Stain (3 page)

When she leaves she doesn’t close the door behind her, but I won’t be in my room for much longer. Putting the blow-dryer on low, I take hold of the black, wooden back, boar-bristled brush and make short work of drying my hair. It’s roughly twelve minutes later before I set the dryer and brush back down, confident that I’ve taken out every last bit of moisture from the blond strands. It’s not too often that I leave my hair unbound and today won’t be any different as I section it in two parts and go to work on plaiting one side and then the other into my customary French braids. Tying the end of each braid with a clear elastic band from the container closest to the mirror, they hang like two golden ropes down my back. Stepping away from the vanity with the knowledge I look as I’ve always looked, plain, modest, and inconspicuous, I head to my bookshelf to find my scriptures, notebook, and sketchpad. My beige canvas bag and book bag are flopped along the side of my study desk, exactly where I left them the night before. Grabbing my canvas bag, I set my bible, notebook, and sketchpad inside, along with my dark gray charcoal case holder. With any luck I can sneak away during church to get some sketching done.  

Chapter 3

Aylee

I make my way down the hallway of the single-family home that they’ve had since before I moved in with them. Artistically placed over the flowered wallpapers are framed photographs of me and them over the years, before Sarah was born. Christmas and birthday photos display a loving family, flanked by Rachel and her ever-present Stepford wife smile at one side and Timothy, the bulky, grim-faced police detective on the other, with my place always being between them. I’m not smiling and I don’t sport exactly the same grim expression as Tim, but I’m just there. Expressionless. I prefer looking at the opposite wall because the photographs on that wall ring closer to the truth. Sarah and her parents—even though it’s not entirely true—give the semblance of a loving, authentic family.

The stairs creak as I descend, making my way to the kitchen. The house’s décor brings to mind a dated bed-and-breakfast. The same pale yellow, flowery wallpaper from the hallway is a persistent theme throughout the house. Speaking all too clearly of Rachel’s bad taste in décor. In the living room, two couches and a love seat in blush rose upholstery dominate the space. The focal point of the living room is the red stone fireplace around which each piece of furniture has been placed. The room further saturated by the massive china cabinet on the left-hand corner. There are more photographs on the mantel, but thankfully fewer of me.

When I finally make an appearance, it’s to find them all in the kitchen. Rachel is at the stove where I’m sure she’s been since seven AM this morning. My eyes shift to the digital clock on the microwave situated on the countertop that now reads half past nine. Two and half hours in the kitchen prepping breakfast for an army when there was only three people to feed. Looking at her, you wouldn’t know she’s been slaving over a hot stove. She’s always been meticulous with her appearance, today she is doubly so because it’s Sunday and church is like her personal runway show. She pays special attention to what she wears. Her strawberry blond hair is pulled up into a clean, tight topknot. The smattering of freckles typically visible on her pale face are expertly covered by a touch of makeup. Her lavender dress fits her petite body nicely, but not tight enough to make it indecent; the gold belt that cinches her waist is a perfect accompaniment to the gold heels at her feet. She wears a large statement necklace that offsets the dress and the watch Tim had gotten her for her birthday a few years ago. Everything looks in place. Perfect. No one would momentarily suspect that beneath the white cardigan she wears over the dress lay healing bruises Tim had given her the week before in one of his alcohol-induced rages. Those imperfections she hides well from the world. She and I are alike in that way.

“There you are,” she greets with reproach when she finally notices my presence. “Any longer and I was going to send your father up there to check on you.” I do a good job at tamping down the automatic cringe the notion conjures and instead grab the glass of orange juice she offers. With her nose stuck in a book, Sarah barely notices when I glide on the chair next to her.

“I had a late night,” I say, quietly, taking a sip of my juice.

Alarmed, Rachel turns to me, “Is it the nightmares again? Do we need to call Dr. Peters?”

“No,” I answer, and it comes out a little too quickly, but I need to allay her concern so that it doesn’t snowball into something else. “I just have a heavy course load.”

It’s taken me close to two years to gain back some of the freedom I lost when I ended up in the hospital for cutting myself. Being forced to undergo one-on-one therapy with Dr. Peters had been one of the more upsetting repercussions of my actions. It’d been good at first. I spoke and he did what he was paid to do, listen intently while providing topical doses of psychobabble when he’d felt it was necessary of the moment. It took me two months to realize Dr. Peters wasn’t out for my best interest, but rather implemented in my life to keep Tim in the know about everything that was said in our private sessions. I was stupid enough to be lulled into a false sense of security, foolish enough to believe I could trust anyone. I trusted Dr. Peters with one of my secrets, told him of Tim and his propensity for violence toward Rachel when he drank too much. The scalding burn of Tim’s open-palm smack across my face along with the threat to keep my “goddamn mouth shut” was how I learned of Dr. Peters’ betrayal. I barely spoke in my sessions with Dr. Peters after that, and when I did, it’d been of nothing consequential. It took me having to lie and feign normalcy in therapy to eventually convince Rachel I was doing good and that my desire to join an outpatient group would be more beneficial to my treatment. But the problem came in convincing Tim. Rachel had brought up the subject to him like she tended to do concerning every decision in her life, and I’d been completely sure he was going to say “no.” So it came as a surprise when he actually capitulated and allowed me to get out from Dr. Peters’ watchful eye. Nearly a year later, and I have yet to understand why he did it. I don’t believe for one second it’d been done out of the kindness of his heart. Tim is heartless. It was always better to remain suspicious of good intentions, especially from him.

“Well, all right,” she says, setting a plate piled with scrambled eggs, bacon, and home fries in front of me. “But you know how you get, Aylee. You can get so wrapped up in your school work you let it run your life. Your father and I want you to do well in school, but not at the expense of your health, sweetie. Isn’t that right, Tim?” Another plate accompanies the first, this one stacked with four fluffy pancakes, but the food is the last thing on my mind as my body stiffens reflexively, a cringe scraping down my back at having his attention called to me. The open, upraise newspaper that intermittently crinkles as the reader shuffles from one page to the other drops in one corner to reveal Tim’s expressionless face. 

“Let her be,” he begins, the heated spotlight of his black eyes fully aimed on me. “She’s doing exactly what’s expected of her.” The meaning of those words sits like a layer of sediments beneath the ocean’s thickness of tension.

I keep my own eyes fixed on the heart attack plate Rachel set in front me. Better this view than the nightmare of his gaze. 

Rachel sighs. “Yes, she always does exactly what we ask of her. I’m just worried, that’s all. I understand you’re a senior now, and you need to study hard, but I don’t want you overstressed, you’ll get wrinkles.” God forbid that. “Well, anyway. Eat up, we’re leaving in twenty minutes. Seconds, Sarah?”

I eat what I can of the large meal set in front of me, even though I’m not much of a breakfast person, but knowing food intake is being monitored, I take a few more bites to put Rachel at ease. The remainder of breakfast thankfully passes by uneventfully. We pile into the gray sandstone Acura MDX fifteen minutes later and pull out of the two-car garage. Tim is driving, and Rachel takes the passenger seat while Sarah and I hop in the back. She’s still too consumed with her book to say anything to me. But I don’t mind because I’m not in the mood for conversation. The drive to church is a relatively silent one except for the Christian contemporary music chirping softly from the subwoofers. We live on the border of the second largest city in Massachusetts, except there’s no quaint New England charm about the grittiness of Trenton. It’s known more for its crime rate than any of the other notable things that have happened in its long history. Our house however is located miles away from where crimes are most rampant. But then I’ve learned even the worst crimes can happen in the nicest towns and in the most beautiful homes. It is about how well those who commit these crimes hide them and how much influence and power they wield. Tim works for the Trenton police department, and his position as sergeant affords him a lot of authority. There aren’t too many people lining up to question his actions. We arrive at church with ten minutes to spare, and Tim takes a second to instruct us to go find our seats before resuming conversation with fellow church members, Rachel, the dutiful wife, firmly plastered at his side. 

“There’s Emily and Sally,” Sarah says, at my side, her head craning above the wandering crowd to better see the two girls. “Do you think Daddy will mind if I sat with them?” She turns back to me to ask as we find a place to sit in the second semicircle row of red chairs facing a wide stage with a podium at the center. It isn’t hard for me to find the answer to her question because Tim has always been different with Sarah, more lenient, more tolerant. But then why wouldn’t he be? She was his flesh and blood. There was no comparison to be made between me and Sarah because I wasn’t a factor. Tim’s affinity for little girls didn’t seem to extend to his daughter. Thank God for that.

I’m hesitant in replying, “I think he might be okay...”

“Great, just let them know where I am.” She bounds away before I can stop her.

The moment I take a seat, Rachel and Tim come in from the opposite direction, gradually making their way down until they reach me. I’m spared from sitting next to Tim as Rachel takes the closest seat next to me. A cursory glance around prompts her to ask where Sarah disappeared to.

“She’s sitting with her friends,” I whisper, tilting my head a bit toward her to point at the trio of girls seated at the front right side of the service room. She gives a brief nod before turning to Tim to relay the information. There’s no more exchange between us after that as the band walks up the stage to start the customary fifteen minutes of worship. Soon after, the pastor glides onto the stage and I tune him out. The hour of service crawls by but soon we’re filing out of the service room and split up for hour two and three of Sunday classes. Everyone has a place to be, even the toddlers, who are shephered downstairs to the nursery. The rest of us are broken up by age and gender. The men remain in the service room for elder meetings, while the younger population, ages thirteen to seventeen, are led to one of the classrooms on the first floor for deacon preaching. With the women of the church outnumbering the men two to one, we’re given the entire second floor for classrooms for our meetings. The women’s devotional is Rachel’s group, the eighteen and older crowd, and while I’ll be there in a few months, I’m grateful I don’t have to join her today. My class is the young women’s devotional, and I head upstairs with the herd, though I purposely linger behind. Watching Rachel turn the corner and head inside the first room to the right of the staircase, I proceed down the carpeted hallway, but rather than follow the rest of the girls my age into the last room to the left, I continue forward, tension making my muscles tight as I silently hope that no one stops me.

“Aylee, sweetheart, where are you going?”

My abrupt stop causes my heart to lurch against my chest, crashing against my breastbone. Closing my eyes, I silently curse. I clutch the beige double handles of my bag as though they’ll keep me in place when all I want to do is ignore the inquiry and keep going. But propriety forces me to turn around. Janet Leeson is the church gossip, she talks about everyone, minds everyone’s business but her own. And the irony is her own home life is in complete shambles. Her husband is a known adulterer in the community, her son’s a crossdresser who left home when he was fifteen because her intolerant bigotry chased him away, and I once overheard Rachel tell Tim people suspected her of dipping a hand or two in the tithe and offerings. Everyone in the church community is good at pretending here, so they smile and laugh with her when in actuality, they hate her guts. With all that going on you would think she’d have the sense to feel a little bit of shame and not pry into people’s lives. But that doesn’t seem at all likely.

“Just need to go to the bathroom, Sister Leeson.”

She smiles with a nod, “Oh, all right, sweetheart. I’d hurry if I were you, I wouldn’t want to miss devotional.”

“No, of course not. I’m just going to head in and come back.” That’s a lie. I have no plans of returning until church is good and over. I’m sure she’ll mention this interaction to Rachel, but I count on the fact that Rachel can’t stand her so she won’t take anything Janet says seriously. She rarely ever does. “I’ll see you later, Sister Leeson.”

“Bye, sweetheart.”

I’m down the third step before she calls her goodbye out to me. I make it out of the back exit without any more interruption and step out into the sunlight. The midmorning sun beams down on me. Fall is in the cool breeze that sweeps against my skin, rustling leaves around me, and tousling the short tendrils of hair that manage to escape my two braids. I brush them behind my ears as I follow the beaten path into the forest behind the church. With the tree crowns forming a barrier above to protect the habitat below, only rays of filtered sunshine trickle through the canopy of green leaves, giving the forest a shadowed, magical appearance that would’ve made an awesome shower. The water is a great subject to sketch. But it’s the cemetery just beyond the forest that I’m interested in. I discovered it a few months ago, over summer vacation when I first started skipping devotional to explore the forest. I loved it the minute I saw it because it wasn’t like anything I typically drew. There was nothing conventional, or beautiful, or even picturesque about the old cemetery that had been abandoned many years ago by the church because I assumed there were no more graves. It was in badly need of upkeep now, but doing that would strip it of its allure. It’s unrepentantly ugly, with years of decay painted across sunken, cracked, or listing tombstones overtaken by mold and moss. It’s silly of me to think of a place as being lonely, but this cemetery has that feel to it. The crows, its only occupants, have made it their home. Some of them are perched on the tombstones, while others gather like a bad omen to peck and scavenge at the ground for food. I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by it, but the dark, haunted setting always makes my fingers itch for charcoal and my sketchpad.