ourselves?
The whisper of her menacing gray dresses, the
sound of her voice, the tread of her heavy feet, the
sight of her huge pale hands, soft and puffy, flashing
with diamond rings, and spotted brown with dying
pigment . . . oh, yes, just to see her was to loathe her. Then there was our mother, rushing to us often,
doing what she could to help the twins back to health.
Shadows were under her eyes, too, as she gave the
twins aspirins and water, and later on orange juice,
and hot chicken soup.
One morning Momma rushed in carrying a big
thermos of orange juice she had just squeezed. "It's
better than the frozen or canned kind," she explained,
"full of vitamins C and A, and that's good for colds."
Next she listed what she wanted Chris and me to do,
saying that Chris and I were to give orange juice often. We stored the thermos on the attic steps--as
good as any refrigerator in the wintertime.
One glance at the thermometer from Carrie's lips,
and a frenzied panic blew away all of Momma's cool.
"Oh, God!" she cried out in distress. "One hundred
three-point-six. I have to take them to a doctor, a
hospital!"
I was before the heavy dresser holding to it lightly
with one hand and exercising my legs, as I did each
day, now that the attic was too cold to limber up in. I
threw my grandmother a quick glance, trying to read
her reactions to this.
The grandmother had no patience for those who
lost control and made waves. "Don't be ridiculous,
Corrine. All children run high fevers when they are
sick. Doesn't mean a thing You should know that by
now. A cold is just a cold."
Chris jerked his head up from the book he was
pursuing. He believed the twins had the flu, though
how they had caught the virus he couldn't guess. The grandmother continued: "Doctors, what do
they know about curing a cold? We know just as
much. There are only three things to do: stay in bed,
drink lots of liquids, and take aspirins-- what else?
And aren't we doing all of those things?" She flashed me a mean look. "Stop swinging your legs, girl. You make me nervous." Again she directed her eyes, and her words, at our mother. "Now, my mother had a saying, colds take three days coming, three days
staying, and three days leaving."
"What if they have the flu?" asked Chris. The
grandmother turned her back and ignored his
question. She didn't like his face; he resembled our
father too much. "I hate it when people who should
know better question those who are older and far
wiser. Everyone knows the rule for colds: six days to
start and stay, and three days to leave. That's the way
it is--they'll recover."
As the grandmother predicted, the twins
recovered. Not in nine days. . . in nineteen days. Only
bed rest, aspirins, and fluids did the trick--no
perscriptions from a doctor to help them back to
health more quickly. By day the twins stayed in the
same bed; by night Carrie slept with me, and Cory
with his brother. I don't know why Chris and I didn't
come down with the same thing.
All night long we jumped up and down, to run for
water, for orange juice kept cold on the attic stairs.
They cried for cookies, for Momma, for something to
unstop their nostrils. They tossed and fretted, weak and uneasy, worried by bothersome things they couldn't express except by large fearful eyes that tore at my heart. They asked questions while they were sick that they didn't ask while they were well . . . and
wasn't that odd?
"Why do we stay upstairs all the time?" "Has downstairs gone away?"
"Did it go where the sun hides?"
"Don't Momma like us no more?"
"Anymore," I corrected.
"Why are the walls fuzzy?"
"Are they fuzzy?" I asked in return.
"Chris, he looks fuzzy, too."
"Chris is tired."
"Are you tired, Chris?"
"Kinda. I'd like for you both to go to sleep and
stop asking so many questions. And Cathy is tired,
too. We'd both like to go to sleep, and know the two
of you are sleeping soundly, too."
"We don't sound when we sleep."
Chris sighed, picked up Cory, and carried him
over to the rocker, and soon Carrie and I were seated
on his lap. There we rocked back and forth, back and
forth, telling stories at three o'clock in the morning.
We read stories on other nights till four in the morning. If they cried and wanted Momma, as they incessantly did, Chris and I acted as mother and father and did what we could to soothe them with soft lullabies. We rocked so much the floorboards started
to creak, and surely below someone could have heard. And all the while we heard the wind blowing
through the hills. It scraped the skeleton tree branches,
and squeaked the house, and whispered of death and
dying, and in the cracks and crevices it howled,
moaned, sobbed, and sought in all ways to make us
aware we weren't safe.
We read so much aloud, sang so much, both Chris
and I grew hoarse and half-sick ourselves from
fatigue. We prayed every night, down on our knees,
asking God to make our twins well again. "Please,
God, give them back to us the way they were." A day came when the coughing eased, and
sleepless eyelids drooped, and eventually closed in
peaceful sleep. The cold, bony hands of death had
reached for our little ones, and was reluctant to let go,
for so tortuously, slowly, the twins drifted back to
health. When they were "well" they were not the same
robust, lively pair. Cory, who had said little before,
now said even less. Carrie, who had adored the sound
of her own constant chatter, now became almost as truculent as Cory. And now that I had the quiet I so often longed for, I wanted back the bird-like chitchat that rattled on incessantly to dolls, trucks, trains, boats, pillows, plants, shoes, dresses, underpants,
toys, puzzles, and games.
I checked her tongue, and it seemed pale, and
white. Fearfully, I straightened to gaze down on two
small faces side by side on one pillow. Why had I
wanted them to grow up and act their proper ages?
This long illness had brought about instant age. It put
dark circles under their large blue eyes, and stole their
healthy color. The high temperatures and the
coughing had left them with a wise look, a sometimes
sly look of the old, the tired, the ones who just lay and
didn't care if the sun came up, or if it went down, and
stayed down. They scared me; their haunted faces
took me into dreams of death.
And all the while the wind kept blowing. Eventually they left their beds and walked about
slowly. Legs once so plump and rosy and able to hop,
jump, and skip were now as weak as thin straws. Now
they were inclined to only creep instead of fly, and
smile instead of laugh.
Wearily, I fell face down on my bed and thought
and thought and thought--what could Chris and I do
to restore their babyish charm?
There was nothing either he or
I could do, though
we would have given our health to restore theirs. "Vitamins!" proclaimed Momma when Chris and I
took pains to point out the unhealthy differences in
our twins. "Vitamins are exactly what they need, and
what you two need, as well-- from now on, each one
of you must take a daily vitamin capsule." Even as she
said this, her slim and elegant hand rose to fluff the
glory of her beautifully coiffed, shining hair. "Does fresh air and sunshine come in capsules?" I
asked, perching on a nearby bed, and glaring hard at a
mother who refused to see what was wrong. "When
each of us has swallowed a vitamin capsule a day, will
that give to us the radiant good health we had when
we lived normal lives, and spent most of our days
outside?"
Momma was wearing pink--she did look lovely
in pink. It put roses in her cheeks, and her hair glowed
with rosy warmth.
"Cathy," she said, tossing me a patronizing glance
while she moved to hide her hands, "why do you
incessantly persist in making everything so hard for
me? I do the best I can. Really I do. And, yes, if you
want the truth, in vitamins you can swallow the good health the outdoors bestows--that is exactly the
reason so many vitamins are made."
Her indifference put more pain in my heart. My
eyes flashed over to Chris, who had bowed his head
low, taking all this in, but saying nothing "How long
is our imprisonment going to last, Momma?" "A short while, Cathy, only a short while longer--
believe that."
"Another month?"
"Possibly."
"Could you manage, somehow, to sneak up here
and take the twins outside, say, for a ride in your car?
You could plan it so the servants wouldn't see. I think
it would make an immense amount of difference.
Chris and I don't have to go."
She spun around and glanced at my older brother
to see if he were in this plot with me, but surprise was
a dead giveaway on his face. "No! Of course not! I
can't take a risk tike that! Eight servants work in this
house, and though their quarters are quite cut off from
the main house, there is always someone looking out a
window, and they would hear me start up the car.
Being curious, they'd look to see which direction I
took."
My voice turned cold. "Then would you please see if you can manage to bring up fresh fruit, especially bananas. You know how the twins love
bananas, and they haven't had one since we came." "Tomorrow I'll bring bananas. Your grandfather
doesn't like them."
"What has he got to do with it?"
"It's the reason bananas are not purchased." "You drive back and forth to secretarial school
every weekday--stop yourself and buy the bananas--
and more peanuts, and raisins. And why can't they
have a box of popcorn once in a while? Certainly that
won't rot their teeth!"
Pleasantly she nodded, and verbally agreed. "And
what would you like for yourself?" she asked. "Freedom! I want to be let out. I'm tired of being
in a locked room. I want the twins out; I want Chris
out. I want you to rent a house, buy a house, steal a
house--but get us out of this house!"
"Cathy," she began to plead, "I'm doing the best I
can. Don't I bring you gifts every time I come through
the door? What is it you lack besides bananas? Name
it!"
"You promised we'd stay up here but a short
while--and it's been months."
She spread her hands in a supplicating gesture.
"Do you expect me to kill my father?"
Numbly I shook my head.
"You leave her alone!" Chris exploded the
moment the door closed behind his goddess. "She
does try to do the best she can by us! Stop picking on
her! It's a wonder she comes to see us at all, what with
you riding her back, with your everlasting questions,
like you don't trust her. How do you know how much
she suffers? Do you believe she's happy knowing her
four children are locked in one room, and left to play
in an attic?"
It was hard to tell about someone like our mother,
just what she was thinking, and what she was feeling.
Her expression was always calm, unruffled, though
she often appeared tired. If her clothes were new, and
expensive, and we seldom saw her wear the same
thing twice, she brought us many new and expensive
clothes, too. Not that it mattered what we wore.
Nobody saw us but the grandmother, and we could
have worn rags, which, indeed, might have put a smile
of pleasure on her face.
We didn't go up to the attic when it rained, or
when it snowed. Even on clear days, there was that
wind to snarl fiercely as it blew, screaming and
tearing through the cracks of the old house.
One night Cory woke up and called to me, "Make
the wind go away, Cathy."
I left my bed and Carrie, who was fast asleep on
her side, crawled under the covers beside Cory, and
tightly I held him in my arms. Poor little thin body,
wanting to be loved so much by his real mother . . .
and he had only me. He felt too small, so fragile, as if
that rampaging wind could blow him away. I lowered
my face into his clean, sweet-smelling curly blond
hair and kissed him there, as I had when he was a
baby, and I had replaced my dolls with living babies.
"I can't make the wind go away, Cory. Only God can
do that."
"Then tell God I don't like the wind," he said
sleepily. "Tell God the wind wants to come in and get
me."
I gathered him closer, held him tighter . . . never
going to let the wind take Cory away, never! But I
knew what he meant "Tell me a story, Cathy, so I can
forget the wind."
There was a favorite story I had concocted to
please Cory, all about a fantasy world where little
children lived in a small cozy home, with a mother
and father who were much, much bigger, and
powerful enough to scare away frightening things. A family of six, with a garden out in back, where giant trees held swings, and where real flowers grew--the kind that knew how to die in the fall, and how to come up again in the spring. There was a pet dog named Clover, and a cat named Calico, and a yellow bird sang in a golden cage, all day long, and everybody loved everybody, and nobody was ever whipped, spanked, yelled at, nor were any of the doors locked,
nor the draperies closed.
"Sing me a song, Cathy. I like it when you sing
me to sleep."
I held him snugly in my arms and began to sing
lyrics I had written myself to music I had heard Cory
hum over and over again . . . his own mind-music. It
was a song meant to take away from his fear of the
wind, and perhaps take from me my fears too. It was
my very first attempt to rhyme.
I hear the wind when it sweeps down from the
hill, It speaks to me, when the night is still,
It whispers in my ear,
The words I never hear,
Even when he's near.
&n
bsp; I feel the breeze when it blows in from the sea, It
lifts my hair, it caresses me,
It never takes my hand,
To show it understands,
It never touches me, ten-der-ly.
Someday I know I'm gonna climb this hill, I'll find
another day,
Some other voice to say the words I've gotta hear,
If I'm to live, another year. . . .
And my little one was asleep in my arms,
breathing evenly, feeling safe. Beyond his head Chris
lay with his eyes wide open, fixed upward on the
ceiling. When my song was over, he turned his head
and met my eyes. His fifteenth birthday had come and
gone, with a bakery cake, and ice cream to mark the
occasion as special. Gifts--they came every day,
almost. Now he had a polaroid camera, a new and
better watch. Great. Wonderful. How could he be so
easily pleased?
Didn't he see our mother wasn't the same
anymore? Didn't he notice she no longer came every
day? Was he so gullible he believed everything she
said, every excuse she made?
Christmas Eve. We had been five months at
Foxworth Hall. Not once had we been down into the
lower sections of this enormous house, much less to
the outside. We kept to the rules: we said grace before
every meal; we knelt and said prayers beside our beds every night; we were modest in the bathroom; we kept our thoughts clean, pure, innocent . . . and yet, it seemed to me, day by day our meals grew poorer and
poorer in quality.
I convinced myself it didn't really matter if we
missed out on one Christmas shopping spree. There
would be other Christmases when we were rich, rich,
rich, when we could go into a store and buy anything
we wanted. How beautiful we'd be in our magnificent
clothes, with our stylish manners, and soft, eloquent
voices that told the world we were somebodies . . .
somebodies who were special . . . loved, wanted,
needed somebodies.
Of course Chris and I knew there wasn't a real
Santa Claus. But we very much wanted the twins to
believe in Santa Claus, and not miss out on all that
glorious enchantment of a fat jolly man who whizzed
about the world to deliver to all children exactly what
they wanted--even when they didn't know what they
wanted until they had it.
What would childhood be like without believing
in Santa Claus? Not the kind of childhood I wanted
for our twins!
Dollenganger 01 Flowers In the Attic Page 17
