MARGARET BRIGHAM WHITE, in the Carrie franchise, brought Carietta Carrie White into the world. She raised Carrie according to a strict hyper-fundamentalistic regimen for slightly more than seventeen years. At the end of that time, she died by her daughter's own hand. An invisible hand.Margaret Brigham was born into a family that produced telekinetic women. Her maternal grandmother was a telekinetic. She carried the trait on one of her X chromosomes.She met Ralph White in a hyper-fundamentalistic church near Chamberlain, Maine. Ralph White worked as an ironworker. His fellow ironworkers knew him by reputation. He carried a Bible and a revolver (at least, in the 1976 version he is likely to have done so). He carried the Bible to remind himself to stay close to God. (How close he really was, the novel does not say. But part of the problem with hyper-fundamentalism is its tendency to interpolate into the Bible, as the ancient Pharisees often did.) He carried the revolver in case he met the Wild Man or the False Prophet (cf. Revelation chapter 13) on the job.As Margaret White finally described it to Carrie on the last night of her life, the two practiced strictly platonic love. Oh, they felt the temptation. But we. Never. Did. Until. One night I caught him looking at me That Way. I told him to pray, but he did not. He was weak. He took me. And...and I like it! Oh, may God forgive me I liked his hands rubbing ALL OVER ME!!! Ralph White died (or perhaps left her) a few months after that night. Margaret White eventually delivered Carrie on her own bed and severed the umbilical cord with a kitchen knife. She probably would have killed her infant daughter had not her neighbors, hearing her screams, come to their rescue.What she did not know--what no one suspected (and few would have known the significance even if they had)--was that Ralph White carried the telekinesis allele on his own sole X chromosome. That he did not manifest a TK talent is because men cannot manifest it. No one knows whether testosterone interferes with the TK talent, or whether some other gene on the Y chromosome nullifies the trait. But this much, authorities at The Shop (cf. Firestarter, The Tommyknockers) know: Carrie White inherited the TK allele from her father and from her mother. Carrie White was, therefore, telekinetic.Margaret White never suspected. Not even on the day when Carrie was three years old, and went over to a neighbor's house when the neighbor's teen-aged daughter was sunbathing, in the semi-nude, on their front lawn, looking just like the Whore of Babylon (cf. Revelation chh. 17-18). Margaret angrily snatched Carrie into her house and prepared to discipline her--and then hail, the size of grapefruit, pelted Margaret's house and lawn. And still--still!--Margaret White did not suspect what her daughter could do.Margaret continued to raise her daughter according to her strict hyper-fundamentalistic precepts. She built a prayer closet for Carrie and decorated it with a grotesquely modified crucifix. And she never once gave Carrie even the most elementary sex education. She also filed to excuse Carrie from any session of any class mentioning the names of Charles Darwin or Alfred Russell Wallace, or their joint work, The Origin of Species.Everything fell apart during Carrie's senior year. First, in mid-May, Carrie came home with a tale of woe--and Margaret got a call from the Ewen High School principal's office. So: Carrie had become a woman. The Curse of Eve had worked its will. Margaret of course confined Carrie to the prayer closet until dusk.But that was only the beginning. Carrie came home one day and announced she would attend the Spring Ball at the school. Margaret refused to buy a dress, so Carrie bought a bolt of expensive fabric and made her own. Then Margaret tried to stop Carrie from going out the door. And Carrie shoved her violently aside. Without touching her!The shock took Margaret's breath away. This was her grandmother's power! And now Carrie had it!Naturally Margaret laid an ambush for her daughter. She was going to kill her own daughter with a heavy knife. Sure enough, Carrie came back, drenched in blood and wailing that her classmates had laughed at her. Margaret then told Carrie the story of her conception, and prepared for the kill--either with the knife or trying to drown her in a bathtub, according to various accounts. But in fact Margaret died, at Carrie's hand. Some say Carrie reached into her chest with her imaginary hand, found her heart, and squeezed. And some say Carrie impaled Margaret with fifteen to twenty knives and other sharp kitchen utensils, after the fashion of the modified crucifix in the prayer closet.By two of the three accounts, Carrie herself died, after setting the house ablaze to fall on them both. But by the third account, Carrie escaped alive.Note: By one account, Ralph White survived and remarried. By a coincidence that must have strained the credulity of every cynical officer of The Shop, he married another carrier of the telekinetic allele. Their daughter, Rachel Lang, ripped off a Carrie herself, at a school where Carrie's former friend Susan Snell had become a guidance counselor. Ralph White's second wife went insane on the strength of the TK powers Rachel showed, and landed in an asylum.No one has ever told a story of The Shop beginning a project on telekinesis and tracking down TK women or male or female carriers of the TK allele. Perhaps such a story line might have developed had CBS productions developed the regular series they originally planned, based on Carrie White escaping alive. Show less «