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“You won’t hurt Momma?” I held my ground and waited for an answer, though he took a step forward.
“Of course I won’t hurt Momma.” Sarcasm was in his voice. “If I hit her and hurt her, then I’d have to pay her doctor’s bills, wouldn’t I? My son is inside her, and I am thinking of him.”
Weakly my mother sat up to call me to her. Her arms opened as I approached. Her kisses felt wet on my face. “Do as your father says, darling. He won’t hurt me. He’s never really hurt me—in physical ways.”
Undecided, I looked from her to Papa as he shoved Vera out of the room, delivering a hard slap to her bottom as he did. Then he turned to me. I, too, feared a slap, but he took me into his embrace. “I’m sorry I woke you up. When I drink too much I look in the mirrors and see a fool who doesn’t know when to quit, and then I want to punish someone because I’ve failed myself.”
I didn’t understand any of that.
“Everything will be just fine. The party is over.” There was a sob in his voice, pain in his eyes, shame, too. “Go back to bed and forget all you heard and saw here. I love you and I love your mother, and tonight has seen the last of my parties. No more, ever.”
I lay on my bed torn with doubts about men, about marriage. I decided that night I’d never marry, not in one million years, not when all men could be like Papa, wonderful and terrible. Deceitful and lovable and cruel even when he loved, wielding the belt in private, screaming abuse, criticizing, stealing self-confidence and instilling self-loathing and a deep sense of shame for just being female.
Perhaps Aunt Ellsbeth was right. Men were king of the mountains, king of the woods, king of the home and office and everywhere—just because they were male.
The Nightmare in Daylight
That night when finally I fell into sleep I tossed and fretted and dreamed awful things, but I didn’t dare whimper or scream for fear Papa would come flying into my room to question me.
From now on, no matter what went wrong in my life, I’d handle it all by myself. How could I forgive him even one slap on my mother’s face?
Confusion was a daily state of mind for me, so why should I feel so depressed and disappointed by someone I loved when I’d known all along I could hate him, too? Baffled by my own contrariness, I somehow managed to slip into a light dream tortured by horrible visions of bony people ambling over a frail bridge into nowhere.
I willed myself to wake up and found tears had wet my pillow. I suspected the day would give me little pleasure, and the tears I’d cried without knowing would be tears for a very good reason.
Depression hung about me at dawn while I bathed, dressed and quietly crept down the stairs. The house was full of gloom; no sunlight came through the stained-glass windows. I didn’t have to step over the colors, but I wished the colors back to make this day seem brighter and more ordinary. One glance out of a kitchen window showed me a murky dark sky that threatened rain. Morning mists hung heavy over the River Lyle. Distant foghorns sounded sad and mournful, and far away ships putting out to sea sent back melancholy goodbyes. The seagulls that always hung over the place where Momma fed the ducks and geese could be heard but not seen. Ghostly and muffled their shrill, plaintive cries came to me and tickled goose bumps on my arms. On a day like this only awful things would happen.
Send out the sun, God, send out the light. It’s my ninth birthday, God, and on this day the First and Best Audrina died in the woods.
I wanted the fog to lift, to tell me this birthday of mine was not foreboding terrible things ahead just because it was so dreary. I stood near the back stairs waiting to hear my mother’s footfalls, or the sweet way she’d hum to herself as she dressed and moved about upstairs, her pretty satin mules clickity-clacking where the floors weren’t covered by rugs. Hurry up and come down, Momma, I need to see you. She’d take away my fears.
I left the kitchen, which seemed so bleak without Momma moving around in there, and went into the formal dining room. All its twenty chairs were lined up along a huge rectangular table. That table made a wonderful dancing floor when no one was around, and often I took off my shoes to just slide up there. But today the room was dreary and hardly a place for dancing. No one had pulled open the heavy green draperies to let in some light. Always Momma did that as soon as she reached the first floor. When I opened the draperies an
d looked around, the cheeriest room in the house still looked as grim as the others.
Somewhere there had to be a calendar to mark with a red circle this ninth birthday of mine. But I shouldn’t want a red circle, for this had been her birthday, too. On this day she would have been eighteen years old. How young Momma must have been when she married Papa. Looking out the window, I saw the first few drops of rain begin to fall. Oh, dear God, did it always rain on September the ninth?
Work. Aunt Ellsbeth was always saying that when she was working she didn’t have time to worry about anything. That’s what I’d do. I’d fry the bacon, whip the eggs, make the omelettes, scrape the dishes after the meal, and Momma could sit and feel pleased about how well she’d trained me. If only Aunt Ellsbeth and Vera would keep their mouths shut.
I’d no sooner put the frying pan on the gas range, very intent on starting the bacon off in a cold pan so it wouldn’t curl, when I was rudely shoved to one side. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?” barked my aunt.
“Helping Momma.”
Poor Aunt Ellsbeth couldn’t cook worth a darn. Nobody wanted her in the kitchen unless she was there to scrub the floor or clean the windows.
“What nasty thoughts are in your head?” barked my aunt, taking over the bacon. Right away she turned the heat up too high. She wouldn’t listen if I told her she should keep the flames low.
I pulled out what I’d need for five place settings, watching my aunt as I did. A cup slipped from my hand and fell to break on the floor. I stood there frozen. It was Papa’s favorite coffee mug. The only one he wanted to drink from. Now he’d have another reason to be angry with me.
My aunt threw me a disdainful glance. “Now look what you’ve done. You’d be a bigger help if you stayed out of the kitchen. That coffee mug was the last of a set given to your parents as a wedding gift. He’s going to blow when he knows what you’ve done.”
“What’s idiot Audrina done this time?” asked Vera, limping into the kitchen, falling into a chair and putting her arms on the table so she could rest her head on them. “I’m still sleepy. This is the noisiest house; you can’t ever get enough sleep.”
Setting the table was the one thing I thought I could do correctly, and now my aunt was shouting something about using too many plates. “Three place settings, girl, that will be enough.”
I turned to stare at her. “Why only three?”
She kept right on turning over the bacon. “Your mother’s contractions began just before dawn. It seems all her children have to come just when I’ve finally fallen asleep.”
