The Six Granddaughters of Cecil Slaughter (28 page)

Today, before she left home, she put on a necklace she found at the shop. Supposedly it is authentic—the center drop of it being a circular coin sliced in half, recovered from the El Cazador shipwreck. It had a tag on it with its history. The vessel had disappeared into the winter sea in another January—1794 to be exact—and the treasure it was carrying discovered only recently—1993—by a fishing vessel named
Mistake.
She smiled at that when she first read it.

She wondered who wore the other half of this small, full moon disk. If it had brought them bad thoughts or good luck. She wondered, too, if Arletta would admire her necklace with the coin at the center of which was a Spanish inspired cross, embellished by four black onyx tips separated by four curved rows of four clear-colored cabochon gemstones. Her urge to buy it gave her the small hope that perhaps in wearing it she might become stronger—more like Arletta. That she could be empowered by such a neck-lace—however ridiculous that thought seemed, and was not.

Certainly Arletta's words gave her audiences hope—a vision of Eden before the apple, gave their minds a rest like a meditation or a sermon and that for some moments after they reentered the world they felt smarter, and everything seemed brighter now that they were filled with the belief that easy solutions were possible. At least until they got into their cars and had to deal with the incessant messages left for them by disgruntled relatives or coworkers. Or from having none at all—nothing received from the ones whose voices they truly needed to hear, so as to give them a little affirmation, a boost of positive attention to get through to the next day—a little polish for their spirit. Soon enough, the drivers next to them would begin impinging on their space and the dirty looks, obscene gestures, or the games of chicken
with steel vehicles would begin and the words—always the words—when they turned on the news from the disembodied air would start spitting on them again with the events of the day so much larger than their own lives. Nothing picayune here—rage raining and reigning everywhere. Maybe then they would wonder about the validity of Arletta's vision or perhaps just be grateful for the distraction of it. Most likely by this time they would have forgotten much of what she had said—it being too sallow in its shallowness to last even the drive home—and be left with just a small halo effect of its optimistic pleasantness.

She is a bad driver. She never knows what to do when the merging cars take their aggressive places on the highway. She always feels that this leaves her with no space. That she is being crowded out. That the road she is trying to take for herself is being intruded upon by someone far more confident. Someone stronger, someone bolder. She has tried so hard to hold on to a path in this world of being—of being a Slaughter, of knowing she was unacceptable from the beginning for being a daughter. Always with the realization of not being—not being the everlasting Rose. Of never being able to outwardly perfectly comply or inwardly deal with the rules and expectations set for her way before her birth, no matter how hard she initially had tried. Yet, as she kept touching the leather of her bag and feeling the shape of the gun, with her target closer—now just miles from here—all this seemed of no consequence. She felt what she was doing was not random; what she was doing was filled with great purpose; what she was doing had many dimensions; what she was doing was multifaceted and hard like a diamond.

It was then I became truly frightened.

She touched the sweat that now completely covered her face. It had become fluid, like a second foundation and that, too, felt perfect. Now she imagined, when the air hit her exposed skin as she stepped out of the car—so close to her goal—she would look less like the sprinkled stars in the night sky, but more unified, like a cold, hard jewel. That finally, she would resemble a gem of great value.

Suddenly, in the middle of these dot thoughts, which she knew, if she drew the lines all connected to her maze-puzzled life, she realized she was on
his
street and she started checking the numbers of the houses, which was difficult because it was now almost past the twilight hour in the city-filthy, dark hole of midwinter and the homes were closer together than she expected, some almost disappearing into the next with no light shining on their addresses. She was surprised by the narrowness of each house, but tried not to make of this a metaphor—let it intrude or multiply. She had to keep her mind locked into the reality of what she intended and not leap around in the possibilities of language.

When she finally saw a number near enough, she found a parking spot—one where the city had plowed the snow high, so she fit in easily. The car and her frostbitten thoughts were now imbedded in a concrete igloo of ice. She turned off the car's lights and the ignition and paused, took some deep breaths to try to steady what felt like a not-unfamiliar arrhythmia of her heart. Then, she slipped the gun into her coat pocket, stuffed her purse under the passenger side of the seat and stared at the thick rubber soles on her boots, hoping they would keep her from slipping, keep her anchored to the ground when she got out
of the car and edged along the newly fallen snow which deceptively covered layer upon layer of built-up ice.

Her plan was to find the house—the house he and Arletta bought together—by walking toward it, her head down so she would look weather-beaten like everyone else just wanting to get home at the end of a hard workday. She would go up the steps or the concrete walk to the front door—whichever it was—and ring the bell. If everything worked as she imagined, Herr M would open it, stare at her, and before he could slam it in her face she would take the gun—now resting so snugly in the deep of her pocket—point it at him, while looking straight at him so he could see
her, see
who was doing this to him. See
her
and that would be the last image he would
ever see. See her. Her shooting. Her shooting him.

As she walked, all her thoughts were about death. About the soul and its being released from the mind-body and how she longed for this—for some perspective on what we do to ourselves and to each other and the poem “The Soul's Aerial View of the Burial” started racing around in her mind, and she said it in the smallest whisper, like a prayer to the air—its frozen emptiness the perfect audience—

Everything is black or white—

the mourners' heavy wool coats

wander over the crisp snow,

their arms holding on to whoever's left—

while I wait for them to seal

the perfect rectangular hole

so I can go—to where

I do not know.

But for now I muse above the bony

trees, about how fragile

the dance is that they do,

and how I don't remember

ever having such an unfettered view.

And in saying it, she hoped that when this was over, she, too, would see everything clearer and be freer. But she was not sure, for now she was beginning to feel lightheaded.

It was at this point a little hope rose up in me that she would turn around and go home … but she did not.

When she found the house, it was even narrower than the others, turn of the century old and three stories high. It was not made of brick as she had imagined, but rather a faded yellow clapboard from which the paint was peeling, perhaps with some of the strips turning to rot. The children's story of the three little pigs jumped into her mind and she said out loud, “Not even of brick.” At that moment she felt like the wolf, quite capable of blowing this house in, which was, after all, her intention.

Then she thought, “This doesn't look like the kind of house that Arletta would stay in for long. This doesn't seem like a place Arletta would
ever
live. Surely her exit will be sooner than later.” She idealized Arletta's future once again and pictured her gracefully dancing away into warm, spring air to a larger, grander house with lots of lawn and flowers blooming everywhere. In her mind Arletta's story always, inevitably, led to a happy Hollywood ending.

She was unsteady, her gait definitely off, as she slowly headed up the shoveled, cracked, concrete path which ended with five overly large steps of wood. Only one light was on, in an upper front left-side room on the attic-like top floor. She imagined him there with its sloped ceilings—that were soon to fall in on him—ensconced with his books, perhaps grading papers or preparing tomorrow's lecture—which now would never happen—or listening to some classical music or smooth jazz, feeling so safe and warm.

Perhaps he was reading Nietzche's
The Genealogy of Morals,
going over his favorite part on how the world is intrinsically filled with cruelty and violence, given the instincts inherent in humans, and how it is up to a higher thinking man to develop his own code of morality, not be led or convinced by clichéd beliefs—“let us be aware of the tentacles of such contradictory notions as ‘pure reason,' ‘absolute knowledge,' ‘absolute intelligence.'” He had read her those words early in their relationship and she thought him an expansive thinker and a passionate scholar. Now she believes he used this treatise as an excuse for any and all of his behavior, his voice becoming so theatrical as he continued, “What a mad, unhappy animal is man! What strange notions occur to him; what perversities … what bestialities of idea burst from him, the moment he is prevented ever so little from being a beast of action?” How these lines have stayed memorable in her mind, like an indelible stain. She guesses one could say she had been forewarned.

She wondered how Arletta's philosophy could possibly fit with such beliefs and whether or not they argued a lot about this from their not ivory but wooden tower. However before she could get entirely lost in this quagmire of
thought, the rising and dying noise of someone trying and retrying to start the frozen motor of a car shocked her out of her wobbly, over-intellectualizing and returned her to the imminent impermanency of Herr M's own situation and this made her smile and helped steady her some. As did a Life-Saver she unrolled from her other pocket with her ungloved hand and placed on her tongue. At this moment, the bitter, sugary taste of the lemon one helped unify her senses. Her eyes began to focus better.

She saw that the front porch was darkish gray. The depressing color seemed contradictory—it should have been lighter, as in a welcoming. As it was, the entrance to the house looked like a cave. The floorboards creaked as she stepped on them and there was a matching wood swing held up by rusty chains. She imagined that when it was new it had been painted white and had brought great delight to those who had swung on it. Children. Parents. Lovers. She walked around it as quietly as she could and had the urge to sit on it to rest so as to further help balance herself, though it looked like it would make loud, squeaking sounds or worse, that if any weight were placed on it, it might fall from the low, warped wood ceiling from which it hung.

It was then she thought of a title for a poem: “The Rapist's Porch Swing,” quite aware of its multiple meanings and with this, that night two years ago quickly came back to her with too much memory: her initial bewilderment when he leaped up from his chair and pressed his open mouth onto hers; how the force of this act, coupled with the bristly hairs of his goatee made it feel as if a mask were pressing against her face; how empty this opening to his body felt—like a rough dark pit into which he was trying to swallow her; how he then quickly yanked her to the futon; how he
pushed her down on it; how he would not let her up; how he kept saying, “Turn. Turn. Turn Over,” with her idiotically thinking if she did so, he would let her up and how he did not. How that was just the beginning of his pushing—his pushing himself into her any which way it pleased him.

The feelings of that terror, the physical pain, and the seizure that overtook her when he was nearly done all returned as she stared at the porch swing—its bench becoming his penis and her arms the rusted chains—yes, these past two years, the rusted chains just trying to hold herself up by writing—writing about what had happened that night, so she would not go crashing to the floor, completely broken and useless. Then, the image changed—consolidated itself—and she became both the chains and the bench in all their wreckage, an object on the brink of becoming a complete heap of junk. Something to be tossed to the curb or thrown into an alley, then picked up by a foul smelling truck, and carried off to the dump.