With horror I stared at the four dead mice in our traps. "We've got to eat these mice to gain some strength," he said to me grimly, "and what we have to do, we can do!"
Raw meat? Raw mice? "No," I whispered, revolted by the sight of those tiny stiff and dead things.
He grew forceful, angry, telling me I could do anything that was necessary to keep the twins alive, and myself alive. "Look, Cathy, I'll eat my two first, after I've run downstairs for salt and pepper. And I need that coat hanger to tighten up the knots-- leverage, you know. My hands, they're not working too good now."
Of course they weren't. We were all so weak we could barely move.
He shot me a quick appraising glance. "Really, with salt and pepper, I think the mice might be tasty."
Tasty.
He sliced off the heads, then skinned and gutted them next. I watched him slice open the small bellies and withdraw long, slimy intestines, little bitty hearts, and other miniature "innards."
I could have vomited if there had been anything in my stom ach.
And he didn't run for the salt and pepper, or the coat hanger. He only walked, and slowly at that-- telling me in this way he wasn't too eager to partake of raw mice, either.
While he was gone, my eyes stayed glued to the skinned mice that were to be our next meal. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself into taking the first bite. I was hungry but not hungry enough to enjoy the prospects.
I thought then of the twins, who sagged in the corner with their eyes closed, holding each other, their foreheads pressed together, and I thought they must have embraced like that when they were inside Momma's womb, waiting to be born, so they could be put away behind a locked door, and starved. Our poor little buttercups who once had known a father and mother who loved them well.
Yet, there was the hope the mice would give Chris and me enough strength and we could take them safely to the ground, and some kind neighbor who was at home would give them food, give all of us food--if we lived through the next hour.
I heard the slow returning steps of Chris. He hesitated in the doorframe, half-smiling, his blue eyes meeting with mine and shining. In both of his hands he carried the huge picnic basket we knew so well. It was so filled with food the wooden lids that folded backwards couldn't lie flat.
He lifted out two thermos jugs: one with vegetable soup, the other with cold milk, and I felt so numb, confused, hopeful. Had Momma come back and sent this up to us? Then why hadn't she called for us to come down? Or why didn't she come looking for us?
Chris took Carrie and I took Cory on our laps, and we spooned soup into their mouths. They accepted the soup as they had accepted his blood--as just another event in their extraordinary lives. We fed them bits of sandwich. We ate most sparingly, as Chris cautioned, lest we throw it all up.
I wanted to stuff the food into Cory's mouth, so I could get around to ramming food into my own ravenous stomach. He ate so darned slow! A thousand questions ran through my brain: Why today? Why bring food today and not yesterday, or the day before? What was her reasoning? When finally I could eat, I was too apathetic to be overjoyed, and too suspicious to be relieved.
Chris, after slowly eating some soup, and half a sandwich, unwrapped a foil package. Four powderedsugar doughnuts were disclosed. We, who were never given sweets, were given a dessert--from the grandmother--for the first time. Was this her way of asking our forgiveness? We took it that way, whatever her purpose.
During our week of near starvation, something peculiar had happened between Chris and me. Perhaps it became enhanced that day when I sat in the hot tub of concealing bubble bath, and he toiled so valiantly to rid my hair of the tar. Before that horrible day, we'd been only brother and sister, play-acting the roles of parents to the twins. Now our relationship had changed. We weren't play-acting anymore. We were the genuine parents of Carrie and Cory. They were our responsibility, our obligation, and we committed ourselves to them totally, and to each other.
It was obviously drawn now. Our mother didn't care anymore what happened to us.
Chris didn't need to speak and say how he felt to recognize her indifference. His bleak eyes told me. His listless movements said more. He'd kept her picture near his bed, and now he put that away. He'd always believed in her more than I, so naturally he was hurt the most. And if he ached more than I was aching, then he was in agony.
Tenderly he took my hand, indicating that now we could go back to the bedroom. Down the stairs we drifted as pale sleepy ghosts, in subnormal states of shock, all of us feeling sick and weak, especially the twins. I doubted they weighed thirty pounds each. I could see how they looked, and how Chris looked, but I couldn't see myself. I glanced toward the tall, wide mirror over the dresser, expecting to see a circus freak, short- cropped hair on top, long, lank pale hair in back. And lo, when I looked, there was no mirror there!
Quickly I ran to the bathroom to find the medicine cabinet mirror smashed! Back I raced to the bedroom, to lift the lid of the dressing table that Chris often used as a desk . . . and that mirror, too, was broken!
We could gaze in shattered glass and see distorted reflections of ourselves. Yes, we could view our faces in faceted broken pieces as a fly would, one side of the nose riding up higher than the other. It wasn't pleasant viewing. Turning away from the dressing table, I put the basket of food down on the floor where it was coldest, then went to lie down. I didn't question the rea- son for the broken mirrors, and the one taken away. I knew why she'd done what she did. Pride was sinful. And in her eyes Chris and I were sinners of the worst kind. To punish us, the twins would suffer, as well, but why she brought us food again, I couldn't guess.
Other mornings came, with baskets of food carried up to us. The grandmother refused to look our way. She kept her eyes averted and swiftly retreated out the door. I wore a turban made of a pink towel around my head which revealed the front portion over my brow, but if she noticed, she didn't comment. We watched her come and go, not asking where Momma was, or when she was coming back. Those so easily punished learn their lesson well, and don't speak unless spoken to first. Both Chris and I stared at her, filling our eyes with hostility, with anger and hate, hoping she'd turn and see how we felt. But she didn't meet a pair of our eyes. And then I would cry out and make her see, and make her look at the twins, and see for herself how thin they were, how shadowed their large eyes were. But she wouldn't see.
Lying on the bed beside Carrie, I looked deep into myself and realized how I was making all of this worse than it ought to be. Now Chris, once the cheerful optimist, was turning into a gloomy imitation of me. I wanted him back the way he used to be-- smiling and bright, making the best out of the worst.
He sat at the dressing table with the lid down, with open medical books before him, his shoulders sagging. He wasn't reading, just sitting there.
"Chris," I said, sitting up to brush my hair, "in your opinion, what percentage of teen-aged girls in the world have gone to bed with clean, shining hair and awakened a tar baby?"
Swiveling around, he shot me a glance full of surprise that I would mention that horrible day. "Well," he drawled, "in my opinion, I suspect you might well be the one and only .. . unique."
"Oh, I don't know about that. Remember when they were putting down asphalt on our street? Mary Lou Baker and I turned over a huge tub of that stuff, and we made little tar babies, and put black beds in black houses, and the man in charge of the streetrepair gang came along and bawled us out."
"Yeah," he said, "I remember you came home looking filthy- dirty, and you had a wad of tar in your mouth, chewing to make your teeth whiter. Gosh, Cathy, all you did was pull out a filling "