Page 84 of Between Now and Forever

We came to her house for long weekends at Thanksgiving and Easter. Not because it was family time, like everyone else. Those were the weekends when she hosted her grand getaway weekends.

Two dozen people would come to stay, and but for their very modern clothing, it could have been a scene from a Regency era novel.

When we arrived, she treated us like the rest of her houseguests. She and my father exchanged pecks on the cheek and shook hands with my brothers and patted me on the head when we arrived and then sent someone to come and show us to our rooms.

The only family time we spent together was when she would gather us for a family picture on Christmas Eve.

I didn’t know what to expect living here and why my father viewed it as a punishment.

She trotted out her small army of house staff and introduced them all. I was to spend a month with each one.

“You’ll see that this is the best thing that has ever happened to you. You need to let go of the things that make you weak. When you go home, you will be a new person and you won’t miss the sin and sorrow of your former life. You need this.”

Everything in me wanted to rebel. To tell her to fuck off and run away. And then, I would remember my brother and what he said about his duty, and how it was now mine.

I cried until I fell asleep, her hand stroking my head all the while.

When I woke up, there was a pad of paper and a pack of sketch pencils on my desk. I felt the first glimmer of hope I’d felt in weeks that day.

In those first few weeks, drawing was the only thing that kept my mind quiet. My “training” was pretty mundane and benign. I was awakened at 5:00 a.m., and my grandmother took me through a series of exercises she said would keep everything where it should be. After a very spare breakfast, she would lead me in Bible study for an hour.

Her housekeeper, Hilde, took over after that. It was there, that she taught me how to cook, how to manage a butler’s pantry, inventory, meal planning, gardening, and household staffing.

My time with Hilde and the young girl, Serene, who also worked in the kitchen was my bright spot. It turns out, I’m a pretty good cook, and once a week, when we did the baking for the church, she’d make something for me. On Monday mornings, my grandmother weighed me. And one Monday afternoon, I found a note on my bed that said, “meet me in the kitchen at 9:00 p.m.”

It wasn’t signed, and I was worried it was some sort of test from my grandmother. But I was too intrigued not to go. When I got there, Serene, the young girl who works in the kitchen, cleaning, doing food prep, and carrying up meals to the household, was waiting with a cupcake.

“Mondays are your weigh-in. Monday night is the perfect time to cheat. You have all week to work it off.”

It became our tradition, and while I ate my sweet contraband, I told her all about Carter.

It was the only day I allowed myself to think about him. Because after I let myself frolic in the sweetness of my memories with him, I would fall into despair at the idea that I wouldn’t see him again. My heart, as always, felt like it’d been hit with a hammer when I thought of him. I know he must think I ghosted on him. I wish I had a way to reach him. But, I’ve been so completely removed from everything.

My father took my phone and my computer. The landline phone has one receiver and it’s in the housekeeper’s office. The only TV I see is when I’m in the kitchen with Hilde and she’s watching a rerun of Keeping Up Appearances on PBS. I wouldn’t know if there was a zombie apocalypse coming our way.

The information whiteout was the hardest part of being here at first. But then, I started to feel less anxious about life in general. It turns out that comparison really is a thief of joy.

I wasn’t spending hours staring at beautiful people on Instagram who were posting about what I could do to have hair/skin/tits/clothes/friends/men/money like them. I would always log off feeling worse about myself than when I logged on. But without the constant bombardment of what I should and could be doing, all I had to judge my life on was how one day fared when compared to the one before it.

And in the six months since I moved here, I have to say that using that as a measure, life isn’t so bad.

It was lonely at first. My grandmother socialized a lot. She was a former first lady, and she took that role seriously.

She held a lavish dinner at least once a week, and once a month, she’d host a small group of friends for the weekend.

I had strict orders to stay in my room. She said until my hair grew long enough to make it clear I was a girl, I wasn’t fit for public viewing.

At home, I never minded missing out on nights like that. I was always happier by myself. But I found that not having a choice about it made alone time a lot less appealing.

I started drawing incessantly. Right away, some of the darker thoughts in my head quieted. All the things I couldn’t say, that I couldn’t find words for, I could draw. It was also reassuring to see that my soul could still imagine beautiful things. It made me want to be defiant. They could keep my body captive, but my mind was free.

I used that pad of paper to create a version of my life that made me smile. If I could draw my brothers, then they weren’t really gone. Some of the hopelessness dissipated.

First, I drew one with James and me facing each other, our palms touching. I gave us wings. His were the beautiful sleek feathers of an angel. Mine were tremendous and scaled like a dragon. I drew my father’s face onto the body of a wolf whose neck was caught in between the jaws of a dragon and impaled by the razor-sharp teeth.

But nothing satisfies me more than when I get to draw my memories of Carter.

In these drawings, I’m not a dragon.

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