Whitefern Read online

  “Daughter?” He shook his head. “Go call Santa Claus and tell him you’ve been a good little girl. We’ll find a baby wrapped in ribbons on Christmas Day.”

  When I was just about at the door, I stopped. There was no doubt. I heard the rocking chair rocking. I stepped up and gently opened the door. The sound stopped. I leaned to my left and found the light switch, my heart thumping.

  Sylvia looked up at me.

  “Sylvia, what are you doing? Why did you come in here? Why are you in the chair?”

  She smiled, unafraid, looking at me as though I was the slow-witted sister and not her.

  “Papa told me to,” she said. “He said whenever I wanted to talk to him, I should rock in the first Audrina’s chair, because that was the way you spoke to the first Audrina.”

  “When did he tell you that?”

  “I don’t know when. I don’t have a watch, and calendars are just full of numbers and days and numbers and days.”

  “Was this the secret you wouldn’t tell me, the secret Papa told you never to tell?”

  “Yes, but he said if I came here and rocked in the chair, he would tell me more secrets, Audrina.”

  For a moment, standing there and looking at my sister, I thought Arden was probably right. I should have emptied this room. Maybe we could erase the past, if not forever, for years and years, or at least put it so far in the back of our minds it wouldn’t ruin our present lives.

  “Oh, Sylvia,” I said. “Poor Sylvia. Come back to bed. Come.” I held out my hand.

  “You can talk to him, too, Audrina. Just come here and rock,” she said, starting to rise so I could take her place.

  “Okay. But it’s very late, so not tonight. Please, Sylvia, let’s go back to bed.”

  “But Papa’s still here.”

  “He’ll always be here, won’t he?” I asked.

  That pleased her, and, still reluctant, she rose to take my hand. I turned off the light and closed the door behind us.

  “Let’s try not to wake up Arden,” I warned, afraid she would start talking loudly. “You know how cranky he gets when he’s awakened in the middle of the night.”

  She nodded. When we were almost to her room, she paused. She seemed very excited. I looked around. What was she seeing or hearing now?

  “What is it, Sylvia?”

  “I almost forgot to tell you,” she said. “Papa did have a secret for you that I was supposed to tell you.”

  “What?” I said, so tired I had only inches of patience left for her.

  “He said you’ll have a baby, not to worry.”

  “What?”

  “He didn’t say girl or boy, just baby,” she added, and then went into her bedroom.

  I followed her, feeling dazed now. I had never mentioned to her that Arden and I had been trying to have a child. She never asked, and she was never in a room when he and I talked about it or my failure to get pregnant. I wasn’t confident that she would understand any of the medical information anyway.

  I tucked her in and stood there in the dim light spilling through her doorway from the hallway.

  “Papa told you I would have a baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “When, Sylvia? When did he tell you this?”

  “Tonight,” she said. “He was here first in my room. I knew he was here, so I went to the rocking chair because I knew he had a new secret, and he told me,” she said.

  “Okay. Just go to sleep now,” I told her. I tucked her in, and she turned onto her side, looking very contented. I stood there looking around her room as if I expected to hear or see something.

  I went back to Arden’s and my bedroom and paused outside our door. For a few moments, I actually debated with myself about returning to the first Audrina’s bedroom and sitting in the rocking chair. Regardless of all I knew, despite how the deceptions were exposed, I couldn’t completely disregard the power of the rocking chair. There were too many emotional memories. It called to me, not just tonight but many nights, and in the beginning, after I had learned all the lies, I still wanted to feel its power.

  It took a great deal of self-control to push these feelings back, but I was in more of a daze than ever, and when I entered our bedroom, I just sat on the bed for a few moments thinking. Of course Sylvia couldn’t have gotten such an idea from the spirit of my father while she rocked in the chair. I tried to be logical and decided that Sylvia was more alert than either of us knew, than anyone knew. She might be sitting and looking at pictures or playing with a puzzle, but she wasn’t completely shut off from what people were saying nearby. It was wrong to underestimate her. If anyone should know that, I should.

  “What the hell is it?” I heard Arden demand. His shout made me jump. He must have turned, opened his eyes, and saw me sitting up, or else he had heard me walk out and back in. “What did she do now?”

  My immediate thought was Don’t dare mention the rocking chair.

  “She didn’t do anything terrible, Arden. She merely had a dream,” I said.

  “A dream? Did she scream?”

  “A little,” I lied.

  “Why does that not surprise me? What was the dream?”

  “She dreamed I had a baby,” I said.

  “Oh, she did, huh? Well, that should do it. We don’t even have to make love. It will be an immaculate conception. We’ll call the baby Sylvia’s Wish. Go to sleep, or go back to her,” he ordered. “It’s the middle of the night. How I do as well as I do under these circumstances is a miracle. Thank goodness I’m dedicated.”

  I lay back and pulled the blanket over me.

  “Baby.” I heard him rustling about and then heard him whisper, “Okay.”

  “What?”

  He turned sharply and threw the covers off us as if they were on fire.

  “What are you doing?”

  “It’s baby time. Sylvia has declared it.”

  “I don’t understand, Arden.”

  “Nothing to understand,” he said. “Only to do.”

  He reached down and pulled my nightgown up and out of his way, practically tearing it off me. I cried out, but before I could say another word, he scooped my legs up and pressed his hardness into me, so roughly I lost my breath for a moment. I was shocked at how fast and easily he could be ready. He didn’t bother kissing me or touching me tenderly anywhere. Instead, he hovered above me like a hawk, pouncing.

  “Baby, baby, baby,” he chanted, as he pushed and prodded, twisting me this way and that so he could be more comfortable. His grunts made it sound like he was lifting a heavy weight. I couldn’t stand the sight of him like this and put my hands over my eyes. On he pushed and prodded. I felt like he was tearing me up. The bed sounded like it would crash to the floor. At one point, my head hit the headboard, but he was oblivious to everything but his own animal satisfaction. This wasn’t even sex to me; it was anger and revenge.

  As so often when we made love, he had his orgasm before I even began to enjoy one, not that I could tonight. It reminded me of our earlier years, even our honeymoon, when he practically raped me because of my fears and hesitation.

  “Men will always care more about satisfying themselves than you,” Aunt Ellsbeth had told me time after time. “You’ve got to train them like circus animals. The best way is to insult them.”

  “Insult them? How can you do that and still have them want to make love to you?” I’d asked her.

  “You tell them they have too many premature ejaculations. You’ll see,” she’d said. “They’ll try to prove otherwise, and then you’ll enjoy sex.”

  I had no idea why she thought I would be making love to many men. Maybe she thought I would be like Vera, who Arden once told me could go through a college football team in a week. Making love to so many different men in a short time was terrifying to me. It actually made me sick to my stomach. He tho
ught that was funny.

  Sometimes I wondered if Arden had really seen what had happened to me in the woods. How could he have seen that and not expected me to have negative feelings when he talked like that about sex? But then why would he confess to his failure to help me and cry about how guilty and small that made him feel?

  One night, I’d had a terrifying thought that answered that question. What if he wasn’t only a witness? He had never turned in any of the boys’ names to the police, and he never even mentioned them now. Was he worried they would turn on him? Thinking of that had made me throw up.

  I couldn’t depend on my memory to deliver the truth about anything on that horrible afternoon. Faces and voices were forever blurred, so I couldn’t identify any of them, either. Even the rocking chair didn’t bring it all back, but I wasn’t going to complain.

  When he was satisfied now, he rolled over and turned his back on me. Then I heard him say, “There. Baby, Sylvia’s baby,” and he laughed.

  I lay there, still naked, my body smarting from the way he had rubbed and pressed on me. My legs were aching, the insides of my thighs feeling burned.

  “Maybe,” I said angrily, “if there was more romance in our lovemaking, it would work, and I would get pregnant. If you would think of me as more than just a vessel in which to empty yourself, the magic of two people making a child would happen as it is supposed to happen. You once loved me that way, didn’t you? Or was that a lie? Or are you going to tell me it has withered like a grape on the vine?”

  He didn’t answer for so long that I thought he had fallen asleep instantly, but suddenly, he turned on me. “You’re absolutely right. Romance comes from love, and love comes from respect and obedience. Your father taught me that,” he added. “He should have taught it to you better.”

  I didn’t doubt it. How my mother loved my father despite his meanness and selfishness amazed me. When I asked her about it once, she smiled, stroked my hair, and said, “Love is forgiveness, Audrina. That’s all it really is, constantly forgiving someone for his weaknesses and hoping that it will bring about some good changes.”

  Is that what she would tell me now? I turned my back to Arden and tried to think of good things about him, enough so I could find forgiveness. However, before I fell asleep, I thought I wouldn’t even dream of becoming pregnant as a result of this lovemaking. There was no baby on his or her way tonight. Sylvia could rock in that chair until daylight. There would be no magic.

  No, as much as I wanted to believe it, Papa wasn’t whispering any secrets in Sylvia’s ear. What she was hearing were my thoughts. When she was rocking in that chair, she was hearing and seeing my dreams. But what would come of it? These dreams were like soap bubbles, capturing the rainbow light for seconds and then popping and dropping like tears to the hard, cold reality beneath them.

  I think I passed out rather than falling asleep. For the first time in a long time, Arden was up before me, this time so quiet as not to wake me. That was unusual for him. Normally, because he was the one going to work and I was the one staying home, my having a good night’s rest wasn’t as important. I could always take a nap later, but he couldn’t. When I looked at the clock, I was shocked. I couldn’t recall when I had slept this late. My exhaustion from his rough lovemaking must be the reason, I thought, and I got up, wondering if Sylvia had gone down for breakfast. I had taught her how to make the coffee, and there were juices and cereals she liked, but I could count on the fingers of one hand how many times she had woken, dressed, and gone down without me, and that was over years and years.

  Now that I was up and recalled how Arden had attacked me, I decided I had to shower before getting dressed. My body still ached in places, and I found scratches on my thighs where he had seized me, clawing at me to mold me into a position comfortable for him. Just washing my face wasn’t going to be enough.

  There was a chill in the air, and I realized the temperature must have taken a dive during the night. When I glanced out the window, I saw it was raining lightly, the drops sparkling like liquid ice. The wind had stripped many of the trees in the woods of their once pretty orange and brown leaves. The branches looked like the arms of spidery skeletons. I hated this time of the year. It lasted too long for me, and we couldn’t avoid it. Our house had woods on three sides.

  But at least Whitefern was comfortable all year round now. A few years ago, Papa had upgraded the bathrooms and bedrooms and installed central heating in the old house, except for two unused rooms on the first floor in the rear. Before I took my shower, I put up the thermostat, and afterward, I chose warmer clothes to wear, a pair of heavier jeans and a pink cable-knit sweater. A good part of the morning had already passed. By the time I walked out of the bedroom, I felt certain Sylvia would be up and waiting for me in the kitchen. She hadn’t come looking for me. She probably thought I had gone down without her.

  I started down the stairs and then hesitated. It was too quiet below. I listened for the sound of the rocking chair but didn’t hear that, either. She wouldn’t start painting without her breakfast. I went to her bedroom. Of course, my biggest fear was that she had gone out of the house and to the cemetery again. Maybe she had been there most of the night!

  I breathed with relief. She was still sleeping, but her blanket was cast aside and she was naked. How odd, I thought. Had it been that hot in here? I looked at her thermostat. She had never touched any thermostats in the house. She didn’t understand them. Hers hadn’t been pushed up at all, and the room temperature was a little below sixty. I picked up her blanket and put it gently on the bed. She stirred and looked up

  at me.

  “Were you that hot last night, Sylvia?” I asked. Maybe her dreams and tossing and turning had put her in a sweat.

  “Hot?”

  “Your blanket was on the floor.” She looked at herself and then at me, seeming very confused. Then she shook her head. She looked like she was going to cry.

  “It’s all right. Nothing’s wrong, Sylvia. Are you hungry? Let’s make a bigger breakfast this morning, omelets and toast, okay?”

  “With cheese?”

  “Yes,” I said, smiling. “With cheese. Do you want to take a shower first?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Shower.”

  I picked out clothes for her and set out her shoes and socks while she showered. Then I sat her at her vanity table and brushed out her hair. When I stood behind her and looked at her in the mirror, I thought she was truly beautiful, angelic. For some reason, even more so this morning. Her cheeks looked rosy, her lips full, and her eyes brighter than ever.

  What a dirty trick nature had played on her, to give her this much beauty but not enough mentally to have a wonderful life. She could easily attract a handsome, young, wealthy man who would devote himself to her, build her a bigger home than Whitefern and all the jewelry and clothes she could want. Every man like that would turn to look at her now, but a moment later, when he tried to speak to her, he would surely lose his enthusiasm quickly and look for a fast exit.

  And she wouldn’t even understand why.

  “Let’s go down,” I said.

  She put her hand on mine on her shoulder and smiled.

  “What, Sylvia?” I asked, smiling back at her.

  “Audrina,” she said. “Baby. Coming.”

  A Tree of Secrets

  Right after Sylvia and I finished breakfast, there was an early but quick brushing of snowflakes. The rain that had begun falling at daybreak suddenly was captured by a breath of winter. I had intended to go shopping for food but hesitated when I saw the snow. I hoped that it would soon turn back to only cold rain. It did, and the roads didn’t freeze over.

  Weather of all sorts fascinated Sylvia, especially snowflakes. When she was little, she loved holding up her palms and letting the flakes fall into them and melt. Papa had once told her that rain and melting snowflakes were like the sky crying. That fascinate
d her. Actually, she loved the surprises of all seasons and the wonder of spring flowers, rich green leaves, and the birds returning after winter. I never appreciated the abundance of nature that surrounded us as much as she did.

  Aunt Ellsbeth used to say, “That girl will be a child until her dying day.” When it came to her appreciation of Mother Nature, I didn’t think that was such a terrible prediction. The rest of us seemed to ignore how beautiful the outside world could be, perhaps because we were so shut up inside our own. Our world was lit with the lights we cast over ourselves with our petty jealousies. Who had time to look at the stars?

  Sylvia never paid much attention to what month we were in, and if told, she wouldn’t remember when asked later. The poor girl couldn’t even remember her own birthday. Whenever I told her it was her birthday tomorrow, she would look astonished. I knew that if I was going to help her develop, I had to work on her memory, get her to associate things. She was improving, but lately I had begun to suspect that the problem was more a question of what she thought was important enough to remember rather than the failure of memory itself.

  Anyone who heard this would immediately say, “Well, my birthday is important. How could I ever be expected to forget that?”

  But that memory wasn’t so simple for Sylvia.

  Before she died, Vera was fond of reminding Sylvia that my and Sylvia’s mother had died giving birth to her. I caught her saying things like “If you hadn’t made it so difficult to be born, your mother would have lived,” or “You were so afraid of being born, you tried to stop it, and that killed your mother.” Of course, she was right there on every one of Sylvia’s birthdays, between the time Sylvia understood what a birthday was and Vera’s accidental death, to ask, “How could you be happy it’s your birthday? Your mother died on this day. You should spend the whole day kneeling at her grave and asking her to forgive you.”

  No wonder Sylvia was not looking forward to it enough to remember it, or if she did remember, she would pretend not to, I was sure. I constantly told her that our mother’s dying was not her fault. “A baby can’t purposely do that,” I told her, after I had shouted at Vera, and Papa told her the same thing in his way, too, although I knew now that he wasn’t eager to bring Sylvia home from the hospital quickly. He made all sorts of excuses about her weight, illness, anything he could think of to keep her from being released to our care. It took him quite a while to accept that he would have such a daughter and to look at her and not think about my mother. Nevertheless, to this day, Arden insisted that Sylvia had no concept of what had happened, no matter what terrible things Vera had told her.