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“No!” snapped my aunt. “You don’t know how to do anything right, and in the end you only make more work. Why the devil didn’t
you give Vera the paper dolls when she asked for them?”
“Because she’d only tear them up.”
My aunt snorted, glared at me, at my mother, whose arms were around me, and then she tugged the vacuum down the hall and disappeared.
“Momma,” I whispered, “why does Vera always lie? She told Papa I pushed her down the stairs, but I wasn’t even near her. I was in the attic, hiding the dolls, while she was coming down the stairs. She fell in school, and even then she said I pushed her. Momma, why would she say that when I’ve never been to school? Why can’t I go to school? Did the First Audrina go to school?”
“Yes, of course she went,” said Momma, sounding as if a frog had caught in her throat. “Vera is a very unhappy girl, and that’s why she lies. Her mother gives her very little attention, and Vera knows you receive a great deal. But it’s hard to love such a mean, hateful girl, although we all try our best. There’s a cruel streak in Vera that worries me greatly. I’m so afraid she’ll do something to hurt you, to hurt us all.” Her lovely violet eyes stared off into space. “It’s too bad your aunt didn’t stay away. We didn’t need her and Vera to complicate our lives more.”
“How old is Vera, Momma?”
“How old has she told you she is?”
“Sometimes Vera says she’s ten, sometimes she says she’s twelve, and sometimes she’s sixteen, or twenty. Momma, she laughs like she’s mocking me … because I really don’t know how old I am.”
“Of course you know you are seven. Haven’t we told you that over and over again?”
“But I can’t remember my seventh birthday. Did you give me a birthday party? Does Vera have birthday parties? I can’t remember one.”
“Vera is three years older than you are,” said Momma quickly. “We can’t afford to have birthday parties anymore. Not because we can’t spend the money—but you know why birthday parties bring back tragic memories. Neither your father nor I can bear to think of birthday parties anymore, so we all stopped having birthdays and have chosen to stay the age we like best. I’m going to stay thirty-two.” She giggled and kissed me again. “That’s a lovely age to be, not too young and not too old.”
But I was serious and sick of evasions. “Then Vera didn’t know my dead sister, did she? She says she did, but how could she have when she’s only three years older than me?”
Again my mother looked distressed. “In a way she did know her. You see, we’ve talked so much about her. Perhaps we talk too much about her.”
And so it went, as always, evasions but no revelations, at least not the kind I really wanted, the kind I could believe in.
“When can I go to school?” I asked.
“Someday,” murmured Momma, “someday soon …”
“But Momma,” I persisted, following her into the kitchen and helping her chop vegetables for the salad, “I don’t fall and break my bones like Vera. So I’d be safer in school than she is.”
“No, you don’t fall,” she said in a tight voice. “I suppose I should be grateful for that—but you have other ways of hurting yourself, don’t you?”
Did I?
Papa’s Dream
Before darkness could steal the last rosy glow of dusk, Papa was home from the hospital and carrying Vera into the Roman Revival Salon. As if Vera weighed only a feather, even with a hip-length cast on her left leg, and a fresh cast on her left arm, too, Papa tenderly deposited Vera on the purple velvet couch that my mother loved to keep for herself. Vera appeared very happy with the large box of chocolates she’d half eaten on her ride home from the hospital. She didn’t offer the box to me, though I stood there longing to have just one. Then I saw that Papa had also bought her a new jigsaw puzzle to put together with her good right arm. “It’s all right, honey,” he said to me. “I brought you chocolates and a puzzle too. But you should be grateful you don’t have to fall and break your bones just to gain some attention.”
Immediately Vera threw away her puzzle and shoved the chocolates from the table to the floor. “Now, now,” soothed Papa, picking up the boxes and handing them back to her. “Your puzzle is very large, Audrina’s is very small. You have a two-pound box of candy. Audrina’s box weighs only one pound.”
Happy again, Vera smirked my way. “Thank you, Papa. You’re so good to me.” She stretched her arms forth, wanting him to kiss her. I cringed inside, hating her for calling him Papa, when he wasn’t her father, but mine. I resented the kiss he put on her cheek, resented, too, that huge box of candy, that larger puzzle that had prettier colors than the one Papa gave me.
Unable to bear watching longer, I wandered away to sit on the back veranda and stare at the moon that was coming up over the dark water. It was a quarter moon, what Papa called a horned moon, and I thought I could see the profile of the man in the moon, old and withered looking. The wind through the summer leaves had a lonesome sound, telling me that soon the leaves would die, and winter would come, and I hadn’t enjoyed summer at all. I had vague memories of happier, hotter summers, and yet I couldn’t pull them out to clearly view them. I put a round piece of chocolate in my mouth, even though we had yet to eat dinner. This August seemed more like October, really it did.
As if he heard me calling, Papa came to sit next to me. He sniffed the wind as he always did, an old habit, he’d told me many times, left over from his days in the Navy.
“Papa, why are the geese flying south when it’s summer? I thought they only flew south in late autumn.”
“I guess the geese know more about the weather than we do, and they’re trying to tell us something.” His hand lightly brushed over my hair.
I started to put another piece of candy in my mouth when he said, “Don’t eat but one of those.” His voice was softer when he spoke to me, kinder, as if my sensitivities were as eggshell fragile as Vera’s bones. “I saw you looking jealous when I kissed Vera. You resented the gifts I gave her. Somebody has to pamper her when she’s suffering. And you know only you are the light of my life, the heart of my heart.”
“You loved the First Audrina better,” I choked. “I’m never gonna catch her gift, Papa, no matter how many times I rock in that chair. Why do I have to have her gift? Why can’t you take me like I am?”
