It was getting more difficult to find new ways to amuse the twins. I came up with hide-and-seek, and that became our main distraction. The attic actually provided many hiding places. The twins loved the game, but one day, Carrie became bored and despondent. She could be very moody, and she just decided to go back down to the small bedroom. When all of us were in it, it was claustrophobic. We needed the attic.
After she left, we called to Cory. We wanted to end the game, but he didn’t come out, and we couldn’t find him. At first, I thought it was funny. My little brother had outsmarted us. But gradually, I began to get more frightened. He wasn’t capable of holding out this long. He wouldn’t stay in the game without Carrie, anyway. I came up with a frightening possibility. He must have gone into one of the trunks and the lid got stuck.
I called for Carrie, and she came back up to the attic. In a frenzy, we began opening trunks, and I finally found him locked in one. He was blue from lack of oxygen and ice-cold. My heart pounded with the possibility that he would die right there and then. I remembered what to do and got him into a warm bath quickly. Gradually, he became more and more conscious. I felt like I was resurrecting him. Once he realized what had happened, he began to cry for Momma, just the way any child would. Cathy looked at me. Now I was the one who was desperate. I couldn’t get Momma for him.
And then my sister suddenly, instantly matured in my eyes. “I’ll be your momma,” she told Cory. He clung to her, accepted her, as she sang “Rock-a-bye Baby” to him just the way Momma used to sing it. I saw the calmness return to his face. As I watched them, I felt a great longing inside me, something I had not felt for a long time, a longing for family, for love, and for protection.
I sat in the rocker, and the others joined me. I held them close. Cathy rested her head against my shoulder, and the twins clung to each other and to me.
“We’ll be fine,” I whispered. “Our time will come.” I recited from Ecclesiastes: “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens.”
“For us, too?” Cathy asked.
“Yes. We’ll put in our sacrifice. We’ll get through this, and then we’ll live and enjoy a bountiful life, full of all the things we dreamed of having.”
I rocked on.
The twins were asleep.
Cathy closed her eyes, and before she dozed off, she whispered, “But we have to wait for an old man to die. We have to wish for it.”
Of course, she was right. It seemed wrong, but as I caught the reflection of the four of us clinging to one another, I thought it wasn’t wrong to want someone as dark and hateful as him to die.
I put the diary away and went to sleep wishing that the old man would die soon, too. It was really the first time I had wished anyone any harm. It frightened me a little. Was my reading of the diary turning me into someone I didn’t want to be? Were my father’s fears justified?
I knew I was becoming as moody as Cathy in the diary. I couldn’t help it. Every time there was a lull in classwork or I was alone, even for a minute or so, the vision of those children shivering, clinging to one another, withering away like the flowers they were given, would return. I felt so frustrated for them.
Of course, my friends had no idea that I had a black cloud hovering over me. The problem for me was the contrast between feeling the pain in the diary and seeing my lucky classmates giggling over the silliest things, arguing over trifles, and growing impatient with me because I didn’t laugh at the things they thought were funny and I didn’t have the same excitement about the fun they were expecting on weekends.
No one was more tuned in to my growing depression than Kane. Even so, for days, he tried to ignore it, telling jokes, and then one day, he surprised me with a ring to match the ruby necklace Uncle Tommy had bought me. I had told him how Uncle Tommy had presented it.
“Found this on the sidewalk,” he said when we had a few moments together at lunch.
“Oh, Kane.” He watched me as I unwrapped it.
I couldn’t help it. As soon as I saw what it was, I started to cry, and I cried so hard I had to jump up and run to the bathroom. Lana and Suzette came after me. I was sitting on the toilet in a stall and sobbing as I looked at the ring in my palm.
“What’s going on?” Lana asked. She tapped on the door. “Kane is in shock. He thinks he did something terrible.”
I bit on my lower lip and tried to swallow back my tears before I dabbed my face with tissues and opened the stall door. The two of them stood back as if they thought I might explode or something.
“What happened?” Suzette asked.
Of course, I would never tell them why I was crying. I wasn’t completely sure of the reason myself, but I opened my palm and showed them the ring.
“That’s beautiful,” Lana said. “Why did you get so hysterical?”
“My uncle Tommy bought me this,” I said, lifting the necklace. “It was my mother’s favorite jewel. Kane bought the ring to match.”
They both stared at me.
“So?” Suzette finally said, after looking at Lana.
“It’s hard to explain. I don’t have very much family,” I added.
That seemed to satisfy them. They both moved forward to hug me, and for a few moments, the three of us just stood there clinging to one another.
Maybe we were all shut away in some sort of attic, I thought. Maybe we were all terribly alone at times.