Christopher's Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger

I sat back. I had no idea what to expect or what would happen next, but I couldn’t help being eager to find out.

He didn’t change his voice, exactly, but as he read, I could see him trying to pronounce every word perfectly and speak like a young boy who thought he was much more intelligent than anyone else around him, including, of course, his mother and grandmother. Kane even changed his posture, assuming that Christopher would never slouch.

To play along, I sat back and tried to remember what I was like when I was Cathy Dollanganger’s age, when every new little discovery about myself was earth-shattering and when, like her, I needed my mother so much, a mother neither of us had.

And as he read, I could feel myself slipping out of this world and into theirs.

I think the realization that it was almost Thanksgiving shocked me as much as if not more than it shocked Cathy. I did my best to act surprised when Cathy mentioned it, acting almost carefree about it. I knew how dramatic she could be, and I was afraid of what that would do to the twins. I put on a face that said, “So it’s almost Thanksgiving, so what?”

She didn’t have to tell me. The “what” in “so what?” was that Thanksgivings were always wonderful in our house when my father was alive. To him, it was pre-Christmas, so he always had little novelty presents for us: a challenging mental puzzle for me, a small toy car for Cory, and fake jewelry or combs for Carrie and Cathy. It wasn’t much, just little surprises at the dinner table. He didn’t do anything resembling a novelty for Momma. He never gave her anything that wasn’t very special. Any occasion was good for a new piece of jewelry.

“When you find your soul mate,” he told me, “always treat her like a princess. Women love jewelry.”

Just before Daddy was killed, it got so that Cory used to think a pair of diamond earrings could multiply somehow into a diamond necklace, too, or a bracelet by Christmas. They weren’t large diamonds. Maybe they weren’t even real diamonds, but Momma was always excited and happy to get gifts, no matter what the occasion and especially if there was no occasion. If he came home with something for her after work, it meant he was thinking about her.

“Oh, look, children!” she would cry. “Your father was thinking of me even when he was at work.”

“I’m always thinking of you, Corrine,” he would say. It made her more buoyant and beautiful, especially at Thanksgiving, because he would always begin by telling us how thankful he was for our mother. Maybe because of that more than anything, she was eager to make our Thanks

giving and Christmas dinners special. She was never the greatest cook, but she did a good job on the Thanksgiving turkey with all the trimmings, some of which were smuggled in by Mrs. Wheeler, who also made our pies.

I was carefree and indifferent about it now, because I was afraid Momma would forget to do something about Thanksgiving for us, but she surprised me when she came into the attic with some decorations for our table and announced that they were for our Thanksgiving dinner, which she promised would be hot and wonderful, as wonderful as any.

“How could it be as wonderful?” Cathy whispered. “We don’t have Daddy.”

“But we still have each other,” I replied. “We’ll always have each other.”

She looked at me with grateful eyes. I always seemed to come up with the right answers for her. Sometimes, though, I thought she was sorry I had. She wanted me to be more of an ally, more impatient and disgusted with everything.

One thing that did bother both Cathy and me was that Carrie had completely forgotten what Thanksgiving was. She had been old enough to appreciate what we once had, but so much about our lives was beginning to fade and get lost in the fog of what had happened so quickly and where we were now. When the door was shut and locked, it seemed to cut off our ties with our own past, slamming down on our happier memories.

My second pleasant surprise, however, was how wholeheartedly Cathy decided to get into it, fixing the table with the dishes and place settings that she had the twins help her create. She was almost frantic about making our table joyful. I tried to go along with the same enthusiasm, but I was worried about her. She acted as if she was convinced that this dinner would be more than a typical Thanksgiving celebration; it would be the dinner celebrating our escape into a new life. I have to admit that the way Momma described it and how happy she seemed certainly gave us that impression. She promised all sorts of wonderful food from the party our grandparents were having and described the festivities just the way she would before Daddy died. All of this was going to come to a quick end and a new beginning. Momma’s promises were alive and well.

However, that day, the hour for our participating in the wonderful foods and desserts came and went. Every minute, every hour, was like another whiplash. Every creak in the floor or the walls turned our eyes to the door expectantly, but there was only silence and more disappointment.

We were all getting ravenously hungry in anticipation. Momma had done such a good job of describing it all. The twins were especially irritable as time passed. Cathy tried to calm them with whatever we had to nibble on, but it wasn’t working. I felt I was slipping myself, losing my control. I wanted to start screaming and pounding on the door, shouting, “Where are you? Where’s our wonderful dinner? Where’s our Thanksgiving?”

Finally, hours after she was supposed to be here, Momma arrived. There was the Thanksgiving food she had promised, but by now, it was cold, and the twins wouldn’t eat any, and worst of all, Momma couldn’t stay with us. What kind of a family dinner was this? Nevertheless, I was ravenous and couldn’t get those pieces of turkey into my mouth fast enough. The twins moaned and complained more than ever. They wouldn’t touch a thing. Desperate to have them eat something, Cathy prepared peanut butter sandwiches. Afterward, Cathy didn’t have to say a word to convince me. I sat staring at the plates and thinking how miserable we really were.

Kane paused and looked at me. “I guess I know what we’ll both be thinking about at our own Thanksgiving feasts,” he said. “How would you like eating alone with only your younger brother and sisters in an attic? No music, no conversations, nobody telling jokes, nothing but cold turkey and potatoes? I’ll never complain about our Thanksgivings again. That’s for sure.”

I nodded. He was right. How cruel. As if he knew what would follow in the diary, he put up his hand before I could speak and began again, his voice firmer, the words now colored with anger so visible his face turned a shade of crimson. It riled up my sense of outrage, too. Kane had been right. It was different, more effective, to read Christopher’s diary with someone else and see his reaction. I sat back, and he began again.

But the misery was yet to start. The following morning, Cory came down with a very bad cold. Two days later, Carrie was just as sick. These were very bad colds, more like flu. Momma came to treat them with aspirin and soup and juice, our grandmother following right behind her like some dark shadow cast by Death looking to get his hands on our little brother and sister. She hovered over Cory and Carrie and shook her head at the way we were making a big deal over their illness. She ridiculed whatever I suggested.

“Some doctor you’ll be,” she said, and insisted they just had to tough it out like any other children. I was surprised Momma had told her what my ambitions were, but now I was upset she had. I glanced at Cathy, who would always come to my defense. I shook my head so she’d understand not to do or say anything nasty now. The twins were too sick.

At one point, Cory had a very high fever, but nothing impressed our grandmother, and Momma, to my great disappointment, didn’t challenge her. To impress us with how serious she thought it was, however, she claimed she had taken off from secretarial school just to care for them. I never told Cathy this, but I always suspected that Momma never went to any secretarial school. I couldn’t even begin to imagine her doing that sort of work, and logically, why would she bring us here and put us through all this if we weren’t going to live here but instead live in some apartment supported by her secretarial job? Of course, Cathy never thought of these things, and I wasn’t going to say anything that would diminish her hope.

The twins’ illness went on and on for nearly three weeks. Finally, they began to recuperate, but the illness had drained them. They were lethargic, wisps of themselves, sleeping more than usual, and difficult to get excited about any game or food.

I told Momma, and she decided that all we needed were vitamins. The words were barely out of her mouth before Cathy exploded, shouting at her to get us out or at least take the twins into the fresh air. She stomped her feet and raged. The twins were wide-eyed at her tantrum. They wanted to cry, but they were too frightened to utter a sound. She was making so much noise that I thought if no one else really knew we were here, they surely knew now. Momma pleaded with Cathy to calm down, telling her she couldn’t risk taking the twins out and having us all discovered and revealed to her father. She insisted we were so close.

Cathy continued to rage. “Close, close, that’s all we hear is that he’s close!” she cried.

At one point, Momma cried back, “What do you want me to do, kill him?” Tears were streaming down her face. At that moment, I felt terrible for her. “There are eight servants working here,” she muttered. “They’re like spies, watching me all the time, especially that John Amos. I never liked him. He’s like a puppet. He’ll do anything my parents tell him to do.”

The air seemed to go out of Cathy finally. She just glared at Momma, full of frustration and emotionally exhausted.