“Hush now, baby, don’t say a word.”
“Fraya?”
“Shh, Betty. Mustn’t wake the baby.”
17
Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.
—EPHESIANS 6:1
Some little girls grow up with fathers who are decent, kind, and tenderly nested by their daughter’s heart. Other little girls grow up with no father at all, thus ignorant of good men and the not so good ones. The unluckiest of all little girls grow up with fathers who know how to make storms out of sunshine and blue skies. My mother was one such unlucky little girl and suffered the childhood you run away from. Except if you have nowhere to run to.
My mother hailed from Joyjug, Ohio. She was a woman so lovely, mirrors grieved in absence of her. She was much more than her beauty. But no matter how many miles of fantastic wonders I saw inside my mother, she was already gone to me in a million different ways, even when I thought she was right in front of me. This was no more apparent than that February of 1963.
It had been one month since Fraya had returned home and I was going to be nine years old. Mom hollered me into her bedroom and told me my birthday gift was to be a true story she had never told before. She was dancing as jerky as a rattlesnake in a frypan, slipping across the floor in her nylons as Thurston Harris sang “Little Bitty Pretty One” from the radio. As she kicked up her feet, I saw a photograph beneath each of her heels.
“Little bitty pretty one, come on and talk-a to me,” she sang as she pulled me toward her and tried to get my arms to move as hers. “Tell you a story, happened long time ago. Little bitty pretty one, I’ve been-a watchin’ you grow.”
She had put on mascara heavier than usual and it had run down with the tears, making long black lines that reminded me of the previous summer, when the electric poles had been knocked down by a storm, their live wires twitching against the ground.
“You dance like shit,” she told me once the song ended.
After she turned the radio off, she leaned back against the bedroom wall. She unfolded her arms, standing cruciform. The wallpaper behind her was something green, something purple, something I remember loving.
“My pappy,” she said, “was a man who had his toes in God’s river, but his heels in the devil’s mud. I suppose that’s why I’ve never much understood flat-footed garden men. What with their soft words and gentle bedside manner.”
I couldn’t tell you if Grandpappy Lark wore a hat to church or if Mamaw Lark really believed in God. I could tell you all about the cherry tree in their backyard though. When we went there, Dad never came and only my mother was allowed in her parents’ house. Us kids favored the outside anyways, especially when the cherry tree was ripe.
We were allowed to stare up at the deep red fruit. We could lick our lips. We could even open our mouths and stand beneath a branch, waiting for a dangling cherry to drop. But we were never to pick any off the tree itself. Grandpappy’s orders. Like scavenging animals, we were only allowed to eat cherries which had fallen. To make sure this was the case, Grandpappy would sit inside the house by an open window, holding the cotton curtain back with his flyswatter so he could keep an eye on us. To be so cruel to us must have given him great pleasure after the way our father had beat him in his own front yard. The cherry tree was Grandpappy Lark’s way of beating Landon Carpenter back through his children, sending us home with bruises on the inside instead of on the out.
Grandpappy Lark had waited for revenge, and it came in the form of calling his daughter back to the house just so he could regain a measure of power. I suppose my mother returned to the monster so she could show him what the little girl he had hurt had grown up to be. A woman who was strong enough to remember everything.
I’ve never loved my grandpappy, and yet I have never been able to forget what he looked like. He was a short, fat man who always wore green suspenders to hold up his pants. He had a large white mole in the crease of his left nostril. I think he tried to hide it by stuffing that side of his mouth with chewing tobacco until his cheek bulged. The scar Dad had given him stood out on the bridge of his nose. It was this scar that connected the hateful look in each of his eyes. He had straight blonde hair, which had faded in age. He still wore it, as he always had, parted in the middle. His fair skin was at all times slightly burned no matter how much time he spent outdoors.
I thought his voice would sound like the hard part of a dead field, but it was soft. I imagined he could have sung a good lullaby if he were the type of man to know any. He never spoke to me, but he did say things about me.
“Don’t go bringin’ that half-breed with you when it’s sick,” he said to Mom on his porch when he saw me with a runny nose. “I’m an old man. You want me to catch somethin’ and die? I know you’re after my house. It’s why you like bringin’ all these beasts of yours. You’re hopin’ they make me sick with some savage disease. You’re as nasty as your brother was.” He frowned and smacked his lips. “A faggot and a whore. With children like that, who fears hell?”
Mamaw Lark always stood behind him. She never looked at us. It was as though she did her best to believe we did not even exist and were not her grandchildren. She was always in a housedress with an apron and was never without a dish towel in her hands, curling it about her large knuckles. Unlike Mom, Mamaw Lark would wear the same pair of flat black shoes that laced up. I thought it was so she could move quickly as she waited on her husband hand and foot.
I tried to imagine Mamaw Lark young, but her hair had whitened with age. She wore it in a tight bun. Her skin was so transparent, I could see her veins beneath. Sometimes I didn’t even realize she was standing there unless she moved. She knew how to blend in with her little white house and its cross like a church.
“Where’s your father at?” Mom asked as she slowly walked over to the dresser.
“He went to look at the roof on Mr. Deering’s corncrib if it’s not too icy,” I said.
“Well, I hope your daddy don’t fall off that roof. He’s too poor to afford wings.”
She turned on the fan sitting on the dresser top. Holding her hair up off the back of her pale neck, she looked at me.
“What did you say?” she asked above the fan’s jagged humming.
“I didn’t say nothin’.”
“Don’t you lie to me.” She lunged toward me and grabbed my shoulders. “You’re always lyin’.”
She pulled up my shirtsleeve.
“Always sinnin’ with the sun, too.” She shouted over and over again in my face. “I told ya to stay out of it. It makes you black.”
“It’s winter, Mom. I ain’t been in the sun.”
“You’re so goddamn black.”
She yanked me over to her dresser, where she grabbed the puff and powder. She started harshly applying the white powder onto my skin until I was covered in it.
“Jesus Crimson.” She pushed me back and threw the puff to the floor. “It’s pointless.”
She picked up the half-drunk whiskey bottle from off a shelf.
“It’s time for your birthday gift,” she said as she staggered toward the edge of the bed to sit.
She patted the spot beside her. Knowing I could not run away without my mother chasing me down and tearing my eyes out, I sat beside her.
“I was nine when God first turned his back on me,” she said, keeping her eyes forward. “The age you’ve just become, little girl. Summer had brought so much rain to Joyjug, it felt like the flood was already there. ‘Good thing we’ve swam before,’ Pappy would say, practicing his stroke. Eventually the rain stopped and everything was left to drip and drop and mold. On the first dry day, I was in the backyard pluckin’ one of our chickens for dinner. You ain’t never had to take care of fixin’ a chicken, so I’ll tell ya the way to do it. First you gotta let the silly thing bleed out. To do that, you hang it by its feet and cut i
ts neck.”
She used her uneven pinkie nail as if it were a knife on my carotid.
“I always jarred the blood for Pappy,” she said. “He’d drink it in the mornin’ with biscuits and gravy.”
She took a gulp of whiskey, her eyes glazing over until I thought I might have to lay her down to sleep.
“Once the chicken bleeds out,” she continued, “you gotta put its body in boilin’ water for a few minutes so the feathers are easier to pull. Then you hold the dead bird by its feet and start pluckin’.”
She pretended to pluck feathers off the glass of the bottle as she held it up by its neck and said, “Pluck, pluck, fuck.”
Stopping, she took another drink.
“While I was pluckin’ the feathers,” she said after, “Momma stood on the porch waitin’ for Pappy to get home. She had a cool wet rag in her hand like she did every goddamn day. She would lay the rag on the back of his neck as he sat on the porch swing. Then she would get on her knees with a smile and take off his boots to massage his feet. I remember the time Momma forgot to smile. Pappy made her lick the mud off the bottom of his boots. I can still see her tongue fittin’ in all the little grooves.”
“She had to lick the mud off?” I asked.
I knew the moment I opened my mouth I had made a mistake. Still, I could not prepare myself for the hard slap my mother gave to the back of my head.
“She had to lick the mud off?” Mom mocked me before pouring more whiskey down her throat. I wondered how one woman could hold so much drink.
“It’s hot as hell.” She mumbled as she stood.
Carrying the bottle by its neck, she clumsily walked to a window.
“Hot as hell,” she said again.
It was February and cold, but what made my mother warm had nothing to do with the weather. After she opened a window, she stuck her head out into the falling snow, the flakes landing in her hair like a dusting of flour. She slowly pulled back inside, facing me as she leaned against the sill.
“Once Momma took off Pappy’s boots,” Mom said, “he added more tobacco in his cheek before whispering in her ear. Afterward, he went inside the house while Momma came to me. Told me to lay the chicken in the grass. Said she’d finish it. She used her dishrag to dust the chicken feathers off my hands. Then she spit on the skirt of her apron and used it to clean the dirt from my face the way she did every Sunday before church. I even asked her, ‘Are we goin’ to church, Momma?’ She didn’t say nothin’. Just picked me up in her arms and patted my back like she would a baby as she carried me into hers and Pappy’s bedroom.
“He was already in there takin’ off his suspenders and undoin’ the buttons of his shirt. She carried me to their bed and gently laid me down before she stepped over to the dresser to get her bottle of perfume. I’d helped her make that perfume from the roses that grew in our backyard. She bottled the scent in an old bitters bottle. I can still remember the label word for word. Dr. Cherryweather’s Bitters for a disagreeable stomach, a bellicose headache, for humors, biliousness, fever of the heart, and all complaints advocated by a poor condition of the blood.”
I wanted Dad there more than I ever had. I hoped Mr. Deering’s roof would be too slippery for Dad to climb and that he might come home, opening the door right that second and causing Mom to stop. Instead, there was only silence as Mom left the window and went to the dresser, where she picked up the whiskey bottle’s cork stopper. She pushed it down into the bottle before tipping it so the remaining drink touched the underside of the cork.
“Momma put the perfume on my neck like this,” Mom said as she dabbed the wet cork against my own neck. “Ain’t it nice?” she asked. “Nice and cool.” She had said “cool” in a way that made me think it was dangerous.
I watched her finish the last of the whiskey before throwing the empty bottle out the open window.
“You know what shortenin’ is, don’tcha, Betty?” she asked. “Momma always kept a tin of it in her dresser drawer. Shortenin’ ain’t only for bakin’. It can be used for fuckin’. To allow the man to enter with ease. I should be thankful to Momma for takin’ my underwear off and rubbin’ the shortenin’ between my legs. I know now she done it so I wouldn’t get hurt so bad.”
Mom made a pained face and seemed to hold her breath.
“Her rubbin’ there was a peculiar feelin’,” she said. “Frightened me so badly, I pissed. I thought Momma would kill me for ruinin’ the clean sheets like that, but she didn’t say nothin’. Just dabbed my legs and put a towel beneath me on the bed. She trimmed Pappy’s fingernails before leavin’. ‘Momma, where you goin’?’ I cried out to her, but she only shut the door behind her. When I heard the front screen squeak, I knew she’d gone back outside to finish the chicken.”
Not wanting to listen anymore, I stood and said, “I’m gonna go now.”
Mom placed both her hands on my shoulders until she was lowering me back down to a seat.
“This is your birthday gift,” she said. “You can’t go until you get all of it.”
She teetered back, wiping her eyes.
“With Momma gone, Pappy began to hum. When he took his pants off, it was the scariest thing I’d ever seen. I thought it looked like a growth. A wicked thing. Somethin’ he should be sick by. He was so hard. Do you know what I mean?” She cupped her crotch the way I’d seen men do. “Do you know what I mean?” she asked again.
I nodded just so she would stop.
Her hand fell off to her side as she said, “I thought he was just climbin’ up in the bed to take a nap beside me.” She stared off into the distance. “He laid on top of me. I thought he was gonna keep me warm like a blanket until I fell asleep. He was so heavy, I couldn’t breathe. I remember how sweat from his forehead had collected on the tips of his hair. I didn’t want the sweat to drop in my eye, so I turned my face and felt it land on my temple.”
She lightly brushed my temple.
“Then he started backin’ up,” she continued, “and I hoped he was gettin’ off me, but he was only liftin’ the skirt of my dress. It was my favorite dress. Momma made it for me. It was navy blue with a big cream bow that hung from a sailor collar.”
Mom entwined her fingers and held her hands up against her chest.
“I didn’t understand why he was touchin’ me the way he was. I told him to stop. Why didn’t he stop? I didn’t scream because I didn’t want to be a bad girl and get into trouble for makin’ noise.”
She went to stand in front of the fan once more. I thought about standing with her and raging together against everything, but I wasn’t sure how to be that type of daughter to that type of mother. I looked toward the photographs beneath her feet as she moved her eyes around the room. She appeared tilted and lost as she paced, her hands dragging the wallpaper as if searching, searching. I thought the night would be too short for her to ever find what she wanted. I thought life would be even shorter. What she needed was a sudden infinity. Time as many bars of light she could find everything in.
“I need to get Dad,” I said but didn’t move as she began to dig her fingernails into the wallpaper, digging, digging like claws.
She’s going to scream, I thought. And it’ll be something real. Something we have to chain up in the backyard and feed with bloody steaks.
She laid her forehead against the wall and stood there until I thought it was where she’d always be. I said again that I should go and get Dad. Still I sat there unable to do that very thing.
As if suddenly aware I was still in the room, Mom left the wall and came to me. Her eyes looked washed in the rains and reddened in the fires.
“He brushed my hair with his hand like this.” Her tone was soft as she moved her fingers through my loose strands, putting them behind my ears. “He forced me down like this.” She raised her voice as she grabbed both my arms and pushed me back onto the middle of the bed. Sh
e climbed up herself until she was leaning over me as she said, “He undressed me like this.”
She tried to pull off my pants, but I held on tight to them. She stopped and picked up the edges of the full skirt of her dress to straddle me.
“Juice from his chewin’ tobacco fell on my cheek like this,” she said, holding my face.
She moved her mouth around, collecting saliva before letting it slowly drop from her mouth and onto my cheek. I started slapping my cheek to get the spit off as she reached over and picked up the ruffled pillow shaped like a heart. She clutched it tight in her hands. I was aware of how deep under her I was.
“Mom, please stop,” I said. “Please.”
“I couldn’t breathe, Betty. Just like this.” She shoved the pillow on my face.
I tried to push the pillow off, but my mother had her weight on it.
“I wasn’t prepared for the agonizing pain I would feel when he put himself inside my little body.” Her voice was full of that same agony as she began to thrust herself on top of me. “I thought he was killin’ me by rippin’ me in two. I didn’t even know such a pain was possible. I cried out, ‘Momma. Momma, help me.’ But she never came and he just kept diggin’ into me. I knew then I wasn’t loved. Oh, God, I can still hear the squeakin’ of the bed.”
Managing to turn my face beneath the pillow, I found a small air pocket and was able to get some breaths.
“All of him inside me, while God did nothin’,” Mom said, thrusting harder. “No lightnin’ bolts. No angels blarin’ their trumpets to my rescue. Where was God when my daddy was on me? I was just a little girl. I was just a little girl,” she said once more before rolling off me, taking the pillow with her.
She held the pillow against her heaving chest. I could do nothing more than lay there trembling.
As she got off the bed, she let the pillow drop to the floor. She stepped on it as she walked to the vanity. Digging in the bottom drawer, she pulled out a yellow handkerchief she had embroidered earwigs on. She used it to wipe her smudged mascara, but only smeared it more.
Betty Page 19