“You don't need that, Gabriella. It's not healthy. There's nothing more unattractive in the world than fat children.” She was in no danger of becoming fat, as all three of them knew. If anything, she looked like one of the starving children in Hungary she had heard so much about when she didn't finish her dinner. But nonetheless the whipped cream never came her way again. And she knew better than anyone that it was because she didn't deserve it. She had driven her mother to a frenzy the night before. There was no doubt in her mind that the ravages of the night before were probably her own fault, no matter how little she understood it.

They stayed at the Plaza until late that afternoon, greeting friends and observing strangers. It was a fun place to go for lunch, and normally Gabriella would have enjoyed it, but today she couldn't. She was in too much pain, and she was relieved when they left finally, to go home. Her father had already gone outside to find a taxi and Gabriella hung back a little bit, moving slowly, watching her mother stroll elegantly across the lobby. Heads turned as she walked past, as they always did, and Gabriella watched her in awe and silent hatred. If she was so beautiful, why couldn't she be nice as well? It was one of those mysteries to which Gabriella knew she would never have the answer. And as she walked out of the hotel, thinking about it, she stumbled for just an instant and accidentally stepped ever so lightly on the toe of her mother's black suede shoe. Gabriella shuddered inside as she did it, and her mother reacted even more quickly. She stopped dead in her tracks, stared at Gabriella with contempt, and pointed to her shoe in silent outrage.

“Fix that,” she said in a growling undervoice that made her sound like the voice of the devil, at least to Gabriella. Her mother was pointing at her shoe, with an imperiousness that would have startled anyone who heard her, but as usual, no one seemed to notice.

“I'm sorry, Mommy.” Her eyes were bottomless pools of regret and sorrow.

“Do something about it,” her mother snarled, but Gabriella had nothing to fix the black suede with except her fingers, and she began rubbing frantically in order to eliminate the offending dust spot. She thought of using her dress, but that would make her mother even angrier… or her sweater… There had to be something, but there wasn't. There didn't appear to be an available handkerchief, or even a bit of tissue. So Gabriella did the best she could with her nimble little fingers. And on closer inspection, it appeared that the smudge was gone, but Eloise refused to believe it when Gabriella said so. She made her clean the shoe again and again, kneeling on the pavement outside the hotel to do it. “Don't ever do that again. Do you understand?” she said harshly to Gabriella, as the child said a silent prayer of thanks that she had been able to remove the spot. If she hadn't, there would surely have been another beating, or perhaps there still would be. The day was young yet.

They took a cab back to their house after that, and Gabriella's intense pain grew worse with each passing moment. She was as white as a sheet, and her hands trembled as she folded them quietly, hoping her mother wouldn't see them before they got home. But for some reason, Eloise was in good spirits for a change, and although she wasn't pleasant to Gabriella, considering the scene of the night before, she was surprisingly civil to her husband. She didn't apologize for anything, she never did. As far as she was concerned, she didn't have to. In her mind, their argument of the night before was entirely his fault, and nothing she had to apologize for or explain.

She sent Gabriella to her room almost as soon as they got home. She hated finding her afoot, or wandering around the house for no apparent reason. She preferred to see her confined to a small space, sitting on a chair in her room, keeping out of trouble. And Gabriella meant to do just that. She didn't want to provoke her any further. So Gabriella went to her room, and stayed there. She had nothing to do, but she was in so much pain, she couldn't have done anything, if they'd asked her. But as she sat in her room, she couldn't help thinking about Meredith, the doll that had been demolished the night before. She genuinely missed her. Meredith had been her only friend her confidante, her soul mate. And now she had no one.

She was still thinking about it when she heard laughter in the hall, outside her door, and was surprised to realize that she was hearing the voices of her parents. Her mother seldom laughed at anything, but as Gabriella listened, she sounded almost girlish. Their voices drifted away eventually, and she heard their bedroom door close heavily. She had no idea what was happening in there, and wondered if they were fighting. But it didn't sound like it. They sounded happy as they laughed and giggled. And for a long time, Gabriella just sat there waiting. They'd have to come back eventually if only just to feed her.

But by the end of the afternoon, they still hadn't reappeared, and she knew that there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn't knock on their door, or speak to them through it. She could hardly demand an explanation as to why they had been ignoring her, or why they had left her to her own devices, and neglected to give her dinner.

In the end, they never came back to her that night. They had come to some kind of temporary peace, and were happily consummating it in the privacy of their bedroom. Eloise had forgiven him for the night before, which was rare, and he was so startled by it and she looked so pretty that day that he was actually attracted to her. That and the fact that he'd had several drinks at the Plaza at lunch helped to soften him to a woman he normally detested. For some reason, they were both feeling unusually mellow. But none of their newly found warm feelings extended to their daughter. John knew it would only be a temporary peace, as did Eloise, but it was enjoyable anyway, for however long it lasted. And Eloise decided not to take a single moment away from their time in bed to bother feeding Gabriella.

Gabriella knew she could have gone downstairs. There were still leftovers from the night before, but she had no idea what would happen if she dared to touch them. It was best to just stay in her room, and wait. They couldn't be that long. They were only talking, after all, with the door closed. But as she sat and watched first six and then seven and eight o'clock come, and finally nine, and even ten, it was obvious to her that she had been forgotten. She went to bed finally, grateful that the day was done and nothing particularly untoward had happened to her. But it could still happen, just as it had the night before, if her father angered her mother, or abandoned her, walked out and left her, as he did so often, however much or little she deserved it. Anything was possible, and Gabriella would have to pay the price for all his weaknesses and failings. But this time nothing happened. He didn't go anywhere, and the two lovebirds remained in their room, and Gabriella fell asleep finally, without her dinner.





Chapter 4




BY THE AGE of nine, having survived two more years of her parents’ unthinkable behavior, Gabriella had retreated into a world where she could occasionally escape them. She wrote poems, stories, letters to imaginary friends. She had begun to develop a world where for an hour or two at least, her parents and the tortures they inflicted on her seemed to vanish. She wrote about happy people in pretty worlds, where wonderful things happened. She never wrote about her family, or the things her mother still did to her whenever the mood struck her. Her writing was her only escape, her only means of survival. It was a respite from a cruel world, despite seemingly comfortable surroundings. Gabriella knew better than anyone that neither her address, nor the size of her father's income, or the distinction of the families from which her parents came, protected her from the kind of realities that other people's nightmares were made of. Her mother's elegance, and the jewels she wore, and the pretty clothes that hung in her own closet, meant nothing to her. She knew the meaning of life better than most, and the stood early on what was important, and what wasn't. Love meant everything to her, she dreamed of it, thought of it, wrote of it. It was the one thing in her life that had eluded her completely.

People still talked about how pretty she was, how well behaved, how immaculate, how she never misbehaved or answered back, or challenged her parents. As did her teachers, her parents’ friends talked about her lovely hair, her huge blue eyes, how rarely she spoke. Her grades were excellent, and although her teachers lamented the fact that she seldom spoke up in class, and only answered questions in class when directly pressed to do so, she was nonetheless far ahead of most of the other children her age. She read constantly, and had learned early. Just as her early writing did, the books she read transported her to another world, light-years away from her own. She loved reading, and now when her mother wanted to torment her, she threw away her books, and took her pencils and paper away from her. She was always quick to discover what meant the most to her, and to seal off all of Gabriella's avenues of escape. But when that happened, Gabriella sat lost in thought, dreaming. In the ways that mattered, at least, they could no longer touch her, though they never noticed. And for reasons Gabriella herself couldn't explain, she knew instinctively now that she was a survivor.

Eloise often had Gabriella help in the kitchen, scrubbing, or washing dishes, or polishing silver. She complained that Gabriella was still intolerably spoiled, and owed it to them to make herself useful somewhere in the house. She did her own laundry, changed her sheets, cleaned her own room, and bathed and dressed herself. She was never allowed to be idle for a single moment, unlike other children her age, who were left to play outdoors, or in their own rooms, and given books or toys to entertain them. Gabriella's life was still a constant battle for survival, and as she grew older, the ante was upped frequently, the rules changed on a daily basis. Her skill lay in deciphering her mother's threats, determining her mood of the hour, and striving constantly not to annoy her, doing everything possible not to incur her fury.

The beatings still occurred just as frequently, but she was in school for longer now, which mercifully kept her away from home for more hours every day. And inevitably, the sins she was accused of committing were more serious as she grew older. Forgotten homework, lost articles of clothing, breaking a plate when she was doing dishes in the kitchen. She knew better than to make excuses for her crimes. She just braced herself and took what came. She was artful at hiding the bruises in school, from teachers and the few children she played with. She kept to herself most of the time. She couldn't see the children after school anyway, her mother would never have allowed another child in the house to visit. It was bad enough, as far as Eloise was concerned, having Gabriella underfoot to destroy the house, she had no intention of inviting other children in to help her. One child to endure was bad enough. Yet another was inconceivable torture to her.

Only twice in her three years in school had teachers observed something wrong with Gabriella. Once her uniform had slipped up her thigh while jumping rope at recess, and they had seen the appalling bruises on her legs. When questioned, she had explained that she'd fallen off her bike in her parents’ garden, and after sympathizing with her over the enormity of the bruise and how much it must have hurt when it happened, they let it go and forgot about it. The second time had been at the start of the current school year. Both her arms had been badly bruised and one of her wrists had been sprained. Her face, as was almost always the case, was remarkably untouched, her eyes innocent as she explained a bad fall from a horse over the weekend. They had excused her from doing homework until her wrist got better, but she couldn't explain that to her mother when she got home that night, so she did the homework anyway, and turned it in at school in the morning.

Her father remained as uninvolved as he had always been. And in the past two years, he seemed to spend most of his time away. He was traveling for the bank, and Gabriella knew that something untoward had happened between her parents, although it had never been clear to her exactly when it had occurred, or what it was. But for the past six months, they had had separate bedrooms, and her mother seemed angrier than ever whenever Gabriella's father was home.