Wow! How difficult to think that large old woman had once been young, and small enough to punish. I could almost feel sorry for the child she'd been, but I knew she was happy to see us locked up. Every time she glanced our way, it showed in her eyes--her smug satisfaction to have us so neatly captured. Still, it was a peculiar thing that fate would give her such a fear, and thus give Chris and me reason enough to kiss the dear, sweet, close walls of that narrow passageway. Often Chris and I speculated on how all the massive furniture had been taken up into the attic. Certainly it couldn't have been maneuvered up through the small closet and then up the stairway, which was barely more than a foot wide. And though we searched diligently to find another larger doorway into the attic, we never found one. Maybe one was hidden behind one of the giant armoires too heavy for us to move. Chris thought the largest furniture could have been hauled up to the roof, then passed through one of the big windows.
Every day the witch-grandmother came into our room, to stab with her flintstone eyes, to snarl with her thin, crooked lips. Every day she asked the same old questions: "What have you been up to? What do you do in the attic? Did you say grace before today's meals? Did you go down on your knees last night and ask God to forgive your parents for the sin they committed? Are you teaching the youngest two the words of the Lord? Do you use the bathroom together, boys and girls?" Boy, did her eyes flash mean then! "Are you modest, always? Do you keep the private parts of your bodies from the eyes of others? Do you touch your bodies when it's not necessary for cleanliness?"
God! How dirty she made skin seem. Chris laughed when she was gone. "I think she must glue on her underwear," he joked.
"No! She nails it on!" I topped.
"Have you noticed how much she likes the color gray?"
Noticed? Who wouldn't notice? Always gray. Sometimes the gray had fine pinstripes of red or blue, or a dainty plaid design, very faint, or jacquard--but always the fabric was taffeta with the diamond brooch at the throat of a high and severe neckline, softened a bit by hand-crocheted collars. Momma had already told us a widow-lady in the nearest village custom made these uniforms that looked like armor. "This lady is a dear friend of my mother's. And she wears gray because it is cheaper to buy material by the bolt than by the yard--and your grandfather owns a mill that makes fine fabrics down in Georgia somewhere."
Good golly, even the rich had to be stingy.
One September afternoon I raced down the attic stairs in a terrible hurry to reach the bathroom--and I collided smack into the grandmother! She seized hold of my shoulders, and glared down into my face. "Watch where you're going, girl!" she snapped. "Why are you in such a hurry?"
Her fingers felt like steel through the thin fabric of my blue blouse. She had spoken first, so I could answer. "Chris is painting the most beautiful landscape," I breathlessly explained, "and I've got to get right back with fresh water before his large wash dries. It's important to keep the colors clean."
"Why doesn't he come for his own water? Why do you wait on him"
"He's painting, and he asked if I'd mind fetching him fresh water, and I wasn't doing anything but watching, and the twins would spill the water."
"Fool! Never wait on a mans Make him wait on himself. Now, spill out the truth--what are you really doing up there?"
"Honest, I'm telling the truth. We're working hard to make the attic pretty so the twins won't be afraid up there, and Chris is a wonderful artist."
She sneered and asked with contempt, "How would you know?"
"He is gifted artistically, Grandmother--all his teachers said so."
"Has he asked you to pose for him--without clothes?" I was shocked. "No. Of course not!"
"Then why are you trembling?"
"I'm. . . I'm scared of . . . of you," I stammered. "Every day you come in and ask what sinful, unholy thing we're doing, and truly, I don't know what it is you think we're doing. If you don't tell us exactly, how can we avoid doing something bad, not knowing it is bad?"
She looked me over, down to my bare feet, and smiled sarcastically. "Ask your older brother--he'll know what I mean. The male of the species is born knowing everything evil."
Boy, did I blink! Chris wasn't evil, or bad. There were times when he was tormenting, but not unholy. I tried to tell her this, but she didn't want to hear.
Later on in the day she came into our room bearing a clay pot of yellow chrysanthemums. Striding directly to me, she put that pot in my hands. "Here are real flowers for your fake garden," she said without warmth. It was such an unwitch-like thing for her to do, it took my breath away. Was she going to change, see us differently? Could she learn to like us? I thanked her effusively for the flowers, perhaps too much, for she sp
un around and stalked out, as if embarrassed.
Carrie came running to put her small face into the mass of yellow petals. "Pretty," she said. "Cathy, can I have them?" Of course she could have them. With reverence that pot of flowers was placed on the eastern windowsills in the attic to receive the morning sunshine. There was nothing to see but hills and far off mountains and the trees in between, and above everything hovered a blue mist. The real flowers spent the nights with us, so the twins could wake up in the morning and see something beautiful and alive growing near them.
Whenever I think of being young, I see again those blue-misted mountains and hills, and the trees that paraded stiffly up and down the slopes. And I smell again the dry and dusty air that was ours to breathe daily. I see again the shadows in the attic that blended so well with the shadows in my mind, and I hear again the unspoken, unanswered questions of Why? When? How much longer?
Love . . . I put so much faith in it.
Truth . . . I kept believing it falls always from the lips of the one you love and trust the most.
Faith . . . it's all bound up to love and trust. Where does one end and the other start, and how do you tell when love is the blindest of all?
More than two months had passed, and still the grandfather lived on.
We stood, we sat, we lay on the wide ledges of the attic dormer windows. We wistfully watched as the treetops of summer's old dark green turned overnight into the brilliant scarlets, golds, oranges, and browns of autumn. It moved me; I think it moved all of us, even the twins, to see the summer go away, and see the fall begin. And we could only watch, but never participate.
My thoughts took frantic flight, wanting to escape this prison, and seek out the wind so it could fan my hair and sting my skin, and make me feel alive again. I yearned for all those children out there who were running wild and free on the browning grass, and scuffling their feet in the dry, crackling leaves, just as I used to do.