Dolores Claiborne(26)

'Can't you just stop it?' she asks, and then she finally pulled her hands out of mine and put em over her ears. 'I don't want to hear any more. I won't hear any more.

'I can't stop because that's over and done with, beyond reach,' I says, 'but this ain't. So let me help, dear heart. Please.' I tried to put an arm around her and draw her to me.

'Don't! Don't you hit me! Don't you even touch me, you bitch!' she screams, and shoved herself backward. She stumbled against the rail, and I was sure she was gonna go flip-flop right over it and into the drink. My heart stopped, but thank God my hands never did. I reached out, caught her by the front of the coat, and drug her back toward me. I slipped in some wet and almost fell. I caught my balance, though, and when I looked up, she hauled off and slapped me across the side of the face.

I never minded, just grabbed hold of her again and hugged her against me. You quit at a time like that with a child Selena's age, I think a lot of what you had with that child is gonna be over for good. Besides, that slap didn't hurt a bit. I was just scared of losin her - and not just from my heart, neither. For that one second I was sure she was gonna go over the rail with her head down and her feet up. I was so sure I could see it. It's a wonder all my hair didn't go gray right then.

Then she was cryin and tellin me she was sorry, that she never meant to hit me, that she never ever meant to do that, and I told her I knew it. 'Hush awhile,' I says, and what she said back almost froze me solid. 'You should have let me go over, Mommy,' she said. 'You should have let me go.'

I held her out from me at arms' length - by then we was both cryin - and I says, 'Nothin could make me do a thing like that, sweetheart.'

She was shakin her head back and forth. 'I can't stand it anymore, Mommy. . .I can't. I feel so dirty and confused, and I can't be happy no matter how hard I try.'

'What is it?' I says, beginnin to be frightened all over again. 'What is it, Selena?'

'If I tell you,' she says, 'you'll probably push me over the rail yourself.'

'You know better,' I says. 'And I'll tell you another thing, dear heart - you ain't steppin foot back on dry land until you've come clean with me. If goin back n forth on this ferry for the rest of the year is what it takes, then that's what we'll do. . . although I think we'll both be frozen solid before the end of November, if we ain't died of ptomaine from what they serve in that shitty little snack-bar.'

I thought that might make her laugh, but it didn't.

Instead she bowed her head so she was lookin at the deck and said somethin, real low. With the sound of the wind and the engines, I couldn't quite hear what it was.

'What did you say, sweetheart?'

She said it again, and I heard it that second time, even though she didn't speak much louder. All at once I understood everythin, and Joe St George's days were numbered from that moment on.

'I never wanted to do anything. He made me.' That's what she said.

For a minute I could only stand there, and when I finally did reach for her, she flinched away. Her face was as white as a sheet. Then the ferry - the old Island Princess, that was - took a lurch. The world had already gone slippery on me, and I guess I would have gone on my skinny old ass if Selena hadn't grabbed me around the middle. The next second it was me holdin her again, and she cryin against my neck.

'Come on,' I says. 'Come on over here and sit down with me. We've had enough rammin from one side of this boat to the other to last us awhile, haven't we?'

We went over to the bench by the aft companionway with our arms around each other, shufflin like a pair of invalids. I don't know if Selena felt like an invalid or not, but I sure did. I was only leakin from the eyes a little, but Selena was cryin s'hard it sounded like she'd pull her guts loose from their moorins if she didn't quit pretty soon. I was glad to hear her cry that way, though. It wasn't until I heard her sobbin and seen the tears rollin down her cheeks that I realized how much of her feelins had gone away, too, like the light in her eyes and the shape inside her clothes. I would have liked hearin her laugh one frig of a lot better'n I liked hearin her cry' but I was willin to take what I could get.

We sat down on the bench and I let her cry awhile longer. When it finally started to ease off a little, I gave her the hanky from my purse. She didn't even use it at first. She just looked at me, her cheeks all wet and deep brown hollows under her eyes, and she says, 'You don't hate me, Mommy? You really don't?'

'No,' I says. 'Not now, not never. I promise on my heart. But I want to get this straight. I want you to tell me the whole thing, all the way through. I see on your face that you don't think you can do that, but I know you can. And remember this - you'll never have to tell it again, not even to your own husband, if you don't want to. It will be like drawin a splinter. I promise that on my heart, too. Do you understand?'

'Yes, Mommy, but he said if I ever told. . . sometimes you get so mad, he said. . . like the night you hit him with the cream-pot . . . he said if I ever felt like telling I'd better remember the hatchet .

and . .

'No, that's not the way,' I says. 'You need to start at the beginning and go right through her. But I want to be sure I got one thing straight from the word go. Your Dad's been at you, hasn't he?'