Henry's Sisters (21 page)

I saw Cecilia whip around and slam her forehead against a wall. A hollow ache immediately formed in my head. A police officer and a doctor manhandled Cecilia away from the wall. She arched her back and whipped her head around to me and her tears and the blood from her forehead hit me in the face.

They took her away, too.

Soon I was left alone with the squishing white walls.

It was silent.

Henry never went into a foster care situation again.

He wouldn’t talk to us or to the police about what happened.

It was only when I told the police, in front of Henry, about the two snarky, demented boys at the foster home and Henry started chanting repetitively, continually, ‘I no tell I no tell I no tell no kill sisters no kill sisters, no kill Momma, no please, no please, no kill Henry’s sisters!’ that Cecilia, Janie, and I knew we had our rapists for sure.

The policemen shared a glance and headed out.

Momma did not leave Henry’s side for a week. We stayed home from school. When it was pretty clear that Momma was going to lose her job at the club, we baked and baked, selling our cookies, pies, and cakes door to door, to teachers at school, outside a church on Sunday mornings, in front of the library.

We remembered to sift flour twice, to drizzle with a light hand, and to never, ever overcook, like our dad had taught us.

We did OK moneywise, not great, and we didn’t even attempt to pay any of Henry’s hospital bills, but we did OK.

As for the boys who we knew had raped Henry?

They caved within minutes. When I was older, I read the transcripts. They said they raped Henry themselves and with pencils and one time with a screwdriver. ‘He drove me to do it because he wouldn’t shut up,’ one said. ‘He kept begging for his mommy and his sisters. What a baby. I had to put two socks in his mouth to keep him quiet.
Two socks! Not one
,
two!
’

‘We were having fun with him,’ the other said. ‘He’s a retard, OK? What does he know about what’s going on? His face was in the pillow. He liked it. I’m telling you, he liked it. Plus, who’s ever going to have sex with him? We did him a favour. Now he’s not a virgin. He’s a fag.’

Momma got herself an ambitious, young female lawyer, eager to prove herself in what was then a man’s world, and she sued the foster home and the state. Henry was unable to testify, but the doctors did. The police did. And a fourth boy who was in the foster home testified, too, as he had also been attacked by the boys.

Trent’s record as a child molester didn’t help the state’s case, nor did the fact that he and Thelma always slept in the home next door to get a good night’s sleep, despite their assurances that was not the case.

Add in the boys’ candid confessions, repeated as if they were proud of themselves, and it was a done deal. The boys went to a residential centre for young male criminals until they were twenty-one, then were transferred to a prison for five more years.

About twenty years later a book was written on the horrid conditions of that residential centre for boys, and the author, who had been there at the same time as Henry’s rapists, made tons of money.

Momma won a huge settlement against the foster home and the state. All Henry’s past medical bills were paid for by the state and the Veterans who were finally brought in. The young attorney started her own firm and continues, to this day, to prosecute the worst, most dangerous criminals.

So we got victory, financially, but the whole incident had eviscerated any emotional strength Momma had left. She was done.

Completely, utterly done.

‘We’re going home,’ she told us one night, her cheques in her trembling hand, her body frail and worn down, her mind shot. ‘We’re going home to Grandma. Pack up, girls.’

Packing up took about twenty minutes, because that’s all we had left of our lives. Our car broke down halfway to Trillium River, and Momma wrote a cheque for an only slightly used van that started the first time Momma turned the key. The engine purred. We thought it was the most beautiful thing we’d ever seen. We were so comfortable in the padded seats, I remember thinking it would be just fine to live in if we had to.

On the way there we stayed in hotels with pools and went out for hamburgers and shakes twice. Momma bought us new clothes. She bought Janie an embroidery set, Cecilia books, Henry a new checker set, and me a camera. We felt we were in heaven.

Grandma’s Queen Anne house was a safe palace. She instantly proved to be a stable – if cranky – force. We went to school; Grandma helped with Henry, who had stopped speaking completely; and Momma went to bed.

When Momma got up two months later, she used part of the settlement money to open the bakery.

It was rape money in my mind, but we had to use it.

I hopped on my motorcycle and went to visit Momma one afternoon later in the week. My nightmares continued, my fear continued, my depression continued to slither around the corners of my mind like black ink, but I was functioning. I was proud of that. Sometimes, I think, we have to praise ourselves for simply functioning. Simply getting up to try out another day.

I called ahead to schedule with Momma. I knew from Sinda that she’d been at Bunco Club that morning before her girl gang went out to lunch.

‘Well, I’m weak,’ she told me over the phone, her voice teeny, tiny, tiny. ‘Bone weary. I haven’t been out of bed for days.
Days!
I have called the doctor and discussed my health with him and my lack of progress.’

I tried not to laugh.

When I arrived she was in bed, her robe on, lights dimmed, the curtains pulled against the bright sun.

‘Momma?’ I said. ‘Momma?’

Her eyes were closed. Slowly, she opened her lids.

‘Isabelle,’ she croaked out.

‘Hello, Momma.’ I bent down to kiss her forehead and stifled my laughter.

‘Be careful with me. I ache all over. I’ve hardly been able to move.’

‘I am so sorry to hear that, Momma.’

She opened one eye. ‘Your face is not as bad as it was, Isabelle.’ She actually reached out and held my hand.

I was touched.

‘Every time I think of what that man did to you I want to kill him, and every morning when I wake up and I know he’ll be electrocuted soon, I’m glad. Damn glad.’ She cleared her throat. ‘You’re a pretty woman, Isabelle. A good woman.’

‘Thank you, Momma.’ We sat there for a minute together, and I basked in such rare motherly love.

‘You’re too skinny, though.’ She speared me with those emeralds of hers. ‘Stickish. Scarecrowish. Put on some weight. Cecilia’s still fat, I’ve told her she needs to reduce, and when Janie was here – oh – that
tapping
!’ She rolled her eyes. ‘And that counting! Not from my side of the family, I’ll tell you that!’

Well, that did it. I had to stick it to Momma a wee bit. I am such a
bad
daughter. I cleared my throat. ‘Momma, there’s something I’ve been needing to talk to you about.’ I breathed in deep. ‘We need you to come back and work at the
bakery—’

Momma’s eyes flipped open and she sat up in bed as if a spring had binged her back. ‘That is out of the question!’ she huffed. ‘Haven’t you heard a thing I’ve said? Have you gone deaf, Isabelle Bommarito? Deaf? Have you?’ She coughed a couple of times, squeezed her eyes shut as if fighting a tsunami of pain, and fell straight back to her pillows.

I bit my lip.

‘I’m sick!’ she rasped. ‘The doctor will never release me from this boring rat hole in my condition. Never.’

‘But we
need
you.’

‘You’ll have to stick it out, Isabelle. You and your sisters. I’ve worked hard for years.’ She flushed with anger. ‘Surely you three can do the work of only me? Can’t you girls do that?’

‘It’s hard,
Momma—’

‘Life is hard, suck it up!’

Me oh my, how I almost laughed out loud.

‘Momma, I can tell this visit is tiring you out. Go to sleep. I’ll sit right here by your bed until you’re asleep.’

‘Oh God, no!’ she barked, eyes flying open again. ‘You are
not
going to stay here.’

I shoved down the laughter comin’ on up in my throat. I knew that in minutes she was leaving to see
Phantom of the Opera
in Portland after dinner downtown. Momma had always,
always
wanted to see
Phantom
. As long as I could remember. She knew all the words to all the songs.

‘Oh sure, Momma. Sleep. I’ll sit right here. I have nothing else to do.’

She pierced me with those bright eyes. I tried to pretend I did not see her red silk blouse below her pyjamas. Poor woman. She’d probably had to throw that nightgown over her head in such a rush when she heard I’d arrived.

‘You are
not
staying. I will not have my daughter staring at me while I sleep. Go home, Isabelle. I can manage here by myself. All alone.’

She flopped back down on the bed, sighing, her eyes shut. She cleared her throat. She coughed.

‘OK, Momma.’ I paused. Oh, how I loved to torture her. ‘Are you sure, though? I would like to stay. I’ll be so
quiet—’

‘Young lady, you leave right this minute. Right this minute. Do you hear me?’

I sighed. ‘OK, Momma.’ I bent down and gave her a kiss and said goodbye.

I left the room, then opened the door in the hallway to a linen closet and stepped in. I cracked the door a tiny bit. About three minutes later I saw a group of older people laughing and chatting as they trooped down the hallway. They were dressed up in suits and sparkles and stopped in front of Momma’s door and knocked.

The door whooshed opened and Momma stepped out, resplendent in a lovely, shining, purple dress and lace shawl that I had never seen before. Sinda said she had been shopping…

‘Beautiful, River, beautiful!’

‘Bravo!’ one of the men shouted. ‘Bravo!’

Momma smiled. It made my heart ache. I had so seldomly seen Momma smile with such abandon and joy.

‘Ready?’ she asked. She gave each person a sheet of paper. ‘I have the CD for
Phantom
in my purse and we can all sing along in the car…’

‘Oh, wonderful idea, River!’

‘Perfect! I am the Phantom…’ one man sang, baritone. ‘The phantom of the operrrra!’

I clamped my hand over my mouth. When I was sure Momma was gone, I let my laughter roll.

I wondered if we’d ever get her back to Trillium River.

Several days later Henry had to go and lie down because he said he was sleepy and had a ‘tummy ache’.

‘When I goes like this,’ he told us, leaning a little forward, ‘it hurts. But when I goes like this,’ he leant back, ‘I feels better.’

He was upset because he had planned to go to the animal shelter but we couldn’t let him go.

‘The dogs needs my love!’ he protested.

‘Yeah? And so do I, big guy. Come on, I’ll read to you. We’ll read your favourite books.’

‘OK! Dokay!’ He smiled and we went upstairs. ‘You pretty, Is.’

I thanked him. I noticed he wasn’t moving with his usual pluck. I telephoned the shelter and told them Henry wasn’t coming in.

‘Well, that’s a shame,’ Paula Jay, the supervisor, said. She is an ex-prosecuting attorney, about sixty-five years old, and the angel of all animals.

‘We love Henry! Why, last week we had two pit bulls dropped off that had been used for fighting. They were scarred and scared and jumpy. Why do men make dogs fight? We should lock those men up in a pen and make them attack each other, horrid, horrid people. Anyhow, where was I?’

‘The pit bulls.’

‘Oh, yes. So these pit bulls’ teeth had been filed down so they could be used as bait for other pit bulls. Do you understand what I mean, dear? Other pit bulls would go and attack these two, but they couldn’t fight back because their teeth were filed down to almost nothing. Those poor, poor dogs, I would like to take a hammer to those men’s teeth! Oh! Where was I?’

‘The pit bulls.’

‘Yes, so we thought we were going to have to put them down but then Henry, your Henry, he came in and sat at the edge of their cage. Those two dogs backed right into the corner, barking and whimpering. But Henry, oh my stars, your Henry, he kept talking and singing and on the third day Henry got down on his stomach and the dogs came over and they went nose to nose. Now, when Henry comes in, glory be, those dogs jump up and down, they’re so happy to see him. In fact, we’re not going to put the dogs down now because we know we can place them in a home someday, oh my stars! Why do men make dogs fight? I wish I could sterilise all of them like we do to the dogs, only without anaesthesia, that would calm them down. Now where was I?’

‘Henry.’

‘Yes, a dear boy and we’ll miss him today. Give him my love, will you? We’ll see him soon.’

I assured her I would and we clicked off.

Everyone loves Henry.

‘Stay, Isabelle?’

‘Sure, Henry. I’ll always stay with you.’

I kissed his forehead.

I waited until he was asleep before I put another blanket over him. I watched him, his mouth open, his slanted eyes shut.

‘I love you, Henry, my brother,’ I whispered.

Baking birthday cakes was another forte of the Bommarito sisters.

For a kid who wanted a normal cake, he could skip on down the street to the local grocery store. But if he desired a cake to end all cakes, with some jazz and a little raz-a-daz, we were the bakery for them.

We made yellow-and-orange gecko cakes and panda bears in pink aprons and ladybug cakes with liquorice antennas.

A man with spiked hair wanted a cake in the shape of a guitar for his bandmate, and a lady needed a special cake for a girls’ weekend away so we’d made a giant cake in the shape of a wine bottle. The name of the wine was ‘Women Rule’.

A local newspaper ran photos and we were overrun with orders.

School got out and Cecilia came to work full time. If she hadn’t, we would have had to hire two more people.

Bommarito’s Bakery was booming.

Momma would undoubtedly give birth to a bleating cow when she saw the changes we’d made.

‘Who is that?’ Janie asked, peering out the window of the bakery. ‘I saw him yesterday and the day before.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

The booths and tables in the bakery were filled. Saturday mornings had turned into a small mob scene. All we’d done is offer free coffee with the purchase of a treat. Any treat. Momma would have a bleating cow over this, too.

Bao was in the back making lemon bars with powdered sugar with Belinda. We had given her simple, repetitive tasks, and she did them well. Bao treated her gently, kindly, and Belinda loved him. She’d been scared at first at the thought of a job, but then had calmed down. She muttered here and there, took a nap at ten o’clock on the dot, but was actually a steady, smiley worker.

We had a largish room above the store with two windows and a bathroom we’d given to Belinda once we got our acts together and took a second to lift our heads out of the sand and help someone besides our own sorry selves.

We brought in a refrigerator, a comfy couch, two padded chairs, a TV, rugs, pillows, a few lights, a table and four chairs, and we shoved a twin bed in the corner with a red-and-yellow bedspread. We did not buy a stove or a microwave – sounds callous, but we were afraid that Belinda would burn the building down.

We brought her upstairs one day after she finished icing eighty cupcakes for a company party.

‘Would you like to live here, Belinda?’ Janie asked.

Belinda’s mouth dropped open. ‘Here?’

‘Yes, here.’

Her face lit up. ‘It beautiful!’ Her face sagged. ‘I don’t have no money.’

‘Yes, you do,’ I told her. ‘You have a job now. You work for us and you can live here and we’ll give you extra money, too, for food and clothes and cat food.’

‘Joe can come, too?’ she asked hopefully.

‘Joe can come.’

Joe the mangy, ragged cat with the dirty pink bow, who Janie sneaked off to a pet boutique for a wash when Belinda was working. I reminded myself to get another bow for the cat.

Janie and I prodded her into the shower that day. When she got out, we handed her a new pair of jeans, a T-shirt and sweatshirt, new shoes, and socks. We put her other new clothes – jeans and pants, shirts, two sweaters, socks and undies, tennis shoes, and a jacket – in a chest of drawers. We took her old clothes with us and threw them out.

She had her shopping cart, so we helped her sort through that and threw it all out when she turned around. She never missed it. We left her holding Joe, watching a soap opera.

Her face told me all I wanted to see: she had found peace.

So Belinda and Bao worked and we stared at the man.

‘I’ve seen him before,’ Janie said. ‘The White-Haired Dove. That’s how I think of him because of that thick white hair. I saw him staring at the house a couple of times…’

‘Let’s go meet the White-Haired Dove,’ I said.

But it wasn’t necessary for us to go to him.

He was a tall, lean man, and he came to us, limping.

It turned out that he was our history, on feet, with the gentlest of gentle smiles on his face.

I remembered that gentle smile.

Lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes below a grooved forehead. The scar cut through the right side of his face. Life had beaten him up and spat him back out, that was for certain. He was still a handsome man in a toughened-up, roughened-up way, and when those brown eyes filled up with tears, I knew instantly who he was.

My heart stopped. ‘Daddy?’

‘Would you like a sugar cookie?’ Janie asked our dad, nervous, twitchy, as we settled into a booth. ‘We have sharks with braces on their teeth, mermaids with peace signs, and men’s boxer shorts. You know, like underwear. Red or blue. The underwear. You can choose the colour. Isabelle made jock strap cookies, too, in purple. And bras. Pink. Striped. You probably don’t want a bra cookie. Do you? Want a bra?’ She slapped both hands to her face in embarrassment. ‘A bra cookie, I mean. I didn’t make the bras. Isabelle did it. Not me.’

Janie prattled on. I was speechless.

I have to say that if the Columbia River had suddenly been run over by a tsunami sweeping up the hill, and had that tsunami deposited a pirate ship on our roof, I would still not have been as shocked as I was now to be sitting in a booth across from our dad.

He had so gently asked about my gnarled-up face. (He did not refer to it as ‘gnarled-up’.) When I told him I had a bad date, I saw a muscle throb in his temple as he stared out the window. He choked out an ‘I’m sorry,’ then couldn’t speak for several minutes. I saw his hand move towards mine before he withdrew it, but the pain in his bleak expression never withdrew. ‘I’m sorry, Isabelle.’

‘Or, I can bring you a plate of garlic cheese bread,’ Janie prattled on. ‘Or a wedding cake? Those are good. I could grab a wedding cake for us to eat. Or a blue spider cake? We don’t serve wine. The moms sneak it in on Wednesday mornings. We don’t. Have it. No wine.’