ARR 1988 - Flipbook - Page 49
"I have to finish my homework now."
The conversation at dinner was normal again. Her parents ignored her
and talked about some buyerofherfather's, where they were going for dinner
tomorrow night, the Broadway show they were going to, what time they were
going out tonight, and would Mother pick up his suit from the tailor's?
At 7:00 the piano teacher, Rosie, arrived. Mother used to stay in the living
room during the lessons but, at Emily's request, Rosie had put an end to that
months ago. When Mother had been present and knew what the assignments were, she always used to monitor the practice sessions. Emily
promised Rosie that if she wouldn't let Mother attend the lessons, she, Emily,
would learn her pieces each week. It was easy. She memorized them quickly.
A few uneventful days passed before Emily once again decided to write.
Nothing was really wrong, but she had a feeling in her stomach she thought
of as a hole that nothing could fill. She called it her lonely feeling, kind oflike
being homesick while at home. A poem was brewing about a little boy lost
in the woods. By the time she had an opportunity to get to her notebook, she
pretty well knew the poem. As she flipped the pages to her last entry, she
was aware, vaguely, of something not quite right but she was engrossed in
the poem's opening lines:
Lost in the woods in the middle of the night,
Starving for food, shivering with fright ...
Her eyes were suddenly riveted on the last page of her cannibal story. The
last word was not "cannibal!" Her breath caught in her throat as she read
the last line.
I was so relieved when I awakened to find it had
all been a terrible nightmare.
Her own handwriting? No, disguised to look like hers. Her mother's! Her
mother's handwriting imitating her handwriting.
Like watching a scary movie with her hands over her eyes, unable to
look, unable to resist looking, she turned back more pages. A change in
spelling... some grammatical changes ... the last two lines of a poem erased
and rewritten ... back further to poems and stories as far back as last year. As
she stared at the besmirched notebook, no longer hers, the first tears landed
on the page.
Barbara Goldberg
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