Casteel 1 - Heaven (28 page)

saying, “Read those ova. List of instructions. Read em an learn yer duties.”

“Yes.” “Yes what?” “Yes, Mother.” I shook my head to clear it, then sat to read the

cards in the sunless kitchen that didn't look so cheerful without all the lights on. I'd been warned to use the lights as little as possible when I was home alone, and never was Ito look at TV unless either Kitty or Cal was looking too.

cards.

The lists of what to do and not to do filled four

DO'S

1. Every day, after every meal, wipe up the countertops, scrub the sinks.

2. After every meal, use another sponge to wipe off the refrigerator door, and keep everything inside neat and tidy, and check the meat and vegetable compartments to see nothing is rotten, or needing to be thrown out. It's up to you to see everything is used before it goes bad.

3. Use the dishwasher.

4. Grind up the soft garbage in the disposal, and never forget to turn on the cold water when it's

running. 5. Washed dishes are to be removed

immediately, put in cupboards in exact placement. Never stack cups one inside the other.

6. Silverware is to be neatly arranged in trays for forks, knives, spoons, not tossed in the drawer in a heap.

7. Clothes have to be sorted before washing. All whites with whites. Darks with darks. My lingerie goes in a mesh baguse gentle cycle. My washable clothes, use cold water, and cold water soap. Wash Cal's socks by themselves. Wash sheets, pillowcases, and towels by themselves. Your clothes wash last, by themselves.

8. Dry clothes as instructed on the dryer I showed you how to use.

9. Hang clothes in closets. Mine in mine, Cal's in his. Yours in the broom closet. Fold underwear and put in correct drawers. Fold sheets and cases like what you find in the linen closet. Keep everything neat.

10. Every day wipe up kitchen and baths with warm water containing disinfectant.

11. Once a week, scrub kitchen floor with liquid cleanser I showed you, and once a month re- move buildup of wax, then reapply wax. Once a week,

scrub bathroom floors, clean grout in shower stall. Scrub out tub after every bath you take, I take, and Cal takes.

12. Every other day run the vacuum over all the carpets in the house. Move the furniture aside once a week and sweep under everything. Check under chairs and tables for spiders and webs.

13.Dust everything, every day. Pick things up. 14. First thing after Cal and me are gone, clean

up the kitchen. Make the bed with clean linens, change towels in bathrooms.

The cards fell from my hand. I sat on, stunned. Kitty didn't want a daughter, she wanted a slave! And I'd been so ready to do anything to please her if only she'd love me, and be like a mother. It wasn't fair for fate to always rob me of a mother just when I thought I had one.

Hot, bitter tears coursed down my cheeks as I realized the futility of my dream of winning Kitty's love. How could I live here or anywhere without someone who loved me? I brushed at my tears, tried to stop them, but they came, like a river undammed. Just to have someone who needed me, who really loved me enough to be caring, was that too much to ask? If Kitty could only be a real mother, gladly I'd do

everything on her list, and morebut she was making demands, issuing orders, making me feel used without consideration. Never saying please, or would you? even Sarah had been more considerate than that.

So I sat on, doing nothing, feeling more betrayed by the moment. Pa must have known what Kitty was, and he'd sold me to her, without heart, without kindness, forever punishing me for what I couldn't help or undo.

Bitterness dried my tears. I'd stay only until I could run, and Kitty'd rue the day she took me in to do more work in one day than Sarah had done in a month!

Ten times more work here than in the cabin, despite all the cleaning equipment. Feeling strange, weak, I stared at the cards lying on the table, forgetting to read the last one, and when I tried to find it later on, I couldn't.

I'd ask Cal, who seemed to like me, what Kitty could have written on that last card. For if I didn't know what not to do, ten to one I'd be sure to do it, and Kitty would somehow know.

For a while I just sat on in the kitchen, everything clean and bright around me, while my heart ached for an old rickety cabin, dim and dirty, for

familiar smells and all the beauty of the outside world. No friendly cats here to rub against my legs, or big dogs that wagged furious tails to show how mean they were. Only ceramic animals of unnatural colors holding kitchen utensils, cat faces grinning from the wall, pink ducks parading toward an unseen pool. Dizzy, that's how I felt from seeing so many colors against all the white.

When next I glanced at a clock, I jumped up. Where had the time gone? I began to race around how to finish before Kitty was home again? Those panicky butterflies were on wing again, battering my self-​confidence. I'd never be able to please Kitty, not in a million years. There was something dark and treacherous in Kitty, something slippery and ugly hidden beneath all those wide smiles, lurking in those seawater eyes.

Thoughts of my life as it had been came like ghosts to haunt meLogan, Tom, Keith, Our Jane . . . and Fannyare they treating you like this, are they?

I vacuumed, dusted, went carefully from plant to plant and felt the dirt, all damp. I returned to the

kitchen to try and begin the evening meal, which Kitty said should be called dinner because Cal insisted the main meal of the day was dinner and not

suppa.

About six Cal came in, looking fresh enough to make me wonder if he did anything all day, and then he was smiling broadly. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

How could I tell him that he was the one I instinctively trusted, that without him here I couldn't stay on another minute? I couldn't say that during our first time alone together. “I don't know,” I whispered, trying to smile. “I guess I expected you to look . . . well, dirty.”

“I always shower before I come home,” he explained with a small, odd smile. “It's one of Kitty's rulesno dirty husband in her house. I keep a change of clothes to put on after I'm finished for the day. Then, too, I am boss, and I have six employees, but I often like to pitch in and do the trouble-​shooting in an old set.”

Feeling shy with him, I gestured to the array of cookbooks. “I don't know how to plan a meal for you and Kitty.”

“I'll help,” he said instantly. “First of all, you've got to stay away from starches. Kitty adores spaghetti, but it makes her gain weight, and if she gains a pound she'll think it's your fault.”

We worked together, preparing a casserole that Cal said Kitty would like. He helped me slice the vegetables for the salad as he began to talk. “It's nice having you here, Heaven. Otherwise I'd be doing this by myself, as before. Kitty hates to cook, though she's pretty good at it. She thinks I don't earn my way, for I owe her thousands of dollars and I am in hock up to my neck, and she holds the purse strings. I was just a kid when I married her. I thought she was wise, beautiful, and wonderful; she seemed to want to help me so much.”

“How'd you meet her?” I asked, watching how he tore the lettuce and sliced everything thin and on an angle. He showed me how to make the salad dressing, and it was as if his busy hands set free his tongue, almost as if he were talking more to himself than to me as he chopped and sliced. “You trap yourself sometimes, by thinking desire and need is love. Remember that, Heaven. I was lonely in a big city, twenty years old, heading for Florida during spring break. I met Kitty quite by accident, in a bar my first night here in Atlanta. I thought she was absolutely the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.” He laughed hard and bitterly. "I was naive and young. I had come for the summer from my home in New

England while I was still going to Yale, had two more years to go before I graduated. Alone in Atlanta I felt lost. Kitty was lost too, and we found we had a lot in common. After a while, we married. She set me up in business. I'd always planned to be a history professor, can you imagine? Instead I married Kitty. Haven't been on a university campus since. I've never been home again, either. I don't even write to my parents anymore. Kitty doesn't want me to contact them. She's ashamed, afraid they might find out she didn't finish high school. And I owe her at least twenty-​five thousand dollars."

“How'd she make so much money?” I asked, half forgetting what I was doing.

“Kitty goes through men like castor oil, leaving them weak emotionally and drained financially. She told you she married first when she was thirteen? Well, she's had three other husbands, and each has provided for her very wellin order to get out of a marriage each must have found abominable after a while. Then, to give her credit, her beauty salon is the best in Atlanta.”

“Oh,” I said, with my head bowed low. His confession was not what I'd expected. Yet it felt so good to have someone talk to me as if I were an adult.

I didn't know if I should ask what I did. “Don't you love Kitty?”

“Yes, I love her,” he admitted gruffly. “When I understand what makes her what she is, how can I not love her? There's one thing, though, I want to say now, while I have a chance. There are times when Kitty can be very violent. I know she put you into hot water on your first night here, but I didn't say anything since you weren't permanently harmed. If I'd said something then, she would be worse the next time she has you alone. Just be careful to do everything as she wants. Flatter her, say she looks younger than I do. . . and obey, obey, and be meek.”

“But I don't understand!” I cried. “Why does she want me, except to be her slave?”

He looked up, appearing surprised. “Why, Heaven, haven't you guessed? You represent to her the child she lost when she aborted your father's baby and ruined herself so she can never have another child. She loves you because you are part of him, and hates you for the same reason. Through you, she hopes one day to get to him.”

“To hurt him through me?” I asked. “Something like that.” I laughed bitterly. "Poor Kitty. Of all his five

children, I am the one he despises. She should have taken Fanny or TomPa loves them."

He turned to put his arms about me, and tenderly he held me the way I'd always wanted to be held by Pa. I choked up and clung to this man who was almost a stranger; my need to be loved was so great I grasped greedily, then felt ashamed and so shy I almost cried. He cleared his throat and let me go. “Heaven, above all, never let Kitty know what you just told me. As long as you are valuable to your father, you have value for Kitty. Understand?”

He cared. I could see it in his eyes, and with trust that he'd always keep confidences to himself, I had the courage to tell him about the suitcase in the basement and what it contained. He listened as Miss Deale would have listened, with compassion and understanding.

“Someday I'm going back there, Cal, to Boston, to see my mother's family. And I'll have the doll with me, so they'll know who I am. But I can't go unless I have found”

“I know,” he said with a small laugh, his eyes sparkling at last. “You must take with you Tom, Keith, and Our Jane. Why on earth do you call your little sister Our Jane?”

He laughed again when I told him. “Your sister Fanny sounds like a real character. Will I ever meet Fanny?”

“Why, I sure hope so,” I said with a worried frown. “She's living now with Reverend Wise and his wife, and they call her Louisa, which is her middle name.”

“Aaah, the good Reverend,” he said in a solemn, slow way, looking thoughtful, “the richest, most successful man in Winnerrow.”

“You don't like him?”

“I am always suspicious of any man that successfuland that religious.”

It was good to be with Cal in the kitchen, working alongside him and learning just by watching what he did. I'd never - in a million years have believed a week ago that I could feel so comfortable with a man I hardly knew. I was shy, yet so eager to have him for my friend, for a substitute father, for a confidant. Every smile he gave me told me he'd be all of that.

Our casserole baked in the oven, the timer went off, and my biscuits were ready, and Kitty didn't come home, nor did she call to explain why she was late. I saw Cal glance at his watch several times, a deep

frown putting a pucker of worry between his eyes. Why didn't he call and check?

Kitty didn't return home until eleven, and Cal and I were in the living room watching TV. The remainder of the casserole had long ago dried out, so it couldn't taste nearly as good to her as it had to us. Still, she ate it with relish, as if lukewarm food gone dry didn't matter. “Ya cooked this all yerself?” she asked several times.

“Yes, Mother.” “Cal didn't help ya none?” "Yes, Mother, he told me not to prepare starchy

foods, and he helped me with the salad.“ ”Ya washed yer hands in Lysol water first?"

“Yes, Mother.” “Okay.” She studied Cal's expressionless face.

“Well, clean up, girl; then let's all go t'bed afta our baths.”

“She's sleeping down here from now on,” Cal said, steel in his voice as he turned cold eyes her way. “Next week we are going shopping and we are going to buy new furniture and replace all that clutter in our second bedroom. We will leave the potter's wheel and what you have locked in the cabinets, but we're adding a twin bed, a chair, a desk, and a dresser.”

It scared me the way she looked at him, at me, it really did.

Still, she agreed. I really was going to have a room of my own, a real bedroomas Fanny had with Reverend Wise.

Days of school and hard work followed. Up early, late to bed, I had to clean up after Kitty's dinner, even if she came home at midnight. I found out that Cal liked me by his side when he watched television. Every evening he and I prepared dinner, and ate it together if Kitty wasn't there. I was adjusting to the busy school schedule, and making a few friends in school who didn't think I talked strange, though they never said what they thought of my too-​large, cheap clothes, or my horrible clunky shoes.

Finally it was Saturday, and I could sleep late, and Kitty had given her permission for Cal and me to shop for furniture that would be mine alone to use.