Free Dollenganger 06 My Sweet Audrina by V. C. Andrews

in something coral colored. How had it changed colors? Was it the light from the windows making it seem violet, green and blue? My head began to ache. Was it summer, spring, winter or fall? I wanted to run to the windows and check the trees, only they didn't lie.
Other things were said that I tried not to hear, and then Momma strode over to the piano and sat down to play all the hymns that Aunt Mercy Marie liked to sing. The minute my mother sat on her piano bench, something miraculous happened: she assumed a stage presence as if an audience of thousands 'would soon be applauding. Her long elegant fingers hovered over the keys dramatically, then down they came, banging out a commanding chord to demand your attention. "Rock of Ages" she played, and then she was singing so beautifully and sadly I wanted to cry. My aunt began to sing, too, but I couldn't join in. Something inside me was screaming, screaming. All this was false. God wasn't up there. He didn't come when you needed him . . he never had and he never would.
Mamma saw my tears and abruptly changed pace. This time her hymn was played in a rock style that bounced through the room. "Won't you come to the church in the wildwood, won't you come to the church in the vale," she sang, rocking from side to side, making her breasts jiggle.
My aunt began to eat cake again. Discouraged, my mother left the piano and sat on the sofa.
"Momma," I asked in a small voice, "what's a vale?"
"Lucietta, why don't you teach your child something of value?" asked that merciless voice on the piano. When my head whipped around, trying to catch Aunt Ellsbeth talking, she was sipping hot tea, which I knew was heavily laced with bourbon, just as Momma's tea was. Maybe it was the liquor that made them so cruel. I didn't know if they had liked Aunt Mercy Marie when she was alive, or if they had despised her. I knew they liked to mock the way they thought she'd been killed, as if they couldn't quite believe Papa, who had explained to me more than once that Aunt Mercy Marie might very well be alive and the wife of some African chieftain.
"Fat women are prized in many primitive societies," he told me. "She just disappeared two weeks after she arrived there to do her Missionary work. Don't believe everything you hear, Audrina."
That was my worst problem--what to believe, and what not to believe.
Giggling, Momma poured a bit more tea into my aunt's cup and some into her own, and then she picked up a crystal bottle labeled "Bourbon" and filled the two cups. Then Momma spotted Vera. "Vera," she said, "would you like a cup of hot tea?"
Of course Vera did, but she scowled when no bourbon was added.
"What are you doing home from school so early?" shot out my aunt.
"The teachers had a meeting and let all the students off earlier than usual," said Vera quickly.
"Vera, be truthful in the presence of the living dead," giggled my mother, almost drunk by this time. Vera and I exchanged glances. This was one of the only times we could really communicate, when we both felt strange and baffled.
"What do you do for amusement, Ellie?" asked my mother in that high-pitched, sugary voice she used for Aunt Mercy Marie. "Certainly you must get bored, too, once in a while, living way out in the sticks, having no friends. You don't have a handsome husband to keep you warm and happy in your cold, lonely bed."
"Really, Mercy," responded my aunt, looking straight into those photograph eyes, "how could I possibly be bored when I live with such fascinating people as my sister and her stockbroker husband, who both adore fighting in their bedroom so much one of them screams. Truthfully, I feel rather safe in my lonely bed, without a handsome brute of a man who likes to wield his belt for a whip."
"Ellsbeth, how dare you tell my best friend such nonsense? Damian and I play games, that's all. It adds to his excitement and to mine." Momma smiled apologetically at the photograph. "Unfortunately, Ellsbeth knows nothing at all about the