White Rabbit Chapter 19

19.

Her grandmother, Elizabeth Whatley, died when Delores was twelve and grudgingly she was allowed to attend the funeral. She was driven and escorted by her parents who were averse to going but who went perhaps only concerned with how it might appear if they didn’t; or perhaps they went only to sign the registry, or to appease their phony belief in the overstressed commandment of the Holy Bible they often reminded themselves of about honoring your mother and father. Her parents were indifferent but not pleased with the inconvenience of her death. Delores sat quietly in the back of the Mercedes that was like a casket itself bypassing dead fields that harbored skeletal trees covered in snow drifts bereft of life, passion, or breath. Delores rubbed her arms. She was bleeding still underneath the sleeves of the black shirt her mother made her wear under her sleeveless dress. The bandage fell out. Her mother scolded her, “How could you do this to yourself, or to me and your father? What will everyone think?” The question ran through Delores’ mind like a frightened little white rabbit. You couldn’t see white rabbits in these fields, Delores thought, sinking down into the backseat. You are not supposed to see them. Soft music played in the background the kind no one really likes; then static; then dreadful Catholic radio and a woman who didn’t sound very pretty talking about Mother Mary and the Immaculate Conception. Delores put her head back on the leather seat thinking of the cow whose skin was used to make it, fields of white rabbits, and listened to the lady’s droning and the tires reverberate through the seat cushions.

They cut her grandmother’s legs off due to the diabetes, Delores heard, bluntly so, horrifying her. Hmmmmm. Like monks chanting. Mary was parturient, heavy with child. They spoke of her gravidity, the enceinte, expectancy—she was never pregnant in the usual way. It wasn’t a mistake or anything wrong because God chose her. Every pregnant woman should be jealous. Delores couldn’t help but to seethe, to doubt. The leather complained as she sunk further. Hmmmmm. The windshield wipers streaked clearing away unlucky snowflakes. No one cared of their intricacy, virgin white, and pristine, no one made a case for intelligent design based upon their uniqueness. Most of the cuts on Delores’ arms no longer hurt but one was new, from this morning, and it hurt wonderfully. She looked out of the top of her eyelids, fourteen, through the window to the gray uninspiring skies. She bled perfectly, her blood like animals gushing out of open cages soaking in her black sleeves, her arm hanging over the seat and the familiar trickle down to her wrist, in her palm, and to the floor-mat. She could hear it drop, between the tires lull, ugly Catholic radio, blessed Mother Mary, static. Go ask, Alice she read last weekend and the words were jumbled in her head. A worn copy is in her coat pocket with highlighted passages and underlines for emphasis. She murmured listlessly, “The one that mother gives you don’t do anything at all.”

White Rabbit by Jefferson Starship played in her head. She is in and out. Her mother looks back and is talking to her but she doesn’t hear her. She hadn’t taken her seizure medication, her morning dose of phenobarbital in seven days, and she is in the opening act of the seizure, curtain opens in the hot theatre and her convulsions begin, applause in a crowded theatre at the actors on stage. People are looking at the program. Her father swerves to the side of the road and her mother gets in the back seat and holds her head. Despite what the doctor’s say she is always worried about Delores swallowing her tongue. The song plays louder, the drums beat, Grace Slick sings. Go ask, Alice. Go ask, Alice. Go ask, Alice.

She didn’t want to die, only the feeling of living. Her mother grumbled something about sending her to a more disciplined boarding school. She would go to a catholic school in Boston the following year for the rich and privileged, for the naughty and the spoiled. St. Ann’s, mother of the Virgin Mary. The lady on the radio mumbled, “The conception of Mary free from original sin is termed the Immaculate Conception—which is frequently confused with the Virgin Birth or Incarnation of The Christ.” More of The Immaculata and Ineffabilis Deus. Capitalize everything or God will have your balls. The seizure ended in the parking lot of the funeral home where snow plows scraped the pavement and sprinkled salt and Delores awoke to the beeping sounds of snowplows and to the thuds of car doors shutting and the clip clop of funeral shoes. Her mother was still with her in the backseat of the Mercedes. “I don’t want to go to another boarding school, mother.” She mumbled.

“Where is that you prefer to go? Public school?” She said mockingly.

“Home school, mother. Hire a tutor. I don’t do well in school.”

“That is ludicrous. I will not let you become an introvert.”

“You haven’t a say in the matter. It will be best. This one will be better than the last. You will see.” Her father was standing outside in the cold smiling, talking to an uncle she hardly knew at all. His face seemed so strange, somewhat like her father’s, but younger. He peeked into the backseat and gave an uncomfortable smile to which Delores’ mother acknowledged with a nod. Her father distracted him and they walked away to the funeral home. “Is she okay?” Delores heard him say. His name was Jimmy.

“Let’s go, Delores.” Her mother said angrily. “And for Heaven’s sake, put this on your arm.” She gave Delores a tissue. “I don’t have any bandages.”

“I don’t need it!” Delores snapped bitterly. She opened the door and walked inside refusing to slow down for her mother. She staggered like she was drunk. Her legs were still weak. As much as she loved her grandmother she didn’t cry over the casket. Blood trickled down her arm which she covered with an enormous mass of tissues she had snatched as they entered the funeral home. Strangers that were family said hello, faintly recognizing her. Cousins that were boys checked her out wishing, and girls scrutinized every perfect inch of her spitefully. She sat in the front near her father who suddenly adored her and her mother wasn’t the mother who shipped her to boarding schools and despised her for having seizures, cutting, reading dirty books and cursing. So many imperfections! Wasting away prettiness, what rich worthwhile boy would be interested in such a train wreck, a brat? She wasn’t interested in cooking or complimenting someone else, or children. “I love you, Delores.” Her mother said quietly. “I hope you understand why you weren’t allowed to return to your grandmothers.”

Delores didn’t reply sitting there tightlipped and slouching. “Sit up!” Her mother whispered angrily. She didn’t listen to that either. She looked at the strange priest who gave the service. He was tall and ghastly with orange hair. He didn’t know her grandmother she was sure. She looked at the flowers and the ceiling lights that were bright and shined down on the casket metaphorically like Heaven’s lights might when you die and the angels come to collect your soul like garbage men. Delores put the bloody red wad of tissues in her purse with her lip gloss, cell phone, IPod, glitter pens, note pad, eye shadow, some change and the guilty razor that hid there like a Nazi in Algeria escaping the Russians and Nuremburg. Delores’ grandmother’s face rose out of the topography of the coffin. She looked to be at peace, rigor mortis in hiding under clown make-up and wax. The lower half of the magician’s box was shut so you couldn’t see that she was without legs. Delores wondered what they did with them. Were they thrown in the trash and sent to a landfill? She was a little bloated, pale, a wax lump of gloopy mass, full of preservatives. She was in a terrible blue dress Delores had never seen or could not imagine her wearing with a goofy orchid pinned on her chest surrounded by odd flower baskets with name flags poked in them like countries that had been to some summit. Advertisements of kindness for social capital.

The rift came when Delores’ mother began the abjuration of those whose religions conflicted with the Holy Roman Catholic manifest, or who had no religion at all. Elizabeth was a mystic, a self-avowed witch, who in her advancing age cared less and less to hide it. Delores remembers her using her powers to make things move and things disappear and she wanted to teach Delores to be a mystic but her mother forbade it. When Delores was six, she remembered her grandmother’s cat speaking plain English and Badger, the dog, spoke nine languages and could recite Poe’s The Raven with dramatic flair. But for whatever reason, talking made him cough and often The Raven was interrupted with long coughing fits that her grandmother’s witchcraft could not cure. It was so fantastic to believe that often Delores didn’t believe it at all after she left until she went back; such as the two brooms that swept the floor routinely and the talking grandfather clock that smoked cigars and the player piano that was a regular piano with the ability to play itself. She knew not to tell her mother but her mother snooped and found illustrated stories Delores wrote and collected over the years called At Grandmother’s House that told of all the fantastic things that happened on her visits. Those stories were burned. The Holy Roman Catholic Church spent too many years torturing and murdering witches (even people who weren’t witches) to allow a girl to be brainwashed by a loony grandmother. If it were up to Delores’ mother, she would have burned her mother at the stake and the fact that she died of cancer was just deserts. (There are hundreds of sweet shops around the world called Just Desserts which isn’t the same thing. Go ask, Alice.)

Delores was twelve the last time she saw her grandmother alive. She was fourteen at the funeral, parading through to say a last goodbye in cafeteria line. Delores snuck back through the line one more time. Just as she couldn’t believe that her grandmother was a witch, she couldn’t believe that she was dead. It was likely, Delores thought, that the casket would sprout wheels and turn into a Mercedes and her grandmother would pop up and drive away. But she didn’t. She stayed dead. Delores waited for a few minutes by a man who smiled empathetically who was waiting to close the casket. Her mother stood at the door. Delores thought of what might have happened had her mother never known. She wondered how her grandmother could have died if she was a witch capable of such sorcery that could make inanimate objects move and dogs and cats speak. Could she not have simply purged herself of the cancer? Now it made sense as to why she wanted to die, or wouldn’t do anything to prevent it. She gave Delores a diary in one of the last visits and told Delores to write her story in it, Delores remembered. Though she had almost entirely forgotten, Delores once walked through the fields blanketed in snow with the diary in hand. It was like walking through an absence of anything. And in that absence, the blank empty fields, she walked upon a white rabbit and stood and watched it simply looking back at her before it scurried away. She drew the rabbit on the cover of the diary and called it White Rabbit. “Come, Delores.” Her mother said. “It is time we leave.”