Flowers in the Attic

  "It's pretty!" cried Carrie, spinning around and around, holding to her short pleated skirt so we just had to see the new lace ruffled panties Momma had given her yesterday. All new clothes and shoes had to spend their first night with Carrie and Cory in their beds. (It's terrible to wake up at night with your cheek resting on the sole of a sneaker.) "I'm going to be a ballerina, too," she said happily, spinning and spinning until she eventually fell, and Cory went rushing to see if she had hurt herself. She screamed to see the blood ooze from a cut on her knee. "Oh--I don't want to be a ballerina if it hurts!"

  I didn't dare let her know it hurt--oh, boy, did it hurt!

  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.

  Then Cory spoke up. As always, he was the one to ask the most difficult questions to answer. "Where has all the grass gone?"

  "God took the grass to heaven." And thusly, Carrie saved me from answering.

  'Why?"

  "For Daddy. Daddy likes to mow the lawn."

  Chris's eyes met with mine--and we'd thought they'd forgotten Daddy.

  Cory puckered up his faint brows, staring at the little card- board trees Chris had made. "Where are all the big trees?"

  "Same place," said Carrie. "Daddy likes big trees." This time my eyes took wild flight. How I hated lying to them--telling them this was only a game, an endless game they seemed to endure with more patience than Chris or me. And they never once asked why we had to play such a game.

  Never once did the grandmother come up to the attic to ask what we were doing, though very often she opened the bedroom door as silently as possible, hoping we wouldn't notice the noise of the key turning in the lock. She'd peer in the crack, trying to catch us doing something "unholy" or "wicked."

  In the attic we were free to do anything we wanted without fear of retaliation, unless God wielded a whip. Not one time did the grandmother leave our room without reminding us that God was up above to see, even when she was not. Because she never went even into the closet to open the door of the attic stairwell, my curiosity was aroused. I reminded myself to ask of Momma as soon as she came in, so I wouldn't forget again. "Why doesn't the grandmother go into the attic herself and check to see what we do? Why does she just ask, and think we'll tell the truth?"

  Tired and dejected looking, Momma wilted in her special chair. Her new green wool suit looked very expensive. She had been to a hairdresser, and the style was changed. She answered my question in an offhand manner, as if her thoughts were dwelling on something more appealing, "Oh, haven't I told you before? Your grandmother suffers from

  claustrophobia. That's an emotional affliction that makes it difficult for her to breathe in any small, confined area. You see, when she was a child, her parents used to lock her in a closet for punishment."

  Wow! How difficult to think that large old woman had once been young, and small enough to punish. I could almost feel sorry for the child she'd been, but I knew she was happy to see us locked up. Every time she glanced our way, it showed in her eyes--her smug satisfaction to have us so neatly captured. Still, it was a peculiar thing that fate would give her such a fear, and thus give Chris and me reason enough to kiss the dear, sweet, close walls of that narrow passageway. Often Chris and I speculated on how all the massive furniture had been taken up into the attic. Certainly it couldn't have been maneuvered up through the small closet and then up the stairway, which was barely more than a foot wide. And though we searched diligently to find another larger doorway into the attic, we never found one. Maybe one was hidden behind one of the giant armoires too heavy for us to move. Chris thought the largest furniture could have been hauled up to the roof, then passed through one of the big windows.

  Every day the witch-grandmother came into our room, to stab with her flintstone eyes, to snarl with her thin, crooked lips. Every day she asked the same old questions: "What have you been up to? What do you do in the attic? Did you say grace before today's meals? Did you go down on your knees last night and ask God to forgive your parents for the sin they committed? Are you teaching the youngest two the words of the Lord? Do you use the bathroom together, boys and girls?" Boy, did her eyes flash mean then! "Are you modest, always? Do you keep the private parts of your bodies from the eyes of others? Do you touch your bodies when it's not necessary for cleanliness?"

  God! How dirty she made skin seem. Chris laughed when she was gone. "I think she must glue on her underwear," he joked.

  "No! She nails it on!" I topped.

  "Have you noticed how much she likes the color gray?"

  Noticed? Who wouldn't notice? Always gray. Sometimes the gray had fine pinstripes of red or blue, or a dainty plaid design, very faint, or jacquard--but always the fabric was taffeta with the diamond brooch at the throat of a high and severe neckline, softened a bit by hand-crocheted collars. Momma had already told us a widow-lady in the nearest village custom made these uniforms that looked like armor. "This lady is a dear friend of my mother's. And she wears gray because it is cheaper to buy material by the bolt than by the yard--and your grandfather owns a mill that makes fine fabrics down in Georgia somewhere."

  Good golly, even the rich had to be stingy.

  One September afternoon I raced down the attic stairs in a terrible hurry to reach the bathroom--and I collided smack into the grandmother! She seized hold of my shoulders, and glared down into my face. "Watch where you're going, girl!" she snapped. "Why are you in such a hurry?"

  Her fingers felt like steel through the thin fabric of my blue blouse. She had spoken first, so I could answer. "Chris is painting the most beautiful landscape," I breathlessly explained, "and I've got to get right back with fresh water before his large wash dries. It's important to keep the colors clean."

  "Why doesn't he come for his own water? Why do you wait on him"

  "He's painting, and he asked if I'd mind fetching him fresh water, and I wasn't doing anything but watching, and the twins would spill the water."

  "Fool! Never wait on a mans Make him wait on himself. Now, spill out the truth--what are you really doing up there?"

  "Honest, I'm telling the truth. We're working hard to make the attic pretty so the twins won't be afraid up there, and Chris is a wonderful artist."

  She sneered and asked with contempt, "How would you know?"

  "He is gifted artistically, Grandmother--all his teachers said so."

  "Has he asked you to pose for him--without clothes?" I was shocked. "No. Of course not!"

  "Then why are you trembling?"

  "I'm. . . I'm scared of . . . of you," I stammered. "Every day you come in and ask what sinful, unholy thing we're doing, and truly, I don't know what it is you think we're doing. If you don't tell us exactly, how can we avoid doing something bad, not knowing it is bad?"

  She looked me over, down to my bare feet, and smiled sarcastically. "Ask your older brother--he'll know what I mean. The male of the species is born knowing everything evil."

  Boy, did I blink! Chris wasn't evil, or bad. There were times when he was tormenting, but not unholy. I tried to tell her this, but she didn't want to hear.

  Later on in the day she came into our room bearing a clay pot of yellow chrysanthemums. Striding directly to me, she put that pot in my hands. "Here are real flowers for your fake garden," she said without warmth. It was such an unwitch-like thing for her to do, it took my breath away. Was she going to change, see us differently? Could she learn to like us? I thanked her effusively for the flowers, perhaps too much, for she sp
un around and stalked out, as if embarrassed.

  Carrie came running to put her small face into the mass of yellow petals. "Pretty," she said. "Cathy, can I have them?" Of course she could have them. With reverence that pot of flowers was placed on the eastern windowsills in the attic to receive the morning sunshine. There was nothing to see but hills and far off mountains and the trees in between, and above everything hovered a blue mist. The real flowers spent the nights with us, so the twins could wake up in the morning and see something beautiful and alive growing near them.

  Whenever I think of being young, I see again those blue-misted mountains and hills, and the trees that paraded stiffly up and down the slopes. And I smell again the dry and dusty air that was ours to breathe daily. I see again the shadows in the attic that blended so well with the shadows in my mind, and I hear again the unspoken, unanswered questions of Why? When? How much longer?

  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?

  More than two months had passed, and still the grandfather lived on.

  We stood, we sat, we lay on the wide ledges of the attic dormer windows. We wistfully watched as the treetops of summer's old dark green turned overnight into the brilliant scarlets, golds, oranges, and browns of autumn. It moved me; I think it moved all of us, even the twins, to see the summer go away, and see the fall begin. And we could only watch, but never participate.

  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?

  "You're looking sad," said Chris, who was crowded close beside me, with Cory on the other side of him, and Carrie on the other side of me. Nowadays Carrie was my little shadow to follow where I led, and mimic what I did, and imitate the way she thought I felt--just as Chris had his small mimicking shadow too, in Cory. If there were ever four siblings closer than we were, they would have had to have been Siamese quadruplets.

  "Aren't you going to answer me?" asked Chris. "Why are you looking so sad? The trees look beautiful, don't they? When it's summer, I like summer best; yet when fall comes, I like fall best, and when winter comes, then that's my favorite season, and then comes spring, and I think spring is best."

  Yes, that was my Christopher Doll. He could make do with the here and now, and always think it best, no matter what the circumstances.

  "I was thinking back to old Mrs. Bertram and her boring talk of the Boston Tea Party. She made history seem so dull, and the people so unreal. Yet, I'd like to be bored like that again."

  "Yeah," he agreed, "I know what you mean. I thought school a bore, too, and history a dull subject, particularly American history--all but the Indians, and the old West. But at least when we were in school, we were doing what other kids our ages did. Now we're just wasting time, doing nothing Cathy, let's not waste one minute! Let's prepare ourselves for the day we get out. If you don't set your goals firmly in mind, and strive always to reach them, then you never do. I'll convince myself if I can't be a doctor, then I won't want to be anything else, or want anything more that money can buy!"

  He said that so intensely. I wanted to be a prima ballerina, though I would settle for something else. Chris scowled as if reading my mind. He turned his summer-blue eyes on me and scolded because I hadn't practiced my ballet exercises once since I'd come upstairs to exist. "Cathy, tomorrow I'm attaching a bane in the portion of the attic we've finished decorating-- and five or six hours each day, you are going to practice, just like in ballet class!"

  "I am not! Nobody is going to tell me I have to do anything! Besides, you can't do ballet positions unless you are properly dressed for it!"

  "What a stupid thing to say!"

  "That's because I am stupid! You, Christopher, have all the brains!" With that I burst into tears and fled from the attic, racing past all the paper flora and fauna. Run, run, run for the stairs. Fly, fly, fly down the steep and narrow wooden steps, daring fate to make you fall. Break a leg, a neck, put you in a coffin dead. Make everybody sorry then; make them cry for the dancer I should have been.

  I threw myself down on my bed and sobbed into the pillow. There was nothing here but dreams, hopes--nothing real. I'd grow old, ugly, never see lots of people again. That old man downstairs could live to be a hundred and ten! All those doctors would keep him living forever--and I would miss out on Halloween--no tricking, no treating, no parties, no candy. Oh, I felt sorry for myself, and I vowed somebody was going to pay, pay, pay for all of this, somebody was, somebody was!

  Wearing their dirty white sneakers, they came to me, my two brothers, my small sister, and each sought to give me comfort with small gifts of cherished possessions: Carrie's red and purple crayons, Cory's Peter Rabbit story book; but Chris, he just sat and looked at me. I never felt so small

  One evening quite late, Momma came in with a large box that she put in my hands to open. There amidst sheets of white tissue were ballet costumes, one a bright pink, the other azure-blue, with leotards and toe shoes to match the tulle tutus. "From Christopher," was written on the enclosed small card. And there were records of ballet music. I started to cry as I flung my arms around my mother, then around my brother. This time they weren't tears of frustration, or despair. Now I had something to work toward.

  "I wanted most of all to buy you a white costume," said Momma, still hugging me. "They had a beauty in a size too large to fit you, and with it comes a tight cap of white feathers that curl over your ears-- for Swan Lake--and I ordered it for you, Cathy. Three costumes should be enough to give you inspi- ration, shouldn't they?"

  Oh, yes! When Chris had the bane nailed securely to an attic wall, I practiced for hours on end while the music played. There wasn't a large mirror behind the bane, like there had been in the classes I had attended, but there was a huge mirror in my mind, and I saw myself as Pavlova, performing before ten thousand enraptured people, and encore after encore I took, bowing and accepting dozens of bouquets, every one red roses. In time, Momma brought me every one of Tchaikovsky's ballets to play on the record player, which had been hooked up to a dozen extension cords, which went down the stairs and plugged into a socket in our bedroom.

  Dancing to beautiful music took me out of myself, and made me forget momentarily that life was passing us by. What did it matter when I was dancing? Better to pirouette and pre- tend I had a partner to support me when I did the most difficult positions. I'd fall, get up, then dance on again until I was out of breath and ached in every muscle, and my leotards were glued to me with sweat, and my hair was wet. I'd fall down flat on the floor to rest, and pant, then up again at the bane to do plies. Sometimes I would be the Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty and sometimes I'd dance the part of the prince, as well, and leap high into the air and beat my feet together.

  Once I looked up from my concluding dying swan spasms, and I saw Chris standing in the attic shadows, watching with the oddest expression on his face. Soon he'd be having a birthday, his fifteenth. How had it come about that already he seemed a man and not a boy? Was it only that vague look in his eyes that said he was moving quickly from childhood?

  On full pointe I performed a sequence of those very small, even steps which are supposed to give the impression
the dancer is gliding across the stage and creating what is poetically called "a string of pearls." In such a way I flitter-glided over to Chris and held out my arms. "Come, Chris, be my danseur; let me teach you the way."

  He smiled, seeming bemused, but he shook his head and said that was impossible. "Ballet dancing is not for me. But I'd like to learn to waltz--if the music is Strauss."

  He made me laugh. At that time the only waltz music we had (except ballet) were old Strauss records. I hurried over to the record player to take off the Swan Lake records, and I put on The Blue Danube.

  Chris was clumsy. He held me awkwardly, as if embarrassed. He stepped on my pink pointe shoes. But it was touching how hard he tried to get simple steps right, and I couldn't tell him all his talents must reside in his brain, and in the skill of his artistic hands, for certainly none of it drifted down to his legs and feet. 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 slipperysatin 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.

  "Dance, Ballerina, dance, and do your pirouette

  In rhythm with your aching heart,

  Dance, Ballerina, dance, you mustn't once forget A dancer has to dance the part,

  Once you said his love must wait its turn,

  You wanted fame instead, I guess that's your concern,