Dollenganger 06 My Sweet Audrina (2 page)

Momma
liked
for my aunt to chastise Vera, so then she could open her arms wide and welcome Vera into them, saying time and again to Vera, "It's all right, I'll love you even if your own mother can't."
"That's the weakness of being you, Lucietta," said my aunt sharply. "You can give love to anything."
As if her own daughter, Vera, was less than human.
Never would my aunt Ellsbeth name the man who was Vera's father. "He was a cheat and a liar. I don't want to remember his name," she'd say with scorn.
It was so difficult to understand what was going on in our house. Treacherous undercurrents, like the rivers that ran into the sea that wasn't so very far away.
It was true my aunt was tall, her face was long and she was skinny, even if she did eat three times more than my mother. Sometimes when Papa said cruel things to my aunt, her already thin lips would purse together to become a fine line. Her nostrils would flare, her hands would tighten into fists, as if she'd like to belt him one if she only had the nerve.
Maybe it was Aunt Ellsbeth who kept our city friends from coming more often. There had to be some reason why they came only when we threw a party. Then, Momma said, our "friends" popped out of the woodwork like insects come to feast on the picnic. Papa adored all parties until they were over. Then, for one reason or another, he would jump on Momma and punish her for some trivial thing he called a "social error," such as looking at a handsome man for too long, or dancing with him too many times. Oh, it was difficult being a wife, I could tell. One never knew just what to do, or how friendly to be. Momma was expected to play the piano to entertain while people danced or sang. But she wasn't supposed to play so well that some people cried and told her later that she'd been a fool to marry and give up her musical career.
No casual callers ever came to our doors. No salesmen were allowed either. Signs were posted everywhere: "No Solicitors Allowed," and "Beware of the Dog," and "Keep Off, This is Private Property. Trespassers will be Prosecuted."
I often went to bed feeling unhappy with my life, feeling an undercurrent that was pulling my feet from under me, and I was floundering, floundering, bound to sink and drown. It seemed I heard a voice whispering, telling me there were rivers to cross and places to go, but I'd never go anywhere. There were people to know and fun to have, but I wouldn't experience any of that. I woke up and heard the tinkle of the whispering wind chimes telling me over and over that I belonged where I was, and here I would stay forevermore, and nothing I did would matter in the long run. Shivering, I hugged my arms over my thin chest. In my ears I heard Papa's voice, saying over and over again, "This is where you belong, safe with Papa, safe in your home."
Why did I have to have an older sister dead and in her grave at the age of nine? Why did I have to be named after a dead girl? It seemed peculiar, unnatural. I hated the First Audrina, the Best Audrina, the Good and Perfect and Never Wrong Audrina. Yet I had to replace her if ever I was to win a permanent place in Papa's heart. I hated the ritual of visiting her grave every Sunday after church services and putting flowers there bought from a florist, as if the flowers from our yard weren't good enough.
In the morning I ran to Papa and right away he picked me up and held me close as the grandfather clocks in the hallways relentlessly ticked on. All about us the house was as silent as a grave, as if waiting for death to come and take us all, as it had taken the First and Best Audrina. Oh, how I hated and envied my older dead sister. How cursed I felt to bear her name.
"Where is everyone?" I whispered, glancing around fearfully.
"Out in the yard," he said, hugging me closer. "It's Saturday, my love. I know time isn't important to you, but it is to me. Time is never important to special people with unusual gifts. Yet for me the weekend hours are the best ones. I knew you'd be frightened to find yourself alone in an empty house, so I stayed inside while the rest went out to harvest the rewards of their planting."
"Papa, why can't I remember every day like other people? I don't remember last year, or the year before--why?"
"We are all victims of dual heritages," he said softly, stroking my hair and gently rocking me back and forth in the rocker that my great-great-greatgrandmother had used to nurse her twelve children in. "Each child inherits genes from both parents, and that determines his or her hair color, eye color and personality traits. Babies come into the world to be controlled by those genes and by the particular environment that surrounds them. You are still waiting to fill with your dead sister's gifts. When you do, all that is good and beautiful in this world will belong to you, as it belonged to her. While you and I wait for that marvelous day when your empty pitcher is filled, I am doing my damnedest to give you the very best."
At that moment my aunt and mother came into the kitchen, trailed by Vera, who carried a basket of freshly picked butter
^-
beans.
Aunt Ellsbeth must have overheard most of what Papa had just said, because she remarked sarcastically, "You should have been a philosopher instead of a stockbroker, Damian. Then maybe someone would care to listen to your words of wisdom."
I stared at her, dredging up from my
treacherous memory something I might or might not have dreamed. It could even be a dream that belonged to the First Audrina, who'd been so clever, so beautiful and so everlastingly perfect. But before I could capture any illusive memory, all were gone, gone.
I sighed, unhappy with myself, unhappy with the adults who ruled me, with the cousin who insisted she was really my only sister because she wanted to steal my place, when already my place had been stolen by the First and Best Audrina, who was a dead Audrina.
And now I was supposed to act like her, talk like her and be everything that she'd been . . and where was the real me supposed to go?
Sunday came, and as soon as the church services were over, Papa drove, as he always did, straight to the family cemetery near our house where the name Whitefern was engraved on a huge arching gateway through which we slowly drove. Beyond the archway the cemetery itself had to be approached on foot. We were all dressed in our best, and bearing expensive flowers. Papa tugged me from the car. I resisted, hating that grave we had to visit and that dead girl who stole everyone's love from me.
It seemed this was the first time I could clearly remember the words Papa must have said many times before. "There she lies, my first Audrina."
Sorrowfully, he stared down at the flat grave with the slender white-marble headstone bearing my very own name, but her birth and death dates. I wondered when my parents would recover from the shock of her mysterious death. It seemed to me that if sixteen years hadn't healed their shock, maybe ninety wouldn't, either. I couldn't bear to look at that tombstone, so I stared up into my papa's handsome face so high above. This was the kind of perspective I would never have once I grew up, seeing his strong, square chin from underneath, next his heavy pouting lower lip, then his flaring nostrils and the fringe of his long lower dark lashes meeting with the upper ones as he blinked back his tears. It was just like looking up at God.
He seemed so powerful, so much in control. He smiled at me again. "My first Audrina is in that grave, dead at nine years of age. That wonderful, special Audrina--just as you are wonderful and special. Never doubt for one moment that you aren't just as wonderful and gifted as she was. Believe in what Papa tells you and you will never go wrong."
I swallowed. Visiting this grave and hearing about this Audrina always made my throat hurt. Of course I wasn't wonderful or special, yet how could I tell him that when he seemed so convinced? In my childish way I figured my value to him depended on just how special and wonderful I turned out to be later on.
"Oh, Papa," cried Vera, stumbling over to his side and clutching at his hand. "I loved her so much, so very much. She was so sweet and wonderful and special. And so beautiful. I don't think in a million years there will ever be another like your First Audrina." She flashed a wicked smile my way to tell me again that never would I be as pretty as the First and Best and Most Perfect Audrina. "And she was so brilliant in school, too. It's terrible the way she died, really awful. I'd be so ashamed if that happened to me, so ashamed I'd rather be dead."
"Shut up!" roared Papa in a voice so mighty that the ducks on the river flew away. He hurried then to put his pot of flowers on that grave, and then he seized my hand and pulled me toward his car.
Momma began to cry.
Already I knew Vera was right. Whatever wonderful specialness the First Audrina had possessed was buried in the grave with her.

In the Cupola
.
Not wanted, not worthy, not pretty and not

special enough were the words I thought as I went up the stairs and into the attic. I wished the First Audrina had never been born. I had to wade through the clutter of old dusty junk before I came to the rusty, iron, spiraling stairs that would take me through a square opening in the floor that once had a rickety iron guardrail that someday Papa was going to replace.

In that octagon room there was a rectangular Turkey rug, all crimsons, golds and blues. Each day I visited I combed that fringe with my fingers, as Papa often raked through his dark hair with his fingers when he was enraged or frustrated. There were no furnishings in the cupola, only a pillow for me to sit on. The sunlight through the stained-glass windows fell upon the carpet in swirls like bright peacock feathers and confused the designs with patterns of colored light. My legs and arms were patterned, too, like impermanent tattoos. High above, dangling down from the apex of the pointed roof, were long rectangles of painted glass--Chinese wind chimes that hung from scarlet silken cords. They hung so high the wind never made them move, yet I often heard them tinkle, tinkle. If just one time they would sway for me while I watched, then I could believe I wasn't crazy.

I fell down on the cushion on the rug and began to play with the old paper dolls that I kept lined up around the walls. Each one was named after someone I knew, but since I didn't know too many people, many of the paper dolls had the same names. But only one was named Audrina. It seemed I could vaguely remember once there had been men and boy dolls, but now I had only girls and ladies.

I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I didn't hear a sound until suddenly a voice asked, "Are you thinking about me, sweet Audrina?"

My head jerked around. There stood Vera in the haunted, colored lights of the cupola. Her straight hair was a pale apricot color unlike any other color I'd ever seen, but that wasn't unusual in our family. Her eyes very dark, like her mother's, like my father's.

The colors refracted from the many windows cast myriad colored lights on the floor, tattooed patterns on her face, so I'm sure my eyes were lit up just like hers, like many-faceted jewels. The cupola was a magic place.

"Are you listening to me, Audrina?" she asked, her voice whispery and scary. "Why do you just sit there and not answer? Have you lost your vocal cords as well as your memory?"

I hated her being in the cupola. This was my own special, private room for trying to figure out what I couldn't remember as I moved the dolls about and pretended they were my family. Truthfully, I was putting the dolls through the years of my life, trying in this way to reconstruct and dredge up the secret that eluded me. Someday, some wonderful day, I hoped to retrieve from those dolls all I couldn't recall so that I'd be made whole, and just as wonderful as that dead sister ever was.

Vera's left arm had just come out of a cast. She moved it gingerly as she stepped into my little sanctuary.

Despite my off-and-on dislike for Vera, I felt sorry she could break her arm just by banging it against something hard. According to her she'd had eleven broken bones, and I'd never had any. Little brushes against a table and her wrist fractured. A slighter bump and huge purple bruises came to mar her skin for weeks. If she fell off her bed onto a soft, padded carpet she still broke a leg, an ankle, a forearm, something.

"Does your arm still hurt?"
"Don't look at me with pity!" ordered Vera, limping into the cupola, then scrunching down on her heels in an awkward way. Her dark eyes bore holes into me. "I have fragile bones, small, delicate bones, and if they break easily, it's because I have more blue blood than you do."

She could have her blue blood if it meant broken bones twice a year. Sometimes when she was so mean to me I thought God was punishing her. And sometimes I felt guilty because my bones were tough and refused to break even when I occasionally fell.

Oh, I wondered again, if the First, Best and Most Perfect Audrina had been as aristocratic as Vera.
"And of course my arm hurts!" shrilled Vera, her dark eyes flashing with reds, greens and blues. "It hurts like hell!" Her voice turned plaintive as she went on. "When your arm is broken it makes you feel so helpless. It's really worse than a broken leg because there are so many things you can't do for yourself. Since
you
don't eat much, I don't know why your bones don't break more easily than mine . . . but, of course, you must have peasant bones."
I didn't know what to say.
"There's a boy in my class who looks at ale so sympathetically, and he carries my books, and talks to me, and asks me all kinds of questions. He's so handsome you just wouldn't believe it. His name is Arden Lowe. Isn't that an unusual and romantic name for a boy? Audrina, I think he's got a case on me . . . and he's kissed me twice in the cloakroom."
"What's a cloakroom?"
"My, are you stupid! Holes in the belfry with bats flying 'round, that's Papa's sweet Audrina." She giggled as she tossed her challenge. I didn't want to fight, so she went on to tell me more about her boyfriend named Arden Lowe. "His eyes are amber colored, the prettiest eyes you ever saw. When you get real close, you can see little flecks of green in his eyes. His hair is dark brown with reddish highlights when the sun hits it. He's smart, too. He's a year older than me, but that doesn't mean he's dumb, it just means he's traveled around so much he fell behind in his schoolwork." She sighed and looked dreamy.
"How old is Arden Lowe?"
"Yesterday I was twenty, so Arden was younger, naturally. He doesn't have my kind of talent for being any age I want to be. I guess he's eleven, and kind of a baby when I'm twenty, but such a goodlooking baby."
She smiled at me, but I knew darn well she couldn't be more than. . . than twelve? I went back to my dolls. "Audrina, you love those dolls more than you do me."
"No, I don't . . ." But I wasn't really too sure even as I said that.
"Then give me the
boy
and
men
dolls."
"All the boy and men dolls are gone," I answered in a funny, tight voice that made Vera open her eyes wide.
"Where did
^-
all the male dolls go, Audrina?" she whispered in the weirdest kind of knowing voice that made me shiver.
"I don't know," I whispered back, somehow afraid. I quickly glanced around with scared eyes. Tinkle-tinkle sounded the chimes above as they dangled perfectly still. I shrank tighter inside. "I thought you took them."
"You're a baa... ad girl, Audrina, a really wicked girl. Someday you'll find out exactly how bad, and when you do, you'll want to die." She giggled and drew away.
What was wrong with me that she'd want to hurt me time and again? Or was something wrong with her? Like my mother and her sister. . . were we going to repeat history over and over?
Vera's pale, pasty face grinned at me wickedly, seeming to represent all evil. When she turned her head the colors came to play u n her skin and her apricot hair turned red, then blue streaked with violet. "Give me all your dolls, even if the best ones have gone on to hell." She reached to seize up half a dozen of the closest dolls.
Moving lightning fast, I snatched those dolls from her hands. Then, jumping to my feet; I ran about gathering up all the other dolls. Vera crawled to rake my legs with her long fingernails, always filed to sharp points. Still I managed to hold her off with one foot against her shoulder as I gathered up the last handful of dolls and costumes. With both hands full now, I shoved her with my foot so that she fell backward, and I was off and running down the spiraling stairs at breakneck speed, sure she couldn't catch me. Yet I heard her right behind me, screaming out my name, ordering me to stop. "If I fall it will be your fault, your fault!" She added a few filthy names, which had no meaning for me at all.
"You don't love me, Audrina," I heard her wail. Her hard-soled shoes made clunking noises on the metal stairs. "If you really loved me like a sister, you'd do what I want and give me everything I want to make up for all the pain I have to suffer." I heard her stop and gasp for breath. "Audrina, don't you dare hide those dolls! Don't you dare! They belong to me just as much as they belong to you!"
No, they didn't. I'd been the one to find them in an old trunk. There was a rule about finders being keepers, and I believed in rules, old adages, maxims. They were tried and tested by time that knew so much more about everything than I did.
It was easy to duck out of sight as Vera tediously, clumsily clambered down the steep and narrow stairs. Under a loose floorboard I stuffed the dolls and all their colorful Edwardian costumes that took them to many an important social function. That's when I heard Vera scream.
Oh, golly! She'd fallen again. I ran to where she lay in a crumpled heap. Her left leg was buckled under her in a grotesque way. It was the leg she'd broken twice before. I cringed to see a bit of jagged bone protruding through her torn flesh, which was gushing blood.
"It's your fault," she moaned, in so much agony her pretty face was twisted and ugly. "It's your fault for not giving me what I wanted. Always your fault, everything bad that happens to me, your fault. Somebody should give me what I want sometime."
"I'll
give
you the dolls now," I said weakly, prepared to give her anything she demanded now that she was hurt. "I'll run for your mother and mine first--"
"I don't want your damned dolls now!" she cried. "Just get out and leave me alone! But for you I would have had everything. Someday you're going to pay for all that you've stolen from me, Audrina. I'm supposed to be the first and best, not you!"
It made me feel sick to back off and leave her alone like she was, broken and in pain, that left leg gushing blood. Then I noticed her left arm was lying there in a peculiar position, too. Oh, dear Lord. It had broken again. Now she'd have a broken arm, and a broken leg. But even so, God had not taught Vera anything about humility, as I'd been taught, and taught well . . .
How did I know that?
Flying down
^-
the stairs I bumped into Papa. "Haven't I told you to stay out of the cupola?" he barked, grabbing hold of my arm and trying to prevent me from reaching my mother. "Don't go up there until I have that guardrail put back. You could fall and hurt yourself."
I didn't want to be the one to tell Papa about Vera's broken bones. Yet I had to, since he refused to let go of my arm. "She's up there bleeding, Papa. Great gobs of blood, and if you don't let go of me and call an ambulance, she might die."
"I doubt it," he said; still, he did bellow out to Momma, "Call for the ambulance, Lucky. Vera has broken her bones again. My health insurance will cancel my plan if this keeps up."
Still, when it came down to the nitty-gritty, Papa was the one who calmed Vera's fears and sat beside her in the ambulance and held her hand as he wipes away her tears.
And on a stretcher, in an ambulance that knew her well, Vera was again on her way to the closest hospital to have yet another cast put on her arm, and on her leg, too.
I stood near the front door and watched the ambulance disappear around the bend of our long drive. Both my mother and my aunt refused to go to the hospital again and suffer through all the long hours of waiting and watching that shriveled leg being again put into a cast. The last time she'd broken her leg, Vera's doctor said that if she broke it again, the leg might not grow as long as the other.
"Don't look so worried, darling," comforted Momma. "It wasn't your fault. We have warned Vera time and again not to climb those spiraling stairs. That's why we tell you not to go up there, knowing she'll follow sooner or later to check on what you're doing. And doctors always give you the most dire predictions, thinking how grateful you'll feel when they don't come true. Vera's leg will grow to match the other. . . though God knows how she manages to break the same one over and over again so consistently."
Aunt Ellsbeth said nothing at all. It
seemed
her daughter's broken bones didn't concern her nearly as much as hunting throughout the house for an old vacuum cleaner, which she finally found in the closet under the back stairs. She headed toward the family dining room, where six presidents hung to stare at the naked lady eating grapes.
"Is there anything I can do to help, Aunt Ellsbeth?" I asked.
"No!" snapped my aunt. "You don't know how to do anything right, and in the end you only make more work. Why the devil didn't you give Vera the paper dolls when she asked for them?"
"Because she'd only tear them up."
My aunt snorted, glared at me, at my mother, whose arms were around me, and then she tugged the vacuum down the hall and disappeared.
"Momma," I whispered, "why does Vera always lie? She told Papa I pushed her down the stairs, but I wasn't even near
her.
I was in the attic, hiding the dolls, while she was coming down the stairs. She fell in school, and even then she said I pushed her. Momma, why would she say that when I've never been to school? Why can't I go to school? Did the First Audrina go to school?"
"Yes, of course she went," said Momma, sounding as if a frog had caught in her throat. "Vera is a very unhappy girl, and that's why she lies. Her mother gives her very little attention, and Vera knows you receive a great deal. But it's hard to love such a mean, hateful girl, although we all try our best. There's a cruel streak in Vera that worries me greatly. I'm so afraid she'll do something to hurt you, to hurt us all." Her lovely violet eyes stared off into space. "It's too bad your aunt didn't stay away. We didn't need her and Vera to complicate our lives more."
"How old is Vera, Momma?"
"How old has she told you she is?"
"Sometimes Vera says she's ten, sometimes she says she's twelve, and sometimes she's sixteen, or twenty. Momma, she laughs like she's mocking me . . . because I really don't know how old
I
am."
"Of course you know you are seven. Haven't we told you that over and over again?"
"But I can't remember my seventh birthday. Did you give me a birthday party? Does Vera have birthday parties? I can't remember one."
"Vera is three years older than you are," said Momma quickly. "We can't afford to have birthday parties anymore. Not because we can't spend the money--but you know why birthday parties bring back tragic memories. Neither your father nor I can bear to think of birthday parties anymore, so we all stopped having birthdays and have chosen to stay the age we like best. I'm going to stay thirty-two." She giggled and kissed me again. "That's a lovely age to be, not too young and not too old."
But I was serious and sick of evasions. "Then Vera didn't know my dead sister, did she? She says she did, but how could she have when she's only three years older than me?"
Again my mother looked distressed. "In a way she did know her. You see, we've talked so much about her. Perhaps we talk too much about her."
And so it went, as always, evasions but no revelations, at least not the kind I really wanted, the kind I could believe in.
"When can I go to school?" I asked.
"Someday," murmured Momma, "someday soon. . ."
"But Momma," I persisted, following her into the kitchen and helping her chop vegetables for the salad, "I don't fall and break my bones like Vera. So I'd be safer in school than she is."
"No, you don't fall," she said in a tight voice. "I suppose I should be grateful for that--but you have other ways of hurting yourself, don't you?"
Did I? .