The next chapter starts off with Cathy saying that for the next three months it was too cold to go up into the attic, so she and her siblings spent all their time in front of the TV their mother had given them. In a way this makes sense, but it's the 50's and there really weren't any good movies yet, so this sounds unbearable to me. (I hate the sound of the television, honestly. It just gets really grating after a while. This room would make me nuts)
From there, she could on to say that in April she'll be turning thirteen and the people on TV had warned them all what to expect in their awkward teen years.
She moves on to say that she's noticed Chris staring at her chest.
At least this is consistent with the last bit we read?
Chris also catches her in the bathroom pulling out armpit hairs with tweezers. First of all - OW
He tells her to stop fighting to look "childishly neat" and "start thinking of those hairs as sexy."
This is gonna be another chapter where I need to pause every few lines and question my life choices.
On the other side of the puberty argument, Chris starts having wet dreams, and when Cathy calls him out on it, tells her that her time for messing up beds is coming and their mother should get around to explaining all that to her.
Hey Chris, can you stop making everything you say sound misogynistic? Seriously, not only does he act all high-and-mighty because he knows something about his sister's body that she doesn't, but the way he phrases it is just so damn rude...
Again, I'm probably over thinking it, but something about this character makes my blood boil.
I hate the 50's.
Right after talking about the less savory aspects of the two of them going through puberty, she starts talking about the five year olds in the room.
Look, I don't know if VC Andrews was doing this kind of stuff on purpose or if she was just really bad at segueing to different subjects, but I'm noticing. And it's weird.
Carrie is apparently in the habit of talking to her dolls constantly as she plays with them, still always wanting to hear the sound of her own voice. Cory is perpetually building things with tinker toys and slamming them together to also make as much noise as possible. Paired with the TV being on all the time, Cathy has successfully described my personal Hell.
One day, as the beginning of the chapter hinted at, Corrine does come in with "a large package" (how big were pads in 1950? Did you really need a huge box for them?) and Chris takes the twins up to the attic so they don't have to hear about gross womanly things, and Cathy gets the period talk. Cathy is actually hoping that her mother explains love and sex to her as well, and is severely disappointed when she doesn't. That conversation is going to have to happen someday, Corrine, and your daughter is horny as Hell. You might as well get on with it.
Cathy gives her mom a polite "no thank you" and tries to explain that she's not planning to have kids so she doesn't need to know any of this. Corrine clearly neglected to mention that this happens whether you like it or not. She also, when Cathy asks if it hurts, says there is "a little crampy pain" and as someone who has passed out several times due to that "little crampy pain" I would like to give her a hearty:
I really don't know why this chapter is hitting so many of my berserk buttons today, but man, is it ever.
Cathy tries to argue again and Corrine asks if she wants to be a child forever. Cathy has a bit of a crisis over that, because while she wants to be a woman, she doesn't really like all the "messiness" that comes with it.
" 'And Cathy, please don't be ashamed, or embarrassed, or dread a little discomfort, and the trouble - having babies is babies is very rewarding.'"
Big talk coming from a woman who locked her kids in one room to keep them from ruining her evil schemes to inherit an obscene fortune.
"' Someday you'll fall in love and marry and you'll want to give your husband children - if you love him enough.'"
...
Wow there's a lot to unpack there, isn't it? First of all, fuck this woman. Second of all, fuck the 1950's and the goddamn mindset that still hangs around to this goddamn day.
Third of all, did Corrine kind of just admit that she had her kids because her husband wanted them? Nothing in that inspirational bit of rhetoric of hers said anything about if the woman wants kids. She basically just said that "if you don't give your husband children when he wants them, you don't love him enough."
I.... I gotta sit down after that one.
Never in my life have I been happier to be a demisexual lesbian with a deep aversion to the very idea of pregnancy.
Cathy asks what kind of painful indignities Chris will have to go through to become a man and is very disappointed that there really isn't. So am I, Cathy. Corrine also adds that Cathy shouldn't be afraid if her period starts out of nowhere like when she's asleep or dancing, and says that her own mother told her absolutely nothing about any of this and I need to put this here:
Despite the subject matter, Cathy is actually very grateful for such a warm and open moment with her mom, since it's not only been a long time since she's visited, but also since she'd felt really invested in her children. However, as soon as Chris and the twins come back downstairs, that gap between them reappears as Corrine only seems to give any kind of affection to Chris (ignoring the twins entirely) and Cathy is left feeling very empty. The twins climb into her lap and she acts as a mother to them instead, feeling that they haven't changed at all in all the time they'd been in that room.
"As Chris and I moved on into puberty, the twins stagnated, went nowhere."
This is a really heavy chapter once you get down to the meat of it.
After a page break, Cathy talks about birthdays coming and going, most notably the twin's sixth birthdays where Cory gets a bunch of instruments that he can play instantly and already make up full songs. Okay, this kid is a prodigy. If you're worried about money, why not let the kids out of the attic and take that one on tour?
Corrine notes that Cory must have gotten his musical talent from her own brothers who died an icy death in a deep frozen chasm and/or dangerous mountain pass.
Think I'm joking? Check this shit out:
" '...Both of my brothers were musicians...[her brother Mal] would escape the life he hated by riding up into the mountains on his motorcycle. ...One day he took a curve too fast in the rain. He careened off the road and crashed down hundreds of feet into a chasm.' "
" [Her younger brother Joel] had been killed in a skiing accident in Switzerland. ...He had fallen into some deep ravine filled with snow, and to this day we never found his body."
No one can just die in this book, huh?
Also remember that bit about her brother's body never being found. I swear to God, it comes back later.
With that happy bit of information in hand, Chris and Cathy go up to the attic to try and teach the twins to read and write. It goes about as well as can be expected, but at least it gives them all something else to do.
With summer coming, they start spending more time laying around in the attic on an old mattress in front of the window trying to catch any kind of a breeze. They have a chat about nudity being or not being sinful and about the human body (Cathy mentions she's on her period and wants to know if that grosses Chris out) and I can't really find any reason it's particularly relevant to what's happening because next they wonder about why their mother keeps them locked up. This is something that could have and should have been touched upon much sooner than this.
Cathy suspects that Chris loves their mother too much to see any flaws in what she's doing and he even admits that out loud.
The chapter - and the first section of the book - ends with Corrine reporting that her father does seem to be getting worse and it shouldn't be much longer. Cathy goes to their big wall calendar and crosses off the day.
They've been in the attic for a full year. Two more to go!
And we are officially done with Part One!
I promise part two has (a little bit) more going on!
But that's next time
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