"Then they'll know."
Just then the door opened and Momma came in, with the grandmother trailing behind her. Together they hovered over Cory, touching his clammy, cold face, their eyes meeting. In a corner they drifted to whisper and connive, glancing from time to time at Cory who lay quiet as one approaching death. Only his chest heaved in spasms. From his throat came gasping, choking noises. I went and wiped the beads of moisture from his brow. Funny how he could feel cool, and still sweat.
Cory rasped in, out, in, out.
And there was Momma--doing nothing. Unable to make a decision! Fearful still of letting someone know there was a child, when there shouldn't be any!
"Why are you standing there whispering?" I shouted out. "What choice do you have but to take Cory to a hospital, and get him the best doctor available?"
They glared at me--both of them. Grim faced, pale, trembling, Momma fixed her blue eyes on me, then anxiously they sidled over to Cory. What she saw on the bed made her lips tremble, made her hands shake and the muscles near her lips twitch. She blinked repeatedly, as if holding back tears.
Narrowly I watched each betraying sign of her calculating thoughts. She was weighing the risks of Cory being discovered, and causing her to lose that inheritance . . . for that old man downstairs just had to die one day, didn't he? He couldn't hold on forever!
I screamed out, "What's the matter with you, Momma? Are you just going to stand there and think about yourself, and that money while your youngest son lies there and dies? You have to help him! Don't you care what happens to him? Have you forgotten you are his mother? If you haven't, then, damn it, act like his mother! Stop hesitating! He needs attention now, not tomorrow!"
Sanguine color flooded her face. She snapped her eyes back to me. "You!" she spat. "Always it's you!" And with that she raised her heavily ringed hand, and she slapped my face, hard! Then again she slapped me.
The very first time in my life I'd been slapped by her--and for such a reason! Outraged, without thinking, I slapped back-- just as hard!
The grandmother stood back and watched. Smug satisfaction twisted her ugly, thin mouth into a crooked line.
Chris hurried to seize hold of my arms when I would strike Momma again. "Cathy, you're not helping Cory by acting like this. Calm down. Momma will do the right thing."
It was a good thing he held my arms, for I wanted to slap her again, and make her see what she was doing!
My father's face flashed before my eyes. He was frowning, silently telling me I must always have respect for the woman who gave me birth. I knew that's how he would feel. He wouldn't want me to hit her.
"Damn you to hell, Corrine Foxworth," I shouted at the top of my lungs, "if you don't take your son to a hospital! You think you can do anything you want with us, and no one will find out! Well, you can throw away that security blanket, for I'll find a way for revenge, if it takes me the rest of my life, I'll see that you pay, and dearly pay, if you don't do something right now to save Cory's life. Go on, glare your eyes at me, and cry and plead, and talk to me about money and what it can buy. But it can't buy back a child once he's dead! And if that happens, don't think I won't find a way to get to your husband and tell him you have four children you have kept hidden in a locked room with their only playground an attic . . . and you've kept them there for years and years! See if he loves you then! Watch his face and wait to see how much respect and admiration he has for you then!" She winced, but her eyes shot deadly looks at me. "And what's more, I'll go to the grandfather and tell him, too!" I yelled even louder. "And you won't inherit one damned red penny--and I'll be glad, glad, glad!"
From the look on her face she could kill me, but oddly enough, it was that despicable old woman who spoke in a quiet way: "The girl is right, Corrine. The child must go to a hospital."
.
They came back that night. The two of them. After the servants retired to their quarters over the huge garage. Both of them were bundled up in heavy coats, for it had turned suddenly frigid- cold. The evening sky had gone gray, chilled with early winter that threatened snow. The two of them pulled Cory from my arms and wrapped him in a green blanket, and it was Momma who lifted him up. Carrie let out a scream of anguish. "Don't take Cory away!" she howled. "Don't take him, don't . . ." She threw herself into my arms wailing at me to stop them from taking away a twin from whom she'd never been separated.
I stared down in her small pale face, streaked with tears. "It's all right for Cory to go," I said as I met my mother's glare, "for I am going, too. I'll stay with Cory while he's in the hospital. Then he won't be afraid. When the nurses are too busy to wait on him, I'll be there. That will make him get well quicker, and Carrie will feel good knowing I'm with him" I spoke the truth. I knew Cory would recover quicker if I was there with him. I was his mother now--not her. He didn't love her now, it was me he needed and me he wanted. Children are very wise intuitively; they know who loves them most, and who only pretends.
"Cathy's right, Momma," Chris spoke up and he looked at her directly in the eye without warmth. "Cory depends on Cathy. Please let her go, for as she says, her presence there will help him get well sooner, and she can describe to his doctor all his symptoms better than you can."
Momma's glassy, blank stare turned his way, as if struggling to grasp his meaning. I admit she looked distraught, and her eyes jumped from me to Chris, and then to her mother, and then to Carrie, and back to Cory.
"Momma," said Chris more firmly, "let Cathy go with you. I can do for Carrie, if that's what you're worried about."
Of course they didn't let me go.
Our mother carried Cory out into the hall. His head was thrown back, his cowlick bobbing up and down as she strode away with her child wrapped in a green blanket, the very color of spring grass.
The grandmother gave me a cruel smile of derisive victory, then closed and locked the door.
They left Carrie bereft, screaming, tears flowing. Her small weak fists beat against me, as if I were to blame. "Cathy, I wanna go, too! Make them let me go! Cory don't wanna go nowhere I don't go . . . and he forgot his guitar."
Then all her anger dissipated, and she fell into my arms and sobbed, "Why, Cathy, why?"
Why?
That was the biggest question in our lives.
By far it was the worst and longest day of our lives. We had sinned, and how quickly God set about punishing