The Girl in the Window (6 page)

In the early years, she’d wept and wailed.

“Please Daddy no, I’ll be good,” she’d promised, desperately.

It only angered him more.

“You’ll get one more for each tear,” he’d shouted. And she had.

He’d hated crying. It was a sign of weakness. So she’d learned to stop.

“You know what you need to do,” he would say, and look out the window, away from her.

Over time, she’d learned.

In the early years, he’d gone with her to the back yard to make certain she picked the right switch, but as she’d gotten older she’d gone by herself. If she chose well, the process wouldn’t be repeated and she’d get an easier whipping. If she didn’t, they would both go down, usually with his hand in her hair or wrapped in the collar of her shirt or dress. Once he’d smacked her in the head on the way and she’d nearly fallen down the stairs.

After a while, she’d gotten good at it and picked switches that would get the whipping done quickly.

Forsythia made good switches, but so did any thin, whippy branch, even rose canes – although the thorns left marks.

She looked out the window.

Both the forsythia and the overgrown rosebush were gone, she’d ripped them out of the ground on her first day here. Now fountain grass grew where they’d once stood.

There had been a time or two, though, when she just couldn’t face it and picked badly just to put off the inevitable as long as she could.

He would still be sitting on the bench waiting when she returned, his knees set flat and square and she would obediently lift her skirt and bend over his legs. When she was in the correct position, he would give her the switching he said she’d earned.

Each lash of the switch had been like fire. It made her stomach curl, but after a while the pain just ran together. Then it would stop.

Still, it was better than the other. Although there had been days when she’d suffered both.

It was the whippings, though, that had done it in the end.

Her teacher had been furious with her, but there had been simply no way for Beth to sit still in class, the open welts on her bottom and legs had been just too painful. There was no position, in which to sit comfortably.

So she’d been hauled out of class to the Principal’s office for her disobedience.

Horrified, she hadn’t been able to tell them why she couldn’t sit still until the teacher had pushed her into a chair and she’d flinched as her legs touched it.

One look at the back of her legs – hidden by her dress – and Children’s Services had been called. Further investigation had revealed the other bruises, the ones on her arms where her mother had grabbed and shook her when she was angry. Her father had been a stickler for sitting up straight and had made Beth sit on a stool at meals. One imprecise angle, one imprecise bite, one scrape of her teeth on the fork and she’d found herself on the floor.

The school had called her parents.

Beth had gone from horror to outright terror.

There were times of the day when you just didn’t bother her father.

In the morning, he was all right most times.

By midday sometimes he was jocular, even funny, his big, deep voice booming. Sometimes frighteningly so, with a distant hint of something that had sent chills through her, as if he stood on the edge of something or held it at bay.

Late afternoon, after he’d come home from work, though, was chancy.

By nightfall, he’d either settled into silence or fallen asleep most times. Sometimes though he was just mean.

It was midafternoon. He’d been at work. She didn’t know which of him would show up.

When he’d walked in the door he’d been furious, livid, his face white where it wasn’t red. And he was drunk. Although it was difficult for some to tell – he was very controlled, what they called high-functioning now – she could. So could those with her, although the signs were small. If her mother hadn’t been there he would have been arrested for driving under the influence.

There had been questions, and not just about her.

They’d taken Beth away.

She kept looking back over her shoulder at her parents, wondering why they didn’t come after her.

Instead, her father had bellowed, “Keep her, the ungrateful sniveling brat.”

He was like that when he was drunk.

For years afterward, she kept expecting them to show up, to come for her, to apologize, to tell her they loved her and take her back.

They never had.

Beth hadn’t cried, not then. That she reserved for the institutional place where they took her, with its metal framed beds and stiff rough sheets that reeked of bleach.

Now she went to the windows of her parent’s bedroom and looked out over the back yard.

Whatever else, the fields and woods here had been her refuge, the one place she could escape this cold angry house, her bitter unhappy mother, and her father. There she indulged her imagination, acted out scenes from the books she carefully hid, the TV shows and movies she watched. Out there she was the heroine, big enough to fight the bad guys.

Once they removed her from the house, privacy and flights of imagination had disappeared in the face of shared rooms and shared beds, except in the depths of her mind.

Teachers had called her dreamy. She smiled at the memory.

Now the fields and woods were hers again.

Turning, she faced the room, the sights and smells of it.

She took a breath and set to work, stripping the room bare, right down to the walls, floor and furniture.

If Beth had thought to find a revelation among her parent’s things, she was disappointed. There was none, just the flotsam and jetsam of their joint lives.

In her mother’s jewelry box were pieces Beth couldn’t remember and one or two she did. She found tiny earrings of diamond, ruby and emerald and with them came the memory of her mother’s pride when she’d showed off those small things to her few friends, declaring she’d never wear fake stones. She’d been a Wal-Mart queen in her fancy earrings and sweatshirts.

Beth wouldn’t have worn any of it, preferring instead unique hand-made pieces of jewelry that touched her heart.

Her mother’s clothes were the same. There was nothing there she treasured, and a few that made her shudder, like the fox fur coat Beth discovered deep in her mother’s closet, the head of the fox still attached.

Among her father’s things were the tie-tacks and cufflinks he’d worn when he’d still been employed. Before they’d retired him.

His suits still hung in the closet, the shirts pressed neatly by her mother, his dress shoes precisely in place on the floor beneath. The suits were dark and the shirts white or acceptable shades of blue and gray. He would never have worn pink or purple, not because he considered them ‘gay’, but because he considered them feminine colors and unsuitable for a man.

Nothing surprised her. No journals or diaries, no unsent letters. Neither of her parents had been introspective people that she remembered. There hadn’t even been saved birthday and Christmas cards to and from each other. For some reason she found that sad. Her heart ached for them.

Vaguely she remembered the impossibly romantic tale her mother had told Beth once of how they’d met, how her mother had stepped out in front of Beth’s father’s car to make him stop and notice her.

Stripped now down to the bare mattress – purchased a good quarter century before – the bed looked oddly naked, even vulnerable. She wouldn’t even keep the sheets she’d taken from it. She wanted nothing of theirs. Everything would be donated to charity. There were people who would appreciate their things as she could not.

A soft breeze swept through the room from windows that had rarely been opened little more than a crack during the years she’d lived here – a source of argument between her parents during the winter months. That soft whisper of wind brought with it the scents of summer, of fresh flowers and tall grass, the sweet scents of growing things, and the distinctive aroma of corn as it ripened in the fields. She loved that smell.

Suddenly, sharply, she wanted all of it gone. All the dark heavy furniture and the thick dusty damask drapes that had hung over the windows. The dingy carpet, everything.

A child of the light, of sunshine, she’d hated the darkness and the shadows of this house. It wasn’t until that moment that she realized how much. She wanted that darkness gone with a passion that made her want to weep.

*****

Where a few moments before everyone in the barn had been working there was a sudden hush. Three pairs of eyes looked past Josh to whoever stood behind him at the entrance to the barn.

He turned to find Beth framed within the big doors, sunshine pouring down over her.

As always her blue eyes were huge, her expression cautious and wary. Her hands were clenched tightly together and yet she looked at him squarely, her gaze going to the boys and then back to him uncertainly, as if she already regretted the impulse that had made her come.

With a smile he restrained, he thought she probably did.

She looked prettier than he remembered, her hair brushed and loose and she’d troubled to put a touch of makeup on, not that she needed it. He couldn’t help but hope she might have done it for him. The blue of her dress made her eyes appear luminous in the dark of the barn. Her hair was brilliant, washed in the bright sunlight that flooded that section of the barn.

Dust motes danced in the sunlit air around her like stars.

He was so surprised to see her that for a moment he couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

Then he saw her feet were bare.

Where her clenched hands revealed some of her nervousness, her feet showed it all, moving against each other restlessly. She reminded him of a child then, the new kid at school, uncertain of her welcome in a strange place.

Josh almost smiled at the thought and quickly changed it to a smile of welcome.

“Beth,” he said, keeping his voice soft so as not to startle her. “What brings you here? Can we do something for you?”

She looked at him and he could see the sudden doubt, the second thoughts, clearly reflected on her face even before she bit her lip.

Part of him suddenly wanted to catch her up in his arms and hold her, keep her safe, sheltered.

She’d have run if he’d done it, he knew.

Now that she was the center of all those eyes Beth wished she hadn’t come but she hadn’t known where else to go and she wanted that furniture gone. Today, or as soon as she could manage it. There were too many memories that came with it.

Biting her lip she looked at Josh, at his kind eyes and welcoming smile.

She’d come this far.

“It’s too much to ask,” Beth said, “but I have some furniture that needs to be moved. I can pay for the help.”

“How big is it?” Josh asked.

She looked at him, thinking about it. “Big.”

Josh glanced at his men. “Show me and we’ll discuss it.”

It looked as if Josh would get a tour of the house after all anyway.

She swallowed hard, let out a breath. “All right.”

“Okay,” Josh said, and turned to his men. “Who wants to give the lady a hand?”

The next thing Beth knew all four of them followed her back to the house and crowded into her parent’s bedroom, that sacred and inviolate space where even she had not been welcome.

All four studied the furniture, and one of them the older man named Russ got down on his hands and knees to look underneath it and then behind it where it was pushed against the wall.

“We’ll need some tools, Joshua,” the man said, “a socket to unbolt parts of the bed…”

Nodding, another said, assessing the size of the furniture, “We’ll need the truck, I’ll bring it around. Keys?”

“Thanks, Will,” Josh said, tossing the keys to the man he called Will as Will departed, and then spoke to the man crouched by the bed, “There’s tools in the shed, Russ.”

“What do you think you’ll need, Russ, I’ll get it,” the last of them said.