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I stared up at the cracked white ceiling. The cracks zigzagged across, looking like threads pasted up there. Then I turned over and switched off the light. With the night sky now overcast and no lig
hts outside my window, it was pitch dark in my room. Even after my eyes grew used to it, I could barely make out the dresser and the window.
It was always hard to get used to a new place when we were traveling and moving from one town to another. First nights were scary, only then Jimmy and I had each other to comfort each other. Now, alone, couldn't help but listen to every creak in the antique wing of the old hotel and shudder. I had to get used to every sound until nothing surprised me.
Suddenly, though, I thought I heard someone crying. It was muffled, but it was clearly the sound of a woman crying. I listened hard and heard my grandmother's voice, too, although I couldn't make out any words. The crying stopped as suddenly as it had started.
Then the silence and the darkness became heavy and ominous. I strained to hear the sounds of the hotel, just so I would have the comfort that came from hearing other people's voices. I could hear them, but they seemed so distant, like voices on a radio far, far away, and they didn't make me feel any safer or any more comfortable. But after a while my exhaustion overcame my fear, and I fell asleep.
I had arrived at what was my real home, only I didn't feel any sense of belonging. How long, I wondered, would I be a stranger in my own house and to my own family?
My eyes snapped open when I heard someone at the door. For a moment I forgot where I was and what had happened. I expected to hear Fern cry out and see her bounce up and down impatiently in her crib. But instead, when I sat up, I confronted my grandmother. Her hair was brushed back as perfectly as it had been when I had first met her, and she was wearing a dark gray cotton skirt with a matching blouse and jacket. Pearl earrings dangled from her lobes, and she wore the same rings and watch. She smirked with disapproval.
"What is it?" I asked. The look on her face and the way she had burst in my room jumped my heart right up against my throat.
"I had a suspicion you were still in bed. Didn't I make clear what time you were to get up and dressed?" she asked sharply.
"I was very tired, but I didn't fall right asleep because I heard someone crying," I told her. She drew her shoulders up and made her eyes small.
"Nonsense. No one was crying. You were probably already asleep and dreaming."
"It wasn't a dream. I heard someone crying," I insisted.
"Must you always contradict me?" she snapped. "A young girl your age should learn when to speak and when to be quiet."
I bit down on my lower lip. I wanted to snap back at her. I wanted to demand she stop treating me this way, but fate had pulled me through a knothole and stretched me out thin and flat. I trembled. It was as if I had lost my voice and everything would be trapped forever inside me, even tears. She glanced at her watch.
"It’s seven," she said. "You must get dressed and go to the kitchen immediately if you want any breakfast. If any member of the staff wants breakfast, he or she has to eat it earlier than the guests. See to it that you get yourself up in the morning from now on," she commanded. "At your age, you shouldn't be dependent upon others to fulfill your responsibilities."
"I always get up early, and I always fulfill my responsibilities," I shot back at her. My anger finally exploded like a balloon filled with too much air. She stared a moment. I remained in bed, holding my blanket against my chest to keep down the pounding of my broken heart.
She studied me for a moment, and then her glance went to my little nightstand. Suddenly her face grew fiery red.
"Whose picture is that?" she demanded stepping forward.
"It's Momma," I said.
"You brought Sally Jean Longchamp's picture into my hotel and put it out for anyone to see?"
In a flash, far faster than I ever imagined someone as old as she could move, she seized my precious photograph.
"How dare you bring this here?"
"No!" I cried, but in an instant she tore it in two. "That was my picture, my only picture!" I cried through my tears. She pulled herself up to her full height.
"These people were kidnappers, child-stealers, thieves. I told you," she said through her clenched teeth, her lips pulled back until they were pencil thin, "I don't want any contact with them. Wipe them from your memory."
She threw Momma's picture into the small wastebasket. "Be in the kitchen in ten minutes. The family must set a good example for the staff," she added and stepped back out, closing the door as she did so.
The tears flowed down my cheeks.
Why was my grandmother being so horrible to me? Why couldn't she see the pain I was in having been ripped from the family I thought was mine? Why wasn't I given a little time to adjust to a new home and a new life? All she could do was treat me as if I were someone who had been brought up to be wild and useless. It made me furious. I hated this place; I hated being here.
I got up and quickly got dressed in a pair of jeans and a blouse. Not thinking about anything else but getting away from this horrible place, I ran out of my room and out the side entrance. I didn't care about breakfast; I didn't care about being late for my new work. All I could think of was my grandmother's hateful eyes.
I walked on, my head down, not caring where I ended up. I could walk off a cliff, for all I cared. After a while I did look up, however, and found myself standing in front of a tall, stone archway. The words carved into it read CUTLER'S COVE CEMETERY. How appropriate, I thought. I felt as though I'd rather be dead.
I gazed through the dark portal at the stones gleaming like so many bones in the morning sunlight and found myself drawn in like someone who had been hypnotized. I discovered a path to the right and walked down it slowly. It was a well-cared-for cemetery, with the grass neatly cut and trimmed and the flowers well weeded. Before long I found the Cutler section and looked upon my ancestors' stones: the graves of the people who had to be my great-grandfather and great-grandmother, aunts and uncles, cousins. There was a large monument marking my grandfather's grave, and right behind that and to the right was a very small stone.
