before. There was a small cut on her head, and bright red marks where she had been slapped, a welt from one of the rings already visible on her cheek. Eloise Harrison slapped the child across her right ear, and then shook her, holding her by both arms, shouting into the tiny, devastated face. “You're always hiding! Always giving us problems! What are you afraid of now, you little brat? What have you done? You did something, didn't you? Of course you did… why else would you hide in the closet?”
“I didn't do anything… I promise…” The words were barely more than a whisper as Gabriella gasped for air. The beating seemed to take all the wind out of her, all the life out of her soul, as she looked up imploringly with tear-filled eyes at her mother. “I'm sorry, Mommy… I'm sorry…”
“No, you're not… you never are… you're never sorry, are you? You drive me crazy all the time, doing stupid things like hiding… What do you expect from us… miserable child… My God, I can't believe what your father and I have to put up with…” She flung the child away from her then, as Gabriella slid across the well-waxed floor, a few feet away from her, never far enough,’ as a blue suede high-heeled shoe kicked her with blinding venom in the small thin thigh that trembled. The biggest bruises were always on her legs and arms, her body, where they were unseen by others. The damage to her face always subsided in a few hours. It was as though her mother knew instinctively where to place the blows. She'd had plenty of practice at it. She'd been doing this for years. Nearly all of Gabriella's life now.
There was no remorse, no words of comfort to Gabriella lying at her feet. No effort to apologize or soothe her. She knew that if she got up too soon, it could start her mother's fury all over, so she waited there for a long time, head bowed, cheeks drenched in silent tears, still wincing from the blows delivered by her mother. Gabriella knew that looking up at her with her tear-stained face would only make her mother angrier, so she kept her eyes focused on the floor, as though she might disappear if she lay there forever.
“Get up… what are you waiting for?” The biting words, followed by another yank on the arm, and one last blow on the side of her head. “My God, Gabriella… I hate you… pathetic child… look how disgusting you are… you're all dirty… look at your face!” Suddenly, from nowhere, two smudges had appeared mixed with tears on the angelic face.
Anyone even minimally human would have been in agony seeing her, but not her mother. Eloise Harrison was a creature from another world, and anything but a mother. Abandoned by her parents as a small child, sent to live with an aunt in Minnesota, she had lived in a cold, lonely world with a maiden aunt who had rarely spoken to her, and most of the time had her carrying firewood or shoveling snow in the freezing winters. It was the Depression then, her parents had lost most of their money, and had gone to Europe to live on the little they had left. There was no room for Eloise in their world, or their hearts. They had lost their son, Eloise's brother, to diphtheria, and neither of them had ever had great affection for their daughter. Eloise had stayed with her aunt in Minnesota until she was eighteen, and then returned to New York, to stay with cousins. She had met John Harrison at twenty, and married him two years later. She had known him as a child, he'd been a friend of her brothers. And his parents had been more fortunate than hers had been. Their fortune had remained intact during the Depression. Well born, well bred, well educated, though without great ambition or strength of character, John had gotten a job in a bank, and met Eloise again shortly thereafter. He was instantly dazzled by her beauty.
Eloise had been pretty then, and young, something of a beauty, and there was a coolness about her that drove him into a frenzy. He begged, he pleaded, he courted, he wanted desperately to marry her, and the more he pursued her, the more aloof she was. It took him almost two years to convince her to become his wife. He had wanted children