"Can't she tell us anything she wants? How do we know when she's telling the truth? Maybe she didn't even take him to a hospital. And if she did, obviously the doctors didn't suspect any unnatural cause of death, or else she'd be in jail by now."
"But, Chris," I objected, "Momma wouldn't allow the grandmother to feed us poison! I know she wants that money, and I know she doesn't love us now as she did once--but still she would never kill us!"
Chris turned aside his head. "Okay. We've got to make a test. We're going to feed Cory's pet mouse a bit of powdered-sugar doughnut"
No! Not Mickey, who trusted and loved us--we couldn't do that. Cory had adored the little gray mouse. "Chris, let's catch another mouse--a wild one that doesn't trust us."
"C'mon, Cathy, Mickey is an old mouse, and lame, too. It's hard to catch a mouse alive, you know that. How many have lived after the cheese was nibbled on? And when we leave, Mickey won't survive when we set him free--he's a pet now, dependent on us."
But I was planning on taking him with us.
"Look at it this way, Cathy--Cory's dead, and he hadn't even begun to live. If the doughnuts aren't poisonous, Mickey will live, and we can take him with us, if you insist. One thing for certain--we have to know. For Carrie's sake, we've got to be positive. Look at her. Can't you see she's dying, too? Day by day, she's losing ground--and so are we."
On three well legs, he came staggering to us, dragging the lame leg, our sweet little gray mouse that nibbled trustingly on Chris's finger before he bit into the doughnut. He took a small piece and ate it, trustingly, believing in us, his gods, his parents, his friends. It hurt to watch.
He didn't die, not right away. He grew slow, listless, apathetic. Later on he had small fits of pain that made him whimper. In several hours he was on his back, stiff, cold. Pink toes curled up into claws Small black bead eyes, sunken and dull. So now we knew . . . for sure. God hadn't taken Cory.
"We could put the mouse in a paper sack along with two of the doughnuts and take it to the police," said Chris tentatively, keeping his eyes averted from mine
"They'd put the grandmother in jail."
"Yeah," he said, and then turned his back.
"Chris, you're holding something back--what is it?"
"Later . . . after we've gone. Right now I've said all I can say without throwing up. We'll leave early tomorrow morning," he said when I didn't speak. He caught both my hands in his and squeezed them tightly. "As soon as possible, we'll get Carrie to a doctor--and ourselves too."
Such a long day to live through. We had
everything ready and nothing to do but stare at the TV for the last time. With Carrie in the corner, and the two of us on separate beds, we watched our favorite soap opera. When it was over I said, "Chris, soap people are like us--they seldom go outdoors. And when they do, we only hear about it, never see it. They loll about in living rooms, bedrooms, sit in the kitchens and sip coffee or stand up and drink martinis--but never, never go outside before our eyes. And whenever something good happens, whenever they think they're finally going to be happy, some catastrophe comes along to dash their hopes."
Somehow I sensed someone else in the room. My breath pulled in! There stood the grandmother. Something in her stance, in her cruel, hard, gray-stone eyes showed her mocking scornful contempt, and infoimed me she'd been there for some time.
She spoke, her voice cold: "How sophisticated the two of you have grown while locked away from the world. You think you jokingly exaggerated the way life is--but you didn't exaggerate. You forecast it correctly. Nothing ever works out the way you think it will. In the end, you are always disappointed."
Chris and I stared at her, both chilled. The hidden sun took a nose-dive into night. She'd had her say, so she left, locking the door behind her. We sat on our separate beds, with Carrie slouched over near the corner.
"Cathy, don't look so defeated. She was only trying to put us down again. Maybe nothing did work out right for her, but that doesn't mean we are doomed. Let's go forth tomorrow with no great expectations of finding perfection. Then, expecting only a small share of happiness, we won't be disappointed."
If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. But after all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing--I wanted a mountain high! A hill wasn't enough. From this day forward, I vowed to myself, I was in control of my life. Not fate, not God, not even Chris was ever again going to tell me what to do, or dominate me in any way. From this day forward, I was my own person, to take what I would, when I would, and I would answer only to myself. I'd been kept prisoner, held captive by greed. I'd been betrayed, deceived, lied to, used, poisoned . . . but all that was over now.
I had been barely twelve years old when Momma led us through the dense piney woods on a starry, moonlit night, .. . just on the verge of becoming a woman, and in these three years and almost five months, I'd reached maturity. I was older than the mountains outside. The wisdom of the attic was in my bones, etched on my brain, part of my flesh.
The Bible said, as Chris quoted one memorable day, there was a time for everything. I figured my time for happiness was just ahead, waiting for me.
Where was that fragile, golden-fair Dresden doll I used to be? Gone. Gone like porcelain turned into steel--made into someone who would always get what she wanted, no matter who or what stood in her way. I turned my resolved gaze on Carrie, who slumped in the corner, her head so low her long hair covered her face. Only eight and a half years old, but she was so weak she shuffled like someone old; she didn't eat or speak. She didn't play with the sweet little baby who lived in the dollhouse. When I asked if she wanted to take along a few of those dolls, she kept on hanging her head.
Not even Carrie, with her stubborn, defiant ways would defeat me now. There was no one anywhere, much less an eight-year-old, who could resist the strength of my will now.
I strode over and picked her up, and though she fought weakly, her efforts to free herself were fruitless. I sat down at the table and forced food into her mouth, and made her swallow when she would spit it out. I held a glass of milk to her lips, and though she clamped those lips together, I pried them apart and forced her to swallow the milk too. She cried out that I was mean. I carried her into the bathroom, and used tissue when she refused even to do that.
In the tub I shampooed her hair. Then I dressed her in several layers of warm clothing, just as I dressed myself. And when her hair was dry, I brushed it until it shone and looked somewhat like it used to look, only far thinner, and less glorious.
All through the long hours of waiting, I held Carrie in my arms, whispering to her of the plans Chris and I had for our future--the happy lives we'd live in the golden, liquid sunshine of Florida.
Chris was in the rocker, fully clothed, and was strumming idly on Cory's guitar. "Dance, ballerina, dance," he softly chanted, and his singing voice wasn't bad at all. Maybe we could work as musicians--a trio--if Carrie ever recovered enough to want a voice again.
On my wrist was a fourteen-karat-gold watch, made in Switzerland, that must have cost Momma several hundred dollars, and Chris had his watch,