I was in the dressing room trying on the clothes from Momma's big closet. For the first time in my life I slipped on nylon hose, and, oh, did my legs look heavenly--divine! No wonder women liked these things! Next, I put on a bra for the first time, one that was much too large, to my dismay. I stuffed the cups full of tissues until they bulged way out. Next came the silver slippers, again, too large. And then I topped off the splendor of me with a black dress cut very low in front to show off what I didn't have much of.
Now came the fun part --what I used to do when I was little whenever I had the chance. I sat down at Momma's dressing table and began to apply her makeup with a lavish hand. She had ten carloads. On my face I slathered the whole works: foundation, rouge, powder, mascara, eyeshadow, lipstick. And then I swept my hair up in a way I considered sexy and stylish, stuck in hairpins and began to put on jewelry. And, last of all, perfume--lots of it.
Tottering awkwardly on the high heels, I teetered over to Chris. "How do I look?" I asked, flirtatiously smiling, and fluttering my sooty lashes. Truly, I was prepared for compliments. Hadn't the mirrors already told me I looked sensational?
He was carefully going through a drawer, putting everything back exactly as he had found it, but he turned to take a glance. Astonishment widened his eyes, and then he heavily scowled, while I rocked back and forth and sideways, seeking my balance on four-inch heels, and kept on batting my eyelids-- maybe I didn't know how to put on false eyelashes right. I felt I was looking through spider legs.
"How do you look?" he began in a sarcastic way. "Let me tell you precisely. You look like a
streetwalker--that's how!" He turned away in disgust, as if unable to bear the sight of me. "An adolescent whore--that's what! Now go wash your face, and put back all that stuff where you found it, and clean up the dressing table!"
I tottered over to the nearest full-length mirror. It had right and left wings so she could adjust them, and see herself from every angle, and in those three very revealing mirrors I took a fresh perspective--and what a fascinating mirror; it closed like a three- page book, and then there was a beautiful French pastoral scene to view.
Twisting and turning, I checked over my appearance. This wasn't the way my mother looked in the same dress--what had I done wrong? True, she didn't ladder so many bracelets up her arms. And she didn't wear three necklaces at once, while long, dangling diamond earrings brushed her shoulders, plus a tiara; nor did she ever wear two or three rings on each finger--including her thumbs.
Oh, but I did dazzle the eyes all right. And my jutting bosom was absolutely magnificent! Truthfully, I had to admit I'd overdone it.
I took off seventeen bracelets, twenty-six rings, the necklaces, the tiara, and the black chiffon formal gown that didn't look as elegant on me as when Momma wore it to a dinner party with only pearls at the throat. Oh, but the furs--nobody could help but feel beautiful in furs!
"Hurry up, Cathy. Leave that stuff alone and come help me search."
"Chris, I'd love to take a bath in her black marble tub."
"God Almighty! We don't have time for you to do that!"
I took off her clothes, her black lace bra, the nylon hose, and the silver slippers, and put on my own things. But on second thought, I sneaked a plain white bra from her drawer of many, and tucked it down inside my blouse. Chris didn't need my help. He'd been here so often, he could find money without my assistance. I wanted to see what was in every drawer, but I'd have to move fast. I pulled open a small drawer of her nightstand, expecting to find cold cream, tissues, but nothing of value for servants to steal. And there was night cream in the drawer, and tissues, plus two paper- back books to read when sleep was evasive. (Were there nights when she tossed and turned and thought uneasily about us?) Underneath those paperbacks was a very large and thick book with a colorful dustjacket.
How to Create Your Own Needlework Designs.
Now, that was a title to really intrigue me. Momma had taught me to do some needlepoint stitches, and also crewelwork on my first birthday in that locked room. And how to create your own designs would indeed be inspiring.
Casually I lifted out the book and flipped through the pages at random. Behind me Chris was making soft noises as he opened and closed drawers, and moved on sneakered feet from here to there. I had expected to see flower designs--anything but what I actually saw. Silent, wide-eyed, full of stunned fascination, I stared down at the photographs in full color. Unbelievable pictures of naked men and women doing . . . did people really do such things as that? Was this lovemaking?
Chris wasn't the only one who'd heard whispered tales accompanied by much snickering from older children clustered in groups in the bathroom at school. Why, I had believed it was a sacred, reverent thing to do in complete privacy, behind locked doors. This book depicted many couples all in one room, all naked, and all into each other in one way or another. Against my will, or so I wanted to think, my hand stole out to slowly turn each page, growing ever more incredulous! So many ways to do it! So many positions! My God, was
this
what lovesick Raymond and Lily had in mind from page one of that Victorian novel? I lifted my head and stared blankly into space. From the beginning of life, were we all headed toward this?
Chris spoke my name, informing me he had found enough money. Couldn't steal too much all at once, or it might be noticed. He was taking only a few fives, and many ones, and all the change under chair cushions. "Cathy, what's the matter, are you deaf? Come on."
I couldn't move, couldn't leave, couldn't close that book without pursuing it from cover to cover. Because I stood so enthralled, unable to respond, he came up behind me to look over my shoulder at what held me so mesmerized. I heard his breath pull in sharply. After an eternal time, he exhaled a low whistle. He didn't say a single word until I reached the end and closed the book. Then he took over and began at the beginning, looking at each page he had missed as I stood beside him and looked again, too. There was small printed text opposite the full- page pictures. But the photographs didn't need explanations-- not to my mind
Chris closed the book. I glanced at his face quickly. He appeared stunned. I returned the book to the drawer, placing the paperbacks on top, just as I had found it. He took my hand and pulled me toward the door. Down all the long and dark halls we went silently back to the northern wing. Now I knew only too well why the witch-grandmother had wanted Chris and me put in separate beds, when that compelling call to human flesh was so strong, so demanding, and so thrilling it could make people act more like demons than saints. I leaned above Carrie, staring down in her sleeping face, which, in her sleep, regained the innocence and childishness that evaded her during her waking hours. She seemed a small cherub lying there on her side, curled up tight, her face rosy and flushed, her hair damp and curling on the nape of her neck and on her rounded forehead. I kissed her, and her cheek felt hot, and then I went over to Cory to touch his soft curls and kiss his flushed cheek. Children like the twins were made from a little of what I had just viewed in that erotic picture book, so it couldn't all be totally wicked, or else God wouldn't have made men and women the way He did. And yet I was so troubled, and so uncertain, and deep down really stunned and shocked, and still . . .
I closed my eyes and silently prayed:
God, keep the twins safe and healthy until we're out of here . . . let them live until we reach a bright and sunny place where doors are never locked . . . please.
"You can use the bath first," said Chris, sitting on his side of the bed with his back toward me. His head was bowed down, and this was his night to take his bath first.
Under a kind of spell I drifted into the bath and did what I had to, then came out wearing my thickest, warmest, and most concealing granny-gown. My face was scrubbed clean of all makeup. My hair was shampooed and still a little damp as I sat down on the side of my bed to brush it into shining waves.
Chris rose silently and entered the bath without looking my way, and when he came out much later, and I was still sitting and brushing my hair, he didn't meet my eyes. Nor did I want him to look at me.
It was one of the grandmother's rules that we were to kneel down by our beds each night and say prayers. Yet, that night, neither of us knelt to say prayers. Often, I was on my knees by the bed, with my palms together under my chin, and I didn't know what to pray, since already I'd prayed so much, and none of it helped. I'd just kneel there, empty-minded, bleakhearted, but my body and its nerve endings felt everything and screamed out what I couldn't bring myself to think, much less say.
I stretched out beside Carrie on my back, feeling soiled and changed by that big book that I wished to see again and would if I could, read every word of the text. Maybe it would have been the ladylike thing to just put the book back when I'd found out its subject--and most certainly I should have slammed it shut when Chris came to look over my shoulder. Already I knew I wasn't a saint, or an angel, or a puritan prude, and I felt in my bones that someday in the near future I was going to need to know all there was to know about how bodies were used in ways of love.
Slowly, slowly, I turned my head to peer through the rosy dimness and see what Chris was doing.
He was on his side, under the covers, gazing over at me. His eyes glimmered in some faint meandering light that filtered through the heavy draperies, for what light was in his eyes wasn't rosy-colored.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"Yes, I'm surviving." And then I said good night in a voice that didn't even sound like me.
"Good night, Cathy," he said, using someone else's voice, too.
That spring, Chris got sick. He looked greenish around his mouth and threw up every few minutes, staggering back from the bathroom to fall weakly on the bed. He wanted to study
Gray's Anatomy,
but threw it aside, irritated with himself. "Must have been something I ate," he grouched.
"Chris, I don't want to leave you alone," I said at the door, preparing to fit the wooden key into the lock.
"Look here, Cathy!" he yelled. "It's time you learned to stand on your own two feet! You don't need me at your side every livelong minute of the day! That was Momma's trouble. She thought she'd always have a man to lean on. Lean on yourself, Cathy, always."
Terror jumped into my heart, flooded up in my eyes. He saw, and he spoke more gently. "I'm all right, really. I can take care of myself. We need the money, Cathy, so go on alone. We might not have another chance "
I ran back to his bed, falling down on my knees, and pressing my face down on his pajamaed chest. Tenderly he caressed my hair. "Really, Cathy, I'll survive. It's not so bad you have to cry about it. But you've got to understand, no matter what happens to either one of us, the one left has to get the twins out."
"Don't say things like that!" I cried out. Just to think of him dying made me sick inside. And as I knelt there, staring at him, it fleetingly crossed my mind, how often one or the other of us was sick.
"Cathy, I want you to leave now. Stand up. Force yourself. And when you get there, take only ones and fives. Nothing larger. But take all the coins our stepfather lets fall from his pockets. And in the back of his closet, he keeps a big tin box full of change. Take a handful of the quarters."
He looked pale and weak, thinner, too. Quickly I kissed his cheek, loath to leave when he felt so unwell. Glancing at the sleeping twins, I backed off toward the door, clutching the wooden key in my hand. "I love you, Christopher Doll," I said in a joking way before opening the door.
"I love you too, Catherine Doll," he said. "Good hunting."
I threw him a kiss, then closed and locked the door behind me. It was safe enough to go stealing in Momma's room. Only this afternoon she had told us she and her husband were attending another party, at a friend's who lived down the road. And I thought to myself, as I stole quietly along the corridors clinging to the walls, keeping to the shadows, I
was
going to take at least one twenty, and one ten. I was going to risk somebody noticing. Maybe I'd even steal a few pieces of Momma's jewelry. Jewelry could be pawned, just as good as money, maybe better.
All business, all determination, I didn't waste time looking in the trophy room. Straight on to Momma's bedroom I crept, not expecting to see the
grandmother, who retired very early, at nine. And the hour was ten.
With all brave determined confidence, I stole through the double doors to her rooms, and silently closed them behind me. One dim light was burning. Often she left lights burning in her rooms--
sometimes every last one, according to Chris. For what was money to our mother now?
Hesitating uncertainly, I stood just inside the doors and looked around. Then I froze in terror.
There, in a chair, with his long legs stretched before him and crossed at the ankles, sprawled Momma's new husband! I was directly in front of him, wearing a transparent blue nightie that was very short, though little matching panties were underneath. My heart beat out a mad tune of panic as I waited for him to bellow out and demand to know who I was, and what the hell was I doing coming uninvited into his bedroom?
But he didn't speak.
He wore a black tuxedo, and his formal shirt was pink with black-edged ruffles down the front. He didn't bellow, he didn't question, because he was dozing. I almost turned about and left, I was so terrified he'd awaken and see me.
However, curiosity overcame my trepidations. On my toes I stole closer to peer down at him. I dared to go so close, up to his very chair, that I could reach out and touch him, if I chose. Close enough to put my hand in his pocket and rob him if I chose, which I didn't.
Robbery was the last thing I had in mind as I gazed down into his handsome sleeping face. I was amazed to see what was revealed now that I was so very close to my mother's dearly beloved Bart. I had viewed him from a distance a number of times: first, the night of the Christmas party, and another time when he was down there near the stairs, holding a coat for Momma to slip her arms in. He'd kissed the back of her neck, and behind her ear, and whispered something that made her smile, and so tenderly he'd drawn her against his chest before they both went out the door.
Yes, yes, I had seen him, and heard much about him, and knew where his sisters lived, and where he was born, and where he'd gone to school, but nothing had prepared me for what was so clearly revealed now.
Momma--how could you? You should be ashamed! This man is younger than you--years younger!
She hadn't told us that.
A secret. How well she could keep such an important secret! And no wonder she adored him, worshipped him--he was the kind of man any woman would want. Just to look at him so casually, elegantly sprawled, I guessed he was both tender and passionate when he made love to her.
I wanted to hate that man dozing in the chair, but somehow I just couldn't. Even asleep, he appealed to me, and made my heart beat faster.
Bartholomew Winslow, smiling in his sleep, innocently, unknowingly responding to my
admiration. A lawyer, one of those men who knew everything--like doctors--like Chris. Certainly he must be seeing and experiencing something exceptionally pleasing. What was going on behind his eyeballs? I wondered, too, if his eyes were blue or brown. His head was long and lean, his body slim, and hard and muscular. A deep cleft was near his lips, looking like a stretched vertical dimple to play games of hide and seek as it came and went with his vague sleepy smiles.
He wore a wide sculptured gold wedding band, and of course I recognized it as the twin to the slimmer one my mother wore. On the index finger of his right hand he wore a large square-cut diamond ring that sparkled even without much light. On a small finger he wore a fraternity ring. His long fingers had square nails buffed so they shone as much as mine. I remembered when Momma used to buff Daddy's nails, while they played teasing games with their eyes.
He was tall. . . . I already knew that. And of everything he had that pleased me well, it was his full and sensual lips beneath the moustache that intrigued me most. Such a beautifully shaped mouth--sensual lips that must kiss my mother . . . everywhere. That book of sexual pleasures had educated me well along that line of how adults gave and took when they were bare.
It came over me all of a sudden--the impulse to kiss him-- just to see if the dark moustache tickled. Just to know also, what a kiss was like from a stranger who was no blood relation at all.
Not forbidden, this one. Not sinful to tentatively reach out and very lightly stroke his closely shaven cheek, so softly challenging him to wake up.
But he slept on.
I leaned above him and pressed my lips down on his ever so lightly, then drew away fast, my heart pounding in a paralyzing kind of fear. I was almost wishing that he would waken, but I was still fearful and afraid. I was too young and unsure of what I had to believe he would come rushing to my defense, when he had a woman like my mother madly in love with him Would he, if I took his arm and shook him awake, sit and listen calmly to my story about four children sequestered in a lonely, isolated room year after year, waiting impatiently for their grandfather to die? Would he understand and sympathize with us, and would he force Momma to set us free, and give up hopes of inheriting that immense fortune?
My hands fluttered nervously to my throat, the way Momma's did when she was caught in a dilemma, not knowing which way to turn. My instinct was shouting loud:
Wake him up!
My suspicions
whispered slyly, keep quiet, don't let him know; he won't want you, not four children he didn't father. He'll hate you for preventing his wife from inheriting all the riches and pleasures that money can buy. Look at him, so young, so handsome. And though our mother was exceptionally beautiful, and on the way to being one of the wealthiest women in the world, he could have had somebody younger. A fresh virgin who'd never loved anyone else, nor slept with another man.
And then my indecision was over. The answer was so simple. What were four unwanted children when compared to unbelievable riches?
They were nothing. Already Momma had taught me that. And a virgin would bore him.
Oh, it was unfair! Foul! Our mother had everything! Freedom to come and go as she wished; freedom to spend lavishly and buy out the world's best stores, if she chose. She even had the money to buy a much younger man to love, and sleep with--and what did Chris and I have but broken dreams, shattered promises, and unending frustrations?
And what did the twins have, but a dollhouse and a mouse and ever-declining health?
Back to that forlorn, locked room I went with tears in my eyes and a helpless, hopeless feeling heavy as stone in my chest. I found Chris sleeping with
Gray's Anatomy
lying face down and open on his chest. Carefully I marked his place, closed the book, and put it aside.
Then I lay beside him, and clung to him, and silent tears came to streak my cheeks and wet his pajama jacket.
"Cathy," he said, waking up, and coming sleepily into focus. "What's the matter? Why are you crying? Did someone see you?"
I couldn't meet his concerned look squarely, and for some inexplicable reason, I couldn't tell him what happened. I couldn't speak the words to say I'd found mother's new husband dozing in her room. Much less could I tell him I'd been so childishly romantic as to kiss him while he slept.
"And you didn't even find a single penny?" he asked with so much disbelief.
"Not even a penny," I whispered in return, and I tried to hide my face from his. But he cupped my chin and forced me to turn my head so he could delve deep into my eyes. Oh, why did we have to know each other so well? He stared at me, while I tried to keep my eyes blank, but it was no use. All I could do was close my eyes and snuggle closer in his arms. He bowed his face into my hair while his hands soothingly stroked my back. "It's all right. Don't cry. You don't know where to look like I do."
I had to get away, run away, and when I ran away, I would take all of this with me, no matter where I went, or who I ended up with.
"You can get in your own bed now," said Chris in his hoarse voice. "The grandmother could open the door and catch us, you know."
"Chris, you didn't throw up again after I left, did you?"
"No. I'm better. Just go away, Cathy. Go away."
"You really feel better now? You're not just saying that?"
"Didn't I just say I was better?"
"Goodnight, Christopher Doll," I said, then put a kiss on his cheek before I left his bed and climbed into my own bed to snuggle up with Carrie.
"Good night, Catherine. You make a pretty good sister, and mother to the twins . . . but you're one helluva liar, and one damned no-good thief!"
Each of Chris's forays into Momma's room enriched our hidden cache. It was taking so long to reach our goal of five hundred dollars. And now summer was upon us again. Now I was fifteen, the twins recently turned eight. Soon August would mark the third year of our imprisonment. Before another winter set in, we had to escape. I looked at Cory, who was listlessly picking at black-eyed peas because they were "good luck" peas. First time on New Year's Day, he wouldn't eat them: didn't want any little brown eyes looking at his insides. Now he'd eat them because each pea gave one full day of happiness--so we'd told him. Chris and I had to make up tales like this or else he'd eat nothing but the doughnuts. As soon as that meal was over, he crouched down on the floor, picked up his banjo, and fixed his eyes on a silly cartoon. Carrie glued in beside him, as close as possible, watching her twin's face and not the TV. "Cathy," she said to me in her bird twitter. "Cory, he don't feel so good."
"How do you know?"
"Jus' know."
"Has he told you he feels sick?"
"He don't have to."
"And how do
you
feel?"
"Like always."
"And how is that?"
"Don't know."
Oh yes! We had to get out, and fast!
Later on I tucked the twins in one bed. When they were both asleep, I'd lift out Carrie, and put her in our bed, but for now, it was comforting for Cory to go to sleep with his sister by his side. "Don't like this pink sheet," complained Carrie, scowling at me. "We all like white sheets. Where are our white sheets?"
Oh, rue the day when Chris and I had made white the safest color of all! White chalk daisies drawn on the attic floor kept away evil demons, and monsters, and all the other things the twins feared would get them if white wasn't somewhere near to hide inside, or under, or behind. Lavender, blue or pink, or flowerstrewn sheets and pillowcases were not to be tolerated . . . little colored places gave small imps a hole through which to drive a forked tail, or glare a mean eye, or stab with a wicked, tiny spear! Rituals, fetishes, habits, rules--Lord--we had them by the millions! Just to keep us safe.
"Cathy, why does Momma like black dresses so much?" asked Carrie, waiting as I took off the pink sheets and replaced them with plain white ones.
"Momma is blonde and very fair, and black makes her look even more fair, and exceptionally beautiful."
"She's not scared of black?"
"How old do you get before black doesn't bite you with long teeth?"
"Old enough to know such a question as that is absolutely silly."
"But all the black shadows in the attic have shiny, sharp teeth," said Cory, scooting backward so the pink sheets wouldn't touch his skin.
"Now look," I said, seeing Chris's laughing eyes watching as he anticipated some gem I would certainly deliver. "Black shadows don't have shiny sharp teeth unless your skin is emerald green, and your eyes are purple, and your hair is red, and you have three ears instead of two. Only then is black a threat."
Comforted, the twins scurried under the white sheet and white blankets, and were soon fast asleep. Then I had time to bathe, and shampoo my hair, and put on wispy baby-doll pajamas. I ran up into the attic to open a window wide, hopeful of catching a cool breeze to freshen the attic so I'd feel like dancing and not wilting. Why was it the wind could find its way inside only during a wintery blast? Why not now, when we needed it most?
Chris and I shared all our thoughts, our
aspirations, our doubts, and our fears. If I had small problems, he was my doctor. Fortunately, my problems were never of much consequence, only those monthly cramps, and that womanly time never showed up on schedule, which he, my amateur doctor, said was only to be expected. Since I was of a quixotic nature, all my internal machinery would follow suit.
So I can write now of Chris and what happened one September night when I was in the attic, and he had gone stealing, just as if I were there, for later, when the shock of something totally unexpected had died down a bit, he told me in great detail of this particular trip to Momma's grand suite of luxurious rooms.
He told me it was that book in the nightstand drawer that drew him always; it lured him, beckoned to him, was to shipwreck him later, and me too. As soon as he found his quota of money-- enough, but not too much--he drifted over to the bed and that table as if magnetized.
And I thought to myself, even as he told me: Why did he have to keep on looking, when each of those photographs was forever engraved on my brain?
"And there I was, reading the text, a few pages at a time," he said, "and thinking about right and wrong, and wondering about nature and all its strange exhilarating calls, and thinking about the
circumstances of our lives. I thought about you and me, that these should be blossoming years for us, and I had to feel guilty and ashamed to be growing up, and wanting what other boys my age could take from girls who were willing.
"And, as I stood there, leafing through those pages, burning inside with so many frustrations, and wishing in a way you hadn't ever found that damned book that never drew my attention with its dull title, I heard voices approaching in the hall. You know who it was--it was our mother, and her husband, returning. Quickly I shoved the book back into the drawer and tossed in the two paperbacks which no one was ever going to finish reading, for the bookmarks were always in the same place. Next I dashed into Momma's closet--that big one, you know, the one nearest her bed--and way back near the shoe shelves I crouched down on the floor beneath her long formal gowns. I thought if she came in, she wouldn't see me and I doubt she would have. But no sooner did I feel this security, then I realized I'd forgotten to close the door.