Dolores Claiborne Read online

  The water that day was the deep shade of blue you only seem to see on calm days in October, and the sound of the diesels was soothin. Selena untied the kerchief she was wearin over her head and raised her arms and laughed. "Isn't it beautiful, Mom?" she asked me.

  "Yes," I said, "it is. And you used to be beautiful, too, Selena. Why ain't you anymore?"

  She looked at me, and it was like she had two faces on. The top one was puzzled and still kinda laughin ... but underneath there was a careful, distrustin sort of look. What I saw in that underneath face was everythin Joe had told her that spring and summer, before she had begun to pull away from him, too. I don't have no friends, is what that underneath face said to me. Certainly not you, nor him, either. And the longer we looked at each other, the more that face came to the top.

  She stopped laughin and turned away from me to look out over the water. That made me feel bad, Andy, but I couldn't let it stop me any more than I could let Vera get away with her bitchery later on, no matter how sad it all was at the bottom. The fact is, sometimes we do have to be cruel to be kind--like a doctor givin a shot to a child even though he knows the child will cry and not understand. I looked inside myself and saw I could be cruel like that if I had to. It scared me to know that then, and it still scares me a little. It's scary to know you can be as hard as you need to be, and never hesitate before or look back afterward and question what you did.

  "I don't know what you mean, Mom," she says, but she was lookin at me with a careful eye.

  "You've changed," I said. "Your looks, the way you dress, the way you act. All those things tell me you're in some kind of trouble."

  "There's nothing wrong," she said, but all the time she was sayin it she was backin away from me. I grabbed her hands in mine before she could get too far away to reach.

  "Yes there is," I said, "and neither of us is steppin off this ferry until you tell me what it is."

  "Nothin!" she yelled. She tried to yank her hands free but I wouldn't let loose. "Nothin's wrong, now let go! Let me go!"

  "Not yet," I says. "Whatever trouble you're in won't change my love for you, Selena, but I can't begin helpin you out of it until you tell me what it is. "

  She stopped strugglin then and only looked at me. And I seen a third face below the first two--a crafty, miserable face I didn't like much. Except for her complexion, Selena usually takes after my side of the family, but right then she looked like Joe.

  "Tell me somethin first," she says.

  "I will if I can," I says back.

  "Why'd you hit him?" she asks. "Why'd you hit him that time?"

  I opened my mouth to ask "What time?"--mostly to get a few seconds to think--but all at once I knew somethin, Andy. Don't ask me how--it might have been a hunch, or what they call woman's intuition, or maybe I actually reached out somehow and read my daughter's mind--but I did. I knew that if I hesitated, even for a second, I was gonna lose her. Maybe only for that day, but all too likely for good. It was a thing I just knew, and I didn't hesitate a beat.

  "Because he hit me in the back with a piece of stovewood earlier that evenin," I said. "Just about crushed my kidneys. I guess I just decided I wasn't going to be done that way anymore. Not ever again. "

  She blinked the way you do when somebody makes a quick move toward your face with their hand, and her mouth dropped open in a big surprised O.

  "That ain't what he told you it was about, was it?"

  She shook her head.

  "What'd he say? His drinkin?"

  "That and his poker games," she said in a voice almost too low to hear. "He said you didn't want him or anybody else to have any fun. That was why you didn't want him to play poker, and why you wouldn't let me go to Tanya's sleep-over last year. He said you want everyone to work eight days a week like you do. And when he stood up to you, you conked him with the creamer and then said you'd cut off his head if he tried to do anything about it. That you'd do it while he was sieepin."

  I woulda laughed, Andy, if it hadn't been so awful.

  "Did you believe him?"

  "I don't know," she said. "Thinking about that hatchet made me so scared I didn't know what to believe. "

  That went in my heart like a knife-blade, but I never showed it. "Selena," I says, "what he told you was a lie."

  "Just leave me alone!" she said, pullin back from me. That cornered-rabbit look come on her face again, and I realized she wasn't just hidin somethin because she was ashamed or worried--she was scared to death. "I'll fix it myself! I don't want your help, so just leave me alone!"

  "You can't fix it yourself, Selena," I says. I was usin the low, soothin tone you'd use on a hoss or lamb that's gotten caught in a barbwire fence. "If you could have, you already would have. Now listen to me--I'm sorry you had to see me with that hatchet in my hand; I'm sorry about everythin you saw n heard that night. If I'd known it was going to make you so scared and unhappy, I wouldn't have took after him no matter how much he provoked me."

  "Can't you just stop it?" she asks, and then she finally pulled her hands out of mine and put em over her ears. "I don't want to hear any more. I won't hear any more."

  "I can't stop because that's over and done with, beyond reach," I says, "but this ain't. So let me help, dear heart. Please." I tried to put an arm around her and draw her to me.

  "Don't! Don't you hit me! Don't you even touch me, you bitch!" she screams, and shoved herself backward. She stumbled against the rail, and I was sure she was gonna go flip-flop right over it and into the drink. My heart stopped, but thank God my hands never did. I reached out, caught her by the front of the coat, and drug her back toward me. I slipped in some wet and almost fell. I caught my balance, though, and when I looked up, she hauled off and slapped me across the side of the face.

  I never minded, just grabbed hold of her again and hugged her against me. You quit at a time like that with a child Selena's age, I think a lot of what you had with that child is gonna be over for good. Besides, that slap didn't hurt a bit. I was just scared of losin her--and not just from my heart, neither.

  For that one second I was sure she was gonna go over the rail with her head down and her feet up. I was so sure I could see it. It's a wonder all my hair didn't go gray right then.

  Then she was cryin and tellin me she was sorry, that she never meant to hit me, that she never ever meant to do that, and I told her I knew it. "Hush awhile," I says, and what she said back almost froze me solid. "You should have let me go over, Mommy," she said. "You should have let me go."

  I held her out from me at arms' length--by then we was both cryin--and I says, "Nothin could make me do a thing like that, sweetheart."

  She was shakin her head back and forth. "I can't stand it anymore, Mommy ... I can't. I feel so dirty and confused, and I can't be happy no matter how hard I try. "

  "What is it?" I says, beginnin to be frightened all over again. "What is it, Selena?"

  "If I tell you," she says, "you'll probably push me over the rail yourself."

  "You know better," I says. "And I'll tell you another thing, dear heart--you ain't steppin foot back on dry land until you've come clean with me. If goin back n forth on this ferry for the rest of the year is what it takes, then that's what we'll do ... although I think we'll both be frozen solid before the end of November, if we ain't died of ptomaine from what they serve in that shitty little snack-bar."

  I thought that might make her laugh, but it didn't. Instead she bowed her head so she was lookin at the deck and said somethin, real low. With the sound of the wind and the engines, I couldn't quite hear what it was.

  "What did you say, sweetheart?"

  She said it again, and I heard it that second time, even though she didn't speak much louder. All at once I understood everythin, and Joe St. George's days were numbered from that moment on.

  "I never wanted to do anything. He made me." That's what she said.

  For a minute I could only stand there, and when I finally did reach for her, she flinched away
. Her face was as white as a sheet. Then the ferry--the old Island Princess, that was--took a lurch. The world had already gone slippery on me, and I guess I would have gone on my skinny old ass if Selena hadn't grabbed me around the middle. The next second it was me holdin her again, and she cryin against my neck.

  "Come on," I says. "Come on over here and sit down with me. We've had enough rammin from one side of this boat to the other to last us awhile, haven't we?"

  We went over to the bench by the aft companionway with our arms around each other, shufflin like a pair of invalids. I don't know if Selena felt like an invalid or not, but I sure did. I was only leakin from the eyes a little, but Selena was cryin s'hard it sounded like she'd pull her guts loose from their moorins if she didn't quit pretty soon. I was glad to hear her cry that way, though. It wasn't until I heard her sobbin and seen the tears rollin down her cheeks that I realized how much of her feelins had gone away, too, like the light in her eyes and the shape inside her clothes. I would have liked hearin her laugh one frig of a lot better'n I liked hearin her cry, but I was willin to take what I could get.

  We sat down on the bench and I let her cry awhile longer. When it finally started to ease off a little, I gave her the hanky from my purse. She didn't even use it at first. She just looked at me, her cheeks all wet and deep brown hollows under her eyes, and she says, "You don't hate me, Mommy? You really don't?"

  "No," I says. "Not now, not never. I promise on my heart. But I want to get this straight. I want you to tell me the whole thing, all the way through. I see on your face that you don't think you can do that, but I know you can. And remember this--you'll never have to tell it again, not even to your own husband, if you don't want to. It will be like drawin a splinter. I promise that on my heart, too. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, Mommy, but he said if I ever told... sometimes you get so mad, he said ... like the night you hit him with the cream-pot ... he said if I ever felt like telling I'd better remember the hatchet... and ..."

  "No, that's not the way," I says. "You need to start at the beginning and go right through her. But I want to be sure I got one thing straight from the word go. Your Dad's been at you, hasn't he?"

  She just hung her head and didn't say nothing. It was all the answer I needed, but I think she needed to hear herself sayin it right out loud.

  I put my finger under her chin and lifted her head until we were lookin each other right in the eye. "Hasn't he?"

  "Yes," she said, and broke out sobbin again. This time it didn't last so long nor go so deep, though. I let her go on awhile just the same because it took me awhile to see how I should go on. I couldn't ask "What's he done to you?" because I thought the chances were pretty good she wouldn't know for sure. For a little while the only thing I could think of was "Has he fucked you?" but I thought she might not know for sure even if I put it just that way, that crude. And the sound of it was so damned ugly in my head.

  At last I said, "Has he had his penis into you, Selena? Has he had it in your pussy?"

  She shook her head. "I haven't let him." She swallowed back a sob. "Not yet, anyway."

  Well, we were both able to relax a little after that--with each other, anyway. What I felt inside was pure rage. It was like I had an eye inside, one I never knew about before that day, and all I could see with it was Joe's long, horsey face, with his lips always cracked and his dentures always kind of yellow and his cheeks always chapped and red high up on the cheekbones. I saw his face pretty near all the time after that, that eye wouldn't close even when my other two did and I was asleep, and I began to know it wouldn't close until he was dead. It was like bein in love, only inside out.

  Meantime, Selena was tellin her story, from beginnin to end. I listened and didn't interrupt even once, and accourse it started with the night I hit Joe with the creamer and Selena come to the door in time to see him with his hand over his bleedin ear and me holdin the hatchet over him like I really did intend to cut his head off with it. All I wanted to do was make him stop, Andy, and I risked my life to do it, but she didn't see none of that. Everything she saw stacked up on his side of the ledger. The road to hell's paved with good intentions, they say, and I know it's true. I know it from bitter experience. What I don't know is why--why it is that tryin to do good so often leads to ill. That's for wider heads than mine, I guess.

  I ain't gonna tell that whole story here, not out of respect to Selena, but because it's too long and it hurts too much, even now. But I'll tell you the first thing she said. I'll never forget it, because I was struck again by what a difference there is between how things look and how they really are... between the outside and the inside.

  "He looked so sad," she said. "There was blood running between his fingers and tears in his eyes and he just looked so sad. I hated you more for that look than for the blood and tears, Mommy, and I made up my mind to make it up to him. Before I went to bed, I got down on my knees and prayed. 'God,' I said, 'if you keep her from hurting him any more, I'll make it up to him. I swear I will. For Jesus' sake, amen.' "

  You got any idear how I felt, hearin that from my daughter a year or more after I thought the door was shut on that business? Do you, Andy? Frank? What about you, Nancy Bannister from Kennebunk ? No--I see you don't. I pray to God you never will.

  She started bein nice to him--bringin him special treats when he was out in the back shed, workin on somebody's snowmobile or outboard motor, sittin beside him while we were watchin TV at night, sittin with him on the porch step while he whittled, listenin while he talked all his usual line of Joe St. George bullshit politics--how Kennedy was lettin the Jews n Catholics run everythin, how it was the Commies tryin to get the niggers into the schools n lunchrooms down south, and pretty soon the country would be ruined. She listened, she smiled at his jokes, she put Cornhuskers on his hands when they chapped, and he wasn't too deaf to hear opportunity knockin. He quit givin her the lowdown on politics in favor of givin her the lowdown on me, how crazy I could be when I was riled, and everythin that was wrong with our marriage. Accordin to him it was mostly me.

  It was in the late spring of 1962 that he started touchin her in a way that was a little more'n just fatherly. That was all it was at first, though--little strokes along the leg while they were sittin on the couch together and I was out of the room, little pats on the bottom when she brought him his beer out in the shed. That's where it started, and it went on from there. By the middle of July, poor Selena'd gotten as scared of him as she already was of me. By the time I finally took it into my head to go across to the mainland and get some answers out of her, he'd done just about everything a man can do to a woman short of fucking her... and frightened her into doing any number of things to him, as well.

  I think he would have picked her cherry before Labor Day if it hadn't been for Joe Junior and Little Pete bein out of school and underfoot a lot of the time. Little Pete was just there and in the way, but I think Joe Junior had more'n half an idear of what was up, and set out to put himself in the way of it. God bless him if he did, is all I can say. I was certainly no help, workin twelve and sometimes fourteen hours a day like I was back then. And all the time I was gone, Joe was around her, touchin her, askin her for kisses, askin her to touch him in his "special places" (that's what he called em), and tellin her that he couldn't help it, he had to ask--she was nice to him, I wasn't, a man had certain needs, and that was all there was to it. But she couldn't tell. If she did, he said, I might kill both of them. He kep remindin her about the creamer and the hatchet. He kep tellin her about what a cold, bad-tempered bitch I was and about how he couldn't help it because a man had certain needs. He drilled those things into her, Andy, until she was half-crazy with em. He--

  What, Frank?

  Yes, he worked, all right, but his kind of work didn't slow him down much when it came to chasin his daughter. A jack of all trades, I called him, and that's just what he was. He did chores for any number of the summer people and caretook two houses (I hope the people who hired hi
m to do that kep a good inventory of their possessions); there were four or five different fishermen who'd call him to crew when they were busy--Joe could haul traps with the best of em, if he wa'ant too hung over--and accourse he had his small engines for a sideline. In other words, he worked the way a lot of island men work (although not as hard as most)--a drib here n a drab there. A man like that can pretty much set his own hours, and that summer and early fall, Joe set his so's to be around the house as much as he could when I was gone. To be around Selena.

  Do you understand what I need you to understand, I wonder? Do you see that he was workin as hard to get into her mind as he was into her pants? I think it was seein me with that goddam hatchet in my hand that had the most power over her, so that was what he used the most. When he saw he couldn't use it anymore to gain her sympathy, he used it to scare her with. He told her over n over again that I'd drive her out of the house if I ever found out what they was doin.

  What they was doin! Gorry!

  She said she didn't want to do it, and he said that was just too bad, but it was too late to stop. He told her she'd teased him until he was half-crazy, and said that kind of teasin's why most rapes happen, and good women (meanin bad-tempered,. hatchet-wavin bitches like me, I guess) knew it. Joe kep tellin her he'd keep his end quiet as long as she kep hers quiet ... "But," he told her, "you have to understand, baby, that if some comes out, all comes out."

  She didn't know what he meant by all, and she didn't understand how bringin him a glass of iced tea in the afternoon and tellin him about Laurie Langill's new puppy had given him the idear that he could reach between her legs n squeeze her there whenever he wanted, but she was convinced she must have done somethin to make him act so bad, and it made her ashamed. That was the worst of it, I think--not the fear but the shame.