“It only makes me feel like more of a prisoner, thank you.”
“It’s for Asa’s sake. Think only of him now,” she said.
“I thought you were thinking of me, too.”
“Of course, I am. If you’re unhealthy, he’s going to be.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
“Forget about it, Cassie. I’m tired.”
“Then go to bed. Always lie down when you’re tired.”
“How often should I breathe?” I asked under my breath. If she heard me, she ignored it.
My rage at Cassie didn’t subside over the next few weeks, no matter how much she pampered me. At times, just to see her work harder, I pretended to be in some sort of pain or greater fatigue. I flew into my own little tantrums, rejecting the food she made, complaining about the taste, and forcing her to make me something different. She blamed it on my pregnancy, claiming my emotional ups and downs were typical of a pregnant woman.
Nevertheless, it did my heart good to hear her running up and down the stairs. I could see that the effort to please me, to make sure I was comfortable and well, was taking a toll on her. She looked more tired at times than I was, and if she hadn’t cared about her appearance before, she looked as if she wanted to destroy it deliberately now. Her hair was straggly. She didn’t change clothes for days. I thought she neglected bathing as well and told her she smelled and it was nauseating.
Almost daily now, I said and did everything I could to upset her, but nothing stopped her, and she rarely permitted herself to lose her temper or even show any anger for fear it would upset me. After all, as she told me often during the past days, stress was unhealthy for a pregnant woman.
What did upset me and give me great stress was to see that Daddy wasn’t in any way forgiving me. He rarely smiled at me, and if I did catch him looking at me, it was always with a face full of disappointment and sadness. It made my heart ache. Where was the miracle Cassie had sworn she would create when it came to him? Not only did that never happen, but one night, I overheard her talking to him in the living room when they both thought I was sleeping upstairs. I was about to join them when I heard Cassie apologizing for not telling him about me sooner.
“Please don’t be angry at me,” she pleaded. “I didn’t keep her secret to protect her, Daddy. I did it to protect you, to protect our family.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s just that I’m so deeply disappointed in her.”
“Don’t you think I am, too? All these years, I tried to be a big sister to her, tried to educate her about boys and sex, tried to guide and protect her. I feel just as betrayed as you do. Thank God Mother’s not here to see this.”
The hot tears were streaming down my cheeks.
And when Daddy said, “Yes, thank God. She would have killed herself over what Semantha has done for sure,” I turned and ran up the stairs. I threw myself onto my bed and started to cry, and then I stopped.
A strange new feeling came over me. It was as if all the sadness turned hard and filled me with a new and more satisfying emotion.
I was filled with hate, hate for my sister. All I could dream of that night was getting my revenge and getting Daddy to see the truth and love me again.
Little did I know that the way to get all that accomplished lay waiting for me where it had been ever since Mother’s death.
And in a real sense, it was as if Mother herself brought me to it.
Downfall
WHEN I SAW Cassie’s Mrs. Chapman, my supposed midwife, I thought for sure that she was another phony like Dr. Samuels. First, she looked about as old as Grandmother Heavenstone had on the day she died, and second, she was more interested in seeing the house than she was in seeing me. Instead of asking questions about my pregnancy, she asked one question after another about paintings, vases, furniture and appliances. It was as if she was really a real-estate agent and not a midwife. If Cassie saw my skepticism, she ignored it.
We didn’t go up to my bedroom for any examination. She felt my stomach and pulled a pressure cuff out of her satchel to take my blood pressure. Then she finally asked me questions about my pregnancy. When she started to recite what I should expect during the last weeks, I stopped her.
“Cassie has given me things to read about that. I know all that,” I said petulantly. I was still suspicious of her. In the back of my mind, I harbored the thought that Cassie probably believed she could deliver the baby herself, anyway. That damn self-confidence Mother had so admired in her was showing its face constantly these days. Often, I found her reading her books on birthing. She told me she just wanted to be sure everything went all right. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was trying to experience what I was experiencing, imagining it so hard and so well that she would have labor pains when I did.
For my part, I hoped she would. To my way of thinking, she deserved the pain more than I did, anyway. She should have been the one to throw up, not me. She should be the one waddling like some duck around the house, not me. And she should be the one gaining all this weight and looking like a stuffed hog, which was how I felt now. I hung a dress over my full-length mirror so I wouldn’t have to see myself every morning.
“We’ll deliver the baby in my bedroom,” Cassie told Mrs. Chapman, and then she brought her upstairs to see the room, as if that mattered. “I want the baby born in my bed,” she whispered.
Mrs. Chapman looked at her and shrugged at me.
“A bed’s a bed,” she said.