Save Johanna! (19 page)

“We lived alone, just he and I in that huge Victorian house where everything was dark brown and maroon with heavy velvet drapes that kept out any sunlight. Sarah, a woman from the congregation, cleaned for us three times a week. She cooked for us too, heavy brown stews that clogged my throat, but she was a nice woman, and I looked forward to seeing her. She brought in a pleasant ordinariness that lightened some of the intensity of my world.

“When we were alone, Father and I, we said very little. Though he was never in any way demonstrative toward me when my mother was alive, after she died it was as if he deliberately held himself apart from me. I was very lonely and missed her terribly.

“That particular night, as I lay in my bed, I decided to make my birthday my secret day that I would share only with my mother. I remember turning on my side toward the far wall, happy with my decision and beginning to slip into sleep, when I felt something odd. I stared ahead at the wall, listening without moving, but I heard nothing. Then I saw what I had felt. Ahead of me, halfway up the wall, was the outline of a huge, wide shadow. It went all the way down to the bottom of the wall, broke and spread across the floor, then disappeared behind the foot of my bed. Fearing some storybook monster, I lay frozen. Then I heard my father’s breathing and felt his hand caress my hair and, like puppies do sometimes, I remember moving into it, wanting more. I needed the love so badly. . . .”

Sephra’s silence seeps into the haze of my brain with a foreboding akin to nausea. I wait for her to continue.

“But it wasn’t love, Johanna,” she says, and years of locked-in fury explode in her voice. “The hellfire and damnation he whipped his congregation with became mine. Nightly this pious leader, this monster demon, my own father came to my bed and with his black and hairy fingers unbuttoned my pajamas and as I lay stiff with horror abused my body and tore apart my soul.”

Sephra, my older sister, the rock of my life, collapses into sobs as she curses out a two-year nightmare. And then her voice grows quiet and sad again. “I was just a little girl, Johanna, little as my Betsy, scared and ashamed, with no one to help me. Once I tried to tell Sarah, but when she realized what I was saying she turned on me and said that God would strike me dead if I ever made up another story like that again. I never said a word to anyone after that.

“My only defense was to retreat deep inside myself, leaving the outside intact but dead. In school my teachers saw the change, but like everyone else they were too intimidated by Father’s position to interfere.

“The torture lasted until I was twelve, the year he married your mother.

“Johanna, I loved your mother right away. She was so good to me, and when you were born I loved you too.”

“Sephra, I’m so sorry. I wish I had known. At least we could have shared the pain.”

“Johanna,” she says, “there’s more.” Her very words signal a chill that shudders through my body. Black feelings that have terrorized me for years begin to well up, and I wait silently to hear what in some hidden place in my mind I already know.

In a voice evened out by control she continues. “One afternoon we were home alone. You were about four and had just gotten over a very bad flu and were still in bed, recovering. I was at the kitchen table, reading a magazine, when I heard you crying. I remember grabbing a cookie for you as I left the kitchen. On the way up the stairs to your bedroom, I sensed your cry changing to a whimper, and I hurried on, thinking you must have hurt yourself.

“From the top of the steps your door looked closed. You never closed your door. You were too afraid of being alone. The strangeness of it registered on me, but it was too small for any alarm. I continued down the hall, perhaps a bit more cautiously, and when I got there I saw that the door wasn’t completely closed . . . but it was meant to be.”

“Sephra . . . no more.”

“Let me say it, Johanna, listen to me. You need to know, and I have to tell you.”

“No . . . no.”

“I
need
to tell you.”

I could put the phone down, but that wouldn’t end it. It’s too late for anything but the truth. I listen, and she continues in a passionless voice. “At first I could only hear your voice,” she says, “but then there was another voice, a whisper, and before I looked I knew he was in there with you. I wanted to turn and run, but instead, very carefully and quietly, with one finger I poked open the door a tiny bit and looked in.”

Now anger and hate rip open her control, and she screams her fury at that vile and hideous creature who was our father. I listen, mesmerized, as she places together the pieces that have been floating around in my brain, tormenting me all my life. And the fright and the pain and the terror come back at me and still I listen, but now her horror is even greater. Sephra cries as she speaks. “I wanted to kick open the door and rush in and save you. I wanted to rip you away from him and hold you safe in my arms. Tight! Tight! He’d have had to kill me to get you. I swear it. . . . I wanted to, Johanna, I wanted to . . . but I couldn’t. Instead I stood outside the door and watched, as if in a dream, as powerless to help you as I had been to help myself. I heard the agony of your sobs . . . to this day I hear them, and the sight of that scene still flashes in my brain with tortuous frequency.”

I am weeping. For that little girl, for my whole life, and now for Sephra too.

“I didn’t hear your mother coming up the stairs. I wasn’t aware of her until she flung the door open and raced in, diving at him and tearing at his arms. He jumped up in horror, shouting, ‘No! No! It isn’t so!’ And then in anguish cried out for God to forgive him, that he couldn’t help himself, but he saw that she was insane with fury and, rushing past me, fled down the steps and out the front door. She grabbed you off the bed with one arm, half carrying you, and with the other hand holding mine took us both down the hall to her bedroom.

“Somehow during that short walk she managed to compose herself, and by the time she got us onto her bed, she was calmer. She told us that our father was a very sick man and that she was going to go out and find him and bring him to the hospital because that was the only place he could get the help he needed. We were to wait here, and she would be back as quickly as she could. And then she left. I watched her from the window. He was waiting for her in the car. She walked around to the driver’s seat and they talked, but he kept shaking his head no, and then she walked around to the other side and got in. When the car pulled out of the driveway, Father was driving.”

The line goes deathly quiet. I hear Sephra’s breathing, quick, shallow breaths at the other end. Or is that me?

“I remember it, Sephra,” I say softly. “I remember the car leaving, not when it happened but in the nightmare I have over and over again. I’m watching you and crying. In the dream I’m being punished for something. My mother is angry at me, and that’s why she’s leaving. You’re crying too, and I think you’re also angry at me. I never know why, but I feel I’m to blame. And the end is always the same. We wait for her. But she never comes back.”

Sephra says, “No, she never did. They said it was an accident, but I never thought it was. He crashed that car on purpose. I know it. He couldn’t face the world, not as a sinner, contrite and human, not him. Not when he thought he was God.”

“He killed her.”

“I say he did, but no one would have believed me. People were very kind to us. They said they’d never seen children suffer so much. They talked about what a great loss to the community Father’s death was, and I never said a word about him or what happened. You were so traumatized that you barely spoke for almost a year. You couldn’t even go to kindergarten.

“We were living with the Winstons by then, and you stayed home with Mrs. Winston. You cried every morning when I left for school, and when I came home you would attach yourself to me and silently follow me around, never letting me out of your sight, loving me as if I were the only person left in the whole world. But the heavy guilt I carried wouldn’t allow me to accept that love. I turned away from you, making my guilt even greater.”

I’m overcome with a profound misery. Sobs break into my words. “It’s all so ugly and awful,” I say, “and so much a part of me, I’ll never get away from it.”

“It’s a part of me too, Johanna. Please, I failed you once, and I can never forgive myself for it. Let me help you now. I’ll do anything. I love you so. . . .”

“I love you too, Sephra, and I forgive you, but you can’t help me.”

“I can. I know it. Just tell me where you are. Please, Johanna . . . ”

The possibility of allowing myself to fall into her strong hands and be taken care of, loved, helped . . . it’s all so tempting.

I yield and tell Sephra where I am.

“It’s going to be all right, Johanna,” she says. “I promise you. We’ll work it out together. I’m going to make the first flight I can tonight and be in New York by tomorrow morning. Stay where you are and wait for me. Trust me, Johanna, please.”

“I do, Sephra. . . .”

“Together we have the strength, something neither of us have had alone. Promise you’ll wait for me, Johanna, promise me you won’t do anything alone.”

But suddenly I’m frightened. Maybe it was a mistake to tell her where I am. She’ll certainly call David, and then both of them will move into my life and take control from me. They might not let me finish the book. Sephra will recognize the dark shadow of Father and know who Avrum really is. She’ll never let me continue. But I must write them, exorcise them from my life, both of them—Avrum and my father.

“Johanna?” Sephra is talking to me again. “Johanna, are you there?”

My mind is in turmoil. I must complete the book. I could be finished today. I have only a few pages left to write. If Sephra told David and he left right now, that would still give me three hours before he got here. And then he would be here, with me, loving me, protecting me. . . . Oh, God, I need David so desperately.

I hear Sephra’s voice. “Johanna, are you there?”

While she waits for me to answer, I quietly place the receiver down on the hook and move quickly to the computer. I could do it in three hours, but I feel so tired. There’s a terrible exhaustion weighing me down. I won’t be able to work unless I can take some Dexedrines, but I can’t seem to remember what I did with them. Then it comes to me. I put them on the windowsill in the kitchen. And that’s where I find them, but I have only six left. I thought I had a full bottle.

I take one and wait for the sleepiness to lift. While I’m waiting I make my plans. First I have to work quickly and finish before David gets here. I should have told Sephra not to come. She’ll bring all those nightmares into my life again. And then David will know all about me. I don’t want that. I have to stop her, but how? I’ve lost track. I feel so heavy that I must lie down for a while. Just for a moment. Here, on the floor.

Why did I choose Avrum, the most terrible of people; why have I polluted my life with him? Or do I deserve him? No, that’s not true.

If they’re one and the same, I have a chance now to wipe both evils from my life. I’ve caught Avrum in my book. I have him trapped. In one last chapter I can write him out of my life forever. Both of them at once.

But I can’t do it like this. I have only a few pills left. If I take them all it will power me through to the end, and by then David will be here, and I will be free to go to him.

But I must finish this last chapter. I take all the pills I have left and wash them down with wine. Seconds later I feel a charge of energy shooting through my body, and I can do it.

I know I can.

It was nearly two-thirty in the morning when the dark blue van slipped past the brick stanchions that led to the Wyndam Estates. The night was clear and so bright with the gray light from the full moon and the blaze of stars that it seemed as if dawn were only moments away.

Immediately inside the gate the terrain became hilly with gentle mounds of velvet lawns topped by long, low, expensive brick and stone homes barely peeking out from the lush of the shrubbery. In the valley, the road curled around each grass mountain, and every house had its own perch. There were no streetlights, but most houses had their own lights that either traced the long driveways or wove up the footpaths to the front doors. Most of them had been turned out for the night, and, except for an occasional dim hall light, the houses were dark inside.

They didn’t pass a single person, not even a stray dog. Swat was driving, and the four practice runs she had made earlier in the week, along with her natural ease at the wheel, took all the guesswork out of the complicated circles and crossroads. She took the turns as if she’d lived there all her life. Sitting back in the seat, her face aimed straight ahead at the road, she seemed relaxed; only the veiny tightness of her hands gripping the wheel gave any hint of tension.

Avrum was next to her, silent, almost in a trance. Directly behind him, Imogene sat leaning forward, her hand lightly, almost reverently, caressing the back of his hair. If he was aware of her, he made no sign. For a long time all were silent; then softly, in the high pitch of a child, Imogene began a monotonous four-note hum. Minutes passed, and neither Swat nor Avrum seemed to notice; then abruptly Avrum jerked his head away, and Imogene snapped her hand back and stopped in mid-hum. Now again all were silent.

Swat, who had kept herself in a state of controlled calm, began to be aware of a rising excitement. It started as easy waves that rolled up from her stomach and over her chest, but then they grew stronger, intensifying to a pounding power that charged her body and changed her breath to quick gasps. She knew where she was going and what would be done, but when she tried to imagine how it would happen, the actual feel of the bodily contact, a dizziness swept over her, and it took all her strength to wrench her concentration back to the empty road. And when she did, she was aware of Avrum, and the power of his presence quieted her, and she could empty her mind until the next assault.