The Acorn Box
By Paisley Swan Stewart (To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Bookworm Challenge)
“He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.”
I whispered the last sentence to myself, trying to effect a southern accent just like Scout in the movie. It was my favorite book, and even if I hadn’t quite understood the more adult issues, the one thing I knew for sure was that I longed for a father like Atticus Finch; a man who loved his kids with a pure kind of love, and who always did everything he could to protect them from bad people or dangerous situations.
“Yeah...like that’s ever gonna happen,” I muttered.
Turning out the light, I closed the book and tucked it underneath my pillow. I would keep it there safely so that no one would disturb it. In that house, it was difficult to keep your things private. Especially from him…my stepfather. He didn’t like it when I hid things from him. He said I was living under his roof now, and everything I had, belonged to him.
I would catch him in my room sometimes, digging through my dresser drawers and looking at my belongings-but the one thing I would never let him lay his hands on, was my acorn box. The acorn box was where I kept my mother’s photographs and other items that were precious to me. Like the cigar box that held the treasures Boo Radley left for Jem and Scout in that old tree, I often laid my own treasures out on the bed and admired them one by one. Along with the photos, there was the little swan pendant Momma had always worn. It was mine now, but I wouldn’t wear it publicly until I was old enough to leave that house. I wouldn’t let him see me with it on, because it was just between my mother and me. It was our secret-as was the box.
I knew he would never find the box because the place I hid it in was just too perfect. With the haunting theme from the “To Kill A Mockingbird” movie tinkling in my thoughts, I was’t ready to sleep yet, so I rolled over onto my side and turned the light on. Careful not to make a sound, I crept out of bed and knelt down on the floor, then grasped the fringed rug and folded it back on itself. With the rug out of the way, I ran my hand across the floorboards, and looked over my shoulder to make certain that no one was spying on me. Using my fingernail, I lifted the loose board and cautiously pulled it free, then set it aside.
The acorn box was safe and sound, and even though I had known it would be, I still felt relief wash over me that he hadn’t found it. The box itself was as much of a treasure as what I kept inside it, for it too, had belonged to my mother. And before her, it had belonged to my mother’s favorite aunt who had died of cancer before I was born. Momma said that her aunt Jenny had used it to keep her sewing things, and then when she passed it onto my mother, it had contained Momma’s special jewelry.
I gently freed the box from it’s hiding place in the floor and traced my fingers over the carving of acorns and oak leaves. It was made of solid wood, and the intricate carvings extended all along the lid and sides of the box. There were no nails in its construction, only round wooden pegs that fit the pieces together securely.
When I was a little girl, and before he came into our lives, I used to believe the box was magical-and I suppose in a way it was, because it always made me feel close to my mother, even though she had been dead for five years.
Sometimes it seemed like it had happened only yesterday, and at other times it felt like she had been gone forever. But no matter how much time had passed, I still missed her so much that I couldn’t even cry about it anymore.
With a clear picture of her face passing like a breeze across my memory, I sat down on the floor Indian style and set the acorn box in my lap, then dreamily opened the lid, half-expecting something magical to happen. My mother’s swan pendant sat atop a pile of photos, and it glinted in the lamp light as I opened the clasp and dropped the chain around my neck. I gazed down with admiration at the beautiful jeweled swan figure that dangled from the chain. It was made of gold, and the open wings were studded with tiny diamonds. The wing-tips were quite sharp, as I had discovered once when I accidentally cut myself. Of course now, the cuttings were not accidental. They were intentional; a holy convocation of sorts, and something I had picked up from my friends in the 9th grade. Everyone self harmed.
Also in the acorn box, I kept a zipper pouch that contained a few cotton balls and a small bottle of alcohol. I was cautious to avoid infections-so I kept everything clean and orderly when I did the cutting. I regularly sharpened the swan’s wing tips with small file I had stolen from my stepfather’s toolbox, along with several of his unused razors-but I would use the razors only occasionally. The swan, I felt, gave me a special connection to my mother-and I was desperate for something more of her.
I closed my eyes and ran my thumb along my upper thigh, feeling the silvery scars that still raised the skin slightly, remembering when each cut had been carved there.
“The first night he came into my room and laid with me in the bed,” I murmured, as my fingers drifted a little father down to the next set of scars.
“And this one is from the first time he fondled me, and put his hand over my mouth-then told me to be quiet because Mommy was sleeping.”
I found it amusing how people misunderstood why young girls like me cut themselves. They assumed it was an act of destruction and self hatred-but in fact, it was an act of healing. It was a cleansing; a moment of rebirth when I could wash his touch away with the flowing of my blood. After the pain of the cut, came a sense of euphoria and freedom; because along with my own blood leaving my body, part of him was purged out of me as well.
I hadn’t cut myself in several days because the more recent wounds needed time to heal, but just as I was about to put the swan pendant back inside the box, I heard a sound outside my bedroom door!
Quickly I shut the lid, dropped the box back down into its hiding place, replaced the floorboard, then pulled the rug back to where it belonged. I froze when I heard my stepfather’s voice from out in the hallway.
“Amber, are you still awake in there?” he asked in a very soft voice.
I could feel the hair on my arms bristle at the sound of that gentle voice, and I wondered how a man like that could have been born with such a voice. It should have been gruff and angry, but instead it was almost kind, and that made the lies he told me, and the things he did to me even more evil.
In that moment, I didn’t know what would be worse; letting him catch me still awake on a school night, or finding me already asleep. I scrambled back up onto the bed and switched the light off, then turned over on my side and faced away from the door. Grabbing the blankets, I pulled them tightly up around my shoulders and waited.
The knob turned, and I shivered as I heard his footsteps plod over the very spot where the acorn box was hidden.
“Well, I guess I’ll let you sleep then…see you in the morning.”
It was all I could do to keep from vomiting as I felt him hover over me. For the briefest of moments he touched my hair, and it wasn’t the sort of fatherly touch Atticus Finch would have given his daughter Scout. God knows I would have welcomed a touch like that.
No. My stepfather’s touch implied so much more. I was relieved that at least he wasn’t drunk. If he had been, the mere fact that he had found me already asleep would not have mattered. As he had done on many nights just like this one, he would have crawled into bed on top of me and …
I wouldn’t let myself finish the thought. At least for now I could sleep in peace. Closing my eyes, I pictured myself as a little girl, with Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, holding me in his arms.