Mom patted my knee with her thin hand. “Your father loves you, Lizzie. I hope you believe that. He’s rough with you, I know, but he’s afraid. He doesn’t want you to end up like Nina.
“He loved that girl too much. Sometimes I think he loved her more than he loves me. Men are strange that way. A wife has flaws and no one knows them better than her husband — but a daughter can be anything he wants to see. She looked like an angel, and that’s all your daddy saw. He couldn’t bear it when he found out. He couldn’t forgive her. He still can’t. That’s the evil that can come of love.”
I saw Nina twirling down the stairs in her pink dress with the crinoline slip that made it float around her legs. She was fourteen, like me. Nina didn’t have to tempt boys by painting herself like a bird. She was temptation itself. Everyone saw it, everyone but my father. “My baby,” he said, his voice a prayer, “my beautiful girl.”
“Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?” Mom said. “Your father wants you to stay his little girl. He says nasty things he doesn’t mean. Promise me you won’t be too hard on him.”
“I won’t,” I said. Just an hour before, she’d been railing at my father to go easy on me. Sometimes I thought she wanted me to love him in ways that she couldn’t. No wonder her soft cheeks were crossed with tiny lines. No wonder her long hair was streaked with gray.
We moved from the swing to the steps to look at the night sky. Once in a while Mom pointed and said, “Look at that!” Or, “There’s another one.” But I never saw a shooting star. Maybe she was only pretending, or wishing. Maybe the stars in the blur of tears that swelled slowly in the corners of her eyes seemed to leave a trail in the night.
We sat for an hour or more, until Daddy appeared, swaying down the poorly lit street, his hands in his pockets, the whistling man. Mom gripped my arm. “Don’t let him catch us,” she said. Even in his stupor he might sense we’d been talking about Nina.
I climbed slowly to my room, our room, Nina’s and mine, the room where she had read to me night after night to help me fall asleep. I was restless even then, chased by dogs at the edge of my dreams. I thought of that last summer and how there were so many mornings when I’d wake to find her curled around me in my bed instead of sprawled across her own. She must have known she wouldn’t be around that long; she was trying to say good-bye. At night the shadows in the yard were alive, swarming with boys. But I was only nine and didn’t understand. I tossed in her arms, kicked the blankets from us both and let her soft kisses fall on me, thinking they would always be as plentiful and constant as the rain.
That night I prayed to a god I barely knew, and I made a bargain. I didn’t want to be lost like Nina. We knew nothing of her life. I had no place to root her. In my mind, she drifted in a desert, parched at noon and frozen at midnight. I couldn’t stop thinking that what Zack and I had done in the tree house could make what happened to Nina happen to me. I saw the stain in the crotch of Zack’s jeans when he rolled away from me. I felt the pressure of his hipbones grinding into mine. Then I saw Daddy slapping Nina so hard I thought her jaw would snap and her teeth would clatter to the floor like the pieces of a broken teacup. I heard him call her those names, names I’d never heard before but understood at once; my father’s tone could not be mistaken. I crouched on the stairs. He grabbed her yellow hair, twisting it around his hand. He told her not to show her face in his house again, and she thought he meant it.
I was no purer than my sister, no more virtuous than that loathsome cruel boy who could snap the neck of a cat. A grin could tempt me, muscled arms could hold me down, a boy’s tongue in my mouth could make my hands numb.
That night I promised my new God that if He spared me, just this once, I would devote my life to His work. I’d never give Mother and Father cause for grief again. I would be good enough for two people: my sister and myself.
14
BY THE end of April I knew I’d been spared this time. I wasn’t going to end up like Nina, my stomach swelling so I couldn’t hide what I’d done. I figured a girl wasn’t going to get too many breaks in her life and that I’d better find a way to show God I was grateful. It wasn’t easy. Zack took no interest in me, so I had no opportunity to resist temptation.
I kept my eyes on the ground when Father spoke to me. I wore baggy pants and long sweaters so that even I wouldn’t notice my body. I set the table before I was asked, scrubbed the kitchen floor on my hands and knees, and scoured the toilet once a week. When I saw Marlene Grosswilder at school, I forced myself to think one kind thought. “That’s a pretty dress,” I said to her one day. She peered at me through her thick glasses, suspecting some nasty intention, then hurried away without a word. I smiled to myself: virtue was its own reward.
Still, I wasn’t satisfied. These were small changes. My knowledge of God’s truth was one drop of rain in the river. I didn’t want to do good things; I wanted to be good. The vast difference wasn’t lost on me even in my ignorance. I was hungry for the Lord now that I was sure He’d heard me. He’d let my beautiful sister go to ruin, had cast her into the wasteland, a barren place that was only beautiful when twilight turned the horizon green for half an hour. But He had chosen to pardon me. I began to wonder if I’d been saved for some special mission. A girl like me had little chance of becoming a saint or martyr. I’d have to accept a more ordinary course, without glory or recognition. By chance, Aunt Arlen revealed the simplicity of my calling.
She plunked herself down at our kitchen table. “Dean can stop flogging himself over this Lanfear Deets business,” she said. “I saw him this morning pumping gas out at Ike’s Truckstop, working every bit as fast as any two-fisted brute I ever saw. Thank God for Ike Turner, always willing to hire an Indian or a cripple. He took Miriam on too; she’s waitressing on the morning shift. I have to say, Lanfear looked like a happy man. I believe there’s a kind of person who’s so common he takes a certain pleasure in being maimed. Sets him off from the rest, know what I mean?”
“That’s the craziest thing I’ve heard you say all month,” Mom said.
“The lame shall enter first; says so right in the Bible,” said Arlen.
“No one wants to be deformed in a permanent way.”
I leaned against the stove, curling my fingers into a stiff claw to see if I could imagine a mangled hand making me feel special.
“Well, anyway,” Arlen said, “Dean can stop feeling responsible. Lanfear Deets most certainly is not suffering.”
“Dean knows he’s not to blame.”
“I got eyes, Evelyn. I’ve never seen my brother so thin. And his drinking is no secret.”
“We can’t all be fat and happy like Les,” Mom said. She made the word fat sound vile, something you wouldn’t want to touch, but Arlen didn’t choose to notice.
“Yes, he is happy, my oh my, don’t I know. He gave Justin and Marshall the word — six months and they’re out. Collin goes soon as he graduates. Fair warning. Les wants some privacy before we’re too dried up to enjoy it.” Arlen had become an expert on marital bliss ever since she’d gone back to Lester. I didn’t think it would last. I didn’t think that loving my uncle would be nearly as satisfying as bitching about him had always been. She turned around to look at me. “You keep that in mind, Lizzie. Find yourself a decent job or a half-decent man when you get out of high school. Give your parents some peace.”