Once more I knelt by the side of the bed and put my hands in prayer position under my chin. Silently I began: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. . . But somehow
I just couldn't say those words about taking my soul if I should die before I wake. Again I had to skip that part, and again I asked blessings for Momma, for Chris, and the twins, and for Daddy, too, wherever he was in heaven.
Then, when I was back in bed again, I had to go and think of the cake or cookies, and the ice cream the grandmother had half- promised last night--if we were good.
And we had been good.
At least until Carrie started cutting up--and still the grandmother hadn't come into the room with desserts.
How could she have known that later on we would be so undeserving?
"What are you thinking now?" asked Chris in a sleepy monotone. I thought he was already asleep, and certainly not watching me.
"Nuthin' much. Just little thoughts of the ice cream, and cake or cookies the grandmother said she'd bring if we were good."
"Tomorrow's another day, so don't give up on treats. And maybe tomorrow the twins will forget about outdoors. They don't have very long memories."
No, they didn't. Already they'd forgotten Daddy, and he'd been killed only last April. How easily Cory and Carrie let go of a father who had loved them very much. And I couldn't let him go; I was never going to let him go, even if I couldn't see him so clearly now. . . I could feel him.
Minutes Like Hours
.
All the days dragged by. Monotonously. What did you do with time when you had it in
superabundance? Where did you put your eyes when you had already seen everything? What direction should your thoughts take, when daydreams could lead you into so much trouble? I could imagine how it would be to run outside, wild and free in the woods, with dry leaves crackling under my feet. I could picture swimming in the nearby lake, or wading in a cool mountain stream. But daydreams were merely cobwebs, easily torn into shreds, and I'd quickly be dropped back into reality. And where was happiness? In the yesterdays? In the tomorrows? Not in this hour, this minute, this second. We had one thing, and one thing only, to give us a spark of joy. Hope.
Chris said it was a deadly crime to waste time. Time was valuable. No one ever had time enough, or lived long enough to learn enough. All about us the world was on the way to the fire, crying, "Hurry, hurry, hurry!" And look at us: we had time to spare, hours to fill, a million books to read, time to let our imaginations take wing. The creative genius begins in the idle moment, dreaming up the impossible, and later making it come true.
Momma came to see us, as she promised, bearing new games and toys to occupy our time. Chris and I adored Monopoly, Scrabble, Chinese checkers, plain checkers, and when Momma brought us a double deck of bridge cards, and a book on how to play card games, boy, did we become the card sharks!
It was harder with the twins, who weren't old enough to play games with rules. Nothing held their interest for long, not the many tiny cars Momma bought, nor the dump trucks, nor the electric tram that Chris hooked together so the tracks ran under our beds, under the dressing table, over to the dresser, and under the highboy. No matter where we turned something was underfoot. One thing for sure, they did hate the attic-- everything about it seemed scary to them.
Every day we got up early. We didn't have an alarm clock, only our wristwatches. But som
e automatic timing-system in my body took over and wouldn't let me sleep late, even when I wanted to.
As soon as we were out of bed, on alternate days, the boys would use the bathroom first, and then Carrie and I would go in. We had to be fully dressed before the grandmother entered--or else.
Into our grim, dim room the grandmother would stalk, while we stood at attention, waiting for her to put down the picnic basket and depart. Seldom did she speak to us, and when she did, it was only to ask if we had said grace before every meal, said prayers before retiring and had read a page from the Bible yesterday.
"No," said Chris one morning, "we don't read a page--we read chapters. If you consider reading the Bible a form of punishment, then forget it. We find it fascinating reading. It's bloodier and lustier than any movie we ever saw, and talks more about sin than any book we ever read."
"Shut up, boy!" she barked at him. "I was asking your sister, not you!"
Next she was asking me to repeat some quote I'd learned, and in this way we often had our little jokes, at her expense, for when you looked hard and long enough, you found words in the Bible to suit any occasion. I answered on this particular morning, "Wherefore have you rewarded evil for good? Genesis 44:4."
She scowled and pivoted about and left us. It was another few days before she snapped at Chris, without looking his way, and keeping her back turned, "Repeat to me a quote from the Book of Job. And do not try to fool me into believing you read the Bible when you do not!"
Chris seemed well prepared and confidant "Job, 28:12.--But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Job 28:28,-- Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding. Job, 31:35--My desire is that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversity had written a book. Job, 32:9--Great men are not always wise." And he would have gone on and on endlessly, but anger colored the
grandmother's face. Never again did she ask Chris to quote from the Bible. She eventually stopped asking me also, for I, too, could always come up with some stinging quote.
Around six o'clock each evening Momma would show up, breathless, always in a great hurry. She came loaded down with gifts, new things for us to do, new books to read, more games to play. Then she'd dash off to bathe and dress in her suite of rooms for a formal dinner downstairs, where a butler and a maid waited on the table, and it seemed, from what she breathlessly explained, that often guests dined with them. "A great deal of business is done over lunch and dinner tables," we were informed.
The best times were when she sneaked up fancy little canapes, and tasty hors d'oeuvres, but she never brought us candy to rot our teeth.
Only on Saturdays and Sundays could she spend more than a few moments with us, and sit down at our small table to eat lunch. Once she patted her stomach. "Look how fat I'm becoming, eating lunch with my father, then saying I want to nap, so I can come up and eat again with my children."