Cynthy had to do. But money was still a salve. Money was good for—one day—herring fillets, kippers, unwatered-down wine, a red dress, and a ticket to Montreal. Money was for bucking beds that couldn’t break. Money was for skin smooth as licorice, for hair as straight as licorice, for breath as sweet as licorice, and for eyes as dark as licorice. Above all, money was for a scarlet-crimson-red dress that could be set off by a white scarf. And didn’t she admire redwood, red chile, red cinnamon, and red wine? The best way to ward off Asa’s evils was, Cynthy believed, to indulge in a dress whose red was opulent and perfect for a carmine-lipped woman with apple-smooth skin.
It was January 1931 when, passing through Windsor town in the wake of the Xmas Shopping Sales, she saw a sumptuous dress in the windows of the shop owned by Flora Carat. The dress shone with an April-like brilliance even in the dead-end of winter. In that red dress, Cynthy imagined she could set all Three Mile Plains ablaze with crimson, see the landscapeblazed in scarlet. Just flowers, flowers, flowers. She’d afford tantrums of red, a religion of red.
She went into the bedroom and got the sixteen dollars she’d pinched and wadded and hidden in a tin can inside a hole in the floor under the crib. She forgot her boys now. Jangling gently because of the change bulging her purse, she tramped through snow, flagged down an eye-roving man who saw just her juicy, lightly clad bottom (she was only wearing her nightgown under her thin black wool coat), and got into Windsor, went to Madame Carat’s Paris Dress Shop, looked into Carat’s green Siamese-cat eyes, plunked down the coins, and bought a red crushed-velvet dress. Cynthy made sure that Madame Carat tied up the box real pretty, with a red ribbon and a bow. (She could later use the ribbon in her hair.)
When she left Madame Carat’s shop, Cynthy didn’t just walk through snow; now, she marched through it, militantly proud, her head sky-high. She felt deliciously rich—a Cleopatra of the pines—and though she’d not have the shoes to match the dress, though the dress itself would be conspicuous in her closet, like a rose jutting from sawdust, though other women would loathe her for her
expensive
look, Cynthy was delighted. She felt so good, she couldn’t feel the wind drilling into her body like a host of circus knifethrowers’ blades, nor the snow that snuck down chillingly into her ankle-high boots with almost every other step.
When Cynthy arrived back at the shack, its guts spooked by the oil lamp’s malevolent shadows, Asa had already discovered the open hole in the floor beneath their bed and had decided what it meant. She knew when she saw his slit-eyed look at her coming through the door, while she brushed snow from her shivering shoulders and held that inexplicable box crooked self-consciously under one arm, that a cave-man rage would seize him like an epileptic fit. George and Rufus ran out to meether, expecting the box to contain gifts for them. But Asa barked at them to get to their beds. They shrank back into their shadows. Cynthy steeled herself against Asa’s leaden anger.
Before Cynthy could say a word, Asa’s fist slammed her face like a rum bottle; the precious box flew from her grip; she fell.
“That cash—you sly, yella bitch—was Easter!”
She laughed, blood jerking from her nose: “Dumb-ass nigger!” Her venom was her champagne—in that hut where perfume itself seemed derisory. While his infants wailed, Asa uncoiled his belt from his pants, made a loop of that leather, then straddled his fallen, bleeding wife and treated her like he was tenderizing horse meat. Then he tore the clothes right off Cynthy’s squirming, writhing body and raped her, screeching, on the blood-muddied floor. George and Rufus wailed, watched. Their pa’s curses lashed out like a pimp’s coat hanger wire—slick, hot, whipping. Then he burnt Cynthy’s brand-new red dress in the