It

There had been some faint pain at first, but
that wa s gone now. They were extremely small — not much more than spring apples, really — but they were there. It was true; childhood would end; she would be a woman.
She smiled at her reflection and put a hand behind her head, pushing her hair up and sticking her chest out. She giggled a little girl’s unaffected giggle . . . and suddenly remembered the blood spewing out of the bathroom drain the night before. The giggles stopped abruptly.
She looked at her arm and saw the bruise that had formed there in the night — an ugly stain between her shoulder and elbow, a stain with many discolored fingers.
The toilet went with a bang and a flush.
Moving quickly, not wanting him to be mad with her this morning (not wanting him to even notice her this mornin g), Beverly pulled on a pair of jeans and her Derry High School sweatshirt. And then, because it could no longer be put off, she left her room for the bathroom. Her father passed her in the living room on his way back to his room to get dressed. His blue pyjama suit flapped loosely around him. He grunted something at her she didn’t understand.
‘Okay, Daddy,’ she replied nevertheless.
She stood in front of the closed bathroom door for a moment, trying to get her mind ready for what she might see inside. At least it’s daytime, she thought, and that brought some comfort. Not much, but some. She grasped the doorknob, turned it, and stepped inside.
4
That was a busy morning for Beverly. She got her father his breakfast — orange juice, scrambled eggs, Al Marsh’s version of toast (the bread hot but not really toasted at all). He sat at the table, barricaded behind the News, and ate it all.
‘Where’s the bacon?’
‘Gone, Daddy. We finished it yesterday.’
‘Cook me a hamburger.’
‘There’s only a little bit of that left, t — ‘
The paper rustled, then dropped. His blue stare fell on her like weight.
‘What did you say?’ he asked softly.
‘I said right away, Daddy.’
He looked at her a moment longer. Then the paper went back up and Beverly hurried to the refrigerator to get the meat.
She cooked him a hamburger, mashing the little bit of ground meat that was left in the icebox as hard as she could to make it look bigger. He ate it reading the Sports page and Beverly made his lunch — a couple of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, a big piece of cake her mother had brought back from Green’s Farm last night, a Thermos of hot coffee heavily laced with sugar.
‘You tell your mother I said to get this place cleaned up today,’ he said, taking his dinnerbucket. ‘It looks like a damn old pigsty. Sam Hill! I spend the whole day cleaning up messes over to the hospital. I don’t need to come home to a pigsty. You mind me, Beverly.’
‘Okay, Daddy. I will.’
He kissed her cheek, gave her a rough hug, and left. As she always did, Beverly went to the window of her room and watched him walk down the street. And as she always did, she felt a sneaking sense of relief when he turned the corner . . . and hated herself for it.
She did the dishes and then took the book she was reading out on the back steps for awhile. Lars Theramenius, his long blonde hair glowing with its own serene inner light, toddled over
from the next building to show Beverly his new Tonka truck and the new scrapes on his knees. Beverly exclaimed over both. Then her mother was calling her.
They changed both beds, washed the floors and waxed the kitchen linoleum. Her mother did the bathroom floor, for which Beverly was profoundly grateful. Elfrida Marsh was a small woman with graying hair and a grim look. Her lined face told the world that she had been around for awhile and intended to stay around awhile longer . . . It also told the world that none of it had been easy and she did not look for an early change in that state of affairs.
‘Will you do the living-room windows, Bevvie?’ she asked, coming back into the kitchen. She had changed into her waitress uniform. ‘I have to go up to Saint Joe’s in Bangor to see Cheryl Tarrent. She broke her leg last night.’
‘Yeah, I’ll do them,’ Beverly said. ‘What happened to Mrs Tarrent? Did she fall down or something?’ Cheryl Tarrent was a woman Elfrida worked with at the restaurant.
‘She and that no-good she’s married to were in a car wreck,’ Beverly’s mother said grimly. ‘He was drinking. You want to thank God in your prayers every night that your father doesn’t drink, Bevvie.’
‘I do,’ Beverly said. She did.
‘She’s going to lose her job, I guess, and he can’t hold one.’ Now tones of grim horror crept into Elfrida’s voice. ‘They’ll have to go on the county, I guess.’
It was the worst thing Elfrida