A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [85]
“It’s you girls that make me crazy! I gave you everything, and I get nothing in return, just some orders about doing this and being that and seeing points of view.”
Rose stood like a fence post, straight, unmoved, her arms crossed over her chest. “We didn’t ask for what you gave us. We never asked for what you gave us, but maybe it was high time we got some reward for what we gave you! You say you know all about Ginny, well, Daddy, I know all about you, and you know I know. This is what we’ve got to offer, this same life, nothing more nothing less. If you don’t want it, go elsewhere. Get someone else to take you in, because I for one have had it.” Her voice was low but penetrating, as deadly serious as ice picks.
Now he looked at me again. “You hear her? She talks to me worse than you do.” Now he sounded almost conciliatory, as if he could divide us and conquer us. I stepped back. All at once I had a distinct memory of a time when Rose and I were nine and eleven, and we had kept him waiting after a school Halloween party that he hadn’t wanted us to go to in the first place. I had lost a shoe in the cloakroom, and Rose and I looked for it madly while the other children put on their coats and left. We never found it, and we were the very last, by five or ten minutes, to come out of the school. Daddy was waiting in the pickup. Rose got in first, in her princess costume, and I got in beside the door, careful to conceal my stockinged foot. I was dressed as a hobo. Daddy was seething, and we knew we would get it just for being late when we got home. There was no telling what would happen if he learned about the shoe.
It was Mommy who betrayed me. When I walked in the door, she said, “Ginny! Where’s your shoe?” and Daddy turned and looked at my foot, and it was like he turned to fire right there. He came for me and started spanking me with the flat of his hand, on the rear and the thighs. I backed up till I got between the range and the window, and I could hear Mommy saying, “Larry! Larry! This is crazy!” He turned to her and said, “You on her side?”
Mommy said, “No, but—”
“Then you tell her to come out from behind there. There’s only one side here, and you’d better be on it.”
There was a silence. Rose was nowhere to be seen. From upstairs I could hear Caroline start to cry and then shush up. Mommy’s head turned toward the sound, then back. He said, “Tell her.”
She said, “Virginia, come out from behind there. Out to the middle of the room. He’s right. You shouldn’t have lost your shoe.”
I did what she said, five steps. I kept my gaze down, on the fringes of my hobo pants that we’d cut earlier in the day. My hands were covered with the makeup I’d rubbed off my face, so they looked strangely red and black. When I got to the middle of the room, he grabbed my arm and pulled me over to the doorway, leaned me up against it, and strapped me with his belt until I fell down. That was what a united front meant to him.
I said, “Daddy, if you think this is bad, then you’d be amazed at what you really deserve. You don’t deserve even the care we give you. As far as I’m concerned, from now on you’re on your own.”
Rose flashed me a look, perplexity mixed with vindication. She said, “Your house is down the road. You know where it is, and you can get there. I’m going inside, out of the storm.”
Daddy said, “How can you treat your father like this? I flattered you when I called you a bitch! What do you want to reduce me to? I’ll stop this building! I’ll get the land back! I’ll throw you whores off this place. You’ll learn what it means to treat your father like this. I curse you! You’ll never have children,