DAHLIA
SILAS WAS NOTHING LIKE THE REST OF THEM. IF HE HADN’T BEEN A Wood, the boy would have slipped through four years of high school unnoticed. Average to look at, not much of a student—and he had this, um, closed way about him. No personality, kids said, but I suppose that’s a personality, too, isn’t it?
The only reason he got picked for teams or invited to parties was because his brothers made sure of it. They were that way, the Woods—loyal to a fault. Here, I had to stop myself a minute. Yes.
He was only a year ahead of me at school, but the first time I ever paid him any mind was that Sunday Bobby brought me to dinner.
“To the mansion with the lions?” Agnes asked. I nodded.
What kills me is that even knowing everything that came of it, I’m still impressed when I think of that table—the sparkling glasses, gleaming silver, a tablecloth—on an ordinary Sunday. A maid serving the courses, for heaven’s sake! But mostly, I was dazzled by all the bright young faces glittering around it. Five sons, all destined to be SOMEONE; that’s what people said. As if the rest of us aren’t.
In my mind, I saw them all as clear as I had at sixteen. Michael, a college student in Boston who still came home every Sunday, my handsome Bobby, the one they called Ray Ray—he excelled at hockey—shy Calvin, who was soon to come into his own . . . and him. The closed-off one.
When the mayor asked about my plans for the future, they all jumped in—like I was the most fascinating girl they ever met, and nothing was more important than my plans. Later, I realized that had nothing to do with me. It was who they were, how they had seduced a city.
Meanwhile, Silas looked down, focused on the beef he was cutting into tiny squares. I was acutely aware of his presence, though. He cleared his throat a bit too loud a couple of times, but then said nothing. No one seemed to notice but me. And Mrs. Wood.
“Silas, dear, sit up straight,” she said, nervous, the way she’d been when they teased Calvin. A feeling I know myself as a mother.
He pushed back his chair, leaving that precisely cut plate of beef. “Can I be excused?”
Though he was speaking low, I felt the—what’s the word?—volatility—that was just below the surface in all of them. The mayor, too. He released him with the same look my mother sometimes gave me. Who knows? Maybe that’s why I was drawn to Bobby, why he was drawn to me. It was what I knew.
Anyway, it’s strange the things you remember. The way Silas cut his beef, the sound of him clearing his throat. Almost as if you know it’s significant long before you understand why. Or how. As if something warns you: Pay attention. This is going to matter. Hmm.
I suppose I felt sorry for him. I even tried to talk to him a few times when I ran into him at school, but he was always quick to get away.
“Silas is the mailman’s kid; that’s what Dad says,” Bobby told me once after his brother missed an easy shot in a game of pickup basketball. And when I asked if that hurt Silas’s feelings, the unpredictable anger flared.
“If there’s one thing a kid’s gotta learn, it’s how to take a joke.”
Was that something his father taught him? I wondered. Another Wood secret of success?
But before I could ask, Bobby got up and walked away—as he often did—abruptly leaving me to wonder what I’d said. Now, of course, I know it wasn’t anything I said. It was what I might say. The questions I might have asked, but never got the chance.
“But why did Silas matter? Bobby was your boyfriend,” Zaida said when I paused. “He’s the one in all those pictures up in the attic.”
I tensed up as I thought of them up there in the attic, going through my things.
How much had they seen? Obviously not enough to know Silas’s part in it—but of course there were no pictures of that.
“You looked so happy, Ma,” Agnes added, as if to reassure me.
Happy? Hah. I took a belt of my coffee the way Louie does with his water. I suppose I was for a while; we both were—though things were never right. There was always this anger in him, this need to . . . squash me, it felt like, and it got worse the longer we were together. Still, what did I know? Bobby was the first and only boy I went with in high school.
He was jealous of my friends, of where I went, who I was, it seemed like. And after I got accepted to nursing school it escalated, until finally I got the courage to break up with him. It wasn’t easy, but somehow I managed to avoid him all summer. I’m telling you I never felt so free—so happy as I did that summer. Of course, the family was furious. The way they saw it I’d never been near good enough for Bobby, and yet they’d taken me in, encouraged me, even hired a tutor when I struggled with my chemistry. Who did I think I was? How dare I?
I was leaving for school in six days when it happened. Can you imagine? Six days and my entire life would have gone different. Both our lives.
I paused awhile before I went on.
Silas was the one who brought me out there, I began, knowing I didn’t have to explain. After the kids blamed me for letting Jon go and for allowing everything to go to ruin while I lay up in bed, Louie had tried to make them understand it wasn’t my fault. That I’d been left in the woods. That I hadn’t been right since they found me on the highway three days later. He even showed them the clippings from the newspaper.
I wasn’t there when they read it, of course, but I could see their faces just the same: Zaida’s eyes filling, Agnes turning in on herself. And Jimmy? Probably got up and walked out. It’s hard for boys to know what to do with those things. Later, when I saw the pity in them, I grilled Louie about how much he had said.
“I told them some boys . . . they took you out in the woods—and they hurt you, that’s all. They hurt you bad.”
I suppose he thought he was defending me, but I was outraged. And even madder that he’d reminded me of it. Crazy, isn’t it? Though it’s been with me every day since, I never let myself think of it.
I had gone back to those days I lay beneath the yellow leaves. I’d let myself remember the morning when someone or something called me out, told me to get up, and led me to the highway. But never, never, had I returned to the night it happened. Never.
Unconsciously, the girls reached their hands across the hole in the couch to each other. Their hair, their eyes, the light and the dark of them, were shining. Never had they been so beautiful to me—or so vulnerable. Was I really going to foist my nightmare on these poor girls? My children, for heaven’s sake?
But now that it had risen up, demanding to be told, who else was there? Louie would have dropped like Josie Pennypacker if he was forced to listen to the details. Should I go down to Joe O’Connor’s silly market, sit Saint Joe and Anna down, and let them know just how damn imperfect this world could get?
Like she often did, Zaida read my mind. “It’s okay, Ma. You can tell us. I’m almost eighteen, you know—the same age you were. And Agnes—well, she probably went through worse before she was five.”
Yes, worse. So many of my kids.
“Mr. Dean always told me that everything that happened to me was my fault. Mrs. Dean, too. They said I deserved it and more,” Agnes added. “It was only after I told my story to all of you that I knew how wrong they were.”
“Now is the time,” Zaida said, like she did when we were standing under that green sign. “Go on, Ma.”
LIKE I SAID, Bobby and me had broke up in the spring. Right after that pretty prom picture you might’ve seen in the attic, it happened. I know he took it hard. People said he hardly left the house all summer. There were rumors he changed his mind about going to Boston College like his brother. He was talking about a school out in Texas. Maybe even joining the military—like he couldn’t get far enough away. His father didn’t just object. He forbid it.
I still shuddered every time I thought of the man at the table.
Anyway, I had just got off work and was heading to my friend Murph’s that night when Silas pulled up. He said Bobby wanted to see me one more time before we both left. He had something for me.
I paused, seeing that blue Chevy with the open door, Silas at the wheel. There weren’t a lot of nineteen-year-olds with cars in those days and I was still young enough to be impressed by what the Woods had. Who they were in town. But that wasn’t the reason I got in.
There was so much unsaid between Bobby and me, I wanted a chance to try. I wanted it so bad I didn’t see what I should have seen.
Agnes narrowed her eyes. “What was that?”
Silas’s face. The hardness of it. Later, those leaves falling on me, I would peer back in that car and see it clear as day, but that night . . . Well, like I said, all I was thinking of was Bobby. I jumped in the car. I didn’t even question where he was taking me till we left the city and headed for the wooded area outside town.
“Has to be some place where no one who could report back to my father might see you, okay?” Silas explained.
I nodded my head in the dark car. “Okay.”
We drove deep in the woods till we came to a clearing. There, he handed me a flashlight and pointed to a narrow path. “He’ll meet you down there. Not far, maybe a half mile.”
“He’s not here yet?”
“You know Bobby—always running late. Don’t worry; it’ll only be a few minutes.” As soon as I got out of the car, he put it in reverse.
“You’re leaving me—alone?” I called after him.
But he just backed out, taking out a few bushes in the process.
If I had any sense, I would have been afraid, but in those days there was this dumb strength running through me all the time—whether I was putting on my apron at the restaurant after being up all night studying for a test or getting up to give a speech at school. The only thing on my mind was what I would say, how Bobby and I would act. Still, I was grateful for the chance.
I looked at my watch: 7:05. Silas had told me the plan was to meet at seven. No doubt Bobby would be there soon. The light was still streaming through the trees as I started down the path. Ever since I was small, I’d loved to play in the woods. I’d find a fallen tree, sweep out a corner with a branch, and imagine I was in my own private kingdom. Nowhere had I ever felt more safe.
As I got closer to the second clearing, the place where I was supposed to meet Bobby, the tree came into view. My God, I wish you could have seen it! It was so beautiful it stopped me where I was, stopped me and then pulled me forward. It was early for the leaves to turn, but that one was already shimmering with color.
In the dazzling light, the leaves were pure gold. I could hardly wait for Bobby to get there so I could show him. That was what was good between us—especially in the beginning. Every song we played for each other was the best tune ever; a new pizza place wasn’t just good, it was fantastic. If we only remembered that, I thought . . . I don’t know . . . Maybe we could separate as friends. He could move on to his own life in peace.
I looked back down the path where I’d come—still not scared, though I was alone in the unfamiliar woods, just worried that he might not get there in time to see the spectacular gold tree before the light turned. That’s when I heard the approaching car.
“Bobby!” I called out when the door opened. “I’m down here.” And then, unable to resist, “You have to see—”
But before I finished, I heard a second door open. And then a third. “Bobby?”
Sitting in the parlor, I swear I heard those footsteps on the path. The unfamiliar voices. Felt the fear taking hold. Trembling right there in my own chair, I wasn’t sure I could go on.
“Was he with them?” Zaida asked.
It was a while before I could answer, but the girls waited, pulling me deeper with their eyes. I shook my head.
IT WAS HIS cousin and a couple of other kids from out of town. Boston, we thought, though no one ever found out for sure. Thugs, they were—all of them—the Woods, too, for all their polished silver and fancy ways. At first, they stopped there in the clearing and stared at me, like they’d forgotten what they were supposed to do. One kid—the youngest of the group—he looked like he wanted to bolt himself. He turned from one to the other of them. “Chick hasn’t done nothin’ to us. Maybe we should—”
“Bobby,” I repeated. “My—my boyfriend will be here any minute and—”
“You hear that?” a heavyset boy said, turning to the other two. “She thinks Bobby’s comin’ to rescue her.” He laughed, and then without warning, his fist was in my jaw.
I didn’t know it was possible to be hit that hard. I went down, hitting my head against the trunk of the golden tree on the way.
It wasn’t just the pain, but the . . . the intent of it. The power it had. The knowledge that this—hate, this violence—was there, around us all the time. I just hadn’t known it. Up until then, I’d walked through the world like a damn fool, scared of nothing.
I looked over at the girls, expecting them to be horrified, but all I saw was courage. What had been such a shock to me was something they’d been forced to reckon with all their lives. Agnes in the attic. And Zaida, struck in a different way when she was abandoned with her dying mother and baby Jon in that apartment.
“Did the other boy—the younger one—did he help you?” Agnes asked. No matter how harsh life treated that one, she always searched for the way out.
I shook my head slightly, looking down at myself lying at the foot of that golden tree, the way they say you do when you die.
THE ANIMAL INSTINCT must have kicked in. Him and the big one took turns kicking and hitting me until finally, the third boy, who had stood back from it all—Walter, I heard them call him—came over and tore my blouse.
Without thinking, I covered my bosoms there in the parlor, as I was unable to do the night of the attack.
“We’re not supposed to do that, Walter. You heard him. He was strong about that,” one of them said. “Just rough her up; that’s it.”
“Hey, she ain’t looking too good,” the beefy one who started it all said. “There’s blood coming out the friggin’ mouth. Son of a bitch. I told you not to kick her so hard.”
“Me? You were the one who—”
Yes, that was another funny thing I remembered—that he called it the mouth, instead of her mouth, as if he, too, was looking down at me from a great distance. Like I was no longer human. And I suppose I wasn’t to them.
“Shit,” someone else said. Were there more than three of them? Or was I just hearing echoes. “I told you to scare her, not . . . not this. The girl’s dead, or you did anything else to her, you don’t get a red cent. That was the deal. Go on, get the hell out of here, the three of you.”
Who was the girl they were talking about? Was it me? That’s how far away I was. And that voice. Where had I heard it before? My head throbbed, reminding me I was still there in my body.
“You heard me—go before you end up getting charged with something.”
I struggled to open my eyes, but it felt like they were weighted with heavy coins. I heard the footsteps again, moving away. The one that was left, the voice, bent over me and tried to cover me with that torn blouse, almost as if he wanted to help. But then he stopped.
It was his eyes I felt before anything else. Next thing I knew his hands were on me, everywhere. “Bitch,” the voice was saying, as he tore at my pants, pushed himself into me. “Messed up Bobby so bad he wants to scrap college and go off to fight the war. Probably get himself killed and doesn’t even care. All over a little nobody like you?” I think he was crying by that point. Crying for himself—not for me. See, I was a corpse to him. Less than that.
The sun was going down, taking with it the gold of the tree. I tried to pry my eyes open enough to see, but they were swollen almost completely shut. Still, there was enough light to make out Silas’s face looking down on me, and he caught the slit between my puffy lids.
“Even think about telling and next time it will be worse,” he said, though at that moment, neither of us could have thought I’d live to see a next time. Then he ran away like the others and left me there alone.
I’D GOTTEN SO lost in the dark dream, the story I hadn’t told anyone, not even myself, I almost forgot who I was speaking to.
When I looked up, Agnes was on the side of my chair, her arm sloped over me, hand holding mine with a different kind of force. The opposite of what I felt in the woods. Zaida sat on the floor, her face wet with my own unshed tears.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you all that . . . but once I got started, it just came.”
“It’s all right,” Zaida said, wiping her cheeks and chin with the flat of her hand. Then she laughed at herself, which felt like a relief to us all. “I’m such a dope.”
“We knew anyway, Ma,” Agnes told me. “Not the details, of course, but we knew . . .”
Zaida nodded.
“That wasn’t the end of it, though,” I said, not wanting to leave them there with Silas, not wanting to let him win another minute.
By then, memory was pouring through me like light through that tree.
After the pain and the cold of those nights when the animals howled and the temperatures dropped, the tree was still there. It wasn’t gold like I thought when I first saw it, either. It was plain yellow, but when the leaves began to fall on me, to cover me—how can I describe it? It was as if they were blessing me. That’s when it came on me, that great peace I told you about. The peace they say you have at the end. In all my life, I never felt anything like it.
Agnes nodded as if she felt it, too, as if she could see that tree I wanted to show to Bobby clear as day.