Like one heart shared between us, we drummed out a terrible tune of self-punishment for what we'd done.
A colder breeze lifted a dead leaf to the roof and sent it scuttling merrily on its way to catch in my hair. It crackled dry and brittle when Chris plucked it out and held it, just staring down at a dead maple leaf as if his very life depended on reading its secret for knowing how to blow in the wind. No arms, no legs, no wings. . . but it could fly when dead.
"Cathy," he began in a crackling, dry voice, "we now have exactly three hundred and ninety-six dollars and forty-four cents. Won't be long before the snow starts to fall. And we don't own winter coats or boots that fit, and the twins are already so weakened that they will catch cold easily, and might pass from colds into pneumonia. I wake up in the night, worrying about them, and I've seen you lying on your bed staring at Carrie, so you must be worrying, too. I doubt very much we'll be finding money lying about in Momma's suite of rooms now. They sus- pect a maid is stealing from them--or they did. Maybe now Momma suspects that it could be you . . . I don't know . . . I hope not.
"Regardless of what either of them thinks, the next time I play thief, I'm forced to steal her jewelry. I'll make a grand sweep, take it all--and then we'll run. We'll take the twins to a doctor as soon as we're far enough away, and we'll have enough money to pay their bills."
Take the jewelry--what I'd begged him to do all along! Finally he would do it, agree to steal the hardwon prizes Momma had struggled so to gain, and in the process, she was going to lose us. But would she care--would she?
That old owl that might be the same one that greeted us at the train depot on the first night we came, hooted in the far distance, sounding ghostly. While we watched, thin, slow, gray mists began to rise up from the damp ground, chilled by the night's sudden cold. The thick and billowing fog swelling up to the roof . . . undulating curling waves, rolling as a misty sea to shroud over us.
And all we could see in the murky-gray and cold, damp clouds was that single great eye of God-- shining up there in the moon.
I awakened before dawn. I stared over to where Cory and Chris slept. Even as my sleepy eyes opened, and my head turned, I sensed that Chris was awake, too, and had been for some time. He was already looking at me, and shiny, glistening tears sparkled the blue of his eyes and smeared the whites. The tears that rolled to fall on his pillow, I named as they fell: shame, guilt, blame.
"I love you, Christopher Doll. You don't have to cry. For I can forget, if you can forget, and there's nothing to forgive."
He nodded and said nothing. But I knew him well, right down to his bone marrow. I knew his thoughts, his feelings, and all the ways to wound his ego fatally. I knew that through me he had struck back at the one woman who had betrayed him in trust, faith and love. All I had to do was look in my hand mirror with the big C. L. F. on the back, and I could see my own mother's face, as she must have looked at my age.
And so it had come to pass, just as the
grandmother predicted. Devil's issue. Created by evil seed sown in the wrong soil, shooting up new plants to repeat the sins of the fathers.
And the mothers.
Color All Days Blue, But Save One for Black
. We were leaving. Any day. As soon as Momma gave the word that she'd be out for the evening, she'd also be out of all her valuable, transportable possessions. We would not go back to Gladstone. There the winter came and lasted until May. We would go to Sarasota, where the circus people lived. They were known for having and showing kindness to those from strange backgrounds. Since Chris and I'd grown accustomed to high places, the roof, the many ropes attached to the rafter beams, I blithely said to Chris, "We'll be trapeze performers." He grinned, thinking it a ridiculous idea--at first--next calling it inspired.
"Golly, Cathy, you'll look great in spangled pink tights." He began to sing: "She flies through the air, with the greatest of ease, the daring young beauty on the flying trapeze. . . ."
Cory jerked up his blond head. Blue eyes wide with fear.
"No! "
Said Carrie, his more proficient voice, "We don't like your plans. We don't want you to fall."
"We'll never fall," said Chris, "because Cathy and I are an unbeatable team." I stared over at him, recalling the night in the schoolroom, and on the roof afterward when he'd whispered, "I'm never going to love anyone but you, Cathy. I know it. . . I've got that kind of feeling. . . just us, always."
Casually I'd laughed. "Don't be silly, you know you don't really love me in that way. And you don't have to feel guilty, or ashamed. It was my fault, too. And we can pretend it never happened, and make sure it never happens again."
"But Cathy. . ."
"If there were others for you and me, never, never would we feel this way for each other."
"But I want to feel this way about you, and it's too late for me to love or trust anyone else."
How old I felt, looking at Chris, at the twins, making plans for all of us, speaking so confidently of how we would make our way. A consolation token for the twins, to give them peace, when I knew we would be forced to do anything, and everything to earn a living.
September had passed on into October. Soon the snow would fly.
"Tonight," said Chris after Momma took off, saying a hasty good-bye, not pausing in the doorway to look back at us. Now she could hardly bear to look at us. We put one pillowcase inside another, to make it strong. In that sack Chris would dump all Momma's precious jewelry. Already I had our two bags packed and hidden in the attic, where Momma never went now.
As the day wore on toward evening, Cory began to vomit, over and over again. In the medicine cabinet we had non- prescription drugs for abdominal upsets.
Nothing we used would stop the terrible retching that left him pale, trembling,, crying. Then his arms encircled my neck and he whispered, "Momma, I don't feel so good."
"What can I do to make you feel better, Cory?" I asked, feeling so young and inexperienced.