Heaven (Casteel 1)

Her pinching grasp hurt my arm. I tried to tug free, "I won't do it again, Mother. I swear I won't!"

"Yer damned right ya won't do it again!" Wham! She punched my face, once, twice, three times!

I staggered backward, off balance, feeling my eye beginning to swell as my nose began to bleed from blows she threw like a boxer. "Now ya git upstairs an stay in that room all day tomorra--with t'door locked. No church an no food until ya kin come down an make me believe yer really sorry t'have ruined my best thins that should be hand-washed."

Sobbing, I ran for the stairs, for the little room with the furniture Cal and I had chosen, hearing Kitty swearing behind me, saying such awful things about hill-scum trash I felt those words would be forever engraved on my brain. In the hall I collided with Cal. "What's wrong?" he asked with alarm, then caught rue and forced me to hold still so he could see my face. "Oh, God," he groaned when he saw my injuries. "Why?"

"I chipped her best plates. . broke a handle off a cup . put her wooden-handled knives in the washer. . ."

He strode off, descended the stairs, and down there I heard him raise his voice for the first time. "Kitty, because you were abused as a child is no reason for you to abuse a girl who tries to do her best."

"Ya don't love me," she sobbed.

"Of course I do."

"NO YA DON'T! Ya think I'm crazy! Ya'll leave me when I'm ole an ugly. Ya'll marry some otha woman, younga than me."

"Please, Kitty, let's not go through this again." "Cal , . . didn't mean t'do it. Neva mean t'hurt her. Or hurt ya. I know she's not really bad . . it's jus somethin about her. . somethin about me, don't understand it . . . Cal, I got me yearnins t'night."

Oh, God, what went on beyond their bedroom wall had taught me only too well why he stayed on and on, despite all the ways she had of castrating him.

In that bedroom with the door shut and locked, he was putty in her hands. She didn't blacken his eyes, or make his nose bloody. What she did for him made him smile in the morning, made his eyes bright, his steps light.

The next morning was Sunday, and Kitty forgave me for chipping her china, forgave me for breaking a cup handle and ruining an expensive knife. . . now that she had Cal under her thumb again. Yet when Cal and I were in the car, waiting for her to finish checking to see what I'd failed to do, he said without looking my way, "I promise to do all I can to help you find Tom. And when you're ready to go to Boston to see your mother's parents, I'll do some detective work myself, or hire others to find your mother's family. They must have been very wealthy, for I hear a Tatterton Toy Portrait Doll costs several thousand dollars. Heaven, you must show that doll to me one day--the day you fully trust me."

To prove how much I did trust him, while Kitty napped upstairs that very afternoon Cal and I entered the basement. First I had to put in a load of Kitty's clothes, and while the washer spun I opened my precious suitcase of dreams and lovingly lifted out the doll. "Turn your back," I ordered, "so I can straighten her gown, put her hair in order. . . and then look, and tell me what you think."

He seemed stunned to see the bride doll with her long silver-gold hair. For long moments he couldn't speak. "Why, that's you with blond hair," he said. "How beautiful your mother must have been. But you are just as lovely. . ."

Hurriedly I wrapped the doll again, tucked her away. For some reason I felt deeply disturbed. After seeing the doll, why did Cal look at me as if he'd never seen me before?

There was so much I didn't know. So much to keep me awake at night in the small room with so much space still taken up by all the things Kitty refused to move out. Again Kitty and Cal were arguing, over me.

"Stop telling me no!" said Cal in a low but intense voice. "Last night you said you wanted me every day, every night. Now you shove me away. I'm your husband."

"Kin't let ya. She's right next door. Where ya wanted her."

"YOU put her in our bed! But for me she'd still be here between us!"

"I went in there--walls ain't thick en

ough. Makes me self-conscious t'know she kin hear."

"That's why we have to get rid of all your stuff. Then we could put her bed on the other wall, much farther away. You do have a huge kiln in your classroom. And all the other junk should go as well."

"It's not junk! Ya stop callin my thins junk!" "All right. They're not junk."

"T'only time I kin get a rise out of ya is when ya defend her--"

"Why, Kitty, I didn't know you wanted a rise out of me."

"Yer mockin me. Yer always mockin me by sayin that, when ya knows what I mean . ."

"No, I wish to God I knew what you really are up to. I wish I knew who and what you are, what thoughts go on beneath all that red hair--"

"Ain't red! Auburn! Titian . . ." she flared hotly. "All right, call it whatever you want. But I know this: if ever you hit Heaven again, and I come home to see her nose bleeding, her face bruised, her eyes black . . . I'll leave you."

"Cal! Don't say thins like that! I love ya, I do! Don't make me cry . . . kin't live without ya now. I won't hit her, promise I won't. Don't wanna anyway. . ."