The First Audrina
.
Out into the stormy, threatening afternoon I ran
to escape Whitefern. I ran to escape Papa, Arden, Sylvia, Vera, and, most of all, Iran to escape the ghost of that First Audrina, who was now trying to tell me I didn't exist at all.
The rape had happened to her, not me! I sped like a crazy woman, afraid all her memories were chasing after me, wanting to jump into my brain and fill all the empty Swiss cheese holes with her terror.
I ran, trying to run fast enough and far enough to escape what I was, to escape everything that had tormented me most of my life. Lies, lies, running to where they couldn't exist, and at the same time not knowing where I was going to find such a place.
Behind me I heard Arden call my name --but that was her name, too! Nothing was my very own.
"Audrina, wait! Please stop running!"
I couldn't stop. It was as if I were a springwound toy, twisted for years and years until now finally I had to let go or break.
"Come back!" Arden called. "Look at the sky!" He sounded desperate. "Audrina, come back! You're not well! Stop acting crazy!"
Crazy, was he telling me I was crazy?
"Darling," he gasped as he continued to chase me, sounding almost as panicked as I felt, "nothing can be as bad as you think."
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 again. "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 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 White-fern buried in this cemetery. The tree split open and fell with a tremendous crash just a few feet away, then began to burn.
We didn't even turn our heads to watch the giant die. I kept on beating on his face and chest with my fists, which were raw and bleeding and beginning to weaken and hurt. Appearing so wild now, completely out of himself, Arden ruthlessly threw his weight flat down on me again, almost burying me in the soft and mushy ground. My arching back again tried to throw him off, but I was tiring. He cursed as I'd never heard him curse before, then lunged to crush his lips down on mine. I turned my head to the right, then the left, then right again, but try as I would, I couldn't escape the brutal kiss that bruised my lips and caused my teeth to bite down into the tender flesh inside my mouth.
Then his ravishing hand was inside my torn blouse, unfastening my front-hook bra. Seeing, his animal lust made me want to kill him. I writhed, twisted, turned and screamed as his hands ripped off my blouse and bra and threw them both away. In the end, every conflict between a man and woman came down to this. I hated him! Hated him with such a passion I wanted to kill him.
Even as I fought him, something just as ravenous as what had hold of him betrayed me and caught fire. I fought on, but between my blows I responded to his kisses, parting my lips even as my fists stopped flailing, and my arms suddenly grabbed him and drew his head down to mine. I bit his lip, daring him to draw away, but he kept on with that kiss until I, too, was kissing back, stroking him, loving and hating him, ripping off his wet clothes, too, until we were both naked on the grave of my dead sister.
In his arms, on that grave, while the storm beat into a wild crescendo, I surrendered to the greatest passion of my life. Not sweet, tender loving as it had been that one time, but brutal passion that devoured and demanded. Gasping and panting, I came back to reality time and time again to find myself jerking with one orgasm after another. Then he rolled off and came at me in a different way, making me into the animal he seemed. His hands reached beneath me and cupped my swollen breasts. He moaned.
Then it was over and we were both locked in each other's embrace. Even so, we kept kissing, and I returned kiss for kiss, as if we hadn't had enough and would do it all over again and never stop until we were both dead.
On shimmering hot waves of smoldering desire to do it all over again, out here in the storm when the world could end any second and no sin would matter, I drifted back to being me. Furious to find I'd lost
again. I hadn't meant to surrender. -
"
-
I
-
"I won't leave this place until I see her body, s
-
aid as I rose to my feet and began to pull on my sopping wet, filthy, torn clothing . . . like hers, just like hers . . .
"If that's what you want and need to convince you," he said in an angry way, "I'll run back to the house and get a shovel--but wait until I'm back!"
Zipping his trousers as he ran off, Arden soon disappeared into the day that had turned into night. Perhaps it was six o'clock and twilight should have had the sky full of vibrant colors, but the night was black as tar, and the storm raged on full force, and I didn't seek any shelter, just fell flat on the ground and cried.
In what seemed only a few minutes, Arden was back. He yelled at me to get out of the way, then put his foot on the spade and savagely shoveled down into the soggy earth. He heaved and panted as he threw out shovelfuls of dirt. Then he was gasping, "This ground is only six feet above sea level. The law insists on a concrete burial vault . . . so I should be hitting it soon."
The rain had me almost blind. I crawled closer to where I could look down and see
her
vault. On and on Arden dug, until there was water in the deep hole. On my knees on the very edge, the mud began to slide. I yelped and grabbed for something to cling to as I slipped, unable to stop my momentum. Arden yelled, "Get back!" just as I fell on top of him and both of us slid down into her empty grave
.
Bleakly I stared down into his eyes. "Arden. . . does this mean I really am the First, the Best Audrina?"
Sorrow was in his deep voice. "Yes, darling." He threw out the shovel and embraced me. "Your father didn't lie. He told you the truth."
All the strength I'd felt before vanished. I went limp in his arms, drowning in the realization that it had been me who had been gang-raped when I was nine years old, and my entire family--Momma, Papa, Aunt Ellsbeth and even Vera--had connived to deceive me. What did they think I was, a weakling who couldn't cope? Putting me in that damned rocking chair to gain peace and contentment, to find that special something they had called her "gift" when all along it had been me? I was the First, the Best Audrina, and to this grave they'd brought me, and forced me to put flowers into the urn that was really mine. Oh, God, they were the ones who were crazy!
.