The Flowers in the Attic Series: The Dollangangers: Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and a New Excerpt! (16 page)

Every day we got up early. We didn’t have an alarm clock, only our wristwatches. But some automatic timing-system in my body took over and wouldn’t let me sleep late, even when I wanted to.

As soon as we were out of bed, on alternate days, the boys would use the bathroom first, and then Carrie and I would go in. We had to be fully dressed before the grandmother entered—or else.

Into our grim, dim room the grandmother would stalk, while we stood at attention, waiting for her to put down the picnic basket and depart. Seldom did she speak to us, and when she did, it was only to ask if we had said grace before every meal, said prayers before retiring and had read a page from the Bible yesterday.

“No,” said Chris one morning, “we don’t read a page—we read chapters. If you consider reading the Bible a form of punishment, then forget it. We find it fascinating reading. It’s bloodier and lustier than any movie we ever saw, and talks more about sin than any book we ever read.”

“Shut up, boy!” she barked at him. “I was asking your sister,
not you!”

Next she was asking me to repeat some quote I’d learned, and in this way we often had our little jokes, at her expense, for when you looked hard and long enough, you found words in the Bible to suit any occasion. I answered on this particular morning, “Wherefore have you rewarded evil for good? Genesis 44:4.”

She scowled and pivoted about and left us. It was another few days before she snapped at Chris, without looking his way, and keeping her back turned, “Repeat to me a quote from the Book of Job. And do not try to fool me into believing you read the Bible when you do not!”

Chris seemed well prepared and confidant “Job, 28:12.—But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Job 28:28,—Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding. Job, 31:35—My desire is that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversity had written a book. Job, 32:9—Great men are not always wise.” And he would have gone on and on endlessly, but anger colored the grandmother’s face. Never again did she ask Chris to quote from the Bible. She eventually stopped asking me also, for I, too, could always come up with some stinging quote.

Around six o’clock each evening Momma would show up, breathless, always in a great hurry. She came loaded down with gifts, new things for us to do, new books to read, more games to play. Then she’d dash off to bathe and dress in her suite of rooms for a formal dinner downstairs, where a butler and a maid waited on the table, and it seemed, from what she breathlessly explained, that often guests dined with them. “A great deal of business is done over lunch and dinner tables,” we were informed.

The best times were when she sneaked up fancy little canapés, and tasty hors d’oeuvres, but she never brought us candy to rot our teeth.

Only on Saturdays and Sundays could she spend more than a few moments with us, and sit down at our small table to eat lunch. Once she patted her stomach. “Look how fat I’m becoming,
eating lunch with my father, then saying I want to nap, so I can come up and eat again with my children.”

Meals with Momma were wonderful, because it reminded me of the old days when we were living with Daddy.

One Sunday Momma came in, smelling fresh from outside, bringing a quart of vanilla ice cream and a chocolate cake from a bakery. The ice cream had melted almost to soup, but still we ate it. We begged her to stay all night, to sleep between Carrie and me, so we could wake up in the morning and we could see her there. But she took a long look around the cluttered bedroom, and shook her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t, I really can’t. You see, the maids would wonder why my bed wasn’t used. And three in a bed would be too crowded.”

“Momma,” I asked, “how much longer? We’ve been here two weeks—it seems like two years. Hasn’t the grandfather forgiven you yet for marrying Daddy? Have you told him about us yet?”

“My father has given me one of his cars to drive,” she said with what I considered evasiveness. “And I believe he is going to forgive me, or else he wouldn’t be letting me use his car, or sleep under his roof, or eat his food. But no, I haven’t had the nerve to tell him yet that I have four children hidden away. I have to time this very carefully, and you have to have patience.”

“What would he do if he knew about us?” I asked, ignoring Chris, who kept frowning at me. Already he’d told me if I kept asking so many questions, Momma would stop coming to see us everyday. Then what would we do?

“God knows what he’d do,” she whispered fearfully. “Cathy, promise me you will not try to make the servants hear! He is a cruel, heartless man, and one who wields a great deal of power. Let me time carefully the moment I believe he’s
ready
to hear.”

She went away about seven, and soon after we retired. We went to bed early, because we got up early. And the longer you could stay asleep, the shorter were the days. We would drag our twins into the attic as soon as the hour of ten passed. Exploring
the giant attic was one of the best ways to occupy our time. There were two pianos up there, uprights. Cory climbed on a round seat that twirled higher or lower, and round and round he spun. He banged on the yellow piano keys, cocked his head and listened attentively. It was out of tune, and the noise he made was so discordant it made your head ache. “Don’t sound right,” he said. “Why don’t it sound right?”

“It needs tuning,” said Chris, who tried to tune it, but when he did, the wires broke. That was the end of trying to make music on two old pianos. There were five Victrolas, each with a small, white dog that cocked its head charmingly, as if enchanted to hear the music—but only one of these machines worked well. We’d wind up this one, put on a warped old record, and listen to the weirdest music we’d ever heard!

There were stacks and stacks of Enrico Caruso records, but, unfortunately, they were not well cared for, just stacked on the floor, not even put in cardboard cartons. We sat in a semicircle to listen to him sing. Christopher and I knew he was the greatest of all male singers, and now was our chance to hear him. His voice was so high-pitched it sounded false, and we wondered what had been so great about him. But for some crazy reason, Cory loved it.

Then, slowly, slowly, the machine would wind down, and would spin Caruso’s voice into only a whine, and that’s when one of us would race like mad to crank the handle so tight he’d sing fast and funny so he sounded like Donald Duck talking jibberty-junk—and the twins would break up in laughter. Naturally. It was their kind of talk, their secret language.

Cory would spend all of his days in the attic, playing the records. But Carrie was a restless prowler, ever discontented, an incessant seeker of something better to do.

“I don’t like this
big bad place!”
she wailed for the zillionth time. “Take me out of this
baa-aad place! Take me out now! This minute! You take me out or I’m gonna kick down the walls! I will! I can! I can, too!”

She ran to the walls to attack with small feet and flailing little fists that she managed to bruise severely before she gave up.

I felt sorry for her, and for Cory. All of us would have liked to kick down the walls and escape. With Carrie, though, it was more likely the walls would tumble down just from the crescendo trumpet of her powerful voice, like the walls of Jericho tumbling down.

Indeed, it was a relief when Carrie braved the dangers of the attic and found her own way to the stairway, and to the bedroom below, where she could play with her dolls, and her tea-cups, and her tiny stove, and her little ironing board with the iron that didn’t heat up.

For the first time, Cory and Carrie could spend a few hours separated from each other, and Chris said that was a good thing. Up in the attic was the music which charmed Cory, while Carrie would chatter on to her “things.”

Taking many baths was another way to use up excess time, and shampooing hair made it last longer—oh, we were the cleanest children alive. We napped after lunch, which lasted as long as we could stretch it. Chris and I made a contest of peeling apples so the skin came off in one long, long spiraling cord. We peeled oranges and took off every bit of white string that the twins detested. We had little boxes of cheese crackers that we counted out to divide equally into four portions.

Our most dangerous and amusing game was to mimic the grandmother—ever fearful she’d walk in and catch us draped with some filthy gray sheet from the attic, to represent her gray taffeta uniforms. Chris and I were the best at this. The twins were too afraid of her to even lift their eyes when she was in the room.

“Children!” snapped Chris while he stood by the door, holding an invisible picnic basket. “Have you been decent, honorable, proper? This room looks a terrible mess! Girl—you over there—smooth out that rumpled pillow before I crush your head in with the mere glare of my eyes!”

“Mercy, Grandmother!” I cried, falling down on my knees
and crawling to her with my hands folded under my chin. “I was dead tired from scrubbing down all the walls in the attic. I had to rest.”

“Rest!”
snapped the grandmother at the door, her dress about to fall off. “There is no
rest
for the evil, the corrupt, the unholy and the unworthy—there is only work until you are dead, and hung forever over hell’s eternal roasting fires!” Then he lifted his arms beneath the sheet in some horrible gestures that made the twins shriek from fright, and in a witch’s way, the grandmother disappeared, and only Chris was left, grinning at us.

The first weeks were like seconds turned into hours despite all we did to entertain ourselves, and we managed to do quite a lot. It was the doubts and the fears, the hopes and expectations that kept us so in suspense, waiting, waiting—and we were no closer to being let out and taken downstairs.

Now the twins ran to me with their small cuts and bruises, and the splinters garnered from the rotten wood in the attic. I carefully plucked them out with tweezers, Chris would apply the antiseptic, and the adhesive plaster they both loved. An injured small finger was enough reason to demand cuddly-baby things, and lullabies sung as I tucked them into bed, and kissed their faces, and tickled where laughter had to be freed. Their thin little arms wrapped tightly about my neck. I was loved, very loved . . . and needed.

Our twins were more like three-year-olds than children of five. Not in the way they talked, but in the way they rubbed their eyes with small fists, and pouted when they were denied anything, and the way they had of holding their breath until they turned magenta and forced you to give them what they wanted. I was much more susceptible to this kind of ploy than Chris, who reasoned it was impossible for anyone to suffocate themselves in such a way. Still, to see them purple was a terrifying sight.

“Next time they behave like that,” he told me in private, “I want you to ignore them, even if you have to go into the bathroom and lock the door. And, believe me, they won’t die.”

That was exactly what they forced me to do—and they didn’t die. That was the last time they pulled that stunt as a way to keep from eating food they didn’t like—and they didn’t like anything, or hardly anything.

Carrie had the swayback posture of all little girls, protruding in front in a strong arc, and she adored skipping around the room, holding out her skirts so her ruffled panties showed. (Lace ruffled panties were the only kind she would wear.) And if they had little roses made of ribbons, or embroidered somewhere in front, you had to see them at least a dozen times a day, and comment on how charming she looked in her panties.

Of course, Cory wore briefs like Chris, and he was very proud of this. Somewhere, lurking in his memory, were the diapers not too long ago discarded. If he had a temperamental bladder. Carrie was the one who got diarrhea if she ate one teensy bit of any fruit but citrus. I actually hated the days when peaches and grapes were brought up to us—for dear Carrie adored green grapes without seeds, and peaches, and apples . . . and all three had the same effect. Believe me, when fruit came in the door, I blanched, knowing who would have to wash the ruffled, lacy panties unless I moved fast as lightening, running with Carrie under my arm, and plopping her down in the nick of time. Chris’s laughter would ring out when I didn’t make it—or Carrie
did
make it. He kept that blue vase handy, for when Cory had to go, he had to let loose immediately, and woe if a girl was in the bathroom with the door locked. More than once he had wet his short pants, and then he’d bury his face in my lap, so ashamed. (Carrie was never ashamed—my fault for being slow.)

“Cathy, when do we get to go outside?” he whispered after one accident.

“As soon as Momma says we can.”

“Why doesn’t Momma say we can?”

“There is an old man downstairs who doesn’t know we’re up here. And we have to wait until he likes Momma again, enough to accept us too.”

“Who is the old man?”

“Our grandfather.”

“Is he like the grandmother?”

“Yeah, I’m afraid he is.”

“Why don’t he like us?”

“He doesn’t like us because . . . because, well, because he hasn’t got good sense. I think he’s sick in the head, as well as in the heart.”

“Does Momma still like us?”

Now, that was a question to keep me awake at night.

*  *  *

More than weeks had passed when a Sunday came where Momma didn’t show up during the day. It hurt not having her with us, when we knew she had the day off from school, and we knew she was somewhere in this very house.

I lay flat on my stomach on the floor where it was cooler, reading
Jude the Obscure.
Chris was up in the attic searching for new reading material, and the twins were crawling around pushing tiny cars and trucks.

The day dragged on into evening before finally the door opened and Momma came gliding into our room, wearing tennis shoes, white shorts and a white top with a sailor collar trimmed in red and blue braid, and an anchor design. Her face was rosy tan from being outdoors. She looked so vibrantly healthy, so unbelievably happy, while we wilted and felt half-sick from the oppressive heat of this room.