Part 6 (1/2)
”Sara!”
Her mother's icy voice echoed in the tiny room. ”What are you doing in here?”
The giant can of hairspray shook in Sara's seven-year-old hands. ”You told me to look nice for the party, Mummy. You told me to fix my hair.” She struggled to free the hairbrush that had become tangled and plastered against the side of her head.
Her mother knocked the can from her hands, sending it flying against the baby blue velvet ferns of the textured wallpaper. ”I said I would do it for you later. You are not to be here, Sara. This is my bathroom, my private s.p.a.ce!” She laughed once, making a quick, sour bark. ”But you're just like your father, treating me like I don't exist while you just go and put on your little show.” Mummy stared at Sara, pursing her lips and looking like she was about to cry, but then her face hardened. She grabbed for the brush.
”I know, Mummy. I'm sorry. I- ow!”
The brush dropped to the blue plush carpet, wrapped in Sara's dark hair. Her scalp throbbed. Sara wailed.
”Shut up!” Mummy's hand swung down from the ceiling, spanking again and again. Sometimes it hit her bottom, sometimes her back, shoulders, or neck.”I don't need this today, Sara.”
Sara sobbed. Mummy s.n.a.t.c.hed her by one arm and yanked her out of the bathroom, pinching so tightly that Sara's hand went cold. ”You're not fooling me, you little s.h.i.+t!” Mummy said. Sara squirmed. She couldn't think. She tried to run, but Mummy yanked the arm, which twisted like rope as she rose to her tiptoes. Mummy slapped some more, hitting Sara's head and face as she spun. Something crunched and popped in Sara's elbow and her fingers went numb.
Sara ... disappeared. Not all of her. Her body was still there. She could still see and hear. Even talk if there was someone to listen. But part of her was sliding down inside her mind, disappearing like Alice in the rabbit hole. That little part- that little Sara- landed in complete darkness deep inside, insulated and alone. She stopped crying. The insulated little Sara knew that crying was useless. Her arm throbbed, but that was useless, too. After a few more swings, Mummy stopped hitting and let go of the arm, which Sara let hang loosely at her side.
Mummy grabbed the shoulder of Sara's dress, pus.h.i.+ng her along. Together they marched down the hall and down the stairs, faster than Sara could comfortably walk. Mummy was still talking fast. ”You know we're throwing this very important party tonight, and on top of everything else I have to search all over for you. And when I find you I see you don't have the common decency to leave other people's things alone! Stop sniffling like it's so tough on you! This is what happens when you are bad.”
Down inside wherever she was, the little Sara remembered the Alice book. It should have been scary, but words on paper were never as frightening as when real things happened. Maybe that was why the little part of her there saw only words now, white letters suspended on the pitch black all around her. Mummy's words.
This is what happens when you are bad.
Being here was like cheating! All the other times she had been bad, she had felt the pain. The twisting, the hitting ... sometimes the bruises would hurt for a really long time. But now, down here, separated from her body like this, she felt nothing. Sara had become so bad now she was cheating her way out of her punishment.
Karen, a filing clerk from her father's office, stood at the muted gold-colored counter, picking at a plant with her usual blank expression. Sometimes Mummy was really nice when guests were visiting, but Karen didn't count. She seemed to blend in with the busy beige pattern on the wallpaper behind her.
Mummy heaved Sara forward like a bowling ball.
Mummy's face looked angry and sick, like maybe someone had just given her poison. ”Do you think this is a day when I have time for your little games, Sara? Do you?”
Sara's face felt loose and her mouth hung open.
”Look at this place! Can't you see how hard I'm working!” Her mother's shriek rose in pitch and volume. ”And on the day of the most important party of my career, you just had to show me how little I mean to you, is that it?”
Her mother grabbed the back of Sara's neck, turning her toward the counter and pus.h.i.+ng her face down into the sink, where it hovered over the plate she'd used for lunch.
”What's the meaning of this?” her mother said. It sounded like her teeth were clenched together. The hand on Sara's neck rocked her whole body as her mother took huge, hissing breaths.
Sara managed to speak, but all her words came out with the same tone. ”I'm sorry, Mummy. It was just one hamburger bun from the back of the refrigerator and a little bit of cheese. I didn't know it was party food-”
”Oh, poor, pathetic little baby! Don't you try that s.h.i.+t, thinking you're going to make Karen feel sorry for you. You know I don't care about a hamburger bun. What I do care about is the G.o.dd.a.m.ned mess! You can't just leave dirty dishes just lying out!”
A smear of white on the plate still clung to a few stray sesame seeds. The edge of the sink was wet. She hunched her shoulders to keep from staining the plaid dress that matched her mother's.
From inside the sink, Mummy's voice sounded far away. ”This is not the time for you to make a statement about how little you respect me, Sara. You've made that point well enough already. You know everything has to be perfect today, and still you go out of your way to mess it up. My career is very important, Sara, and I will not have it spoiled because of you. Now clean it up!”
Once during a big argument Daddy had laughed at Mummy when she'd talked about her career. He'd said that organizing the volunteers of the North Sh.o.r.e Ladies' League couldn't be a career because n.o.body paid her to do it.
Mummy released her grip. Sara reached for the plate. ”I'm sorry, Mummy. The dishwasher was running when- ”
Her mother turned to Karen and the plant, her anger vanis.h.i.+ng. Now she was official, like a boss. ”Karen, I told you to throw that d.a.m.ned thing out. Why is it still here?”
”Oh, well, you said it was dead, but really it just had a few brown leaves. I thought- ”
Mummy turned away, s.n.a.t.c.hing the phone and dialing a number. ”Just throw it out. Once they start to go, there's no sense in keeping them around.” Sara reached under the sink to find the dish soap.
”Doctor Harris Garner, please,” Mummy said into the phone. ”Yes. This is Lacey Usher of the Ladies' League.” Her voice sounded very proper, like a queen telling someone the rules in a movie.
In the black nothing where the little Sara had gone, words appeared all by themselves: The Queen of Hearts.
Sara scrubbed the plate and rinsed it, closing one eye to watch Mummy without having to turn her head. If Mummy was a queen, then Sara must be a princess. Her head felt like a sunburn at the place where the hairs had come out.
”Doctor Garner? Lacey Usher. I was just calling to thank you for your very generous donation to the League's Christmas drive this year ... Yes. It's ... Yes.” Now Mummy's voice sounded happy and giggly. ”It's so nice to see a doctor who knows there's more to life than medicine, Doctor Garner, and we- oh, Harry, then, thank you, and do call me Lacey ... I hope you're still planning on coming to our little party tonight at the house, it wouldn't be the same without you ... Great. Oh, no, if you're late for paddle tennis, I completely understand that you have to go- that's how you stay in such great shape, I'm sure. Oh, yes. People notice. We'll see you in about five hours, then.”
Sara washed the coffee cups in the sink, too. Lipstick was always hard to scrub. Her mother turned to Karen as she hung up the phone, her smile fading like a camera flash.
”Well, at least one thing's going right,” she told Karen. ”Harry will be here tonight ... with that dingbat wife of his. I just hope Sara will behave once the party starts; I don't know how much more of this I can take from her.”
Karen nodded sympathetically to Mummy, her eyes drooping like a tired hound's.
Sara dried the last cup and placed it back in the cabinet, heading quickly out the kitchen door. Her mother's voice followed her.
”For some reason she always acts up around the holidays. You know last year she gave her father this lovely little thing she'd made at school, made of wood with little seeds glued onto it, but then she gave me this ugly lump of clay with horrible google eyes stuck in. She was trying to tell me how much she hated me, as if I didn't already know.”
Mummy's words hung suspended. Ugly lump of clay with horrible google eyes... Down deep inside the rabbit hole, little Sara remembered the gift. It was supposed to have been an elephant.
The city lights flew past as the shuddering machine carried them off to the Blue Lotus, with the radio pounding out an electronic rhythm.
”I feel great,” she said. ”Really. I mean, I remember feeling all warm and tingly like this when I did c.o.ke before, but I've never felt anything so intense. I'm not afraid of anything. Bring on the crowds! I could probably jump off a building and not even feel it.” She laughed and laughed. That was the funniest idea in the entire world.
Her mouth kept going. ”And the memories? Like about my backstabbing friends and my family- all that s.h.i.+t- just gone! Like magic. It's probably from when you bit me the other night.” The whole city seemed to echo with the power of her laugh.
”Sure,” he said. ”It couldn't be that I have better c.o.ke than high school boys do.”
”Yeah, okay,” she said, smiling and running her fingertips over the dashboard. ”But if it's all c.o.ke, why do I feel so comfortable? c.o.ke's supposed to make me all hyper and jittery. But this is perfect. It's just a perfect, perfect, perfect feeling. I'm not nervous at all. I feel so strong. I'm invincible!” She laughed again. ”Something big is about to happen. Any minute now. I can feel it. Can't you feel it?”
He didn't respond.
”It doesn't matter, that thing you said about hunger. I've been hungry my whole life. I was hungry for love, you know? And ... and friends.h.i.+p ... and, and trust. So, if I suddenly was hungry for blood, what'd be different? At least there'd be plenty of it around.”
”One more of these, please,” Sara said, raising her gla.s.s to show the waiter as he pa.s.sed behind her. She didn't need to see him. She'd smelled the hint of cologne he wore mixed with some shots of tequila and pieces of lime on the tray he carried. She watched the dancers out on the floor, gyrating to Aldo Nova: ”... Life is just a fantasy. Can you live this fantasy life?”