For week 2, the assignment was to write a 2 character short story, from the child's point of view, in which a child catches an adult in a lie.
Becca wasn't particularly interested in the contents of the box hidden in the utility closet - not when she first found it. It held old newspaper clippings with pictures of people she didn't know and some odds-and-ends that were of no particular interest to her. She was looking for something more exciting, perhaps something secret that her mother had deliberately hidden from her.
She found the box of chocolates in her mother's lingerie drawer. The best part was the danger and excitement of stealing just one, then waiting, waiting to see if the theft would be detected. It never was. And if her petty thievery had been discovered, her mother had been most generous in not prosecuting her for her crime.
She wasn't inclined to think good thoughts about the woman with whom she currently lived. She was only six, but had spent the majority of her young life being cared for by almost everyone except her mother. 'Bonding' is a contemporary concept; in the early 1940s, raising a well-behaved, disciplined child - by whatever means it took to do so - was the methodology of choice. She was much more likely to get the back of her mother's hand across her face than she was to get a hug. The best Becca could normally hope for was her mom's smile of pride when friends and family complimented her on how well-behaved her daughter was.
What none of them evidently knew was that the child was exceptionally intelligent. They seemed to think that the pretty, golden haired six year old was some kind of walks-on-water angel-child and, of course, all of the credit went to her mother. In truth, the child learned early that, when in the presence of her mother or mother's friends, the only way to avoid the humiliation of that backhand was to follow all of the rules - to the letter. When she was alone... well, that was another matter entirely.
In some ways, Becca's dad had died at just the right time. The war had started just a few months before his death and every patriotic, able-bodied American male had gone off - voluntarily or otherwise - to make the world safe for democracy. Jobs that would never have been available to women were suddenly open to anyone who wasn't in uniform and who could perform satisfactorily.
Her mother Pat benefited from that situation. After many unexplained absences, she retrieved her daughter from the current caregiver, quit her low-paying job in the dress shop and went to work for the state employment office... a desk job, with real possibilities for promotion. She was determined to get ahead, to make it on her own, to be independent. They settled down into their own small apartment.
Becca loved the apartment because the kitchen window looked out on the mountains and she loved the mountains. Aunt Ann and Uncle Jack had a cabin in the mountains; some of the happiest times of her young life were spent with them when they were the designated care givers - especially when they all went to the cabin. In the spring and summer, she fished with her cousin Lenny and his friend Hank. In the winter, they built snowmen and had snowball fights, hiding behind the aromatic pines, and running and laughing in the sunshine and snow... Afterward, Aunt Ann always had hot chocolate and fresh, warm, homemade oatmeal cookies waiting for them.
This new life was very different. Becca spent her days in daycare while Pat worked at her new job. Evenings, Pat cooked something nourishing in the pressure cooker, then mostly wanted to be left alone to recover from her day's labors. Becca learned to amuse herself quietly and never impose on her mother or expect attention from her. The best times were bath times, when Pat would read to her.
Weekends were the worst. Pat slept very late, and Becca was to be absolutely quiet in her play, was to find ways to amuse herself until 9:00 or 10:00 or even 11:00... ways that would not disturb Pat's much needed rest. Becca became very resourceful.
Becca caught all the normal childhood diseases, but in the early 40s they were somewhat more serious. The treatment for many of them was an aspirin, bed rest, and hot drops of oil in the ear when that was the site of the problem. Antibiotics were still only a dream in the mind of some forward-thinking researcher.
Becca's normal childhood diseases presented a problem for Pat. The child seemed to get just about every infection that found its way to the daycare center. She wasn't sickly, just very susceptible to whatever was making the rounds. Pat wanted to get ahead in her job. She felt she simply couldn't take the risk of staying home for days on end to take care of this once-much-wanted but suddenly burdensome youngster.
So Becca was left home alone until she was well enough to return to daycare or school.
Every morning, Pat fed her a nourishing breakfast, braided her long hair, and left detailed instructions for her lunch. She also left behind threats of the punishment Becca could expect if there was evidence that those instructions hadn't been followed to the letter. At the end of first day, if everything was in order and all instructions had been obeyed, Pat would present her with crayons, pencils, scissors, paste, and... best of all... Play-A-Bed books - full of things to color and cut and paste; things that could be done in bed by a sick child to keep her out of trouble.
But not even that could keep this particular child amused for an entire day. She quickly discovered the lure and thrill of the forbidden. The possibilities were definitely limited in the one bedroom apartment. Had she been allowed to go out in the California sunshine - even to just sit quietly and color - things might have ended differently...
Pat made sure that the neighbors knew when Becca was home alone, and made sure that Becca had at least one phone number to use in case of emergency. If Becca had so much as opened the door, even a crack, Pat would have known - probably well before she came home. But Becca found ways to alleviate her boredom. She explored the every hiding place in the small apartment, beginning with her mother's dresser.
First she found the candy. She was exploring Pat's lingerie drawer; she was absolutely fascinated by the things her mother put on every day and watched her dress for work each morning. First the girdle that enclosed and shaped almost her entire torso. It had 'stays' - thin strips of something hard - sewn into it, to help pull the ample figure into a more defined shape. It had garters, little metal things that hung down from the bottom, that Pat used to hold up her stockings. Because of the war, the stockings were nylon; the silk was needed for parachutes for 'our boys' who were saving the world... The top of the garment included a bra, which served to harness the large, flaccid breasts and shape them into something considerably more attractive than their natural state.
It was Becca's job to fold the clean laundry, so Pat wouldn't notice any difference if she removed some of these fantastic garments to try on, then replaced them, neatly folded, in the drawer. It fascinated her to see herself in the mirror wearing mommy's underwear. She found it difficult - and not at all pleasant - to think that she might someday have a body that would require such 'armor' to restrain and shape it.
The candy... first it was a box of soft-center chocolates. Becca never knew - indeed, never even wondered - whether Pat had bought them for herself or if they had been a gift from an admirer. Actually, the thought of her mother having an admirer never entered her head. She assumed that her mother had purchased the candy and was too selfish to share it with her child. That made perfect sense, since she was reluctant to share much of anything beyond necessities with her daughter.
She was smart enough to ration herself... no more than one piece of candy a day, then wait and see if the theft was discovered. If not... one single piece the next day. She may have gotten away with it because Pat herself snuck them - just putting her hand in and extracting one without actually removing the box from the drawer, to reduce the chance of having the child discover her secret stash.
There was always candy there. After a while, though, it changed from soft-centered chocolates to those caramels that, taken according to the directions on the box, would help one lose all of the weight gained by eating too many chocolates! Quite acceptable to Becca... she didn't like some of the fillings in the other ones anyhow, and the caramels were always good. They didn't taste at all like diet medicine!
It was when she was ten that she revisited the cardboard box with the newspaper clippings. Before antibiotics, scarlet fever was treated with bed rest and possibly aspirin; isolation from all other children; and extended bed rest. There were only so many Play-A-Bed books and she had completed the puzzles and games in every one of them. Besides, those were for little kids. She was a good reader now and passed many hours reading what her mother referred to as 'children's classics'. But it was inevitable that during her 3 week confinement, she would see what else of interest might be hidden in the apartment's dark closets and drawers. For some reason, that box full of clippings had stayed in her head and now that she was such a good reader and so grown up, she wanted to know who the people were and why mom had saved that stuff for so long.
She checked the time... almost noon. Pat sometimes surprised her with a visit at lunch time, just to make sure she wasn't up to something she wasn't supposed to be doing. She climbed back into bed and picked up her book - The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew - and was there, innocently reading, when she heard Pat's key in the door.
They ate lunch together, then Becca watched Pat drive off. She waited a full 15 minutes, watching the clock on the wall, before she opened the door to the closet and found the object of interest. She memorized the position of everything in the closet so that she would be sure to put it back exactly as it had been. She had become very, very good at this game of deception and probably could have had a successful career as a cat burglar or corporate thief!
In the first clipping she picked up, there was a picture of a woman holding a baby. The caption read: Mrs. Martin, photographed with her infant daughter, shortly before her husband, Pvt. Joseph Martin, shipped out to join our brave troops overseas.
Becca read that Pvt. Martin had been killed in action, and that police speculated that Mrs. Martin, overcome with grief, had ended her own life. It told about how the Martin family had long been respected members of the community; Joseph's father Harold not only owned the only decent hardware store in town, but had been a pillar of the church and active in civic matters. The parents were devastated by the death of the next generation hardware store owner, civic-minded, church-supporting citizen - "a fine boy," Mr. Martin was quoted as saying. Joe's friends from high school enumerated his achievements, and talked about Mrs. Joe... the former Mary Ellen Lucas... a sweet girl with lots of friends; active in Girl's Chorus and the Home Ec club... She had dropped out of high school. When Joe was drafted, they decided to get married before he shipped out. "Him and her knowed that was the end of it for her; she couldn't never get her diploma if she got married!" one friend was quoted as saying. After all, a married woman in high school was unthinkable.
The locals had watched these two carefully. Mary Ellen started to show... just a little... in her third or fourth month, so the watchers were not surprised when almost nine months later, she delivered her baby girl. The community busybodies had been counting on their fingers, checking for something new to shake their heads over, and they would have been satisfied had they known that Joe and Mary Ellen had run off and tied the knot about five minutes after she missed her first period! Most people didn't worry too much about it: everybody wanted to get married before shipping out. And they didn't waste one moment of their precious time together!
The whole situation was tragic, but understandable. A young girl, barely 17, with a new baby... and now a widow. What kind of future could she hope for?
Nobody knew what had happened to the baby... police speculated that Mary Ellen had left her with a friend or family member, but none of those people had seen the child. Perhaps someone walking by had heard the baby crying, shrieking really, stopped to have a look and possibly help out... and had maybe seen Mary Ellen, the telegram... and instead of helping out, had just helped herself.
All trails were cold; there were no real clues; none of the neighbors remembered seeing or hearing anything unusual. Sure, a couple of them had heard the baby crying - sounded like the poor little thing was either mighty hungry or hurtin' a lot - but there was nothing unusual about that in this neighborhood. Police Chief Newsome said he would continue to follow all leads.
There were other articles about the parents, the grandparents, the missing baby, and - in general - the tragedy of it all. And the suspicions... some of the baby's things were missing... And the sapphire earrings Mary Ellen's parents had given her as a wedding present... something new and blue... Later articles suggested that the trail was pretty much cold; the grandparents were afraid the child would never be found.
It was pretty exciting to read, but Becca didn't understand her mother's interest in this story. It had all taken place way on the other side of the country. By fourth grade, she knew enough geography to know that New Hampshire was a very long way from California. Had Pat known these people? Were they distant relatives? Or was she concerned that maybe somebody might take her child? Maybe she kept them as a reminder of the kind of things that can happen when ladies live alone with small children; that a house without a man is simply not a safe (or respectable) place for a young woman...
Becca checked the time and decided she'd better put everything back where it belonged and go read some more or color some pictures to account for how she'd spent her time. She'd look at this again in a few days.
She tried to concentrate on her book, but finally switched to crayons and paper. She could think about this better while she was coloring. After dinner that evening, Becca - as casually as she could manage - initiated the conversation.
"Mom, can we go to New Hampshire some day?" She watched her mother's face carefully.
"What do you know about New Hampshire? Why do you want to go there, for God's sake?" Pat's voice was just a teensy bit edgy.
"I don't know," Becca replied. "We studied about it in school and it sounds really pretty. They have mountains there, mom."
"Look out the window, for heaven's sake! What do you think those things are? Believe me, the mountains in New Hampshire look like little bumps compared to what you can see from our kitchen window. Everybody wants to be right where you are... right here in California. Nobody wants to be in New Hampshire."
"Mommy, have you seen the mountains in New Hampshire? Maybe they just look small in the pictures, but look big when you're in them."
"Trust me, they're just bumps, like mosquito bites!"
"How do you know if you've never been there?"
"What's all this sudden interest in New Hampshire? Let me tell you, if we can afford a vacation, it won't be to New Hampshire."
Becca let it drop. She knew when to stop pushing her mother for information. A little farther and Pat would be screaming at her, maybe even hitting her. She changed the subject.
"Mommy, how come when I'm bad, you always tell me you're going to send me back to where I came from? Don't you want me anymore?"
"Well, maybe I wouldn't want you if you were really bad!" Pat seemed more relaxed. She was used to an endless stream of strange questions from this annoyingly bright child. This kid wanted an answer to everything and it had better be one she could understand.
"Mommy, where did I come from? Sometimes, when you get mad, I think I want to go back there. Did I come from New Hampshire?"
"You, Rebecca Marie, just used up all of my patience asking incredibly stupid and annoying questions about something you'd better stop worrying about. Now get to bed, and don't let me hear you talking about this again. When I get mad, it's because you've disobeyed me. If you're bad and try to go anywhere, you'll find out how mad I can really be! The police will come and put you in jail and I'll be well rid of you! You kiss me goodnight right now and get to bed. I don't want to hear another sound out of you tonight."
Becca did as she was told, but laid awake for a very long time wondering why New Hampshire was such a sensitive subject with her mother. Maybe the lady who died was her sister or her friend. Maybe it was even her mother; she'd have to look at the articles again to see when that stuff all happened. She knew her mother was thirty years old, so it would have to be about thirty years ago. It was 1951 now, so if the articles were written around 1931 or 1932, she decided, the lady who killed herself was probably Pat's mother. She was a very creative and logical child - the result of having had to amuse herself constantly, well before television was anything but an occasional treat. She had a story about almost everything... her own way of escaping a less-than-ideal home life.
The next day, she ignored the articles, except to check the publication dates; they ranged from August of 1942 to as late as December of 1943... 'still no leads'...
"That's when I was born... 1942." She added that to the information stored in her head. Too recent for the dead lady to be her mom's mother. But the same year she was born...
She didn't read anymore, but instead explored the box to discover what else of interest it might contain. A few baby things... pink booties with teddy bear face appliqués on the tops... a baby blanket, one corner of which appeared to have had something embroidered on it... but the stitches had mostly been removed. A small gold locket with a picture of a cute guy in a soldier hat... and a pair of dainty earrings with pretty blue stones, wrapped carefully in a lace edged linen handkerchief.
She found the article that described the items missing from the crime scene in New Hampshire and her 'game' took a turn toward the serious. The items described seemed to match almost exactly the items that she'd found in the box, though she wasn't positive what a sapphire was. Resourceful brat that she was, she found her mother's dictionary on the bookshelf in the living room and looked it up: "...a clear, deep-blue variety of corundum, valued as a precious stone."
Well, at least the color and stone parts were right, but for all she knew, corundum could be something mom gave her when she had a stomach ache! On second thought, that didn't go too well with the 'precious stone' part. Her self-education continued when she learned - on page 328 - that corundum is a "very hard mineral... transparent varieties (ruby, sapphire) are used as gems." One more word to look up, to confirm her understanding of 'gem'.
She was suddenly very excited, and a little bit scared. Becca hadn't yet put it all together, hadn't come up with her own version of what this all meant... but she most certainly would. She had come up with some interesting, if impractical, plans about how she could get her mother to let her go back and live with Aunt Ann again. Sometimes, when she was really angry or really needed a hug that no one wanted to give her, she had even wondered how she could get rid of her mother. She never, of course, actually plotted killing her, but just imagined that she'd catch some horrid disease and die, or run off with one of the men she went out with sometime.
Now, with a slight adrenaline overload and still upset because of the treatment she'd received last night for some innocent questions about one of the oldest states in 'this great nation of ours', she wondered how she might end this storyline in her head, considered possible outcomes. One, of course, was that her mother would figure out what she was up to and hit her hard enough to break her jaw. The other plan developing in her creative little head would take some time, some creativity, and an enormous amount of caution...
It was 7:00 a.m. - a beautiful spring morning a few weeks later. The sunlight sparkled on the distant snow-capped mountains and closer by, the palm trees provided a colorful reminder that this was southern California. It was almost time to leave for school.
The sudden pounding on the door frightened them both; Pat jumped out of her chair, as did Becca, who moved toward her mother for comfort and safety. "Los Angeles Police, open up in there," a loud voice shouted.
"Go into the bedroom and get in the closet; don't make a sound, and do not come out until I tell you to," Pat whispered to her.
"Ma'am, open up now please, or we'll have to bust in."
She paused for only a moment before making her decision, then ran for the back door and jerked it open, ready to run as far and as fast as she could... find somewhere to hide until dark, then... she'd have to worry about that later. For now, just get out. The officer on the other side of the door had a different idea. In the split second that she stopped to let his presence register, he grabbed her wrists and cuffed her hands behind her, then went to open the front door, pushing her along in front of him.
Becca had not gone to the bedroom and certainly hadn't hidden in the closet. This, she knew, was the day that either all of her fantasies would materialize, or the day her mother would kill her, for real this time. She wasn't going to miss a moment of it. Her mother was screaming hysterically at the policemen.
"Let me go! Let me go, you son of a bitch, let me go and get out of my house! You have no right to do this. Why are you doing this to me?"
Becca heard one of them say 'I think you know, ma'am. Don't pretend that you don't. We're here to arrest you for the murder of Mary Ellen Martin and the kidnapping her infant daughter.'
Silence for a moment... then her mother crying, then "How did you find me?" The policeman nodded toward the hall door, and Pat turned and faced Becca. Her eyes were harder than Becca had ever seen them and Becca was sure that if the officers hadn't been holding her so tightly and she hadn't been handcuffed, her own name - Rebecca Marie English - would be on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper, the innocent child victim of a horrible tragedy. She pictured how it would look.
"You shouldn't have kept all that stuff in the box, mommy. You really shouldn't have. When you were at work, I read it all. Then I found the blue earrings and stuff. And you got really mad at me when I asked you if you were ever in New Hampshire. 'Member how mad you got? And you lied to me, too. You told me it was bad to lie, but you told a really big lie about New Hampshire. I never thought you were my real mom, 'cause sometimes you seem like you hate me. I think real moms love their kids."
"Well, kid, I may not have hated you before, but I'm sure as hell not too fond of you right now. Why'd you have to go and spoil it? You had a roof over your head and food and clothes, nothing to complain about... We could've just kept going like we were; we could've had some fun together when you were a little older! Why'd you have to spoil it?
"Let me tell you, some day, you're gonna understand all this and then you'll be sorry. Some day, some guy you really love is gonna dump you for some little hussy, and he'll get her knocked up and marry her and she'll have the kid that should have been yours. Then you'll understand! That bitch deserved what she got. So did he. That was my life they ruined, MY life. And you... you're no better than she was. You turned me in! I don't know how you did it, but you turned me in. You'll have to live with that for the rest of your life... your own mother... arrested because of you. You'll live with that forever."
Then, to the policemen... "How'd she do it? Did she call you? She doesn't even know how to make a long distance call. Did you get somebody to help you, you little bitch? Who was it? I'll kill them, too."
Very calmly, the policeman explained about the letter Becca had written, and the accurate - if somewhat childish - drawings she'd included, drawings of the things she'd found in the box in the utility closet; the letter was mailed to 'Chief Newsome, Weston, New Hampshire'. "Postmaster knows everybody there, ma'am, it's a very small town, so the letter didn't have no problem finding its rightful destination. You ought to talk a bit nicer to the kid, ma'am. She's a smart one, she is!"
Pat spoke to the child she had thought she wanted so much... the child who was her revenge for the wrongs Joe and Mary Ellen had wrought.
"If I ever see you again, you're gonna' wish you'd died today. You're just like them... you got their bad blood, their meanness. I'll kill you, but it will be slow and it will hurt. Now don't you die, baby, 'cause your mamma's gonna come back some day and help you do that. Don't you ever forget..."
Becca looked directly into Pat's eyes and, without any signs of fear or nervousness, but with a good deal of cold, pure hatred, said to the woman she had always known couldn't be her mother, responded:
"Remember what you used to tell me you'd do if I wasn't good? Well, I think you've been very, very bad, so I'm going to send you back to where you came from. And I don't think the policemen will let you come back to California for a long, long time."
Aunt Ann and Cousin Lenny arrived to take her home just as the policemen led Pat from the apartment. Becca's mouth curved up in a small, ironic smile and a perceptive person would have noticed the look of satisfaction in her eyes...
Copyright 2001 Sunny Carney