Authors: Cynthia Tottleben
But he was dead, too. Had I passed at the same moment? I’d been numb for so long that sometimes I had difficulty telling whether or not my veins held anything even slightly warm. What a misfortune that I hadn’t been able to hold him as his flame was snuffed and instead could barely even scream beneath the gag in my mouth. Was it my fault he was gone? Had the family curse somehow brought it on?
“How was he?”
“It’s not like we had a long conversation. I was checking on your mother, and he was helping her up from the couch. I said hello, he smiled and that was it.”
That was it? Fifteen years later and this was all she’d give me?
“Listen, Joan, you need to pull yourself together. Think of your life as a business. These other people, your employees. Would you stand for their shenanigans? Would it be beneficial to your bottom line if you allowed personal feelings and personality to supersede execution, delivery, profit?”
“No.” Aunt Evelyn had a valid point. “I wouldn’t.”
“There you go. It’s a business. If you ran a bakery and had an infestation of mice, would you just lock the mice up in the basement and wait to see what happened or would you eradicate them?”
“I’d call an exterminator.”
“But what if
you
are the exterminator?”
A point I’d never truly considered.
“But she isn’t a mouse.” I argued. “She’s actually a pretty good girl.”
This truth about you was one of the greatest secrets I hid, even from myself. As much as I deplored having you as a child, you would have made another mother happy.
“She’s the devil’s spawn! Why can’t you see that?” The ax slipped from Evelyn’s hand. I jumped back, the blade barely missing my foot, and watched with horror as it embedded itself in the linoleum, the handle sticking out of the floor like a rudimentary grave marker.
“I do see it. She’s destroyed my life. She came to this world covered in the blood of my husband. But….” I couldn’t finish. I didn’t want Evelyn to badger me for my weakness.
“There is no room for your quivering! There are no
if
s,
and
s or
but
s when it comes to family business!”
“But each time I’ve tried to…take care of her…it’s like my mother steps in and stops me. My gut screams that it is the worst thing I could ever do. I look at Lucy and see nothing but a white light surrounding her and can’t take that final step. What if you’re wrong? What if she’s good inside? What if this whole…legend…is nothing but that? Or if it is true, what if Lucy turns it around? Have you ever thought of that? Maybe she’s the one to stop the evil and take the stand for righteousness!” I found myself rising at the end of my outburst, towering over my aunt, my fists against the table.
“Feel better now?” Evelyn dismissed me with a wave of her hand.
“A bit.” The good thoughts of Alex and my mother were slipping away. The negativity was fogging back into my soul.
“Do you think that all the mothers before you were heartless fiends bent on killing their own children?”
“I don’t know what to think.” I was nothing if not honest.
“They loved their girls, too! Remember the Aussies. Both families. Do you think that mother wanted to give her daughter to the dingos? But when they were all sitting with her, and that little imp was smiling, giving the tell-tale sign with her eye, do you think that her mother said, ‘Yay! Now I finally get to live out my dreams and get to slash the throat of my baby and let these wild dogs ravage her flesh’? Do you? Really?”
“No.”
“And Easter Sunday in Norway? Seventeen people killed before the mother put an end to the horror? Do you think that while cooking the ham for dinner, she was mulling over how to destroy her own flesh?”
“No.” I was getting burnt out on her lessons.
“But they did. All of these women did. All of them, proving their honor and faith and dedication to the blood line. Without hesitation.”
“Lucy has never hurt a soul.” Once again I defended you. Such an odd stance for me to take.
“Not yet. But her role is different, isn’t it? She’s not just a local scamp. She’s not looking to bring down three or four bodies. Her death toll will be in the hundreds of thousands. Millions, even. That child of yours will bring down the whole human race, if given the chance. Why can’t you see that?”
A vile image filled my mind. You, dancing with your little dog. The two of you in a fancy ballroom, packed with people from all over the world. Your gown was long and black and whipped violently as you twirled around. A cacophony of laughter panicked the room. When you turned to face me, your bad eye was ablaze, and despite their terror, the people fell to their knees before you, your crown of snakes slithering as you glared at me in triumph.
No, you wouldn’t be content as one of many. You were born to rule. To relieve your father of his position and take control of Hell. Evelyn gestured to her cup, and I refilled it with boiling water.
From the basement we heard you laughing. Giggling hysterically, your voice razor blades that sliced the walls as it echoed through the room. You took over our conversation. Made me realize what a fool I’d been to stand up for you.
“I can see it.”
I had to practically scream for Aunt Evelyn to hear me over your cackling.
Lucy
Sleep kept me captive for a small eternity. I so wanted to escape my life that I just closed my eyes and let it all slip away. Forgot about Mother’s thoughts on aborting me. Her determination to free me from the devil. The utter starkness that made up her insanity.
I woke up once, took off the rest of my clothes, laid back down on the comforters.
They were so wet from my sweat that I pondered wringing them out to save the moisture. The air scorched like hot pavement and I half expected scorpions and lizards to crawl out from under me, sand dunes to undulate the length of the room.
When I finally came to, I felt dizzy, confused, like I had been unleashed in the dark labyrinth of Mother’s barmy thoughts. Nothing was stable. Everything was off-kilter. Even my skin seemed out of place, my fingers heavy clumps of wood, my lungs embers that glowed bright orange each time I took a breath.
Still, my thoughts returned, as always, to water. My senses honed in on it and wouldn’t let go. I could hear it dripping, big heavy drops pinging against metal, all a fantasy that I couldn’t convince my mind to disregard.
No matter how hard I tried to ignore it, my body obsessed. Closing my eyes only brought images of rain barrels and overflowing gutters to mind. My lips, cracked and torn, reminisced about the days when they had not yet uttered the word
dehydration.
I didn’t want to move, let alone crawl along the dark floor until I found the jugs of water. Had I been here for hours? Days? Was Tippy okay?
My heart cringed at the thought of my best friend. Alone. With Mother. Would she be safe? Did Mom have her chained somewhere, covered in gravy, waiting for the God of Hot Dog Eating Canines to descend and prove that Tippy wasn’t an evil beast?
At least I didn’t have to worry about her hunger level or how much of my water she might slop up when I wasn’t looking.
I could barely contemplate standing. Just lying on the floor I felt like an unproven surfer, trying to balance amidst the waves, all wobbly legged and out of sorts. Something was very wrong with me.
How had I gotten to this place? In all of the great plans I had made for my future, none included being trapped in the coal room, naked and loopy.
For a while I couldn’t stop laughing. But laughter quickly turned to hysterics. Without Tippy looking to me for strength, my emotions gave way. And the tears weren’t just about my bad situation. They were for my sister, both because I missed her ferociously and because she had completely and utterly abandoned me, knowing Mom was nuts and that I wasn’t safe with her. They kept running down my cheeks as I thought about all of the years I had striven to be a good girl, following Mom’s and God’s rules, living up to my responsibilities.
But this was where my best behavior brought me. Lying in the pitch black, weeping for a mother who had always hated me, for fathers both dead and divine. Lonely. Afraid.
Thirsty.
Crying just added more anguish to my sore throat. I calmed myself. Took deep breaths. Promised myself I had a resilience that others my age lacked. That God couldn’t hate me.
Maybe I was the one who had gone mad. Maybe I was really lying on the beach somewhere, taking a mental vacation that had gone horribly awry, and had somehow become trapped inside my own mind.
Thinking of the ocean again led me right back to my current reality, where I was parched beyond reckoning and had no one to help me but myself. I willed Brandy to show up and fetch the water for me. Or at least to prop me up on her shoulder and help me get there.
The jugs were miles away. In the dark room, the walls were tilted, the floor at an odd angle I didn’t think I could navigate. I inched forward, remembering back when our family was functional and Mom had taken us to the county fair. She had found a comfortable bench and was eating an elephant ear while Brandy and I braved one of the rickety rides. The metal base had rolled just like the coal room was doing now. We had screamed at the top of our lungs while we spun around, trying to get Mom’s attention each time we whirled past, waving when we could pull our arms up.
What fun that had been.
But this was certainly a different story. A nightmare with no ending.
I had to stop. My insides threatened violence if I continued.
Yet images of water filled my mind . Chilling in a frosty mug. So cold that the ice cubes chunked up together, freezing into one big block. Even hot water. The bathtub, steam rising from its belly, bubbles coating the water’s surface like an old man’s beard.
A cup of hot tea. Spiced orange had always been my favorite.
And Brandy. Spraying me down with the hose in the dreadfully hot days during our summer vacations. Sometimes we even turned on the sprinkler while Mom was at the bank and spent our afternoons doing yard work, keeping ourselves cool while completing our daily chores.
My face itched, the drama of having a billion flesh eating ants consume my outer layers running a close second to my raging thirst. The sage and cream were caked to my skin and cracked like desert soil. I had clawed at it until I smelled fresh blood and even then couldn’t stop myself from trying to get it off.
Which led back to a running faucet. How delicious would it be to turn on the hot water, douse a washcloth, and scrub the crust from my skin? The clean scent of Ivory soap fed my fantasy, and for just a second I could feel the sage loosening from my forehead, my reflection in the mirror that of a younger, healthier me.
I crossed over the edge of the comforter as though I had made it across state lines. I was on new terrain, the old cement floor, somewhat of a rough shock to my knees as I used up another brief surge of energy. My forehead met the slightly cooler surface of the floor, balancing my body as I took a break. Time was of no concern. If it took me six days to find the treasure on the other side of the room, then so be it.
Of course, I might be long dead by then.
Not that anyone would care.
Except for Tippy. She’d whine for me. Especially once she got whiff of my decaying corpse. That would be disastrous for her, that odor, wafting about the house while she tried to go on with her life. Mom probably wouldn’t even notice it.
Another couple of inches.
But maybe this was Mom’s dilemma. Maybe she was like Abraham, whom God told to kill his son….was this
her
test, and I just the pawn in the whole ordeal? If that was the case, the water would be poisoned. In the dark I wouldn’t be able to see if it was clear or tainted green or had razor blades floating in it. When it came down to it, I really couldn’t remember what it should taste like anymore. Mom could have filled the bottles with battery acid, and as long as it was liquid, I wouldn’t know the difference.
I must have been in the basement for six weeks to be so devoid of all moisture. My tongue hung outside of my mouth. My eyeballs felt like they were going to pop from my skull like ping-pong balls, and for just a second I wished they would, hoping that their release would ease some of the tension.
When I finally reached the far wall, my heart thumped wildly. My fingers met the groove at the bottom of the concrete and followed it along the edge. I had seen the jugs here, right before Mother locked me in. My eyes had flashed on them like cameras, emblazing their image forever in my mind. The water was my safety net. My security blanket.
My salvation.
But I couldn’t find them.
I hurried as best I could, panicked, my first thought that I would go utterly insane if my fingers didn’t find the liquid cache soon, my second that my heart was just about to challenge my soul to a drag race and end this quest before I locked on target.
Then the world changed.
An explorer would have been jealous. An architect, inspired. A very damaged, dehydrated teenager on the verge of lunacy—ecstatic with the taste of freedom.
The walls didn’t end.
I fumbled, hands pushed against the cement, a blind cave fish bumping into the room’s boundaries with every movement. My breathing evened. My heart registered its concern, but mellowed enough for me to keep working. For a brief spell the dizziness that kept me roller-coastering while perched on all fours subsided.
And where the corner always stood, the world kept going.
The modification was so slight, no wonder Brandy and I had never discovered it during our basement explorations. A hallway of sorts, smaller than the rest of the room, barely big enough for me to squeeze through. I crawled the wall with my fingertips, pulled myself tall and thin, and wedged myself into the skinny space.