Soul Survivor

A prayer of Charlotte O' Brien:

“Lead me not into temptation and deliver me from evil, please God.  Thanks.  It would be great if you could lead me not into temptation.  It’s Lottie, and I’m in big trouble.”



Prologue:  Freak of Nature
         Dad’s boisterous laugh echoed all the way into the living room.  I sat gazing at the blue-eyed, red-haired girl on the glossy cover of the book my cousin April just lent me.  Not only pretty, she was really smart, too, April had said.  I’d never heard of Nancy Drew before, but she said all the sixth grade girls read these books.  I took her word for it since she was the only sixth grader I knew.  School let out last week and I’d already re-read all the books in my small library and, since they were committed to memory by now, I was too bored to read them again.  Mom was busy taking care of my baby sister Carrie Ann.  She couldn’t take me to the library.  Dad was laid off and bored, like me, so we’d started playing cards to fill in the time between watching the White Sox on TV, swimming at the community pool and softball games. The twelve-inch softball was so big compared to the league balls I usually found at the playground, but I was getting really good at throwing it, too, just like the cards.
Card games were fun and my dealing was definitely improving, though shuffling the deck was still too big a challenge for my small hands.  The glossy faces were really slippery and I’d had a lot of trouble holding all the cards for gin and rummy in one hand, the way Dad did.  But my fingers were getting stronger every day, thanks to so much softball throwing, and Dad said not to worry about the small hands.  He promised I’d grow big and tall just like all my older cousins and aunts and uncles. The last two days we’d played mostly poker and blackjack, which were easier since I didn’t have to hold many cards for any length of time.  When Dad said he was tired of waiting for his union manager to call him back to work and decided to go visit Aunt Josey, I jumped at the chance to get out.  He wanted her to teach me pinochle, since she was the best card player in the family.  Dad said it would be fun for me to learn a more social game. 
         Maybe I should go ask to play, I thought excitedly.  I could read at home anytime. 
I hopped off the overstuffed couch and hustled off toward the kitchen.  I wasn’t sneaking, but the hallway was dim so I walked slowly.  The few shards of light squeezing around the worn, wooden door were swallowed by the hall’s dark paneling and my light footsteps were silent on the plush runner carpet.  I heard the snap of Aunt Josey’s gold flip lighter, the one she brought back from Las Vegas last December.  The scratch of the wheel and the whoosh of her first puff was so familiar I could see her long cigarette fastened in her first two red-tipped fingers drawing the Virginia Slim to her thin, red-painted lips in my mind.  Red was Aunt Josey’s lucky color, she’d confided.  It must be true because she was the luckiest person in our family, or so Grandpa believed.  She’d just won two thousand dollars playing poker in Vegas, which was even luckier for Dad since I’d heard him tell Mom he was going to borrow some money to pay the overdue bills to the hospital for Carrie Ann’s delivery.  Dad’s gravelly voice was asking to borrow some of Aunt Josey’s card books.  Those sounded interesting to me, too, so I almost hastened my step, but something about the tone of Aunt Josey’s “Sure, why not?” reply caused me to pause just before entering the kitchen.   
“By the way, thanks for the lesson in humility, John,” her sarcastic voice rasped through the door, “and for hustling me and my kids.”  I heard her take a pull off her cigarette.  She coughed softly. 
         “I didn’t hustle you and you know it,” Dad snapped back. “I warned you she was great at Wheel of Fortune.  You’re the one that decided to make it interesting if I remember correctly.”
I touched the lump in the pocket of my shorts where twenty-eight dollar bills were rolled into a tight, rubber-banded coil.  When we got to Aunt Josey’s she and my cousins were betting on Wheel of Fortune puzzles.  Everyone was betting a dollar on each puzzle, and the first one to guess it won the pot.  Dad staked me the first dollar when I said I wanted to play.  I won that round, paid him back and then guessed every single puzzle including the “double bubble” big money puzzle at the end.  April’s twin older brothers, Jake and Charlie, had stopped playing and left before the end of the show, broke and muttering to each other, but April stayed even though she was out of money.  She said wanted to see if I could solve them all.  When she lent me the book I tried to give her money back, but she just laughed and said it was worth it to watch her know-it-all older brothers get shown up by an eight year-old.  They were going into high school.  Then she combed out my tangled golden curls and put them up in a pretty sparkly rubber band.  It was nice hanging out with April, almost like having an older sister.  Our conversation replayed in my mind as I smiled thinking about how nice April was to me.
“Keep it,” she said. “I don’t wear it anymore.” 
“Wow, thanks,” I said, admiring the way it reflected the light in her dresser mirror.  “Can I wear some lip gloss, too?” I asked timidly.
“Sure,” she’d said with a smile.  She nudged it over toward me and then continued combing out her own long blonde hair. “Let’s get you all prettied up.”
I unscrewed the lid and dipped my tiny finger in the pot.
“You should really stop biting your nails, Lottie,” she remarked.  “Big girls don’t bite their nails off ‘til they’re bleeding.”
My face flushed with embarrassment and I curled my fingers into fists.  “I know, Mom keeps telling me the same thing.  I just get nervous, and can’t help it.”
April picked up a bottle of red nail polish and handed it over. “Well, take this and paint them every other day or so.  When they look pretty, you won’t want to do it anymore.”
I set the tiny bottle on her dresser.  “Mom won’t let me wear it,” I said quietly.  “She says young girls are always trying to grow up too fast and no daughter of hers is going to wear makeup like a whore.”
Her blue eyes widened with alarm and her hand moved quickly to cross herself.  “She said that to you?”
I shook my head.  “No, she was saying it to my Grandma, but I heard it anyway.”
She smiled at me.  “Well, my mom doesn’t mind a little lip gloss and nail polish, but you should be careful if your mom’s so set against it.  And don’t go around repeating that name anymore, Lottie.  If my mom hears you talk like that she’ll wash your mouth out with soap.”
         
Aunt Josey’s irritated comment recalled my attention. “You coulda told me she was a ringer.” 
Dad laughed.  “I would’ve if I knew she was gonna clean out the cookie jar on you.  She’s solving crosswords now, Josey.  Not little ones.  I bring her the ones from the Sun-Times, and sometimes the New York Times, too.”
“She didn’t clean out my cookie jar, John, she just nabbed up all my pocket money.  I got more.”  She took another puff and the forced sound of her exhalation pained me.  “I’m just not willing to pass it on to my niece, yet.”
Dad’s low chuckle made me smile as I pictured the curve of his lips and the bright blue of his merry eyes.  His words tumbled out hastily, as though confessing an exciting secret.  “I’ve been trying her on cards.  I think she can count, Josey.  That’s why I want the book—I want to see for sure.” 
“Jesus Christ,” she muttered.  “How the hell did you end up with such a brainiac for a daughter?”
         “Who knows?” he chuckled again.  “We got another letter with her report card.  They said she’s got some kind of unbelievable memory—photographic they think, but they’re gonna send her for some special tests to be sure.  And, they’re starting up a special program at the school.  They called it gifted and she’ll be the youngest one to be enrolled.  Next fall she’s gonna be in a special computer class learning programming with the advanced junior high kids.”
           “Holy Cow!” she remarked with real enthusiasm. 
         Aunt Josey wasn’t easily impressed.  I smiled, my heart pounding with delight.  I kept listening as Dad continued.  He and Mom hadn’t said much to me about the letter.  They just told me I was going to some special classes for smart kids. 
“The tests they made last month weren’t able to figure out how smart she is, Jos.  They said she reads at the eighth grade level, but that was because that was as high as the test would go.  They want to re-test her in the fall with a harder test, so they can figure out what to do with her in these new classes.”
There was a long pause.  I waited.  I heard Aunt Josey take another long pull on her cigarette.  She blew the smoke out.
“John,” she said finally, in a tone I didn’t understand, “that kid’s a freak of nature.”
Her words sank like a stone in the pit of my stomach.
“No she’s not,” Dad replied.  “Lottie’s special.  Gifted, just like the school said.”
The tiny white hairs on my arms rose.  A cold chill blew through me, making me shiver despite the lack of air in the dim hall.  Horrified by the alien feeling Aunt Josey’s words sparked, I turned back to the living room.  I paused at the full-length mirror.  The reflection of my blue-green eyes—wide and frightened—sent another shiver over my cold skin.  I curled up into a little ball on the sofa.  The wad of bills cut into my thigh.
Freak of nature. Special. Gifted. The words echoed in my head battering the inside of my mind.
I opened the book to page one and tried desperately to forget them but somewhere in the back of my cluttered mind, some part of me wished I knew whose words were correct.