At fifteen, Jude had already entered her age of sexual enlightenment in full splendor. Though still a virgin - barely - she boasted to all of her girlfriends she’d done everything but go all the way.
Her breasts looked dented, pale finger marks creasing the milky flesh. Danny’s short, hard grip imprinted on her tender skin, not that she cared, a means to an end. Tomorrow there would be bruises, maybe long red streaks, and Jude would have to wear her halter bikini to hide the marks, but she didn’t mind. When she let Danny touch her, she owned him.
Hattie
The candle was near death, its life flickering and shuddering and threatening to cast Hattie into a dark, off limits room with no beacon to guide her out. She leaned into it, holding the candle close as if that might stop the non-existent wind from blowing out the flame, but to no avail. It gave a closing wave and then sagged sideways, the wick taking its final sleep in a bed of molten wax.
In the darkness, Hattie’s eyes burned, and white spots danced in a canvas of black. Felix was nestled against her chest, his hard body comforting, his dry nose pressed into her neck, the way Gram Ruth held babies. Suffocating them, Jude said.
In the far corner, Gram’s big grandfather clock tick-tocked the seconds away. To fight her fear, she whispered them out loud, soothed by her voice in the silence, but also afraid of waking someone, of waking Gram. After counting three hundred and thirty-two seconds, she took a step and then another.
Hattie had visited the room often, only with Gram Ruth, of course, and knew the layout well. If she walked a direct path to the door, she would leave Felix’s cabinet to her left, Gram Ruth’s blue crushed velvet chaise would stand to her right. The only other obstacle would be the big, round marble table that held a crystal vase of flowers. This table stood in front of the glass French doors that opened into the room.
Hattie shuffled forward, sliding each foot out and then sliding the other to meet it, a snowshoer in socks. The darkness was not whole; it slithered away as her eyes adjusted, hulking shapes staring at her, their shadowy bulk a welcome sight. Her shin brushed the chaise, the velvet scratching along her bare calf inches below the hem of her rose-colored nightgown.
The glass doors were propped open and Hattie used a single hand to slide each closed. They ghosted over the plush carpeting in silence, only a single metallic click to give her away.
If taller, she might have taken the stairs two at a time, rushing to the sanctuary of level two, a faster ascent to her child’s pink bedroom. A Victorian-flavored room with curls and tendrils of pink, like the sugar plum dreams of such unfathomable innocence that only a child could stand it.
Hattie adored the room, loved it so fiercely she often cried just standing in its center, staring out across the expanse of decadence: the tall doll house carved of real wood and expertly decorated by a keen eye and tiny adult fingers. The front of the house opened, exposing the interior to any interested eyes, such a naughty privilege to peak so unashamedly into, not only the lives, but the furnishings of another. What child slept in that miniature cherry maple bed, its sky-blue lace coverlet tucked into the creases of wood, whittled for that very purpose? Hattie longed to climb into that house, to roam freely the rooms that flecked her dreams like sugar sprinkles on morning pancakes. A house so similar to Gram Ruth’s, but so distant, so unconnected, impossible to imagine how one could live within the other. And this, this spectacle, took up mere feet in her opulent bedroom.
Speak nothing of the downy stuffed toys heaped on the floor, but not haphazardly, no, carefully arranged on a wide chenille throw of periwinkle color. Then the vanity, gilded with a gold powder so fine it might have brushed off when touched, but didn’t, somehow clung like enchanted fairy dust to its delicate legs, to the smooth mirrored edges. The glass table was adorned with bottles of fragrance - perfume in aquamarine bottles, or amber hued, shaped as smooth round crystal balls or tall thin feminine bodies. Aromas not meant for any child and surely not meant for a child such as Hattie. A child whose own mother preferred the scents of strong ivory soap and the bitter odor of burning wood.
Though Gram Ruth lived in a mansion, it was an old mansion. Haunted old, Jude said. Creepy old, according to Peter. And it was true, all they said. Many times Hattie had stayed awake long into the night whispering with her mother about the spirits who wandered Gram Ruth’s home and property, but that was their little secret.
Hattie maneuvered, like a stealthy cat, leaping with the wistful air of a floating feather, landing on the spongy front pads of her feet, defying the house in its desire to ferret her out to her heavily sleeping grandmother.
At the top of the Grand Staircase, Hattie stopped. The hall was dark, and yet at the far end, she could see the girl in the yellow dress. She stood outside Hattie’s door, her eyes vacant, one hand swinging against her side like a rag doll’s.
“I don’t want to see you, right now,” Hattie whispered, repeating the words her mother taught her.
She stared at Felix for a long time, saying it over and over again. When she looked back up, the hall was empty.
Jude
Jude longed to shower, her skin was smeared with the salty saliva of Danny’s wandering mouth, but Gram had a hard rule of no showers after nine pm. She reigned over her grandchildren like a frigid nun supervises orphans.
Jude did not even play at liking Gram Ruth, who also did not feign at liking her. They were two opposing female forces, on such opposite ends in the world of what female meant, they could hardly be lumped together solely based on their sexual parts.
Jude fancied herself a feminist, an empowered woman, a young, hot-blooded sexualized animal intent on carving her place out in the world of men. Gram Ruth may have considered herself a feminist as well, though the kind that settled into patriarchy as if it were good manners rather than direct oppression. At sixty-five, she continued to wear girdles heavily laced up her back, tighter and tighter until the softly lined skin of her aging bosom toppled over the stiff fabric. Her panties were large, bleached white, and covered everything, including her sadly sloping ass and the pouch of curdled belly that hung below Gram’s bellybutton like an alien twin. The type of secret body anarchy that besieged all aging peoples, women especially, slowly taking over their body as a final ‘fuck you’ to the chaos of life already endured.
Showers were not permitted after nine pm, nor was music, television, loud talking, telephone calls (unless for Gram Ruth), playing outside, playing inside, visitors and anything that might be remotely fun.
In previous years, Jude had avoided breaking the rules. She followed Gram’s stern instructions, taking only minor consolations like late night reading or an occasional midnight snack after Gram had already stated, “the kitchen is closed.”
However, all that had changed when Jude’s parents had dropped her and her siblings at Gram Ruth’s door that summer. The act did not look different from the outside; there were no teary-eyed goodbyes or strange melancholy silences. Her parents had stopped for a quick chat with Gram, pecked the kids on their already sun-burnt cheeks, and loaded back in their station wagon, bumper bruised and rust peeking from the tire wells. Nothing out of the ordinary was said that day, no slip of the tongue, or overheard conversations, but Jude knew. Something was amiss - the careful alignment of their small family had fallen off its tracks. She knew her parents’ scowls, smiles, forehead creases, clammy hands, tone of voices, body postures. She recognized a good hug (full body contact) versus a bad hug (shoulders and arms only).