Heartless
“What’s past is past?” Meg asked, struggling to keep her voice down. “No, what’s past is present, Mother. It continues to follow me around everywhere I go. Every time I close my eyes. Every time I lay my head down to sleep. You can’t honestly think that, can you? That I should simply forget what’s happened to me here?”
As Meg’s eyes bore holes through her uncle, without looking up, he quietly said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
She couldn’t quite believe her ears. She looked at Charlie and saw his jaw set in such a way she knew he was doing his best not to fly out of his seat and knock her uncle into the next room. “Don’t you dare!” Meg said, her tone menacing. “Don’t you dare sit there and make it seem like an accident. Like you didn’t mean to come into my room night after night to torture me, to make me feel helpless, to invade my personal space, my own body, for your own pleasure. Don’t you dare try to make it seem like you didn’t know what you were doing, like it wasn’t calculated and planned. You are the most disgusting, vile, evil creature who has ever slithered on the face of the earth, and I know I am not the only one who thinks so. I know about the other little girls you tortured under this same roof. They may not be able to gain vengeance, but I most certainly will. So help me God, you will pay for your actions if it is the last thing I ever do.”
By the end, he was looking at her, and Meg could see the fear in his eyes. For a moment, he looked like a small child, perhaps one waiting in the dark for something sinister to sneak through the door and torment him. Meg glared at his leathery face, every ounce of rage she had stored up protruding through her searing blue eyes.
For the first time Meg could ever remember, she heard the sound of her mother weeping. She glanced in Mildred’s direction and saw real tears rolling down her cheeks. There had been times when she’d put on a show, but this was genuine. The fact that she was crying for this horrible man, not her own little girl, made Meg even more furious. She was just about to turn her lashing to her mother when her uncle spoke, causing her to turn back in his direction.
“Is that all?” he asked, his tone bordering between bored and unimpressed.
Meg opened her mouth in disgust, unable to think of any words she could say to such a statement, but she didn’t have the chance. Charlie said, “I believe the officers out front will want to speak to you shortly—before they arrest you, and take you to prison, where I’m sure the other inmates will like to know that you’re a pedophile and a rapist.”
The fear was back in Bertram’s eyes, but only for a moment. He looked just as disinterested in Charlie’s remarks as he had Meg’s. “When they are ready, I’ll be in my room.” He stood on unsteady legs and began to exit the room.
“Bertram?” Mildred called, scooting to the edge of her chair. “Bertram?”
“Perhaps you should follow him, let him know how horrible I am for speaking the truth,” Meg offered. “Not that you choose to recognize it as such.”
“What do you want me to do, Mary Margaret?” Mildred asked, turning to face her daughter. “By the time I knew what was happening, it was too late. We were both reliant on your uncle, on his running of the factory, for our very lives.”
“That’s not true, Mother,” Meg shot back. “You had every opportunity to do something—anything—to save me, to save the other girls. You chose him over me. You never treated me like a daughter, not even when Da was still alive.”
“Mary Margaret, of course I did,” Mildred argued. “I’ve always loved you.”
“Then you have no idea what love is, Mother,” Meg shouted back, no longer able to keep her voice down. “You were never affectionate, never had any time for me at all. Your idea of showing you cared was to warn me not to eat too many cookies or else I’d grow plump. The one pleasant memory I have of you was when you were teaching me to dance, and even that is tarnished by the fact that it ended with my confession about what was happening to me and you sending me sprawling across this very floor.” By the time she finished, tears were flowing down her own cheeks, which made Meg even angrier. In all these years, she’d never let her mother see her cry, and she hated the fact that she was doing it now.
Mildred folded her arms and said nothing for a very long time as Meg swiped at her tears and Charlie offered her a handkerchief, which she took away from him a bit more violently than she intended and then had to mumble an apology, which he dismissed. They heard footsteps overhead followed by the sound of a door closing, announcing Bertram was back to his nap, and Meg was at least grateful that it would be his last under her father’s roof.
“You’re right, Meg. I was a louse of a mother,” Mildred admitted, quietly. “I was terrible to you. I don’t suppose I set out intending for that to be the case, but it was, nevertheless. By the time you were born, I’d given up on being a mother. I’d buried so many of your siblings, I didn’t think I’d ever have a child. Then, when you lived past the lengths of your sisters’ and brothers’ short lives, I spent every day waiting. Waiting to wake up and see that you were ill or that you’d died. But, obviously, you didn’t pass away, but by then, I’d put so much distance between us, it wasn’t something I could readily remedy. And I was jealous of the affection you had for your father. It all came so easy to him. So… I simply decided not to love you the way a mother should for fear you would break my heart the way the others had.”
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