Then, bewilderingly, he seized me by the shoulders, digging in his fingers, hard! They hurt. “Damn you, Cathy! You kissed that man! He could have awakened and seen you, and demanded to know who you were! And not thought you only a part of his dream!”
Scary the way he acted, the fright I felt for no reason at all. “How do you know what I did? You weren’t there; you were sick that night.”
He shook me, glaring his eyes, and again I thought he seemed a stranger. “He saw you, Cathy—he wasn’t soundly asleep!”
“He saw me?” I cried, disbelieving. It wasn’t possible . . . wasn’t!
“Yes!” he yelled. This was Chris, who was usually in such control of his emotions. “He thought you a part of his dream! But don’t you know that Momma can guess who it was, just by putting two and two together—just as I have? Damn you and your romantic notions! Now they’re on to us! They won’t leave money casually about as they did before. He’s counting, she’s counting, and we don’t have enough—not yet!”
He yanked me down from the window sill! He appeared wild and furious enough to slap my face—and not once in all our lives had he ever struck me, though I’d given him reason to when I was younger. But he shook me until my eyes rolled, until I was dizzy and crying out: “Stop! Momma knows we can’t pass through a locked door!”
This wasn’t Chris . . . this was someone I’d never seen before . . . primitive, savage.
He yelled out something like, “You’re mine, Cathy! Mine! You’ll always be mine! No matter who comes into your future, you’ll always belong to me! I’ll make you mine . . . tonight . . . now!”
I didn’t believe it, not Chris!
And I did not fully understand what he had in mind, nor, if I am to give him credit, do I think he really meant what he said, but passion has a way of taking over.
We fell to the floor, both of us. I tried to fight him off. We wrestled, turning over and over, writhing, silent, a frantic struggle of his strength against mine.
It wasn’t much of a battle.
I had the strong dancer’s legs; he had the biceps, the greater weight and height . . . and he had much more determination than I to use something hot, swollen and demanding, so much it stole reasoning and sanity from him.
And I loved him. I wanted what he wanted—if he wanted it that much, right or wrong.
Somehow we ended up on that old mattress—that filthy, smelly, stained mattress that must have known lovers long before this night. And that is where he took me, and forced in that swollen, rigid male sex part of him that had to be satisfied. It drove into my tight and resisting flesh which tore and bled.
Now we had done what we both swore we’d never do.
Now we were doomed through all eternity, damned to roast forever, hung upside down and naked over the everlasting fires of hell. Sinners, just as the grandmother had forecasted so long ago.
Now I had all the answers.
Now there might be a baby. A baby to make us pay in life and not wait for hell, and everlasting fires reserved for such as us.
We drew apart and stared at each other, our faces numb and pale from shock, and barely could we speak as we drew on our clothes.
He didn’t have to say he was sorry . . . it was all over him . . . the way he quivered, the way his hands trembled and were so clumsy with his buttons.
* * *
Later, we went out on the roof.
Long strings of clouds blew across the face of the full moon, so it would duck and hide, then peek out again. And on the roof, on a night that was made for lovers, we cried in each other’s arms. He hadn’t meant to do it. And I had meant never to let him. The fear of the baby that might be the result of one single kiss on moustached lips rose high in my throat, and hesitated on my tongue. It was my worst fear. More than hell, or God’s wrath, I feared giving birth to a monstrous baby, deformed, a freak, an idiot. But how could I speak of this? Already he was suffering enough. However, his thoughts were more knowledgeable than mine.
“The odds are all against a baby,” he said fervently. “Just one time—there won’t be a conception. I swear there won’t be another time—no matter what! I’ll castrate myself before I’ll let it happen again!” Then he had pulled me tightly against him so I was crushed so hard it hurt my ribs. “Don’t hate me, Cathy, please don’t hate me. I didn’t mean to rape you, I swear to God. There’s been many a time when I’ve been tempted, and I was able to turn it off. I’d leave the room, go into the bathroom, or into the attic. I’d bury my nose in a book until I felt normal again.”
Tight as I could, I wrapped my arms around him. “I don’t hate you, Chris,” I whispered, pressing my head tightly against his chest. “You didn’t rape me. I could have stopped you if I’d really wanted to. All I had to do was bring my knee up hard, where you told me to. It was my fault, too.” Oh yes, my fault too. I should have known better than to kiss Momma’s handsome young husband. I shouldn’t have worn skimpy little see-through garments around a brother who had all a man’s strong physical needs, and a brother who was always so frustrated by everything, and everyone. I had played upon his needs, testing my femininity, having my own burning yearnings for fulfillment.
It was a peculiar kind of night, as if fate had planned this night, long ago, and this night was our destiny, right or wrong. It was darkness lit up by the moon so full and bright, and the stars seemed to flash Morse Code beams to one another . . . fate accomplished . . . .
The wind in the leaves rustled and made an eerie, melancholy music that was tuneless, yet music just the same. How could anything as human and loving be ugly on such a beautiful night as this one?
Perhaps we stayed too long on the roof.
The slate was cold, hard, rough. It was early September. Already the leaves were beginning to fall, so soon to be touched by the winter’s frosty hand. Hot as hell in the attic. On the roof, it was beginning to turn very, very cold.
Closer Chris and I huddled, clinging to each other for safety and warmth. Youthful, sinful lovers of the worst kind. We had dropped ten miles in our own esteem, done in by yearnings stretched too thin by constant closeness. Just once too often we’d tempted fate, and our own sensuous natures . . . and I hadn’t even known at the time that I was sensuous, much less that he was. I’d thought it was only beautiful music that made my heart ache and my loins crave; I hadn’t known it was something far more tangible.
Like one heart shared between us, we drummed out a terrible tune of self-punishment for what we’d done.
A colder breeze lifted a dead leaf to the roof and sent it scuttling merrily on its way to catch in my hair. It crackled dry and brittle when Chris plucked it out and held it, just staring down at a dead maple leaf as if his very life depended on reading its secret for knowing how to blow in the wind. No arms, no legs, no wings . . . but it could fly when dead.
“Cathy,” he began in a crackling, dry voice, “we now have exactly three hundred and ninety-six dollars and forty-four cents. Won’t be long before the snow starts to fall. And we don’t own winter coats or boots that fit, and the twins are already so weakened that they will catch cold easily, and might pass from colds into pneumonia. I wake up in the night, worrying about them, and I’ve seen you lying on your bed staring at Carrie, so you must be worrying, too. I doubt very much we’ll be finding money lying about in Momma’s suite of rooms now. They suspect a maid is stealing from them—or they did. Maybe now Momma suspects that it could be you . . . I don’t know . . . I hope not.
“Regardless of what either of them thinks, the next time I play thief, I’m forced to steal her jewelry. I’ll make a grand sweep, take it all—and then we’ll run. We’ll take the twins to a doctor as soon as we’re far enough away, and we’ll have enough money to pay their bills.”
Take the jewelry—what I’d begged him to do all along! Finally he would do it, agree to steal the hard-won prizes Momma had struggled so to gain, and in the process, she was going to lose us. But would she care—would she?
/> That old owl that might be the same one that greeted us at the train depot on the first night we came, hooted in the far distance, sounding ghostly. While we watched, thin, slow, gray mists began to rise up from the damp ground, chilled by the night’s sudden cold. The thick and billowing fog swelling up to the roof . . . undulating curling waves, rolling as a misty sea to shroud over us.
And all we could see in the murky-gray and cold, damp clouds was that single great eye of God—shining up there in the moon.
* * *
I awakened before dawn. I stared over to where Cory and Chris slept. Even as my sleepy eyes opened, and my head turned, I sensed that Chris was awake, too, and had been for some time. He was already looking at me, and shiny, glistening tears sparkled the blue of his eyes and smeared the whites. The tears that rolled to fall on his pillow, I named as they fell: shame, guilt, blame.
“I love you, Christopher Doll. You don’t have to cry. For I can forget, if you can forget, and there’s nothing to forgive.”
He nodded and said nothing. But I knew him well, right down to his bone marrow. I knew his thoughts, his feelings, and all the ways to wound his ego fatally. I knew that through me he had struck back at the one woman who had betrayed him in trust, faith and love. All I had to do was look in my hand mirror with the big C. L. F. on the back, and I could see my own mother’s face, as she must have looked at my age.
And so it had come to pass, just as the grandmother predicted. Devil’s issue. Created by evil seed sown in the wrong soil, shooting up new plants to repeat the sins of the fathers.
And the mothers.
Color All Days Blue, But Save One for Black
We were leaving. Any day. As soon as Momma gave the word that she’d be out for the evening, she’d also be out of all her valuable, transportable possessions. We would not go back to Gladstone. There the winter came and lasted until May. We would go to Sarasota, where the circus people lived. They were known for having and showing kindness to those from strange backgrounds. Since Chris and I’d grown accustomed to high places, the roof, the many ropes attached to the rafter beams, I blithely said to Chris, “We’ll be trapeze performers.” He grinned, thinking it a ridiculous idea—at first—next calling it inspired.
“Golly, Cathy, you’ll look great in spangled pink tights.” He began to sing: “She flies through the air, with the greatest of ease, the daring young beauty on the flying trapeze . . . .”
Cory jerked up his blond head. Blue eyes wide with fear. “No!”
Said Carrie, his more proficient voice, “We don’t like your plans. We don’t want you to fall.”
“We’ll never fall,” said Chris, “because Cathy and I are an unbeatable team.” I stared over at him, recalling the night in the schoolroom, and on the roof afterward when he’d whispered, “I’m never going to love anyone but you, Cathy. I know it . . . I’ve got that kind of feeling . . . just us, always.”
Casually I’d laughed. “Don’t be silly, you know you don’t really love me in that way. And you don’t have to feel guilty, or ashamed. It was my fault, too. And we can pretend it never happened, and make sure it never happens again.”
“But Cathy . . .”
“If there were others for you and me, never, never would we feel this way for each other.”
“But I want to feel this way about you, and it’s too late for me to love or trust anyone else.”
How old I felt, looking at Chris, at the twins, making plans for all of us, speaking so confidently of how we would make our way. A consolation token for the twins, to give them peace, when I knew we would be forced to do anything, and everything to earn a living.
September had passed on into October. Soon the snow would fly.
“Tonight,” said Chris after Momma took off, saying a hasty good-bye, not pausing in the doorway to look back at us. Now she could hardly bear to look at us. We put one pillowcase inside another, to make it strong. In that sack Chris would dump all Momma’s precious jewelry. Already I had our two bags packed and hidden in the attic, where Momma never went now.
As the day wore on toward evening, Cory began to vomit, over and over again. In the medicine cabinet we had non-prescription drugs for abdominal upsets.
Nothing we used would stop the terrible retching that left him pale, trembling, crying. Then his arms encircled my neck and he whispered, “Momma, I don’t feel so good.”
“What can I do to make you feel better, Cory?” I asked, feeling so young and inexperienced.
“Mickey,” he whispered weakly. “I want Mickey to sleep with me.”
“But you might roll over on him and then he’d be dead. You wouldn’t want him to die, would you?”
“No,” he said, looking stricken at the thought, and then that terrible gagging began again, and in my arms he grew so cold. His hair was pasted to his sweaty brow. His blue eyes stared vacantly into my face as over and over again he called for his mother, “Momma, Momma, my bones hurt.”
“It’s all right,” I soothed, picking him up and carrying him back to his bed, where I could change his soiled pajamas. How could he throw up again when there couldn’t be anything left? “Chris is going to help you, don’t worry.” I lay beside him and held his weak and quivering body in my arms.
Chris was at his desk poring over medical reference books, using Cory’s symptoms to name the mysterious illness that struck each one of us from time to time. He was almost eighteen now, but far from being a doctor.
“Don’t go and leave me and Carrie behind,” Cory pleaded. He cried out later, and louder, “Chris, don’t go! Stay here!”
What did he mean? Didn’t he want us to run away? Or did he mean never sneak into Momma’s suite of rooms again to steal? Why was it Chris and I believed the twins seldom paid attention to what we did? Surely he and Carrie knew we’d never go away and leave them behind—we’d die before we did that.
A little shadowy thing wearing all white drifted over to the bed, and stood with big watery blue eyes staring and staring at her twin brother. She was barely three feet high. She was old, and she was young, she was a tender little plant brought up in a dark hothouse, stunted and withered.
“May I”—she began very properly (as we had tried to teach her, and she had consistently refused to use the grammar we tried to teach, but on this night of nights, she did the best she could)—“sleep with Cory? We won’t do anything bad, or evil, or unholy. I just want to be close to him.”
Let the grandmother come and do her worst! We put Carrie to bed with Cory, and then Chris and I perched on opposite sides of the big bed and watched, full of anxiety, as Cory tossed about restlessly, and gasped for breath, and cried out in his delirium. He wanted the mouse, he wanted his mother, his father, he wanted Chris, and he wanted me. Tears were pooling down on the collar of my nightgown, and I looked to see Chris with tears on his cheeks. “Carrie, Carrie . . . where is Carrie?” he asked repeatedly, long after she’d gone to sleep. Their wan faces were only inches apart, and he was looking directly at her, and still he didn’t see her. When I took the time to look from him to Carrie, she seemed but a bit better off.
Punishment, I thought. God was punishing us, Chris and me, for what we’d done. The grandmother had warned us . . . every day she’d warned us up until the day we were whipped.
All through the night Chris read one medical book after another while I got up from the twins’ bed and paced the room.
Finally Chris raised his red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. “Food poisoning—the milk. It must have been sour.”
“It didn’t taste sour, or smell sour,” I answered in a mumble. I was always careful to sniff and taste everything first before I’d give it to the twins or Chris. For some reason, I thought my tastebuds keener than Chris’s, who liked everything, and would eat anything, even rancid butter.
“The hamburger, then. I thought it had a funny taste.”
“It tasted all right to me.” And it must have tasted fine to him, as well, for he’d eaten half of Ca
rrie’s hamburger on a bun, and all of Cory’s. Cory hadn’t wanted anything to eat all day.
“Cathy, I noticed you hardly ate anything yourself all day. You’re almost as thin as the twins. She does bring us enough food, such as it is. You don’t have to stint on yourself.”
Whenever I was nervous, or frustrated, or worried—and I was all three now—I’d begin the ballet exercises, and holding lightly to the dresser that acted as a barre, I began to warm up by doing pliés.
“Do you have to do that, Cathy? You’re already skin and bones. And why didn’t you eat today—are you sick, too?”
“But Cory so loves the doughnuts, and that’s all I want to eat too. And he needs them more than I do.”
The night wore on. Chris returned to reading the medical books. I gave Cory water to drink—and right away he threw it up. I washed his face with cold water a dozen times, and changed his pajamas three times, and Carrie slept on and on and on.
Dawn.
The sun came up and we were still trying to figure out what made Cory ill, when the grandmother came in, bearing the picnic basket of food for today. Without a word she closed the door, locked it, put the key in her dress pocket, and advanced to the gaming table. From the basket she lifted the huge thermos of milk, the smaller thermos of soup, then the packets wrapped in foil, containing sandwiches, fried chicken, of bowls of potato salad or cole slaw—and, last of all, the packet of four powdered-sugar doughnuts. She turned to leave.
“Grandmother,” I said tentatively. She had not looked Cory’s way. Hadn’t seen.
“I have not spoken to you,” she said coldly. “Wait until I do.”
“I can’t wait,” said I, growing angry, rising up from my place on the side of Cory’s bed, and advancing. “Cory’s sick! He’s been throwing up all night, and all day yesterday. He needs a doctor, and his mother.”
She didn’t look at me, or at Cory. Out of the door she stalked, then clicked the lock behind her. No word of comfort. No word to say she’d tell our mother.
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 35
