The next year passed uneventfully as Dinah, unhappy and consigned to her selected role as a housewife to a boorish man, read Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" and thought about her path in life, wondering if there was a way out. They had no children, Fred assuming Dinah's epilepsy having rendered her sterile, and Dinah for lack of any other evidence, in agreement, sadly spending tiresome nights allowing him to wallow over her, in a blubbery sweat, leaving her in a mess of quickly congealing cheesy slime, enjoying none of it and wondering what was the purpose of it all.
Victory was concerned about Dinah, having seen bruises on her arms and legs, which Dinah nervously dismissed as due to various housekeeping mishaps, but Victory wasn't too convinced. Dinah canceled what had become a weekly visit for Sunday dinner, claiming to be too busy in her own church affairs, but when Victory discreetly checked, she learned her daughter was not even attending church, and fretted over being deceived. In her heart she remembered the tension between Dinah and Fred when they visited, and kept her counsel within her in the dark place where she kept the insanity of her brother and the lack of her mother's love.
The following year Sunny walked across a stage and accepted a hard earned BA degree in animal husbandry, with a farm veterinary minor, with honors and a proud, tearful Jedd hooting "that's my girl!", and broadly grinning Wanda watching and applauding enthusiastically. In her happiness, Wanda planted a big kiss on Sunny's cheek, and the young woman felt a hot blush rise up to her face, stunned by the electric reaction her body had to Wanda's touch, and its continuing aftershocks that rolled through her the rest of the day. Scared by this, Sunny decided she wanted to see the world some before settling down, a plan Victory wholeheartedly agreed with, feeling the women in that family tended to marry far too young. In reality, Sunny felt compelled to run from Wanda for a few months, dealing with an intensity of feelings she was unprepared to face. Dixie, on the other hand, was not happy with the plan, fearing sending out a young woman into the world unchaperoned; but Victory had no fears for her daughter, knowing full well that Sunny could easily deck most full grown men, and those she couldn't knock out she could, to put it delicately, disable.
Sunny's first stop was Canada, where the graduate met a well-traveled gentleman of nearly 40. Mitchell Bouvier squired her around, giving her a grand tour of Montreal, telling her romantic descriptions of his homeland, Paris, of standing on the top of the Eiffel tower surveying the sparkling city, breathing in the crystal air and aroma of fresh baked bread, and how it was a land for lovers. They spent hours laughing at movies, toured a display of op art and contemplated monotonic canvases, both a bit dubious as to their purpose in art, and stared up at the skeletons soon to construct dizzying, twisted heights of skyscrapers that defied the laws of gravity. Sunny grew very fond of Mitchell, but was even more fond of his horses, which he boarded in Montreal in his summer home there. Despite his efforts, for several months she remained solely his friend, and he resigned himself to that, enjoying her company but refraining from further advances.
Sunny welcomed the company of the older man, becoming aware also that the climate was changing around her, the province was being flooded by draft dodgers from the United States, an influx not only unwelcome but fought by the English-speaking Canadians. The French Canadians were more tolerant, and Sunny decided it best to remain in Montreal for the rest of her tour of that country rather than wander into the areas where the populace was in unrest and Americans spit upon, since Mitchell's company gave her a welcome mat where standing alone would have left her facing closed doors, and she took advantage of that as much as he soaked up the pleasure of having a beautiful young woman on his arm.
The next two years rolled by peacefully with the family celebrating accomplishments. Mitchell came home to Sunny quietly proud his history of the peace movement in France had published to critical acclaim, and the two friends celebrated by deciding to marry. After all, they were good friends, even if their love was only the brotherly love the Welsh call brwdgarwch, it was a solid love and the two ran down to the Justice of the Peace like two giddy teens, made their bans and flew off to France for a heady romantic honeymoon, Sunny finally seeing the beautiful country of Mitchell's vivid descriptions, gasping in wonder at the lights from the Eiffel tower, breathing in the fresh minty scent of the countryside and gorging herself on the best bread and sticky pastries she'd ever had in her life. Mitchell relished the enthusiasm of his young bride, taking her to the finest fashion houses to outfit her in smart, but tailored clothes, that brought to view for the first time her lean athletic beauty that had emerged from the winds of her anorexia and its recovery, and Sunny blossomed, passionately fond of her older, dashing husband.
Dinah, in her sixth year of marriage, was learning a different lesson in Georgia, one that was also driving her to desperate measures. Victory wrote Dixie at the turn of the year of her daughter's latest disaster, a broken jaw she said was caused by falling off a horse. Now, Victory knew horses could be dangerous, and injuries could occur, but could not determine how falling head first would break the jaw rather than the crown of the head, and suspected this injury had nothing to do with horses. She decided it was time to pay Dinah a visit, and showed up at her door unannounced on a stormy autumn evening.
Fred waddled to the door, idly chatted with her and asked in an oily voice why she decided to visit, not inviting her in as she stood on the porch, backlit by lightening and her hair sweeping with the wind of the impending storm. When rain began to fall, splattering heavily on Victory's back, she was done with nicety and with a "For God's sake, man," pushed her way inside, not an easy task since Fred occupied most of the doorway. Dinah stood inside, one side of her face a greening bruise, her jaw wired shut, unable to talk. It looked as if she had lost a good 30 pounds, and Victory had no doubt that Fred had made no attempt to help her eat. Victory read the panic in her eyes and didn't pause to interpret its cause.
"She's coming with me until that jaw heals," the mother declared, and took the compliant Dinah by the hand and marched her out to the car. Fred watched in seething silence, but did not try to stop her, confident that Dinah would return to him, for after all, she was the epitome of the obedient wife. Victory drove directly home, only taking her hand off of Dinah's to shift gears, repeatedly telling her she didn't have to return to him. Dinah just sat, not trying to speak, tears slowly coursing down her swollen face.
When they arrived in the wee hours of the morning, Dinah ran to embrace her father and turned and stroked her mother's face, then went directly to bed. Jedd, shocked by her appearance, went to go comfort Dinah, but Victory stayed his stride, knowing her child needed first to weep and to sleep before she could deal with reality.
Jedd and Victory stayed up despite the fact Victory had not slept the night before and Jedd had also sat awake, waiting for news or her return. Jedd wanted to go destroy Fred then divorce them if Dinah wasn't already a widow by then. Victory was hard pressed to keep Jedd's anger in check and acutely aware that she shared Jedd's view and barely had her own rage under control, resisting largely due to being strongly opposed to the idea of divorce, believing it to be sinful. She also knew rage was the cause of the problem and their ire added to it would only make matters worse. After adroit argument, she managed to convince Jedd of the same, and the two parents decided Victory would discuss it with Dinah the next morning, turning in early while their daughter still slept.
On a sunny, chirping morning, Victory faced Dinah across the living room, both sipping their morning coffee, Dinah gingerly drinking hers, iced to a comfortable temperature, gulping through a straw. Dinah used a slate to communicate, since speech was impossible. Victory casually opened the discussion.
"Tell me about how you broke your jaw."
Dinah paused, looked up, then scribbled on the slate,
"Who was riding with you?"
Quick erasing, one word,
"So who found you?"
"With a broken jaw?"
"Weren't you in pain?"
"Weren't you a bit dizzy or faint from pain? I know I would be. I'm not sure I could ride a horse right after that."
"OK. Let's move on to another topic. Why have you stopped attending church?"
"I know you've stopped."
"That's not the issue. Are you or are you not attending church?"
Dinah sighed.
"How do you feel about that? Do you miss it?" Victory knew church was vital to Dinah, who absolutely believed the Southern Baptist dogma and felt damned if she so much as missed a choir practice.
Dinah looked at Victory for a long time. She shifted again in her chair, releasing a mist of dust motes that danced in the sunlight, sparkling. She swept the slate clean with her sleeve and wrote,
"Sure." Her mother got up and stretched, then wandered to the kitchen to pour some milk, unsure that lemonade wouldn't be painful for her daughter to drink. She slipped a straw in it and went back into the room, to find Dinah flipping through her notes. She stared her child down and stood, holding her hand out for the notes, refusing to deliver the milk until they were back in her hands. With a pain sparked smirk, Dinah handed them over, accepted the milk, then settled back into her chair, loudly slurping from the straw. She paused to write,
Victory slapped her hands on her thighs. A beam of sunlight stroked the floor between them as she looked her daughter in the eye. "Look sister, I don't have to do this if you won't cooperate. And I certainly don't need to sit here and be insulted. For God's sake I'm trying to help you but if you don't want to be helped, fine. Go back to Fred. Go back to the hospital next time he hits you. Live that life. But don't come crying to me next time because it's your choice and heaven forbid I dare interfere because I love my daughter!" She stood and went to leave the room, stopping when she heard frantic scribbling on the slate behind her.
She turned to silently accept the slate and read,
"Alright. Let's get down to brass tacks. Tell me again how you broke your jaw."
"Dinah, the family knows. They've known ever since we all first saw bruises on you. They've known from the time you stopped coming to dinner with us, visiting Helga, visiting mom and dad, writing Sunny. Why do you think I took you out of there? Because you fell off a horse? They know, and no one's planning to kill anyone. That's why I am talking with you. We want to solve it in a civilized way."
"Do you believe he loves you?"
"Do you believe it is right to hurt the person you love? That that is love?"
"So he hates you too."
Dinah stood and rapidly wrote,
"OK. We'll acknowledge that somewhere in him he may love you, just for argument here. Why do you allow him to hurt you?"
"I bet. What prompted him to break your jaw?"
Victory dropped her notes, using the time to regather them to think. "You stole a baby?"
"And Fred is not that?"
"So you want a baby. How long have you had this need?"
"You have a nursery and no baby? Are you pregnant?" Victory tried to discreetly make more notes, but realized it was a lost cause as Dinah tried to strain to read them upside down. Victory decided it best to switch to shorthand and blessed the secretarial courses required by the finishing school.
"We really don't know that. You think that. Epilepsy does not make you sterile."
"Maybe Fred is sterile. Have you considered that?"
"Uh huh. What does he think of the nursery?"
"You consider adopting?"
"And you?"
"I'll pass on that dream. Done it enough for my taste. But I understand how you want it, you've always been more motherly than me."
"I believe you." Victory smiled and patted Dinah's hand, knowing that Dinah would be a good mother if she were well. It was just a shame that Fred would be such a lousy father, but Victory refrained from voicing her thoughts.
"So let's get back to stealing the baby. What happened? Where is the baby now? Whose was it?"
"OK. Go on."
Dinah erased and continued,
"Yes?"
"Did the mother see you? What did she do?"
"What did you do then?
"Why didn't you just give it to the mother?"
"You just knew that?"
"You do know it is wrong to steal a baby, don't you?"
"Different?"
"Uh huh. So what happened when you got outside in the parking lot?"
"What did you do"
"Good thing you did. Do you think that you are a better mother for the baby than her own?"
"I think she cared that a stranger had her baby and that overrode her concern for the child being a bit squashed or tossed around."
"I'm a mother; I do understand. But you aren't a mother yet, so how can you?"
"Yeah. Let's just say for moving along now that I grant that. Did the mother press charges?"
"OK. So how did this get your jaw broken?"
"His reaction?"
"Hell of a slap. Back from what?"
"He do that often?"
"Give me an example."
"He hits you then?"
"Leaving bruises?"
"Uh huh. So you think he's justified in hitting you. That it's right to do?"
"Yeah. I remember mom spanking us. But I don't recall it ever left bruises and we were children."
"Maybe you do. I don't. Let's move on. Are you happy with your life?"
"Do you think you are healthy enough to raise a baby?"
Victory raised her hands palm facing her daughter, "Just asking."
"I think I have enough for this first time. Have you and Fred considered family counseling?"
"Because dear child it isn't right for him to hit you, it isn't right for you to steal babies, and it isn't right for the two of you to continue this way because if you do it will only get worse and one of these days one of you is going to kill the other one, that's why."
"I don't think so. I also know we are too close to continue this. You need an outside counselor. I'm going to make some calls and put you in touch with one in this area. I don't want you going back until you and Fred both agree to go to counseling, that the two of you not get back together until you've been cleared for that by the professional."
"Agree to it, or I'll simply commit you and you'll have no choice."
"Oh yes I would. I'm leaving now to let you think about it." Victory stood, gathered her notes, and left Dinah sitting in the stream of sunlight from the window, pouting.
Victory went out on the porch where Jedd was tossing a ball around with Cobb, the white-haired boy at heart liking to play sports to stay in shape, just in case he needed to defend the world some day. With a smile to Cobb, she encouraged him to go downtown and chat with the shop keepers, taking Jedd around to the back porch to talk, out of earshot from Dinah, and seated so she could see if Dinah had decided to join them. Cobb left with a parting comment, "Absolute belief is absolute slavery." Victory shook her head and talked with Jedd.
"Jedd, Dinah's very sick. She needs professional help."
"Dinah? It's Fred that's hitting her!" Jedd was indignant and afraid, the vision of Cobb sitting on their porch as the priest flashed through his mind as he watched the rangy man wander all over the road to reach the downtown.
"Dinah allows it. Not only that, she sees nothing wrong with it."
"So he is hitting her." Jedd interjected, his face darkly stern.
"Yes. He's hitting her, fairly regularly from the sound of things."
"I'll kill him." Jedd rose from his chair, prompting Victory to tug him back down.
"No, Jedd. We've already talked about that."
"Let the law handle it then." Jedd rose to go to the phone.
Victory stopped him, "How? Hitting your wife isn't a crime in Georgia."
"Oh. I thought hitting anyone was."
"No. Some states have made it illegal, but not Georgia yet."
"Really? I find that shocking." Jedd sunk back into his chair.
"Me too. But nothing we can do legally, not in a state where women are property."
"Property?"
"Sorry, flashback of some of my reading."
"Victory, I understand," Jedd unexpectedly added, suddenly thinking back on his youth in the south and the lessons his father had tried to teach him. Fortunately for Victory, he ignored the part about the husband being the controller of his wife.
"I asked mom about it earlier. She said it was Dinah's duty to take it. It made me so angry I couldn't see clearly. How did we ever get these ideas?"
"I'm afraid I know, hon. It's our faith. Ask any Pastor."
"Our faith?"
Jedd took a long breath and answered slowly, "Ask the Puritans. Ask the Baptists. Ask the Catholics. Ask the Jews. For that matter, ask the Bible and see how women are treated there. I don't think individual dogma matters here. It's been going on a very long time and only now are things beginning to change. My father and I used to get into terrible fights over this sort of thing. He was very modern in many of his views then, but he still believed women were beneath men."
"Well, perhaps we are wrong here and the Bible's correct, and I'm damning my daughter and myself for our disobedience, but I tell you I'd rather disobey than be a punching bag, and we need to do something about Dinah before something tragic happens. Their situation is like a lit fuse and before long it will explode."
"So how is Dinah sick?"
"I believe she is a danger to herself and others. Jedd she stole a baby and by God's good grace wasn't charged with the crime."
"Our Dinah?" Jedd could not believe his gentle, god fearing daughter would do anything illegal.
"Our Dinah is a very troubled woman. You wanted my input so here it is. She and Fred should stay separated and both go into family counseling. If she does not agree to that, I will commit her."
Jedd nearly passed out. The image of his precious Dinah wasting away among babbling, glazed eyed crazies like Cobb was too much for him and he looked at Victory in a haze of disbelief. That haze turned red and he rose in anger.
"I asked you to help, not just throw her away as a nutcase. I will not commit her any more than your parents never committed your brother. If Helga had not thrown him away like she did he would be with her and we would not be saddled with him."
"And he'd be beating her, confusing her with the avenging angel of death who so narrowly missed him. Besides, who returned him to the sanitarium when he came for our help? We did. We were as much involved in Cobb being shunned by his family as my parents were. You need to come to terms with that."
Jedd stood over Victory, nearly foaming at the mouth in anger, a fist raising of its own volition at his side.
"So, you going to hit me now like Fred hits your daughter?" Victory coolly replied.
That broke the tension and Jedd fell back into his lawn chair, putting his hand over his eyes. "I just don't want her to be crazy like he is. I don't want to go through this with her too."
"She's not that kind of crazy hon. And I'm sorry I threw old fear in your face, but you have to see that Dinah needs real help. Dinah doesn't need medicine like Cobb's taking; her problem is simply not knowing the difference between her dreams and her reality. Her life is so miserable she has escaped into her dream world to avoid facing a grim reality. She needs to talk it out with someone to bring the two together and to work out a way to achieve her dreams without losing touch with the facts of her life. She needs to do that to be whole. She has to do that to survive."
"What about Fred?"
"He has to be counseled too. He has a vision of himself that is unrealistic and feeds right into Dinah's fantasy world. If their marriage is to make it, they both need to be in therapy together.
"I'll not have a divorce in my family. They'll go to counseling." Jedd declared, ending the discussion as he turned to go into the house to eat dinner.
Victory sat a long time on the stoop, watching the fireflies skydiving in the yard, relaxing in the rising song of the night crickets, smelling the jasmine and wild peppers. She idly plucked a tomato from her vines and bit into it like an apple, ignoring the juices running down her face, immersing herself in the sheer hedonism of a sun-warmed treat, deeply inhaling the red blood smell of rare meat and green citrusy scent from the broken stem that drifted from the tomato as she ate it, contemplating what kind of family she'd been born to.
The next day, after finding a local psychologist she felt would be a good fit for Fred and Dinah, Victory set up the first appointment, secured Dinah's assurance she would attend and Fred's amused promise he'd come down and go too if it would help his crazy wife. She had misgivings as to whether this plan would really work, but at least the counselor would help Dinah face reality better, the therapist being a tough, no-nonsense teacher with a velvet glove born in the south and acutely aware of southern mores. Victory suspected this woman could cow Fred into better behavior and strengthen Dinah in standing up to him. But whether that change would make a marriage work was yet to be seen.
Dinah made herself at home at her mother's, secretly relieved to be free of Fred for a short while, and relaxed under her mother's patient nursing, regaining 22 lb. and much of her strength. But absence made the heart grow fonder and she never developed the anger she needed to see Fred in a realistic light, reading Joyce Carol Oates "A Garden of Earthly Delights," dreaming of Fred as a dashing hero and herself as a helpless damsel in distress, in various scenes of captivity to be rescued from the evil guards. She saw her stay at her mother's as a necessary tenure she had to endure for the knight in shining armor to save her and live happily ever after with her, birthing and raising the good Sir's heir, and never saw him as abusive.
Fred on the other hand realized he'd best start playing the game of the good husband or he'd never inherit the family fortunes, and chose to refrain from disciplining his wife, instead capitulating to the idea of adopting a baby. This plan was twofold; he also hoped it would keep Dinah out of his hair, for he had met and started seeing a randy woman on his sales route and didn't want Dinah so bored she would discover his infidelity. On the surface, to the therapist, it appeared the two had resolved their problems, and she released Dinah to return to Fred, and the two began the process of adoption. Dinah delighted in preparing for a baby, going to absurd lengths to design and set up the perfect nursery. Long before a baby was found for them, the house smelled of talcum powder and the gentle tinkle of lullaby mobiles drifted in on the evening breeze.
The year passed quietly with the exciting news that a baby had been found for Dinah and Fred, and in a tearful ceremony of paper signing in a leather-bound, pot pourri scented attorney's office with Dinah weeping with joy, the two accepted the three-day-old they named Peter James, driving him off to their home in a jubilant moment of rare mutual happiness. The bliss lasted about a week, as the testy baby exhausted Dinah, causing her to forego her lifelong ritual of makeup and hair styling, and the boy's darkening skin led Fred to wonder about Peter's heritage, the only thing known about him being that his biological mother was a teen drug addict and his father unknown. Fred hit the road to see his paramour, Lucy, leaving Dinah to deal with the baby, whom in her eyes, could do - and would do - no wrong.
Dinah took to reading and viewing everything she could about baby and child care, carefully following Dr. Spock's tried and tested advice, becoming an expert at diaper folding and formula mixing, actually evolving into the good mother her sister assured her she'd be, at least in a technical sense. When the film Rosemary's Baby came out, Dinah naturally went to see it, since it obviously was about a baby. She emerged from the film white with shock, images of the evil child flipping in her mind like a slide show, but overshadowed by the scenes of Mia Farrow's treatment of the child, horrified at the fine line between love and hate. She rushed to her baby-sitter's and took up her son, holding him close to her and murmuring that she'd never let him be afraid and she'd never hurt him and she'd never let him turn out bad. Dinah correctly saw the message in the film about the disruption of family when both parents pursue careers, and vowed never to work, to always be there for her child, and dove into the task of parenting with a vengeance.
Helga, on her farm in Ohio, read Victory's letters of Dinah's situation thoughtfully, wondering if the madness in the family was genetic. She too was reading, Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," seeing the connection between the story and the Saer tribe, but intelligently kept her thoughts to herself, knowing to bring it up would only cause civil war within the clan, writing her opinions only to her diary.