’d waited to hear for many a year? No! While I sat solemnly and awaited the disclosing of all the evil, unholy things boys knew from the moment they were born, according to one particular witch-grandmother, I sat stunned and disbelieving while she did the explaining of how likely any day I would start to bleed!
Not from a wound, an injury, but from God’s plan of how a woman’s body should function. And, to add to my amazement, not only was I going to bleed once every month from now on until I was an old woman of fifty, this bloody thing was going to last five days!
“Until I’m fifty?” I asked in a voice weak and small, afraid, oh so afraid she wasn’t joking.
She gave me a sweet and tender smile. “Sometimes it stops before you’re fifty, and sometimes it goes on for a few years more—there’s no set rule. But somewhere around that age bracket you can expect to go into ‘the change of life.’ And that is called menopause.”
“Is it going to hurt?” was the most important thing I needed to know at that moment.
“Your monthly periods? There may be a little crampy pain, but it’s not so bad, and I can tell you this from my own experience, and that from other women I know, the more you dread it, the more it pains.”
I knew it! Never did I see blood that I didn’t feel pain—unless it was the blood of someone else. And all this mess, this pain, these cramps, just so my uterus could ready itself to receive a “fertilized egg” that would grow into a baby. Then she gave me the box which contained everything I would need for “that time of month.”
“Hold up, Momma!” I cried, having found a way to avoid all of this. “You’ve forgotten I plan to be a ballerina, and dancers are never supposed to have babies. Miss Danielle was always telling us it was better never to have a child. And I don’t want any, not ever. So you can take all this stuff back to the store, and get back your money, for I’m calling off this monthly period mess!”
She chuckled, then hugged me closer and put on my cheek a kiss. “I guess I must have overlooked telling you something—for there isn’t anything you can do to prevent menstruation. You have to accept all of nature’s ways of changing your body from that of a child, into that of a woman. Certainly you don’t want to remain a child all your life, do you?”
I floundered, wanting very much to be a grown woman, with all the curves she had, and yet I wasn’t prepared for the shock of such messiness—and once each month!
“And, Cathy, please don’t be ashamed, or embarrassed, or dread a little discomfort, and the trouble—having babies is very rewarding. Someday you’ll fall in love and marry, and you’ll want to give your husband children—if you love him enough.”
“Momma, there’s something you’re not telling me. If girls go through this sort of thing to become a woman, what must Chris endure to become a man?”
She giggled girlishly and pressed her cheek to mine. “They have changes, too, though none that make them bleed. Chris will soon have to be shaving—and every day too. And there are certain other things he will have to learn to accomplish, and control, that you don’t have to worry about.”
“What?” asked I, eager to have the male gender share some of the miseries of maturing. When she didn’t answer, I asked, “Chris, he sent you to me with instructions to tell me, didn’t he?” She nodded and said yes, though she had meant to tell me long ago, but downstairs there was a hassle every day to keep her from doing what she should.
“Chris—what does he have to endure that’s painful?”
She laughed, seemingly amused. “Another day, Cathy. Now put your things away, and use them when you have the need. Don’t panic if it starts in the night, or while you’re dancing. I was twelve the day mine started, and out riding a bicycle, and you know I rode home at least six times and changed my panties before my mother finally noticed, and took the time to explain to me what it was all about. I was furious because she hadn’t warned me in advance. She never told me anything. Believe it or not, you’ll soon get used to it, and it won’t make one bit of difference in your lifestyle.”
Despite the boxes of hateful things I wished I would never need—for I wasn’t going to have a baby, that was a very good warm talk that my mother and I shared.
And yet, when she called Chris and the twins down from the attic, and she kissed Chris and ruffled his blond curls, and played with him in teasing ways, and almost ignored the twins, the closeness shared but a moment ago began to fade. Carrie and Cory seemed ill at ease in her presence now. They came running to me and climbed up on my lap, and with my arms hugging them close, they watched as Chris was fondled, kissed, and fawned over. It bothered me so much the way she treated the twins, as if she didn’t like to look at them. As Chris and I moved on into puberty, and toward adulthood, the twins stagnated, went nowhere.
* * *
The long cold winter passed into spring. Gradually the attic grew warmer. We went, all four, up there to take down the paper snowflakes, and we made it bloom again with our brilliant spring flowers.
My birthday came in April, and Momma didn’t fail to come with presents, and the treats of ice cream and bakery cake. She sat down to spend the Sunday afternoon, and taught me how to do crewel embroidery, and a few needlepoint stitches. Thus, with the kits she gave me, I had another way to fill my time.
My birthday was followed by the twins’ day—their sixth birthday. Again, Momma bought the cake, the ice cream, and the many gifts, including musical instruments that made Cory’s blue eyes light up. He took one long, charmed look at that toy accordion, gave it a squeeze or two while punching the keys, cocking his head to listen attentively to the sounds he made. And darned, if he wasn’t soon playing a tune on that thing! None of us could believe it. Then again we were dumbfounded, for he turned to Carrie’s toy piano and did the same thing. “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Carrie, happy birthday to you and me.”
“Cory has an ear for music,” said Momma, looking sad and yearning as she at last turned her gaze upon her youngest son. “Both my brothers were musicians. The pity of it was my father had no patience for the arts, or the type of men who were artists—not only those who were musicians, but painters, poets, and so forth. He thought them weak and effeminate. He forced this older brother to work in a bank he owned, not caring if his son detested the job that didn’t suit him at all. He was named after my father, but we called him Mal. He was a very goodlooking young man, and on weekends, Mal would escape the life he hated by riding up into the mountains on his motorcycle. In his own private retreat, a log cabin he had built himself, he composed music. One day he took a curve too fast in the rain. He careened off the road and crashed down hundreds of feet into a chasm. He was twenty-two years old and dead.
“My younger brother was named Joel, and he ran away the day of his brother’s funeral. He and Mal had been very close, and I guess he just couldn’t bear the thought that now he would have to take Mal’s place, and be the heir to his father’s business dynasty. We received one single postcard from Paris, in which Joel told us he had a job with an orchestra touring Europe. Next thing we heard, perhaps three weeks later, Joel had been killed in a skiing accident in Switzerland. He was nineteen when he died. He had fallen into some deep ravine filled with snow, and to this day, they never found his body.”
Oh, golly! I was greatly disturbed, kind of numb-feeling inside. So many accidents. Two brothers dead, and Daddy, too, all from accidents. My bleak look met with Chris’s. He wasn’t smiling. As soon as our mother was gone, we escaped to the attic and our books.
“We’ve read every damned thing!
” said Chris in deep disgust, flashing me an annoyed look. Wasn’t my fault he could read a book in a few hours!
“We could read through those Shakespeare books again,” I suggested.
“I don’t like to read plays!”
Gosh-golly, I loved reading Shakespeare and Eugene O’Neill, and anything that was dramatic, fanciful, and fraught with tempestuous emotions.
“Let’s teach the twins to read and write,” I suggested, I was that frantic to do something different. And in this way we could give them another way to entertain themselves. “And Chris, we’ll save their brains from turning into mush from looking at that tube so much, and keep them from going blind, too.”
Down the stairs we determinedly stalked, and right up to the twins who had their eyes glued to Bugs Bunny, who was signing off.
“We are going to teach the two of you to read and write,” said Chris.
With loud wails they protested. “No!” howled Carrie. “We don’t want to learn to read and write! We don’t write letters! We want to watch ‘I Love Lucy’!”
Chris grabbed her, and I seized hold of Cory, and quite literally we had to drag them both into the attic. It was like trying to handle slippery snakes. One of them could bellow like a mad bull charging!
Cory didn’t speak, nor did he scream, nor did he beat at me with small fists to inflict some damage; he just clung fiercely to whatever came within reach of his hands, and he used his legs to wrap around things, too.
Never did two amateur teachers have a more unwilling student body. But finally, through tricks and threats and fairy tales, we began to interest them. Maybe it was pity for us that soon had them carefully toiling over books, and tediously memorizing and reciting letters. We gave them a McGuffey’s first grade primer to copy words from.
Not acquainted with other children the same age as our twins, Chris and I thought our six-year-olds did remarkably well. And though Momma didn’t come every day now as she had in the beginning, or every other day, she did show up once or twice a week. How anxiously we waited to give her the short note Cory and Carrie had printed, making sure each had the same amount of words to print.
The Flowers in the Attic Series: The Dollangangers: Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and a New Excerpt! Page 22
