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When Caroline was four, she began to realize her life didn’t make sense. It was a mess of contradictions, a collage or truths and fibs.
Her mother wore beautiful dresses purchased from the ritziest shops in town, her father the highest quality suits, yet Caroline and her sister Susannah were dressed in clothes from garage sales.
Their home had bits and pieces of wealth in it, a 00 painting here, random designer silverware sets there, yet their furniture was tattered and found at Goodwill and on the street.
And the location and appearance of the home! It was in the slummiest of all the slums in Chicago, a tiny mess of wood with chipped white paint and patches of dead yellow grass. It was decorated with a chain-link fence with holes and cracks all over, barbed wire woven along the top to ward off the many crooks in the neighborhood. Once, when Caroline was three, she had ignorantly attempted to climb over the fence just for fun. She had ended up with stitches on her leg.
Helen Scarr, her mother, sent Caroline and Susannah to the ritziest schools in Chicago, all across the city on the North side, where they hired the best teachers and had the daughter of mayor enrolled, yet when a field trip costing came up, the girls were unable to afford it.
Helen had friends from the affluent church the Scarr’s attended for Sunday mass that were unbelievably wealthy and frivolous and glamorous and beautiful, but they never, ever came to call. Caroline often feared they knew their secret, that they somehow sensed that the Scarr family was not one of their caliber and never would be.
Caroline’s father Samuel was a rough man that had 22 years under his belt. He was the most confusing man Caroline had ever seen or met, her own papa. He was charming and sophisticated in public, and he spoke in a subtle voice that was powerful in the quietest, most alluring way, dry humor glimmering from him occasionally. Samuel was attractive in public, both in physical appearance and wit, and he enamored the whole of Chicago. Caroline often thought about how he resembled Bogart in his manner, from the way he talked in that low, husky voice that demanded your attention, down to the fat cigar forever perched in his mouth.
That was in public, when Caroline watched him in awe, captivated, like everyone else in the room.
At home, he was a different sort of brandy. He was rough and loud, and his favorite activity, besides gambling with his pals, was sitting on the holey blue couch, nursing a Jack Daniels. He would blurt out odd things when Helen walked by, things that were not appropriate or things that simply were rude. Helen would ignore it for a while, and if Caroline or Susannah asked about him, she would tell them he was “sick” and send them to their room.
Then, about two hours and three whiskeys later, Helen and Samuel would begin to argue, and soon the girls could hear the terrifying symphony of alcohol-induced rage: earth-shattering shouts from Samuel, sobs and pleas from Helen. Somewhere, a crash would sound against the wall, and more sobs and yells could be heard.
Finally the fight would end, usually when the whiskey ran out, and the meaningless shouts and crashes turned into the quiet locking of Helen’s bedroom door and the rough opening of the front one.
Then tiny whispers could be heard from Helen’s room. Those words, those tiny undertones in the dark of the freezing Chicago night, were so much more powerful than anything Samuel yelled or Helen sobbed. They were words of innocence, words of hope, and Caroline would remember the sound of them coming out of her mother’s mouth for the rest of her life.
“Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy
Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work too may be holy
Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy
Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy
Guide me then, O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy.
Amen”