It was in third grade that I started going by Kate. Before then, my mom had always told everyone my name was Katherine; she wouldn’t allow me to be called anything else. But at school she couldn’t control everything; and nobody could control Maddie.
It was all her idea, of course. “Katherine takes such a long time to say,” she complained to me during a game of Hide-and-Seek. “I’m going to call you Kate.”
And she did. I don’t think I ever heard the name Katherine pass her lips after that. By the time the nickname got back to my mom, all the other school children had adopted it as well. There was no going back to Katherine after that, no matter what my mom said.
Kate was my name; it was the one Maddie had given me. Maybe that’s when I first started to admire her, not as a friend but as someone who was somehow above me. It certainly wasn’t the first time I’d felt the touch of her sunshine smile, but it was one of the most memorable.
At school our circles of acquaintance widened, and more and more I found Maddie and me playing in different groups. I liked playing with dolls; Maddie liked running around wildly outside pretending to be an Indian. We each had our own little cluster of girls to play with, but Maddie was the leader of her group, while I was just a follower.
To be truthful, I wasn’t quite sure how to play the games she did. Her imagination was limitless. In my play, all I had to do was rock my doll and pretend to feed her a bottle. Maddie created whole worlds, with complicated names for each of her playmates and plots akin to those you’d read in a book. A whole bevy of little boys would race by the swings where I’d be sitting with my doll and a few little friends, and I’d know they were wild horses, created by Maddie to be caught by her and her Indian braves. The school steps would be littered with pretty rocks and sticks tied together with grass, and Maddie would be sitting cross-legged on the cement, calling out names and prices as her friends pretended to deliberate over their purchases. Even the teacher joined in sometimes, laughing as Maddie gave her a silly Indian name and told her she was chief for the day.
I don’t remember wanting to play Maddie’s games. If I had, I’d have had that much more of a real history with her, and maybe she wouldn’t have chosen me for her best friend later on at all.
When Irene and Damian started going to school with us, things were a little more complicated. We kept on with our games, but Maddie watched out for Damian, while I did everything I could to avoid Irene. To me, younger siblings were a bother, at least at that point; to Maddie, Damian was like a pretty stone she could show off. He had her bright eyes and endless curiosity, and what’s more, what really made the difference, he adored Maddie. He would do anything she said, even if it got him in trouble.
Maddie was never malicious though; she was just thoughtless. Her older sister, Annalena, was a different story. She seemed to hate both Maddie and Damian, perhaps for entering a territory that had formerly belonged to her alone. Tyrone, of course, was still in school, but he was in high school and didn’t interact much with the younger ones. Annalena, while sharing none of Maddie’s verve, was her own type of powerful. Bossy and aggressively possessive, she kept the older girls in torment when they didn’t do what she wanted and in bliss when her eye was turned kindly upon them. I should know; Bridget suffered under her tyranny for years.
But Annalena and I didn’t have much to do with each other. The stories I heard from Maddie were much different than those Bridget told me. Maddie worshiped her older sister, no matter how mean Annalena was. I think Anna was the only one then who had that sort of powerful hold over Maddie, and she didn’t even know it.
As we got older, Maddie and Bridget started to hit it off. “Maddie’s my best friend,” Bridget told me once. I couldn’t imagine it. My coarse, unsophisticated sister best friends with the fascinating Madeleine Proctor? It didn’t fit inside my head, but I envied her all the same. When Maddie came over to play, she played with Bridget, and I was lucky to be included in their long jaunts through the woods.
Suddenly I’d become the little squirt, while Maddie had jumped rank to be an equal with my older sister. I pledged to act more grown-up, to be more like Maddie. It was hard though. Already, her electricity was brimming over while I was still at the awkward, shy stage.
That might have been the beginning of a long dry spell in my relationship with Maddie. It wasn’t always Bridget who was her best friend. Sometimes it was one of the other little girls or, as we grew up, her cousin Janae.
She and Janae accepted Jesus as their Savior around the same time, shortly after Annalena and Bridget did. I heard Bridget say once that Annalena thought Maddie and Janae were just copying her by becoming Christians. Anna seemed to think the whole world revolved around her. But it didn’t: it revolved around Maddie.
At least for me.
I was always watching, even when we hadn’t talked for months, even when she was too busy for me. I don’t think she meant to forget about me. After all, no one forgets about a mouse; they just don’t care anymore.
Watching Maddie and Janae parade around in their new coverings, looking so much older with their hair put up, I knew what I had to do. I had to make the same decision they’d made, and maybe I’d get put in the same instruction class with them. Then Maddie would have to notice me.
But it didn’t work that way. Instead, another instruction class was started, this one composed of me and a few of my classmates, including Damian and Irene, of all people. Once again, Maddie was above me.
Around the same time, she gained a title that I hadn’t even dreamed of having when I was only eleven. Cassandra had a baby girl, thus making Maddie and Annalena aunts. To say I was jealous would be almost a lie; I was beyond jealous. That darling little girl, Natasha, was all I could think about in the first months after she was born. I didn’t care that she’d been born out of wedlock; I hardly knew what that meant. I didn’t care that Cass, still unreturned as yet to the faith, dressed her in overalls and jeans and cut off some of her adorably curly hair. She was a cherub in my eyes, and simply because she belonged, in a way, to Maddie.
“Cassie spent the night last night,” Maddie would tell the rest of us importantly. “And I got to hold Tasha for almost an hour.”
I burned with envy. It seemed to me that Madeleine Proctor had the world. While I had nothing.
Oh, we had the same amount of siblings, though hers were blessed with outlandish names that seemed so superior to me then. We had the same number of parents, though my mother was controlling and my father . . . There will be time enough to tell of my father later on. We were nearly the same age, could do the same things, went to the same church and school.
But I could never be like her, no matter how hard I tried. My efforts went unnoticed. After all, I was just little Kate Hershberger, afraid of her own shadow.
My father might have had something to do with that. I grew up under his criticism and wrath the same way a stunted tree grows up under a blazing sun. Never satisfied with anything we girls did, we bore the brunt of his anger more frequently than anyone at church knew. He was careful not to hit us where it’d be seen, but his most effective punishment came out in his words. He had the temper of a devil and a tongue to match. Only Stefan was safe from him. Sometimes I wondered if he didn’t wish we’d all been boys.
My sisters and I and even my mother suffered in silence. A few in the church knew the ways of my father, but his excommunication had come even before Bridget was born, and it was easier for them to turn a blind eye to his misdemeanors than to call him out on them. After all, they must have reasoned, we weren’t physically harmed.
But they never saw the sickly purple bruises across our backs and shoulders or the welts that sometimes made us cry out during recess at school. We hid our sorrows well, like our mother taught us. They were our secret to keep.
When I was younger, I thought all fathers were like my own. I was used to the name-calling, the hair-pulling, the vile verbal abuse he hurled down upon us when his wrath was stirred. In some small way, I suppose I thought we deserved it.
Maddie’s father wasn’t like that. He was gentle, soft-spoken, kind, all the things a father should be. But he was Maddie’s, and my father was mine.
April 13, 2002.
They’re so beautiful, Maddie and Janae, like little angels in their frilly white dresses and glowing cheeks. Janae looks frightened, but Maddie doesn’t. She’s proud and strong, like always. Maybe she really is an angel.
I hardly hear the words the minister murmurs as he places his hand on Maddie’s head and baptizes her with water from a crystal bowl. “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost . . .”
Maddie’s crying. Or maybe it’s just the baptismal waters trickling down her cheeks. Whatever the case, she’s ethereal. I wish for nothing more than to be beside her at this instant, steadying myself for the waters to be poured upon my own head.
But I haven’t even finished instruction class yet. I’ll be baptized later in the year with Damian and Irene and a few others, but I know it won’t be as beautiful a ceremony as this one. Maddie gives this one all its loveliness. I envy Janae.
They’re going forward now, all the older ones, to welcome the younger ones. I wish I had a reason for going forward. Later I might be able to tell Maddie how beautiful she looks, but it’s doubtful. I lose my thoughts when I’m with her. My words won’t come, or if they do, they come out so stuttered and mangled that I blush red with shame.
Maddie’s father reaches her first. My breath is sharp, unsteady, as he tenderly takes her in his arms, holds her tight. I can almost feel it as if he were holding me. Does she know what a gift she is receiving right at this very moment? Does she know how much I would give to be clasped in an embrace as strong and loyal and loving as her father’s?
I cannot bear it. Turning away, I try to drive the longing from my heart. My father has never hugged me.
I don’t want him to.