Dollenganger 06 My Sweet Audrina (5 page)

Just a playroom, safe in my home,
Only a playroom, safe in my home,
Got no tears, no fears
And nowhere else to roam,
'Cause my-papa wants me always to stay home,
Safe in my playroom, safe in my home.
The playroom of the First and Best Audrina. The Perfect Audrina who'd never given her parents the pain and the trouble I delivered daily. I didn't want to sing her song. But I couldn't stop. On and on I heard the singing, trying to keep my eyes open so they could see those elephants, bears and toy tigers on the toy shelves, all sweet and friendly looking until I glanced away. When I looked back, they were fiercely snarling.
The wallpaper was faded bluish violet, entwined with glittery silver threads to make spiderwebs on the walls. There were more spiders on the toys. A giant one began to weave more dolls together, and another came to rest in the
eye
socket of one doll that had hair somewhat the color of my own. How awful.
"Rock, Audrina, rock!" ordered Papa. "Make the floorboards creak. Make the gray mists come. Watch the walls dissolve, hear the wind chimes tinkle. They'll take you back, back to where you'll find all your memories, all the gifts that were hers. She doesn't need them where she is, but you do. So sing,
sing,
sing. . ."
Hypnotizing, like a singsong chant he, too, had to use, but he didn't know the words I was saying. Papa loves me, yes he does. Papa needs me, yes he does.
Jesus loves me, this I know, For the Bible tells me so. . .

The shiny black button eyes of the plushy animals seemed to glitter and gleam with more knowledge than I'd ever have. Little pink or red tongues appeared ready to speak and tell me secrets Papa would never reveal. High above, the wind chimes were tinkling, and contentment was coming as I rocked and rocked and became more and more tranquil. Nothing wrong with me, for sooner or later I was going to be changed in some indefinable way for the better. . . .

I grew sleepy, sleepier, unreal feeling. The orangey light from the gaslamps shivered, caught silver and gold threads in the wallpaper. All the colors in the room began to move, to sparkle like diamonds suddenly caught fire. The music of the cupola wind chimes was in my brain dancing, dancing, telling me of happy playtimes up there, slyly whispering of one terrible time up there. Who was flashing that crystal prism in my eyes? How did the wind get into the house to blow my hair when the windows were all down and locked? Were there drafts in the cupola, and ghosts in the attic? What made the hair on my head move, what?

Way back near the sane side of me, I wanted to believe all of this was hopeless and I'd never become an "empty pitcher" that would fill with everything wonderful. I truly didn't want to be that First Audrina, even if she had been more beautiful, and more gifted, too. Still I rocked and sang, I couldn't stop.
Contentment was on the way, making me happier. My panicky heart slowed. My pulse stopped racing. The music I heard was beautiful as I heard behind me, or ahead of me, a man's voice singing.

Someone who needed me was calling; someone who was in the future waiting, and dreamily, unquestioningly, I fuzzily saw the walls open as the molecules slowly, slowly separated, opened, and formed such grainy pores I could drift through them without difficulty. I was outside in the night that swiftly changed into day.

Free! I was free of the playroom. Free of my papa. Free of Whitefern!
I was skipping merrily home from school on my own special day. And I was me. Happily I danced along a woodsy dirt path. I'd just left school, and I didn't question or wonder about this, even knowing I'd never been to school. Something wise was telling me I was inside the First and Most- Wonderful Audrina, and I was going to know her as well as I knew myself. I
was
her, and she was me, and "we" were wearing a beautiful crepe de chine dress. I wore my best petticoat underneath it--the one with Irish lace and embroidered shamrocks near the hem.
It was my birthday and I was nine years old. That meant soon I'd be ten, and ten wasn't so far from being eleven, and when I was twelve all the magic of becoming a woman was close at hand.
I spun in circles to see my accordian-pleated skirt flair up to my waist. I inclined my head and spun some more to see my pretty petticoat.
Suddenly there was a noise on the path ahead. Someone giggled. Like black magic the sky abruptly turned dark. Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled deep and ominously.
I couldn't move. Like a statue of marble I stood frozen. My heart began to beat wildly like a jungle drum. Some sixth sense woke up and screamed that something awful was soon to happen.
Pain, my sixth sense was beating out, shame, terror and humiliation. Momma, Papa, help me! Don't let them hurt me! Don't let them do it! I went to Sunday school every week, didn't miss even when I had a cold. I'd earned my black Bible with my name on the cover emblazoned in gold, and I had a gold medal, too. Why hadn't the rocking chair warned me and told me how to escape! God, are you there? Are you seeing, God? Do something! Do anything! Help me!
Out of the bushes they jumped. Three of them. Run, run fast. They'd never catch me if I ran fast enough. My legs unlocked, they ran. . . but not fast enough.
Scream, scream loud and louder!
I fought with kicks and scratches, I butted my head back against the teeth of the boy who pinned my arms behind me.
God didn't hear me cry for help. Nobody heard. Scream, scream, and then scream again--until I could scream no more. Just feel the shame, the humiliation, the ruthless hands that ripped and tore and violated.
See the other boy who rose from behind the bushes and stood there paralyzed, staring at me with his hair pasted down on his forehead from the rain that came down hard now. See him run away!
My screams brought Papa flying into the room. "Darling, darling," he cried, falling to his knees so he could gather me into his arms. He cuddled me against his chest and stroked my back, my hair. "It's all right, I'm here. I'll always be here."
"You shouldn't have, shouldn't have," I choked, still trembling from the shock.
"What did you dream this time, my love?"
"Bad things. Same awful thing."
"Tell Papa everything. Let Papa take away the pain and shame. Do you know now why I warn you to stay out of the woods? That was your sister, Audrina, your dead sister. It doesn't have to happen to you. You're letting that scene into your head when all I want is for you to travel beyond the woods and take for yourself all the specialness she used to have. Did you see how happy she could be? How joyful and vibrant? Did you feel how wonderful it used to be for her when she stayed out of the woods? That's what I want for you. Oh, my sweet Audrina," he whispered with his face buried deep in my hair, "it won't always be that way. Someday when you sit down to rock and sing, you'll bypass the woods, forget the boys and find the beauty of being alive. Once you do, all the memories you've forgotten, the good things, will come flooding back and make you whole again."
He was telling me, with good intentions, that I wasn't whole now--and if that were so, what was I? Crazy?
"Tomorrow night we'll do this again. I don't think it was as bad this time as before. This time you pulled out of it and came back to me."
I knew I had to save myself from this room and this chair. Somehow I had to convince him I had gone on beyond the woods and had already found the gifts the First Audrina no longer needed.
Tenderly he tucked me into bed, and on his knees he said a prayer to send me safely into sweet dreams, asking the angels on high to protect me through the night. He kissed my cheek and said he loved me, and even as he closed the door behind him I was wondering how I could convince him not to make me go to that room and sit in that chair again. How could I hate what he did to me, and love the idea of being what he wanted? How did I preserve me--when he was trying to turn me into her?
For hours I lay on my back staring up at the ceiling, trying to find my past in all the fancy swirls in the overhead plaster. Papa had given me many clues as to what would make him happiest. Papa wanted lots and lots of money, for himself, for Momma, for me, too. He wanted to fix up this house and make it like new again. He had to fulfill all the promises he'd made Lucietta Lana White-fern, the heiress every worthy man on the lower East Coast had wanted until she married him. What a catch my mother had been. If only she hadn't given birth to two Audrinas.

Tuesday Teatime
.
Christmas came and went, but I hardly

remembered anything but a princess doll that had shown up under the tree, making Vera jealous, even though she often insisted she was much too old to play with dolls.

It scared me the way time moved along so swiftly, so that even before I knew what was happening, spring was on its way. Days were falling into the holes in my memory. Vera liked to torment me by saying that anyone who couldn't keep track of time was insane.

Today was Tuesday, and Aunt Mercy Marie would visit again, even though it seemed to me only yesterday that Mercy Marie had been brought out for teatime.

Papa was taking his time about leaving this Tuesday morning. He sat at the kitchen table expounding on life and all its complexities, while Vera and my aunt consumed pancakes as if they would never eat again. Soberly my mother was preparing the canapes and other treats for teatime.

"They were the best of times; they were the worst of times," began my papa, who loved to say that phrase over and over again. It seemed to grate on my mother's nerves as much as it did on mine. He made it an awesomely fearsome thing to even think beyond tomorrow.

On and on he went, making his time to be young seem so much better than any time I was likely to know. Life had been perfect when Papa was a boy; back then people had been nicer; houses had been constructed to last forever and not fall apart as they did nowadays. Dogs, too, had been better when he was a boy, really reliable, sure to bring back every hurled stick. Even the weather was better, not so hot in the summers, nor so cold in the winters, unless there was a blizzard, No blizzard now had a chance of equalling the freezing ferocity of the blizzards Papa had to trudge home from school in.

"Twenty miles," he boasted, "through the wind and snow, through the sleet and rain, through the hail and ice, nothing kept me home--even when I had pneumonia. When I was in high school on the football team and broke my leg, that didn't keep me from walking to school every day. I was hardy, determined to be well educated, to be the best there was."

Momma slammed down a dish so hard it cracked. "Damian, stop exaggerating." Her voice was harsh, impatient. "Can't you see what false notions you plant in your daughter's mind?"

"What other kind of notions have either one of you ever planted?" asked Aunt Ellsbeth sourly. "If Audrina grows up to be normal it will be a miracle."

"Amen to that," contributed Vera. She grinned at me and then stuck out her tongue. Papa didn't notice, he was too busy shouting at my aunt.

"Normal? What is normal? In my opinion normal is only ordinary, mediocre. Life belongs to the rare exceptional individual who dares to be different."

"Damian, will you please stop expounding on your ideas to a child too young to understand that you are not an authority on anything except how to run your mouth all day long."

"Silence!" bellowed Papa. "I won't have my wife ridiculing me in front of my only child. Lucky, apologize immediately!"

Why was Aunt Ellsbeth smirking? It was my secret belief that my aunt loved to hear my parents argue. Vera made some gagging noise and then, with a great deal of difficulty, rose to her feet and limped toward the front hall. Soon she'd be boarding the school bus I'd sell my soul to ride on like every other child who wasn't as special as I was. Instead, I had to stay home, lonely for playmates, with the kind of adults who filled my head with hodgepodge notions and then stirred them up with a witch's stick of contradictions. No wonder I didn't know who I was, or which day of the week, month or even year it was. I didn't have any best or worst times. I lived, it seemed to me, in a theater, with the exception being the actors on stage were my family members and I, too, had a role to play--only I didn't know what it was.

All of a sudden, for no reason at all, I was looking around the kitchen and remembering a large orange cat who used to sleep near the old cast-iron stove.

"I wish Tweedle Dee would come home," I said wistfully. "I'm even lonelier since my cat went away."
Papa jolted. Momma stared at me. "Why, Tweedle Dee has been gone for a long, long time, Audrina." Her voice sounded strained, worried.
"Oh, yes," I said quickly, "I know that, but I want him to come home. Papa, you didn't take him to the city pound, did you? You wouldn't put my cat to sleep, would you--just because he makes you sneeze?"
He threw me a worried look, then forced a smile. "No, Audrina, I do the best I can to cater to all your needs, and if that cat had wanted to stay and make me sneeze myself to death, I would have suffered on in silence for your sake."
"Suffered, but not in silence," muttered my aunt.
I watched my parents embrace and kiss before Papa headed for the garage. "Have a good time at your tea party," he called back to Momma, "though I wish to heaven you'd let Mercy Marie stay dead. What we need is someone to live in that empty cottage we own; then you'd have a nice neighbor-woman to invite to your teas."
"Damian," called Momma sweetly, "you go out and have your fun, don't you? Since we're held captives here, at least let Ellie and me have ours."
He grunted and said no more, and soon I was at the front windows watching him drive away. His hand lifted in a salute before he drove out of sight. I didn't want him to go. I hated Tuesday teatime.
Teatime was supposed to begin at four, but since Vera had started playing hooky to escape her last class in order to reach home by four, teatime had been moved up to three o'clock.
Wearing my best clothes, I sat ready and waiting for the ritual to begin. I was required to be there as part of my social education, and if Vera was incapacitated enough to stay home legitimately, then she was invited to the parties, too. I often thought Vera broke her bones just so she could stay home and hear what went on in our best front salon.
My tension built as I waited for Momma and my aunt to show up. First came Momma, dressed in her prettiest afternoon gown--a soft flowing wool crepe of a pretty coral color, with piping of violet to match her eye color. She wore a pearl choker and earrings with real diamonds and pearls to match the choker. It was heirloom White-fern jewelry she'd told me many times would be mine one day. Her magnificent hair was swept up high, but a few loose curls dangled down to take away the severity and make her look elegant.
Next came my aunt in her best outfit, a dark navy-blue suit with a tailored white blouse. As always, she wore her dark glossy hair in a figure-eight knot low on the back of her neck. Tiny diamond studs were in her ears, and on her little finger she wore a ruby class ring. She looked very schoolmarmish.
"Ellie, will you let Mercy Marie in?" said Momma sweetly. Tuesday was the only day my mother was allowed to call her sister by her nickname. Only Papa could call my aunt Ellie any time he chose.
"Oh, dear, you are late," said Aunt Ellsbeth, getting up to lift the piano lid and take from
underneath the heavy silver frame that enclosed the photograph of a fat woman with a very sweet face. "Really, Mercy Marie, we expected you to arrive on time. You've always had the annoying habit of arriving late. To make an impression, I suppose. But dear, you'd make an impression even if you arrived early." Momma giggled as my aunt sat down and primly folded her hands in her lap. "The piano isn't too hard for you, dear, is it? But it is sturdy enough, . I hope." Again Momma giggled, making me squirm uneasily, for I knew the worst was yet to come. "Yes, Mercy Marie, we do understand why you're always tardy. Running away from those passionate savages must be very exhausting. But you really should know it's been rumored about that you were cooked in a pot by a cannibal chief and eaten for dinner. Lucietta and I are delighted to see that was only a malicious rumor."
Carefully silk crossed her legs and stared at that portrait on the piano, placed just where music sheets were usually stacked. It was part of Momma's role to get up and light the candles in the crystal candelabra while the fire snapped and crackled, and the gaslamps flickered and made the crystal prisms on the chandeliers catch colors and dart crazily about the room.
"Ellsbeth, my dear, my darling," said my mother for the dead woman who had to participate, even if her ghost was often rebellious, "is that the only suit you own? You wore it last week and the week before, and your hair, good God, why don't you change that hairstyle? It makes you look sixty."
Always Momma's voice was sickeningly sweet when she spoke for Aunt Mercy Marie.
"I like my hairstyle," said my aunt primly, watching my mother roll in the tea wagon loaded down with all the goodies Momma'd prepared earlier. "At least I don't try to look like a pampered mistress who spends all her time trying to please an egotistical sex maniac. Of course, I realize that's the only kind of man there is. That is exactly why I chose to stay single."
"I'm sure that's the only reason," said my mother in her own voice. Then she spoke for the photograph on the piano. "But Ellie, I remember a time when you were madly in love with an egotistical maniac. In love enough to go to bed with him and have his child. Too bad he only used you to satisfy his lust; too bad
he
never fell in love with you."
"Oh, him," said my aunt, snorting her disgust. "He was just a passing fancy. His animal magnetism drew me to him momentarily, but I had sense enough to forget him and move on to better things. I know he found another immediately. All men are alike selfish, cruel, demanding. I know now he would have made the worst possible husband."
"Too bad you couldn't have found a wonderful man like Lucky's handsome Damian," said that sweet voice from the piano, as my mother sat down to nibble on a dainty sandwich.
I stared at the picture of a woman I didn't remember ever meeting, though Momma said I had known her when I was four. She appeared to be very wealthy. Diamonds hung from her ears, neck, studded her fingers. The fur trimming on her suit collar made her face seem to sit on her shoulders. Often I imagined that if she rose, she'd have fur about long, full sleeves and rimming the edge of her skirt, like a medieval queen.
Mercy Marie had traveled all the way to Africa: in hopes of salvaging a few heathen souls and converting them to Christianity. Now she was part of the heathens, eaten, hopefully, after she was killed and cooked.
According to everything I'd learned from attending these teatimes, Aunt Mercy Marie once had ridiculous fondness for cucumber and lettuce sandwiches made with the thinnest possible cheese bread. In order to do this, my mother had to bake the bread, trim off the crust and flatten the bread with her rolling pin. The bread was then cut with cookie cutters into fancy shapes.
"Really, Mercy Marie," said my aunt in her harsh way, "ham, cheese, chicken or tuna is not as tacky as you think. We eat food like that all the time. . . don't we, Lucietta?"
Momma scowled. I hated to hear what she'd say next, something cruel and biting. "If Mercy Marie adores dainty cucumber and lettuce sandwiches, Ellie, why don't you let her eat a few, instead of hogging them all for yourself? Don't be such a pig. Learn to share."
"Lucietta, darling," spoke up the shrill voice from the piano, this time donated by my aunt, "please show your older sister the respect due her. You give her such tiny portions at mealtimes, she has to make up for your stinginess by eating the sandwiches I adore."
"Oh, Mercy, you are such a dear, so gracious. Of course I should know my sister's appetite can never be satisfied. A bottomless pit could hold no more than Ellie's stomach. Perhaps she tries to fill the great emptiness of her life with food. Perhaps for her it replaces love."
On and on went the memorial teatime, while the perfumed candles
^--
burned and the fire spat red sparks, and Aunt Ellie consumed all the sandwiches, even those with chicken liver pate, which I liked very much--and so did Vera. I nibbled on a sandwich I hated. This kind always tasted like Aunt Mercy Marie might have: damp, grassy and soggy.
"Really, Lucietta," said Aunt Ellsbeth, ring the voice of the dear departed, casting me a grievous look for so obviously disliking what Mercy Marie meet have loved most. "You should do something about that child's appetite. She's nothing but skin and bones and huge haunted eyes. And that ridiculous mop of hair. Why does she look so spooked? From the looks of her some dry wind could blow her away--if she doesn't lose her mind first. Lucietta, what are you doing to that child?"
About this time I heard the squeak of the side door opening, and in a few seconds Vera crawled into the room. She hid herself behind a potted fern so our mothers wouldn't see her and put her finger to her lips when I looked her way. She had with her a huge medical encyclopedia that had cardboard front pieces made of both the female and male body--without clothes on.
I cringed. Behind me Vera giggled. I shrank into that small hiding place in my brain where I could feel safe and unafraid, but that place felt like a cage. I always felt caged when Aunt Mercy Marie's spiteful ghost came to our front salon.
She
was dead and unreal, but somehow or other she still made
me
feel like a shadow without substance. Not real in the same way other girls were real. My hand fluttered nervously to feel my "haunted" eyes, to touch my "gaunt" cheeks, for sooner or later she'd get around to mentioning those things, too.
"Mercy," spoke my mother chastisingly, "how can you be so insensitive in front of my daughter?" She stood, looking tall and willowy in her soft, flowing dress.
I stared at that dress, confused. Surely she'd walked into this room in something coral colored. How had it changed colors? Was it the light from the windows making it seem violet, green and blue? My head began to ache. Was it summer, spring, winter or fall? I wanted to run to the windows and check the trees, only they didn't lie.
Other things were said that I tried not to hear, and then Momma strode over to the piano and sat down to play all the hymns that Aunt Mercy Marie liked to sing. The minute my mother sat on her piano bench, something miraculous happened: she assumed a stage presence as if an audience of thousands 'would soon be applauding. Her long elegant fingers hovered over the keys dramatically, then down they came, banging out a commanding chord to demand your attention. "Rock of Ages" she played, and then she was singing so beautifully and sadly I wanted to cry. My aunt began to sing, too, but I couldn't join in. Something inside me was screaming, screaming. All this was false. God wasn't up there. He didn't come when you needed him . . he never had and he never would.
Mamma saw my tears and abruptly changed pace. This time her hymn was played in a rock style that bounced through the room. "Won't you come to the church in the wildwood, won't you come to the church in the vale," she sang, rocking from side to side, making her breasts jiggle.
My aunt began to eat cake again. Discouraged, my mother left the piano and sat on the sofa.
"Momma," I asked in a small voice, "what's a vale?"
"Lucietta, why don't you teach your child something of value?" asked that merciless voice on the piano. When my head whipped around, trying to catch Aunt Ellsbeth talking, she was sipping hot tea, which I knew was heavily laced with bourbon, just as Momma's tea was. Maybe it was the liquor that made them so cruel. I didn't know if they had liked Aunt Mercy Marie when she was alive, or if they had despised her. I knew they liked to mock the way they thought she'd been killed, as if they couldn't quite believe Papa, who had explained to me more than
once
that Aunt Mercy Marie might very well be alive and the wife of some African chieftain.
"Fat women are prized in many primitive societies," he told me. "She just disappeared two weeks after she arrived there to do her Missionary work. Don't believe everything you hear, Audrina."
That was my worst problem--what to believe, and what not to believe.
Giggling, Momma poured a bit more tea into my aunt's cup and some into her own, and then she picked up a crystal bottle labeled "Bourbon" and filled the two cups. Then Momma spotted Vera. "Vera," she said, "would you like a cup of hot tea?"
Of course Vera did, but she scowled when no bourbon was added.
"What are you doing home from school so early?" shot out my aunt.
"The teachers had a meeting and let all the students off earlier than usual," said Vera quickly.
"Vera, be truthful in the presence of the living dead," giggled my mother, almost drunk by this time. Vera and I exchanged glances. This was one of the only times we could really communicate, when we both felt strange and baffled.
"What do
you
do for amusement, Ellie?" asked my mother in that high-pitched, sugary voice she used for Aunt Mercy Marie. "Certainly
you
must get bored, too, once in a while, living way out in the sticks, having no friends. You don't have a handsome husband to keep you warm and happy in your cold, lonely bed."
"Really, Mercy," responded my aunt, looking straight into those photograph eyes, "how could I possibly be bored when I live with such fascinating people as my sister and her stockbroker husband, who both adore fighting in their bedroom so much one of them screams. Truthfully, I feel rather safe in my lonely bed, without a handsome brute of a man who likes to wield his belt for a whip."
"Ellsbeth, how dare you tell my best friend such nonsense? Damian and I play games, that's all. It adds to his excitement and to mine." Momma smiled apologetically at the photograph. "Unfortunately, Ellsbeth knows nothing at all about the many ways of pleasing a man, or giving him what he likes."
My aunt snorted contemptuously. "Mercy, I'm sure you never allowed Horace to play those kind of sick sex games with you."
"If she had, she wouldn't be where she is now," giggled my momma.
Vera's eyes were as wide as mine. We both sat silent and motionless. I was sure both of them had forgotten we were there.
"Really, Mercy Marie, you do have to forgive my sister, who is a bit drunk. As I was saying a moment ago, I do live with such fascinating people there is never a dull moment. One daughter dies in the woods, another comes to take her place, and the fools give her the same name--"
"Ellsbeth," snapped my momma, bolting upright from her slouched position, "if you hate your sister and her husband so much, why don't you leave and take your daughter with you? Surely there must be some school somewhere that needs a teacher. You do have the kind of sharp tongue that could really keep children in their place."