The Scapegoat.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN from CAUGHT UP Truth and Metaphor | An Imaginary Tale
The Scapegoat
16
Petra’s so-called memories, a tapestry of half-truths imposed upon her impressionable psyche, did not reflect reality. The tragic death of her baby sister, Anne, was too much for an undeveloped four-year-old brain to handle. The loss initiated a series of survival tactics causing her mind to splinter. She compartmentalized the overwhelming emotions by hiding them deep within the caverns of her subconscious. Her conscious mind, wiped clean, became incapable of accessing any legitimate memories of what had happened, or her involvement in it. As a result, she believed everything she was told, which, as it turns out, was very little and most of it lies. The story came out in bits and pieces over many years.
Her father, Raymond, carrying two mortgages, one in Chicago, the city where she was born and another in Ohio, the site of his present employment, had his back pressed against a crumbling wall of debt. The only option to get out from under, without foreclosure on the Chicago property, was a job offer from Firestone in Liberia, Africa. The pay, measured against his current salary, was extravagant and included housing, servants, a car and a driver. He jumped on the opportunity, dragging his wife and their two daughters, a two-year-old and a six-month-old, to West Africa. It was a desperate, impulsive move with little to no regard for the impact race riots and civil unrest might have on his family.
Raymond and Lou enjoyed their time in Monrovia. The unexpected imperialist lifestyle was far more than they had hoped for. It was downright elitist. They partied non-stop, as twenty-something’s often do, leaving the child care to the nanny and the cook. Everything went along as planned until the unthinkable happened.
Anne, two years old at the time of the incident, and Petra, now an independent four-year-old, were playing by themselves in the dining room. In full view, on top of the china cabinet was a glass jar filled with cookies. An outsider might wonder whose idea it was to display a jar of delicious-looking cookies in a see-through glass container, where children could see it.
“Those cookies are not for children. Do not touch!”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
Africans, in the early sixties, understood all too well that their white oppressors carried malaria. To avoid infection, the servants required a regular dose of anti-malarial medicine. The administration of the life-saving drug was problematic as the indigenous population was resistant to all forms of western medicine, especially the swallowing of pills. Raymond’s company found a workable solution. They manufactured a special chocolate chip cookie that contained the daily recommended adult dose of the drug.
Upon entering the dining room, the nanny witnessed the half-empty container turned on its side, with cookie crumbs spread out all over the floor. It looked as if a wild beast had attacked it. A lone dining room chair sat next to the cabinet. She found the girls in the attached half-bath. Petra was holding baby Anne in her lap while she threw up in the toilet.
Nanny and Cook grabbed the girls and placed them in the car. The driver made a quick stop to pick up their parents at a nearby tennis court and speed into the city. At the hospital, doctors pumped both of their stomachs. Petra showed no signs of overdose. Her sister, however, had slipped into a coma as the result of a raging fever. They placed her in multiple ice baths over several days. In the middle of the night, on the third day, she stopped fighting and died.
Anne had been a happy child, luminous and full of energetic light. It was plain as day, everyone could see it, little Anne was special. Her radiance inspired Raymond and Lou to place their dreams of a triumphant future upon her. In their minds, she carried the potential success of the family on her tiny shoulders. Petra, in contrast, was a dark, brooding child who was already showing signs of depression and lethargy.
Her death was the hammer that shattered an already fragile family system; a system that was cursed generationally. No matter how far back you looked, the same familiar pattern exhibited itself over and over again. While they appeared gifted, the members of both the maternal and paternal bloodlines had one thing in common. They did not function well within the constraints of societal standards and expectations. Chaos surrounded them, and they counteracted the mayhem with alcohol. There were stories of family members being murdered, many committed suicide, still more fell into patterns of spontaneous relocation, as if running for their lives.
In contrast to the family’s inherent emotional instability, was the obsession with fitting in, being respected, and looking good at any cost. The children, instructed to be “seen and not heard,” exhibited extraordinary levels of self-control and an elegant politeness at all times. No emotional displays of any kind allowed, ever! Spontaneous play and self-expression were met with criticism and physical punishment.
All day, every day, was a grand performance that had nothing to do with anybody’s authentic self. A nightly alcohol-induced reprieve followed the strained production. Cocktail hour, which began ritually at five o’clock, on the dot, offered a respectable loosening of moral restraint. The participants were under the false impression that it allowed them an opportunity to relax into a genuine expression of their truest and best selves. In actuality, alcohol opened the doors to degenerate, compulsive and impulsive behaviors. It seemed to be a polar opposite to the perfectionism of their daily routines. The often mean-spirited, abusive, and selfish behaviors spawned from alcohol abuse led to dire consequences, to the destruction of self and others.
Following Anne’s death, with their reputation in mind, a unanimous decision was made.
“No one should speak about the accident. Besides, it won’t bring her back.”
Everyone agreed and together, they psychically signed a non-disclosure agreement. The whole thing was too painful. It brought up unruly emotions and generated questions about who was to blame. It tarnished the image the family wished to portray. The only way to deal with the tragedy was to sweep the entire ordeal under the rug and move on as if nothing had happened.
Less than twenty-four hours after her sister’s death, Petra, in the care of a flight attendant, boarded an airplane bound for London. Her grandmother, Evelyn, retrieved her at the terminal gate. Considering her debutante roots, the code of silence may very well have originated with her. Over the years, under the influence of alcohol, family members slipped up and particles of information leaked out.
Lou, after one too many gin martinis, unleashed some very interesting information.
“We barely made it out of Africa with Anne’s ashes because there was a murder contract on your father’s head.”
She tried her best to get more information. It was obvious her mother was upset about the slip. Still loose-tongued, Lou couldn’t help but embellish.
“Without Anne’s death and our sudden departure, the locals would have killed your father.”
The new information caused Petra to wonder.
“What, exactly, did my father do?”
On a side note, someone murdered Evelyn’s first husband, Lou’s biological father, supposedly for gambling debts. A tidbit, her second husband, drunk, disclosed at a fancy country club party to his wife’s horror.
If there was a funeral, no one invited Petra. Any mention of “the accident” remained taboo.
“Just too painful.”
It never was about the pain. If it had been about pain, someone would have helped the living child left behind, dying of guilt, remorse and shame.
Every summer, the family went to Grandmother Evelyn’s cabin on Lake Huron, in northern Michigan. Attempting to break the code of silence, before the dinner guests arrived, Petra, age twelve, interrogated her half-dressed grandmother upstairs in her bedroom.
“Oh, how I hate these contraptions.”
Evelyn was preoccupied pulling on a girdle. Aghast, the burgeoning adolescent stared at her seventy-two-year-old grandmother’s sagging, wrinkled flesh as she lifted, tucked and squeezed it back into its former shape. Already at war with her body image, she saw the gruesome spectacle as an ill omen of still worse vulgarities to come.
In the middle of that thought, Petra, the narrator telling Sister McKinney her story, flashed to the Puerto Rican families that occupied 127 Second Avenue when she first arrived. The sudden infiltration by white junkie poets and artists, sad souls, but privileged nonetheless, must have sparked a similar sense of the impending desecration of their way of life. She considered her present day status as the only white woman in a black ghetto.
Was she the foreshadowing of an appropriation disaster? A harbinger of doom? What if developers had a keen eye on the physical movements of disenfranchised caucasian creatives? What if she, like the proverbial canary in a coal mine, her death signified by an inability to function within the status quo, and her subsequent flight in search of freedom, sounded an “all clear” to the powers that be to initiate gentrification?
“Oh, my fucking God! Stop! Can’t you see you blame yourself for everything? It’s a pattern. A fucking pattern! This is where it began,” said her angry internal, cigarette smoking, cocktail drinking twelve-year-old self. “Why am I the only one who sees it? You are so fucking blind! It’s maddening. You’ve got to find your way out of this mess. Get back to the story already!”
Deaf to the actual content of the words, the force they carried snapped her out of the self-blaming rabbit hole and back into the present reality where she continued her conversation with Grandmother Evelyn.
“Can’t you tell me anything about Anne?—Anything at all?”
Caught in a moment of unconscious reflection, Evelyn said, “I was helping you unpack your suitcase in London. You pulled out a pair of underwear and said, ‘These are my Annie’s panties. I was a bad mommy.’ It broke my heart.”
From that moment on, Petra had an abiding love for her grandmother. It wasn’t much information, little more than a crumb, but it signified emotional support and something was better than nothing.
When Evelyn died, Petra was forty-years-old. They laid her to rest in a family plot in Cheboygan, Michigan. Petra spent every summer, before she turned eighteen, at her grandmother’s cabin. No one had bothered to mention that her dead sister's grave was next to the plot reserved for her grandmother. She stood staring at Anne’s headstone, holding her four-year-old son’s hand. Behind her, she could hear Lou trading pie recipes with the cemetery manager’s wife. It was surreal. Her mother was acting as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
Had Petra been able to take her eyes off Anne’s grave to turn toward Lou, she would have let her have it.
“How dare you! You stupid fucking bitch! She was here the whole time? Why didn’t you tell me? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
She would have grabbed her poor excuse for a mother by the collar, dragged her to the grave and beat her brains out on the headstone.
Instead, her sweet son, still connected to Spirit, squeezed her hand and drew her attention back to the matter at hand.
“Mom, go say goodbye to your sister.”
Following Anne’s death, Lou and Raymond’s alcoholism escalated. With their drunkenness came loose side remarks that broke the NDA.
“Your sister Anne would never disappoint me like this.”
Her father was often frustrated by Petra’s complete lack of motivation. Likewise, her mother, in rage-fueled fits, spoke equally damaging words.
“I wish you had died.”
And on another occasion.
“How could you kill my precious baby?”
Petra, imprisoned by grief and survivor’s guilt, walked around in a dark cloud and distanced herself from life. Her contrary state perpetuated more condemnation from her parents.
“Why can’t you be normal?”
At five years old, she did not believe she had a right to life. The world would be better off without her. Pretending to be dead, she practiced holding her breath until she experienced a dizzying fade into darkness. She hid in corners, out of sight and invisible. She was quiet, withdrawn, and clinically self-conscious. Convinced that all the harsh words, criticisms and abuses were well-deserved, she came to believe that deep down, at her core, she was no good. She went limp and allowed her parents to abuse her with words and deeds. Unsupported and alone, she became like the walking dead and, as such, was a constant reminder of the perfect child her parents had lost.
As the story poured out, Sister McKinney understood why this white woman was toughing it out in a black ghetto. The only stability she had ever known came from the African servants who had raised her. From that day on, she began calling her “Daughter.”
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A harrowing tale, shot through with unlikely humor and fantastical creatures.
This autofiction (autobiography and fiction) novel revolves around a lifetime spent underwater struggling to find the surface. The narrative follows the journey of an unlikely heroine from the bondage of childhood trauma to self-awareness and freedom.
It is a roller coaster ride from the depths of hell to triumphant success that finishes with a big Hollywood ending.
Powerful, brave, heart wrenching. 🌻🫶🌻