Barefoot Girls (21 page)

Keeley, who had been sitting quietly cuddling Baby Elly, her face hidden by the huge sunhat, suddenly looked up and pushed the hat’s brim back, her face hopeful. She said, “She can stay with Baby Elly! Baby Elly has a bed and she wants to share it with the princess!”  She put Baby Elly in the tiny bassinet that came with the doll and gestured to Zooey, smiling.

“Oh! Thank you, Baby Elly! I am so tired and cold!” Zooey said in Princess SunSparkle’s high falsetto, shuffling over to the bassinet on her knees and holding the doll. She placed Princess SunSparkle in the bassinet next to the baby doll. “Oh, how warm and cozy your bed is! I can almost forget how hungry I am!”

Zooey looked at Keeley and smiled at her. Keeley smiled in return, tipping her head back to look at Zooey from under the hat, the lines that came onto her face when she was in a bad mood disappearing.

Pam jumped up with Mr. Pups and went over to the bassinet. “No!” she growled for Mr. Pups. “You are a servant and must suffer!” She reached out and grabbed for the Princess doll.

Keeley moved fast to grab Princess SunSparkle first. “Stop it, Mr. Pups! I have given her permission!”

Amy stood up with Mo-mo. “Yes, Mr. Pups! Permission has been granted!”

“No!” Pam growled, grabbing at the only area she could reach: the princess doll’s head, “You are a servant and you are not worthy!”

Keeley shrieked, yanking back at the doll. “Stop!”

Pam dropped Mr. Pups, freeing her left hand, and grabbed at Keeley’s hat in an effort to distract her. The hat fell off onto the floor.

Seeing Keeley’s exposed head, Pam gasped, letting go of the princess doll.

Keeley fell back and landed on her butt, still holding the doll by her legs. Her usually beautiful hair was tangled, and its lightness was marred by dark tarry looking chunks of something near the scalp. Worse, her whole head looked misshapen. Glancing around at the other girls who were staring at her, she dropped the princess doll on the floor and quickly covered her exposed head with her hands.

They were all silent suddenly, looking at Keeley sitting on the floor, trying to cover up her head.

Then they were all talking at once. “What happened? Keeley! Your head!” Was that blood?

Keeley, keeping one hand on her hair, reached out and snatched back the hat off of the floor and pulled it back over her head. Then she slowly picked up Princess SunSparkle and put her in the bassinet, tucking her in next to Baby Elly. “Now, now,” she said quietly. Then she let out a little sob, and got to her feet, looking down so her face was covered by the hat. “I have to go home,” she said, her voice wavering.

Pam took two steps and put her hand on Keeley’s shoulder. Keeley flinched a little. “No, don’t go home, Key. We want you here,” Pam said softly. Pam’s tone had changed to the gentle one Amy had heard her use with her younger brother.

“What happened?” Amy asked, stepping closer. “You fall down?” She had never seen anything like Keeley’s poor head, all swollen and lumpy, hair chunky with dried blood. Maybe she fell down the stairs in the dark? It could get so dark on Captain’s at night, pitch black. Maybe Keeley had thought she could feel her way to the bathroom last night and fell.

Keeley stood quietly looking at the floor, her face still covered by the hat. She didn’t answer.

Pam said, patting Keeley’s shoulder, “Did you fall down, Key?”

Zooey, still kneeling by the bassinet, looked up at Keeley, trying to see her face. “No,” she said, sadly. “It was something else, wasn’t it?”

Keeley jerked a little and looked at Zooey. “What?” Keeley said.

Zooey looked up at Keeley. “Am I wrong?”

They looked at each other for a minute, as if having a silent conversation. Then Keeley started shaking her head. “I, I...,” Keeley whimpered, and then started outright crying.

Amy couldn’t stand it anymore. She walked right over to Keeley and wrapped her arms around her as far as she could reach. A full head shorter, her face rested against Keeley’s chest. “It’s okay, Keeley. It’s okay! We know you’re a clumsy goof, but we love you anyway. We love you so much. Your head’s going to heal just fine. My mom can look at it and fix you right up.”

Keeley just cried louder and said, “No! No one! Leave me alone!” But she didn’t shake Amy off.

Pam wrapped her arms around Keeley, too, one arm going around Amy’s back. Then Zooey stood up and hugged Keeley from behind. Zooey said, “It’s going to be all right. Really it is.”

Then they were all crying a little, mostly from shock at seeing their friend hurt so badly.

When the tears subsided, they parted, patting Keeley on her arms and back. Keeley still stood, looking at her feet, little sniffles emanating from under the floppy hat.

Then Zooey said something weird. “You don’t have to tell us, Keeley. It’s okay.”

Amy looked at Zooey like she was nuts. Not tell them? Why not? Keeley probably fell down the stairs and needed a grownup to help her! What if she was seriously hurt? She forgot all about Keeley’s own mother, who was living in the same house with her daughter and should have looked at her daughter’s injured head herself. All Amy could think about was her own mother and how her mother would clean Keeley’s wounds and wash her hair and bandage her. She would probably make her something nice and comforting to eat, too, like a grilled cheese sandwich and they would all get one. Amy’s mouth started watering thinking about that warm gooey sandwich.

But Zooey looked very serious. She kept a hand on Keeley’s shoulder.

Keeley said, her voice watery from tears, “I can’t tell. If I tell, then maybe it’s true. Maybe she really…”

Amy stared at Keeley. What was she talking about? Who?

Pam spoke up, her voice louder than before. “What? What are you talking about?”

Zooey shushed Pam. “Don’t shout, Pam. Let her talk.” She put her arm around Keeley protectively.

“I am!” Pam yelled and then lowered her voice, and looked around at each of them, “I am. I don’t understand.”

Join the club, Amy thought.

“You were telling us about your mom,” Zooey prompted softly. She rubbed Keeley’s arm, and peeked under her hat at her face.

Her mom! What? Amy felt an electric zinging feeling pass through her.

Keeley mewled and nodded.

“It’s okay,” Zooey said again.

Keeley told them then, her voice halting and then surging in pulses like a wonky outboard motor. She stood among them, her head hung low, her face obscured by the hat and told them everything about her mother’s hidden hatred for her, about the hitting that started and then had just gotten worse. They heard the basics that day and more details of the story would be filled in over the years.

It all began two years before, when Keeley was five. Before then she was coddled and spoiled by both parents, a favored pet in their family, the darling little girl that was a perfect counterpart to her older golden-boy brother, Sean. Four years older than Keeley, at nine Sean was their family’s shining light. Like his father, Sean was both scholastically gifted, a straight-A student, and an athletic star – he was both the captain of his ice hockey team as well as one of the best players on his school’s tennis team.

Riding home on his bike late one night after tennis practice, he’d taken a shortcut through a little wooded area, probably hungry and tired and in a rush to get home. Keeley’s mother, Maggie, held dinner as long as she could, going to the front door again and again to look for Sean. When she and Keeley finally sat down to eat - her father was working late as usual and not home for dinner - the food was dry and hard from being kept in the oven for over an hour.

After they finished eating, Maggie called her husband’s office, and not reaching him, called the police. Sean was found two hours later by the police lying just off the path in the woods, his head split open by a rock from when he fell off of his bike. There was nothing in the path to explain why he had fallen and the assumption was that an animal had been in the path and Sean had swerved to avoid hitting it.

Keeley’s parents changed forever that night. Their marriage had never been strong.  Joseph O’Brien was a workaholic and rarely home, usually seeking the bottle and the solace of other men’s company at a local bar when he wanted to relax.  Maggie’s social ambitions exceeded her working-class reach and her failure to be truly accepted by the genteel women of the local garden club was a grave disappointment to her, making her bitter and often depressed.  What had held them together, what had been their favorite topic of conversation on the rare nights and weekends when Joe was around, were their ambitions for their son.

Sean’s aptitude for numbers, something Joe had never had, meant he could work on Wall Street one day, where the real money was. Joe’s career in advertising, despite long hours and hard work, had never really taken off and he was still only an assistant account executive. Things would be different for Sean. Doors would open. Maggie could see him living the kind of life she had always dreamed of: one of yachts and sprawling estates and regular trips to Paris and Rome.

After Sean’s death, Joe all but disappeared from their lives, only showing up when sufficiently harangued by Maggie, and Maggie’s bitterness blossomed into anger at the world, at the unfairness of her life, and specifically, anger at Keeley for being the one to live. That was when the beatings started. First it was slaps and smacks and ordering Keeley to go to her room. Then Maggie started using a big wooden hairbrush. Then, it was an aluminum frying pan.

This summer, Joe had come out to Captain’s on the weekends, but yesterday was Monday and he was back home and at work. Keeley said she hadn’t seen it coming last night. She had been sitting at the kitchen table waiting for her mother to serve dinner. Her mother had been grumbling to herself, but that was typical.

Then, all of the sudden, smack! Her mother hit her in the back of the head with the aluminum frying pan that she had stopped cooking with and now only used on Keeley.  Keeley fell on the floor in surprise.

The girls still clustered around her, Keeley said, “She just kept hitting me on the head while I was lying there and yelling about my head being the one that should be cracked open and not Sean’s. Every time I tried to cover up my head to protect it, she’d grab my arms away and hit me again. I really thought I was going to die. That she was going to smash my head open. It hurt so bad. Then she just stopped. Dropped the pan on the floor and went to her bedroom. Left the food burning on the stove with me lying on the floor. She wanted me to die last night.”

Amy was frozen in shock, her feet glued to the floor. She had never heard anything like it. Sure, kids got spankings sometimes. Sometimes they deserved them. But this? It was terrifying.

Pam, who had also been silent and still while listening to Keeley’s story, suddenly spoke. “No, she didn’t mean it, not really! My mom gets the blues sometimes, that’s what she calls it when she won’t leave the house, and she’s really mean to me. But after, she always tells me she loves me, that she didn’t mean it, what she said. Your mom’s just the same way. She doesn’t mean it!”

Amy looked over at Pam. Her mother, too? What was wrong here? Her mom and all her friends’ moms back home had always been a source of love and comfort and care. How was it possible for them to be anything else? They were mothers! They’re supposed to be that way. She couldn’t get her mind around this whole thing. It was like there was a stop sign in her head.

Keeley lifted the brim of the hat and looked at Pam and then at each of them. “No. She means it. She really does.” Then her face crumpled. “Oh, I don’t know what I’m going to do!”

They all hugged Keeley again, all looking at each other over her head, their faces filled with fear and confusion. Amy wanted her mother to see Keeley’s head, but Keeley adamantly refused. Pam took over then and they all went to the bathroom downstairs together, hooked the lock on the door, and camped out while Pam gently washed Keeley’s hair. They used up a whole box of Band-aids on Keeley’s head as well as some Bacitracin, which made Keeley whimper and squeal in pain when it was applied to her still-oozing wounds.

Even though it was a beautiful sunny day, the girls didn’t want to swim or sail, they just wanted to take care of Keeley. They stayed in the house all day, playing board games on the screened-in porch and ignoring Rich and Jim, who were crouched under the porch yelling out jokes and quotes from Saturday Night Live. Keeley kept her hat on over her newly bandaged head to hide it from Amy’s parents. After much pleading from the girls, Amy’s mother agreed to a sleepover, and the girls breathed a sigh of relief knowing Keeley would be safe that night. Pam and Zooey had to get permission for the sleepover from their parents, but Keeley didn’t go home at all.

“She doesn’t care if I ever come back,” she said, and shrugged. Then she changed the subject, talking about a dollhouse she’d seen in a magazine that had real working lamps. Amy told her mother that Keeley’s mother had given permission, feeling slightly guilty but justified in her lie.

Keeley went back to her house the following night and didn’t say another word about her mother. She wouldn’t even talk about the subject if one of the other girls brought it up. Her head healed and came out of hiding from behind the floppy sunhat after two weeks. Their days returned to the old pattern they’d had before, but now, when they saw the bruises, they knew Keeley wasn’t clumsy, had never been. Tears would start in Amy’s eyes at those moments and she would wipe them away quickly, understanding that’s what Keeley wanted, for things to be happy and normal. That was all she understood.