Echoes of Dollanganger Read online

  And then it began. She was true to her threat. There was no food brought to us. I was afraid she would sneak in and cut Cathy’s hair anyway, so I tried blocking the door, and we planned to take turns playing sentry. We soon realized there was no reason to do it. She wasn’t coming back until she got what she wanted. She didn’t even check to see how we were doing without food. She brought us no supplies, either. Our toilet bowl got clogged. The twins were listless. All of us were weak without any food. Then I thought that if I cut off some of Cathy’s hair and she wrapped her head in a scarf, that could fool her. We thought it might work, but she still didn’t come with food. I even tried to feed the twins some of my blood for nourishment.

  We were desperate. I planned to make a sheet ladder for an escape from the attic. I even prepared dead mice for us to consume for the strength we would need, and then, perhaps believing she had punished us enough, she left us a basket of food. What we discovered, however, was that she had removed every mirror and smashed the one in the bathroom. Cathy wondered why, and I told her I had read that the devil loves vain people. “She believes it and thinks she can stop us from having any pride or what is known as vanity.”

  We were in the hands of an insane woman, and deny it as hard as I could, I couldn’t answer Cathy when she asked why—why would our mother let all this happen? All I could think was she didn’t know what her mother was doing to us.

  Kane looked at me and stopped reading.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “You look sick to your stomach.”

  I nodded. However, for a moment, I couldn’t speak. I actually ran my fingers through my hair as if I believed it had been magically bathed in tar and then cut off.

  “He had to feed them his blood?” I said. “I felt my stomach churn when you read that.”

  “He felt he had no choice. How could she do that to children so small? I have to say he was clever to cut her hair that way and make it look like she had obeyed the old lady’s insane demand. What would she have done if they had all died? Could she cover up something like that?”

  “I don’t know. It gets back to whether anyone else in that house knew about them.”

  He held up the diary. “I still say, how could they not? If I understand this correctly, he’s saying they’ve been there two years. That’s a long time to go without anyone else knowing they were there.”

  “I suppose.”

  He thought a moment. “You know, Kristin, maybe the Halloween stories are not that exaggerated. Some of the stories I’ve heard range from two to five years. We know now that there are people who have been kept locked up that long without anyone realizing it. If he was ready to create a sheet ladder for them and escape because she was starving them to death, why didn’t he do it?”

  “I don’t know, Kane. All of it is disturbing, but this part made me sick.”

  I didn’t want to say it again, but maybe this was why my father didn’t want me reading the diary. And yet how would he know what was in the diary? Could he know what really had happened at Foxworth Hall? Was that why he hated the property so much that he literally attacked the rubble when it became time to clear it away? Had my mother known any of this? Was this why she hated hearing about it? There were so many questions rolling around in my brain I felt dizzy. And here I had thought reading the diary would bring answers, not more questions.

  Kane put the diary down. He stared at me strangely, as if I was going in and out of focus. Maybe he was having a similar reaction.

  “What?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to escape.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Same reason he didn’t come up with an escape plan earlier. He didn’t want to ruin his mother’s plan.”

  “I know, but how could he not want to give up on it by now? Especially after what their grandmother did to them. Who knew what she might do next?”

  He was silent a moment, but I could almost see his mind working.

  “What?”

  “We were just talking about this in my English class recently, something called the Stockholm syndrome, where hostages actually sympathize with their captors. In a way, that’s what Christopher is constantly doing, sympathizing with his mother’s plight, blinding himself to the truth. It sounds crazy, especially after what we just read, but if you’re penned up that long, you might grow comfortable with the situation, especially after years. It sounds like the twins have fully accepted things as they are. They don’t scream for their mother as much.” He paused and then added, “Even Christopher and Cathy seem to be accepting their relationship in a way. I don’t know if it’s so unexpected under the circumstances.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The way they treat each other, comfort each other. Sometimes I forget that they’re brother and sister, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t want to say yes, but he was right.

  “It’s not unusual. I mean, it could happen to people that age even if they’re not locked away together for years.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean, Kane.”

  “That scene he described, coming in on Cathy looking at herself . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “You’ve done that, stood naked before a mirror. It’s only natural to be interested in yourself, right?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Women would be doing that more than men. There are more changes to observe. I mean, breasts, curves. Men can see hair grow, some size, but looking at yourself . . . that’s not sick or anything.” He seemed to want confirmation from me.

  “No, Kane, it’s natural to be curious about yourself. Why do you keep talking about it? What does that have to do with what you’re saying?”

  “I don’t know. The way Christopher’s describing it . . . does it make it seem weird?”

  “He’s gazing lustfully at his own sister,” I said. “He feels guilty.”

  The way Kane sat there and continued to stare at me suddenly convinced me that I knew now what he had meant by telling me his sister was beautiful. “Are you trying to tell me that you’ve done that, spied on your sister?”

  He shrugged. “When I was younger. I would never do anything like that now,” he quickly added.

  It was my turn to shrug something off. “I bet every boy who has an older sister has done that one time or another,” I said.

  “You think? None of my buddies ever told me such a thing.”

  “I don’t think they’d talk about it, brag about it. If they did, then they’d be weird.”

  “I just did.”

  “You didn’t brag about it. All you did was admit to having done it and admitted it to me after what you read. That’s not what I mean.”

  “Yes, that’s true. I mean, I’ve done that, the spying, but I didn’t have the kind of thoughts afterward that he had.”

  “I’ll say this much. When it came to his being interested in girls, he didn’t have much choice at that moment. That’s all I think it means, Kane.”

  “I suppose. Yeah, I guess Christopher and I are not so different, even at this point in the diary,” he said, holding it again. “I mean, he’s not turning into a child monster or anything, the way some of those stupid stories depict him.”

  “Oh, no, definitely not. There’s so much about him to admire. You’ve made understanding it all easier. I mean, the way you read it, our being up here and trying to understand what being shut up meant to them, even that wig.” I started to smile.

  “Maybe next time we’re up here, you should wrap a scarf around your head.” At first, I thought he might be kidding, but he didn’t smile.

  “I still have my hair, Kane.”

  “But if you want to feel what she feels . . . it’s just a suggestion.”

  I nodded but wondered whether we were taking this too far now. The expression on Kane’s face was so different, especially while he was still wearing the wig. Maybe my own imagination was going wild, too, because I thought he even sounde
d different, and not just when he read the diary. Every time we entered the attic now, he lost that casual, carefree posture for which he was so well known. There was an intensity about him when we were up here. He didn’t shrug anything off or give me that wry smile, the way he often did at school or when we were with others our age. When he gazed at me now, he looked like he was gazing at someone who was suffering as much inside as he was or, maybe more accurately, as much as Christopher had.

  Why wasn’t I happy about all this? Wasn’t it our intention to feel and appreciate what Christopher and Cathy had endured, to use the diary as a doorway to the past and discover what really happened and who they really were? It was working. His ideas made it all more authentic. Why be upset about that?

  I had put on my mother’s nightgown for the scene we read. It wasn’t a big leap to wrap a scarf around my head. “Okay. I’ll see.”

  He smiled, looked at the diary, and then stood and handed it to me. “Maybe we should think about getting something to eat. The movie starts early.”

  “Well, I’m not going out without a shower and changing,” I said.

  “Shower? Sounds good to me.”

  “Just a shower,” I said firmly, and he laughed.

  We restored the attic to the way it had been and went down to my room. I could see what he had on his mind. The thought brought back that rush of excitement I had when I demonstrated my fantasy in the attic. Every part of me tingled in anticipation. How much longer could we be this intimate with each other without “crossing the Rio Grande”? I would be a liar if I said I didn’t want it to happen.

  Whenever my girlfriends and I had serious conversations about this, a few questions were inevitable. Who among us would admit to being afraid of it, and not solely because we might become pregnant? There were obviously ways to avoid that. Who among us thought we should be as casual about it as any boy? Who among us thought she shouldn’t do it unless she was really in love with the boy or expected to marry him?

  As we grew older, we stopped asking one another these questions. We waited for one of us to admit she had done it. We all joked about it. Most of us believed Suzette had lost her virginity before she was a junior, much less a senior. I thought she enjoyed everyone believing that. Now she was the one teasing everyone else. She didn’t tease me as much. I knew it was because my mother had died. Somehow she believed it would be unfair, perhaps because I had no one at home to run to and confess or ask the important questions.

  If there was any reluctance to believe it about me or tease me about it before, it was dying a quick death now that I was “hot and heavy” with Kane in the eyes of my friends. The assumption was that no girl could go with Kane Hill more than two weeks and not have slept with him. If they only knew, I thought, and then I wondered why it was important for them to know anything, really. Did it bother me or make me feel older, more sophisticated, to have them think so? I knew it would bother me if my father thought so. How much, I wondered, would it really bother him? Whatever was left of his image of me as his little girl would evaporate, but did I want to be forever a little girl?

  These thoughts and growing pains were hard enough when your hormones took center stage. But to have it happening with no one to compare notes with? That had to be twice as hard. Yes, Cathy missed having friends, for sure. She missed everything girls her age were enjoying out there, but I could speak from experience. Surely she missed having a mother most of all.

  Kane watched me move around my room, choosing the clothes I would wear and preparing to take my shower. When I glanced at him, I saw him pretending to be interested in one of my magazines. I smiled to myself, got down to my panties, and went into the bathroom to shower. Maybe it was just natural for a female to be a tease, I thought as I got into the shower. Moments later, I got my payback.

  He got into the shower beside me as he had suggested he would. How many times had I seen a movie scene like this? I thought when he kissed me. The warm water cascaded over our heads and bodies. I turned my face into it, thinking that it was a baptism of some sort. It was the first time I was totally naked with a boy who was totally naked. I don’t think I was more than eleven when the image had occurred to me, and along with it, the waves of sensual excitement washed over me so quickly I was afraid I would drown in my own fantasies.

  This was no fantasy. My nipples hardened; my legs felt weak. I leaned against him for support as he turned me toward him. His hands moved around my thighs and gently lifted me to him. I felt his excitement building and tensed up. My heart fluttered with panic, not because he was being aggressive as much as because I was quickly losing resistance.

  “Kane,” I said, my voice so weak and tiny I wasn’t sure I had said it or thought it.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “When it happens, it will be a lot more comfortable for both of us.”

  That made me laugh, but I was in a terrible conflict. I was happy we were under control, but I was also disappointed. It wasn’t the first time in my life when two conflicting emotions had raged inside me simultaneously, and I was sure it wouldn’t be the last. There were those two parts of me again, arguing through every pore in my body, disagreeing along every nerve, only pausing when I brought my lips closer to his. We kissed again and again, his hands gently lifting my breasts toward his lips when he lowered his head.

  We kept pulling away from each other and then rushing toward each other, each time closer, tighter, more passionately, and then truly like someone who had come upon a fire. I reached for the shampoo and poured some of it over his head. He cried out when it burned his eyes. He laughed, and then he poured some over my hair.

  “I’ll do it,” he said when I reached up to begin washing my hair. I turned to let him go at it. It’s not as hard as trying to shampoo out tar, I thought, when he started to wash my hair for me like a professional beautician.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll do it every night if I can do it in here,” he said.

  He stood back as I rinsed, and then he began to work on his own hair. He remained in the shower after I got out. I dried myself, slipped into my panties, paused to catch my breath and let my heart stop pounding. And then, quite contented, I stepped out of the bathroom.

  I started for the clothes I had chosen and then stopped. I could feel something different, and not because of what had just happened in the shower.

  It was my bedroom door, I realized. We hadn’t closed it when we entered.

  But it was closed now.

  * * *

  How do your parents adjust to the new you once you’ve crossed over from dolls and toy teacups, from cartoon shows and picture books, once you’ve lost your childhood faiths, including all the make-believe you cherished, like waiting for the tooth fairy after you lost one of your teeth? How long does it take them to realize you are your own person, more and more responsible for all you do, for what you think and what you say?

  All parents must fool themselves for a while into believing their children would remain young and innocent longer. Perhaps out of fear of what really lay in wait for their children, parents surely cling to the belief that the children’s world was somehow safer. There was all that protection they could layer over it, making sure that they knew exactly where their children were going all the time, filtering out what they heard and saw, locking them safely under wing when curfews came. With a kiss and a hug, they could always drive away goblins and ghosts, monsters and creatures invading their children’s dreams. They could tuck them in securely and watch them fall asleep in the bubble of security they created. Every day for as long as they could do it, they could advise and counsel, demand and receive the obedience that helped tie their children to them.

  “Time to go to sleep. You don’t want to be tired and sick.”

  “Who’s taking you home from the party?”

  “Are any of your friends doing that? Has anyone suggested it?”

  “No, you can’t go.”

  “You’re not old enough yet.”
/>   “I’ll tell you when.”

  Layer after layer of orders ensured that sanctuary with only a moan or two in protest. In the morning, the rules and demands they made firmly still resonated. The little protests were forgotten, at least until the next time.

  Gradually, all this began to fall away. It fell in small ways at first, but soon every rule they set down, every demand they made, was challenged more vigorously and bravely. Defiance crept in alongside anger and self-pity. In how many households could we hear, “Everyone else’s parents let them do it! Why can’t you trust me?”

  Slowly, their grip weakened. They relented in more ways, and before they knew it, certainly before they wanted it to happen, their children were out there, vulnerable to all the dangers they had somehow escaped. Other parents, psychologists, and advice columns in magazines all warned them that clamping down too hard, tightening the restrictions, forbidding things, would drive their children to be defiant and perhaps even to do something they wouldn’t have done if they hadn’t prohibited it so inflexibly.

  My father liked to joke whenever anyone commented on how grown-up I was now, “Yeah. Little kid, little problems, big kid . . .”

  Whoever heard it laughed, but behind the laughter, you could see the belief that there was more truth in jest than anyone wanted to admit openly. Who wanted to be a bigger problem? Certainly not me, not now, not for my father, who was already afraid he wasn’t doing all he could to ensure my safety and who felt a bigger burden and obligation to my mother’s memory. To fail in any way with me would have a resounding, deep effect on him, twice as resounding as it was for parents who shared the responsibility with a spouse.

  I knew all this, I felt it, but I was also a young adult now. Because of my mother’s unexpected early death, I had been hurried along in so many ways my friends had not been. How many nights did I choose to stay home with my father rather than do something with them? My father thought I was just being very picky about whom I associated with and when I would join them for some event. I let him believe that was true, because I knew how much it would bother him if he thought I had declined something because I felt sorry for him or thought he’d be too lonely.