The House on Seventh Street by Karen Vorbeck Williams Page B

glad when he left her alone.
    Exhausting herself with tears, she lay in bed under the open window hoping for a breeze, listening to the voices that came up through the floor. She looked out the window, at the blue sky and the street below. Her father got into his car and drove away. She stayed by the window a long time, watching the street, the people passing by—mothers pushing baby carriages and good children riding their bikes. None of them knew what she had done or what had just happened. They didn’t know that the worst girl in the world lived on their street or that she was looking at them, wishing she were good too.
    As the afternoon light deepened, the delightful smell of dinner simmering on the stove downstairs made Winna hungry. She was hot in the upstairs room and could hear Chloe and her mother talking. Out the window, she watched the fathers come home from work and park their cars in their driveways. The whole neighborhood went about the business of the early evening. After a while, her father came home again. As the sun sank low behind the trees, she finally felt a hint of cool air breathe in through the window. It took forever to get dark and cool down.
    Winna’s mother had taught her that when she was afraid or sad, she could make herself think about something happy. She knew how to fill her mind with pretty pictures and remember her favorite places and things—like how it felt to taste ice cream or smell roses.
    The next morning the room was cool. Before she got dressed, she used a hand mirror to look at the red marks her father had seared on her bottom. As if those marks were a perverse kind of trophy, she put on a fresh pair of white cotton panties and ran downstairs to show her mother.
    Nora scrambled eggs for breakfast and reminded her daughter that spankings are what you get when you don’t mind. “Your father and I hope that someday you’ll learn to listen.”
    Winna hoped so too.
    Desperate to chase away the gloom, to make her mother and sister smile, she danced around the kitchen in her panties mugging in the mirror. She sang as she danced, making up a silly song about big red handprints on a little white butt. Stretching her elastic waistband, she gave the mirror a peek at her bottom. Chloe laughed so hard she fell off her chair.
    When her dance was over, Chloe asked to see the handprints up close.
    â€œFirst let me see your cut,” Winna said, lifting her sister’s little foot for a look at the gash and the black threads holding it together.
    Chloe must have seen the shame on Winna’s face, because she reached out to pat her sister on the cheek. “You’re sorry, Winna,” she said, her eyes warm and sad as she kissed her. “I heard Daddy spank you upstairs. It made me cry.”
    RAYS OF SUN, coming in through the dirty attic window, splashed the old rug with soft light. Reassuring herself, Winna looked around making sure she knew where she was. Feeling exhausted, she got up off the rug and wiped away the tears.
    Look what this house has done to me. She could not spend time going down memory lane with every object she saw or she would never get home. Feeling like Dorothy stranded in Oz, she looked again at the room with no walls. It seemed eerily sad. She did not want to stay there another moment. Her stomach wrenched with hunger and she guessed it must be time for lunch. As she stood to go, she realized that she no longer had the apple peeler in her possession. Thinking that she must have put it down somewhere, she decided to return to the shelves.
    Just then, she noticed a second wall of shelves on the south side of the attic. As she approached, something caught her attention. An old wooden trunk sat alone in an uncluttered spot just behind the chimney. She stepped over several boxes, pushed aside an aged easy chair, and reached out to touch it. She had been looking for one of these for years.
    Lifting the brass latch, she opened the lid.