The Midnight Dancers: A Fairy Tale Retold (9 page)

five

Paul stood on the Durham’s doorstep around ten o’clock the next morning, steeled with determination, and  knocked. He wasn’t entirely sure of what to do next, but it had occurred to him that this might be a decent idea.

When one of the girls answered the door, he asked to see their mother. In a few minutes, Sallie came to the door. She was dressed in a blue cotton jumper, and was holding baby Jabez, who looked recently cleaned.

“Good morning, Paul,” she said, and her eyes were still a bit nervous, although she smiled. “What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to say thanks again for the great dinner last night. I really appreciated it.”

“Well, you’re very welcome, I’m sure.”

“Last night, I had told your younger daughters, Debbie and Linette, that I could teach them juggling. They seemed to be interested so I wanted to find out if that was all right with you, and when would be a good time.”

Sallie looked hesitant. “I would have to ask my husband. That’s very kind of you to offer. Would you want to be paid for it?”

Paul shook his head. “Not at all. Actually, I’m scheduled to do this show next week at the Colonial festival. I could really use some assistants. If you and Colonel Durham were willing, and the girls as well, they could be my assistants in the show.”

“Oh my! Well, that would keep them busy! Are you sure you could teach them in time?”

“Even if they learn a few things, they can help me out. It’s really not that difficult.”

She paused. “I’d have to check with my husband first. If he says it’s okay, then maybe you could come by at noon to teach them? If the girls are finished with their chores. Would that work for you?”

“Sounds great!”

“All right,” Sallie said, still seeming a little guarded. “I’ll see you then, Mr. Fester.”

“Call me Paul, please. Goodbye.”

Paul walked away as the door closed, breathing deeply.  He was fairly certain Colonel Durham would allow the lessons.  The only difficulty was that he was sure he would be tired by noon.

I’d better go back to the tent and make up my sleep now,
he thought.
And I hope Debbie and Linette manage to make up their sleep too.

Rachel yawned over the laundry.
I must, I
must
get some sleep today.
She thought of the hammock outside in the sun.  After she was done here, she would steal down there and doze off, if none of her sisters got there first.

Stepping up her pace, she finished the laundry a bit more quickly than usual, dabbed on some sunscreen, and slipped outside, stifling another yawn.  The hammock hung in a corner of the yard, unoccupied.  She lay down, closed her eyes against the sun, and was asleep almost instantly, swaying in the breeze.

A bit later on, she drifted to the surface of sleep and became aware of shrieks of laughter and shouts. She opened one eye, and saw some figures cavorting on the lawn. After watching them in a bored perplexity for some time, she remembered that Paul was supposed to come over to teach Debbie and Linette juggling, or tumbling, or something like that. She closed her eyes again.

Then she heard giggles coming closer. She opened an eye a bit irritated, and saw her two younger biological sisters Liddy and Becca, dressed in fancy dresses, come dancing up to the hammock, carrying a big plastic hamper between them.

“What are you doing?” she asked, a bit sharply.

Liddy, resplendent in royal blue, with ample costume jewelry said, “Becca and I are going to play dress up. In the cave.”

“Won’t Sallie think you’re a bit old for dress-up?” Rachel asked mildly.

“Oh no. She saw us, and she said we looked very cute,” said fourteen-year-old Becca. “Of course, we were doing it with the young ones, before Paul came and stole them away from us. So we’re just bringing the rest of the dresses down to the cave to wait for them.”

“I see,” Rachel said, “and you might just forget and leave them down there.”

“We might,” Liddy giggled.

“I see,” Rachel said, and closed her eyes again. She wondered to herself if there was a dress somewhere in the house that she could wear. There was something about seeing guys on summer nights that made her want to dress up.  But she didn’t exactly want to go in an old dress-up gown or discarded bridesmaid dress. Her own bridesmaid dress from her father’s second marriage had been made for her before she really hit her growth spurt—no question of her fitting into it now. Besides, it was pale blue cotton with ivory roses on it. At the time, she had picked out the fabric herself. But now it seemed like fabric for a naïve little girl, not for someone—well, like herself.

Remembering picking out the bridesmaid dresses turned over painful memories. Her mother’s death was something she had pushed to the furthest reaches of her mind. For a long time her father had seemed so anxious that she not be psychologically disturbed by the tragedy, and had arranged a plethora of counseling services for her, and would probably do so again, instantly, if he had any idea that she was still struggling with it. But she was weary of talking about the pain, and just wanted it to die away quietly in the back of her mind, alone and unnoticed.

The one good outcome of Mom’s dying was that for a while, it seemed, she and her father had been very close. He depended on her, the oldest, to keep the other girls together, to soak up their grief and more than that, to look after them, cook for them, feed them, keep them clothed, to run the household, especially when his military duties called.

Then he had met Sallie, and things had begun to change.  Rachel remembered bitterly the night Dad had taken her, Rachel, out to dinner, and told her about his plans to marry again. “You’ve been taking on the responsibilities of an adult, and you shouldn’t have to do that yet at your age. I want you to be free to be a child again, and enjoy being a young person.”  

Perhaps he meant it to be comforting, but for Rachel, he was stripping her of her newfound maturity. He was taking away part of her identity, even though he hadn’t realized it.  So here she was, capable of running a house, but unable to do it as she wanted, because it was no longer her house. Yet she still had to live under her father’s roof, and be a child, and she was sick of being a child.

And her father, who at one point had begun to treat her as an equal, repented to her (at their new pastor’s prodding) for placing too many burdens on her shoulders, and had proceeded, through his deeper involvement in their church, to become more and more clueless. He didn’t understand her silent outrage at having to listen to Sallie, whose haphazard housekeeping drove Rachel nuts, or her resentment towards the church and its various ministries.

Her father had turned to the church for support in his time of bereavement, and now seemed to be caught in its stranglehold. Everything in the family schedule revolved around church groups, share groups, youth groups, men’s groups, and women’s groups. Church annual retreats had become more important than Christmas and Easter, it seemed. But Rachel could see how much comfort and happiness her father and his wife derived from the church and their church family.  She didn’t dare suggest they leave or pull back. Who was she, she thought dismally, to wreck the happiness of so many people?

So she was finding her own version of happiness, in different places.
Yes, what I need,
she thought,
is a dress
. A sleek black dress, not too formal, not too casual. And black sandals, with thin straps
.
There was nothing in her wardrobe—or her sisters’—or Sallie’s—that remotely resembled the dress she was envisioning.  Such dresses were common enough in the outside world, but not in the cotton-print fabric of their church and family life.

The other girls would need dresses, too. Dresses to dance in.  Because they would go dancing, somehow. She felt the island would be a perfect place for a midnight dance.

She counted up dollars on her fingers. Last week she had gotten paid for several hours of filing at the church office. Perhaps next time she went into town, she could go to the Mission store—or better yet, the bargain-price clothing store that sold slightly defective brand name clothes. Next time she and Prisca went grocery shopping, they could arrange to split up and have one of them go to the store while the other went clothes shopping. Yes, that might work.

Turning over, she sighed, and gazed lazily over at the juggling class. She could see Linette tossing a club in the air and dropping it, while Paul stood in front of her, coaching her. Debbie was working with two clubs, and seemed to be doing just fine.

She wished she could get two sweet dresses for the younger girls as well, something still girlish and not too alluring. Part of her regretted that Debbie and Linette had found out about the secret.  They were really too young, even though Debbie was a tremendous flirt in her Sunday school class, attracting and casting off boys like an unusually pugnacious flower. No doubt she was more interested in Paul and his juggling than in any boy near her age.

“Rachel,” Cheryl’s voice called. Rachel groaned and rolled over in the hammock, wishing she had stayed asleep. The insistent note meant she was needed for something. She closed her eyes until her stepsister was standing right by the hammock, shaking her by the shoulder.

“What?” Rachel moaned pathetically.

“Mom wants you. You’re supposed to make bread today. For the Sabbath.”

“A pox on the Sabbath day,” Rachel murmured.

Cheryl, shocked, said reprovingly, “You really shouldn’t say that.”

Rachel opened one eye and saw Cheryl’s hand hanging down by her side, holding a book, her finger keeping her place. It was an older cloth-covered volume with scrolled black writing and an ominous title:
Babylon Mystery Religion.
 Beneath the words was a lithograph of a rather crude statue of a woman holding a baby.

“What are you reading?” she asked.

“One of mom’s books. It’s all about the Roman Church.”

“You mean the Catholic Church?”

“It’s not really a church, Rachel. It’s a satanic system. See the statue on the front? Doesn’t it look like the statue of the Virgin Mary with Jesus you see in Catholic churches? But it’s actually a statue of the Babylonian goddess Ishthar with her son, Nimrod the sun god. She was the moon goddess. Catholics are really just pagans under another name, worshipping the sun and moon.”

Rachel regarded the suggestive title with some amusement. “So Paul is an agent of Satan, trying to get us to…worship idols or something?”

“I hope not,” Cheryl said, her eyes worried. “This book is old, Rachel, and Mom said it’s still in print. It’s possible that not everything that it says is true, but there’s so much the author says that you just can’t argue with. It’s actually frightening.”

“Cheryl, you read too much,” Rachel blew her hair out of her eyes. “Just because a book is in print doesn’t mean anything. I mean, isn’t the Satanic Bible old? And that’s probably still in print.” She was irritated and got to her feet.

But as she stalked towards the house, she couldn’t help casting a furtive glance in Paul’s direction, picturing him as Cheryl’s agent of the devil, horns sprouting out of his short-cropped curly hair. The picture didn’t fit. Everything about Paul screamed “Wholesome.”
What a simply tremendous disguise,
she marveled sarcastically.
You would never guess.

Paul turned a full somersault and landed near her on the grass, breathless. He was sweating in the hot summer sun.  A silver medal bounced on a chain around his neck, along with a couple of strings. Wiping his forehead, he picked up the medal, untangled it from the strings, and tucked it back under his shirt. When he turned he seemed to become aware of her presence and startled.

“Sorry, didn’t see you there,” he murmured.

Rachel raised an eyebrow. “What’s that around your neck?” she asked.

“Oh, that. Just a medal, and a cross, and a scapular. They tend to get all tangled when I’m tumbling.”

“What kind of medal? For bravery?” she pursued. Debbie giggled behind Paul’s back.

“Heck no. Not that kind of medal, just a Catholic thing.” He held out the medal. “It’s got a picture of Mary on it.”