The Syringa Tree by Pamela Gien

Author:Pamela Gien
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307432674
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

EVERYONE MAKES MISTAKES

Postcards arrived—Prue in Capri, adorned in fake-jeweled Cleopatra sandals with blue eye shadow to match; Prue in Alice Springs, Australia. Exactly where Jack wanted to send Algernon, my mother said, quoting her favorite radio story with that earnest wild man, “somewhere between this world, the next world, and Australia.” From the picture, it was also a dust hole.

“Elizabeth, if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred and fifty times. But God gave you ears that don’t listen.” My mother moved below me under the syringa tree in a tired circle, trying to catch sight of me. “You will come down and eat that egg!” She fidgeted with her earring, her other hand crossed around her waist, like a small bird in a self-made cage. “If you do not, it will be on your plate for lunch, and then for supper. And you will not go to ballet.”

Ignoring my vomit-gagging threats, she floated like a gossamer dandelion to the edge of the shade. “I can see exactly why Mrs. Stryck suffocated her five children,” she said. “She was driven to distraction by children who will not listen.”

I was already deaf. Because I’d seen about the pillows in the Sunday Times. That Mrs. Stryck must have walked down her passage in the middle of the night. I thought of the gun, safely put away in the top drawer each morning.

“She went quite mad,” my mother warned. And then she made a joke for me. She rolled her eyes far back until, from where I was perched, I could see only ice white, and said, in a demented voice, “Quite maaaad!” I stayed very still. She drifted back into the house like an empty bottle on the sea.

She was only joking. However, Mrs. Stryck, I knew, was not in Australia, but right around the corner, right here in Ferndale somewhere. She’d done it in the middle of the night, smothered them while they were sleeping. Oh no oh God oh . . . Maybe Tarzan could wander down from Clova and rustle his chains, warn if anyone came near. Once, I thought he had come to me. But in the morning, there was no sign of him, no ghost marks from his chain in the dust outside my window.

And in the middle of this, Moliseng made the first mistake.

“Miss Lizzy Monkey, come down! I’ve got a very bad news for you!” Salamina came running, with Moliseng close behind. I slithered down the tree faster than snakes before the rain comes. Salamina looked at Moliseng with eyes of fire. “Monkey . . . ” she said, “she washed it. It shrank very, very much.” In Moliseng’s hands lay shreds of shrunken, matted voile that had once been a dream of white, the dress of my bride doll. The news fell into my ears like thunder. My legs jittered in disbelief. That was my best doll, the one who held all my dreams of being taken somewhere else, by someone

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