Julia's Chocolates (8 page)

Growing up unloved and neglected is horrific. Not only because your parent doesn’t love you, but because you know your parent doesn’t want
your
love. You learn that your love is inferior. Unneeded. Worthless. You’re inferior, you’re unneeded, you’re worthless.

But Spot needed my love. He needed me.

Robert had hated Spot on sight, as he hated all animals.

A voice in the back of my head told me that day that Robert had killed Spot. I knew the voice was right. As the days wore on after that incident, and the wedding loomed like a rusty pitchfork over my neck, I found breathing more and more difficult. I could almost see those points of that pitchfork imbedded in my neck, and I knew I had to escape it.

Caroline grabbed my hand, bringing me away from Spot and back to her. Her right eye was almost spasmodically twitching.

“I see clothes in a bag.” Her voice was tight. “The bag is full. I see it being thrown. I see fire. It’s hot. It smells. The clothes are burning. They’re gone. I see red. He’s furious.”

Now I really was having trouble breathing. About two months ago, in a weird attempt to make him happy, and wanting to look better for him, I had gone shopping. I had bought two skirts that came above my knees, several lace camisoles, a bright red coat, black heels, and a halter top. The clothes were a huge departure from my usual jeans and a dull sweater and loafers.

When he came to the apartment and saw the bag full of clothes his face had turned almost purple with rage. He had turned the bag upside down, running his hands over each and every garment as if a woman were already inside them. “You’re cheating on me, aren’t you?”

After a long minute when I couldn’t speak, from fear, he laughed mercilessly, as if that was a hilarious thought. When he released my hair from around his fist, I protested my innocence.

Robert had laughed again. “I know you’re not cheating, Cannonball Butt. Who would cheat with you? You’re lucky I’m with you, I’m the best you’re ever going to get, the best you can ever expect.” He held up the camisole and laughed again. “I hardly think you’ll be able to get your stomach in that. Don’t try to be something you’re not. I don’t need humor in bed.”

And then suddenly I was furious, too. I was so sick of him criticizing my clothes, my hair, everything, and here I had gone out to fix the problem, and he was cruel again. “Well, if you don’t want to see me in them, perhaps someone else will.” I didn’t know where the words came from, and, really, it was a preposterous thought.

Robert froze, his eyes darkening, and fear exploded in my stomach. He very quietly, very neatly folded each and every garment into the bag. Then he took the bag, shoved it into the fireplace and lit a match. I screamed at him to stop but he didn’t, the fire smoldering against the material. I yanked at him and he backhanded me. Backhanded me again when I tried to pull some clothes out. He had to light a second match to burn them all.

When the fire was roaring, he picked up a nearby phone and smashed it into my face.

I lost consciousness. When I came to, Robert was bending over me, the fury gone, replaced by a concerned, loving, desperately sorry man holding an ice pack over my eye.

“You shouldn’t have made me mad, Turtle. Shouldn’t have threatened to cheat on me.”

Shaking, I could barely keep from throwing up, my head throbbing. When I didn’t say anything, he grabbed my upper arms. “I know you come from a white-trash family, and I’m trying to save you from them, can’t you see? You don’t know how to be a proper wife yet, but you will. I’m being patient….” The lecture went on and on and on. He slept at my apartment that night and watched me carefully for days, taking time off work. When he did go back to work, he called every hour on the hour, then made sure that his horrible mother and her sisters monopolized every moment of my time with wedding plans.

His mother and her sisters didn’t ask about the bruise, and I didn’t discuss it. Those women were wrapped up tight in their secrets and were used to ignoring abuse.

Two nights before our wedding, he came by my apartment. He wasn’t happy with the greeting I gave him, nor was he happy when I complained that his mother had taken over the wedding, so that fist came out once again.

He didn’t call on our wedding day, left me alone, believing that I would never cut out on my wedding to a rich, eligible bachelor.

“I hear screaming, Julia,” Caroline said, her voice low, sad. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“He’s coming, Julia, he’s coming. Here. To Golden.”

A
unt Lydia and I worked out a system over the next weeks. We’d wake up before dawn had even cracked, then head out to the chickens, pigs, horses, and sheep with Aunt Lydia’s eight cats swirling around our legs. Cat 1, Cat 2, Cat 3, Cat 4, Cat 5, Cat 6, Cat 7, and Cat 8, were the most friendly cats I had ever known. They meowed at me all the time, and as soon as I sat down they would leap to my lap, snuggling in, even three at a time. They would meow again until I scratched their heads, and then they would fall asleep, purring contentedly.

I had never been much of a cat person, but I had made a radical hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.

Of course, the chickens weren’t real fond of the cats, clucking excitedly when they came near their hallowed houses, but the cats were scared of the chickens, scampering away in fright if a chicken came clucking. ’Fraidy cats, all of them.

Lydia and I went about collecting the eggs and caring for the animals. The morning was cool and crisp, although I knew it would become much warmer later on in the day. I loved mornings on the farm. The land was waking up. The sun was stretching. The trees waved their morning greetings at each other. Melissa Lynn and the piglets were softly shuffling about as if making too much noise would break the serenity of the moment.

It was so different from the cities I’d lived in. I breathed in deeply, the exhaustion that followed me around like a stalker still with me, but it wasn’t as sharp, wasn’t as invasive. Sleep had helped. Peace had helped. Mountain air had helped.

“Good to see you, young lady. How is your womanly health today?” Aunt Lydia would say when she wanted to discuss women’s issues. This was my clue to the conversation topic of the day.

During the egg-collecting I would get information on all sorts of women’s issues that Aunt Lydia had read about in
The New York Times,
the
Journal of the American Medical Association, Forbes, Science Digest
, and a whole array of obscure magazines. I would also get a lecture on the feminine healing powers of embroidery, cross-stitch, knitting, painting, and wreath-making.

She was most fond of quoting some hippie friends of hers who published a monthly newsletter listing sage advice on how to rid yourself of toenail fungus, how to reach your inner monster, cook for ghosts, and do cartwheels naked to improve acne.

Today’s topic was fear.

“Fear will strangle the womanliness right out of you, Julia,” she announced, petting a chicken on the head.

I had no argument for that. Fear had followed me for so long in my life. Being out in the country, among peace and gentleness, was making me well aware of how fear had guided almost every move in my life. And every mistake.

“Fear will turn your instincts to mush, making you doubt the wisdom that springs forth from your uterus. The uterus, your womb, knows the truth. The uterus tells the brain. But fear interrupts that transaction.”

She looked under a battered pink dresser, found a batch of eggs. “Fear will smush your ability to choose your life’s direction. Fear gets inside your brain like octopus tentacles and pokes into your brain cells.”

I scooted my hand under a few ladies. No one pecked me today. I whispered, “Thank you, Hildy, Geranium, and Darth Vader.” Aunt Lydia’s funny way of naming chickens had grown on me.

“Fear will smother your creative energy, shaking your passions into nothing but warts.”

I was not so lucky with the next three ladies. They pecked at me, then clucked, a secret sister language all their own. “I have never liked you, Queen Titty, Dog Face, and Sabrina,” I said to them.

“Fear will prevent you from seeing the success that can be yours.” Aunt Lydia shook her fists in the air. “It will blind you as good as someone with a fat ass sitting on your face will blind you.”

Next she picked up a shovel. “Never, never let someone’s fat ass sit on your face, my dear. Never.”

I nodded at her. She was right, of course. I would not want someone’s fat ass on my face.

When we were done, the eggs collected, the chickens happy, the cats petted, Melissa Lynn and her piglets cared for, she said, as she so often did, “Let’s go and eat some pancakes, Julia. You look in need of some pancakes with lots of my maple syrup to get your secretions moving.”

And then, as she often did, she pulled me closer to her as we walked out of the barn. But this time she said something different. “Sweetheart. There is one more way for you to conquer your fear.”

I nodded, took a deep breath. Fear was killing me, day by day.

“You must attend target practice more often. Stash is coming over soon to help you. We both feel that you won’t be able to hit this side of a cow’s butt from ten feet away unless you spit more bullets out of the gun I gave you. So far you’re a terrible shot. Don’t look at me like that. You are a terrible shot. You must get for yourself the killer’s instinct. My hormones are screaming that I’m failing you, my pelvic bones say that the child not of my womb but of my heart needs to protect herself better. Stash felt my pelvic bones the other day, and he feels the same.”

I did not inquire into that particular statement on Stash and her pelvic bones.

Aunt Lydia kissed my cheek, then whispered, “Shoot to kill, Julia. Always, always, shoot to kill.”

I nodded.

Shoot to kill.

Lydia had dubbed tonight Getting To Know Your Vagina Psychic Night. Caroline, Katie, and Lara were all coming over within minutes. Lydia had cooked dinner. We were having tacos.

“The taco shells are to symbolize the importance of filling your vagina with good health!” Lydia wielded two pans in the air as she said this, her gray hair pulled back into one long braid, stray curls softening her features. “We’ll be filling our tacos with meat to symbolize our oneness with Mother Earth, and finely grated cheese to represent the milk our breasts hold to feed our babies, and avocados for healthy wombs, and fresh tomatoes because I like tomatoes, and hot sauce to kill vaginitis!”

I didn’t know that hot sauce could kill vaginitis, but I was certainly game to try. My vagina had been feeling much better—cleaner, I would say—since being away from Robert the last weeks. It almost felt as if it belonged to me again, and wasn’t just poised between my legs waiting for Robert’s intrusion.

“We are also having strawberry daiquiris to release the fiery woman that lives in all of us, just waiting for a chance to escape and explore her sensuality!” She clanged the pans together three times, looking heavenward. “Daiquiris will let our femininity run wild as it should, the strawberries feeding our libidos and our lusts, since men so seldom do much for us with their teensies!”

I almost laughed, but I was eating some of the white chocolate I’d made earlier and didn’t want to spit it out. Chocolate should never be wasted. It is a bite of heaven.

But, I thought, Stash obviously satisfies Aunt Lydia with his teensie.

Lydia and Stash spent quite a bit of time at her house, and often, when I came back from town or a walk, they would hurriedly rush from Lydia’s room. Stash would wink at me, and Lydia would immediately start throwing orders his way. “You aren’t to come over here again for three days, Stash! And get your tractor out of my driveway, and I need you to let me borrow your backhoe, and don’t eat all the spice bread I made you in one day again.”

“All right, my beam of light,” he would drawl, kissing her on the cheek. “Not for three days, but I’ll see you later tonight. Be by at seven. Henry and Casey don’t like it when we’re late for dinner.”

Or he would tell her to be at his house by six for morning omelets, or he would hug her and tell her he would call tonight as he had to go to the city for a couple of days, and then he would lecture her about locking her doors, keeping her gun by her bed, thanking the Lord at that point that I had come to stay so he didn’t have to worry about Lydia being alone. “Have you been target practicing, Lydia?” he asked on numerous occasions. “I don’t like leaving you alone, but knowing you have the thirty-eight I gave you makes me feel a lot better. Remember, shoot to kill, not to maim.”

She would interrupt him, even as she was slapping his butt with one hand. “I don’t need you to tell me how to protect myself, old man. And I got better aim than you, and don’t think I haven’t thought about aiming a gun in the direction of your ass many a time!”

Stash would hug me before he left, his eyes full of warmth, and admonish me to keep an eye on Lydia while he was in the city. They would kiss again, with Lydia barely pausing to stop giving him orders. “Drive slow. Don’t drive like the fires of hell are burning after your hide, Stash, you old man. I’ll see you Wednesday night for dinner. Do not be late!” She grabbed his face with both hands, tilting his head down. “Not one minute late!”

Aunt Lydia would stand with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, and Stash would honk his horn periodically as he drove down the road. When she couldn’t see him anymore, Lydia would semi-yell, “Stash! He will not leave me alone for a second. He is one ripe pain in the petoosy. Now, what needs to be done?”

And off we’d both charge. We’d fix a fence, clean out the Pigs Palace, as Lydia called Melinda’s pigpen, paint a shed lime green, cook up four different meals to be distributed to four needy families in town, sew new curtains, or hang flowers to dry to make bouquets and other pretty house things. Aunt Lydia let her art projects be auctioned off for various fund-raisers in the county, so she always had plenty to do.

“When you’re sad or depressed, you might as well get something done,” Lydia always said. “Pretty soon, you’re not sad or depressed, and darned if things aren’t done.”

We had spent about an hour in the kitchen getting the Cheers To Vaginas Tacos ready and making a fruit salad. She called it Fruit Salad For Fruitful Women. The green salad, with shredded cheese, dried berries, and nuts was called Greens For Clean Secretions Salad.

Like I said, it was Getting To Know Your Vagina Psychic Night.

So, as usual, the lights were turned down low, and pink candles dotted the room. The day was warm, so a couple of windows were open, cool breezes swirling through the house.

The dining room table was covered in a pink fabric. “Pink represents the inside of a healthy vagina,” Aunt Lydia had told me. Over the table was a centerpiece in the shape of a wreath made with red apples, dried flowers, leaves, a little hay, and a pink ribbon. Lydia had whipped it up in about an hour, and it was stunning, made more stunning by the fact that it hung by cranberry-red ribbons from the ceiling, coming to a stop about five inches from the table.

“We’re going to get half-naked and reawaken our vaginas,” Aunt Lydia announced to the four of us, who were happily relaxed in the overstuffed furniture, drinking our daiquiris to release the fiery woman who lives in all of us and is just waiting for a chance to escape and explore her sensuality. Aunt Lydia had poured all the daiquiris into these tall, pink, curvy glasses.

“We’re going to do what?” Katie asked, munching on another hors d’oeuvre of stuffed mushrooms wrapped in bacon. When everyone had arrived, Lydia had told us the stuffed mushroom was to represent our privacy, the bacon the outer shell of protection we all wear around our privates.

Lara sat next to me, again in a proper, red short-sleeved blouse, her blond hair piled in a bun on top of her head. She had dark circles under her eyes and a few flecks of purple paint on her face and hands. “Reawaken our vaginas? The way Jerry’s after me, mine hardly has any time to sleep,” she muttered, although not unhappily.

On the other couch, Caroline, whose eye seemed to be taking a break tonight, with no winking, laughed. She wore a jean skirt, a blue T-shirt, and white sandals. She had brought with her an enormous bouquet of flowers for each of us. Caroline was always, always giving.

I thought about all the times that I hadn’t given, and should have. The neighbors who were kind to me, the old lady across the hall in my apartment building, the people I worked with, my two ex-friends that Robert had made me dump. All had reached out a hand. Some had tried to warn me about Robert. They all deserved a great big bouquet, but I had never given them one, being too wrapped up in my own problems to reach back.

I felt like crying, but I sucked it up. What a rotten person I am.

“I really don’t think anyone wants to see me half-naked, Lydia,” Katie said. “I don’t even want to see my own butt.” She wore an overly large red sweatshirt and baggy jeans. Her mermaid hair was swept back into a ponytail like a mermaid tail.

“Nonsense!” Lydia bellowed. “It’s men who have made us embarrassed about ourselves. A woman’s worth should not be judged by her bodily curves and valleys! That’s what men have done to us!” She held up both fingers in the air, giving us the signal. “Remember!”

“Men are pricks!” Caroline, Lara, Katie, and I yelled back in unison. Soon we would probably have secret handshakes and rituals. Maybe we would sacrifice a man on a spit one night. I could think of one who would burn really well.

“A woman’s form is merely what we’ve been given to get through this life,” said Aunt Lydia.

“I think I know my vagina as well as I want to know it,” Lara said. “It doesn’t bother me, and I don’t bother it. We exist separately except when I have to pee or have sex with Jerry.”