Diamond Girl

Chapter 5



Right after my ninth birthday, Daddy told me over one of our breakfasts together that my mother had a new baby, a girl. I could tell right away from the way he said it that I didn’t need to worry about losing my place with him, but my mother probably did.

She and my sister came home a few days later. I saw Lily in passing with her baby nurse. She was a beautiful baby, the prettiest of all of us.

The staff was a little stressed, I think, because Lily meant two more nannies and a baby nurse, and along with my two live-in nurses and a nutritionist, and Kelly’s three nannies, things must have been pretty crowded up there on the fourth floor. Staff worries weren’t mine, though. I had my own problems to deal with. The juvenile diabetes diagnosis had changed my small world for the worse and I was barely coping.

Two months after my parents were told the news, I had my first seizure and, disastrously, it happened at breakfast with Daddy. Daddy wasn’t used to physical disabilities, or problems, or scenes, and his child falling off her chair and writhing on the floor in front of him like some homeless person gave him, and our butler, Louis, a terrible shock. He sent Louis running frantically for Sylvia, and after Sylvia had arrived, needle in hand, and I had been carried back up to bed, he had demanded she explain what had happened to me.

Sylvia, being relatively new and no doubt enjoying her gig at 800 Fifth Avenue, blamed Elizando for helping me hide from her, and then, ass-covering frantically, she even blamed my castle bed, telling Daddy she couldn’t check my blood sugar at night since I closed the doors and barricaded them with stuffed animals.

Daddy liked her proactive stance on the whole messy issue and the next day I was sent off to Tamerlane with Stacey and the second shift nurse, Bettina, 'to rest and recuperate'.

I didn’t think anything of it. It was spring vacation at Buckley, and Kelly and I were always shipped off to Tamerlane.

I liked it out there. I didn’t get to see Daddy but, on the upside, I had the run of the place, I had my horse and there were no tense silent rooms or traces of my mother’s perfume.

Tamerlane might strike a stranger as some great imposing castle of a house, perched on a patrolled jewel of an estate, but since I had never known any other kind of house, it was just an ordinary house to me, and a comfortably shabby one compared to the apartment. At Tamerlane, Kelly and I could jump on the couches and slide down the stairs, and since all of my father’s legendary artwork was displayed at the New York apartment, we could go into any of the rooms whenever we wanted to. This wasn’t always the case at the apartment in New York where there were times when either my mother was entertaining or my father had business acquaintances in, and the alarms in the great room were set and we were not even allowed to leave our floor for fear of setting them off.

So I didn’t have a clue that this time at Tamerlane was different. I missed Elizando, who didn't accompany us to Tamerlane, but it was great to have Stacey with us for two whole weeks.

Stacey knew what was going on but, instead of saying anything to me, she was just nicer than usual and let me hitch one of my father’s antique carriages up to the horses and ride it all over the estate. She even taught me how to drive a golf cart.

Stacey must have asked Bettina to take the train back from Connecticut the day she rode back into the city with me because we were alone in the back of the car. I don’t know where Kelly was. Like always, I was a little sad to leave Tamerlane, but I was excited to get home to Elizando and impress her with my driving stories.

Stacey waited to tell me until we were about ten blocks from home. She leaned forward, switched off the car's TV, and gave me this weird little smile. “Carey, I need to tell you something.”

I had been watching the show, so I leaned forward and tried to turn it back on.

Stacey put her hand on mine and shook her head. “No, seriously, Carey, I want you to listen to me, okay?”

I huffed out, “Okaaay, Stacey, fine, tell me,” and leaned back dramatically in my seat, rolling my eyes. I thought she was going to tell me some stupid boring story about my mother being pregnant again, or being in Europe again. Stacey was always mentioning our mother to Kelly and me, like she thought we missed her. Stacey had a very rose-colored view of my mother. It made me feel kind of sorry for her. I always thought maybe her own mother was dead and that’s why she didn’t understand how real mothers acted.

I pretended to be interested because, after all, I really liked Stacey and she had let me drive the golf cart by myself.

Stacey smiled and said, “Well, your dad called me yesterday and told me your new bedroom was done and he didn’t want ...”

“What new bedroom? I don’t want a new bedroom, Stacey.”

She couldn’t look at me, so she stared out the window while she told me about my surprise. “Come on, Carey, don’t be that way. Your parents went to a lot of trouble on this. They got like an architect and an interior designer to do this in like record time, so it could be finished before you came home.”

I was confused. I liked presents, and she had said 'parents', not 'your mother', and so that meant Daddy too, but I loved my bedroom and my safe castle bed where I could hide if I wanted to. I decided to wait and see the new room. If I didn’t like it, I would tell Elizando to tell Daddy, and for sure he would let me stay in my old room if I wanted to.

When we pulled up in front of our building, Stacey didn’t get out. She said she had to be back at her dorm. I was a little disappointed that Elizando wasn’t outside like she usually was when I came back from the country, but I guessed that she must be upstairs getting my new room ready for me. As soon as I walked into the lobby I saw Sylvia waiting for me with her big horse face, grinning like she had missed me, which I knew was a lie. Kids can tell who likes them, and with Sylvia and me it had been mutual hate at first sight.

“Hi, Carey, welcome home. Did you have a good time in Connecticut?”

I ignored her, asking. “Where’s Elizando? Is she upstairs?”

Sylvia smiled and rang for the elevator. “No, she’s not here right now. Let’s go upstairs. I want you to see your new room and then we have to go out again to see Dr. Heming. You have an appointment this afternoon to have a pump installed.”

I ground in my heels at that. “I want Elizando, and I am not going to the doctors, and I don’t know what a pump is.”

Sylvia grasped my wrist and pulled me into the elevator with her little fake laugh. “Let’s not discuss your business in front of the whole world, Carey, I’ll explain on the way up.”

I looked around the lobby, empty except for the doorman standing fifty feet away. I had a sudden desire to break free and run out into the street but Sylvia had already pulled me into the elevator and the doors were closing behind me.

“Come on, Carey, stop this. What in the world would your mother think of you acting like this?”

I backed away from her to the far corner of the elevator and looked up at her sullenly. “I don’t know, Sylvia. Why don’t you ask her yourself.”

She smiled with no teeth at me. “Maybe I will ask her, Carey. I can tell you this much: after all the work she has done for you this last two weeks, she would be very disappointed.”

“Really, Sylvia, did my mother go in and paint my bedroom herself?” At that point new paint was about as far as I was willing to let my imagination go.

Sylvia shook her head, saying, “Obviously not, Carey, your mother did not paint the room herself, but she did work very hard to surprise you, and she would be very hurt if she could see how you are acting now.”

I shrugged. “Don’t worry about it, Sylvia. If I run into her, I’ll tell her that you said so.”

When the doors opened, I left her behind and ran up the marble staircase towards my room, calling out for Elizando. There was no answer, and when I got to the top of the stairs on the third floor, I was shocked to see that the single door to my bedroom had become a set of double doors, like my parents had. I hesitated outside them until I felt Sylvia’s clammy hand on my shoulder. She reached over me and turned the new swan handles down.

”Come on in, Carey. Wait till you see our rooms.”

Faintly I said, “Our?” but I forgot to worry when I walked inside my new suite.

It was white, blinding white.

The gleaming white walls reflected the spring sun from the floor-to-ceiling windows. The light outside sprang off the polar bears fifteen stories down in the zoo and bounced back off the pearly walls to shine on the great ivory double satin bed, and the white chaise longue, and the glittering miniature chandelier above my head.

Quietly I opened the door to my old bathroom. It had been transformed into a huge mirrored space with its own make-up area outlined in the same tulip bulbs that my mother’s mirrors had. My old bathtub had been replaced by a round rose marble one the size of a small pool.

I turned to Sylvia, smiling. “It’s beautiful, it’s so grown up.”

She nodded pleased. “It is very grown-up, Carey, that’s right. Your parents thought that now, with you being almost nine and such a big girl, that it was time for you to have a more sophisticated room.” She gestured me back into the grand white bedroom and pointed to a door off to the left that I hadn’t noticed. “See that door right there? That opens into my room. Now if you need me, or if I need to check on your blood sugar during the night, I’m right next door. Isn’t that nice for us, Carey?”

I knew then I wanted to scream and call for Elizando until I was hoarse, but I couldn’t make a sound. My legs gave out and I fell over onto the thick white carpet, choking out her name. Above me, Sylvia said, the triumph in her voice barely concealed, “That’s right, Carey, Elizando is gone. You are too old for a nanny and your father is more comfortable with me being near at hand to make sure that you stay healthy. Now hurry up if you want to change. We need to leave for Dr. Heming’s in the next half hour. All your clothes have been moved into the new closets in here. You don’t need my help changing, do you, a big girl like you?”

I shook my head and she left me alone. She was gone, my Elizando, with her big brown face and warm eyes. She had been with me since I was six weeks old, and all the physical love and security I had ever known had been from her. The one person in all of that vast space who had been all mine had disappeared, like my old room. Elizando. I wanted to cry and I wanted to run and look for Daddy, but I didn’t do either of those things. I understood that Elizando was gone because I had been bad at breakfast and upset Daddy. He had made her go away because of me, and had given me the new white room in exchange for her. If I acted badly again, he might think mother was right after all about sending me to Canada.

I walked into my new ballroom-sized bathroom and held my hands under the cold water until they stopped shaking. I didn’t want to see my own small white face in all those mirrors. When my body became still, I pulled in my breath, walked downstairs and waited by the door for Sylvia.

I didn’t cry in the car and I didn’t flinch when Dr. Heming’s clumsy nurse hurt me putting the needle and tube into my stomach for the new pump. I didn’t cry when I ate dinner alone in the upstairs library with my night nurse Bettina, or when two of the girls at school the next day made fun of me for my new 'blood beeper'.

I kept everything inside, and when I was alone at night in my big white bed where I would have to pull my knees up against me because my stomach hurt so badly and I wanted to scream, I kept that inside too.

I told myself that the hurt was better than the empty dead feelings I walked around with during the day. If I had pain, then I must be real. Remembering what that first year alone was like makes me feel a little less scared now. If I’m dying, it won’t be any different than going into another empty white room. If I’m dying alone, that is nothing new either because I have always been alone.