Sherri’s heart was racing, her breathing was heavy and erratic, her mouth bone-dry. She looked at the clock display on the ceiling: 3:45 AM. She sat up in her bed, spun around and landed her feet flat on the floor. The thick carpet comforted her, helping her to calm herself. She wished she could wipe the dream from her memory, but it was persistent. With her heart still pounding, she put on her slippers and grabbed a robe from the oversized walk-in closet.
She shuffled out of her bedroom, down the hallway, passing the guest rooms to eventually reach the grand staircase leading to the first floor foyer. She continued down the staircase and turned right to exit the foyer, traveling down the main hallway past the dining room and salon to reach the double doors leading into the kitchen. She headed to the back and pulled open one of the doors on the refrigerator, grabbing a partially used gallon of milk. Pulling out a glass from the cupboard, she poured herself a healthy serving.
She sat down on a stool next to the eight-foot stainless steel table along the side of the kitchen. She took a few sips of the cold liquid and fell into a trance, staring at the hanging pots and pans, not really seeing any of them.
This was the third night she’d had the dream. It was beginning to scare Sherri, as the dreams were all she could think about, not to mention that she was lucky to get four hours of sleep for the past few nights. What really concerned her the most was that she could remember them all in intimate detail. She knew dreams weren’t supposed to work like that. Usually, she was lucky to remember even vague details after the first minute or so of being awake.
Sherri took another sip of her milk and found it lukewarm. She looked up at the clock on the wall, 4:30 AM. Had she really been sitting here staring at nothing for over half an hour? She got up and put some ice cubes in what remained of her milk and sat in front of the computer that the kitchen staff usually used to order their supplies. She figured she could check if the college course choices she’d made for her first semester were confirmed.
At 5:30, her mother, Samantha, came into the kitchen. “There you are. I noticed your bedroom door was ajar and you weren’t in bed. Is everything okay?”
Samantha was already dressed in a sharp business suit, with her long blond hair twisted into a very professional, but retro hair style.
Sherri turned to face her mother, “Yeah, I’m fine now. I just had another one of those dreams.”
Samantha pulled an oversized coffee mug from the cabinet, “Oh, so what’s happening on this installment of Little House on the Prairie?”
“It’s not funny Mom, these dreams are really bothering me.”
“I’m sorry honey, tell me about what happened.”
Sherri started, “Well, last night’s dream was the same as I told you before, like I’m watching things happen through someone else’s eyes. It’s not like it’s me in the dream, it’s more like I’m just along for the ride in someone else’s life.”
Samantha turned back towards her daughter, “So, was last night the same person? Or was it someone different?”
“It was the same woman, everything looked familiar. All she does is prepare food, cook on a wood burning stove, wash laundry in a wooden basin and mend cloths in this dingy house on a farm. But last night, something different happened. A man was there, who I’d seen in previous dreams, but he was off working in the fields. This time, he was in the house with the woman and he was so mean to her. He treated her like a slave Mom. He yelled at her, told her she was no good, not worth feeding.”
Sherri frowned while she twisted the hem of her bathrobe, “I felt like, I don’t know, like I could feel her desperation and sadness.”
Samantha put down the coffee cup she was preparing to put in the Keurig, walked over to Sherri and put her hand on her shoulder, “Darling, I think you should talk to a counselor. I’m concerned that these dreams are going to start dragging you down.”
“Start? They already are! I’m lucky if I can get four hours sleep!”
* * *
The following morning, Sherri heard a knock at her bedroom door. She could barely even make out her own voice squeak a meek “Come in.”
The door opened and her mom came walking in. Sherri had the bed sheets pulled up to her chin, tears still trailing down her face from that night’s dream.
Samantha’s expression turned to concern, “Oh honey, what’s wrong?”
“He hit her!”
“Who sweetie, who hit whom?”
“The man, the man in the dream. I felt it too, like it was me being hit. It was devastating. It made me feel so hopeless.”
Samantha sat on the edge of the bed, “You have to tell yourself it’s just a dream. I’m expecting a call back from Dr. Epstein today, hopefully he’ll know someone you can talk to.” She wiped the damp hair from Sherri’s face.
“Okay, thanks Mom. You know what made it worse? After he hit her, he continued about his business like nothing had happened…, like she was a dog or something. He started talking about how he had to take his invention into town to see a lawyer. Apparently they live near Chicago.”
Samantha looked quizzical. “Chicago? An invention? Do you know what it was?”
“He said it was an automatic planter. Something about putting seeds in the ground automatically.”
There was a long silence, Sherri turned her head on her pillow to look at her mother. Samantha was just staring back, her mouth open.
“What, what’s the matter Mom?”
“Your Great-great grandfather on your father’s side used to tell us that his father’s first invention was an automatic seed planter. It was pulled behind a mule or a horse and it planted seeds automatically in the ground after the plowing was finished. Coincidentally, he lived in Chicago.”
Sherri shot up in bed, the sheets falling to her waist, “What was his name Mom, what was Great-great grandpa’s father’s name?”
Samantha responded, “William, but everyone called him…”
“Billy!”, Sherri blurted out. “The woman, she called him Billy!”
Samantha put her hand over her mouth. “Oh my god” she said through her fingers.
After a brief moment, Sherri asked, “What was his wife’s name? Do you remember?”
With her hand still over her mouth, Samantha replied, “Margaret, she was your Dad’s Great-great-grandma Marge.”
* * *
Later that night, Sherri was lying awake in bed for hours. She was afraid to go to sleep again. Her parents were at a fundraiser for one of the presidential nominees, so she knew they wouldn’t be home until the early hours of the morning. Once that thought exited her mind, she was in the farmhouse again looking down at a wash basin.
The woman was scrubbing clothes on a soapy washboard in a wooden bucket filled with filthy water.
Sherri wanted to try and communicate with her to see if this was really her Great-great-great grandmother. She knew she’d blurted out some obscenities last night when Billy had hit her, but she had no feedback as to whether Margaret had heard her.
Sherri concentrated and asked, “Margaret, can you hear me?”
The scrubbing action in the wash basin stopped for a moment. Then the woman focused her attention on the clothes again.
Sherri tried again, “Margaret, my name is Sherri, I need to talk to you.”
The clothes washing stopped again. Then Margaret said, “If that don’t beat all, now I’m gonna go crazy and wind up in the insane asylum.”
Sherri spoke again, “Margaret, you’re not going insane. I know this is weird, but I’m your great-great-great granddaughter.”
“Now I knows I must be goin’ crazy. I knew somethin like this would happen to me.”
Sherri tried to explain, “I can’t seem to stop what’s happening here, but I thought that maybe if we could communicate with each other, we could get to know each other better.”
Margaret replied, “Oh sure, I’s always hoping to have an imaginary friend, I’s sure that will really do great things for me.”
“Margaret, can you do me a favor?”
“What?” Margaret replied.
“Do you have a mirror? Can you look in a mirror so I can see your face?”
Margaret got up and started walking over towards the bed in the corner of the little house. “This is crazy, this is crazy. Nows I’s listening to a voice in my head.”
She picked up a pretty silver hand held mirror from a table next to the bed and held it up. Sherri could see Margaret’s reflection staring back at her.
“Oh my god Margaret, you’re so beautiful! I can’t believe it, you look like me. I mean, I look like you, I guess. Now I know where all the good looks in the family come from.”
“Yeah, sure, ‘cept you don’t look like nobody, causin’ you’re just a voice in my head.”
Sherri laughed, “Well, if it means anything, this is pretty messed up for me too. I go to sleep, and instead of dreaming, I wind up inside your head.”
“And how long has you been doin’ this?”
“Just a few days. I didn’t know who you were at first. Not until I talked to my mom about it. She recognized you and Billy from my stories. You’re my father’s Great-great-grandma.”
Margaret put down the mirror and sat on the bed. “You mean… you’re sayin’ that I have a child? Causin’ I’m not carry’n right now, as I just started my curse.”
“Yes Margaret, you do. I don’t know when, but you have a boy. He’s going to grow up to be an inventor, just like Billy. He’s also going to make the family very wealthy!”
“Well I’ll be damned. What’s his name gonna be?”
Sherri thought for moment, “I don’t want to say Margaret, I feel like I’d be taking away one of the exciting things in life, picking a name for your child.”
“I sees, and maybe you don’ts really knows his name…”
“Oh Margaret, I know this is hard, but you have to believe this is really happening. This is way off the scale for weirdness for me too.”
“So what’s we do now?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened yesterday with Billy. The way he treats you, the fact that he hit you. We have to do something about that. You don’t deserve to be treated that way.”
Margaret didn’t reply right away, “Wells, you need not fret about that. Billy’s a good man. If’n I gets hit, it’s usually ‘cause I deserves it.”
“No you don’t, Margaret! It’s very common for women in your situation to believe that. Nobody deserves to be treated like that. In my time, we have lots of ways to deal with abusive people. I’ll do some research and see if there’s anything I can find that will help us change his behavior.”
Sherri suddenly realized she was looking at the ceiling in her bedroom. Her clock was projecting 6:00 AM and the alarm was going off.
Damn it! I can’t believe I finally WANT to have this dream and my alarm goes off!
* * *
That night during dinner, the Little House on the Prairie was the topic of conversation.
Sherri’s father, Marcus, said, “So honey, Mom told me about the dreams you’ve been having. It would be pretty strange if you were really dreaming about Great-great-grandpa Billy, considering I don’t remember ever talking about him.”
“It was Mom that told me that grandpa Billy’s wife’s name was Margaret, so last night I spoke to her in my dream using her name. We actually held a conversation.”
Marcus smiled, “Really, what did she say?”
“Well, naturally, she was a little freaked out by the whole thing.”
“Naturally,” Marcus replied.
“You don’t believe this is really happening, do you?” Sherri accused her father.
“What am I supposed to believe is happening, honey?”
Sherri looked down at her dinner plate, “That’s a good question. I don’t know.”
Sherri looked up again, “It sure feels real when it’s happening. I mean, the setting she’s in, the way she talks. It’s just a lot of things that I don’t remember seeing or hearing before, you know? It doesn’t feel like it’s just a dream about things I’ve seen before.”
She paused for a moment, “Can you tell me what you know about Grandpa Billy?”
Marcus looked thoughtful, “Well, I don’t know much, he passed away before I was born. My Grandpa Fred, Frederick Vunderbilt, who died when you were little used to tell me that his dad was a tough man. He grew up on a farm and in turn, ran a farm himself as an adult until he patented his first invention. He had an agreement to sell it in the Sears catalog, which was really the only way people could shop for unique stuff back then. Sears was based in Chicago, where Grandpa Billy used to live. Well, he lived outside of Chicago, on his farm.”
Sherri asked, “Were there ever any rumors about Grandpa Billy, well, hitting his wife?”
“I don’t recall any talk about that. You have to consider that back in those days, people used to look the other way on that kind of behavior. I’m not saying everyone thought it was okay, it’s just that women weren’t considered equals by the majority of men. Anyway, I did know Grandma Marge, but she was pretty old when I was a kid. I think she was ninety-six when she passed away. I don’t remember her ever saying anything negative about Grandpa Billy. Although she did tell me that when he was older, he was wheelchair bound. He had a leg injury from when he was a teenager on the farm that became worse as he got older.”
Marcus turned to Samantha, “Do you remember anything else about Great-grandma Marge?”
Samantha said, “The only thing I remember was when both of our families went on that trip to the lake cabin when we were kids. I remember getting ready to leave the house and I saw her behind the van with her walker. She pushed the walker aside, leaned over and picked up a giant cooler full of stuff and threw it in the back of the van. I couldn’t believe how strong she was.”
Marcus had a big smile on his face, “Yes, she did have a reputation for being quite a tough woman. I would think that if Grandpa Billy got nasty with her, he’d likely come out of it with a black eye.”
* * *
After dinner, Sherri was in bed by eight o’clock. For the first time in a week, she was looking forward to going to sleep. Now that she knew she could communicate with Margaret, everything was different. She’d spent the day researching abusive relationships, but found that most of the treatments involved external intervention. She suspected that Margaret wouldn’t have that type of support structure available to her. She really felt that she could be successful in helping her, but was too excited to fall asleep. After her thoughts became calm, she finally drifted off to sleep.
Sherri was looking down at work-worn hands cutting up vegetables on a table.
“Margaret, I’m here again.”
The cutting stopped.
“Whoever you is, you need to get outta my head. I can’t sits here talkin’ to myself. I’s gots work to do.”
Sherri was disappointed, she thought that after their last encounter, she’d be more willing to talk.
“Margaret, I talked to my father today, he said that you live to be ninety-six years old.”
Margaret hissed, “Ain’t that beat all hell, I gets to look forward to seventy more years of this life.”
“Oh Margaret, I’ll try to help make things better. I heard that Billy’s invention sells pretty well. So you guys will make some money. Your son will do even better. He creates a huge business around new inventions.”
“Well, that’s all nice and all, but I’m just a woman, I ain’t meaning nothin’ in the lives of men.”
“Actually, that’s something I want to talk to you about. I think you should figure out a way to go into the city to talk to someone. I know it’s hard, but the kind of thing Billy is doing will only get worse without some outside help. One day, he’s going to hurt you really bad. I think if he hits you again, you need to consider it.”
There was silence for a moment. “Oh, tain’t you so damned smart is ya. What the hell am I supposed to do? If’n I leave, the sheriff’s just gonna find me and bring me back, so whatsin you think’ll come of that? Besides, I love Billy. I knows he loves me too, he don’t mean nothing by hit’n me.”
“Who in the hell are you talkin to?” a loud voice boomed in the background.
Margaret spun around to see Billy standing in the doorway. Sherri felt her fear, her own heart rate escalating, just as if she was standing there in the little farmhouse with Grandma Marge.
His feet pounded on the floor as he walked up and got right in Margaret’s face. “Damn you woman, I asked you a question! Who you plannin’ to talk to about hit’n you?”
“Nobody Billy, I swear. I’s just talkin to myself is all. That’s all. Just fixin supper and talkin to myself.”
“Damn you crazy woman!” He raised his arm and slapped her in the face with the back of his hand. Margaret crumpled to the floor.
Sherri yelled at her, “Margaret, stay there, don’t get up!”
But Margaret wasn’t listening. She pulled herself up using the table next to her.
“Billy, you knows I love you. Now just let me finish up this prepin’ and I’ll fix ya somethin to eat.”
“I don’t want nothing to eat fixed by some crazy woman who’s gonna go talkin lies about me!” and he struck her again.
Margaret fell to the floor face first. When she started to push herself up, Sherri could see a small pool of blood on the floor.
“No Margaret, don’t get up! This is going to get worse. He’s going to hurt you really bad, please don’t get up!”
Margaret pulled herself up off the floor anyway. Sherri was in a panic; this was all her fault! Her intervention with Margaret had led to this confrontation. Now she felt like it was the difference between life and death. She was determined to get Margaret to listen.
“LISTEN MARGARET! God is telling you to stay down, don’t get up!”
But it was too late, Margaret was already standing again.
Margaret looked right at Billy. Sherri could see the crazed look in his wide-open eyes. His hair was disheveled, and he had spittle at the corners of his mouth. He was shaking with anger. The situation was escalating out of control.
“Margaret, you have to defend yourself!”
Margaret made a quick glance to the side, just enough for Sherri to see the large carving knife on the table.
“Margaret! Grab that knife, then put the table between you and Billy.”
Margaret did as Sherri asked, grabbing the knife and quickly dashing around to the other side of the small table. She looked directly at Billy across the partially prepared dinner.
“Now Billy, you needs to calm down.”
Billy gripped the edge of the table and threw it to the side, clearing the space between them. The table smashed some of the other furniture in the room, coming to rest on it’s side. Billy crossed the newly created space as he went for Margaret.
Sherri yelled, “Margaret, don’t let him get you! Threaten him with the knife, he’s the one who’s crazy, he’s gonna kill you!”
Margaret swung the knife at Billy, but he blocked the blow with his arm. With his other hand, he grabbed Margaret, and Sherri felt everything start to swirl around. She couldn’t tell what was happening, but she could feel Margaret’s sheer terror as if she was in the fight herself.
Sherri shouted, “Keep trying Margaret! Kick him in the leg! Kick him in his bad leg! Please Grandma, for me, please …”
The spinning stopped, and Sherri could see Billy laying on his back on the floor holding his leg, his forehead creased in pain.
He turned to look at Margaret, “Now you done did it you worthless rag! Now I’m gonna really have to teach you a lesson you won’t never forget!”
Margaret yelled back at him, “I don’t need no damn lessons from you! Damn you Billy, damn you for making me do this!” and she slammed the knife into Billy’s chest.
Sherri woke up to her mother shaking her. “Wake up Sherri, you’re yelling in your sleep!”
Sherri yelled, “MOM!”, and then there was darkness.
* * *
Samantha was on her way home from work. She’d picked up some burgers for dinner, since she was running later than usual and didn’t want to cook. She had to pick up the car from the mechanic again, the second time this month. The damn old car was going to make her late on the rent again.
She pulled up in front of the double-wide trailer and threw the shifter into park. She carried the bags of food and the drink tray up onto the deck and went inside. The house reeked like stale cigarette smoke, making her crinkle her nose in disgust.
Her husband was leaning all the way back in the recliner, watching TV, a beer in his hand. He was wearing an open robe exposing his t-shirt and underwear.
“What the hell Frank, why the hell didn’t you go to work today? We can’t afford all the bills on just my salary!”
“Shut up bitch, can’t you see I’m under a lot of stress? I’ll go to work tomorrow.”
“Damn you Frank! We’re going to get evicted if you get fired again?”
Samantha brushed all the fast food wrappers off the dinner table onto the floor and put down the warm burgers.
She went to the kitchen sink to wash her hands, but it was overflowing with dirty dishes. She put her hands on the side of the sink and let her head hang in sorrow.
What the hell happened to my life? When I was young, I thought I had everything figured out. I know I deserve better than this. How did everything go so wrong?