Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews.
Title: Flowers in the Attic.
Author: V.C. Andrews.
Genre: Fiction, horror, teen, bildungsroman, abuse, mental health, family saga, mystery.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: November, 1979.
Summary: At the top of the stairs there are four secrets hidden. Blond, beautiful, innocent, and struggling to stay alive. They were a perfect family, golden and carefree, until a heartbreaking tragedy shattered their happiness. Now, for the sake of an inheritance that will ensure their future, the children must be hidden away out of sight, as if they never existed. Kept on the top floor of their grandmother’s vast mansion, their loving mother assures them it will be just for a little while. But as brutal days swell into agonizing months and years, Cathy, Chris, and twins Cory and Carrie realize their survival is at the mercy of their cruel and superstitious grandmother, and this cramped and helpless world may be the only one they ever know.
My rating: 8/10.
My review:
♥ It's so appropriate to color hope yellow, like that sun we seldom saw. And as I begin to copy from the old memorandum journals that I kept for so long, a title comes as if inspired. Open the Window and Stand in the Sunshine. Yet, I hesitate to name our story that. For I think of us more as flowers in the attic. Paper flowers. Born so brightly colored, and fading duller through all those long, grim, dreary, nightmarish days when we were held prisoners of hope, and kept captives by greed. But, we were never to color even one of our paper blossoms yellow.
Charles Dickens would often start his novels with the birth of the protagonist and, being a favorite author of both mine and Chris's, I would duplicate his style-if I could. But he was a genius born to write without difficulty while I find every word I put down, I put down with tears, with bitter blood, with sour gall, well mixed and blended with shame and guilt. I thought I would never feel ashamed or guilty, that these were burdens for others to bear. Years have passed and I am older and wiser now, accepting, too. The tempest of rage that once stormed within me has simmered down so I can write, I hope, with truth and with less hatred and prejudice than would have been the case a few years ago.
So, like Charles Dickens, in this word of "fiction" I will hide myself away behind a false name, and live in fake places, and I will pray to God that those who should will hurt when they read what I have to say. Certainly God in his infinite mercy will see that some understanding publisher will put my words in a book, and help grind the knife that I hope to wield.
♥ We had a funny surname, the very devil to learn to spell. Dollanganger. Just because we were all blond, flaxon haired, with fair complexions (except Daddy, with his perpetual tan), Jim Johnston, Daddy's best friend, pinned on us a nickname, "The Dresden dolls." He said we looked like those fancy porcelain people who graced whatnot shelves and fireplace mantels. Soon everyone in our neighborhood was calling us the Dresden dolls; certainly it was easier to say than Dollanganger.
♥ "Come," she said, standing and pulling me up with her, keeping her arm about my waist, "You've been out here much too long. I thought you were in the house with the others, and the others thought you were in your room, or with me. It's not good to be alone when you feel bereft. It's better to be with people and share your grief, and not keep it locked up inside."
She said this dry-eyed, with not a tear, but somewhere deep inside her she was crying, screaming. I could tell by her tone, by the very bleakness that had sunk deeper into her eyes.
♥ With our father's death, a nightmare began to shadow our days. I gazed reproachfully at Momma and thought she should have prepared us in advance for something like this, for we'd never been allowed to own pets that suddenly pass away and teach us a little about losing through death. Someone, some adult, should have warned us that the young, the handsome, and the needed can die, too.
♥ They came in droves, all the people who loved, admired, and respected our father, and I was surprised he was so well known. Yet I hated it every time someone asked how he died, and what a pity someone so young should die, when so many who were useless and unfit, lived on and on, and were a burden to society.
From all that I heard, and overheard, fate was a grim reaper, never kind, with little respect for who was loved and needed.
♥ We were four children stumbling around in the broken pieces of our grief and loss. We would play in the back garden, trying to find solace in the sunshine, quite unaware that our lives were soon to change so drastically, so dramatically, and the words "backyard" and "garden" were to become for us synonyms for heaven-and just as remote.
♥ I floundered in the desire to understand, and struggled not to drown in the understanding.
♥ Even in her grief, wearing black, she was beautiful-shadowed, troubled eyes and all. She was so lovely, and I loved her,-oh, how I loved her then!
How we all loved her then.
♥ Even I, now twelve years old, and almost a woman, could not comprehend why Momma didn't really look happy to be going home again to parents she hadn't seen in fifteen years. Secret grandparents we'd thought were dead until after our father's funeral. Only this day had we heard of two uncles who'd died in accidents. It dawned on me strongly then, that our parents had lived full lives even before they had children, that we were not so important after all.
♥ "Look at me," she said, throwing wide her arms, appearing vulnerable, beautiful, helpless. "Do you know what I am? I am a pretty, useless ornament who always believed she'd have a man to take care of her. I don't know how to do anything. I can't even type. I'm not very good with arithmetic. I can embroider beautiful needlepoint and crewelwork stitches, but that kind of thing doesn't earn any money. You can't live without money. It's not love that makes the world go 'round-it's money."
♥ "Cathy"-Momma was at the door-"don't just stand there and cry. A room is just a room. You'll live in many rooms before you die, so hurry up, pack your things and the twins' things, while I do my own packing."
Before I died, I was going to live in a thousand rooms or more, a little voice whispered this in my ear... and I believed.
♥ Everything came so easily for him. His eyes could scan a page just once or twice, and all the information would be written indelibly on his brain, never to be forgotten. Oh, how I did envy him that gift.
I had a gift too; not the bright and shining coin that was Christopher's. It was my way to turn over all that glittered and look for the tarnish.
♥ Yet there stood Christopher looking around and expressing his pleasure in finding a room where people hid away their children so they couldn't see them, or hear them, or maybe not even think about them, and he saw it as a room with possibilities.
Sure, somebody could clean all the dark secret places where creeping horrors lived, and they could spray all over with insect repellent so nothing sinister was left that was small enough to step on. But how to step on the grandmother, the grandfather? How to turn an attic room into a paradise where flowers bloomed, and not just another prison like the one below?
♥ 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. . . .
♥ "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.
♥ I floundered in a maelstrom of uncertainty, aching inside, not knowing who or what I was, if I had the right to be living on an earth the Lord reserved for those born with his blessings and permission. We had lost our father, our home, our friends and our possessions. That night I no longer believed that God was the perfect judge. So, in a way, I lost God too.
♥ "When I was growing up, with my two older brothers, we were literally forced to go to church. Even if we were sick enough to stay in bed, we still had to go. Religion was rammed down our throats. Be good, be good, be good-that's all we ever heard. Everyday, normal pleasures that were right for other people were made sinful for us. My brothers and I were not allowed to go swimming, for that meant wearing bathing suits and exposing most of our bodies. We were forbidden card games, or any sort of game that implied gambling. We weren't allowed to go to dances, for that meant your body might be pressed close to that of the other sex. We were ordered to control our thoughts, to keep them off lusting, sinful subjects for they said the thought was as evil as the deed. Oh, I could go on and on about all we were forbidden to do-it seemed everything that was fun and exciting was sinful to them. And there is something in the young that rebels when life is made too strict, making us want to do most of all the very things denied to us. Our parents, in seeking to make their three children into living angels or saints, only succeeded in making us worse than we would have been otherwise."
♥ ..and he'd be as beautiful as Daddy had been, radiating beauty, touching my heart. You had to have love or you withered away and died.
♥ "Love doesn't always come when you want it to. Sometimes it just happens, despite your will."
♥ "It's not really my fault," she went on hastily, as if she could see I was blaming her for being inadequate.
"When you're born rich, and you're educated in boarding schools only for the daughters of the extremely rich and powerful, and then you're sent to a girls' finishing school, you are taught polite rules of social etiquette, academic subjects, but most of all, you're made ready for the whirl of romance, debutante parties, and how to entertain and be the perfect hostess. I wasn't taught anything practical. I didn't think I'd ever need any business skills. I thought I'd always have a husband to take care of me, and if not a husband, then my father would-and besides, all the time I was in love with your father. I knew the day I turned eighteen we'd be married."
She was at that very minute teaching me well. Never would I become so dependent on a man I couldn't make my way in the world, no matter what cruel blow life delivered! But most of all I felt mean, mad, ashamed, guilty-feeling she was to blame for everything, and how could she have known what lay ahead?
♥ "I am likeable, you know that, and my father did love me extremely well once. So that will make it easy for him to love me again, won't it?"
Yes, yes, it would. To love anything once extremely well made you vulnerable to another loving attack. I knew; I'd already been in love six times.
♥ All the days dragged by. Monotonously.
What did you do with time when you had it in super-abundance? Where did you put your eyes when you had already seen everything? What direction should your thoughts take, when daydreams could lead you into so much trouble? I cold imagine how it would be to run outside, wild and free in the woods, with dry leaves crackling under my feet. I could picture swimming in the nearby lake, or wading in a cool mountain stream. But daydreams were merely cobwebs, easily torn into shreds, and I'd quickly be dropped back into reality. And where was happiness? In the yesterdays? In the tomorrows? Not in this hour, this minute, this second. We had one thing, and one thing only, to give us a spark of joy. Hope.
Chris said it was a deadly crime to waste time. Time was valuable. No one ever had time enough, or lived long enough to learn enough. All about us the world was on the way to the fire, crying, "Hurry, hurry, hurry!" And look at us: we had time to spare, hours to fill, a million books to read, time to let our imaginations take wing. The creative genius begins in the idle moment, dreaming up the impossible, and later making it come true.
♥ "Why don't he like us?"
"He doesn't like us because... because, well, because he hasn't got good sense. I think he's sick in the head, as well as in the heart."
"Does Momma still like us?"
Now, that was a question to keep me awake at night.
♥ "It's alright, Momma," said Chris, drawing her into his embrace just as our father would. "What you ask isn't too much, not when we have so much to gain."
"Yes," Momma said eagerly, "just a short while more to sacrifice, and a little more patience, and all that is sweet and good in life will be yours."
What was there left for me to say? How could I protest? Already we'd sacrificed over three weeks-what was a few more days, or weeks, or even another month?
At the end of the rainbow waited the pot of gold. But rainbows were made of faint and fragile gossamer-and gold weighed a ton-and since the world began, gold was the reason to do most anything.
♥ "Its name is Charlie," she said, handing over her four feet of "worm" to me. (When things came to us without a name of their own, we made their names begin with a C to make them one of us.)
♥ Patience. I colored patience gray, hung over with black clouds. I colored hope yellow, just like that sun we could see for a few short morning hours. Too soon the sun rose high in the sky and disappeared from view, leaving us bereft, and staring at blue.
♥ Hearing the maids move about, laughing and chatting, while the grandmother hovered near the closet door directing them, to clean the mirrors, use the lemon wax, air the mattresses-it all gave me the queerest feeling. Why didn't those maids notice something different? Didn't we leave any odor behind to let them know Cory often wet his bed? It was as if we really didn't exist, and weren't alive, and the only scents we had were imaginary. We wrapped our arms about each other and held onto each other tightly, tightly.
The maids didn't enter the closet; they didn't open the tall, narrow door. They didn't see us, or hear us, nor did they seem to think it odd the grandmother never left the room for a second while they were in there scrubbing the tub, cleaning the toilet bowl, scrubbing the tile floor.
That Friday did something strange to all of us. I believe we shriveled in our own estimations of ourselves, for afterwards we couldn't find words to say. We didn't enjoy our games, or our books, and so silently we cut out tulips and daisies and waited for Momma to come and bring hope with her again.
Still, we were young, and hope has strong roots in the young, right down to their toes, and when we entered the attic and saw our growing garden, we could laugh, and pretend. After all, we were making our mark in the world. We were making something beautiful out of what had been drab and ugly.
♥ Yesterdays ago, I'd ambled through real gardens, real forests-and always I felt their mystical aura-as if something magic and marvelous was waiting just around the bend. To make our attic garden enchanted too, Chris and I crawled around and drew white-chalk daisies on the floor, joining them in a ring. Inside that fairy ring of white flowers, all that was evil was banished. There we could sit cross-legged on the floor, and by the light of a single candle burning, Chris and I would spin long, involved tales of good fairies who took care of small children, and wicked witches who always went down in defeat.
♥ Love... I put so much faith in it.
Truth... I kept believing it falls always from the lips of the one you love and trust the most.
Faith... it's all bound up to love and trust. Where does one end and the other start, and how do you tell when love is the blindest of all?
♥ My thoughts took frantic flight, wanting to escape this prison, and seek out the wind so it could fan my hair and sting my skin, and make me feel alive again. I yearned for all those children out there who were running wild and free on the browning grass, and scuffling their feet in the dry, crackling leaves, just as I used to do.
Why was it I never realized when I was able to run wild and free that I was experiencing happiness? Why did I think back then, that happiness was always just ahead in the future, when I would be an adult, able to make my own decisions, go my own way, be my own person? Why had it seemed that being a child was never enough? Why had I thought that happiness reserved itself for those grown to full size?
♥ And yet, and yet, there was something sweet and endearing about a Strauss waltz, easy to do, and romantic, and so unlike those athletic ballet waltzes that put you in a sweat, and left you panting for breath.
When Momma finally came through the door with that smashing white outfit for dancing Swan Lake, a beautifully feathered brief bodice, tight cap, white slippers, and white leotards so sheer the pink of my skin showed through, I gasped!
Oh, it seemed that love, hope, and happiness could be brought upstairs in one single giant-sized slippery-satin white box with a violet ribbon and given to me by someone who really cared when another who really cared, put this idea in her head.
♥ When his flesh was colored normally again, we dried Cory off, put on his warmest pajamas, wrapped him in a blanket, and, in the old rocker Chris had brought down from the attic, I sat down and cuddled my small brother on my lap. I covered his wan face with kisses, and whispered sweet nothings in his ear that made him giggle.
If he could laugh, he could eat, and I fed him tiny bits of sandwich, and long drinks of milk. And as I did this, I grew older. Ten years I aged in ten minutes. I glanced over at Chris as he sat down to eat his lunch, and saw that he, too, had changed. Now we knew there was real danger in the attic beyond that of slow withering from lack of sunlight and fresh air. We all faced threats much worse than the mice and spiders that insisted on living, despite all we did to kill every last one.
♥ And all the while we heard the wind blowing through the hills. It scraped the skeleton tree branches, and squeaked the house, and whispered of death and dying, and in the cracks and crevices it howled, moaned, sobbed, and sought in all ways to make us aware we weren't safe.
..Fearfully, I straightened to gaze down on two small faces side by side on one pillow. Why had I wanted them to grow up and act their proper ages? This long illness had brought about instant age. It put dark circles under their large blue eyes, and stole their healthy color. The high temperatures and the coughing had left them with a wise look, a sometimes sly look of the old, the tired, the ones who just lay and didn't care if the sun came up, or if it went down, and stayed down. They scared me; their haunted faces took me into dreams of death.
And all the while the wind kept blowing.
♥ One night Cory woke up and called to me, "Make the wind go away, Cathy."
I left my bed and Carrie, who was fast asleep on her side, crawled under the covers beside Cory, and tightly I held him in my arms. Poor little thin body, wanting to be loved so much by his real mother... and he had only me. He felt too small, so fragile, as if that rampaging wind could blow him away. I lowered my face into his clean, sweet-smelling curly blond hair and kissed him there, as I had when he was a baby, and I had replaced my dolls with living babies. "I can't make the wind go away, Cory. Only God can do that."
"Then tell God I don't like the wind," he said sleepily. "Tell God the wind wants to come in and get me."
I gathered him closer, held him tighter... never going to let the wind take Cory away, never! But I knew what he meant.
♥ It was my very first attempt to rhyme.
I hear the wind when it sweeps down from the hill,
It speaks to me, when the night is still,
It whispers in my ear,
The words I never hear,
Even when he's near.
I feel the breeze when it blows in from the sea,
It lifts my hair, it caresses me,
It never takes my hand,
To show it understands,
It never touches me, ten-der-ly.
Someday I know I'm gonna climb this hill,
I'll find another day,
Some other voice to say the words I've gotta hear,
If I'm to live, another year....
♥ I convinced myself it didn't really matter if we missed out on one Christmas shopping spree. There would be other Christmases when we were rich, rich, rich, when we could go into a story and buy anything we wanted. How beautiful we'd be in our magnificent clothes, with our stylish manners, and soft, eloquent voices that told the world we were somebodies... somebodies who were special... loved, wanted, needed somebodies.
..Even for those locked away, Christmas was a busy time, even for one beginning to despair, and doubt, and distrust.
♥ "Next year this time we'll be living in our own house," she said brightly, and I believed.
"Yes," said Momma, smiling, filling all of us with cheer, "next year this time life will be so wonderful for all of us. We'll have plenty of money to buy a grand home of our own, and everything you want will be yours. In no time at all, you'll forget this room, the attic. And all the days you have all endured so bravely will be forgotten, just like it never happened."
She kissed us, and said she loved us. We watched her leave and didn't feel bereft, as before. She filled all our eyes, all our hopes and dreams.
♥ "Santa would never overlook children deliberately," he said, "and besides, he knew you were here. I made sure he knew, for I sat down and wrote him one very long letter, and gave him our address, and I made out a list of things we wanted that was three feet long."
How funny, I thought. For the list of what all four of us wanted was so short and simple. We wanted outside. We wanted our freedom.
♥ I was ashamed and full of contrition for everything mean and ugly I'd thought. That's what came from wanting everything, and at once, and having no patience, and no faith.
♥ Fools!-that's what we'd been! Damned fools!
We'd never win her over! She'd always consider us Devil's spawn! As far as she was concerned, we really didn't exist.
And it hurt, oh, you bet, it did hurt. Right down to my bare feet I ached, and my heart became a hollow ball shooting pains through my chest.
♥ Then I was bending down, crying, and picking up the silk butterflies Cory and Carrie had made so painstakingly, with so much effort wasted to color the wings gloriously. Pastel butterflies I was to keep all my life long.
♥ We sat on the floor silent now amidst our gifts. The twins were quiet, their big eyes full of doubts, wanting to play with their toys, and undecided because they were our mirrors, and they would reflect our emotions-whatever they were. Oh, the pity of seeing them so made me ache again. I was twelve. I should learn at some time in my life how to act my age, and hold onto my poise, and not be a stick of dynamite always ready to explode.
♥ With such parents as she'd described, she did have to have someone to love, and she did need to be loved in return-she did... he did.
Love, it came unbidden.
You couldn't help whom you fell in love with-cupid's arrows were ill aimed.
♥ "How do I know?" answered Chris in an offhand manner. "Though it certainly seems everybody else thinks she will, and, of course, they know more about that side of her than we do."
What an odd thing to say. Didn't we, her children, know our mother better than anyone else?
"Chris, why did you say that?"
"What?"
"What you did-about others knowing her better than we do."
"People are multi-faceted, Cathy. To us, our mother is only our mother. To others, she is a beautiful, sexy young widow who is likely to inherit a fortune. No wonder the moths all come swarming to encircle the kind of bright flame she is."
Wow! And he was taking all of this so casually, just as if it didn't matter to him one whit-when I knew it did. I thought I knew my brother very well. He must be suffering inside, just as I was, for I knew he didn't want our mother to marry again. I turned my most intuitive eyes upon him... ah, he wasn't nearly as detached as he seemed, and that pleased me.
I sighed, though, for I would so much like to be the eternal optimist, like him. Deep down I thought life was sure to always put me between Scylla and Charibdis, and give to me always Hobson's Choice. I had to make myself over, make myself better, and become like Chris-eternally cheerful. When I suffered, I had to learn to hide it, as he did. I had to learn to smile and never frown, and not be the genuine clairvoyant I was.
♥ He came closer to whisper in a sly and conspiratorial stage whisper, "I'll be back soon, my fair beauty, and when I'm back, I shall bring with me all the dark and mysterious secrets of this huge, huge, old, old house." And suddenly, he caught me by surprise, and swooped to plant a kiss on my cheek.
Secrets? And he said I was given to exaggerations! What was the matter with him? Didn't he know that we were the secrets?
♥ And those diamonds, those emeralds kept flashing, flashing... signal lights, meaning something. And I sat and watched, and wondered, and felt... felt, oh, I didn't know how I felt, except confused and bewildered, and very, very young. And the world all about us was wise, and old, so old.
♥ ..I stole over to the balustrade and looked down on all the people. They looked odd, foreshortened, and I thought, I'll have to remember that, so when I draw people from an above the eye-level viewpoint, they'll look natural. Perspective makes all the difference in a painting.
It made all the difference in everything, if you asked me.
♥ Oh, yes, I knew what he meant. My anguish was always like a mountain of rage.
♥ And now there was nothing left to say but good night-and don't let the bedbugs bite. I put a kiss on his cheek and pushed him off the bed. This time he didn't complain that kisses were only for babies and sissies-and girls. Soon he was snuggled down beside Cory, only three feet away.
In the dark, the little live Christmas tree, two feet tall, sparkled with tiny colored lights, like the tears I saw glistening in my brother's eyes.
♥ It bothered me so much the way she treated the twins, as if she didn't like to look at them. As Chris and I moved on into puberty, and toward adulthood, the twins stagnated, went nowhere.
♥ "Chris," I began, then stumbled on quicksand, I knew, "don't you ever have any doubts about her?"
I saw his frown, and spoke again before he could fire back some angry retort, "Doesn't it strike you as... as odd, that she keeps us locked up for so long? She's got lots of money, Chris, I know she has. Those rings and bracelets, they're not fake like she tells us. I know they're not!"
He had drawn away when first I brought up "her." He adored his goddess of all female perfection, but then he was embracing me again, and his cheek was on my hair, his voice tight with thick emotion, "Sometimes I am not the eternal cockeyed optimist you call me. Sometimes I am just as doubting of what she does as you are. But I think back to the time before we came here, and I feel I have to trust her, and believe in her, and be like Daddy was. Remember how he used to say, 'For everything that seems strange, there is a good reason? And everything always works out for the best.' That's what I make myself believe-she has good reasons for keeping us here, and not sneaking us out to some boarding school. She knows what she's doing, and Cathy, I love her so much. I just can't help it. No matter what she does, I feel I will go right on loving her."
♥ "Sweet low, sweet chariot, comin' for t' carry me home..." was the tune I hummed as I made the beds, and waited for the news to come that our grandfather was on his way to heaven if his gold counted, and to hell if the Devil couldn't be bribed.
♥ The morning came pale behind the heavy drawn draperies that shut out the yellow light of hope.
♥ Soft southern breezes cane came and played in my hair and dried the wisps about my face. I felt them tickling like small kisses, and again I wanted to cry, for no reason at all, except the night was so sweet, so lovely, and I was at the age for high romantic yearning. And the breeze whispered loving words in my ears... words I was so afraid no one was ever going to say. Still, the night was so lovely under the trees, near the shimmering moonlit water, and I sighed. I felt that I'd been here before, on this grass near the lake. Oh, the strange thoughts I had as the night-fliers hummed and whirred, and the mosquitoes buzzed and somewhere far off an owl hooted, taking me quickly back to the night when first we came to live as fugitives, hidden from a world that didn't want us.
♥ "Chris, remember when Momma told us that it was money that made the world go around and not love? Well, I think she's wrong."
"Yeah? Give that a bit more thought. Why can't you have both?"
I gave it thought. Plenty of thought. I lay and stared up at the ceiling that was my dancing floor, and I mulled life and love over and over. And from every book I'd ever read, I took one wise bead of philosophy and strung them all into a rosary to believe in for the rest of my life.
Love, when it came and knocked on my door, was going to be enough.
And that unknown author who'd written that if you had fame, it was not enough, and if you had wealth as well, it was still not enough, and if you had fame, wealth, and also love... still it was not enough-boy, did I feel sorry for him.
♥ Even if I did all that Momma did once, I was wise enough to know it wouldn't be the same. It was her he wanted. He had all his hopes, dreams, and faith wrapped up in one single woman-Momma.
She'd been gone more than two months! Didn't she realize one day up here was longer than a month of normal living? Didn't she worry about us, and wonder how we were faring? Did she believe that Chris would always be her staunchest supporter when she left us without an excuse, a reason, an explanation? Did she really believe that love, once gained, couldn't be torn asunder by doubts and fears, and could never, never be put back together again?
♥ "I'm going to call him Mickey," said Cory-a thousand candles behind his eyes because one small mouse would live to become his pet.
♥ God blessed Cory with magic fingers.
God blessed me with mean thoughts to take the joy from everything. What good were pretty clothes when no one ever saw them? I wanted things that didn't come wrapped in fancy paper, and tied around with satin ribbons, and put in a box from an expensive store. I wanted all the things money couldn't buy. Had she noticed my hair cut so short on top? Had she seen how thin we were? Did she think we looked healthy with our pale, thin skins?
Bitter, ugly thoughts as I pushed a maple sugar leaf into Carrie's eager mouth, and then a leaf into Cory's, and next one into my own mouth. I glared at the beautiful clothes meant for me. A blue velvet dress, such as should be worn to a party. A pink and blue nightgown and peignoir set, with slippers to match. I sat there with the candy melting on my tongue, and it had the acrid taste of the iron lump in my throat. Encyclopedias! Were we going to be here forever?
Yet candy made from maple sugar was my topmost favorite, always had been. She brought this box of candy for me, for me, and I could only swallow one piece, and that with great difficulty.
They sat on the floor with the candy box centered between them, Cory, Carrie, and Chris. They stuffed the candy in, piece after piece, laughing and pleased. "You should make that candy last," I told them with sour hatefulness. "That may well be the last box of candy you see for a long, long time."
Chris threw me a look, his blue eyes happy and shining. Easy enough to see all his faith and trust was restored by just one short visit from Momma. Why couldn't he see that gifts were just a way of hiding the fact that she no longer cared about us? Why didn't he know, as I did, that we weren't as real to her now as once we'd been? We were another of those unpleasant subjects that people don't like to talk about, like mice in the attic.
♥ I lay on my back and stared up at that unseeing, uncaring sky. I doubted God lived up there; I doubted heaven was up there, too.
God and heaven were down there on the ground, in the gardens, in the forests, in the parks, on the seashores, on the lakes, and riding the highways, going somewhere!
Hell was right here, where I was, shadowing me persistently, trying to do me in, and make me into what the grandmother thought I was-the Devil's issue.
♥ In the dark, on the roof, in the cold, we reached for each other intuitively. We clung as one, our hearts throbbing loud against each other. Not crying, not laughing. Hadn't we already cried an ocean of tears? And they hadn't helped. Hadn't we already said a zillion prayers and waited for deliverance that never came? And if tears didn't work, and prayers weren't heard, how were we to reach God and make him do something?
"Chris, I've said it before, and I'm saying it again. We've got to take the initiative. Didn't Daddy always say God helps those who help themselves?
♥ And I didn't know if I should speak, or stay silent. At least when you were silent, you didn't make any new enemies. Maybe she was right, too. God, let her be right. Let my faith be renewed. Let me believe in her again. Let me believe that she is not just beautiful on the surface, but all the way through.
God didn't reach down and lay a warm, reassuring hand on my shoulder. I sat there realizing my suspicions were stretching the cord between her and me, very, very fine.
♥ Love. How often that word came up in books. Over and over again. If you had wealth and health, and beauty and talent... you had nothing if you didn't have love. Love changed all that was ordinary into something giddy, powerful, drunken, enchanted.
♥ From paragraph one the story had captivated both of us with its mystical, romantic charm. Each slow page spinning out an involved tale of star-crossed lovers named Lily and Raymond, who had to overcome monumental obstacles to find and stand upon the magic place of purple grass, where all dreams are fulfilled. God, how I wanted to find that place! Then I discovered the tragedy of their lives. All along they had stood on the purple grass... can you imagine? On that special grass all the time, and they never looked down even once to see it. I hated unhappy endings! I slammed that hateful book shut and hurled it against the nearest wall. "If that isn't the most stupid, silly, ridiculous story!" I raged at Chris, as if he had written the book. No matter whom I love, I'll learn to forgive and forget!" I continued to rail along with the storm outside, the weather and me beating out the same crescendo. "Now why couldn't it have been written differently? How is it possible for two intelligent people to float along with their heads in the clouds, not realizing happenstance can always bring about bad luck? Never, never am I going to be like Lily, or Raymond, either! Idealistic fools who don't know enough to look down at thew ground on occasion!"
My brother seemed amused that I took a story so seriously, but then he reconsidered, and stared thoughtfully at the driving train. "Perhaps lovers aren't supposed to look down at the ground. That kind of story is told in symbols-and earth represents reality, and reality represents frustrations, chance illnesses, death, murder, and all kinds of other tragedies. Lovers are meant to look up at the sky, for up there no beautiful illusions can be trampled upon."
Frowning, sulky, I gazed moodily at him. "And when I fall in love," I began, "I will build a mountain to touch the sky. Then, my lover and I will have the best of both worlds, reality firmly under our feet, while we have our heads in the clouds with all our illusions still intact. And the purple grass will grow all around, high enough to reach our eyes."
♥ Deep silence all around. Always silence. Nature's voices were the only ones to reach us in the attic, and so seldom did nature speak in friendly, soft tones.
♥ "Why don't she notice?"
I sighed, not really knowing who and what my mother was anymore, except a stranger we used to love. Death wasn't the only thing that took away someone you loved and needed. I knew that now.
♥ It wasn't being naked at all.
It was the eyes. The secret of love was in the eyes, the way one person looked at another, the way eyes communicated and spoke when the lips never moved.
..And then, as I delved deeper into the subject, it was more than the eyes-it was what was behind the eyes, in the brain, wanting to please you, make you happy, give you joy, and take away the loneliness of never having anyone understand as you want to be understood.
♥ Now I knew only too well why the witch-grandmother had wanted Chris and me put in separate beds, when that compelling call to human flesh was so strong, so demanding, and so thrilling it could make people act more like demons than saints.
♥ "Chris, I don't want to leave you alone," I said at the door, preparing to fit the wooden key into the lock.
"Look here, Cathy!" he yelled. "It's time you learned to stand on your own two feet! You don't need me at your side every livelong minute of the day! That was Momma's trouble. She thought she'd always have a man to lean on. Lean on yourself, Cathy, always."
♥ Oh, it was unfair! Foul! Our mother had everything! Freedom to come and go as she wished; freedom to spend lavishly and buy out the world's best stores, if she chose. She even had the money to buy a much younger man to love, and sleep with-and what did Chris and I have but broken dreams, shattered promises, and unending frustrations?
And what did the twins have, but a dollhouse and a mouse and ever-declining health?
♥ He told me it was that book in the nightstand drawer that drew him always; it lured him, beckoned to him, was to shipwreck him later, and me too.
♥ It was a peculiar kind of night, as if fate had planned this night, long ago, and this night was our destiny, right or wrong. It was darkness lit up by the moon so full and bright, and the stars seemed to flash Morse Code beams to one another... fate accomplished...
The wind in the leaves rustled and made an eerie, melancholy music that was tuneless, yet music just the same. How could anything as human and loving be ugly on such a beautiful night at this one?
Perhaps we stayed too long on the roof.
The slate was cold, hard, rough. It was early September. Already the leaves were beginning to fall, so soon to be touched by the winter's frosty hand. Hot as hell in the attic. On the roof, it was beginning to turn very, very cold.
Closer Chris and I huddled, clinging to each other for safety and warmth. Youthful, sinful lovers of the worst kind. We had dropped ten miles in our own esteem, done in by yearnings stretched too thin by constant closeness. Just once too often we'd tempted fate, and our own sensuous natures... and I hadn't even known at the time that I was sensuous, much less that he was. I'd thought it was only beautiful music that made my heart ache and my loins crave; I hadn't known it was something far more tangible.
Like one heart shared between us, we drummed out a terrible tine of self-punishment for what we'd done.
♥ I awakened before dawn. I stared over to where Cory and Chris slept. Even as my sleepy eyes opened, and my head turned, I sensed that Chris was awake, too, and had been for some time. He was already looking at me, and shiny, glistening tears sparkled the blue of his eyes and smeared the whites. The tears that rolled to fall on his pillow, I named as they fell: shame, guilt, blame.
"I love you, Christopher Doll. You don't have to cry. For I can forget, if you can forget, and there's nothing to forgive."
He nodded and said nothing. But I knew him well, right down to his bone marrow. I knew his thoughts, his feelings, and all the ways to wound his ego fatally. I knew that through me he had struck back at the one woman who had betrayed him in trust, faith and love. All I had to do was look in my hand mirror with the bug C.L.F. on the back, and I could see my own mother's face, as she must have looked at my age.
And so it had come to pass, just as the grandmother predicted. Devil's issue. Created by evil seed sown in the wrong soil, shooting up new plants to repeat the sins of the fathers.
And the mothers.
♥ Her glazed blue eyes turned our way; void eyes, staring vacantly; lost eyes, seeking something gone forever-I guessed it was her humanity.
♥ It was big out there. We'd be on our own. What would the world think of us now?
We weren't beautiful like we used to be, only pale and sickly attic mice with long flaxen hair, wearing expensive but ill-fitting clothes, and sneakers on our feet.
Chris and I had educated ourselves from reading so many books, and television had taught us much about violence, about greed, about imagination, but it had taught us hardly anything that was practical and useful in preparing us to face reality.
Survival. That's what TV should teach innocent children. How to live in a world that really doesn't give a damn about anyone but their own-and sometimes, not even their own.
Money. If there was one thing we'd learned during the years of our imprisonment, it was that money came first, and everything else came after. How well Momma had said it long ago: "It's not love that makes the world go 'round-it's money."
♥ That dream was to haunt me many a day, pleasantly. It gave me peace. It gave me knowledge I hadn't had before. People never really died. They only went on to a better place, to wait a while for their loved ones to join them. And then once more they went back to the world, in the same way they had arrived the first time around.
♥ Encyclopedias don't give you good lessons on how to become a thief-that must come naturally.
♥ Overwhelmed, I fell into the deep well of betrayal Momma had dug to drown us in.
♥ "Hate... you haven't begun to know what hate is yet. But before I tell you the rest, keep in mind we are leaving this place, no matter what. We will go on to Florida, just like we planned. We'll live in the sunshine and make our lives the very best we can. Not for one moment are we going to feel ashamed of what we are, or what we've done, for what we've shared between us is so small compared to what our mother has done. Even if you die before I do, I'll remember our lives up here and in the attic. I'll see us dancing beneath the paper flowers, with you so graceful, and me so clumsy. I'll smell the dust and the rotting wood, and I'll remember it as perfume sweet as roses, because without you it would have been so bleak, and so empty. You've given me my first taste of what love can be.
"We're going to change. We're going to throw out what's worse in us and keep what's best. But come hell or high water, we three will stick together, all for one, one for all. We're going to grow, Cathy, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Not only that, we're going to reach the goals we've set for ourselves. I'll be the best damned doctor the world's ever known and you will make Pavlova seem like an awkward country girl."
♥ How young I was. How unimaginative-and how confidently presuming.
♥ On three well legs, he came staggering to us, dragging the lame leg, our sweet little gray mouse that nibbled trustingly on Chris's finger before he bit into the doughnut. He took a small piece and ate it, trustingly, believing in us, his gods, his parents, his friends. It hurt to watch.
He didn't die, not right away. He grew slow, listless, apathetic. Later on he had small fits of pain that made him whimper. In several hours he was on his back, stiff, cold. Pink toes curled up into claws. Small black bead eyes, sunken and dull. So now we knew... for sure. God hadn't taken Cory.
♥ "Maybe nothing did work out right for her, but that doesn't mean we are doomed. Let's go forth tomorrow with no great expectations of finding perfection. Then, expecting only a small share of happiness, we won't be disappointed."
If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. But after all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing-I wanted a mountain high! A hill wasn't enough. From this day forward, I vowed to myself, I was in control of my life. Not fate, not God, not even Chris was ever again going to tell me what to do, or dominate me in any way. From this day forward, I was my own person, to take what I would, when I would, and I would answer only to myself. I'd been kept prisoner, held captive by greed. I'd been betrayed, deceived, lied to, used, poisoned... but all that was over now.
I had been barely twelve years old when Momma led us through the dense piney woods on a starry, moonlit night... just on the verge of becoming a woman, and in these three years and almost five months, I'd reached maturity. I was older than the mountains outside. The wisdom of the attic was in my bones, etched on my brain, part of my flesh.
The Bible said, as Chris quoted one memorable day, there was a time for everything. I figured my time for happiness was just ahead, waiting for me.
Where was that fragile, golden-fair Dresden doll I used to be? Gone. Gone like porcelain turned into steel-made into someone who would always get what she wanted, no matter who or what stood in her way.
♥ Leaving Carrie on the bed asleep, leaving Chris in the rocker and strumming the guitar, I wandered up to the attic to say good-bye.
Directly under the dangling lightbulb, I stood and looked around. My thoughts went flashing back to the first day we came up here... I saw us, all four, holding hands, staring around, overwhelmed by the gargantuan attic and its ghostly furniture and clutter of dusty junk. I saw Chris up high, risking his life to hang two swings for Carrie and Cory to use. I ambled into the schoolroom, looking at the old desks where the twins had sat to learn to read and write. I didn't glance at the stained, smelly mattress to picture us sunbathing there. That mattress put other memories in my head. I stared at the flowers with sparkling centers-and the lopsided snail, the menacing purple worm, the signs Chris and I had lettered and through all the maze of our gardens and jungle, I saw myself dancing alone, always alone, except when Chris stood in the shadows watching, making his ache my ache. For when I waltzed with Chris, I'd made him someone else.
He called up the stairs. "It's time to go, Cathy."
Quickly I raced back to the schoolroom. On the blackboard I wrote very large, using white chalk:
We lived in the attic,
Christopher, Cory, Carrie, and me,
Now there are only three.
I signed my name, and wrote down the date. In my heart I knew that the ghosts of the four of us would override all other ghosts of children shut away in an attic schoolroom. I left an enigma for someone in the future to unwind.
♥ There is no hate such as that born out of love betrayed-and my brain screamed out for revenge. Yes, I wanted to see Momma and the grandmother locked up in jail, put behind bars, convicted of premeditated murder-four counts, if intentions were counted, too. They'd be only gray mice in cages, shut up like us, only they'd have the benefit of being in the company of drug addicts, prostitutes, and other killers like themselves. Their clothes would be of gray prison cotton. No trips twice a week to the beauty salon for Momma, no makeup, no professional manicures-and a shower once a week. She'd even lose the privacy of her most personal body places. Oh, she'd suffer without furs to wear, and jewelry, and warm cruises in southern waters when the winter rolled around. There wouldn't be a handsome, adoring young husband to romp with in a grand swan bed.
I stared up at the sky where God was supposed to be-could I let Him in His own ways, balance the scales and take the burden of justice from me?
I thought it cruel, unfair, that Chris should put all the burden of decision on my shoulders. Why?
Was it because he would forgive her for anything-even the death of Cory, and her efforts to kill all of us? Would he reason that such parents as hers could pressure her into doing anything-even murder? Was there enough money in the whole world to make me kill my four children?
♥ I glanced up at the sky again.
God, He didn't write the scripts for the puny little players down here. We wrote them ourselves-with each day we lived, each word we spoke, each thought we etched on our brains. And Momma had written her script, too. And a sorry one it was.
..From this city we'd flee southward on a bus to make of ourselves somebodies. When we saw Momma again-and to be certain fate would arrange it that way-we'd look her straight in the eyes, and turned our backs.