The Heroines (2 page)

W
here I was raised is the first, most important thing to know about me, more important than knowing why Deirdre angered me so, or that my name is Penny, which I despised (but grew to love). Where I grew up explains why I’ve had such a checkered career with both men and jobs. I grew up in an unreal place, a house not of horrors, but of magic, my mother’s bed-and-breakfast in Prairie Bluff, Illinois. But before I recount that summer when my estrangement from Mother peaked, the summer of 1974, when the first U.S. president resigned from office, I must emphasize that my younger years were happy. I grew up in a large, lovely home with acres of land to roam, with kittens and gardens and a bedroom of my own with pale pink walls. Mother sent me to theater camps at Prairie College starting at an early age. Like any girl I believed my mother was powerful and beautiful. She was only eighteen when she had me, in 1961. My father, so I’d been told, was a football player from Lincoln Park High who died in a car accident on I-94 in 1964. He had never seen me, as my mother never told him I was his. They never married. Whenever I asked where my dad was, she always said, “In heaven,” which I pictured in the usual way: clouds, harps, happiness.

As I was growing up, the house seemed more significant than my father’s identity. My great-grandfather built it in the 1890s. He grew corn and soybeans, kept chickens and cows. At the turn of the century, an industrialist offered him a huge sum of money for the farmland, which he returned to prairie. He gave our family “strolling rights” into perpetuity. He built a large Arts and Crafts summer residence for his family. My great-grandfather kept the farmhouse as a summer home, and moved his family south to the city—Chicago—where he invested in residential real estate, snapping up apartment complexes and three flats on the south and west sides of the city. Eventually he bought back the Arts and Crafts summerhouse, which had fallen into disrepair after the industrialist died, as his family had no interest in the property. My great-grandmother soon restored it to its original grandeur.

As a girl, my mother, Anne-Marie, spent her summers in Prairie Bluff. Before she started to “show,” Grandfather Entwhistle shipped her here from Lincoln Park to have the baby in seclusion. That was a year before the full thrust of black migration and white flight bottomed out the Chicago real estate market, rendering Grandfather nearly broke. My grandparents pressured Mother to give me up and had found a couple to adopt me, but once Mother held me she said she couldn’t let me go. This was her first act of defiance against her own mother, who, I later learned, actually tried to forge her daughter’s signature on the adoption papers. My grandfather caught Grandmother red-handed, paying off a secretary in the obstetrician’s office.

When my grandfather finally accepted that his baby girl had chosen to raise her own, he let her stay in Prairie Bluff with me. With the Chicago housing market tanking, they couldn’t afford the house’s upkeep without additional income, so they decided to convert it into a bed-and-breakfast. They installed a front desk in the foyer complete with a bell and register. Mother liked the idea of running a B&B and she named it Prairie Homestead, which always had the ring of a lunatic asylum to me. And in some ways, it was. Though plenty of ordinary women lodged at our place while I was growing up, the Homestead seemed to have a special attraction for Heroines who needed a break from their story lines. Madame Bovary had dozed in the hammock for three weeks after Rodolphe abandoned her. Penelope had sipped our curried lentil soup while she waited for Odysseus. Daisy Buchanan took endless baths after running over Myrtle Wilson. My mother had always been a reader, hooked on
The Secret Garden
and
The Princess and the Pea
at the age of seven. She knew exactly how these women’s stories would end, but she behaved as if she hadn’t any idea. In the padlocked attic she’d hidden all her books on shelves with locked pine doors. One never knew who might show up and in what state. The last thing Mother wanted was for Anna Karenina to discover accidentally that she was bound to take her life on the railroad tracks.

When I was little I didn’t always know who was or wasn’t a Heroine. Sometimes a guest’s lethargy, or constant weeping, or voracious appetite gave her away. My mother recognized the names of the Heroines immediately, but she never enlightened me until they had left. She was afraid I’d bungle and interfere with their destinies. But that summer after I turned thirteen, I wanted her to trust me. I wanted to stay up late with the Heroines, listening and nodding as my mother did, offering popcorn, never advice. I couldn’t say that as a rule I preferred the Heroines to the regular visitors, but Mother did. She had a high threshold for their moods and self-absorption, and it seemed to me at thirteen that I was never granted such sway. Once again, with Deirdre, Mother had put a Heroine’s needs before my own (though Mother didn’t even realize at that point that Deirdre was a Heroine). I thought Mother and the Heroines knew some womanly secret, and I’d started stealing into the hot attic to paw through Mother’s musty books. Up in the eaves, the dust motes swirling through the dollhouse replica of our house, I’d been getting an education.

“Why do so many of them wind up dead?” I once asked.

“We all wind up dead, honey,” Mother said.

“I know. But couldn’t their authors come up with better endings than having them poison themselves or throw themselves in front of trains?”

“It’s just a way to create a dramatic ending,” she said. “Some of these women were part of enormously long novels. There’s got to be a payoff if you drag your reader through five, six hundred pages.”

“But these women aren’t real!”

“Penny—just go get my migraine medicine from my vanity. I feel one coming on.”

I knew, as only a teenage girl does, how to rile my mother, so I harped on this point. She never could brook the argument that these characters weren’t real. They nibbled chicken legs to the bone; they left strands of hair in the bathtub. When they breathed on the windows in wintertime, they left a fog on the glass. And then one day, they were gone.

Don’t ask me to explain how these Heroines found their way to us (and God knows how they got their contemporary clothes). They never commented about our technology, and remained immersed in their narrative problems, living completely in their heads. The Heroines began to appear when Mother was a small girl, and they came only to the Homestead, never to her house in Lincoln Park. Though she has vague memories of beautiful women peeking over the bars of her crib, the one she remembers in detail (the first one she told me about) arrived when she was five.

She woke in the middle of the night; something had stirred in her room. As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she saw at the foot of her bed a young woman with hair that hung beyond the bedrail. Mother propped herself on her elbows and blinked. The girl was beautiful, her hair thick and flaxen. Mother’s mouth fell open, and as her eyes adjusted, she saw something shimmering on the floor beneath her night-light. It was a river of hair, falling from the girl’s shoulders to the floor, twisting and folding all around Mother’s bed, up the side of her nightstand, into her tiny baby-doll cradle. Worried that her doll was smothered, Mother jumped from the bed and dug beneath the silky hair to retrieve her hard-limbed DyDee Doll.

“She’s okay.” Mother patted the doll’s back, and water trickled from the hole in her mouth. Mother licked the vinyl lips and extended her hand. “I’m Anne-Marie.”

Rapunzel smiled and took Mother’s hand, but tears welled in her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Mother asked.

“The weight of this hair, how it makes my head ache!”

“Lie down here and rest.” Mother patted her pillow. As she rubbed Rapunzel’s temples, she listened to the story of how a witch had locked the girl in a tower that had neither doors nor staircases, only a tiny window at the top. The phallic implications escaped Mother, of course, but she was astounded by such a fate. “And you can’t go outside at all?”

Rapunzel shook her head. “But a handsome prince climbs the rope of my hair every day, after Mother Gothel has visited. He brings me some silken rope, and one day I’ll weave a ladder and escape!”

“Is he a handsome prince?”

They stayed up whispering for another hour, but once Rapunzel drifted off to sleep, so did Mother. When she woke, Rapunzel was gone.

The next day at breakfast, Anne-Marie told her parents, Edith and Henry, about the nighttime visitor.

“That sounds like Rapunzel,” her mother said.

“You met her?” Anne-Marie asked.

“She’s a fairy-tale character from Germany. You must have dreamt it. Certainly we read the story together.”

“I don’t remember it.”

“Sure,” her father said. He folded the
Wall Street Journal
in two, and laid it beside his egg-streaked plate. “The witch finds out about the prince’s visits, and she cuts off Rapunzel’s hair and banishes her to the desert.” He tipped his coffee mug and finished the last drops.

The housekeeper, Gretta, was from the Black Forest. She was young then, trim, with muscular calves and a high bosom. Hearing the tales of her native land, she wiped her hands on her apron and chimed in, “Then the witch gets the prince to climb up to the tower and scares the devil out of him.”

Mother burst into tears. “Poor Rapunzel!”

“Now, Henry, Gretta, you’ve got her all worked up!” Grandmother pulled a handkerchief from her apron pocket and held it under Anne-Marie’s nose. “Blow, please.”

“Anne-Marie, dolly, don’t cry.” Henry pulled her onto his lap. “Didn’t you read the whole story? The prince wanders the desert until he finds her. And then, you know what’s really neat?”

Mother heaved a staggering sigh. “What?”

“They have twins! A boy and a girl! And then they live happily ever after.”

“Are you sure?” she sniffed.

“We’ll read it together after you help Gretta clear the table.”

“We’ve obviously read it before!” Edith said. “How else could she have dreamt about her?”

“It was real!” Anne-Marie said, slamming her spoon in her oatmeal.

“Don’t be fresh,” her father said.

“One more word!” her mother said. “And I’ll—”

Even at five, Anne-Marie knew not to cross her mother. So she piped down and kept quiet about Rapunzel. Later when Gretta found a twenty-foot strand of hair on the hardwood floor, they looped it around a spool and hid it in an attic chest. From then on, Gretta became Mother’s confidante. Over the years, other Heroines visited her, and she cherished the easy conversation, the honesty, and always their timeless beauty, but she never told anyone but Gretta about them. She was afraid that if her mother found out, she’d scare the Heroines away, just as the evil witches, stepmothers, and queens always tried to thwart Snow White, Rose Red, and Sleeping Beauty.

Besides Gretta, I was the only person to whom Mother explained the Heroines. When I turned five, the same age as she was when Rapunzel arrived, she read me the story, then showed me the spool of hair, hidden in the attic. I stared at the long, glimmering strand with delight. At five, I could easily believe in the materialization of fantasy characters. Mother said that this was a big secret, and we had to make an oath to never tell anyone about it. She told me to pick my favorite book—
Goodnight Moon
—and we laid our hands on the cover and vowed never to tell a soul about the Heroines. That night I lay in bed, hoping the bunny from Margaret Wise Brown’s book would visit me so we could bid the moon good night together. But Mother explained the next morning that you could never wish for a particular Heroine. They came of their own accord.

I don’t know if Mother possessed supernatural powers that drew the Heroines to us, or if it was just odd luck. She didn’t run around burning sage or conjuring literary ghosts; on the contrary, she was one of the most passive people I’ve known, and the weight of the Heroines’ destinies oppressed her, perhaps as much as it did the authors themselves. Only her position was worse. She knew their destinies before they did. For weeks after a Heroine left, she’d worry about the Heroine’s fate. Why her concern for them had begun to make me feel jilted is probably obvious, but I had no insight at thirteen. So to comfort myself, I’d say, “Mo-om [two syllables]. It’s not like they’re
re-al
[two syllables].”

But that night in the woods, fantasy became my terrifying reality, and deep down, I thought my capture by the Hero was payback for all my singsong shots at Mother.

“S
tep forward!” he yelled.

I moved away from the tree trunk, my feet sinking deep in the dried-up leaves and moist earth. The horse reared back and pawed the air at the sight of me, lit by the torch, in my orange terrycloth shorts and tank top, my pyramid of bushy red hair. I touched the kink above my ears, left when I pulled my pigtails out of the rubber bands. The glossy black horse had glowing eyes, and I smelled the funk of it, the sweat, the lather. The man pulled hard on the reins to calm the horse, then pointed an accusing finger at me.

“And why would you be rambling about the woods in your underclothes?” He had a thick Irish brogue and a baritone voice.

“These aren’t underwear!”

“You’ll rue the day, girl!”

He sounded so parental, I shouted, “You’re not my father!”

“‘Tis hardship in store for the lying woman who claims I am!”

“Deirdre said—” Here, I don’t know what possessed me to say her name. Something vindictive, I guess, something like self-preservation or maybe just sheer confusion.

“So you
do
know the ill-fated Deirdre!” He laughed, the sort of haughty chortle only a man from what had to be a lowbrow novel would make. “Ha!” He even swept his cape across his chest.

“What do you want from me?”

“Silence!” He cracked a whip that he pulled out of nowhere, and I stumbled backward against the tree. However much I wished to protest his “reality,” there was no denying the sound of that cracking whip, nor the fug of that frothing horse. My mother had taught me that the best way to defend myself physically was to use my voice, especially when I was widely outsized. But the sound of that leather strap cutting through the air was withering. Genuine fear finally descended on me. Living in the Homestead, I never was quite sure what was real, but not for a minute out in the woods with the stomping horse did I think I was dreaming, and I felt a sudden wave of sympathy for Deirdre.

“Tell me where she is!”

I glanced to my right at a split-rail fence. The thing to do was run. He’d need to get a good trot going to hop the fence, either backing up or turning full circle. With a sideways glance, I took off, tearing through the scattered leaves. I pressed my hands to the rail and pommel-horsed it like I’d practiced in gym. The leaves jumped around my ankles when I landed, and even in my flimsy flip-flops, I managed to snap a big twig. The horse whinnied, and I heard the commotion of its turning hooves as Conor tried to follow.

“Curses!” he cried.

I ran like a fiend down a narrow path, branches and leaves whipping my face; the threads of a cobweb got tangled in my hair and eyelashes. A spider scrambled down my back and I flailed and swatted my spine. I ran and ran, till the path broadened a bit. I heard the thump of hooves behind me, and I started to scream. Yet as I tore through the dark woods, I couldn’t stop thinking, couldn’t turn off my preteen critical faculty, couldn’t stop asking,
What kind of a cardboard character yells, “Curses!”?

The kind who’s a savage horseman. He was gaining on me, cracking that whip. Overhead, oak trees arched, the night sky flashing between the leaves. My damned flip-flops were the worst shoes for running. Usually I switched to tennis shoes before my walk, but I’d been so mad at Deirdre and my mother, I’d rushed out without thinking. Deirdre had me hamstrung. A felled tree suddenly took shape, materialized before my eyes, transecting the path, a shade darker than the air itself. It was too thick to jump over, so I dove under it, felt the slap of tiny wild grapes against my cheek. I looked back. The man sliced the branches with his whip. I kept going, jumped another fallen trunk, then I heard the hooves clomping toward me. He jumped the second trunk and doubled his time just as I started to get winded. He was right beside me. I couldn’t cut through the woods because a thick hedge had me trapped on the right. I ran and ran, hoping the hedge would end. The thump of the hooves and the heat off the horse overpowered my senses.

Suddenly I felt my head fly back. He had grabbed the back of my hair and he pulled me up. My scalp seethed with pain, and I started yelling and screaming, hating myself for disobeying Mother, hating her for being right about the dangers of the woods at night, as he lifted me off the soft path. Airborne, I kicked, but the next thing I knew I was lying sideways across the horse, and the man was carting me down the path like a bundle of wheat. Then, like some kind of samurai, he flipped me around, pulled me up by the waist, and sat me in front of him.

“Fuck!” I had to be covered in bruises.

“What class of curse would you be making there? There’s no health in it!”

His wool tunic made my back itch, and he smelled like sweat and wood smoke. He rested his pointy chin on my head, holding me tight across the waist as we galloped through the woods.