"Well, now," she said brightly, "if you're going to make the attic pretty, first you must make it clean. And I'll do what I can to help."
Momma sneaked up mops, pails, brooms, scrub brushes, and boxes of soap powder. She went down on her knees beside us to scrub in the attic corners, and around the edges, and under the large pieces of furniture. I marveled that our mother knew how to scrub and clean. When we lived in Gladstone, we had a twice weekly maid who came in to do all the hard, dreary things that would redden Momma's hands and break her fingernails. And here she was, on her hands and knees, wearing faded old blue jeans, an old shirt, her hair pinned up in a bun. I really admired her. It was hard, hot, demeaning work--and she never once complained, only laughed and chatted and acted as if this was great fun.
In a week of hard work, we had most of the attic as clean as possible. Then she brought us insect repellent to kill what bugs had hidden from us while we cleaned. We swept up dead spiders and other crawlers by the bucketfuls. We threw them out of a back window, where they rolled to a lower section of the roof. Later the rain came to wash them down into the gutters. Then the birds found them and had a grisly feast while we four sat on a window ledge and watched. We never saw a rat or a mouse-- but we saw droppings. We presumed they were waiting for all the hustle and bustle to calm down before they ventured out of their dark and secret places.
Now that the attic was clean, Momma brought us green plants, plus a spiky amaryllis that was supposed to bloom at Christmastime. I frowned when she said this--for we wouldn't be here then. "We'll take it with us," said Momma, reaching out to stroke my cheek. "We'll take all of our plants when we go, so don't frown and look unhappy. We wouldn't want to leave anything living, and loving of sunshine, in this attic."
We put our plants in the attic schoolroom for that room had windows facing east. Happy and gay, we all tripped down the narrow stairs, and Momma washed up in our bathroom, then fell exhausted into her special chair. The twins climbed up on her lap as I set the table for lunch. That was a good day, for she stayed until dinnertime, then sighed and said she'd have to go. Her father made such demands on her, wanting to know where she went every Saturday, and why she stayed so long.
"Can you sneak back to see us before bedtime?" Chris asked.
"I'm going to the movies tonight," she said evenly, "but before I leave, I'll slip in to see you again. I've got some of those little boxes of raisins that you can snack on between meals. I forgot to bring them with me."
The twins were crazy about raisins, and I was happy for them. "Are you going to the movies alone?" I asked.
"No. There's a girl I grew up with--she used to be my best friend, and she's married now. I'm going to the movies with them. She lives only a few houses from here." She got up and went to the windows, and when Chris had the lights turned out, she parted the draperies and pointed in the direction of the house where her best friend lived. "Elena has two unmarried brothers, one is studying to be a lawyer. He goes to Harvard Law School, and the other is a tennis pro."
"Momma!" I cried. "Are you dating one of those brothers?"
She laughed and let the draperies fall. "Turn on the lights, Chris. No, Cathy, I am not dating anyone. To tell you the truth, I'd rather go right to bed, I'm that tired. I really don't care for musicals, anyway. I'd rather stay with my children, but Elena keeps insisting I get out, and when I keep refusing, she keeps asking why. I don't want people to wonder why I stay home every weekend; that's why occasionally I do have to go sailing, or to the movies."
To make the attic even pretty seemed highly improbable--to make it a beautiful garden soared over the rainbow! It was going to take an enormous amount of hard work and creative ability, but that darned brother of mine was convinced we could do it in no time at all. He soon had our mother so sold on the idea that every day she went to secretarial school, she came back to us bearing coloring books from which we could cut out pre-drawn flowers. She brought us watercolor sets, many brushes, boxes of crayons, huge amounts of colored craft paper, fat pots of white paste, and four pairs of blunt-nosed scissors.
"Teach the twins to color and cut out flowers," she instructed, "and let them participate in all you undertake. I nominate you their kindergarten teachers."
She came from that city an hour's train ride away, glowing with radiant good health, her skin fresh and rosy from outside air, her clothes so beautiful they took my breath away. She had shoes of every color, and bit by bit she was accumulating new pieces of jewelry which she called "junk" jewelry, but somehow those rhinestones looked more like diamonds to me from the way they sparkled. She fell into "her" chair, exhausted, but happy, and told her of her day. "Oh, how I wish those typewriters had letters on the keys. I can't seem to remember but one row. I have to look up at the wall chart everytime and that slows me down, and I'm not very good at
remembering the bottom row, either. But I do know where all the vowels are. You use those keys more than any oth ers, you know. So far my typing speed is twenty words per minute, and that's not too good. Plus I make about four mistakes in those twenty words. And those shorthand squiggles . . ." She sighed, as if they, too, had her baffled. "Well, I guess I'll learn eventually; after all, other women do, and if they can, then I can."
"Do you like your teachers, Momma?" asked Chris.
She giggled girlishly before she answered. "First, let me tell you about my typing teacher. Her name is Mrs. Helena Brady. She's shaped very much like your grandmother--huge. Only her bosom is much larger! Really, hers is the most remarkable bosom I've ever seen! And her bra straps keep slipping off her shoulders, and if it isn't her bra straps, then it's her slip straps, and she's always reaching into the neckline of her dress to haul them back into place, and the men in the class always snicker."
"Do men take typing classes?" asked I, very surprised.
"Yes, there are a few young men there. Some are journalists, writers, or have some good reason for wanting to know how to type. And Mrs. Brady is divorced, and has a keen eye for one of those young men. She flirts with him, while he tries to ignore her. She's about ten years older than he is, at least, and he keeps looking at me. Now don't get any ideas, Cathy. He's much too short for me. I couldn't marry a man who couldn't pick me up and carry me over the threshold. I could pick him up--he's only five feet two."
We all had a good laugh, for Daddy had been a full foot taller, and he had easily picked our mother up. We'd seen him do that many times--especially on those Friday nights when he came home, and they'd look at each other so funny.
"Momma, you're not thinking of getting married again, are you?" Chris asked in the tightest of voices. Swiftly her arms went around him. "No darling, of course not. I loved your father dearly. It would take a very special man to fill his shoes, and so far I haven't met one who measures up to even his outgrown socks."
To play kindergarten teachers was great fun, or could have been, if our student body had been the least bit willing But as soon as we had breakfast finished, our dishes washed and put away, our food stashed in the coldest place, and the hour of ten had come and gone with servants from the second floor, Chris and I each dragged a wailing twin up into the attic schoolroom. There we could sit at the student desks and make a grand mess cutting flower forms from the colored craft paper, using the crayons to glorify the colors with stripes and polka-dots. Chris and I made the best flowers--what the twins made looked like colored blobs.
"Modern art," Chris named the flowers they made.
On the dull and gray slat walls we pasted up our goliath flowers. Chris ascended the old ladder with the missing rungs again so he could dangle down long strings tied to the attic rafters, and to these strings we fastened colorful blossoms that constantly moved in the attic drafts.
Our mother came up to view our efforts, and she gave us all a pleased smile. "Yes, you're doing marvelously well. You are making it pretty up here." And thoughtfully she moved closer to the daisies, as if considering something else she could bring us. The next d
ay she came with a huge flat box containing colored glass beads and sequins, so we could add sparkle and glamor to our garden. Oh, we did slave over making those flowers, for whatever occupation we pursued, we pursued it with diligent, fervid zeal. The twins caught some of our enthusiasm, and they stopped howling and fighting and biting when we mentioned the word attic. For after all, the attic was slowly, but surely, turning into a cheerful garden. And the more it changed, the more deter- mined we became to cover over every last wall in that endless attic!
Each day, of course, when Momma was home from that secretarial school, she had to view the day's accomplishments. "Momma," gushed Carrie in her breathless bird twitter, "that's all we do all day, make flowers, and sometimes Cathy, she don't want us to go downstairs and eat lunch!"
"Cathy, you mustn't become so preoccupied with decorating the attic that you forget to eat your meals."
"But, Momma, we're doing it for them, so they won't be so scared up there."
She laughed and hugged me. "My, you are the persistent one, you and your older brother both. You must have inherited that from your father, certainly not from me. I give up so easily."
"Momma!" I cried, made uneasy. "Are you still going to school? You are getting better at typing, aren't you?"
"Yes, of course I am." She smiled again, and then settled back in her chair, holding up her hand and seeming to admire the bracelet she wore. I started to ask why she needed so much jewelry to attend secretarial school, but she spoke instead. "What you need to make now is animals for your garden."
"But, Momma, if roses are impossible to make, how can we even draw animals?"
She gave me a wry little smile as she traced a cool finger over my nose "Oh, Cathy, what a doubting Thomas you are. You question everything, doubt everything, when you should know by now, you can do anything you want to, if you want to badly enough. And I'm going to tell you a secret I've known about for some time--in this world, where everything is complicated, there is also a book to teach you how simple everything can be."
That I was to find out.
Momma brought us art instruction books by the dozens. The first of these books taught us to reduce all complicated designs into basic spheres, cylinders, cones, rectangles and cubes. A chair was just a cube-- I hadn't known that before. A Christmas tree was just an inverted ice-cream cone--I hadn't known that before, either. People were just combinations of all those basic forms: spheres for heads; arms, necks, legs, torso, upper and lower, were only rectangular cubes or cylinders, and triangles made for feet. And believe it or not, using this basic method, with just a few simple additions, we soon had rabbits, squirrels, birds, and other small friendly creatures--all made by our very own hands.
True, they were peculiar looking. I thought their oddities made them all the sweeter. Chris colored all his animals realistically. I decorated mine with polkadots, gingham checks, plaids, and put lace-edged pockets on the laying hens. Because our mother had shopped in a sewing notions store, we had lace, cords of all colors, buttons, sequins, felt, pebbles and other decorative materials. The possibilities were endless. When she put that box into my hands, I know my eyes must have shown all the love I felt for her then. For this did prove she thought of us when she was out in the world. She wasn't just thinking of new clothes for herself, and new jewelry and cosmetics. She was trying to make our confined lives as pleasant as possible.
One rainy afternoon Cory came running to me with an orange paper snail he'd laborously worked on the entire morning, and half of the afternoon. He'd eaten but a little of his favorite lunch, peanut-butterand-jelly sandwiches, he was that anxious to get back to his "work" and put on the "things that stick out of the head."
Proudly, he stood back, small legs spread wide, as he watched each flicker of expression on my face. What he'd made resembled nothing more than a lopsided beachball with trembling feelers.
"Do you think it's a good snail?" he asked, frowning up and looking worried when I couldn't find words to say.
"Yes," I said quickly, "it's a wonderful, beautiful snail" "You don't think it looks like an orange?"
"No, of course not--oranges don't have swirls, like this snail does--or crooked feelers."
Chris stepped closer to view the pitiful creature I held in my hands. "You don't call those things feelers," he corrected. "A snail is a member of the mollusc family, which have soft bodies without any backbones--and those little things are called antennae, which are connected to its brain; it has tubular intestines that end with its mouth, and it moves by a gear-edged foot."
"Christopher," I said coolly, "when Cory and I want to know about a snail's tubular intestines, we'll send you a telegram, and please go sit on a tack and wait for it."
"Do you want to be ignorant all your life?"
"Yes!" I flared back, "When it comes to snails, I prefer knowing nothing!"
Cory tagged behind me as we went to watch Carrie pasting pieces of purple paper together. Her working method was slap- dash, unlike Cory's careful plodding. Carrie used her pair of scissors to ruthlessly stab a hole into her purple. . . thing. Behind the hole she pasted a bit of red paper. When she had this . . . thing . . . put together, she named it a worm. It undulated like a giant boa constrictor, flashing a single mean red eye with black spider-leg lashes. "Its name is Charlie," she said, handing over her four feet of "worm" to me. (When things came to us without a name of their own, we made their names begin with a C to make them one of us.)
On the attic walls, in our beautiful garden of paper flowers, we pasted up the epileptic snail beside the fierce and menacing worm. Oh, they did make a pair. Chris sat down and lettered a big sign in red: ALL ANIMALS BEWARE OF EARTH-WORM!!!
I lettered my own sign, feeling Cory's small snail was the one in jeopardy, IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE? (Cory named this snail Cindy Lou.)
Momma viewed this day's accomplishments with laughter, all smiles, because we were having fun. "Yes, of course there is a doctor in the house," she said, and leaned to kiss Chris's cheek. "This son of mine has always known what to do for a sick animal. And Cory, I adore your snail--she looks . . . so .. . so sensitive."
"Do you like my Charlie?" asked Carrie anxiously. "I made him good. I used all the purple to make him big. Now we don't have no more purple."
"It's a beautiful worm, really a gorgeous worm," said Momma, taking the twins onto her lap and giving them the hugs and kisses she sometimes forgot. "I especially like the black lashes you put around that red eye--very effective."
It was a cozy, homey scene, the three of them in her chair, with Chris perched on the arm, his face close to his mother's. Then I had to go and spoil it all, as was my hateful way.
"How many words can you type per minute now, Momma?"
"I'm getting better."
"How much better?"
"I'm doing the best I can, really, Cathy--I told you the keyboard doesn't have any letters."
"What about shorthand--how fast can you take dictation?" "I'm trying. You've got to have patience. You don't learn things like that overnight."
Patience. I colored patience gray, hung over with black clouds. I colored hope yellow, just like that sun we could see for a few short morning hours. Too soon the sun rose high in the sky and disappeared from view, leaving us bereft, and staring at blue.
When you grow up, and have a million adult things to do, you forget how long a day can be for a child. It seemed we lived through four years in the course of seven weeks. Then came another dreaded Friday when we had to get up at dawn and scurry around like mad to rid the bedroom, and the bathroom, of all evidence that we existed. I stripped off the sheets from the bed and rolled them into a ball along with the pillowcases and blankets, and I put the bedspreads directly over the mattress covers--the way the grandmother had ordered me to do. The night before, Chris had taken apart the train tracks. Like crazy we worked to make the room neat, spotless, plus the bathroom, and then the grandmother came in with the picnic basket and ordered us to take it into the a
ttic, and we could eat breakfast there. I had most carefully wiped away all our fingerprints, and the mahogany furniture shone. She scowled heavily when she saw this, and darn if she didn't use dust from a vacuum cleaner bag to make all the furniture tops dull again.
At seven we were in the attic schoolroom, eating our cold cereal with raisins and milk. Down below we could faintly hear the maids moving around in our room. On tippy-toes we moved to the stairwell, and huddled there on the top step listening to what went on below, though we were scared every minute of being discovered.
Hearing the maids move about, laughing and chatting, while the grandmother hovered near the closet door directing them to clean the mirrors, use the lemon wax, air the mattresses--it all gave me the queerest feeling. Why didn't those maids notice something different? Didn't we leave any odor behind to let them know Cory often wet his bed? It was as if we really didn't exist, and weren't alive, and the only scents we had were imaginary. We wrapped our arms about each other and held onto each other tightly, tightly.
The maids didn't enter the closet; they didn't open the tall, narrow door. They didn't see us, or hear us, nor did they seem to think it odd the grandmother never left the room for a second while they were in there scrubbing the tub, cleaning the toilet bowl, scrubbing the tile floor.
That Friday did something strange to all of us. I believe we shriveled in our own estimations of ourselves, for afterwards we couldn't find words to say. We didn't enjoy our games, or our books, and so silently we cut out tulips and daisies and waited for Momma to come and bring hope with her again.
Still, we were young, and hope has strong roots in the young, right down to their toes, and when we entered the attic and saw our growing garden, we could laugh, and pretend. After all, we were making our mark in the world. We were making something beautiful out of what had been drab and ugly.
Now the twins took off like butterflies, fluttering through the mobile flowers. We pushed them high on the swings and created windstorms to shake the flowers madly. We hid behind cardboard trees no taller than Chris, and sat on mushrooms made of papier-mache, with colorful foam cushions on top, which were, honestly, better than the real thing-- unless you had an appetite for eating mushrooms.
Dollenganger 01 Flowers In the Attic Page 13
