Black Raspberries

by Jeanine Collins Malarsky

Plagued by religious friction, violent fights and a belief, "the grass is always greener,"my peripatetic parents dragged their five children in search of the next good farm. From upstate New York to the Mississippi Delta, to the hills of Ohio and West Virginia their dreams led us forward to disillusion and defeat. I was the middle child, unwanted from birth and over-looked while growing up. Though all five of us are deeply scarred, sometimes being the least-loved can be your salvation.

ISBN 1-59431-659-7 Fact-Based Fiction / Mainstream

Cover Art by Laura Evangeline Farago



Prologue

A Bad Dream - 1981

The kitchen is dingy. It’s evening. My older sister Anita is frying potatoes on an old black stove. Daddy is slouched at a side table, and Sheila, my younger sister, is standing on a chair beside him, sneaking sugar from the sugar bowl. Mother is sitting center stage at a large round table with Dennis and Darel, my two brothers, who are barely visible in the shadows. (I can smell the faint odor of cow manure on their barn clothes.)

The radio is broadcasting a news bulletin about thousands of people dying. The city is in chaos because someone dumped ground glass in the municipal water supply.

“I know who did it,” my mother says looking straight at me. Her black eyes pierce through my skin like they did when I was a kid. I’m condemned.

“I didn’t do it,” I say softly, trying not to sound defiant.

“Don’t lie to me!” She spits her words through clenched teeth. She drops her poisonous gaze to her lap, slips her left hand into the pocket of her faded chenille bathrobe, draws it back and flings something shiny through the air. The small blades catch the light of the flyspecked ceiling fixture. I feel a searing pain in my arm.

Like a robot, I extend my right arm and turn toward my father to show him the knife buried deep in my wrist. “Look what your wife did to me,” I say calmly. He sits there. He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t even look at me.

I stand still, observing the tableau of my family. A wall of glass descends from the ceiling, dropping down in front of me, shutting me off. Silence. I’m standing alone, gazing through that clear wall between my family and me.

I wake in a sweat, shivering as a chill creeps up my back.

“Look!” I cry out groping in the dark for my husband’s shoulder. “Wake up!” He groans and rolls over to switch on his bedside lamp.

“What do you want?” he asks, groggy with sleep and irritated at being awakened. “It’s 2:30 in the morning.”

“Look at this!” I stick my right hand out pointing to my wrist. “Can you see it?”

“See what?” he asks, closing his eyes against the light.

“Turn the light up brighter and look closer,” I beg him, thrusting my hand in his face. As his eyes adjust, he peers down at my thin wrist defaced by a ragged scar.

“Where’d you get that?” he asks, fully awake. “When’d that happen?”

“Have I ever shown this scar to you before?”

“No!”

“Have I ever talked about it before?”

“No. Never.” He turns my wrist to study the faded white scar. “How did you get that?”

“I don’t know!” I say softly, somewhat in awe of my own injury. “I have no memory of it. But somehow it seems I’ve known it was there. I just had the most horrible nightmare.”

He packs two thick pillows behind his head and takes me into his arms. “Tell me.”

When I’m finished telling my dream, my husband asks, “Do you think that really happened?” He turns off the light.

“No, I don’t.” I ponder this strange idea as we both slide down under the covers. “And it’s odd because children in families get hurt and the stories get retold over the years, like Darel’s burns and Sheila’s cut from the Ketchup bottle.”

“You can be damned sure somebody in your family knows what happened. Ask your mother about it.”

“I don’t think she’d give me an honest answer,” I tell him. “Even if she knows the truth, she’d probably lie about it.”

“She’s afraid of you,” he says. “She wouldn’t come near us at Sheila’s wedding last month.”

“She’s intimidated by you,” I said. “She doesn’t dare say one word to you.”

“No, Jeanine,” he argues back. “She’s scared of you because she fears that someday you’ll lash out at her and get even for all the despicable things she did when you were a child. She knows she deserves your revenge. Your peaceful manner only serves to increase her terror.”

Why is my mother afraid of me? I was always scared of her, her vicious temper, and her punishments. Perhaps if I think back I’ll understand. Maybe if I begin at the beginning.



Chapter 1

When I Was Three - 1947

A killdeer rose into the air from the edge of a nearby field filling the late summer afternoon with its plaintive call, “Kill-deee, kill-deee.” From my seat on the warm stone steps, I followed its swift flight as I listlessly ran my small hands over the gold and scarlet crushed velvet piano scarf lying across my knees. Packing took forever.

“Neenee!” Mommy yelled from the driveway. “Come on. We’re leaving.” Finally. I threw the tasseled scarf over my shoulders and dashed for the car, hoping if I got there first, I could ride in front.

“I’m riding in front,” Anita yelled in her five-year-old voice of authority.

“I got here first,” I yelled back, not moving.

“You can’t even open the door,” Anita said as she reached over my head for the handle.

“You go on over, Janice,” Daddy called from the back door of the small, empty farmhouse. “I’ll follow with Dennis in the truck.”

Mommy slammed the trunk of our car and said, “You girls can both ride in front. It’s the only space left.”

Confident she wouldn’t lose her place, Anita pulled the car door open and stood back to let me climb in first. With a helpful boost from Anita, I settled in the middle, my legs sticking out straight, my toes almost touching the dashboard.

Anita scrambled in beside me, talking as she tugged the door shut. “You won’t believe how big our new house is. It has eighteen rooms, more than we’ll ever need.”

“It’s not so new,” corrected Mommy, starting the car and shifting it into gear. “It was built in the late 1800’s so it’s rather old.” She checked for traffic and pulled onto the road, leaving behind the little farm on Grove Street where she and Daddy had begun married life in 1939, eight years before.

“It’s new to us,” countered Anita, making her point as usual. “We’ve never lived there before.” Mommy cast Anita an admonishing glance, but Grandma Collins’s house came into view, causing Mommy to return her eyes quickly to the road ahead.

Grandma’s low, white, two-story house looked innocent enough, resting there peacefully above its sloping front lawn, next to the Union Springs Cemetery. A huge shade tree guarded the house from behind, branches of its dark green canopy resting gently on the orange tin roof.

Muscles tightened in Mommy’s jaw reminding me that Mommy hated Grandma. But I liked visiting on Sabbath afternoons when my aunts took pictures of me beside tall pink and yellow gladiolas.

We sped by old Mrs. Monday’s house with its white shingles and dark green shutters. Old Mrs. Monday is crippled because when she was little, some kids put her in a baby carriage and pushed it down the long hill in front of Grandma’s house and she fell out and got hurt.

Farther down, at the old stone mill, Mommy took a sharp left turn uphill. I squirmed around backwards in the seat for a fleeting look at the faded water lilies in the shadowy over-grown millpond and hopefully a glimpse of Cayuga Lake, way back through the trees. Eager to spot our new house first, I turned back around and pulled myself up on my knees to see over the dashboard.

“There’s Millie Smith’s house,” Anita said, pointing to a dark green farmhouse on her side, just past the Union Springs Seventh-day Adventist Academy. “Millie missed Sabbath School last week.”

“Where’s our house?” I asked. I didn’t give a hoot about Millie Smith’s house.

“Not far,” Mommy answered. “You can almost see it from here.” I leaned forward, resting my hands on the cool chrome of the dashboard, just above the radio knobs. “Sit back,” Mommy warned. “You’ll hit the windshield if I stop fast.” I leaned back, just enough to satisfy her.

“See?” exclaimed Anita. “That’s it! Right past those trees on the corner.” I strained forward again, keeping one eye on the trees ahead and one eye on Mommy. “You’ll see it in a minute,” Anita said as the road leveled off. “It’s huge.”

Hidden behind two giant pine trees sat an old tan Victorian farmhouse, its dark windows staring blankly out on the empty porches that clung to its sides. Mommy circled the double garage and pulled into the driveway, passing a large weathered barn with its small milk house and stained cement silo.

Mommy parked beside the wide back porch and turned off the engine. Like a deflating balloon, Mommy released a weary sigh and wilted in her seat, letting her tired arms droop at her sides. From the back seat our baby brother Darel let out a loud wail.

“He’s probably hungry.” Mommy groaned as she slowly climbed out of the car. “Anita, you can unload small things from the trunk. Jeanine, you stay with Anita and don’t wander off while I nurse Darel.”