Casteel 1 - Heaven (34 page)

She didn't hear me. She was distracted by what I held in my arms. “What t'hell ya got there? Caught ya, didn't I? Lyin there on yer side, like I ain't done tole ya one million times not t'do nasty stuff like that!”

She snatched the doll from my arms, quickly turned on all the lights in my room, and stared down at the doll. I jumped up to rescue my doll.

“It's her! HER!” she screamed, hurling my irreplaceable heirloom doll at the wall. “Luke's damned angel!”

I scurried to pick up the doll, almost tripping because I forgot I was wearing high-​heeled sandals. Oh, thank God she wasn't broken, only her bridal veil had fallen off.

“GIVE ME THAT THIN!” ordered Kitty, striding to take the doll from me. She was again distracted by my dress, her eyes raking down my length to see my nylons, my silver sandals. “Where ya get that dress, them shoes?”

“I decorate cakes and sell them to neighbors for twenty dollars apiece!” I lied with flair, so angry that she would sling my doll at the wall and try to ruin the most precious thing I owned.

“Don't ya lie t'me, an say stupid thins like that! An give me that doll.”

“NO! I will not give you this doll.”

She glared at me, dumbfounded that I would answer her back, and in her own tough tone of voice she said, “Ya kin't say no t'me, hill scum, an hope t'get by wid it.”

“I just said no, Kitty, and I am getting by with it. You can't buffalo me anymore. I'm not afraid of you now. I'm older, bigger, strongerand tougher. I'm not weak from lack of nourishing strength, so I do have that to thank you for, but don't you ever dare lay a hand on this doll again.”

“What would ya do iffen I did?” she asked in a low, dangerous voice.

The cruelty in her eyes stunned me so much I was speechless. She hadn't changed. All this time when I'd lived apparently in peace, she'd been brewing some kind of hatred inside her. Now it was out, spewing forth from her pale gimlet eyes.

“What's t'matta, hill scum, kin't ya hear?”

“Yeah, I hear you.” “What did ya say?” “I said, Kitty, YEAH, I hear you.” “WHAT?” Louder now, more demanding. Aggressively, no longer willing to play humble

and helpless, I held my head high and proud, flaring back: “You're not my mother, Kitty Setterton Dennison! I don't have to call you Mother. Kitty is good enough. I've tried hard to love you, and forget all the awful things you've done to me, but I'm not trying anymore. You can't be human and nice for but a little while, can you? And I was stupid enough to plan a party, just to please you, and give you a reason for having all that china and crystal . . . but the storm is on, and so are you, because you just don't know how to act like a mother. Now it's ugly, mean time again. I can see it in your watery eyes that glow in the darkness of this room. No wonder God didn't allow you to have children, Kitty Dennison. God knew better.”

A lightning flash lit up Kitty's pale face gone dead white as the lights flickered on and off. She spoke in short gasps. "I come home t'fix myself up fer t'partyan what do I find but a lyin, tricky, nasty- minded bit of hill-​scum filth who don't appreciate

anythin I've done.“ ”I do appreciate all the good things that you've

done, that's what this party is all about, but you take away my good feelings when you hit out at me. You try to destroy what belongs to me, while I do all I can to protect what belongs to you. You've done enough harm to me to last a lifetime, Kitty Dennison! I haven't done anything to deserve your punishment. Everybody sleeps on theif 'Wes, on their stomachs and no one thinks it is sinful but you. Who told you the right and wrong positions for sleeping? God?"

“YA DON'T TALK T'ME LIKE THAT WHEN YER IN MY HOUSE!” Kitty screamed, livid with rage. “Saw ya, I did. Breakin my rules, ya were. Ya knows ya ain't supposed t'sleep on yer side huggin anything . . . an ya went an done it anyway. YA DID!”

“And what is so bad about sleeping on my side? Tell me! I'm dying to know! It must be tied up somehow to your childhood, and what was done to you!” My tone was as hard as hers, aggressive too.

“Smartmouth, ain't ya?” she fired back. "Think yer betta than me, cause ya gets A's in school. Spend my good money dressin ya up, an what fer? What ya plannin on doin? Ya ain't got no talents. Kin't half cook. Don't know nothin bout cleanin house, keepin

thins lookin prettybut ya think yer betta than me cause I didn't go no higher than t'fifth grade. Cal done told ya all bout me, ain't he?"

“Cal's told me nothing of the kind, and if you didn't finish school I'm sure it was because you couldn't wait to sleep with some man, and run off with the first one who asked you to marry himlike all hill-​scum girls do. Even if you did grow up in Winnerrow, you're not one whit better than any scumbag hill-​crud girl.”

It was Kitty's fault, not mine, that Cal was beginning to look at rue in ways that made me uneasy, forgetting he was supposed to be my father, my champion. Kitty's fault. My rage grew by leaps and bounds that she would steal from me the one man who'd given me what I needed mosta real father. Yet it was she who found her voice first.

“HE TOLE YA! I KNOW HE DID, DIDN'T HE?” she screamed, high and shrill. “Ya done talked about me t'my own husband, tole him lies, made him so he don't love me like he used ta!”

“We don't talk about you. That's too boring. We try to pretend you don't exist, that's all.”

Then I threw on more fuel, thinking that I'd already started the blaze, so I might as well heap on

all the rotten wood I had been saving since the day I came. Not one harsh word she'd said had been forgotten or forgiven, not one slap, one bloody nose or black eye . . . all had been stored to explode now.

“Kitty, I'm never going to call you Mother again, because you never were and never will be my mother. You're Kitty the hairdresser. Kitty the fake ceramic teacher.” I spun around on the heel of one silver slipper and pointed at the line of wall cabinets. And I laughed, really laughed, as if I enjoyed this, but I wasn't enjoying myself, only putting on a false front of bravado.

“Behind those locked cupboard doors you've got professional molds, Kitty, thousands of bought molds! With shipping labels still on the boxes they came in. You don't create any of these animals! You buy the molds, pour in the clay slipand you display them and label them as one of a kind, and that's fraud. You could be sued.”

Kitty grew unnaturally quiet.

That should have warned me to shut up, but I had years of frustrated rage locked up within, and so I spewed it out, as if Kitty were a combination of Pa and everything else that had managed to spoil my life.

“Cal told ya that,” came Kitty's deadly flat

statement. “Cal . . . done . . . betrayed. . . me.” “Nope.” I reached for a drawer in my desk and

pulled out a tiny brass key. “I found this one day when I was cleaning in here, and just couldn't help opening the cabinets you always keep locked.”

Kitty smiled. Her smile couldn't have been sweeter.

“What do ya know about art, hill scum? I made t'molds. I sell tmolds t'good customerslike myself. I keep em locked up so sneaks like ya won't steal my ideas.”

I didn't care.

Let the sky fall, let the rain swell the ocean and wash over Candlewick, carry it to the bottom of the sea, to sleep forever next to lost Atlantis . . . what did I care? I could leave now that the weather was hot. I could hitchhikewho'd care? I'd live. I was tough. Somehow or other I'd make my way back to Winnerrow, and when I was there I'd tear Fanny away from Reverend Wise, find Tom, save Keith and Our Jane . . . for I'd thought of a way we could all survive.

To prove my strength, my determination, I turned and stuffed my doll far under the bed, then deliberately fell on the bed and curled up on my side, reaching for a pillow that I hugged tight against me. It

hit me thenthe thing I'd not thought of beforejust what was the evil thing Kitty presumed I did. The girls in school talked about it sometimes, how they pleasured themselves, and foolishly I threw my leg over the pillow and began to rub against it.

I didn't do that more than two seconds.

Strong hands seized me under my armpits, and I was yanked from the bed. I screamed and tried to fight Kitty off, tried to twist around so my hands could rake Kitty's face or do some other damage that would force her to let me go. It was as if I were a struggling kitten in the jaws of a powerful tiger. I was carried and dragged down the stairs, into the dining room I'd made pretty with party decorations she picked me up, plunked me down on the hard glass-​top dining-​room table.

“You're putting fingerprints on your clean tabletop,” I said sarcastically, idiotically dauntless in the face of the worst enemy I was likely to ever have. “I'm finished with shining your glass tabletops. Finished with cooking your meals. Finished with cleaning your stupid house that has too many gaudy animals in it.”

“SHUT UP!” "I DON'T WANT TO SHUT UP! I'm going to

have my say for once. I HATE YOU, KITTY DENNISON! And I could have loved you if you'd given me half a chance. I hate you for all you've done to me! You don't give anyone half a chance, not even your own husband. Once you have anybody loving you, you do something ugly so that person has to turn on you and see you for what you areINSANE!"

“Shut up.” How calmly she said that this time. “Don't ya move from that table. Ya sit there. Ya be there when I come back.”

Kitty disappeared.

I could run now. Flee out the door, say good- bye to this Candlewick house. On the expressway I could catch a ride. But this morning's papers had spewed ugly photos on the front page. Two girls found raped and murdered alongside the freeway.

Swallowing, I sat frozen, snared by indecision, regretting, too late, all the things I'd said. Still . . I wasn't going to be a coward and run. I was going to sit here, show her I wasn't afraid of anything she did and what worse thing could she do?

Kitty came back, not carrying a whip or a stick or a can of Lysol to spray in my face. She carried only a thin long box of fireplace matches.

“Goin home, back t'Winnerrow fer a visit,” said

Kitty in her most fearsome monotone. “Goin so ya kin see yer sista Fanny, an yer grandpa. So I kin see my sista, Maisie, my brotha, Danny. Goin back t'touch my roots again, renew my vows t'neva get like em. Gonna show ya off. Don't want ya lookin ugly, like I might neglect ya. Ya've grown up prettier than I thought. Hill-​scum boys will try and get ya. So I'm gonna save ya from yer worst self in a way that won't show. But ya'll know from this day on not t'disobey me. Neva again. An if ya eva want t'find out where yer lit sister Our Jane is, and what happened t'that little boy named Keith, ya'll do as I say. I knows where they are, an who has em.”

“You know where they are, you really do?” I asked excitedly, forgetting all I'd said to anger Kitty.

“Does t'sky know where t'sun is? Does a tree know where t'plant its roots? Of course I know. Ain't no secrets in Winnerrow, not when yer one of em . . an they thinks I am.”

“Kitty, where are they, please tell me! I've got to find them before Our Jane and Keith forget who I am. Tell me! Please! I know I was ugly a moment ago, but you were, too. Please, Kitty.”

“Please what?” Oh, my God!

I didn't want to say it. I wiggled about on the slippery tabletop, gripping the edge so hard the glass if it hadn't been beveled would have sliced off my fingers.

“You're not my mother.” “Say it.” "My real mother is dead, and Sarah was my

stepmother for years and years . . .“ ”Say it."

“I'm sorry . . . Mother.” “An what else?” "You will tell me what you know about Keith

and Our Jane?“ ”Say it."

“I'm sorry I said so many ugly things . . . Mother.” “Sayin sorry ain't enough.”

“What else can I say?”

“Ain't nothin ya kin say. Not now. I seen ya doin it. I heard what ya said t'me. Called me a fake. Called me a hill scumbag. Knew ya'd turn against me soona or lata, t'minute I had my back turned ya'd do somethin nasty. Had t'lay on yer side, wiggle round an round, an pleasure yerself, didn't ya? Then ya had eta me off . . . an now I gotta do what I kin t'rid ya of evil.”

“And then you'll tell me where Keith and Our Jane are?”

“When I finish. When yer saved. Then . . . maybe.”

“Mother . . . why are you lighting the match? The lights have come back on. We don't need candles before it's really dark.”

“Go get t'doll.” “Why?” I cried, desperate now. “Don't ask whyjus do as I say.” "You'll tell me what you know about Keith and

Our Jane?“ ”Tell ya everythin. Everythin I know.“ She had one of the long matches lit now. ”Fore

it burns my fingas, fetch t'doll." I ran, crying as I fell to my knees and reached

under the bed and dragged out the doll that represented my dead mother, my young mother whose face I'd inherited. “I'm sorry, Mother,” I cried, lavishing her hard face with kisses, and then I ran again. Two steps from the bottom I tripped and fell. I got up to limp as fast as I could toward Kitty, the pain in my ankle so terrible I felt like screaming.

Kitty stood near the living-​room fireplace. “Put her in there,” she ordered coldly, pointing to the

andirons that held the iron grate. Logs were stacked there, kindling laid by Cal just for looks, for Kitty didn't like wood smoke dirtying and “stinkin up” her clean house.

“Please don't burn her, KiMother. . . .” “T'late t'make up fer t'harm ya done.” "Please, Mother. I'm sorry. Don't hurt the doll. I

don't have a photograph of my mother. I've never seen her. This is all I have."

“Liar!” "Mother she couldn't help what my pa did. She's deadyou're still alive. You won in the

end. You married Cal, and he's ten times the man my father is, or ever could be."

“Put that nasty thin in there!” she commanded.

I stepped backward, causing her to step threateningly forward. “If ya eva wanna know where Keith an Our Jane is . . . ya have t'give that hateful doll t'me of yer own free will. Don't ya make me snatch it from yaor ya'll neva find yer lil brotha an sista.”

My own free will. For Keith. For Our Jane. I handed her the doll.

I watched Kitty toss my beloved bride doll onto the grate. Tears streaked my face as I fell to my knees and bowed my head and said a silent prayer . . . as if my mother herself lay on her funeral pyre.