“Never mind,” she said, choking, tears in her eyes. “You just go back inside and hear about the new baby, and I’ll visit my friend who could never stand you.”
I watched her limp off down the dirt road, wondering where she could go. Maybe she wasn’t going anywhere, but only looking for someplace to cry alone.
Back in the kitchen Papa was still talking. “They moved some of their things into the cottage last week, but they only started staying there yesterday. I haven’t met them myself, but the realtor says they’ve lived in the village for several years and always paid their rent on time. And just think, Lucky, now you’ll have a live woman to invite to your teas, and we can say goodbye to Mercy Marie. Though no doubt you two enjoy imitating her cruel wit very much, I want you to quit that game. It’s not healthy for Audrina to witness something so bizarre. Besides, for all you know, Mercy Marie may be the fat wife of some African chief, and not dead at all.”
Both my mother and aunt scoffed—they wanted to believe no man would want Mercy Marie.
“We’re finished with teatimes,” said Momma dully, as if she’d finished with all social life now that she was expecting a baby.
“Papa,” I began tentatively as I sat at the table again, “when did I last see Aunt Mercy Marie alive?”
Leaning across the table, Papa kissed my cheek. Then he shifted his chair closer to mine so his arm could encircle my shoulders. My aunt got up to sit in the kitchen rocker where she knitted, knitted. In a second or so she was so angry with her knitting that she threw it down, picked up a feather duster and began to swipe at dusty tabletops in the adjoining room, keeping always close to the door so she could listen.
“It was years and years ago when you knew Mercy Marie; naturally you don’t remember her. Sweetheart, stop troubling your brain with efforts to recall the past. Today is what counts, not yesterday. Memories are only important to the old who have already lived the best of their lives and have nothing to look forward to. You’re only a child and your future stretches long and inviting before you. All the good things are ahead, not behind. You can’t remember every detail of your early childhood, but neither can I. ‘The best is yet to be,’ some poet wrote, and I believe that. Papa’s going to make sure you have only the best kind of future. Your gift is growing stronger and stronger, and you know why, don’t you?”
The rocking chair. That chair was giving me the First and Best Audrina’s brain and erasing all my memories. Oh, I hated her. Why couldn’t she stay dead in her grave? I didn’t want her life, I wanted my own. I pulled from Papa’s embrace. “I’m going out into the yard to play, Papa.”
“Don’t go into the woods,” he warned. Aunt Ellsbeth seemed drawn back into the kitchen. She swung that duster in such a threatening way it seemed she might whack Papa with it.
Momma turned her violet eyes on her sister and said mildly, “Really, Ellsbeth, you’re flinging around more dust than you’re picking up.”
Once I was outside, Papa’s words kept resounding in my head. He didn’t really love me. He loved her, the First and the Best. The Most Perfect Audrina. For the rest of my life I had to live up to the standards she’d set. How could I be everything she’d been, when I was me?
I had been planning to slip through the woods and see our new neighbors, but my aunt called me back inside and kept me busy all morning helping her clean the house. Momma wasn’t feeling well. Something called “morning sickness” had her running to the powder room often, and my aunt would look pleased when she did that, muttering to herself all the time about fools who risked the wrath of God.
Vera came limping home around three, looking hot, pale and exhausted. She threw me a scathing glance and stomped up the stairs. I decided I’d check on what she was doing before I stole through the woods to meet the new neighbors. I didn’t want Vera to follow me. She’d be sure to tell Papa so I’d be punished.
Vera wasn’t in her room. Nor was she in mine, prowling through my drawers in hopes of finding something to steal. I kept searching, hoping to surprise her. Instead, she surprised me.
Inside the First Audrina’s room, which Papa usually kept locked except on the days Momma cleaned in there, Vera was seated in the rocking chair with the calla-lily back. The magic chair. Back and forth she was rocking, singsong chanting as Papa made me do so often. For some reason it made me furious to see her there. No wonder I wasn’t “catching” the gift—Vera was trying to steal it!
“Get out of that chair!” I yelled.
Reluctantly she came back to herself, opening her large dark eyes that glittered just like Papa’s. Her lips curled in a sneer. “You gonna make me, little girl?”
“Yes!” I stormed bravely, striding into the dreaded room and ready to defend my right to sit in that chair. Even though I didn’t want the First and Best Audrina’s gifts, I didn’t want Vera to have them, either.
Before I could do a thing, Vera was out of the chair. “Now you hear this, Audrina Number Two! In the long run it’s going to be me who takes the First Audrina’s place. You don’t have what she had, and you never will. Papa is trying and trying to make you over into what she was, but he’s failing, and he’s beginning to realize that. That’s why he told me to start using this rocking chair. Because now he wants me to have the First Audrina’s gifts.”
I didn’t believe her, yet something frail within me cracked and pained. She saw me weaken, saw me tremble. “Your mother doesn’t love you nearly as much as she loved the First Audrina, either. She fakes love for you, Audrina, fakes it! Both your parents would see you dead if they could get back the girl they really loved.”
“Stop saying things like that!”
“I’ll never stop saying what needs to be said.”
“Leave me alone, leave this room alone! You are a fake, Vera, the worst kind of fake!” Then, taking a wild swing, I tried to hit her. She chose to stand at that moment, and if she hadn’t timed it so well, my fist would have missed her. As it was, it caught her smack on her jaw. She fell back on the rocking chair, which tipped over. Surely that fall didn’t do as much damage as her loud howls of pain indicated …
Aunt Ellsbeth came on the run. “What have you done to my daughter?” she yelled, running to help Vera stand. Once she had Vera on her feet, she dashed back to me and slapped my face. Quickly I dodged her second blow. I heard Vera screaming, “Mother, help me! I can’t breathe!”
“Of course you can breathe,” snapped my aunt impatiently, but a trip to the emergency room proved Vera had four broken ribs. The ambulance men gave Momma and my aunt funny looks, as if they suspected Vera couldn’t possibly always be hurting herself. Then they looked at me and weakly smiled.
I was sent to bed without an evening meal. (Papa didn’t come home until late because of some business meeting, and Momma retired early, leaving my aunt in charge.) All that night I heard Vera moaning, gasping and panting as she tried to sleep. Doubled over like an old crone, she came into my room in the middle of the night and shook her fist in my face. “Someday I’m going to bring down this house and everyone in it,” she hissed in a deadly voice, “and you’ll be the first I fell. Remember that if you never remember anything else, Second and Worst Audrina.”
> Arden Lowe
In the morning I was desperate to escape the house. Since Ellsbeth was tending to the wounded Vera, and Momma was staying in bed with her morning sickness, I had the first opportunity of my lifetime to steal away unobserved.
The woods were full of shadows. Just like the First Audrina, I was disobeying, but the sky above said there wasn’t a chance of rain, and without the rain it couldn’t happen again. Shimmering sun rays fell through the lacy green canopy of leaves to pattern the path ahead with golden spots of light. Birds were singing, squirrels were chasing each other, rabbits ran, and now that I was free from Whitefern I felt good, yet slightly uneasy. Still, if ever I was going to make friends of my own I had to make the first move and prove something if to no one but myself.