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This book is dedicated to my mother.
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.
And I, so eager to learn, drank in everything she did to turn herself from just a pretty woman into a creature so ravishingly beautiful she didn’t look real.
I didn’t say anything, but rolled over on my back to glare at him fiercely. Didn’t he know I was supposed to be his favorite all his life through?
She lived next door, and was always saying Momma and Daddy looked more like brother and sister than husband and wife.
Soon everyone in our neighborhood was calling us the Dresden dolls; certainly it was easier to say than Dollanganger.
Momma didn’t scream. Her eyes went bleak, dark, haunted. Despair washed the radiant color from her beautiful face; it resembled a death mask.
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.”
Someone, some adult, should have warned us that the young, the handsome, and the needed can die, too.
From all that I heard, and overheard, fate was a grim reaper, never kind, with little respect for who was loved and needed.
And grief, no matter how you try to cater to its wail, has a way of fading away, and the person so real, so beloved, becomes a dim, slightly out-of-focus shadow.
“Doesn’t everybody love their mother?” “No,” she said with a queer expression, “there are some mothers you just can’t love, for they don’t want you to love them.”
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, that the words “backyard” and “garden” were to become for us synonyms for heaven—and just as remote.
They built a wall about themselves so they were the castle-keeps, and full guardians of their larder of secrets. They had each other and that was enough.
What was the matter with her? Didn’t she know we were hers, and not some stranger’s four perched in a row like birds on a clothesline?
People have a way of believing nothing terrible will ever happen to them, only to others. We don’t anticipate accidents, nor do we expect to die young.
Nothing here is really ours: not this furniture, not the cars, not the appliances in the kitchen or laundry room—not one single thing is fully paid for.”
I floundered in the desire to understand, and struggled not to drown in the understanding. Already I was sinking, drowning in the adult world of death and debts.
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!
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.
It’s not love that makes the world go ’round—it’s money. And my father has more money than he knows what to do with.
The sun shone through the front windows, casting diamond strands of light on her hair. Already she seemed rich beyond value.
With everything you gained, you had to lose something—so I might as well get used to it, and make the best of it.
It was too big, that close sky, too beautiful, and it filled me with a strange sense of foreboding. Still I knew that under other circumstances, I could love a countryside like this.
Around us, below us, this huge house seemed a monster, holding us in its sharp-toothed mouth. If we moved, whispered, breathed heavily, we’d be swallowed and digested.
Carrie was born opinionated. Even before she could talk, and she talked at nine months, she knew what she liked and what she hated.
I recall Mrs. Simpson saying Cory was “a still water that ran deep.” I still don’t know what she meant by that, except quiet people did exude some illusion of mystery that kept you wondering just what they really were beneath the surface.
Next we heard something for the first time, which we were to hear over and over again like a needle stuck in a scratched record: “And remember, children, God sees everything! God will see what evil you do behind my back! And God will be the one to punish when I don’t!”
I presumed, dead relatives of ours. Some had light hair, some dark; all had eyes sharp, cruel, hard, bitter, sad, wistful, yearning, hopeless, empty, but never, I swear, never did I see any happy eyes.
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.
Such horrible words she’d said: “You are here, but you don’t really exist.”
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 . . . .
the twins could transport orange peels in their trucks and dump them down in Florida, which was the trash can in the corner.
Florida: the trash can in the corner of the US.
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.
We will dole out food, drink, and shelter, but never kindness, sympathy or love. It’s impossible to feel anything but revulsion for what is not wholesome.
Yes, she wanted to make us undone that night, when we were young, innocent, trusting, having known only the sweetest part of living. She wanted to wither our souls and shrivel us small and dry, perhaps never to feel pride again.
This was no safe harbor, no refuge, no sanctuary. Certainly Momma must have known how it would be, and yet, she’d led us here in the dead of night. Why?
To believe in God is a good thing, a right thing. But when you reinforce your belief with words you take from the Old Testament that you seek out, and interpret in the ways that suit your needs best, that is hypocrisy, and that is exactly what my parents do.
for he is paving his way to heaven with gold, and if St. Peter can be bribed, my father will surely gain entrance.
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.
He buys everything that is considered a unique work of art—not because he appreciates art, but he likes to own things. He would like to own everything, if possible, especially beautiful things.
He was so beautiful, not just handsome, but beautiful—there’s a difference, you know. Real beauty radiates from the inside out, and he had that.
I am going to have to play the role of the dutiful, humbled, thoroughly chastised daughter. And sometimes, when you begin to play a role you assume that character, so I want to say now, while I am still fully myself, all you have to hear.
“My father adored me when I was young. He wanted to keep me always for himself. He never wanted me to marry anyone. I recall when I was only twelve, he said he’d leave me his entire estate if I stayed with him until he died of old age.”
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!
Those thoughts wanted to lounge around in my head and make me miserable. I had to find a way to drive them out.
We will take each hour as it comes, and never pause to think ahead to the next one, and by using this method, it will be much easier than thinking in terms of days and weeks. Think about music, about dancing, singing.
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.
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.
If you consider reading the Bible a form of punishment, then forget it. We find it fascinating reading. It’s bloodier and lustier than any movie we ever saw, and talks more about sin than any book we ever read.”
