All for a Sister (27 page)

“He’s going to be a lawyer,” Carrie said with obvious pride. “First one in our family to go to college.”

“Someday.” She could barely speak the word.

“That’s right.” Parker beamed as if Dana shared his family’s sense of destiny. “I graduate from high school this spring, and I’ve already been accepted to three universities.”

“Always been the bright one of the family.” Carrie continued to hold Dana’s hand and gave it a squeeze while gazing in adoration at her cousin. “He’s from the good side. That’s why I went to live with them after . . . here. I got to go to school, too. For a little bit.” Her voice trailed, uncomfortable in the shadow of Dana’s unconstrained envy.

“Is there anything—anything you can do for me now?” She hated that she sounded like she was begging. She was not used to asking for anything for herself. Not an extra blanket when she was cold, or a second slice of bread when she was hungry. Her only request had been to Mrs. Karistin, to mail her letters, and once again she saw this as her hope. “Could you mail a letter for me? To Mrs. DuFrane?”

“Of course,” Carrie said, looking relieved at the simplicity of the request.

“I don’t have one right now,” Dana said, wondering just how long she had before Effie returned. Why did she not keep such a missive ready, tucked within her sleeve?

“He’ll write one for you, won’t you, Christopher? He’s one of the best writers in his class. All the teachers said so.”

Christopher attempted to look modest under his cousin’s praise. “I don’t know if I’m the
best
, but I’ll gladly write something on your behalf. What should I say?”

Dana closed her eyes, picturing every word. She’d written the same letter ten times on paper, and a thousand on her heart. “Tell her that I’m sorry—”

“Wait a minute,” Christopher interrupted. “That could be seen as an admission of guilt.”

She shook off his rebuke. “Tell her I would take it back, if I could. And ask if she can forgive me, ever. I could live if I knew I’m forgiven. Live here, even, if I have to. Tell her I don’t think God can forgive me if she doesn’t.”

By now Christopher was up from his seat and kneeling in front of her, looking into her eyes. “I’ll do what I can for you. What’s best for you, but it might take time. I’m not anybody right now.”

Dana sensed movement out of the corner of her vision and saw Effie making her steady, purposeful way across the yard. “You’re a friend, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I promise.”

“Then you’re more than I’ve ever had.”

THE WRITTEN CONFESSION OF MARGUERITE DUFRANE, PAGES 54–58 AND 80–85

IN THAT MONTH BEFORE
you were born, three fears consumed me. The first, of course, was the idea that you would be immediately taken away from me. I had nightmares of your mother wrapping you up in one of my precious Mary’s blankets and escaping with you in the night.
Escape
, I’m sure, is a word my attorney would discourage me from using, as it implies that Mrs. Lundgren was some kind of prisoner in my home, rather than a guest invited to experience comforts and luxuries she could never have known, given her limited resources. Still, those fears pursued me. Daily, friends would stop by, bringing little tokens and gifts—some for me, some for you. Personally, I think they liked the idea of being part of such a dramatic turn of events, this tragedy-turned-blessing, or at least that’s what they liked to call it. The way they babbled on, all these words spilling out of their mouths. How this new baby would mend my broken heart. How my Mary’s angel would bring celebrations to heaven.

“The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.”
Over and over again I heard this as they ate my cookies and drank my tea and told me how happy I should be that the Lord was giving me another child. As if I should forget what he had taken away.

Which gave birth to my second fear: that you wouldn’t be enough. Oh yes, how a child can heal! Perhaps if you’d truly been my child, growing within me, filling my body with your presence, there wouldn’t have been enough room for my bitterness to take root and become the cancerous vine that now chokes out my very life.

I felt it even then, you know. My physicians say that is impossible, but as I watched Mrs. Lundgren grow bigger and bigger with child, I sometimes felt a solid mass growing inside me, flattening my lungs to the point that I couldn’t breathe. No one guessed that I wasn’t in a family way. Everything about me grew enormously fat, from my face to the swollen tree stump–like ankles that defied any footwear other than your father’s leather slippers. Only Mrs. Gibbons, who had been with me through my two pregnancies, hinted that all wasn’t quite right.

“If you’ll pardon me, missus,” she said one afternoon as I wolfed down a plate of scones and a tall glass of buttermilk, “it just don’t seem like you have the glow that you did with those other ones.”

I assume she referred to the fact that my skin had stretched to contain the extra soft flesh of my face, hanging loose at my jowls and beneath my eyes, where no expensive cream could make it conform to its former beauty. I reminded her that I was still in mourning, and that no mother would be expected to glow with one child in her belly and another in the grave. She never mentioned it again.

And then there was the matter of your father. I remember being pregnant with Calvin, and the two of us would lie in bed, fascinated with the boy’s movement within my body. Arthur would fall asleep with his hand on my belly, so eager to meet his son. (Somehow he knew it was a boy.) And he was protective of
Mary even before she was born, hiring nannies to take care of the boy so I could get plenty of rest. I don’t think my feet hit the floor during the last six weeks of my confinement with her. The minute he held her, he wept, and did so every time he looked at her for days on end. So steeped was he in grief over Mary that I had to repeat myself three times when I told him we were going to have another baby.

If it matters at all, those are the exact words I used.

We are going to have another baby.

There will be a new little one in the spring.

Calvin is about to get a new brother or sister.

Phrases carefully crafted to absolve me of a lie. Looking back, it seems silly to spare myself that one falsehood when I was near to drowning in deceit.

I remember as a child going to the circus and seeing the woman high above, walking along a single, suspended rope, and the audience gasped each time she tilted to the right or the left. When I could stand it no more, I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for her, harder than I’d ever prayed for anything in my young life, and when the audience applauded, I opened them to see her safely on the platform, waving to all of us before triumphantly descending the ladder and riding out of the ring on a glorious white horse.

Oh, if only I could have closed my eyes and opened them again to find myself safely delivered of this dangerous trail of deceit. To confess one sin to my husband would have meant revealing another, followed by yet another, until we were bound to each other by only a fragile thread of lies. He would leave me if he knew that a pregnant Mrs. Lundgren rested comfortably in a hidden third-floor room while her daughter had been secreted away at my behest. Indeed, now, looking at my actions
thus writ, they appear far more malevolent than when they were mere thoughts in my grief-addled head.

But Arthur—he was not one to employ emotion as a justification for choices, right or wrong. When I had occasion to confront him about his adultery, he wanted me to believe that his decision to dally with another woman was simply a calculated risk based on availability and opportunity. It had nothing to do with his feelings for me, and certainly never implied that he had any affection whatsoever for those with whom he strayed. I’m sure he meant his explanation to give me reassurance, but his utter disregard for the physical expression of our love manifested itself not only in his wanton disrespect for our marital bed, but also in his failure to acknowledge the improbability that the child I “carried” could be his.
Not once
did he question—in word or regard—either the validity of my pregnancy or its source.

And so I kept my eyes open, carefully balancing each of my lies, praying for God to reward my intentions and make a way, though deep down, I didn’t deserve a shred of grace. I prayed on behalf of this unborn baby, for the sake of Mary’s soul, for the divinely ordained justice that banished Cain for the slaying of his brother.

I have done my initial duty with this document to explain your parentage, dearest Celeste, but I’ve yet to complete my confession of my role in the imprisonment of Dana Lundgren, even as I indulge my conscience with the insistence that, while I may have been the whisperer of words, if others had not taken action, my thoughts would never have come to anything beyond unfulfilled wishes. Except for the case of your natural mother. Never in my life would I have wished such a thing. God’s actions are beyond our understanding.

You, however, were more wonderful than anything I could have conjured in my own imagination. Vibrant, healthy, precocious, and intuitive from the moment you were born. You consumed every moment of every day, not with selfish demands but by being a force of personality that simply could not be ignored. I could watch you for hours—sleeping, rolling on the floor, those first unsteady steps. And your father, too, for all my fears that he’d never recognize you as his own.

One time—you must have been about three years old—it was a wonderful autumn afternoon, and your father and I had taken you to that little park around the corner from our home. It was a rare family outing, with Arthur and I sitting together on an iron bench watching you play with your brother (who never did develop the same doting devotion, more’s the pity) at floating fallen leaves in a puddle. The sunlight hit your hair, and I lost my breath at the glory of it. I’m afraid I quite lost my mind, and wondered aloud how two little ugly ducks like us had managed to produce such a beauty.

Silence followed as each of us pondered our own suspicions. Wrestled with our own truth. I sat next to your father, nearly as fat as I’d been before you were born. We couldn’t look at each other.

It was one of those moments where I’d completely forgotten how you came to be. Sometimes those moments melded into entire days, and days upon days, when I never gave a second thought to the banished young girl or her mother. I had you, and Arthur, and Calvin. I’d landed on the platform, high above any crowd who would accuse me. And later, of course, California would be the white horse that would come to carry me away.

But that was yet to come.

I’d just packed Calvin off to school, and Mrs. Gibbons was occupied getting you cleaned up and dressed for the day, and
Arthur had already locked himself away in his study—not to be disturbed—when the front doorbell rang. It was far too early for a social call, not that I was dressed properly to receive visitors. Those days, I rarely socialized, claiming a particular frailty that left me sometimes too weak to venture far from my own bed. At home, of course, I remained enthralled with you, responding to your every whim and desire, helping you bump, bump down the steps only to carry you back up endlessly. I’d purchased several serviceable housedresses from the Sears and Roebuck catalog, finding that method of procuring a wardrobe far more appealing than listening to my dressmaker cluck her tongue at the measuring tape. Left with no recourse, as you’d created quite a mess of yourself with molasses or some such thing, it fell to me to answer the door, housedress or not.

You can’t imagine the start it gave me to see a Negro standing on our front porch. Our
front
porch. I can’t remember a time before that had ever happened, and I can say with almost-absolute surety that had my grandfather, the original owner of the house, been alive, he would have made short work of the young man who took such liberties with our property. Yet there he was. Tall and big as a barn, or at least he seemed at the time. In hindsight, I can see that my girth matched his inch for inch, and he had a moonish round face that offered absolutely no malice. He stood there, wearing a cheap suit not unlike the ones in the catalog from which I’d purchased my own cotton dress, and held a well-worn brown bowler hat in his hand.