Cross of Ivy

by Roxi Bahar Hewertson

  “It’s time, Abby. They must go now, or they’ll miss their train. We’ll keep in touch, I promise,” Mary said. Everyone but Jack was there, crying for their own pain and for the little ones who were hurting the most. Abby felt her life was over.

  Emmy was her best friend, her only real friend. Who would she tell her secrets to? Who else would know what she was going to say before she said it? Who would understand how to be a fine lady?

  Trouble in school started immediately and grew worse each week. Abby stared out the windows, fell asleep in class, fought with the other children on the playground, and refused to answer questions from the nuns.

  Sister Pauline was highly intolerant of this behavior and called Mary at home to report Abby’s unsatisfactory attitude. Mary explained the problem with Emmy to Sister Pauline.

  “Well, life goes on, Mrs. Mitchell,” Sister Pauline said in a clipped staccato. “She simply must stop feeling sorry for herself and concentrate on her studies. We can’t have disruptive children at the school.”

  Mary put down the phone. That night, Mary let Abby talk to Emmy for more than twenty minutes. Jack walked in at the end of the conversation, his rage immediate.

  “You spoil that kid; all of ya do. Well, I won’t have it, ya hear me? She’s a brat in school, and you go and let her make a phone call that will prob’ly cost me two bucks. Do you know how much I can buy with two bucks?”

  “About a week’s worth of beer, I suspect,” Mary said sourly and turned away from him.

  With a sudden movement, Jack rushed at her, raising his arm and forcing Mary against the basement door. She cringed. Jack’s enormous hands and powerful arms could have easily snapped her neck. Abby was watching from the stairs, her hand over her mouth, her eyes huge, trying not to scream.

  Jack shook with rage, veins throbbed in his neck, his face crimson. “Next time you say somethin’ like that to me, woman, it’ll be the last time. I don’t need nobody naggin’ me about nothin’. Ya hear me?”

  Mary said nothing, but her face was as pale as the faded gray dress she wore. He turned abruptly away from her, caught Abby in the corner of his eye, and threw her a cold, hateful look as he stormed out of the house. The screen door slammed so hard it fell off its rusty hinges.

  Mary stood very still. Only her eyes moved and her cheek twitched. She looked up to see Abby, glued to the stairs, ashen and white with fear. Mary met her on the fourth step.

  “It’s okay, Abby. He’s just upset. He’ll get over it; you’ll see.” She put her arm around Abby’s shoulders.

  “But he was going to hit you, Mama,” she said as her eyes jerked toward the door.

  “But he didn’t. The important thing is you got to talk to Emmy, right? And you promised me that you would try really hard to do better in school if we called. Do you remember that promise, Abby?” Mary’s voice trembled ever so slightly.

  “Yes, Mama. Thank you for letting me call Emmy. I’m sorry he almost hurt you, and it was because of me. I’ll never make him mad again Mama, I promise,” Abby’s voice cracked as she spoke.

  “It’s not your fault, Abby; really it’s not.” Mary took her daughter’s hand and climbed the stairs. “Let’s just get you to bed now. It’ll be all right.”

  But Abby knew it had been her fault, and that knowledge frightened her more than anything had before.

  After Abby was tucked in, Mary walked to her own room at the opposite end of the long dark hallway. She passed by the hideous wallpaper with its faded red flowers and black stripes. Her husband refused to allow any changes except to Abby’s room, and he only agreed to that because Mary had refused to move in until it was done. Now she wondered how she could have so misjudged Jack. How had she fooled herself into believing that marrying him was better for her and Abby than being a widow?

  She cringed at the sight of Jack’s empty bedroom and turned to hers. His intrusions were irregular, brief and repulsive. Mary unconsciously recoiled whenever he grabbed at her. He was crude and clumsy, and he smelled liked the inside of a filthy sock soaked in beer. His unkempt fingernails were always black with grease, and his breath was rancid. Mary had to turn her head away from him to keep from gagging.

  She always wept silently, feeling violated and unclean after he unceremoniously peeled his sweaty body off hers. He’d stumble across the hall to his dim and dreary cave, never once noticing her lack of joy or the precautions she took to prevent having his child. When he’d gotten what he came for, he’d leave her there, shivering in the shadows.

  The next morning, Mary found Jack’s hung over body on the couch with a spilled beer bottle next to his limp and dangling arm. He never could make it up the stairs after a night of marathon drinking. She hated cleaning up after him, but was thankful he’d left her alone. Mary made fresh coffee, cleaned up the mess, and waited for him to wake up. She waited. And waited. Finally, she shook his shoulder.

  “Jack, it’s six-thirty. You have to be to work in an hour.” He opened one eye half way and said, “I ain’t goin’.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I got laid off, that’s what.” Jack had both eyes open now and had moved his bulk to a leaning position.

  “What happened?” Mary’s face had gone pallid.

  “Shit, I dunno. One day I’m there; the next, I get called in and the foreman says there’s no more work for me, and all’s they gimme is two week’s pay. After all I done for them bastards, that’s the thanks I get.”

  “Where’s the money, Jack? We’re going to need every penny until you find work again.”

  “Christ, now you care about money! Well, I had to celebrate leaving those stinkin’ docks with my pals. Anyhow, it’s my money, and I got some left.”

  He sat up and held his head. He’d already lit a cigarette, his third pack of Pall Mall’s in the last twenty-four hours. He coughed in her face. It occurred to Mary that he was decaying in front of her.

  Mary had no choice. She had to work full-time. The only shift open was evenings, six days a week. Her daughter would have to come home to Jack after school and fend for herself as best she could. It wouldn’t be long, Mary told herself, just until Jack found work.

  As the weeks dragged by, Mary prayed that Jack would sober up and get a real job. She worried about Abby, and she worried about the money. Her wages were less than half of Jack’s old job, and the money he earned doing odd jobs barely covered what he drank. Still, she refused to ask her parents for any more help or to invade her hidden mad money, saved coin by coin all year. Whatever else happened, she told herself Abby’s Christmas would not be spoiled. Every night, as sure as she was that she would survive, that Abby would grow up strong and right, she quietly cried herself to sleep.

  CHAPTER 2

  At first, Jack ignored Abby. By the time she arrived home from school, he might have been on a job or might not, but he was always at some stage of getting drunk. It did not take long for him to begin to focus on her. He blamed her for everything that was wrong in his life. It was easy. She was there, and too young to fight him.

  He began to bully her, and if she’d protest, one of his powerful arms would slam her to the floor. If she screamed, he slapped her across the face. Sometimes, she’d come home, thinking he was out. He’d lay in wait, grabbing her as she came around a corner. He always told her that he wouldn’t have to hit her if she weren’t such a bad kid.

  Abby didn’t know why she was bad, or what she’d done, but she was sure that she must have done something terrible. First Emmy left, then Sister Pauline was so very mean, Mama was always at work, and now she was alone with Jack.

  There was always a warning. “If you tell anybody how bad you are or that I punish you, you’ll get double next time,” he sneered as foul spittle sprayed from his mouth. “Nobody believes brats like you. So don’t think somebody will listen. I’m in charge in my house, and you’ll do as I say.”

  Even when he was not lying in wait, Abby felt his presence as if prickly metal filings were stuck to her
skin like a magnet. When she bathed, she rubbed her pale peach skin until she looked more like a bruised tomato. But still his suffocating breath spilled from every crack and corner of the house. It made her skin crawl to imagine Jack stuffing his filthy finger up his nose and twisting it around until he found a prize. She could not forget how his log-like arm would slide across his square growling mouth after supper. Abby wanted Jack dead, and she wanted her real daddy to be alive. But all of these feelings troubled her, and each day, she sank deeper into herself.

  Every time Jack moved, Abby jumped. But she told no one. She had seen what he could do, and she wasn’t going to be the cause of another fight between Jack and her mother. Abby was trapped in her silence. It was a terrible secret. Without Emmy, there was no one to turn to, and then she had the dream. She was in a boat, twirling a baton, and a nice sailor man with a big smile floated up to her in his boat.

  “Abigail, I’m your daddy. Do you want to go for a train ride with me?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Okay,” he said. They sat together in a special shiny train, with tables and chairs, and she had on fancy clothes like in the stores uptown and she was a princess.

  “Oh, I like this very much. I want to stay.” He said they could come back again, but now he had to go.

  Before he left, he told her that he loved her and he’d always be watching out for her. Then he handed her some red balloons, but they slipped from her hand and floated up into the sky. She was on the grass in a big field, alone and the train was gone.

  When she woke up in the morning, Abby sensed a calm she had never felt before, like emerging from a warm bath only better. She knew that somehow her real daddy would never hurt her and that he loved her. Another secret.

  Only Emmy would understand how she felt.

  Her mother had long ago explained to Abby about her father. “He wanted you very much and loved you with all his heart.” Abby wanted to know everything about him, and Mama always told her the story of how they fell in love during the war, about how she found her wedding dress and how happy he was about having a baby girl with his big blue eyes. Abby always saw the water in her mother’s eyes when she told this story, and afterwards they would just hold each other and rock back and forth, and Mama would hum a melancholy Irish lullaby over and over again.

  Sometimes Abby would sneak into her mother’s room and remove the wedding picture from the bed stand drawer so she could touch it and look at her father’s face. She loved the flowers in Mama’s hair. Abby thought her father was the most handsome man she had ever seen. She loved the sound of his name, Francis J. O’Malley. She saw her eyes in his eyes and wept.

  She imagined what it would be like if he were with them. She fantasized about all the things he would buy her, and how happy Mama would be. She decided that he would never have beaten her. She was not completely positive, because she was not sure how truly bad she was, but he seemed so nice in her dream. Abby imagined he was near, smiling at her. Her dream daddy became her only friend. She talked to him when she was alone; she prayed every night that she would see him again.

  Abby had become adept at avoiding Jack, even if it meant she went hungry, even if it meant she stayed in her room—until one night. She waited to hear him come up the stairs and turn to go to his room the way he always did. One night, instead of turning, she heard his feet shuffling towards her room, getting closer to her door.

  He’s going to see the soul, she thought, and her whole body stiffened and began to tremble. She heard him open her bedroom door. The outline of his bulky body darkened the dim opening. The fear she could taste far back in her throat froze her as surely as if she had been turned into a pillar of salt.

  Pretending to be asleep, holding her breath, she lay curled up with her knees nearly touching her chin. She could smell him, feeling his evil presence getting thicker, heavier, filling the room with every tortuous step. One shuffling foot at a time, he edged across the room, swaying in the shadows, grunting unintelligible sounds. And then, as if transported through a hideous black tunnel, he was there, right there, next to her bed. What was he doing? What did he want? And then she knew.

  Jack began running his huge filthy hands under her blanket, over her pajamas and body. She tried to escape, crawling back, back into the corner of her bed. He shoved her bed dress up and away. Abby instinctively kicked at him, flailing her legs and arms in the dark. She tried to scream but Jack covered her mouth with his thick yellow-stained fingers. His huge hairy arm forced her flat against the mattress.

  “Ya can’t get away from ol’ Jack. Ya do what I tell ya and shut up, ya little bitch.”

  Then he forced his hand between her legs and grabbed her, painfully rubbing and poking her body. The more she tried to get away, the more he seemed to enjoy it, panting like a mad dog. He unbuttoned his pants and began pulling at his body until she heard him moan again and again.

  He sat there for an eternity, holding her down. When he was finished with her, he wandered away into the darkness, laughing to himself in a low, sinister gurgle. Too scared to scream now, hurt and humiliated beyond anything she had ever imagined, Abby lay curled in a tight little ball.

  The morning sun peeked through her window. She wondered if it had all been a nightmare—until she tried to stand. Abby ached; her whole body was on fire, and her head throbbed. She barely managed to swing both legs to the floor at the same time and dressed in slow motion, with a vacant and lifeless expression on her tear stained face. Abby dug deep into herself, hoping to hide her shame from her mother. This secret was too dangerous to tell. Abby just wanted to fade away and die.

  She barely spoke, picked at her breakfast, and ran out to wait for the bus. When she got home that day, Jack was waiting for her. He had presents, a miniature Raggedy Anne doll and some candy.

  “Here, kid,” he said as though nothing had happened. “That’s for being good for a change. Don’t ever say I never gave ya nothin’.”

  She looked at the presents and then at him. Her eyes flashed with all the hate one little girl could summon, and she ran to her room, slamming and locking the door behind her.

  But Jack had a key.

  Night after night, he came to her room. When he would leave, Abby huddled in the corner of her bed and tried to go to sleep forever, whispering, “Daddy, please come daddy,” over and over again, wanting so desperately to float into the arms of her father and sail away amidst showers of red balloons as far as she could see. She hated herself for waking up and for lacking the courage to throw herself in front of a bus or drown herself in the tub. Two times she tried to slip under the tepid water only to come up gagging and gasping for air with soapy liquid hotly burning her nose and lungs. She was barely eating and never smiled. She went to school in a stony haze that never lifted.

  Abby was failing second grade.

  CHAPTER 3

  It seemed to Mary that Abby had changed overnight. Her daughter’s unhappiness far exceeded anything that had gone before as she watched Abby move like a wooden doll on strings.

  After trying and trying to get through to Abby and getting nowhere, Mary took her to the doctor. Nothing. The doctor gave Abby a routine exam. All he noticed were some bruises on her arms and thighs, which Abby refused to explain. Mary felt so helpless. “Don’t make no big thing of it,” Jack said. “The doc said she’s okay, then she’s okay. She’s just a moper, a sourpuss, that’s all.”

  It was Sunday, Mary’s night off. Exhaustion had overcome her after she put Abby to bed. She stayed until Abby’s breathing was regular, knowing that her daughter’s frequent nightmares and screams would soon follow. But Mary needed sleep, too. Blackness overcame her quickly.

  She heard Frank’s voice. He was in front of her now, holding a wriggling, giggling infant Abby in his arms. He was completely absorbed in her, ignoring Mary’s presence.

  “Frank, I’m here, I’m here,” Mary heard herself say. He ignored her. Then the baby started to scream. Frank looked up at Mary and back at A
bby. “Take her. She needs you now,” he said quietly, as he handed her their child. When Mary looked up, Frank was gone.

  A shadow emerged where Frank had been, and it was lunging at her. Mary felt it was a wild animal coming to kill her baby. She ran until she was sure it wasn’t following her anymore. She looked around and saw water everywhere. Then she heard her father singing somewhere in the mist, but she couldn’t see him. She looked down at the baby she still had in her arms, and it was Abby smiling up at her with huge blue eyes. And the tiny infant said, in a crystal clear voice, “I love you, Mama.”

  In the morning, Mary realized that Abby hadn’t cried that night. She tried to make sense out of the haunting dream. It had been both terrifying and comforting, but she was unable to shake off the overpowering sense of foreboding.

  She went to work, still troubled. The first part of her shift passed without incident, but she was distracted and almost gave the wrong medication to one of her patients.

  As she sat with her dinner tray at the cafeteria table, Mary picked at her food as she mulled over and over what she felt, what she knew. It was the first time she’d had time to think.

  Abby was so fearful of Jack; that was obvious and understandable. He was big and gruff and drank too hard. Then she remembered his sudden good moods, the presents he’d given Abby for no apparent reason, and the bumps and the bruises Abby said she got on the playground. Mary’s face paled, and she put down her fork.

  How could a small child get bruises on her throat, arms and legs from the playground? She couldn’t have, Mary thought. It doesn’t make any sense. And then, with the suddenness of a tornado, she knew. “Dear God!” Mary said out loud, shoving her tray away.

  Mary left her tray as it sat and ran to the nearest hospital phone. Her voice was shaking as she told them she had a family emergency. Mary left the phone dangling on its cord and ran out of the hospital without even stopping to get her coat.