Into the Garden (5 page)

Almost a half hour later, Jade nudged me.
"We're breaking it up," she said. "Star's got to get back to help her granny and Misty promised to go to the movies with her mother tonight?'
I sat up quickly. My face felt so stiff I thought it might crack.
"Ow," I said grimacing.
"Didn't you put on any sunblock?" Jade asked.
"No," I said.
"Brother. Okay, I have something that will help a little, a skin cream especially for after sun. There are some benefits to having a mother who heads a cosmetic company."
"Can you get me this great new lipstick?" Misty asked as we started back for the house. "The one that makes your lips look like neon lights at night?"
"Absolutely. I have a few tubes. I can get whatever color you want."
Misty squealed with delight.
"Aren't we lucky to have each other," she cried.
As I dried my hair in Jade's bathroom, she made comments about how I could improve my looks. I stared at myself in her vanity mirror and wondered if it was possible for me to even resemble any of them in terms of being attractive. Maybe I could, I thought. Maybe I could be a lot more like them than I had ever hoped.
Before I knew it, it was time to leave and the limousine was waiting for us in front of the house. Misty had to be dropped off first because she was the closest. The driver then decided I would be next.
"The same corner?" he asked.
"No," I said, and gave him my address.
"That a girl," Star told me. "Once she sees you're going to be your own person, she'll back off."
"I don't know," I said, unable to hide my worry. It was one thing to act so brave in front of her and the others, but to face Geraldine when she was furious ...I wasn't sure. She had a way of turning her eyes into gray, cold marbles and swelling her shoulders until she looked like a bird of prey. She had never spared the rod when it came to discipline either. I
remembered one time when she hit me with the fireplace poker and gave me a black and blue mark across my right thigh that remained for nearly a month. And that was only because I had watched something on television she had expressly told me not to watch!
As the limousine drew closer, I felt my insides tighten and tangle like a rusty old chain. It was actually hard to take a deep breath. My ribs seemed fragile enough to crack.
"Remember," Star said, "you've got rights. If you need help, you just call one of us. Okay?"
I nodded as the car pulled to the curb.
"So long. I had a great time," I told her. "Say hello to your granny for me."
"Don't worry, everything will be okay," she said and I closed the door. I stood there and watched the limousine drive off. Then I took a deep breath and headed for my front door.
When I opened the door, I was struck by the deep silence. There was no radio playing old music, no vacuum cleaner going, no water running. Perhaps Geraldine fell asleep in her chair, I thought as I stepped through the doorway.
The moment I crossed the threshold, I was hit with the straw end of a broom right across the back of my head. It caught me by surprise and off-balance, so that I fell forward, barely getting my hands out in time to stop myself from landing smack on my face.
Another swipe of the broom, however, caught me on the rear and I did sprawl forward.
"How dare you disobey me like this? How dare you!" she screamed. She hit me again, raising and lowering the broom with swift, sharp blows across my legs, my back, and my shoulders before I could crawl forward fast enough and get to my feet, screaming and covering my head.
"Stop!"
"Get up to your room. Get up there. I saw you get out of the limousine. Don't even try to lie to me."
She stood with the broom up on her shoulder like a baseball bat, her face flushed red, her eyes like two hot coals now.
"Look at your face, too. What were you doing there? Why are you so sunburned?"
"We went swimming," I said.
"Swimming? You don't know how to swim. Were there boys there, too?"
"No, no, it was just us and the girls taught me."
"Liar, filthy liar. After all I've been through with you to have you do this now. My heart is cracking," she said, shaking her head. She relaxed her shoulders and brought the broom around to serve as more of a cane than a rod. "Why did you disobey me? Why?"
"I want to have friends. They're my friends."
"Water seeks the lowest level," she muttered. "They're your kind now, is that it? All I've done with you, tried to teach you is wiped out, right? It's in the genes. It's in you. You're her all over again. I might as well give you over to Satan himself."
"My girlfriends are not bad. They're good. They're sensitive and concerned and we care about each other, more than our own families care about us. It's nothing like you think."
She whipped her eyes at me and filled them with such cold accusation, I couldn't help but look away. That just confirmed whatever ugly thoughts bad blossomed like black weeds in her garden of fear and loathing.
"Get upstairs," she said. "You'll go without supper tonight."
"I don't care. I already ate," I muttered.
My angry words seemed to renew her energy. She lifted the broom again and started to swing it at me, but instead of backing up, I remembered Star's words of encouragement and stepped forward. Geraldine looked like she wanted to whip the skin off me, but I didn't retreat or cower as usual.
"Don't hit me again," I said firmly. "Stop it."
She froze.
I was holding my breath and even though my whole body was trembling, I held my ground. I glared at her, defiant, determined.
Then she shock her head, the tight, thin lines in her face softening.
"What's the use?" she asked herself as she lowered the broom. Her shoulders dropped like rocks in a pond. She sighed deeply, her body shuddering as if her heart had truly cracked. "You can't change what's been there since birth. It was foolish of me to even try, to ever hope."
"What's been there since birth? What are you talking about? Tell me!" I screamed.
She turned away as if I wasn't even there and headed toward the kitchen.
"I want to know more," I called after her. "I want to know the truth, all of it. I've got a right to know and you have to tell me."
She paused and looked back at me. I never saw her look so small and tired.
"You want to know the truth?" she asked, and laughed coldly. "The truth is you're truly your mother's daughter. That's the only truth that matters in this house."
She continued down the hallway.
"That's not enough. I want to know it all," I cried. She ignored me and went into the kitchen, closing the door behind her. I stood there a moment, my body shaking so much it made my teeth chatter. I embraced myself and took a deep breath. Then I went up to my room and closed my door behind me. A terrible silence rained down around me. I couldn't even hear her running water or clanging pots below. She was probably still fuming, standing there and staring at the kitchen door.
We were both shut up in our own nightmares, and lived in the same house filled with only horrid memories, I thought. Surviving them seemed to be all that mattered now. That was the only thing that really held us together. It certainly wasn't love.
Love probably never set foot on our doorstep, and if it had and come in, it would have looked around once and fled. Which was exactly what I felt like doing.

Geraldine didn't call me to dinner and I didn't leave my room until nearly nine o'clock. I knew she would either be listening to music, watching one of her television evangelist programs, or just dozing in her chair. I was surprised to discover she had gone up to bed. I welcomed the quiet and made myself a hot chocolate.

While I sat there, I thought about the way the girls had reacted to my secret and my ignorance concerning my past. Perhaps I should take Jade's assignment more seriously, I thought. I listened hard for the sounds of Geraldine moving about her room, but heard nothing. Then I rose, quietly put my cup and saucer into the dishwasher and went into the pantry. I turned on the light and looked up.

There was a storage area in a crawl space that was entered through a small square door in the ceiling of the pantry. On occasion I had heard Geraldine make references to it, but I couldn't recall ever seeing her open the little doorway and go up there for anything.

Now, I gazed up at it and considered. In no other room in the house, save my parents' bedroom, could anything like old documents, pictures, whatever, be stored. I had never gone into Geraldine's closets, of course, but my suspicions centered on the crawl space. We had a stepladder in the garage. I went out there and, as quietly as I could, began to bring it into the house. It was awkward going through doorways, and I knocked it against the doorjamb in the kitchen.

My heart stopped and started slowly as I listened hard for sounds that Geraldine might have heard something and gotten up to see. She often slept with an ear open for burglars because we had no alarm system. The house creaked as the ocean breezes whipped in from the sea, but I didn't hear any footsteps or any doors opening.

Feeling safe, I continued to the pantry, set up the ladder, and climbed to the ceiling. The crawl space door seemed stuck in place. As I suspected, it hadn't been opened for a very long time, maybe even years. It was difficult pushing on it without making any noise, and at one point, I almost slipped off the ladder.

Finally, the little door cracked open and gave way to my efforts. It had to be slid to the side. I practically inched it along, trying to keep the smallest sound muffled. When I looked up, I realized there was no light, so I had to go back down the ladder to a cabinet under the sink and get the flashlight. The batteries were dead. Everything in this house seemed to be conspiring against me, trying to prevent me from finding any trace of my own past. Fortunately, Geraldine's obsessive attention to household inventory paid off because there was a supply of fresh batteries in the drawers assigned to tools and hardware. I quickly got the flashlight working and returned to the ladder, practically tiptoeing my way up.

The beam of light revealed a wall of cobwebs on every side of the opening. The dust was so thick that it looked like a second layer of wood. But there, to my right, were several cartons tied up with thick string. None of them were labeled. Once again, I descended the ladder, this time to get a utility knife to cut the strings around the cartons. I went back up and, completely disregarding the cobwebs and dust, pulled myself into the crawl space and, on my hands and knees, approached the cartons.

I sat there for a moment, my whole body trembling, and listened once more to be sure I had not been discovered. It was very quiet. Even the creaking in the house seemed to have stopped as if the house itself was now holding its breath I brought the knife to the nearest carton and cut the strings. Then I opened the carton and directed the flashlight's beam into it.

Neatly packaged, each item wrapped in cellophane, were old toys, toys for a little girl: small dolls, doll's clothing, teacups and dishes, toy furniture and a dollhouse that had been carefully taken apart. I lifted each thing out of the carton carefully and inspected it. Someone had painted tears on the cheeks of some of the doll's faces. I could tell they were painted because the tears were un- even. The face of one doll was smashed in as though someone had taken a hammer to it.

Were these dolls once mine? None of them looked familiar. Were they Geraldine's? Why were they hidden away like this? It was as if someone's childhood was to be kept secret or buried forever.

I went to the carton on my right and cut the strings, again slowly opening it and shining the light down again to see items wrapped in cellophane, only this time, the box was full of clothing. I took one article out of its packaging and held it up. It was a light yellow dress for a toddler. I went to the next garment and the next, taking each out and inspecting it to discover the same thing: clothing for a very small child. They all looked new, never worn. Whose clothes were these? Mine? Geraldine's? Why were they all stored up here instead of being given away or even thrown away, which was what Geraldine usually did with old discarded things?

I turned and slid over to my left to open the next carton, cutting the strings faster and pulling up the lids. Here I found what I would call mementoes: snippets of pretty ribbons, jeweled combs, charm bracelets for a very tiny wrist, a pair of bronzed baby shoes, a cigar box full of old pictures, and a handpainted jewelry box that was also a music box. It didn't play anything when I opened it because it needed to be wound. I was happy about that. The music might have woken Geraldine. Everything was neatly wrapped in cellophane as well. Whose things were these?

With even more trepidation now, I turned to the last carton. I undid the strings and opened it slowly. On top was a baby's crib blanket with a scented soap placed on it. I took it out carefully and laid it aside. Underneath was a small stack of envelopes tied with thick rubber bands and nothing else. The rubber bands practically fell apart before I slipped them off. There was no address on the front of any of the envelopes, no name. They were originally pink, but time had faded them so they were a light cream color. All of them had been opened.

I took out the letter in the top envelope and unfolded it.
Dear Cathy,
it began, and I sucked in my breath. Who had written to me?
I know you won't read my letters until you are much older than you are now My daughter Geraldine has promised me that when you are old enough to understand, she will be sure to give you my letters. Also, by the time you are given them, you will, she assures me, be told the truth about your birth.
What a funny way for a mother to introduce herself to her own child, but that's what these letters are meant to do. All these years before you have these letters in your hands, you will have thought of me as your grandmother I can't begin to tell you what a strange feeling it has been and will continue to be for me to have you call me Grandmother and for me to pretend you are my granddaughter and not my daughter. I hope I can eventually get you to
understand why it had to be this way.
The most wonderful thing for a mother to do is give her daughter the benefit of her own experience and wisdom. It is really the only legacy that matters. I feel certain that money won't be a problem for you, so inheriting my jewelry or assuming the trust fund I have set aside to be given to you on your eighteenth birthday is just window dressing when it comes to the real things a mother can give a daughter.
Trust fund? I thought. Geraldine never mentioned any trust fund to me. When was she going to do that? I had only a year to go to my eighteenth birthday. I returned to the letter.
Let me begin by telling you the first honest thing since you have been given the truth about yourself I never had a good and happy marriage. I married for all the wrong reasons. My mother used to parade around me when I dressed for parties and chant, "Remember; sweetheart, it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is with a poor man." She had me believe that falling in love was something you had complete control oven and you could direct your deepest emotions in the direction you wanted, any time you wanted. She would laugh at the very idea that love happened miraculously, bells rang in your head or in your heart, that you could look across a room and see a perfect stranger and suddenly feel your very soul blossom with happiness. All that, she told me, was just poppycock. That was her favorite word for most things she denied or disbelieved: poppycock. It was her father's word. I hated it, hated to hear it, but I never said so to her face.
You couldn't have found a more obedient child I was brought up in a household that was probably closer to a little monarchy than anything else. My father was the king and my mother was the queen and I was merely one of their subjects. When one or the other made a pronouncement, it thundered with godly weight on my little shoulders. My father believed that fear comes first and then, almost as an afterthought, there was love. He wanted me to be afraid of him, and he got what he wanted.
All this is preparation for telling you why I did what you will have a hard time understanding ...why I gave you away. Oh, I suppose I didn't give you away as much as I shifted you to another place in our family. I knew I couldn't raise you as my daughter, yet I couldn't stand the thought of you living with complete strangers. I wanted to be able to see you when- ever I wanted to see you, as many times as I wanted. Pretending to be your grandmother gave me the opportunity to show love and affection for you, something I could never have done otherwise. I hope that I'm going to be able to do that for a long, long time and one day, after you have read my letters, I hope we can meet some- where, just the two of us, and I can hug you the way a mother should hug her daughter and you might learn to hug me as a daughter would hug her mother Maybe that's a fantasy. We don't realize how precious and how rare fantasies can become as we get older and are forced to admit to cold realities.
Another reason I gave you to Geraldine is that Geraldine has been a more obedient daughter to my husband and me than I was to my father and mother, and I knew she would do everything she was told to do as she was told to do it. I suppose my husband and I were no better than my parents, running our family just like the monarchy in which I was raised. At least, that was how we behaved toward each other
Geraldine is very different from me. She's more like my husband, but sometimes I think she's better off the way she is because I've suffered in ways she'll never experience. She has never truly loved and lost, not in the passionate sense of those words.
I have, and if you're reading this letter; you're probably old enough to conclude even before I tell you, that the man I loved, truly loved passionately, was your real father.
I'm looking at the clock now and I see the time it's taken me to write these thoughts. I'll have to stop for now The man you know as your grandfather is calling for me. We're on our way to one of his business dinners and they're always so important that we can't be a minute late.
I guess I should have started writing this earlier; but (and you might find this either amusing or interesting) I looked at myself in the mirror and I suddenly saw you. I saw myself in your face and 1 thought what if all this time goes by and we never look at each other truthfully? It put such a pang of fear in my heart that I sat right down and began writing.
Of course, I'll write again and again. For now, I'll have to hide this letter; just as I've had to hide my real feelings. My fingers tremble as I sign this.
Love, Mother
I sat there with the letter in my hands for a moment and then looked back over the other cartons. All these things must have been things she had given me, but I didn't recognize any of it. Geraldine kept them from me, I realized.
Surely, that was so, but why keep toys and blankets, combs and jewelry from me?
Suddenly, I heard a noise below, a loud clap of wood. My heart jumped. I turned and looked down through the crawl space door. My ladder! It was gone! I heard it being carried away.
"Mother!" I screamed. "Mother!"
She had taken the ladder back to the garage. A few minutes later, she appeared in the pantry. She was in her robe and slippers and she looked up at me.
"Why did you take away the ladder?"
"Who told you to go up there?" she replied instead.
"I wanted to see what was up here," I said. "How am I supposed to get down?"
"Since when do you go sneaking around our home like this? Since when do you go and do something without first asking me? tell you since when, since you started with that psychotherapist and those wicked girls. You go and disobey me and go swimming and who knows what, and then you come home and go snooping. You think that's all just some coincidence? Huh? I don't. I told you this would happen. I warned you."
"Bring back the ladder," I pleaded. "How am I supposed to get down from here?"
"You wanted to be up there. Be up there," she said, turning away.
"It's scary up here. I can't stay up here. Stop it," I shouted.
She paused in the doorway to look up at me.
"You made your bed for the night. Sleep in it," she said.
"Wait," I called. "What are these things? Why didn't you ever give me these letters?"
She turned again and without replying, put out the pantry lights and walked out, closing the pantry door be hind her.
"Mother!" I shouted, and then I looked down at the letter in my hands and screamed, "Geraldine!"
I waited, but she didn't return. Opening all the cartons and crawling about up in this tiny storage space had stirred the thick dust. It made me cough and sneeze and feel dirty all over. I leaned over the little doorway and directed the flashlight through the door. It looked to be at least ten feet to the floor. I'd have to lower myself carefully, hold on with my hands and then try to drop to my feet. How stupid. What did she think I would do, stay here until morning?
I put the letters back into the carton and closed it. Then I started to position myself at the top of the crawl space doorway. It was impossible to hold onto the flashlight at the same time. I debated dropping it to the floor below, but imagined it would break, so I decided to stuff it into my blouse. After I did that, I began to lower myself through the now very dark opening. My heart was thumping so hard, I thought I might lose my breath and fall. My fingers didn't seem strong enough to grip the sides. This is so crazy, I kept telling myself. Why did she do this?
I turned my body and with my legs shaking, continued to lower myself through the opening. With the full weight of my body on my hands and wrists, my fingers slipped badly and I felt splinters gouge into my skin I lost hold with my left hand, and my right just seemed to fly off the wood. Screaming, I fell downward and hit the floor awkwardly, my left foot hitting first, twisting under my body and getting caught under me. I actually heard the bone snap.
My head hit the floor hard enough to roll stars through my eyes and send a sharp ache down the back of neck and shoulders. I lost my breath, gasped, and pulled my left leg out from under me but I was so full of pain, I couldn't breathe fast enough. I must have blacked out for a few seconds or even a full minute. When my eyes opened again, I saw only darkness. My ankle seemed to have a mouth of its own and screamed pain up my leg.
"Mother!" I cried. "Help me!"
Crying, I pulled myself forward. I tried, but it wasn't possible to stand on my ankle I reached into my blouse and pulled out the flashlight. Then I dragged myself toward the door. Practically crawling and sliding through it, I braced myself on the kitchen counter and screamed again and again for her. The pain filled my eyes with hot tears that streaked down my cheeks.
Finally, the lights went on in the hallway. I heard her footsteps on the stairs and moments later, she appeared in the kitchen doorway, her hands on her hips, scowling.
"What are you howling about?"
"I fell," I cried. "I fell and I think I broke my ankles" She gazed down at my foot quickly.
"Nonsense," she said.
"No, it's not nonsense. I heard it crack. Why did you take away the ladder?" I shouted at her. "How could you do that? My foot feels like it's blowing up like a balloon."
She shook her head and went to the refrigerator.
"All you need is some ice on it," she said, without even looking at my foot.
She scooped out some cubes and put them in a plastic bag.
"Here," she said, thrusting it at me. "Put this on it and go to sleep. This is what comes of being disobedient. Maybe now you'll listen and stay away from those nasty girls who poisoned you."
She turned and started away.
"It's not just swollen, I tell you. It's broken. I heard it snap."
She didn't turn back.
"Let's see how it looks in the morning," I heard her say. "If you can't get upstairs, sleep on the sofa in the living room."
I heard her footsteps on the stairs and then all was quiet, except the ringing in my ears and the screams caught in my throat. Hopping and pulling myself along, I did make it to the living room where I flopped on the sofa. I pulled off my shoe and put the ice on my ankle, but it didn't relieve the pain. All night I moaned and cried until sometime before morning, I fell asleep. When I opened my eyes, she was standing over me, gazing down at my ankle. It was all purple and swollen.
"Maybe it is broken," she decided. "Sit up and I'll help you get into the car. I guess we'll have to go to the hospital emergency room. This is a fine thing, a fine way to start a new day," she muttered, "and all because you're associating with sick people."
I was in too much pain and too tired to argue with her. She let me lean on her as we made our way to the car. Once inside, I closed my eyes and leaned against the door. She muttered her stream of complaints all the way to the emergency room. When we arrived, she went inside first and an attendant brought out a wheelchair for me. It took almost an hour for anyone to look at me and then I was sent for X-rays and it took another two hours before the doctor came to see me. All the while Geraldine sat in the waiting room with me, shaking her head at the magazines displayed on tables around the room.
"What if a child comes in here? They could read or look at any of these. Just look at this picture of this actress in her nightgown. She might as well be naked. You can look right through it and see what she had for breakfast."
I was still in too much pain to really listen or reply, but I saw the way the other patients were gaping at her and listening to the things she said. They were all whispering to each other.
Finally, the nurse had me return to the examination room where the doctor had my X-rays up on the lighted screen.
"It's a fracture," he said. "Did you try to walk on this after you injured it?"
"Yes," I said.
"Hmm. Rotation is unstable," he said, examining my foot. "You'll need a long leg cast and you'll have to have frequent X-rays to avoid delayed discovery of disastrous displacement."
Geraldine groaned as if this was all happening to her instead of me.
"Doctors and medicine," she muttered.
"Pardon me?" the doctor said.
"Nothing," she mumbled, turning to me. "This is what you get being places you're not supposed to be."
"Oh. How did this happen?" he asked.
"I fell trying to get down from the attic," I lied.
He nodded.
"You'll be all right," he added, and called the nurse to start the preparations for my cast. After another three hours, we were on our way home and I had a cast and crutches. They had given me something for the pain, too, and I felt myself starting to drift in and out of sleep.
Either Geraldine finally stopped complaining about Doctor Marlowe, the girls, and me or I simply didn't hear her anymore. The medicine was kicking in and turning off my eyes, my ears, even my thoughts.
When we got home, she had to help me out of the car. Going up the stairs to my room was an ordeal, especially because I felt so bleary-eyed. She didn't have the strength to support me and I wobbled and made her scream. Somehow we managed, and I got into bed. Almost the moment my head hit the pillow, I was asleep, and when I woke up, I could see that it was nearly twilight. My stomach rumbled. I hadn't eaten anything all day. I groaned and started to sit up, forgetting the cast. It quickly reminded me this was not a dream.
As usual the door to my room was closed. I threw my leg and cast over the side of the bed and turned myself around, reaching for the crutches. After I caught my breath, I hobbled to the door and opened it.
"Mother!" I called. A moment later she was at the foot of the stairway.