The Murderer's Daughters (3 page)

Mama always finished the story by grabbing at the nonexistent fat on her thighs, giving a sad chuckle, and saying, “Remember, Lulu, in the end, mothers are always right. No one else tells you the truth.”

After her crying fit, Mimi Rubee headed for one of her headache-driven afternoon naps. She went into her room, closed the blinds, and climbed into bed. She called out for me to bring the special white enamel bowl with the chips all around the edge. The bowl was in case she vomited. Then I brought her a cold washcloth for her forehead, making sure it wasn’t drippy.

Once I’d done this and cool air blew from the metal fan I’d dragged to her bed, she sighed and gave me a weak half smile. With a few tears wetting her lashes, Mimi Rubee declared me her little soldier. “You’re always so good. That’s why your mother loved you.”

Mimi Rubee’s migraine pill took hold, her breathing got heavier, and she fell into a noisy sleep. I tiptoed out and closed the door behind me. I grabbed my shoes from under the sofa, a plank of teak similar to the rest of the furnishings in the apartment. After Grandpa died, Mimi Rubee had stripped away the dark Victorian furniture and dense Oriental rugs he’d loved and, declaring her desire to be up-to-date, bought Danish Modern and fluffy rugs with sunsets woven in them. I slept on the knuckle-hard sofa and woke up most mornings cramped in a knot. Mimi Rubee promised me she’d buy a Castro Convertible when Merry got out of the hospital.

As Mimi Rubee napped, I got out the phone book and copied the address for Coney Island Hospital. The hospital was on Ocean Parkway, the same street as our apartment, but Ocean Parkway went all the way from one side of Brooklyn to the other. The hospital was way down near the boardwalk where Grandma Zelda and Daddy lived before in a tiny bungalow near the water. Someone tore the bungalow down years ago, but I had seen it in pictures.

I wrote “Went for a walk” on a note for Mimi Rubee and left it on the kitchen table. After slipping a dollar from Mimi’s wallet, I put on my sneakers and left.

Unsure of which bus to take, I walked up McDonald Avenue to Ocean Parkway. I looked around for a bus stop. I wanted to get away fast, before Mimi Rubee woke up and came looking for me. Finally, I turned in the direction of Coney Island and the ocean and began walking.

Hazy white sun heated my bare shoulders. My wrinkled shirt felt sweaty
and bunched up where the shirttails tucked into my too-short jeans. Whoever had gone into our apartment to put together my clothes and other stuff had chosen random things that made no sense at all. Instead of the locket my mother had given me when I turned eight, stray Monopoly pieces were crammed into my ballerina jewelry box. Galoshes rested on top of my bathing suit. Each day I rummaged through the strangely packed paper bags crowding Mimi Rubee’s closet.

Today, I’d searched for something to take to Merry—the tiny stuffed moose we’d named Bullwinkle, the frog puppet she slept with—but only crumpled clothes and jigsaw puzzles we never played with were stuffed in the bags.

Even with my hair pulled up into a ponytail, a sticky dampness enveloped me as I walked block after never-ending block. Merry and I got red rashes in the heat. My mother called it prickly heat and dusted our necks with Cashmere Bouquet. She’d shake the powder from the pink can and rub it on us until the sweet-scented dust filled our nostrils.

I finally saw the huge white hospital rising in the distance and sighed with relief. I felt like I’d been walking an entire day. Before going on, I stopped at a familiar-seeming corner candy store. Like at Greenburg’s—where I’d bought Mama’s cigarettes—newspapers, school supplies, and magazines crowded the shelves, but this place looked a lot more run-down than Greenburg’s.

In the back, I found a shelf of dusty toys. I picked through the selection, looking for something that might comfort Merry. A stuffed tiger was cheap, but his mouth was mean, his filling seemed made of crumpled paper, and he looked hungry enough to eat a little girl. An old-fashioned doll with brown ringlets had eyelids that clicked as they blinked. She wore a pink dotted dress. Merry would love her. She’d name her something like Mitzi or Suzi. Merry loved names with
z
and
i,
but Mitzi-Suzi was marked one dollar.

I picked through water guns, paddleballs, and packages of jacks. Finally, behind some old Halloween masks, I found a tiny wooden cradle no bigger than a fat man’s thumb. Inside was a minute pink baby doll covered by a miniature yellow blanket. After searching for a price sticker, I picked it up and carried it to the old woman at the cash register. “How much?” I asked.

She squinted at the doll lying in the cradle, then at me. I closed my hand around the worn bill in my pocket. Despite the heat, the woman wore an old gray cardigan. It looked like a sweater a grandpa would wear, all pilled and stretched.

“Fifty cents.”

I nodded and put a Zagnut bar, a pack of Juicy Fruit gum, and a roll of cherry Life Savers, Merry’s favorites, next to the doll. I put my dollar beside it. The lady snatched it, handed me back a dime, and returned to her
Daily News
.

“Could I please have a bag?”

“A bag?” she asked as though I’d requested free candy for life.

A vibrating thrum ran through my throat. I wanted to throw the doll and candy at her. “A bag,” I said. “I need a bag.”

The woman drew a thin brown bag from underneath the counter. She stuffed everything in, and the bag tore along one side. She thrust it at me.

My throat hurt from wanting to scream. “I need another bag, a bigger bag.”

She poked the bag toward me with a swollen finger. “This fits fine.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Listen, girlie, this isn’t Sears, Roebuck.”

“I need another bag.” I banged the wooden counter. “It’s for my sister.”

She shoved a larger bag toward me. “Here. Get out.” She backed away, shaking her head and whispering under her breath,
“Meshuganah.”

If she thought I was crazy, she should meet the rest of the family.

I crept into the hospital, hoping nobody would notice me. Mimi Rubee had written 602, Merry’s room number, on the kitchen notepad. Figuring out how to get upstairs was my challenge.

With a plan in mind, I took a seat in the lobby. If somebody asked, I’d say my parents were parking the car or something. The worn benches felt cool and smooth under my hands. How many millions of nervous behinds had polished the wood? For about fifteen minutes, things were quiet. I counted the speckled green floor tiles, watched the receptionist flirt with
the security guard, and tried to be invisible until visiting hours began at three, as posted on a large sign.

At a quarter of three, clumps of people started gathering in the lobby, waiting by elevators and watching the clock. One family knotted so close together, they looked like a six-legged animal.

“Three o’clock. Visiting hours have begun,” the security guard announced.

Everyone shuffled toward the elevator, pushing buttons, clearing throats, and brushing away invisible dust. Women wormed their hands into the waiting palms of husbands and fathers. One person in each group held a bag, flowers, or a stack of magazines. I let the first wave of families go, watching the lights on top of the elevator doors.

Visitors poured through the hospital entrance. Some stopped at the information desk where the flirty woman sat. Others marched right to the bank of elevators. Finally, gathering my courage and making myself as small as possible, I slipped up next to a large family who spoke to each other in nonstop Italian. We all squeezed into the elevator, no one seeming to notice me. I watched the controls, praying, scratching 6, 6, 6 into my palm, until I saw someone press the button for the sixth floor.

Three people got out with me. Large signs with arrows pointing in opposite directions read ROOMS 600–605 and ROOMS 606–610. I turned left, holding my breath. Children rolled down the hall in wheelchairs. Children on crutches thumped past. Nurses hurried down the halls on rubber-soled shoes.

Room 602 was quiet and empty except for Merry, who barely made a dent in her iron bed by the window. I crept into the room, past three beds with folded white blankets on bare mattresses. Merry turned at the sound of my footsteps. Her usually creamy pink cheeks looked the color of cooked oatmeal.

“Lulu.” Merry’s voice sounded rusty. “You’re here.” She sat up, moving like Grandma Zelda.

“I’m here, Merry.” I took her hand in mine.

“Are you mad at me?”

“Mad at you?” I asked. “Why would I be mad at you?”

“You didn’t come. And Mimi Rubee looked mad.”

“I promise; no one’s mad at you.” I sat on her bed.

Merry inched toward me, wincing as the bandages over her chest moved. She wore a thin pink cotton hospital gown that left her backside open to the world. Her underpants looked grayish white, as though she’d worn them for days. “I want to go home.”

“Soon,” I promised.

“Now. I want to go home now. Please?” Merry grabbed my hand and kissed it.

“You just can’t. It’s not time yet.”

Merry began crying. “Daddy’s mad at me. He hurt me. Mimi Rubee said.”

“Daddy didn’t hurt you because he was mad at you.”

“Because I was bad?”

“You weren’t bad.”

“I was.” Merry curled down her lower lip. “Now no one wants to be with me.”

“I couldn’t come before because I’m not a grown-up. I snuck in today.”

“Where’s Daddy? Where’s Mama?” Merry’s leg shook up and down. “Are they mad at me?”

“Some bad things happened, Merry,” I said and fingered the top of the brown bag. “Daddy got mad at Mama.”

“Was she bad?”

The orange marmalade turned over in my stomach. “No. Daddy was drunk.” I tried to push away the memory of Mama lying in all that blood under the stark kitchen light, no one with her, Mama all alone on the floor. Dead.

“Bad drunk?” We’d seen Daddy drunk before.

“Really bad drunk.” Daddy’s bloody hands, bloody from Mama, bloody from Merry, bloody from where he cut himself.

“And he hurt me?”

I nodded, trying to talk without crying. “And he hurt Mama.” Would he have hurt me if I’d stayed in the apartment? Probably. But maybe I could have stopped him from hurting Merry and killing Mama. If I hadn’t hid.

This was my fault, anyway. I let him in the house.

“Is Daddy in trouble?”

I scratched the word STOP on my arm in big capital letters and sucked back snotty tears. “Bad trouble. He’s in jail.” We’d seen jail on television. On
Gunsmoke
and
Mighty Mouse.

“Is Mama in jail with him?” she whispered.

Telling my little sister the truth seemed as mean as hitting her, but I couldn’t imagine what lie to tell. I shook my head. “No. Mama got hurt. Bad. Mama’s dead.” Merry knew dead from
The Wizard of Oz.
The Wicked Witch had died.

Why had I thought such mean things about Mama?

Merry touched the tips of her fingers to her chest, to the bandages, where Daddy had stabbed her, right to where I thought her heart might be. “I want Mama,” Merry wailed. She started to shake so bad I thought she might die. I wanted to call the nurses, but was afraid they’d throw me out.

“I want Mama,” Merry repeated, tears drowning her words. “Who’s going to watch us?”

“I’ll watch you.” I took the brown bag and put it on the bed. “Here. I bought you something.” I unrolled the top of the bag where it had gotten all shredded and wet from my sweaty hands. I reached in, took out the little doll and crib, and put it in her hand. “You take care of this baby and I’ll take care of you.”

I climbed up on the bed and lay next to Merry. She couldn’t roll over to be spooned as we usually did when we were scared, so she put her head on my shoulder just like she used to do with Daddy.

A faint fuzz of grass grew on top of Mama’s grave. Mama’s unveiling would begin any minute. Even though Mimi Rubee had explained that Jewish people covered the headstones for a year, and then came back and took the covering off, I still didn’t understand what any of it meant.

Merry and I stood at the foot of Mama’s burial plot. Everyone else huddled by the cloth-covered headstone. No one seemed to notice us. I tried not to picture Mama’s feet beneath us. She painted her toes with the brightest red nail polish of any mother in Brooklyn. Had chips of it stayed on her bones?