On the Day I Died (17 page)

I cannot remember her exact words now, but I
know she explained the arrangements. She was there to cook and serve meals, do laundry and tidy the house. If I needed a new shirt, she would buy one. If I needed a doctor, she would fetch one. She was not there to entertain me or play with me. She was
not
my companion. When she finished, she waited for a reply.

“When will Mother be here?” I asked. “When is Father coming?”

I saw a little smile of scorn touch her lips, and I guessed at once that she had been told about my ponderings and considered me mad. Something in the expression of her face, so cool and politely impersonal, told me that she would also be watching me, her eyes always upon me, reporting back to Father.

“Your parents are not coming,” she said firmly. “No one is coming.”

And as days turned to weeks, and weeks became months, I resigned myself to the truth of her words. No one
was
coming. Not Mother. Not Father. Not ever.

Thus I gave in more and more to my ponderings. And though I knew Mrs. Usher’s eye was upon me, I easily dismissed her from my thoughts as I mused for long hours on the texture of a pinecone; became absorbed for the better part of a summer’s day on a blue shadow slanting across the floor; lost myself for an entire winter’s night in watching the steady flame of the gaslight. So many objects seized my attention, held me in thrall, that—how to explain this?—the years simply slipped by
unnoticed. Summer became winter. Winter became summer again. And still I pondered. The winking brass of the bureau drawer knobs. A hairline crack in a glass paperweight.

And then … 
the wallpaper
.

Pondering the wallpaper was unlike anything I had experienced before. Its whispers were clearer. More alive. And as I pondered the wallpaper, its patterns seemed to crawl deep inside me, revealing dark secrets … No! Reflecting my own darkness to me.

I could barely—just barely—make out a figure, skulking behind the confusing, uncertain curves of the wallpaper’s pattern. It crouched and crept, provoking me with its sly coyness. But I was cleverer. I pressed my ear to the wallpaper. Yes … there! The faint thump of a heart. I held a candle close. Aha! I caught the figure out of the corner of my eye. It scuttled into the shadows.

And then I discerned something else. The wallpaper, which looked so solid and substantial by daylight, dissolved in the candle’s glow. The roiling pattern shifted, taking on the shape of prison bars. The teeth above the bedstead clacked a warning. The glowering eyes blazed.

The skulking figure grew clearer, and I could see that it was a boy. A boy exactly like me, trapped within the malicious pattern. Alone.

All by himself
.

The glowering eyes of the wallpaper watched the boy’s every movement, while its teeth—those strong white teeth—kept guard, refusing to let the boy out.

I knew I had to help him. I had to free him!

With a howl of fury, I lunged at the paper. I pounded it with my fists, clawed at it with my fingernails until they were split and bloody. But still the paper clung stubbornly to the walls, thwarting me, enraging me.

“Hurry,” urged the boy in the wallpaper.

I redoubled my efforts, snatching a letter opener from a bedside table and gouging at the paper. I stabbed it, raked at it, skinned it from the plaster wall as one would a pelt from a rabbit. And at long last the paper surrendered, peeling away in great sticky strips. Those glowering eyes grew wide with fright. The teeth clenched in terror. The boy, at last, was free! I laughed victoriously as scraps of the odious red-flocked stuff dripped to the floor like dried blood. I fell back, panting and drenched in sweat.

Am I awake, or am I still pondering?

With a moan, I buried my face in my trembling hands.

Bits of sticky paper still clung to my shaggy hair, and red flocking still dusted my white shirt when Father suddenly appeared in the library like an apparition.

“Are you real?” I asked. “Or are you a figment?”

Father did not answer. He was assessing me, sizing me up in that way of his, taking in my gray pallor, my overlong hair, my red-rimmed eyes. It had been only this morning that I’d awakened from my struggle with the wallpaper—three whole days of focus—and I
was spent. But I knew that did not begin to explain the differences Father must have seen in me. Six years was a long time. I had changed from a boy to a man.

Asked Father, “Do you still suffer from those”—he searched for the word—“inclinations?”

I nodded.

He paused, collected himself, pulled his waistcoat straight. “No matter,” he said. “I didn’t make the trip to discuss that. Your mother is dead. She succumbed last week to cholera.” He waited for my response.

I gave him none.

“Her last wish was that I come and see you myself.”

As he talked I watched his thin pink lips parting to expose his hard teeth, gleaming white against his dark beard. Those teeth. How I wish to God I had never seen them!

“Have you nothing to say?” said Father.

I could not speak. The blood was boiling in my head, and my hands and feet were beginning to tingle.

From a distance I heard him say, “I shall have Mrs. Usher show me to my room.” I heard the library door close behind him.

Then all became dark, but I could still see him—Father’s face … his beard … his glowering eyes … those teeth. Those hard white teeth. Not a speck on their surface. Not a mark or indentation on their enamel. Perfect and glistening; now making a clacking sound, now a grinding sound.

NO!

I wrestled with my pondering, struggled against its strange and irresistible focus. But it was no use. Everything else faded away, and I was left with one mesmerizing thought—Father’s teeth. They, and they alone, were all I could see. My mind’s eye traveled over their surface, taking in their shape, their sharpness. They felt so real, as if I was holding them in my hand rather than my mind. My muscles tensed. My blood rose.

Night closed in on me, and still I pondered Father’s teeth.

The morning mists came and went, and still I pondered.

A second night passed, and a day, and still I remained motionless as visions of Father’s teeth floated above me—clenched, grimacing, commanding all my attention.

At last the clock in the hall chimed midnight and the spell was broken. I blinked, panting, suddenly free. In place of the spell, a feeling of dread began to creep over me. I had done something …

I searched my memory. But all that came to me was a dim recollection of a man’s voice crying out.

“What was it?” I asked myself.

My question was answered by a pounding on the library door. It banged open and two gray-uniformed policemen filled the doorway. Behind them stood Mrs. Usher. “There he is!” she shouted, pointing at me. “There’s the madman.”

I shook my head in confusion.

The first policeman pointed at my shirt.

I looked down. The white cotton was soaked with blood.

The second policeman grabbed my arm.

It was covered with scratches, and the crescent-moon imprints of human fingernails.

And then I remembered.

Oh, God, I remembered!

My eyes fell on the wooden cigar box sitting on the desk. I had put it there when … Shaking off the policeman’s hand, I bounded over to it.

“He’s going for a revolver!” shrieked Mrs. Usher.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!” shouted one of the policemen.

I ignored his warning and snatched up the box.

“I’m warning you, drop it!”

There came the soft click of a gun’s hammer being drawn back. But I was too feverish and agitated to care. I wrestled open the box. It slipped from my trembling fingers and fell with a crash to the floor. Oh, God … no!

Mrs. Usher screamed.

The policeman fired.

I felt a white-hot bolt of pain as I, too, fell to the floor.

The last things I saw, spilling from that wooden box, were a pair of bloody pliers and Father’s thirty-two hard white teeth.

“Jeez,” croaked Mike. He fell back against Carol Anne’s gravestone, gripping the cold granite for support as the
strength seeped out of his body, just drained out like water from a leaky bucket. “No wonder the guy looks so … so … hollowed out.”

“Yeah, that was awful, all right,” said a new voice, a female voice.

Truly
awful. Mike shuddered as Edgar retreated to the shadowy branches of the willow tree. “How could something like that happen?” Mike wondered out loud. “How could a father be so cruel?”

“Good old parents,” the girl said, raising her right eyebrow sarcastically. “They bring you into the world just to drive you crazy or dump you, you know?”

Mike turned to look at her now—a wiry girl with attitude. “You have a story you want to tell?”

She gave him a withering look. “Like why else would I have waited around all friggin’ night?” Stepping into the rapidly waning circle of moonlight, she hollered, “Okay, you freaks, listen up.”

Y
OU WANT TO KNOW why I was standing on the sow’s front porch that night? Because I didn’t have any other choice, that’s why. See, it was either the sow’s house or child protective custody, and frankly, I’d rather have my guts pulled out through my nose than spend another night in the ESC—that’s the Emergency Services Center, for those of you with nice, comfy homes.

The sow pushed open the screen door with her dough-fat hand, and a smell like dirty scalp escaped from the house. I wasn’t surprised. I mean, let’s face it, there was a sagging blue chest of drawers leaning against the porch railing and an open bag of cat food spilling down the stairs. Chicken-and-liver pellets had gone
crunch-crunch-crunch
beneath my platform shoes as I’d kicked aside papers and books and bits and pieces of busted-up sewing machine on my way to her door. I’d
even counted, like, seven pairs of identical white tennis shoes piled in a corner. Crazy!

The social worker standing next to me tried to peer past the sow’s fleshy bulk into the house. I could tell he was unsure about leaving me here, didn’t like the look of the place. He asked, “Do you mind if I step in, ma’am? Take a look around?”

“I certainly
do
mind,” she said. She straightened her beefy shoulders, tried to push out her sagging-to-the-waist boobs. “It’s bad enough being saddled with the girl for the weekend. I won’t have you in my house, too.”

The two locked eyes, and for a second I thought they might go at each other, you know?

Then the sow said, “Either sign her over right here or take her back where she came from.”

The social worker backed down. The last thing he wanted was to return me to his car, drive me all the way down to the ESC, especially after I’d called him “donkey breath” and smeared a booger under the car’s headrest. So he nodded, pulled out some paperwork, got the sow to sign on the dotted line. “Good luck, Tracy,” he said, acting all sincere the way grown-ups do when they can’t wait to be somewhere else. Then he practically danced down the littered walk to his car.

Mission accomplished: kid dumped.

The sow locked eyes with me now. “You’re Tracy,” she said.