Daughter of Darkness (15 page)

For most of the day, I assumed that was that. Despite what he hoped he saw in me, he had gotten the message loud and clear. I had turned him off, and he would leave me alone. I avoided looking at him, and whenever I did see him, he appeared to avoid looking at me. He didn’t approach me again before lunch or in the cafeteria, but I could see that my outburst at him was the talk of the school. Some of those girls who I knew had been jealous of me from the start saw another chance to pounce. In P.E. class, Ruta Lee and a clump of her friends accused me of being gay.

“No one can come up with any other reason why you would blow off Mark Daniels,” she said. “You don’t date anyone. You refuse any other boy’s invitations. This clinches it. It’s all right if you want to be gay. We just want you to know we know and don’t appreciate your staring at us when we change clothes in here.”

All of her friends were grinning from ear to ear. I could hear Ava’s words: “Daddy sees through my eyes, hears through my ears.”

I nodded and stepped toward her. “Ruta,” I said
softly, sympathetically, “we both know that you’re saying this in front of your friends just because I rejected your advances in the girls’ room. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“What?” She turned red.

I looked at the others. The tone of my reaction and comment took them all by surprise. “Has Ruta approached anyone else? If so, you know what I’m talking about. I couldn’t stop her in the bathroom. It was embarrassing.” I looked at her again and shook my head, my face locked in a sad-serious expression. “The way you came at me, complimented me on my clothes, my makeup. Really, Ruta, you should return to the therapist you said you were seeing.”

All the girls looked at her.

“I never saw any therapist. Shut up.”

I sighed and shook my head at the other girls. “I thought she was having an orgasm in the toilet stall beside me. I was so afraid Mrs. Gilbert would walk in on us. Ruta hasn’t noticed it, but Mrs. Gilbert has been very suspicious. She sees when you touch my hand in class, Ruta. I’ve asked you to stop.”

“You’re disgusting!” Ruta cried.

I didn’t smile. One thing about accusations, I thought. You could always depend on them to ruin or weaken someone else. I could see the possibilities swimming in the eyes of her friends. Had she ever touched any of them in a suggestive way or talked about homosexuality, maybe even wondered aloud what it would be like? She wasn’t very popular with boys. Would they think this might be why? She was the one who had used that to strengthen her accusations about me. As the
Wiccans warn their own: do evil to someone, and it can come back at you three times.

Ruta seemed to shrink back, her eyes revealing a new sense of desperation. “I wouldn’t turn down Mark Daniels,” she claimed, searching for a strong comeback. She looked at the other girls. “No one here would. That’s for damn sure.”

“That’s not the issue here, is it? Now that you’ve brought it up, let’s talk about it. Why wouldn’t he or any other really good-looking boy in this school be after you? I’ll tell you why, Ruta. Boys can sense when a girl’s gay,” I said, looking at the others and nodding. “It’s instinctive.”

I saw Ruta’s eyes begin to tear. She looked as if she would turn and run.

“After all,” I delivered as a final killing blow, “why would being gay be the first thing to come into your mind when you thought about attacking me just now? Anyone else think that?” I asked the others. One or two actually shook their heads. Ruta’s lips began to tremble.

“That’s ridiculous,” Meg Logan said, stepping up to her defense.

“Is it? Haven’t you slept overnight at Ruta’s, Meg? Ruta told me how hot and heavy you two can get,” I said. “Did you put her up to this? Was it because you were jealous of how strong her feelings have been for me?”

“What?”

Some of the other girls looked shocked.

“You bitch!” Ruta cried, and swung at me. I caught her wrist in midair and turned it sharply. She screamed, and I stepped forward, my face in hers so closely that, as Shakespeare would say, our breaths did kiss.

“Don’t you dare make up any more stories about me,” I said in a cold, gruff whisper. I felt more like Ava, the rage in me rising to the top and spilling out like milk boiling over in a pan. Ruta wilted with the pain. “If I hear that you are, I’ll come see you in your sleep.”

I let go of her and returned to my locker. No one spoke. Ruta turned away, rubbing her wrist. Meg started to put her arm around her to comfort her, but Ruta threw it off.

“Stop!” she cried.

I smiled to myself. How quickly an innocent gesture would look telling to the others. She had tried to poison them against me but only poisoned herself. I couldn’t wait to tell Daddy all about this and how well I had handled it and Mark Daniels.

But Mark Daniels wasn’t as discouraged as I had thought. He was right, though. Despite myself, I still felt a longing to be with him, to have fun together. Pressing all that down was like smothering a starving baby.

“Okay,” he said, stepping up beside me as I made my way through the halls at the end of the day. “This is my final offer. Maybe they’re more to your liking and you’ll reconsider.”

He handed me a slip of paper and walked faster. I watched him head toward the exit to the parking lot, and then I looked at the paper. He had listed four more personal references: Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Madonna.

It was certainly difficult being hard with him, I thought, laughing to myself, but one thing I knew for sure, I couldn’t let Daddy know that.

“Well, what happened with him?” Marla asked me when we got into the car. “I saw him talking to you even after you told him off at the school entrance this morning.”

“What, were you spying on me?” I thought for a moment. “Ava didn’t tell you to do that, did she?”

“Maybe Daddy told me to do it.”

“You’re lying. I’m going to ask him, and he’ll be enraged. You said it yourself. He wants us to look out for each other, not hurt each other.”

“Nobody told me to do it. I’m just trying to be a good sister and help you,” she whined. I had frightened her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

I felt myself calm down. “It’s over, Marla. Stop asking me about him.”

“Good, but you don’t sound happy,” she said. “I’m just telling you as a good sister would. You’d better be careful.”

I didn’t speak for the remainder of the trip. When we arrived at home, Mrs. Fennel told me my father was waiting for me in the living room.

“Marla, you go to your room,” she added. Marla’s shoulders sank. She had so hoped to listen in on any discussion. Maybe she was afraid I would still tell Daddy what she had done and said.

“Tell me everything,” Daddy said when I entered the living room. Dressed in his ruby velvet robe, he was sitting in his armchair. He put down the book he had been reading while waiting for me and folded his hands.

I told him what I had said to Mark and his reaction
and then how he had continued approaching me. “He kept kidding around about it, but I didn’t smile or laugh at anything he said.”

“Very persistent. Are you sure you were stern enough?”

“Oh, yes, Daddy,” I said. I repeated the words I had used and then told him what had happened in the girls’ locker room and how I had turned the tables on Ruta Lee. That brought a smile to his face.

“Very clever of you, Lorelei. But,” he added with concern, “I don’t want you getting into trouble at school. None of my girls gets into trouble like that and brings unpleasant attention to us. Ignore them from now on. Your days at that school are limited.”

The way he said that made me think we might be moving again very soon.

“Are we moving?”

“Soon, yes.”

“How soon?”

“I’m not sure yet, but don’t worry about it, Lorelei. Moving at short notice is not a problem for any of us,” he added. “Okay. You can go do your homework if you’d like.”

“Is Ava back yet?”

“Not yet,” he said. “She won’t be at dinner, either.”

She’s hunting
, I thought, and mentally counted the days. It was time. I didn’t see or hear her until the middle of the night. Apparently, she had gone much farther for her catch this time.

To my surprise, Daddy wasn’t at dinner, either. When I asked why not, Mrs. Fennel said he had things
to do and wouldn’t be home until late in the evening. Usually, she would just say, “He had things to do.” I was sensitive to the fact that she was speaking to me more now. Something had changed between us. She wasn’t sniping at me, and I thought I even saw her smile occasionally. There was no change in how she spoke or acted toward Marla.

Marla was quiet and solicitous at dinner. I thought she was still afraid I would tell Daddy how she had behaved and even some of the things she had said. It was clear also that Daddy was not unhappy with how I had handled things in school with Mark. She knew that eventually, as Ava had been my mentor, I would be hers. I saw how frightened she was now of my holding a grudge. I was pleasant to her but took advantage of her timidity and bullied her a little. It made me feel more and more like Ava, and I wondered if I was tumbling headlong into her persona. Perhaps it wouldn’t be much longer before she would feel usurped and move on to fulfill her own destiny, whatever that was.

After dinner, Marla went right up to her room. She asked me to stop in to listen to some music with her after I had done my work, and I said I might. I lingered in the dining room for a few moments longer, and when Mrs. Fennel came in to start cleaning up, I rose to help her. She never tolerated any help unless we had company and she wanted us to make a good impression. Since my younger days helping her in her herbal garden, I had always been timid about doing anything to assist her. We were responsible for our own things and our own rooms, but she guarded the rest of the house
as if it were her special kingdom. No one was to move anything ever and certainly we were never to touch the very valuable antique artifacts.

Most girls my age would have loved not having to do kitchen and housework. A number of them in my class came from families that had permanent maids, and some even had cooks. Ava never minded our arrangements, and Marla, who was often too lazy to care for her own things, loved not being asked to do anything else, but I had a different feeling about it. As strange it would sound to my classmates, being so unattached to caring for our home made me feel more like a tenant. I wanted to cherish our possessions, feel that they were part of who I was. Sometimes I felt as if I were in some shop or model home, looking at things the way customers might look at merchandise.

Mrs. Fennel glanced at me when I started to pick up plates to follow her into the kitchen, but, unlike after my other attempts, she didn’t say, “Just leave it.” She went into the kitchen and let me follow her. I put the plates down on the counter and went back into the dining room to bring in the rest. She was quiet and worked as I cleared the dining-room table. And then, in a very uncharacteristic soft tone of voice, she turned to me, smiled softly, and said, “You want to talk to me tonight?”

“Yes,” I said, holding my breath.

“Return to the dining room,” she said.

I did, and a few moments later, wiping her hands with a dish towel, she returned as well and sat in Daddy’s seat.

She leaned forward and said, “Go ahead.”

“Marla was being a little brat today,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, sitting back with a look of disappointment. “Is that what this is about?”

“No, no,” I said quickly. “I’m not here to complain about her. I can handle Marla myself.”

She smiled at that. “So, what is it?”

“She claimed Ava told her things, things about you.”

“Did she?” She twisted her lips and then nodded. “Ava can be spiteful. She was like that with Brianna, too. None of you is perfect or as perfect as I would like.”

“She said you were Daddy’s sister.”

She stared at me a moment and then nodded. “Your father has been moving you along a little faster than the others, so your learning what Ava learned when she was older than you is appropriate.”

I held my breath. I had been waiting for this so long. How much would she tell me?

“Yes,” she began. “I am your father’s sister, but I am considerably older than he is.”

“What are your ages?” I asked in a low, meek whisper.

She smiled at me, and it was one of the few times I had ever seen a warm, truly humorous smile on her face. It made her look younger, too. “You know what, Lorelei? We’ve lived so long that after a while, we lose track. Time isn’t the same for us, anyway. We don’t look for it on watches and on calendars. It doesn’t move in increments. It all seems to stream, flow. It’s like trying to find a single drop of water in a stream. Just know we’ve
both been around a very long time. You’ll understand someday.”

It was going so well, I thought I would continue. “Ava knows who her mother was. She’s angry about her. I’d almost say she hates the thought of her, blames her for dying. Is that true? Was her dying her own fault somehow?”

“No,” Mrs. Fennel said. “A man like your father can have children with an ordinary woman, but she will always die in childbirth. He knew this. I don’t want you talking to Ava about this anymore. Understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That’s enough for now. Thank you for helping. Now, put all this away for now. You have a ways to travel yet before you can handle what more there is to learn and to do,” she said.

I didn’t get up immediately. I was trembling. My legs felt weak. Then I heard the door open and close and turned to see Daddy standing there.

“Why are you sitting by yourself in the dining room, Lorelei?”

“I…”

“She helped me with the cleanup, and then we had an important conversation,” Mrs. Fennel said. I supposed I should be thinking of her as Aunt Razi, I thought, but I wouldn’t, nor would I call her that until she told me it was okay to do so.

“Oh? That’s good,” Daddy said. I thought he looked tired. His shoulders sagged, and his face was darker. “We’ll talk more tomorrow,” he added, and headed upstairs. I looked quickly at Mrs. Fennel.

“Tend to your own duties now,” she said, and returned to the kitchen.