Chapter 13
Drinking Game Tally: 14 drinks, 7 chugs, 9 shots
Creep Award: Christopher and Cathy
Chapter 14
Drinking Game Tally: 10 drinks, 3 chugs, 2 shots
Creep Award: Christopher
Chapter 15
Drinking Game Tally: 19 drinks, 5 chugs, 4 shots
Creep Award: Grandmother
FA LA LA LA LA IT’S FITA TIME!
What ho, FYAers? I hope all of you of the American persuasion had a delicious and festive Thanksgiving yesterday. I love Thanksgiving! It’s my favorite holiday! SO MUCH FOOD! Plus, Thanksgiving OFFICIALLY ushers in the Holiday season, and if there’s anything I love more than eating tons of turkey and pie, it’s Santa and cookies!
But I know that not everyone loves Turkey Day as much as I do. Perhaps you’re a vegetarian. Or perhaps you look at Thanksgiving as a time when you’re stuck with several drunken members of your family, who will spend the long weekend criticizing your life choices. Or maybe you work in retail. Well! Take heart! At least your mother hasn’t locked you in an attic in order to claim her inheritence! So that’s something, at least!
And, because it IS the holiday season, look! I’ve made you a present! I know! I’m SO NICE!
Confused about how the Flowers in the Attic family tree shakes down? Who’s related to who? Who’s sleeping with who? Well, now you can sort it all out, using this handy flowchart! (I actually tried to make this on one of those geneology sites and I couldn’t because they didn’t allow me to link siblings together to make babies. TECHNOLOGY REJECTS INCEST.)
Chapter 13: Growing Up, Growing Wiser
“Hallelujah, Mary loved her son, why don’t my mother love me?” – Hair: The Musical
Number of Drinks Taken: 14
Number of Drinks Chugged: 7
Number of Shots Taken: 9
Chapter Summary
Well, gosh! Things here in the Attic sure have gone crazy! It all started, you see, when I decided it would be a good idea to preen in front of the mirror while naked! Unlike pretty much every other person going through puberty, I can’t get enough of how I look! I’m so hot! I don’t have zits but I have plenty of tits! Anyhooskies, so there I was, just doing naked plies in front of the mirror, as per uze, when I turned around and saw Chris staring at me with lust in his eyes! Oh, Christopher! I sure wish you didn’t get a boner everytime I was doing my naked ballet!
But then, oopsie, Grandmother came in and saw us! And she was pretty pissed off, I guess, on account of how we’re incestin’ right under her roof. So she told me I had to cut all my hair off! And that no one would eat until I do! Because this is 100 BC and hair is the only thing a lady’s got going for her!
Chris and I were like, “Nuh-uh, grandmother!” and then she left without giving us any food and I had weird dreams that night and when I woke up, my hair was covered in tar! Grandmother totally snuck in, drugged me in my sleep, and then coated all of my precious Aryan hair in tar!
So then Chris had to look at me naked some more while we got the tar out of my hair. And Chris figured we could trick the grandmother by just cutting off the front of my hair. But she didn’t come back! For weeks! And we starved and starved and starved and drank blood and then just as we were about to escape, she brought us tons of food! And powdered donuts! I guess I’m glad we weren’t too rash!
The Creepy Award Goes To:
Oh, I think Christopher and Cathy get to share the award this time. Cathy, for deciding that preening in front of a full-length mirror – in the middle of a bedroom she shares with three other people, in a house run by a religious zealot – was a good idea, and Chris, for perving on his sister. QUIT BEING CREEPY, JERKHEADS.
Notes from the Margin
I stood trembling, uncertain, wondering what to do that wouldn’t make me seem like a foolish prude in the judgement of a brother. . .
Granted, I’m an oldest child, so I never really had to deal with looking up to my baby brother, who is eight years younger than me. But I like to think that, should our birthing situation be reversed, I wouldn’t worry about not coming across as a prude to someone who was STARING AT ME WHILE I WAS NAKED. Not that that would happen, because my brother and I have a healthy sibling relationship; i.e. if we ever walked in on the other undressed, we’d immediately cover our eyes and scream “UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!” And then come up with derogatory nicknames for each other, based on the incident.
“I know I shouldn’t be, but you look so beautiful. It’s like I never saw you before. How did you grow so lovely, when I was here all the time?”
Besides being gross, that sounds like the lyrics to some treacly-ass love ballad from the 1970s. You know the kind of song I’m talking about, the ones that end up on Life’s Top Love Songs Of 1974, or whatever. It could be crooned by a long-haired fella in bell bottoms, and we can all sway back and forth while swallowing down our vomit.
. . .how could she know that almost every night I dreamed she stole into this room when I slept and sheared me as one did a sheep? And sometimes I dreamed not only did I wake up in the mornings bald and ugly, but she cut off my breasts, too!
Cathy, this obsession – and conflation – between your hair, your beauty and your breasts SERIOUSLY needs to stop. How are you ever going to be an empowered woman if you wrap up all of your vanity in your hair and tits? I mean, there are plenty of other things to be vain about! Your ass, for instance!
Then suddenly, out of the dark loomed up a cottage made of gingerbread! Made of cheese, too, with a roof of Oreo cookies and hard Christmas candy made a winding path the the Hershey bar door. The picket fence was of peppermint sticks, the shrubbery of ice cream cones, seven flavors . . . the hot-roll cushions, dripping with golden butter, and the sofa was of freshly baked bread, buttered, too.
Can I just say? I read this right after finishing dinner yesterday and the idea of reading about food having just eaten a metric ton of turkey . . . . well. It was so exhausting I had to go straight to sleep!
And always before I went to sleep, I spread my hair on my pillow so I could turn my head, and nestle my cheek in the sweet-smelling silkiness of very pampered, well-cared-for, healthy, strong hair.
What the fuck is this, a Pantene commercial? Tangled wasn’t enough for them, so now they’ve moved in to incestuous trashy books too?
. . . I lay without much feeling at all as I watched Chris take his pocket knife and slash his wrist. He put his bleeding arm to Cory’s mouth, and made him drink his blood, though Cory protested.
How much better would this book be if it suddenly turned into a vampire book? Our four little blonde heathens could arise from the dead, slaughter the residents of the house, escape the mansion and spread terror through Virginia! They could team up with the Salvatores! Though I don’t imagine Damon would have much, if any, patience for their bullshit, and they’d probably end up locked in the tomb within a week or so.
Raw meat? Raw mice? “No,” I whispered, revolted by the sight of those tiny stiff and dead things.
Um. Cathy. You were just watching your brother feed your siblings HIS BLOOD. HIS BLOOD, CATHY. The stuff that runs through his veins and engorges his penis anytime he looks at you! And you’re grossed out by some mice? REALLY?
Chris . . . unwrapped a foil package. Four powdered sugar donuts were disclosed.
YES! The arsenic donuts have finally made an appearance! ARSENIC DONUTS FOR THE WIN!
Chapter 14: A Taste of Heaven
“Daylight licked me into shape / I must have been asleep for days” – The Cure
Number of Drinks Taken: 10
Number of Drinks Chugged: 3
Number of Shots Taken: 2
Chapter Summary
Now that we’ve got food again, why worry about the fact that we’re locked in an Attic all the time? Let’s go swimming instead!
Chris woke me up and we used a rope ladder to escape the house and then we went to a lake and swam! Doesn’t that sound nice, and like a completely reasonable activity to do upon escaping years-long captivity? Gosh, maybe next time we can get an ice cream or something!
The Creepy Award Goes To
Chris, for being both creepy AND dumb. I mean, he pervs on his sister’s swimming form, and that’s gross, but he expends valuable energy and a rope ladder just to go swimming and that is BEYOND STUPID. Just get the dumb twins and go! Idiot children; clearly the lack of vitamin D has grossly affected your reasoning skills.
Notes from the Margin
“Are we going to skinny-dip?” asked Chris, looking at me in a peculiar way.
Ugh, GIVE IT A REST, INCEST-BOY!
. . . his chest was beginning to broaden . . . and there was that hillock of his growing maleness before his strong thighs, beginning to swell.
Gross. GROSS. This book and its description of nudity is so gross that it actually puts me off sex. Like, I kind of want to get a Purity Ring and start telling people about how I choose to honor my body by not using it for pleasure just to get away from sex thoughts. OH MY GOD I BET CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS PUBLISHED THIS BOOK.
“You really think I’m pretty enough for a man to love?”
This book makes Gertrude Stein weep.
And from every book I’d ever read, I took one wise bead of philosophy and strung them all into a rosary to believe in for the rest of my life.
College freshmen do this as well, Cathy, and they are almost as insufferable as you are!
Chapter 15: One Rainy Afternoon
“The rain falls hard on a humdrum town.” – The Smiths
Number of Drinks Taken: 19
Number of Drinks Chugged: 5
Number of Shots Taken: 4
Chapter Summary
Well, jeepers! Grandmother caught Chris looking out the window and he backtalked to her and then she got a switch and whipped him! And I screamed so then she whipped me! So hard that the switch broke! Then she beat me with a hairbrush! Guys! I think Grandmother has Rage Issues!
The Creepy Award Goes To
Damn, I’d promised myself that I’d never give this award to The Grandmother, who’s just trying to LIVE HER LIFE, okay? Haters gonna hate! But, well, maybe beating the crap out of people for back-talking IS a little creepy. Okay, fine. Just this once, though! I love you, Grandmother!
Notes from the Margin
And when I had my dream home, I’d have an emerald-glass tub situated on a dais where I could soak in beauty oil all day long if I wanted to – and nobody would be outside the door, banging and telling me to hurry up!
Mark this day and moment on your calendar as the day that I agree with Cathy Dollanganger about something! (well, maybe not emerald glass, but the size, depth and accoutrement of my future bathtub in my dream house occupies much of my thoughts.)
I’d draw his head down against my breast and cuddle it there as she used to do, and he’d go back to being the cheerful, sunny optimist who never had a sullen angry day . . .
STOP! TALKING! ABOUT! YOUR! BREASTS!
“I’m going to get even one day, old woman,” I said. “There’s going to come a day when you are going to be the helpless one, and I’m going to hold the whip in my hands.”
THIS IS CALLED FORESHADOWING!
We held each other carefully. Our bare bodies pressed together; my breasts flattened out against his chest.
Ugh. I think I’m about to lose all that turkey. Which means it’s time to down my drink!
Thanks it for this month, my little turkey friends! We’re rapidly reaching the conclusion of our story! The rape is yet to come!
