The dream of the white hands started just about the time the pink Avon hairbrush appeared. It was her favorite brand of punishment and you never knew when it was coming.
She liked to have her back scratched while she watched television. Under the shirt, hard, but not too rough. She asked her four-year-old daughter, not her husband who worked too hard and was tired from night school. I once saw a backscratcher advertised on Saturday morning TV after The Monkees. Peter is my favorite, not Davy Jones. My mom said scratchers break easy. Scratching makes white stuff get under my fingernails and my arms get tired. Failure to scratch, or excessive complaints, equals pink Avon hairbrush whack to the back of the thigh, just above hemline of my shorts. Good, clean girls do not sport welts.
Once I dreamed of heaven. A classic heaven filled with white fluffy clouds and grape vines heavy with ripe fruit. Not just grapes, but fruits of all colors and shapes, ripe and ready on the same vine. It was a feeling, though, not the misty landscape or ample harvest that make me remember that particular dream. The feeling of safe. It happened only once.
The white-hand dreams happened three times a week. A little variety is allowed, but the hands and the finale were always the same. First, you detect danger of some sort. The danger is in the house or happening to the house. For instance, the house might be burning down from a kitchen fire. You see the bright orange flames dancing above the red-bobbing kitchen bird. Get a drink, stand up, get a drink, stand up. Melt red plastic beak into glass of water and create lava lamp. Second, you realize you must leave the house. You are not allowed outside without shoes on. Failure to wear shoes while outside equals pink Avon hairbrush whacking. Grab maryjanes by front door, sit on floor with back against scratchy, army-green, Colonial-style sofa. Put shoes on with sense of urgency and rising panic. Third, here come the hands. White gloved hands shoot out from under the couch’s box-pleated skirt and hold me tight. The fingers dig into my forearms even harder than my mom’s do when she’s mad at the store and people might notice. Struggle, struggle, panic. Forth, and this is the kicker, try to scream. Try and try and try but only the faintest noise, a wheeze, a whisper, a tiny high-pitched windy sound so low in the night escapes. Finally, mom and dad appear. Mom is out the door with baby brother wrapped in blue. The old Barracuda’s engine is revving. Dad turns around just inside the front door and shouts your name one time into the smoke. Try to scream! Try to scream! Can’t you hear me, I’m right here! Ping-Pong, my mean Siamese that the neighbor boy stuffs in our mailbox, makes it out the door before my dad turns and leaves. He shuts the door so we don’t cool the whole neighborhood.
After your dream death is surely imminent, or at least very certain, you wake. We are not a wasteful family, so my lamb night-light is turned off after I fall asleep. Stiff as a board, sweaty, afraid to move. Sometimes the white hands lurk under the bed. Calling out is not an option. Waking mom also equals hairbrush unless there is a loss of bodily fluids, and it had better be blood or puke. Loss of pee in bed is a crime, not an emergency.
Years after we moved my dad told me on pizza night that a woman was once killed in that house. We got to rent it cheap and my mom likes that, because she’s thrifty, not tight. My mom cleaned the bathroom when we moved in and found some dried blood and hair back behind the toilet. The killer was caught, my dad assured me, but he had a helper who got away. The dead lady’s little girl saw the whole thing. The police found the girl hiding in the house two days later when they discovered the body. The little girl wasn’t tied up, or bound in any way. She just couldn’t move.
