Authors: V.C. Andrews
It had taken Christopher hours to make those swings, and then he risked his life to hang them. And when he was down, and the twins were seated on the swings, fanning back and forth and stirring up the dusty air, they were satisfied for, perhaps, three minutes.
Then it began. Carrie started off. “Take us out of here! Don’t like these swings! Don’t like in here! This is a baa-ad place!”
No sooner did her wails cease than Cory’s began. “Outside, outside, we want outside! Take us outside! Outside!” And Carrie added her chants to his. Patience—I had to have patience, deep self-control, act adult, not scream just because I wanted outside just as much as they did.
“Now stop that racket!” snapped Christopher to the twins. “We’re playing a game, and all games have rules. The main rule of this game is to stay inside and be as quiet as possible. Screaming and yelling is forbidden.” His tone turned softer as he gazed down at their tear-streaked, grimy faces. “Pretend this is the garden under a bright blue sky, and tree leaves are overhead, and the sun is shining bright. And when we go downstairs, that room will be our home with many rooms.”
He gave us all a whimsical, disarming smile. “When we’re rich as Rockefellers, we’ll never need to see this attic again, or that bedroom below. We’ll live like princesses and princes.”
“Do you think the Foxworths have as much money as the
Rockefellers?” I asked disbelievingly. Golly-day, wow! We’d be able to have everything! Yet, yet, I was terribly troubled . . . that grandmother, something about her, the way she treated us, as if we didn’t have a right to be alive. Such horrible words she’d said: “You are here, but you don’t really exist.”
We rambled about the attic, half-heartedly exploring this and that, until someone’s stomach rumbled. I glanced at my wristwatch. Two. My older brother stared at me, as I glanced at the twins. It must have been one of their stomachs, for they ate so little, but, nevertheless, their digestive systems were automatically set on seven for breakfast, twelve for lunch, and five for dinner, and seven for bedtime, and a snack before.
“Lunch time,” I announced cheerfully.
Down the stairs we tripped single file, back into that hateful dim room. If only we could open the draperies wide to let in some light and cheer. If only . . .
My thoughts could have been spoken aloud, for Christopher was perceptive enough to say that even if the draperies were opened wide, this room faced north and the sunlight would never enter.
And my, just look at the chimney sweeps in the mirrors! Just like those from
Mary Poppins
, a spoken comparison to put smiles on the dirty faces of the twins. They dearly loved being compared with those charming people who lived in their kind of picture books.
Since we’d been taught from our earliest years never to sit down to eat when we were less than spotlessly clean, and since God had His keenest eye riveted on us, we would obey all the rules and please Him. Now, it didn’t really offend God’s eyes if we put Cory and Carrie in the same bathtub, when they’d come from the same womb, did it? Christopher took over Cory, as I shampooed Carrie, then bathed her, dressed her, and brushed her silky hair until it shone, and then I curled her hair around my fingers till it spiraled down in pretty coils. Next I tied on a green satin ribbon.
And it wouldn’t really hurt anyone if Chistopher talked to me
while I bathed. We weren’t adults—yet. It wasn’t the same thing as “using” the bathroom together. Momma and Daddy had seen nothing wrong about bare skin, but as I washed my face, the memory of the grandmother’s stern, uncompromising expression flashed before my eyes.
She
would think it was wrong.
“We can’t do this again,” I said to Christopher. “That grandmother—she might catch us, and then she would think it evil.” He nodded as if it didn’t really matter. He must have seen something on my face that made him move forward to the tub so he could put his arms about me. How did he know I needed a shoulder to cry on? Which was exactly what I did.
“Cathy,” he soothed while my head was tucked down on his shoulder and my sobs came, “keep thinking about the future, and all that will be ours when we’re rich. I’ve always wanted to be filthy rich so I can be a playboy for a while, only a little while, for Daddy said everybody should contribute something useful and meaningful to mankind, and I’d like to do that. But until I’m in college, and med school, I could sneak in a little fooling around until I settle down seriously.”
“Oh, I see you mean do everything a poor guy can’t afford to do. Well, if that’s what you want, go to it. But what I want is a horse. All my life I’ve wanted a pony, and we’ve never lived in a place that would allow a pony, and now I’m too big for a pony. So it will have to be a horse. And, of course, all the while I’ll be working my way to fame and fortune as the world’s leading prima ballerina. And you know how dancers have to eat and eat or else they’d be just skin and bones, so I’m going to eat a whole gallon of ice cream each day, and one day I’m going to eat nothing but cheese—every kind of cheese there is, put on cheese crackers. Then, I want lots and lots of new clothes: a different outfit for each day of the year. I’ll give them away after one wearing, then sit down to eat cheese on crackers, and top it off with ice cream. And I’ll work off the fat by dancing.”
He was stroking my wet back, and when I turned to see his profile, he looked dreamy, wistful.
“You see, Cathy, it’s not going to be so bad, this short time while we’re shut up here. We won’t have time to feel depressed, for we’ll be too busy thinking of ways to spend all of our money. Let’s ask Momma to bring us a chess game. I’ve always wanted to learn to play chess. And we can read; reading is almost as good as doing. Momma won’t let us get bored; she’ll bring us new games and things to do. This week will pass in a flash.” He smiled at me brilliantly. “And please stop calling me Christopher! I can’t be confused with Daddy anymore, so from now on, I am only Chris, okay?”
“Okay, Chris,” I said. “But the grandmother—what do you think she’d do if she caught us in the bathroom together?”
“Give us hell—and God knows what else.”
Still, when I was out of the tub, drying off, I started to tell him not to look. However, he wasn’t looking. Already we knew each other’s bodies well, having been looking at them naked since I could remember. And in my opinion, mine was the best. Neater.
All of us wearing clean clothes, and smelling good, we sat down to eat our ham sandwiches, and lukewarm vegetable soup from the small thermos, and more milk to drink. Lunch without cookies was an abysmal thing.
Furtively, Chris kept glancing at his watch. It might be a long, long time before our mother showed up. The twins prowled around restlessly after lunch was over. They were cranky, and they expressed their displeasure with everything by kicking at it, and from time to time as they prowled the room, they shot both me and Chris scowling looks. Chris headed for the closet, and the attic, to the schoolroom for books to read, and I started to follow.
“No!”
screamed Carrie. “Don’t go up in the attic! Don’t like it up there! Don’t like it down here! Don’t like nothin’! Don’t want you being my momma, Cathy! Where is my real momma? Where’d she go? You tell her to come back and let us go out to the sandbox!” She took off for the door to the hall and turned the
knob, then screamed like an animal in terror when the door wouldn’t open. Wildly she beat her small fists against the hard oak and all the while she screamed for Momma to come and take her out of this dark room!
I ran to catch her up in my arms while she kicked and kept right on yelling. It was like holding a wildcat. Chris seized Cory, who ran to protect his twin. All we could do was put them down on one of the big beds, haul out their storybooks, and suggest naps. Teary and resentful, both twins glared up at us.
“Is it night already?” whimpered Carrie, gone hoarse from so many fruitless screams for freedom, and a mother who wouldn’t come. “I want my momma so bad. Why don’t she come?”
“Peter Rabbit,”
I said, picking up Cory’s favorite storybook with colorful illustrations on every page, and this alone made
Peter Rabbit
a very good book. Bad books had no pictures. Carrie had a fondness for
The Three Little Pigs,
but Chris would have to read like Daddy used to, and huff and puff, and make his voice deep like the wolf’s. And I wasn’t sure he would.
“Please let Chris go up in the attic and find himself a book to read, and while he does that, I’ll read to you from
Peter Rabbit.
And let’s see if Peter will steal into the farmer’s garden tonight and eat his fill of carrots and cabbages. And if you fall asleep while I’m still reading, the story will end in your dreams.”
Maybe five minutes passed before both the twins were asleep. Cory clutched his storybook against his small chest to make the transportation of
Peter Rabbit
into his dreams as easy as possible. A soft, warm feeling swept over me, making my heart ache for little ones who really needed a grown-up mother, not one only twelve. I didn’t feel much different than I had at ten. If womanhood was just around the corner, it hadn’t reared its head to make me feel mature and capable. Thank God we weren’t going to be shut up here long, for what would I do if they got sick? What would happen if there was an accident, a fall, a broken bone? If I banged hard on the locked door, would the despicable grandmother come running in response? There was no
telephone in this room. If I cried out for help, who would hear me from this remote, forbidden wing?
While I stewed and fretted, Chris was up in the attic schoolroom, collecting an assortment of dusty, buggy books to bring down to the bedroom for us to read. We had brought along a checker board, and that’s what I wanted to do—not stick my nose in an old book.
“Here,” he said, thrusting an old book into my hands. He said he’d shaken it free of all bugs that might send me off into hysteria again. “Let’s save the checkers until later when the twins are awake. You know how you cut up when you lose.”
He settled down in a comfortable chair, flinging his leg across the fat, rounded chair arm, and opened up
Tom Sawyer.
I flung myself down on the only empty bed and began to read about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. And, believe it or not, that day a door opened I hadn’t known existed before: a beautiful world when knighthood was in flower, and there was romantic love, and fair ladies were put on pedestals and worshipped from afar. A love affair with the medieval age began that day for me, one I was never to lose, for, after all, weren’t most ballets based on fairy tales? And weren’t all fairy tales written from folklore of medieval times?
I was the kind of child who’d always looked for fairies dancing on the grass. I wanted to believe in witches, wizards, ogres, giants, and enchanted spells. I didn’t want all of the magic taken out of the world by scientific explanation. I didn’t know at that time that I had come to live in what was virtually a strong and dark castle, ruled over by a witch and an ogre. I didn’t guess that some modern-day wizards could weave money to create a spell . . . .
* * *
As daylight drew away behind the heavy drawn draperies, we sat down at our small table to eat our meal of fried chicken (cold) and potato salad (warm) and string beans (cold and greasy). At least Chris and I ate most of our meal, cold and
unappetizing or not. But the twins just picked at their food, complaining all the time that it didn’t taste good. I felt that if Carrie had said less, then Cory would have eaten more.
“Oranges are not funny looking,” said Chris, handing me an orange to peel, “or supposed to be hot. Actually, oranges are liquid sunshine.” Boy, he did say the right thing that time. Now the twins had something they could eat with pleasure—liquid sunshine.
Now it was night, and really not much different than the day had been. We turned on all four lamps, and one tiny little rose nightlamp our mother had brought along to comfort the twins who didn’t like the dark.
After their naps, we had dressed the twins again in their clean clothes, and brushed their hair, and washed their faces, so they looked sweet and appealing as they settled down on the floor to put large pieces of puzzles together. Those puzzles were old ones and they knew exactly which piece fitted into the other, and it was not so much of a problem, but a race to see who could fit in the most pieces first. Soon the race to put puzzles together bored the twins, so we piled all on one of the beds and Chris and I told stories we made up. That too grew boring for the twins, though my brother and I could have gone on longer, competing to see who had the most imagination. Next we hauled the small cars and trucks from the suitcases so the twins could crawl around and push cars from New York to San Francisco, by route of wriggling under the beds and between the table legs—and soon they were dirty again. When we tired of that, Chris suggested we play checkers, and the twins could transport orange peels in their trucks and dump them down in Florida, which was the trash can in the corner.
“You can have the red pieces,” announced Chris patronizingly. “I don’t believe as you do, that black is a losing color.”
I scowled, sulked away. It seemed an eternity had passed between dawn and dusk, enough to change me so I’d never be the same again. “I don’t want to play checkers!” I said nastily.
So I fell on a bed and gave up the struggle to keep my thoughts from roaming up and down endless alleys of dark suspicious fears, and tormenting nagging doubts, wondering always if Momma had told us all of the truth. And while we all four waited, and waited, and waited for Momma to show up, there wasn’t a calamity my thoughts didn’t touch upon. Mostly fire. Ghosts, monsters, and other specters lived in the attic. But in this locked room fire was the uppermost threat.
And time passed so slowly. Chris in his chair, with his book, kept sneaking glances at his watch. The twins crawled to Florida, dumped their orange peels, and now they didn’t know where to go. There were no oceans to cross, for they had no boats. Why hadn’t we brought a boat?