The Murderer's Daughters (2 page)

Mama was used to getting what she wanted.

Sun snuck over the walls enclosing our gloomy courtyard and blazed into the bedroom. I flipped and rotated my pillow, squashing it into semi-comfortable lumps, seeking a bit of cool cotton to tuck under my head. Merry, cross-legged on her bed, moved her paper dolls into various constellations. She propped them against the wall, folding down the tabs on first one outfit and then another, moving her lips for the silent plays they acted out for her alone.

Merry was supposed to be taking a nap, and I was supposed to be making sure she did. Merry looked all proud and happy wearing her apple green sunsuit, the one that tied on the top with little yellow ribbons. I hated it because I had to help her pull it all the way down, then tie it back up every time she had to go to the bathroom. Merry loved it because it came from Daddy. Grandma Zelda really picked it out, not Daddy, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to ruin Merry’s good times.

Merry was unusually cute, and I was unusually plain. People stopped us every day, bending down to gush over Merry’s black curls or her
Tootsie Pop eyes—the chocolate ones—or to stroke her rosy cheek as though her skin were a fabric they couldn’t resist fingering. I felt as though I toted around the Princess of Brooklyn.

Daddy doted on Merry. Aunt Cilla had said that while watching Daddy pop M&M’s into Merry’s mouth one by one. “Does it ever make you jealous?” she asked my mother. Aunt Cilla, Mama’s sister, looked like a puffy blowfish version of my mother.

“Yeah, right. He’s a big shot with the five-year-olds,” Mama had responded to Aunt Cilla, but really for Daddy’s ears.

Merry made Daddy happy. I never did. He’d make a joke or something, and I’d narrow my eyes, wondering if the riddle or knock-knock joke was funny enough to merit a laugh. Then he’d get mad and say, “Jesus, Lulu, do you have to analyze every single thing a person says?”

I switched position on my bed, leaning on the windowsill with my elbows halfway out, trying to catch some breeze. Music from Mrs. Schwartz’s stereo blasted through the courtyard. Someone had probably told her to shut it off, which usually made Mrs. Schwartz turn it up. “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” played so loud that I missed hearing the first quiet taps on our front door.

“Someone’s knocking,” Merry said. “I’ll get it.”

“Stop.” I swung my legs to the floor. “Are you nuts? Do you want Mama to kill us? Let me. You’re supposed to be sleeping.”

Merry jumped back on her bed, landing with her feet tucked under her butt. She was skinny and small for her age. In her green sunsuit, she looked like a grasshopper leaping up.

I tiptoed to the door. Mama used our nap time to take her own nap, her beauty sleep, she called it, and she hated waking before her time. I held a finger to my mouth, letting Merry know to keep quiet. She opened her eyes wide, her Tootsie Pops asking,
Do you think I’m stupid?

Our bedroom and the front door practically touched. I opened our bedroom door inch by inch, trying to be quiet. The knocking got louder. “Who is it?” I murmured, practically pressing my lips to the edge of the door.

“Open up, Lulu.”

I heard my father breathing.

“Come on, Lu. Open it now.”

“I’m not supposed to let you in,” I whispered, praying Mama wouldn’t hear.

“Don’t worry, Cocoa Puff. Mama won’t get mad. I promise.”

My eyes filled a little hearing my pet name. When things had been better, I’d been Cocoa Puff and Merry had been Sugar Pop. He’d call Mama Sugar Smack Pie, because he said that was the sweetest thing of all. Then he’d smack his lips and my mother would throw whatever she was holding at him.

But she’d smile.

“I know you’re scared of Mama, but you have to let me in. I’m your father.” Daddy lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone. “It’s my name on the lease.”

I didn’t know what a lease was, but maybe he was right. I opened the door a pinch, leaving the tarnished chain on, and saw a sliver of my father.

He pulled up real close and smiled. His teeth looked cruddy, as if he’d eaten crackers or something without brushing after. He smelled like cigarettes, beer, and something else. Something scary. Something I’d never smelled before.

He put a hand up against the door and leaned in. The chain tightened. “Unbolt it, Lulu.”

I backed away, wondering if I should get Mama. I felt Merry behind me. I didn’t know if Daddy saw her. I didn’t think so. He would have said hello.

“I’ll get Mama,” I said.

“You don’t need your
mama.
Just open the damn door. I have something to give her.”

“I’ll get her for you.”

“Stop being stubborn. Let me in now!”

He rattled the knob, and my heart shook.

“Get back into bed,” I whispered to Merry. When she disappeared, I reached up for the latch and chain. He let up on the door so I’d have the slack I needed.

“Thanks, Lu.” He touched the mezuzah nailed to the doorjamb, then kissed his fingers. He called it Jewish luck,
the only kind us Jews get,
he’d say.
Then he chucked me on the chin. I pulled back from his acrid tobacco touch, wanting to wash my face.

“You’re my peach.” Daddy walked down the short hall, turning left at the tiny alcove where he’d wedged in a desk for me.

I hung behind, hovering halfway down the hall, and then slipped into the bathroom, cracking the door enough to hear, though I couldn’t see.

“Jesus, Joey, you scared me half to death!” My mother sounded nervous. I pictured her holding up the thin sheet she used for her summer naps.

“Miss me, sweetheart?” my father asked.

“Louise, get in here now,” Mama yelled.

I didn’t move. I didn’t say a thing.

“We need to talk.” Daddy sounded slurry.

“Get out; you’re drunk. I have nothing to say to you.” I heard her get up and my father stomp after her. The refrigerator door opened with a sucking sound. A can popped. They were in the kitchen.

“You had plenty to say when you talked my paycheck out of my boss, didn’t you, Miss America?” Daddy shouted. “Did you wiggle your ass real hard?”

Something thumped back in my room. Merry scampered down the hall, her bare feet sounding soft and sticky on the linoleum. I wanted to reach out and yank her into the bathroom.

I heard her stop at the couch, the springs squeaking as she jumped. I pictured her balled up, holding her knees and trembling. You could see into the kitchen easy from the couch.

“Someone’s got to feed these kids. What am I supposed to do? Manufacture money?” Mama asked.

“I need that money back, Celeste. Now.”

My mother mumbled something too low to hear. I opened the bathroom door wider.

“I’m serious; give it, Celeste. Give it.”

Daddy’s low voice thrummed like a machine.
Give it. Give it. Give it.

“Get out before I call the cops.”

Something scraped.

“Get out!”

“I need it. I need the money, damn it!”

Something slammed.

My sister whimpered. Had she gone in the kitchen? I should get her.

“Shush, quiet, Sugar Pop. It’s okay.” My father’s words blurred together. I pictured him bending down, kissing the top of Merry’s head as he always did, wrapping one of her curls around his finger and letting it spring out and back.

“Go to Mama’s room, Merry,” Mama ordered.

“Yeah, go to Mama’s room,” my father repeated. Something clattered, as though a whole bunch of stuff fell to the floor. “Bourbon, Celeste? You buying them booze on my money?”

He sounded like he was crying. I slid against the wall and inched toward them.

“Go to your mother’s.” Mama sounded more mad than scared now. “Get sober.”

“You think I give you money to buy liquor for your boyfriends?”

Daddy’s voice had changed again. The teary voice had disappeared. Now he sounded big. Like a wolf. A bear. Heavy banging started. I pictured him slamming and slamming and slamming cabinet doors. Metal screeched, cracking like hinges ripping out of their sockets.

GIVE THE MONEY, MAMA!

“Lulu,” Mama screamed. “He’s got a knife. He’s going to kill me. Get Teenie!”

What if Teenie wasn’t home?

No, Teenie never went out.

What should I say?

I stayed frozen in the hall for what felt like my whole life listening to Mama and Daddy yell. Then I ran down the pitted stairs to Teenie’s apartment. I pounded my fists on her door over the sound of her television. I banged so loud I expected the entire building to come down. Finally, her youngest son opened the door. I flew inside and found Teenie in the living room watching
Let’s Make a Deal
and ironing her husband’s boxer shorts.

“My father has a knife,” I said.

“Watch the boys,” Teenie called to her oldest son as she unplugged the iron without even turning it off.

As we ran out of the apartment, Teenie yelled, “Stay here, boys. Don’t move an inch!”

We raced up the stairs. I wondered if I should get someone else to go with Teenie and me. Mr. Ford, maybe. He lived alone. He was a bachelor. Old. However, he was a man, even though my father called him a fruit.

No, we didn’t need anybody else. My father liked Teenie. He’d listen to her. She’d make him calm down.

We ran into our apartment, me right behind Teenie as she skidded through the living room and into the kitchen. Wide-open cabinets from where my father had slammed the doors open and shut showed our turquoise and white dishes. A broken door swayed back and forth in the strong, humid breeze blowing the curtains.

Mama lay on the floor. Blood dripped on the green and brown linoleum. Teenie fell to her knees, grabbed the edge of her wide cotton apron, and held it over the place on my mother’s chest where the blood pumped out the fastest.

Teenie looked up at me. “Call the operator.” Her voice cracked. “Tell them to send an ambulance. Police.”

I stared down at Mama.
Don’t die.

“Go, Lulu!”

I ran into my mother’s room. The phone was next to the bed. Pink. A Princess phone. Merry lay on top of my mother’s pink and gray bedspread. Mama would scream her head off when she saw how blood had spread everywhere. The cute green sunsuit that made Merry into a little grasshopper was slashed down the middle, but the bows I liked to make with the yellow ties had stayed perfectly in place.

My father was beside Merry. Blood leaked from his wrists.

“Did you call?” Teenie yelled from the kitchen.

I picked the phone up from the night table, careful not to jar Mama’s bed, knowing she wouldn’t like it if I did.

My grandmother Mimi Rubee sat at the table sipping black coffee and eating melba toast with cottage cheese. This was her breakfast and lunch. She was in charge of us now. Mama’s funeral had been over a week ago, on my birthday, though no one said anything at all about that.

I’d made myself a butter and orange marmalade sandwich, the only food in the house that I understood what to do with.

Every day since the funeral, I’d asked Mimi Rubee to take me to the hospital to see Merry, and every day she’d said no. I couldn’t breathe right, picturing my tiny sister all alone in some giant white building.

“Can we go today? To the hospital?” I asked between bites of my sandwich.

“Please, I can’t take any more heartache today.” She took a loud sip of coffee as if this proved her point. “I promise you, the nurses take good care of her. I saw.”

“When then?”

“Soon. Maybe Aunt Cilla can take you tomorrow.”

“Aunt Cilla won’t go,” I said. Besides, I didn’t want to go with Aunt Cilla. Difficult things became unbearable with my mother’s sister.

“She’ll go, she’ll go.” Mimi Rubee gave a long, wet sigh.

“But Merry’s alone,” I pleaded. “She’s scared.”

“She spends most of the day sleeping.”

“Please, Mimi Rubee, please take me to see her.”

“Enough already!” Mimi Rubee wet a paper napkin in her water glass and dabbed at the crumbs around my plate. “Your sister’s fine. I told you a million times. Now stop. Can’t you see you’ve given me a migraine?” She rubbed small circles on her temples.

I ignored the warning signs of what was to come—my grandmother’s rising voice, the compulsive crumb catching, the temple rubbing. Her savage scrubbing of the table. “Merry shouldn’t be alone,” I said.

“
Enough! He
did this to her!” Mimi Rubee clutched her dyed red hair as though she was going to start yanking strands right out. “A monster, that’s what he is, your father. A monster!” She banged the table so hard that my bread jumped, and her coffee sloshed over.

Mimi Rubee hadn’t let me go to my mother’s funeral. I’d stayed with Grandma Zelda, Daddy’s mother. We’d watched hours of television, one show melting into another, neither Grandma Zelda nor I bothering to change channels. We just stared at whatever shows came on while Merry lay all alone in Coney Island Hospital, my father rotted in jail just like everyone kept saying, and Mimi Rubee buried my mother in the ground. I imagined Mimi Rubee screaming so hard at the funeral she could almost have woken up Mama.

Mama used to call Mimi Rubee a real Sarah Bernhardt, who was apparently some old-time actress. Some afternoons, Mama would sip a cup of Sanka with brandy and reminisce about the fits Mimi Rubee threw when she and Daddy started dating. Mama did a great job mimicking Mimi Rubee’s phony cultured accent, enunciating each word as she did her imitation: “You’re too young, too beautiful, and too thin, for God’s sake. Don’t throw yourself away. You’ll never be this slender again.”