Memorial Day Tribute To Our Friend & Colleague Nicole Chakalis

Things in the new house were different. Not better, just different. Toni and Lee could play outside now and they each had their own bed. The girls pushed their beds together every night and their mother pulled them apart every morning. The girls were only one year apart and really quite different. Toni was the older of the two and usually did all the talking for both of them. Lee was younger and never said much. Toni had curly dark hair and black eyes. Lee had long, smooth, golden blonde hair, skin the color of honey, and hazel eyes. Peggy dressed them exactly alike as if they were twins.

It was dark and late and even in their matching red flannel pajamas the girls were cold. Toni was awake; she tried to hold still and not move to where the sheets got even colder. Hearing the soft regular breathing in the bed next her, she reached over and scratched Lee’s sheet. It was their signal to each other; if Lee were awake, she would scratch back. She didn’t. Toni laid there waiting for her parents to come back. She could still smell her mother’s cologne in the air, Fabergé by Coty, but it was fading. Toni loved the smell but it made her feel anxious too. The scent excited her because her mother wore it only on special occasions and Toni came to recognize it as the smell of her mother’s happiness. Her mother was always happy when she put it on, but it also meant she was going out, that she would leave, and Toni knew they would be alone, cold and in the dark until she came back.

Toni thought tonight might be a special night. Mother and father had rarely went out together since moving into the new house. Earlier that night, Toni thought: Maybe they won’t come back. She wasn’t scared; she felt like she didn’t really need them around anymore. Toni imagined what it would be like to be an orphan, how people would feel sorry for her and Lee, how her Gramma Bridget would probably come for her. But Toni worried that Gramma Bridget wouldn’t take Lee, and Toni wouldn’t go without her.

Shouting from outside grew loud and close. Toni heard the door swing open hard and bounce off the wall. The cold, bitter, winter wind blew all through the house, chilling every room. The wind blew away the smell of the cologne and replaced it with the smell of whiskey. The cold air made the covers stiff and unyielding and Toni felt paralyzed in her bed. She could smell cigarettes and booze, hear her parents stumbling around, and her mother’s shouting. She had never heard her mother yell like that before. Her mother would usually just sit in the chair next to the stove without saying a word while her father yelled.

Toni wanted to go out there and try to stop them. She wanted to get out of bed, but it was too cold. The noise and the light from the hall woke Lee. She sat up in bed and parted the curtain of long blonde hair from the front of her face and hooked it behind her ears. “What’s that noise? Why’s it so cold?”

“Nothing, go back to sleep. They just came home, that’s all.” Toni tucked the blanket under her sister and pulled it up to her chin. Lee looked up at Toni with her soft green eyes, smiled and fell back asleep.

•

Toni lay shivering, listening.

“God, it’s freezing in here. When are you gonna get some heating oil?” her mom shouted.

“I told you tomorrow. I just got paid, you know that for Christ sake,” her dad yelled back.

“I saw how you spent all night mooning over how wonderful that Cathy was, complimenting her all night, what beautiful posture she has for a tall woman. What kind of crap was that? How nice she keeps her house. What a lovely dress. ‘Did you hear that Peggy? She even fixes lunch for Bud when he stops home from work.’ The bastard has a job. He goes to work every day. She doesn’t have a bunch of kids and a lazy good-for-nothing drunk for a husband. You can’t even keep a job.”

“Who wouldn’t be drunk married to you? You’re a spoiled bitch.”

“You followed her around like a puppy dog all night, telling’ her she should be a model. You must be drunk, she’s not that good looking’. She’s tall, that’s all.”

“You got a lot of nerve criticizing Cathy just because she’s an attractive woman who keeps her house clean and her husband fed. While we live in filth and you can’t keep your horny hands off that Chuck guy.”

“Shut up! The kids will hear you!”

“Shut up? When they might hear about their lazy tramp of a mother but all day, every day, all they hear is what a no-good, son-of-a-bitch I am.”

Toni quietly got out of bed and cracked the bedroom door just wide enough to see her parents.

“Leave me alone. You make me sick!” Her mom kicked off her shoes and sat down at the kitchen table. Still in her evening dress, she stuffed the aqua blue taffeta between her legs then picked through the ashtray looking for a long butt to smoke.

Her dad pulled a Pall Mall cigarette from the red pack in his shirt pocket and lit it with a match cupped in his hand, then shook the match out. He paced back and forth on the new living room carpet holding a juice glass of whiskey and taking drags on the long, unfiltered cigarette.

“Why don’t you go back there if you like it so much?” Peggy spat.

In four long strides, her appeared in the kitchen. He grabbed her mom by the shoulders and shook her then pushed her back hard off the chair. She fell, the chair toppled, the ashtray crashed and splintered on the floor. Instead of getting up, Peggy lay on the floor crying.

Toni forgot she’d been hiding and ran to her mother.

Before she reached her, her dad saw her and told her to go back to bed.

“What about Mom?”

Her mom sat up and wiped her face with her hands. “I’m all right, honey. Go back to bed.”

Toni retreated. She rolled up in her blanket, shut her eyes tight, and put the pillow on her head. Eventually, she drifted off to sleep.

•

When Toni awoke again an uneasy silence had come over the house. Her dad had either quieted down or left, Toni wasn’t sure. She didn’t hear her mom anymore either. Fully awake, she had to use the bathroom. She got up, hitched up her pajama pants and tiptoed barefoot down the hall on the cold linoleum floor trying not to wet her pants. The light in the bathroom was on, but the door was closed. She heard muffled sobs coming from behind the door. Toni had to push very hard to get the door open enough to squeeze in. Behind the door, her mom lay curled in a ball. Toni noticed that the front of her nightgown was soaked in blood. The bathroom rug, too, was red. There were several towels bunched up in the tub also soaked in blood. The toilet was splattered with blood. Her mom had one towel rolled up between her legs.

Toni felt terrified and started to cry. “Ma, Ma, what’s wrong?”

Peggy tried to push herself up but dropped back onto the bathroom floor. “It’s just an accident.”

It was the worst accident Toni had ever seen. She had never seen so much loose blood in one place. “Did Dad do this? When he pushed you?”

Peggy shook her head. “No, honey. I’ll be okay. Just help me up. I think I’ll be okay. I think it’s going to be fine.”

Toni tried to help her mother up but she wasn’t tall enough or strong enough. Peggy grabbed the sink and Toni ducked under her mom’s other arm. Her mom leaned on Toni until she collapsed on the toilet seat.

“Go back to bed now, it’s okay.”

Toni was so scared she did as she was told. As she crept down the hall back to her bedroom, she smelled something strange. It was a smell she wouldn’t recognize until much later in life and it was a smell that would remind her of her mother: the smell of dead blood. Toni learned something awful that night but, for many years, couldn’t identify it. She went back to bed without using the toilet. When she finally fell asleep, she wet the bed.

•

In the morning, their mom woke the girls for school and went back to bed. Toni opened a can peaches and poured some milk on them hoping to duplicating the wonderful peaches and cream she had at her grandmother’s, but it didn’t work. When she poured the milk in the can of peaches, it got all lumpy.

The bathroom was clean, no towels, no rug, just a few drops of blood on the black and white tiled floor between the pink toilet and the pink tub. The girls dressed in their identical uniforms: blue plaid, pleated skirts, white, short-sleeved blouses with Peter Pan collars, navy knee socks, and brown-and-white saddle shoes.

The sky was gray. Toni and Lee wore matching wool coats with velvet collars. They walked down the middle of the road to the place were the orange bus picked them up for school. They stood holding hands until they saw the headlights. Their mittens dangled on yarn strings that ran up the insides of their sleeves and around their shoulders. They managed to get seats together in the back of the bus but the seats were over the wheel. Toni told her sister what she saw the night before, the blood, the strange smell. Lee just listened and stared. During the long bus ride to school, girls began to worry about what had happened the night before and they both began to feel sick. They blamed it on the bumpy ride.

When Toni got to her fourth grade classroom, Sister Mary Sienna sat behind her desk waiting with her hands folded under her white habit. She was Toni’s favorite teacher. She seemed to understand. Toni had written a paragraph about the changes in the fall and Sister liked it. She showed it to Sister Marie Antonio, the principal. Sister Sienna even wrote a note to Toni’s parents saying how good it was. When Toni’s father read it, he asked her if she had copied it from someone else’s paper. Toni wondered how she could copy her thoughts from someone else’s paper. Her mother never read it.

Feeling ill, Toni asked the Sister if she could go to the bathroom.

But sister said, “Antoinette, you will have to wait until after morning prayers.”

The class stood and recited one Our Father and one Hail Mary, then The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. They were in the middle of singing America the Beautiful when Toni threw up the peaches in the aisle between the desks. The other kids started to retch. One girl had to run to the bathroom. The janitor came and put what looked like ground-up erasers on the puke. Toni went to the girl’s room and rinsed her mouth out. She stalled and stayed there for a long time not wanting to face the class again.

When she returned, she announced, “It must have been the peaches I ate for breakfast that made me sick.”

Sister Sienna called Toni back up to the front of the classroom and asked what she usually had for breakfast. Now Toni was in a bind. She had already said too much. She had been told over and over again by her mom, her dad, even her grandmother, to never tell anything about what happened at home. If she told Sister they didn’t usually have breakfast, Sister might think that was wrong. So she lied. Lying was the one thing Toni was pretty good at. She said they usually had cereal, and toast, and milk, and juice, like the pictures of a good breakfast Toni had seen on boxes of cereal.

“My mom had an accident last night and there was a lot of blood in the bathroom and she didn’t wanna get up this morning. So I ate the peaches and the ride to school was bumpy. And I think that’s why I got sick. But I feel better now.”

Sister picked up Toni’s hands, turned them over and looked at them.

“Did you wash your hands today?” Sister asked. Toni lied again. “Yeah.”

Sister Sienna left the room. When she returned she told Toni to bring her books and come with her. They walked silently down the long hall to the principal’s, Sister Antonio’s, office. Sister Antonio wasn’t much taller than Toni. She was dark, with a slight mustache, furry eyebrows and black eyes. She stared coldly at Toni for a few moments then said, “Antoinette, why are your nails painted and your hands dirty?”

Toni explained that her grandmother had painted them when they were clean, but then they got dirty and the paint was still there. Sister Antonio told her that good people do not wear paint on their nails. Toni thought, What about Gramma? She’s good and she paints her nails. Toni didn’t want to tell Sister that, though, because she would probably say it was backtalk. She knew adults always asked you a question and when you answered they would say, “No backtalk, young lady!”

Sister Sienna came back in the office and said she had called Toni’s house and had spoken to her mother and everything was fine, that nothing had happened and that her mother wasn’t aware Toni had eaten the peaches but she was sure she would be fine.

After classes, all the students had to go to the church to pray for the poor souls in purgatory. The smell of the incense burning, the hypnotizing affect of the flames of hundreds of votive candles in their red glasses made Toni feel sick again. Thinking of children just like her burning in purgatory, waiting for enough prayers to be said, enough candles to be lit, enough good deeds to be offered up, so their poor souls could be released into the kingdom of heaven, Toni felt helpless, frustrated, and scared. By the time the prayers were over she was crying.

•

It was already dark when the girls got home. All the lights in the house were on, casting a golden glow on the driveway. Through the window Toni saw her mother wearing her apron and standing by the stove. Her dad stood behind her mom with his arms around her waist, his chin resting on her shoulder. As the girls peeled off their hats and coats, they could smell the calf’s liver with bacon and onions sizzling in the frying pan. It smelled wonderful but the girls already knew it smelled way better than it tasted. They didn’t mind because they also knew there would be mashed potatoes with big pats of melted butter on them to go along with it. The house was steamy and warm. The big picture window was all misted up. Toni and Lee tried to write their names backwards on the window while they waited for dinner. Their dad was home and sober, waiting for dinner, sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper. It seemed like a nice night to be home. Toni thought, maybe things would be better in the new house.

“What did you tell Sister Sienna today?” Toni’s mom asked.

“I just told her I had peaches for breakfast.”

“What else?”

“Just that you were hurt and there was blood in the bathroom.”

“Why did you do that? You know better. How many times have you been told not to tell anyone what goes on in this house?”

“I don’t know.” She really didn’t; it was often but she really couldn’t remember how many times and she’d probably be wrong or it would be backtalk again.

“You can go to bed without supper and stay there until you learn to keep your mouth shut!”

The room was dark and Toni didn’t push the beds together. She just pulled the covers over her head and fell into a sad sleep.

Sometime later, when the whole house was quiet again Lee woke Toni. She held a bowl of Jell-O with fruit cocktail trapped inside, and two spoons. After they ate the Jell-o, the girls pushed their beds together and went to sleep. No one spoke of the bloody night ever again because the truth must be kept a secret.

Bloody Night

By Nicole Chakalis

Things in the new house were different. Not better, just different. Toni and Lee could play outside now and they each had their own bed. The girls pushed their beds together every night and their mother pulled them apart every morning. The girls were only one year apart and really quite different. Toni was the older of the two and usually did all the talking for both of them. Lee was younger and never said much. Toni had curly dark hair and black eyes. Lee had long, smooth, golden blonde hair, skin the color of honey, and hazel eyes. Peggy dressed them exactly alike as if they were twins.

It was dark and late and even in their matching red flannel pajamas the girls were cold. Toni was awake; she tried to hold still and not move to where the sheets got even colder. Hearing the soft regular breathing in the bed next her, she reached over and scratched Lee’s sheet. It was their signal to each other; if Lee were awake, she would scratch back. She didn’t. Toni laid there waiting for her parents to come back. She could still smell her mother’s cologne in the air, Fabergé by Coty, but it was fading. Toni loved the smell but it made her feel anxious too. The scent excited her because her mother wore it only on special occasions and Toni came to recognize it as the smell of her mother’s happiness. Her mother was always happy when she put it on, but it also meant she was going out, that she would leave, and Toni knew they would be alone, cold and in the dark until she came back.

Toni thought tonight might be a special night. Mother and father had rarely went out together since moving into the new house. Earlier that night, Toni thought: Maybe they won’t come back. She wasn’t scared; she felt like she didn’t really need them around anymore. Toni imagined what it would be like to be an orphan, how people would feel sorry for her and Lee, how her Gramma Bridget would probably come for her. But Toni worried that Gramma Bridget wouldn’t take Lee, and Toni wouldn’t go without her.

Shouting from outside grew loud and close. Toni heard the door swing open hard and bounce off the wall. The cold, bitter, winter wind blew all through the house, chilling every room. The wind blew away the smell of the cologne and replaced it with the smell of whiskey. The cold air made the covers stiff and unyielding and Toni felt paralyzed in her bed. She could smell cigarettes and booze, hear her parents stumbling around, and her mother’s shouting. She had never heard her mother yell like that before. Her mother would usually just sit in the chair next to the stove without saying a word while her father yelled.

Toni wanted to go out there and try to stop them. She wanted to get out of bed, but it was too cold. The noise and the light from the hall woke Lee. She sat up in bed and parted the curtain of long blonde hair from the front of her face and hooked it behind her ears. “What’s that noise? Why’s it so cold?”

“Nothing, go back to sleep. They just came home, that’s all.” Toni tucked the blanket under her sister and pulled it up to her chin. Lee looked up at Toni with her soft green eyes, smiled and fell back asleep.

•

Toni lay shivering, listening.

“God, it’s freezing in here. When are you gonna get some heating oil?” her mom shouted.

“I told you tomorrow. I just got paid, you know that for Christ sake,” her dad yelled back.

“I saw how you spent all night mooning over how wonderful that Cathy was, complimenting her all night, what beautiful posture she has for a tall woman. What kind of crap was that? How nice she keeps her house. What a lovely dress. ‘Did you hear that Peggy? She even fixes lunch for Bud when he stops home from work.’ The bastard has a job. He goes to work every day. She doesn’t have a bunch of kids and a lazy good-for-nothing drunk for a husband. You can’t even keep a job.”

“Who wouldn’t be drunk married to you? You’re a spoiled bitch.”

“You followed her around like a puppy dog all night, telling’ her she should be a model. You must be drunk, she’s not that good looking’. She’s tall, that’s all.”

“You got a lot of nerve criticizing Cathy just because she’s an attractive woman who keeps her house clean and her husband fed. While we live in filth and you can’t keep your horny hands off that Chuck guy.”

“Shut up! The kids will hear you!”

“Shut up? When they might hear about their lazy tramp of a mother but all day, every day, all they hear is what a no-good, son-of-a-bitch I am.”

Toni quietly got out of bed and cracked the bedroom door just wide enough to see her parents.

“Leave me alone. You make me sick!” Her mom kicked off her shoes and sat down at the kitchen table. Still in her evening dress, she stuffed the aqua blue taffeta between her legs then picked through the ashtray looking for a long butt to smoke.

Her dad pulled a Pall Mall cigarette from the red pack in his shirt pocket and lit it with a match cupped in his hand, then shook the match out. He paced back and forth on the new living room carpet holding a juice glass of whiskey and taking drags on the long, unfiltered cigarette.

“Why don’t you go back there if you like it so much?” Peggy spat.

In four long strides, her appeared in the kitchen. He grabbed her mom by the shoulders and shook her then pushed her back hard off the chair. She fell, the chair toppled, the ashtray crashed and splintered on the floor. Instead of getting up, Peggy lay on the floor crying.

Toni forgot she’d been hiding and ran to her mother.

Before she reached her, her dad saw her and told her to go back to bed.

“What about Mom?”

Her mom sat up and wiped her face with her hands. “I’m all right, honey. Go back to bed.”

Toni retreated. She rolled up in her blanket, shut her eyes tight, and put the pillow on her head. Eventually, she drifted off to sleep.

•

When Toni awoke again an uneasy silence had come over the house. Her dad had either quieted down or left, Toni wasn’t sure. She didn’t hear her mom anymore either. Fully awake, she had to use the bathroom. She got up, hitched up her pajama pants and tiptoed barefoot down the hall on the cold linoleum floor trying not to wet her pants. The light in the bathroom was on, but the door was closed. She heard muffled sobs coming from behind the door. Toni had to push very hard to get the door open enough to squeeze in. Behind the door, her mom lay curled in a ball. Toni noticed that the front of her nightgown was soaked in blood. The bathroom rug, too, was red. There were several towels bunched up in the tub also soaked in blood. The toilet was splattered with blood. Her mom had one towel rolled up between her legs.

Toni felt terrified and started to cry. “Ma, Ma, what’s wrong?”

Peggy tried to push herself up but dropped back onto the bathroom floor. “It’s just an accident.”

It was the worst accident Toni had ever seen. She had never seen so much loose blood in one place. “Did Dad do this? When he pushed you?”

Peggy shook her head. “No, honey. I’ll be okay. Just help me up. I think I’ll be okay. I think it’s going to be fine.”

Toni tried to help her mother up but she wasn’t tall enough or strong enough. Peggy grabbed the sink and Toni ducked under her mom’s other arm. Her mom leaned on Toni until she collapsed on the toilet seat.

“Go back to bed now, it’s okay.”

Toni was so scared she did as she was told. As she crept down the hall back to her bedroom, she smelled something strange. It was a smell she wouldn’t recognize until much later in life and it was a smell that would remind her of her mother: the smell of dead blood. Toni learned something awful that night but, for many years, couldn’t identify it. She went back to bed without using the toilet. When she finally fell asleep, she wet the bed.

•

In the morning, their mom woke the girls for school and went back to bed. Toni opened a can peaches and poured some milk on them hoping to duplicating the wonderful peaches and cream she had at her grandmother’s, but it didn’t work. When she poured the milk in the can of peaches, it got all lumpy.

The bathroom was clean, no towels, no rug, just a few drops of blood on the black and white tiled floor between the pink toilet and the pink tub. The girls dressed in their identical uniforms: blue plaid, pleated skirts, white, short-sleeved blouses with Peter Pan collars, navy knee socks, and brown-and-white saddle shoes.

The sky was gray. Toni and Lee wore matching wool coats with velvet collars. They walked down the middle of the road to the place were the orange bus picked them up for school. They stood holding hands until they saw the headlights. Their mittens dangled on yarn strings that ran up the insides of their sleeves and around their shoulders. They managed to get seats together in the back of the bus but the seats were over the wheel. Toni told her sister what she saw the night before, the blood, the strange smell. Lee just listened and stared. During the long bus ride to school, girls began to worry about what had happened the night before and they both began to feel sick. They blamed it on the bumpy ride.

When Toni got to her fourth grade classroom, Sister Mary Sienna sat behind her desk waiting with her hands folded under her white habit. She was Toni’s favorite teacher. She seemed to understand. Toni had written a paragraph about the changes in the fall and Sister liked it. She showed it to Sister Marie Antonio, the principal. Sister Sienna even wrote a note to Toni’s parents saying how good it was. When Toni’s father read it, he asked her if she had copied it from someone else’s paper. Toni wondered how she could copy her thoughts from someone else’s paper. Her mother never read it.

Feeling ill, Toni asked the Sister if she could go to the bathroom.

But sister said, “Antoinette, you will have to wait until after morning prayers.”

The class stood and recited one Our Father and one Hail Mary, then The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. They were in the middle of singing America the Beautiful when Toni threw up the peaches in the aisle between the desks. The other kids started to retch. One girl had to run to the bathroom. The janitor came and put what looked like ground-up erasers on the puke. Toni went to the girl’s room and rinsed her mouth out. She stalled and stayed there for a long time not wanting to face the class again.

When she returned, she announced, “It must have been the peaches I ate for breakfast that made me sick.”

Sister Sienna called Toni back up to the front of the classroom and asked what she usually had for breakfast. Now Toni was in a bind. She had already said too much. She had been told over and over again by her mom, her dad, even her grandmother, to never tell anything about what happened at home. If she told Sister they didn’t usually have breakfast, Sister might think that was wrong. So she lied. Lying was the one thing Toni was pretty good at. She said they usually had cereal, and toast, and milk, and juice, like the pictures of a good breakfast Toni had seen on boxes of cereal.

“My mom had an accident last night and there was a lot of blood in the bathroom and she didn’t wanna get up this morning. So I ate the peaches and the ride to school was bumpy. And I think that’s why I got sick. But I feel better now.”

Sister picked up Toni’s hands, turned them over and looked at them.

“Did you wash your hands today?” Sister asked. Toni lied again. “Yeah.”

Sister Sienna left the room. When she returned she told Toni to bring her books and come with her. They walked silently down the long hall to the principal’s, Sister Antonio’s, office. Sister Antonio wasn’t much taller than Toni. She was dark, with a slight mustache, furry eyebrows and black eyes. She stared coldly at Toni for a few moments then said, “Antoinette, why are your nails painted and your hands dirty?”

Toni explained that her grandmother had painted them when they were clean, but then they got dirty and the paint was still there. Sister Antonio told her that good people do not wear paint on their nails. Toni thought, What about Gramma? She’s good and she paints her nails. Toni didn’t want to tell Sister that, though, because she would probably say it was backtalk. She knew adults always asked you a question and when you answered they would say, “No backtalk, young lady!”

Sister Sienna came back in the office and said she had called Toni’s house and had spoken to her mother and everything was fine, that nothing had happened and that her mother wasn’t aware Toni had eaten the peaches but she was sure she would be fine.

After classes, all the students had to go to the church to pray for the poor souls in purgatory. The smell of the incense burning, the hypnotizing affect of the flames of hundreds of votive candles in their red glasses made Toni feel sick again. Thinking of children just like her burning in purgatory, waiting for enough prayers to be said, enough candles to be lit, enough good deeds to be offered up, so their poor souls could be released into the kingdom of heaven, Toni felt helpless, frustrated, and scared. By the time the prayers were over she was crying.

•

It was already dark when the girls got home. All the lights in the house were on, casting a golden glow on the driveway. Through the window Toni saw her mother wearing her apron and standing by the stove. Her dad stood behind her mom with his arms around her waist, his chin resting on her shoulder. As the girls peeled off their hats and coats, they could smell the calf’s liver with bacon and onions sizzling in the frying pan. It smelled wonderful but the girls already knew it smelled way better than it tasted. They didn’t mind because they also knew there would be mashed potatoes with big pats of melted butter on them to go along with it. The house was steamy and warm. The big picture window was all misted up. Toni and Lee tried to write their names backwards on the window while they waited for dinner. Their dad was home and sober, waiting for dinner, sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper. It seemed like a nice night to be home. Toni thought, maybe things would be better in the new house.

“What did you tell Sister Sienna today?” Toni’s mom asked.

“I just told her I had peaches for breakfast.”

“What else?”

“Just that you were hurt and there was blood in the bathroom.”

“Why did you do that? You know better. How many times have you been told not to tell anyone what goes on in this house?”

“I don’t know.” She really didn’t; it was often but she really couldn’t remember how many times and she’d probably be wrong or it would be backtalk again.

“You can go to bed without supper and stay there until you learn to keep your mouth shut!”

The room was dark and Toni didn’t push the beds together. She just pulled the covers over her head and fell into a sad sleep.

Sometime later, when the whole house was quiet again Lee woke Toni. She held a bowl of Jell-O with fruit cocktail trapped inside, and two spoons. After they ate the Jell-o, the girls pushed their beds together and went to sleep. No one spoke of the bloody night ever again because the truth must be kept a secret.