The Heroines (12 page)

I’d never seen anything like this, and it terrified me how brutally they treated Kristina. But something even more horrifying registered: Kristina was used to this. Her lip was curled in the corner and she nodded and winked at me. The sight of her flowing blood started a hum in my head, and I lowered my forehead between my knees to keep from fainting.

“That rattletrap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter!” she cried. “You can’t lock me up!”

Then she made a move they’d taught us in drama camp. The rag doll. She went suddenly limp and slumped to the floor. “Penny! ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.’ And it fucked me every time!” The two men pulled her by the elbows and dragged her like a mop across the tile. Her hair fell across her face, into the blood.

When I stood up, the room spun. The sight of blood always made my knees buckle. I closed my eyes and held out my hands.
Come save me, Conor. Please hurry. I’ll do anything!
The soles of Kristina’s feet disappeared across the threshold.

“Sit down, you!” Peggy huffed and puffed, winded by the trips across the room to ring the bell. She leaned into her desk, a hand on her heaving chest. “Back to your rooms. Everybody.”

But I stood there, eyes closed, holding out my hands to steady the spinning room, and silently mouthing the words,
Conor, come quickly. Come now!
I fancied myself a statue, still as marble. An overhead vent blew an air-conditioned gale that nearly parted my hair.
I’ll help you get Deirdre. I’ll do whatever you want.
A cold hand grabbed my elbow and shook me.

“Quit acting crazy,” Florence whispered.

I wouldn’t open my eyes. I let her lead me like a blind girl down the hall into my room. I didn’t want to see anything, didn’t know anymore if I wasn’t crazy. I counted my footsteps back to the room, and with each step some sense returned to me. I knew one thing for sure: I had to stop talking about the Heroines if I was ever going to get out of the Unit.

An hour later, I lay on my bed, sulky and sullen, with the shades drawn. The bare room with its corduroy recliners depressed me, felt nothing like home. However much I took the Homestead and Mother for granted, I’d never felt threatened there. I couldn’t figure out how Kristina had led me to talk so freely about the Heroines. She’d seemed so trusting, so intrigued, and yet she used the information to get back at me. It was almost as if she envied me, an unusual response to a lonely teen like me. Still, I couldn’t blame Kristina entirely. I’d broken one of Mother’s strict codes, and now I understood the consequences. Mother’s chief aim with the Heroines had always been containment: provide a safe haven and meddle as little as possible. I was finally realizing what a volatile compound their existence created; I’d expected Kristina to think I was nuts, but not to be envious. If I was going to survive the Unit, I had to be tougher and smarter. I rolled to my side and closed my eyes. The face of a Heroine came immediately to mind. Though her visit to the Homestead last winter had been brief, I saw enough to know that there was something to admire about Katie Scarlett O’Hara.

S
even months earlier, one late December afternoon, I sat at the front desk thumbing through the registry. We rarely had guests at the Homestead during the winter break. I had talked my mom into paying me two dollars an hour to sit at the front desk (I was saving for new bedroom decorations), and I always enjoyed listening to the top songs of the year on WLS while reviewing the guest registry. Visits from Heroines in 1973 had been a little slim. March had brought Daisy Buchanan (a real pain); in August Ophelia had arrived.

The mantel clock ticked, and I was so bored I almost wished another Heroine would waltz through the door. As if I had some gift for conjuring (which I didn’t), the door banged open and a woman staggered into the foyer. Her black hair was wild, her face as white as the snowy birch trees outside. She had mauve circles beneath her eyes, but one glimpse at their jade color and her tiny waist told me instantly who she was, though she wasn’t quite as beautiful as Vivien Leigh. She reached a shaky hand to the desk for support, then collapsed on the cold tile with a sickening thud.

“Gretta! Help!” I ran around the desk and sat on the floor. As I lifted her head, I felt a lump swelling at the base of her skull. Her eyeballs fluttered beneath her lids as if she were having a nightmare. “Mom!”

Gretta ran in, yellow rubber gloves dripping soap suds. “What’s all the commotion? Oh, my!”

“I think it’s Scarlett O’Hara!”

Tossing the gloves to the floor, Gretta swept her arms beneath Scarlett’s thin body and lifted her off the cold tile. Scarlett wore a rabbit fur coat with a leather belt. Calves bulging, Gretta took the stairs two at a time, transporting Scarlett as if she were carrying a feather bed.

“I’ll get some ice for her head!” I cried.

“Put on the kettle! She’s froze to the bone!”

As I sped through the dining room, I collided with Mother on my way to the kitchen. “Scarlett O’Hara’s upstairs!”

Mother’s eyes widened and she clapped her hands to her mouth to hide her smile.

“She passed out!”

“Must still be the middle of the war,” Mother said. She rushed through the dining room and I heard her run up the stairs.

By the time I’d prepared the tea and ice pack and brought them up to the Top of the Stairs Room, Scarlett was awake. She sat in the four-poster bed with her head propped on pillows. Although the room had a private bath and a large sunporch, the sleeping area was small. We three crowded around the bed, spellbound by her powerful eyes, and grateful for the diversion, as the snowy days had left us with cabin fever.

“I’ll fix some soup,” Gretta said.

“Let me find her a warm nightgown,” Mother said.

“I’ll get more pillows,” I said.

Lifting her hand to shield her eyes from the overhead light, Scarlett glared at us. “Corn whiskey. I told Pork I needed some now!” Her weakened voice still held a touch of saucy Southern belle.

“I don’t think—” Mother said.

“She been in a war,” Gretta said. “Whiskey it is.”

“You’re most kind,” Scarlett said, falling back into the pillows again.

Gretta leaned in and whispered to Mother, “She is tougher than Catherine Earnshaw, this one.”

Mother nodded, immediately dropping her eyes. One mention of Catherine Earnshaw, from
Wuthering Heights,
and Mother backed off like a scolded dog. Whenever Mother and Gretta referred to Heroines I didn’t remember, I always felt left out, and though I’d often tried, I could never get Mother to tell me about that particular Heroine’s visit. I sensed that Gretta knew not to speak of it either. There were many things she wouldn’t speak about, especially the war. I was somewhat surprised that Gretta knew Scarlett’s story, but I realized later that
Gone With the Wind
had been a big hit in Germany. Generally she kept a respectful distance from the Heroines, but wartime refugees evoked her deepest sympathy. Scarlett might be thin and ill, but Gretta knew that she had a colossal personality, more than Mother could handle alone.

The first hour of a Heroine’s arrival was always the most delicate. One never knew how she would adjust. Ophelia had paced the halls; Franny had curled up on the window seat, staring out at the prairie. We hadn’t yet determined at what point in the narrative Scarlett had arrived (and it was always important to Mother that she knew, so she wouldn’t give away anything), but she seemed in dire need of sleep. I couldn’t stop staring. Her frail beauty disturbed me: she was so small, yet so womanly. Her skin seemed translucent and her eyes twitched beneath their lids. I quietly backed away from the bed and looked out the sunporch window. Snow had drifted into the southern corners of the porch, foot-high waves like the caps of dwarfs. The wind whistled through the last of the Dutch elms, and I was happy that Scarlett was safe in bed. As I often did, I said a quick prayer that Franny was safe and warm somewhere, preferably back in her story. Mother tiptoed to the window and lowered the shade, then released the heavy maroon curtains from their sashes. The radiator clanked, and Scarlett moaned in her sleep.

“Ashley!”

Mother and I locked eyes, and she shook her head gravely as if she knew that I wanted to rush to the bed to talk Scarlett out of loving him. Mother gave me too much credit. This was a few months before Emma Bovary arrived, before my rebellious hormones kicked into high gear. I’d seen
Gone With the Wind
enough times to know that nobody could talk Scarlett out of anything.

Gretta came in, holding a bottle of Jameson by the throat. She plunked a glass on the nightstand and poured out a hearty portion. Shaking Scarlett’s shoulder, she said, “Wake up now.”

Scarlett opened her eyes and shook her head. “The cow needs to be milked. And little Beau is starving—”

“You drink!” Gretta pushed the glass toward her.

Scarlett held the glass with both hands and took a sip; her eyes opened wide and she shuddered. Color flooded her cheeks, and she peered into the glass, blinking. Raising it again, she knocked back the rest and then started to climb out of bed.

“No, you stay!” Gretta pushed her back down.

“Leave me! I must check the garden for sweet potatoes.”

“I’ll bring you soup! Stay put.”

Things sometimes took this course with the Heroines in the beginning. Gretta had the firm hand to make them rest and eat, whereas Mother would have caved in and let them run the show. Mother understood the dynamic, and she put her arm around me and led me toward the door.

“Stupid woman!” Scarlett hissed.

We closed the door and stared at each other on the landing. Then I snapped my fingers. “Attic!”

“Yes!” Mother said. We charged down the hall to the attic door to retrieve
Gone With the Wind
. Mother opened the padlock with a key tied to her wrist. We always kept the attic secured, to prevent any wandering Heroine from discovering her fate. Mother opened the door and we climbed the steep wooden steps into the chilly space. Mother ran her hands along a crossbeam and found the keys to her bookshelves. Frost laced the dormer windows. I tugged a shoestring to illuminate the bare overhead lightbulb. Mother plugged in a space heater and the red coils glowed. Along the northern slanted walls were dusty trunks, cobwebby baskets, box fans, a clothes dummy, a birdcage, and the dollhouse replica of our house that I’d abandoned years before. But the flat western wall held Mother’s treasure: six ceiling-high bookshelves, with rough pine doors, latched with metal locks. Each door was labeled by continent: European (French, Italian, Russian, Spanish); Asian (Japanese, Chinese, Indian); and English Literature (Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and American) had its own case. This was Mother’s treasure, her insurance policy, her prized stock. She didn’t care if a book was a cheap paperback or a leather-bound first edition (and she had both types). The collection simply needed to be vast and well organized (alphabetized by author name), to allow for speedy retrieval. Mother wanted to be sure that we didn’t slip and reveal something to Scarlett—that the missing Ashley would show up eventually, that her mother was dead—that she didn’t already know.

“I’ve a good idea that she’s just escaped Atlanta,” Mother said. She turned the dial of the combination lock and popped it open. The hinges creaked as the doors swung and banged against the wall. I propped a bucket against one to keep it from swinging back again. Mother reached up to the
M
shelf and plucked a hard-backed copy of
GWTW
from the shelf. She thumbed through the first few hundred pages.

“She said something about asking Pork to get her whiskey,” I said.

“And needing to feed Beau. Melanie’s milk didn’t come in.” Mother licked her finger and flicked through the pages. She had a near-photographic memory. “I can almost see the page. Here it is.”

We stood there together in the cold attic, hovering under the lightbulb, reading. Scarlett had arrived, like most Heroines, at her worst moment. She had narrowly escaped the fires of Atlanta, after she had waited for Melanie to give birth in the midst of a siege. Abandoned by Rhett, she drove the carriage through the Georgia woods, which felt haunted by the ghosts of slain Confederates. When she finally reached Tara, she discovered that her beloved mother was dead. Typhoid fever gripped her sisters and her father had lost his mind. The stored cotton had been burned, the fields were ruined. Seriously, few Heroines had it so bad. Yet it must have been her mother’s death that precipitated Scarlett’s need for a respite at the Homestead. Scarlett worshipped her mother, Ellen, a model of perfect Southern female deportment, possessing not only beauty but gentleness, self-sacrifice, and restraint. The only one of these attributes Scarlett possessed was beauty. She always struggled to meet Ellen’s high standard of Southern female conduct. But passivity and altruism would not help anybody survive a war.

Mother pointed at the page. “Here she is, asking for whiskey.”

“She’s kind of mean to the slaves,” I said.

“Impatient,” Mother said.

“Same difference.”

“Try not to judge.” Mother closed the book. “Scarlett’s from another era.”

“But racism is wrong.”

“Of course!” Mother said. “And I’m glad that you understand that. But there’s no sense trying to point out that fact to Scarlett. In fact, I want you to steer clear of her altogether. She’s a firebrand. She’s liable to bite your head off.”

“But you spent all that time trying to make Franny a feminist. Why can’t I try to make Scarlett less of a racist?”

“That was different. Franny’s almost a contemporary and—”

“You care more about feminism than you do about racism,” I snapped.

“I just know what battles to pick. It’s based on the character herself. Not on my agenda.”

I shrugged and snatched the book from her hands. Mother didn’t like how I’d begun challenging her approach to the Heroines, pointing out her inconsistencies. “If I’m not allowed near her, then at least let me stay up here and read the rest.”

“It’s too cold and—”

Just then we heard a crash downstairs and a door slamming against a wall. I dropped the book on the floor and we raced down the stairs. Mother scrambled to close the padlock, while I hurried down the hall.

“Oh, my God…” I said.

Gretta had Scarlett by the waist, and Scarlett was flailing and thrashing, beating Gretta’s legs and arms. The maroon bedroom drapes were piled around their feet, looking oddly like the discarded robes of a Greek goddess—though the figure they presented was more like a Gorgon emerging from the stomach of a barbarian. Gretta took a step backward to brace herself against the doorjamb, but her foot caught in the drapes and she bounced against the wall and then tumbled forward. Gretta’s arms flew open, and Scarlett scrambled out, her arms sprawled in front of her and her face planted on the worn Persian runner. Pinned at the waist beneath Gretta, Scarlett let out a shriek that made me happy there were no other boarders in the Homestead.

“Damn woman!” Scarlett tried to reach behind her and gather the drapes, but they were so twisted around Gretta’s ankles that she only succeeded in tightening them, which made Gretta cry out.

Gathering the drapes meant Scarlett was scavenging for fabric, just as she had in the novel, turning the drapes into a dress and bonnet. Mother ran in and extended her hand to Gretta, who lifted her chest off Scarlett and propped herself on her knees. Scarlett wiggled out and fixed Gretta with an angry glare. “How dare you?”

Mother got Gretta to her feet and offered a hand to Scarlett. “Now, Miss Scarlett, you must lie down and rest. You’ve had a terrible time of it.”

“This is no time to lie down! I have a million things to do!” As she rose, the color drained from her face. She tilted to the left, and Mother braced her shoulder against Scarlett’s arm.

“You really must rest,” Mother said, in her softest voice. She paused for a moment while Scarlett steadied herself, then slowly turned toward the bedroom door. “The whiskey’s making you woozy.”

Scowling, Gretta collected the drapes, folding them over her arms in neat layers of tumbling maroon velvet. She picked off lint and muttered under her breath.

“I—I suppose,” Scarlett said. She allowed herself to be coaxed back in the room and into bed. This is where Mother always fared better than Gretta. Sometimes a heavy hand was needed with the Heroines; sometimes a gentle one. With Scarlett good and dizzy, Mother could ply her with kind words and sympathy in a manner that Gretta could rarely muster. Gretta got busy with her more pedestrian skills: shaking out the drapes, finding a stepladder, and fixing the hooks on the curtain rod. I quietly sat down in the wingback chair to watch. I knew they’d shoo me away if I made any noise, and Mother’s gentle persuasion—her soft voice, her careful stroking of Scarlett’s tiny hands—comforted me as much as Scarlett.