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What did he know about me? Me, like a fly caught in Papa’s sticky web of lies, spinning round and round me, wrapping me in a cocoon so my life could be drained dry of pleasure. I threw my arms wide and screamed at the sky, at God, at the wind that rose up and tore at my hair and whipped my skirt wildly. The wind screamed back and came at me more forcefully, so fierce I felt I might fall. I yelled again, defying it to harm me. Nobody, nothing was ever going to tell me what to do, or what not to do, not ever again would I believe anyone but myself!
Suddenly my arm was seized. I was whipped around by Arden. I struck at him with both fists, battering his face, his chest, though as easily as Papa had, he caught both my hands in his and perhaps he might have dragged me back to the house—but fate was with me this time. He lost his footing and let go of my hands. I was free to run on.
The white marble headstones of the Whitefern cemetery came into view, stark against the gloomy, menacing sky. Lightning flashes in the distance heralded a big storm. Deep and ominous thunder grumbled beyond the treetops near the village church steeple. I was terrified of storms when I was outside Whitefern. Out here, God help me, for He hadn’t helped her, and probably wouldn’t help me, either.
Terrified, yet needing to find the truth, I whirled about and began to search for something to dig with. Why hadn’t I thought to bring a shovel? Where did the person who tended the graves leave his equipment? Somewhere I had to find something for digging.
Our family plot consisted of about one-half acre that was enclosed within a low crumbling brick wall with four entranceways. Red ivy crept along those walls, trying to choke the life from the masonry. Even in the winters when Papa had forced us to come here at least once a week, preferably on Sundays, rain or shine, sick or not, it had been a dreary, bleak place, with the trees clawing at the sky with black bony fingers. Now in September, when the trees were brilliant elsewhere, in the cemetery the leaves chased along dry and brown on the ground, sounding like ghosts tripping lightly back to their graves.
Stopping to look around, I began to tremble. I saw the grave of my mother, of Aunt Ellsbeth, and Billie. There was a space next to my mother’s grave where one day my father would lie, and beside him was the grave of the First and Best Audrina. Irresistibly she’d drawn me here. Inside her coffin she was now calling to me, laughing at me, telling me in all ways possible that I’d never equal her in beauty, in charm, in intelligence, and that her “gifts” were hers alone and never would she relinquish one to save me from being ordinary.
It was her tombstone that glittered the most. Rising up tall and slender and graceful, like a young girl itself, that single tombstone seemed brighter than all the others, catching all the ghostly light there was in the cemetery.
I told myself that we always saw what we wanted to see, and that was all. Nothing to be afraid of, nothing. Stiffening my resolve, I strode straight to that headstone.
How many times had I stood right where I was standing now and hated her? “And here is the grave of my beloved,” I imagined Papa intoning as I hesitated. “Here my first daughter sleeps in hallowed ground. In her place by my side, when the good Lord sees fit to take me.”
Oh! No more, no more! I fell on my knees and began to paw at the dying grass with my bare hands. My nails broke; soon my fingers were sore and bleeding. Still I dug on and on; at long last, I had to know the truth.
“Stop that!” roared Arden, rushing into the cemetery. He ran to pull me to my feet. Then he had to wrestle me to keep me from falling again to the ground and doing what I felt I had to do. “What the devil is wrong with you?” he shouted. “Why are you clawing at that grave?”
“I’ve got to see her!” I screamed. He looked at me as if I were crazy. I felt crazy.
The wind whipped up into a real gale. It tore more frantically at my hair, at my clothes. Frenzied, it beat the limbs of the trees so that they snapped almost in my face. Arden had me by my waist, trying to wrestle me into submission, when out of the sky came a deluge of hail pelleting down on both of us with stinging force.
“Audrina, you are hysterical!” he bellowed at me, sounding like Papa. “There isn’t any body down there!”
I screamed back, the wind deafening us both so we had to shout, even though our faces were only inches apart. “How would you know? Papa lies, you know that! He’ll say anything, do anything to keep me tied to him!”
Appearing to consider that briefly, Arden then shook his head before he shook me ag
ain. “You’re talking nonsense!” he shouted. “Stop behaving like this! There is nobody in that grave! There isn’t any older sister and now you have to face up to that!”
Wild-eyed, I stared at him. There had to be the first dead Audrina, otherwise my whole life would be a lie. I screamed again and fought him, determined to defeat him. Determined, too, that I would dig down into the grave and drag out her “gifted” remains. Yes, I told myself as I struggled with Arden, Papa was a liar, a cheat and a thief. How could anyone believe anything he said? He had constructed my whole life on lies.
My foot slipped in the mud then. Arden tried to keep me from falling. Instead, we both tumbled to the ground. Still I fought on, kicking, scratching, bucking and trying to do what that other Audrina hadn’t been able to do when she was nine. Hurt him!
Arden fell flat upon me, spreading his arms to pin mine to the earth. His legs twined around my ankles so I couldn’t even kick. His face hovered over mine, taking me back to her day when Spiderlegs had tried to kiss her in the woods against her will. I butted my head up with such force against his jaw that he swore when his teeth bit through his lower lip.
Blood on his face now—like it had been on theirs.
Rain beat down on my face. Rivulets streamed off him and onto me. I flashed in and out of that day in the woods, seeing him as Spencer Longtree… seeing him as all three of those boys, seeing him as every boy or man who’d ever raped a girl or woman—and this time for the First Audrina, for every woman since time began, I was going to get even and win.
I heard the rip of my blouse as I fought. I felt my violet skirt ride up to my hips, but I only cared about my revenge! Blood from my scratches streaked his face, too, and the wind was in his hair and in mine. All around us beat the fury of nature gone insane, driving us both into more and more violence.
He slapped me twice. Like Papa had slapped Momma for the least little thing. He’d never done anything like that before. It made me even angrier, but I never felt the pain. I hit him back. He grabbed my hands again, seeming to realize that he couldn’t risk letting go of my wrists again.
“Stop it! Stop it!” screamed Arden above the shrieking wind. “I’m not going to let you do this to me, or to yourself. Audrina, if you have to see what’s in that grave, I’ll run back to the house for a shovel. Look at your hands, your poor, poor hands.”
Already he had my hands captured, but even so I tugged them free again, wanting to rake his eyes from his skull. Then he had them again and was pressing my filthy hands to his lips as his eyes turned soft and gazed down into the fury of mine. “You lie there, glaring hatred up at me, and all I can think is how much I love you. Haven’t you had revenge enough? What else do you want to do to me?”
“Shame you, hurt you, like you shamed and hurt me!”
“All right, go ahead!” He released my hands and crouched above me, putting his hands behind his back. “Go ahead,” he yelled when I hesitated. “Do what you want to. Use those ragged, dirty nails on my face, and jam your thumbs into my eyes, and maybe when I’m blind you’ll be satisfied!”
I slapped him repeatedly with my open palm, first with one hand and then with the other. He winced as his head was rocked from side to side from the force of my hard blows. My strength seemed that of a man from all the rage I felt. Adrenaline pumped through my body as I screamed and hit at him. “You beast! You cowardly brute, let me go! Go back to Vera—she’s the one who deserves you!”
As fiercely angry as I was, his amber eyes seemed to sizzle as they blazed down at me. Above us the sky split apart. Bolts of lightning zig-zagged downward and struck a giant oak that must have sent its roots into every Whitefern buried in this cemetery. The tree split open and fell with a tremendous crash just a few feet away, then began to burn.
