Christopher's Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger

In the morning, my father didn’t say anything when I indicated that I was driving myself to school, but I could see he was more than a little curious about it. On my way, I debated suggesting to Kane that we put off any more diary reading until after Thanksgiving, but as soon as we met, it didn’t take me long to realize that if I did that, he would be more than seriously disappointed; he might even be very angry. I didn’t know where that would take us. Ironically, the diary had become the glue that bound us in our relationship now. It frightened me a little to think of it that way. What would happen to us when we closed it on the last page?

I knew my girlfriends were still dissatisfied with my explanations for Kane’s behavior at Tina’s party. She was still complaining about it as loudly as she could. I saw that Kane’s buddies were a little put out with him, too, but he didn’t seem to care. He was with me every possible free moment, anyway.

Even though I had driven myself to school, he waited for me in the parking lot. He had rejected any invitations or activities for after school and actually led the way to my house. I fell behind him, because I wasn’t going to break the speed limit.

“You’re lucky,” I told him after I got out of my car. “They really watch that street this time of day.”

“Yeah, I forgot,” he said. He looked at his watch. “We’ve only got a few hours, probably, right?”

“Right,” I said, even though I knew my father would push his day later. I led him into the house.

While I got us something to drink, Kane went up to arrange the attic. This time, he asked if he could get the diary, too. I could see how anxious he was to get started. It bothered me, but I didn’t say anything. He put on the wig and handed me the scarf. I took it, but I didn’t put it on.

“You don’t want to put it on?” he asked, surprised.

“Not yet,” I said. “Let’s just get into it.”

“Okay,” he said, and opened the diary slowly, looking like someone who was about to enjoy one of the most delicious t

hings in his life.

I never thought I would use my medical knowledge to save the life of a mouse, especially since we were trying to rid the attic of them, but one morning, Cory woke us all with his screams from the attic, and as usual, if Cory or Carrie screamed or cried, the other automatically did, too. Cathy and I rushed up to see what was wrong. Cory was pointing at a mouse that had its left forepaw caught in a trap. It disturbed Cory so much I had to work it loose, and then Cathy worked beside me like a surgical nurse while I cleaned it up and created a tiny bandage and splint. I felt foolish, but Cory and Carrie were so pleased. Cory had a pet.

In the middle of it all, our grandmother arrived with a basket of food. She saw the mouse and loomed over us silently, looking like she was adding up all our violations. I pretended not to even notice her, just to irritate her. I went up to the attic, found an old birdcage, and brought it down to fix up a home for Cory’s pet mouse, doing it all right in front of our grandmother. When she realized we were going to keep a mouse for Cory, she finally spoke up, telling us it was a pet that fit us.

Ironically, that little mouse did become a delightful pet for us all, and although I would never admit it, it kept us from thinking of how dreadful everything had become that we would find delight in a creature we were otherwise killing by the dozens. Maybe Grandmother Olivia was right. Maybe we were no better than a small trapped creature locked away in a world with spiders and other crawlers. We had to continually remind ourselves who we were and what we were in order to hold on to any self-pride at all.

Cathy was always good at reminding me how much time had passed. If I tried to ignore anything, it was that, how long we had been locked away, and how long it had been since Momma had come to see us. At the moment, Cathy pointed out that we had been here almost two and a half years.

When you spend so much time so close to each other the way Cathy and I had for that long, you get so you can tell each other things without speaking a word, and I don’t mean through sign language, either. It was more what we said when we merely looked at each other.

What struck me most about Cathy one day was how much she had developed physically. Her breasts had filled out, and the curves in her waist and hips revealed that she had crossed that line between little girl and young teenage girl, who surely, if she was in school, would be attracting the interest of older boys. Thinking that helped me justify my own new way of looking at her every time I could catch her undressed or half-dressed.

Most boys my age would have these feelings, I thought, this interest. Repeatedly, I told myself not to hate myself for it. Sometimes when I looked at her and felt the rush in my blood and the hardness growing in my penis, I deliberately poked myself with something sharp. The pain distracted me for the moment, but it didn’t end what I was feeling.

And then there was that look on Cathy’s face when she caught me looking at her or I caught her looking at me when I was undressed. Why shouldn’t she have that look? I asked myself. Girls mature faster than boys. That’s why they favor boys older than them most of the time. She had entered that realm of titillation. I saw her nipples harden. I caught her touching herself, thinking about herself and the sensations she was experiencing. I even heard her moan occasionally at night when she thought I was fast asleep.

Finally, one day while the twins were napping, wrapped in each other’s arms to comfort themselves, Cathy paused in her dance routine and flopped down next to me. I had been reading an article in an old newspaper that had been used to wrap something. The article was about the spread of the Spanish flu after the First World War.

For a few moments, she didn’t say anything, but I could see out of the corner of my eye that she was working up to asking me something. Finally, I lowered the newspaper.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“I was wondering if you thought we were growing normally. I don’t mean being with others our age and all that. I mean . . . our bodies.”

“I think we are,” I said. “Despite everything. All the cells in our bodies have these built-in messages, orders, and things happen automatically.”

“Do you think my breasts should be bigger by now?”

“No, they’re fine,” I said quickly. I didn’t want to reveal how often I had gazed upon them.

“There was this girl in the seventh grade I remember, Linda Swanson, who was bigger than Momma.”

“That happens sometimes. It’s called precocious puberty,” I told her. I had read about it recently because I had wondered about us both either maturing too quickly or not quickly enough.

I could see she had many more questions to ask, probably mostly about herself, but she was too shy and too embarrassed.

“Nothing you’re going through is unnatural,” I said firmly. “I’ve read a great deal about it.”