We pull up, get out, and follow Tammy toward the house. It’s so dark I can’t see my feet in front of me as I walk. You don’t realize how dark the night can be until there is no man-made light to interfere with the nighttime.
The aluminum siding of her dingy duplex has rusted in what looks like tear streaks down the side, as if even the house is weeping for its inhabitants. We mount the steep steps and I’m out of breath by the time we reach the porch, where I can dimly make out the weathered couch on which one of us gets to sleep. Definitely has Smoothie’s name on it.
Tammy opens the door, flicks on the light just as a man steps into the sphere of light from the kitchen. I look up to see only two blue eyes glaring at me through what looks like charred flesh.
“Ahhhhh!” I scream so loud that Smoothie startles from his stupor to shut me up.
Before me is a man masked in black. I’m convinced it is a burglar who will bludgeon us all to death for having caught us in mid-burgle.
“Earl, you ain’t showered yet?” Tammy reaches out and kisses the blackened face. “I brought home some guests.” She points at Smoothie and me.
We exchange polite introductions as it dawns on me that Earl has just arrived back from his shift in the coalmine. Christ, the man looks like something out of a minstrel show. His peach flesh overlain with a thick coating of bituminous coal dust. I wonder for a minute where his white gloves are.
In my mind I can hear Al Jolson with his rich baritone voice singing Swanee. Then I begin to type Mammy, Alabamee. Oh, Mary Kate, how wretched of you to even think that.
There is an awkward silence as the four of us realize that we are now housemates for the night. Me, who hasn’t done a daring or adventuresome thing in my entire life, and Smoothie, who I now know has been superseded by a lesbian interloper in his marriage. And a pregnant teenaged diner waitress and her blackfaced whiskey-breathed husband. What a motley crew.
“I’m awful sorry about havin’ to put you on the porch,” Tammy says to Smoothie.
“I’ve slept in worse places,” he tells her.
“It gets cold out here at night, even now in the middle of summer,” Tammy warns.
I feel a little guilty taking the mattress. After all, why am I entitled to the better bed?
“You want to take the baby’s room?” I ask him.
“No, no, no, really, I’m fine. It’ll be like camping, and I like to camp out under the stars,” he says. “And the added bonus—I won’t have any bears venturing all the way up to the porch to attack me, so I get the best of both worlds.”
I follow Tammy around the small house as she gathers up some bedding. We enter the baby’s room—really not a whole lot larger than a broom closet—and she leans over to make the mattress up. I reach over to stop her and can’t help but touch her swollen belly.
“You shouldn’t be bending over like that,” I tell her. “You’ve got a baby in there. I can take care of this.”
My hostess smiles and accepts my offer without a word. I suppose after working an eight-hour shift on her feet, the last thing she really wants to do is service a couple of strangers.
“You know what you’re having?” I ask her. It’s hard for me talking babies with people. I’ve seen too many women get lucky with pregnancy over the years and while I’ve made my peace with it, I have to be honest and say it still sticks in my craw a little bit. Especially to see this baby having a baby.
“No, ma’am,” she says. “Don’t know. Don’t ‘xactly care, neither.”
I look at her, appalled. “But it’s your baby. That baby’s counting on you!”
I see a tear suggest itself in the corner of her eye. I reach over to wipe her eye. “You want to talk about it?”
Tammy shrugs, resigned. “There’s not much to say, really. I had hopes to get out of this place. I was gonna join the Army when I got out of high school.”
“When was that supposed to be?” I ask her.
“Two years,” she says, frowning.
I whistle. She really is just a baby.
“And now you’re gonna have a baby to take care of.”
“Forever.”
“And instead of going out and exploring the world, you’re going to be left behind in Hog Holler, West Virginia, married with a kid before you even get a chance to finish school.”
Tammy sobs quietly and I give her a supportive hug. It’s a shame, this story of hers that is repeated so often it’s one for the ages.
“Do you love him?” I ask her.
She shrugs her shoulders. “I dunno. What’s love? We made a mistake and now we’re together whether we like it or not.”
“You don’t have to be married to Earl,” I remind her.
She shakes her head. “Oooohhhh, you don’t know my daddy. If Earl hadn’t made me an honest woman, my daddy would have shot him and me the minute he found out.”
“So you’re gonna settle for this then?” I ask her, my arms spread out wide. I figure I’m an expert on settling, so I’m entitled to ask this question.
“What else can I do?” she asks quietly, leaving as Smoothie walks into the room.
I hand him a blanket and offer to give him mine as well. It’s warm enough; I’ll be fine with just a sheet. We say our good nights to Tammy and Earl and I join Smoothie out on the porch, feeling the need to talk to a real grown-up about this.
“I feel sorry for her, but I don’t,” I say.
“Christ, how can you not feel sorry for a kid who’s pregnant and not yet old enough to drive?” he asks. “It seems a cruel fate for a girl.”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “Cruel fate either which way.”
“What do you mean by that?” he asks.
“It’s just ironic, that’s all,” I say. “I mean, here I tried and tried and tried to get pregnant. Even when I couldn’t stomach the idea of having to be naked with that man for one more minute. But nothing I did could make me get pregnant.”
“Mary Kate, why did you want to have a baby when you didn’t even like your husband anymore?”
“I don’t know. I guess I figured it would make my life more tolerable. Give me some better company to while away the time,” I say. “It sounds sort of stupid, doesn’t it?”
“It sounds sort of lonely is what it sounds like.”
“For a long time it’s all I wanted. I mean, when Richard and I got married, he made me quit my job. I didn’t have anything to do. I figured I’d better have a baby or I’d go stir-crazy. As the years progressed and nothing happened, well, I settled on ways to fill my days. I’d sleep a little longer. I went to the Y three times a week to swim my twenty-five laps. I took long walks. Of course I cleaned. I cleaned a lot. My house sparkled with clean. Sometimes I would lie down at night and pray to God. I’d promise I’d try real hard to like Richard, just give me that baby.”
The still night air is broken by the sound of heavy breathing. I look over at Smoothie who has fallen asleep upright on the couch. Guess my life bored even him to sleep. I get up, lean over, and try to straighten him out on the couch. I tuck the two cheap hole-pocked polyester blankets under his legs and sort of cock the cushions from the back of the couch over top of him, hoping to block some of the night chill from his skin.
I wander up to the baby’s room and settle onto the spare mattress. Thanks to thin walls, I’m an unwitting audience to the squeak of rickety bedsprings in motion from the room next door, a witness to the reluctant sounds of a coerced union, a sad girl relenting because she has no other choice. I recognize myself in her, and I have hope for her. It might take her twenty years, but maybe she can map out he own escape eventually. If I can, hell, anybody can. I drift off to sleep hardly noticing it’s the first night not in my own bed in my whole life.
Chapter 9
Well before dawn, I am awoken by yet
more squeaking of the bed next door. No wonder the poor thing got pregnant, with the regularity with which they must be going at it. I lay in the half-dark of early morning, listening to the mountains awakening, the birdsong erupting, the promise of another day emboldening me. I feel a crazy mixture of elation and anxiety sink in as the memory of yesterday’s impulsivity washes over me anew. My sleepy fingers start typing. I’m free as a bird, I’m free as a bird. I realize that right now I could do anything I want to. Well, within limits of course. I am a last-minute guest at a stranger’s home. But if I wanted to get in the car and drive to Green Bay I could. Not that I’d want to. I could also eat Chinese food for breakfast, an indulgence Richard took away from me early in my marriage. Hell, he found me eating lo mein at seven a.m. and you’d have thought he caught me with the milkman. “No goddamned wife of mine is going to eat that garbage Chink food for breakfast. Not for lunch either.” He shouted at me as he threw the plate against the wall. Can you imagine, getting so hepped up over some greasy noodles?
I figure the chances of my finding lo mein right now aren’t so great, so instead I decide to slip into the tiny bathroom, hoping to shower. I realized last night that I don’t even have a toothbrush of my own, and hope to rectify that today once we get going again. But at least I can use some soap in my hair and wash up a little bit.
Tammy left two small, dingy towels next to the sink for Smoothie and me. I run the shower water till it’s hot. The smell of sulfur in the murky water is noxious, but it’s probably better than no shower. I step into the tub and look down to see a blackened ring that encompasses much of the lower half of the bathtub. I guess the coal doesn’t rinse off without a bit of scrubbing.
I fumble around in the dimly-lit shower for some shampoo but find only a bar of gritty Lava soap, no doubt the only way Earl can scrub the guts of the Earth from his skin each night. I soap up my palms and lather my hair with the weak trickle coming from the showerhead.
With haste I wash my body from the top down, but as I stare at my feet, I can’t help but turn off the water, step out of the shower, dripping all over the bathmat, and rifle around under the sink till I find a scrub brush and some cleanser. I sprinkle the Comet heavily around the black gunk, then hunch over the tub—still naked and somewhat soapy—and begin to scour. You can take the girl away from her home-based mandate for cleanliness, but I guess you can’t take the compulsion to clean away from the girl.
The coal is stubborn, but I feel a sense of accomplishment as I watch the black of the stain merging with the whitish-green of the Comet, a gritty union of gray slurry slowly eradicating the entrenched filth. I’m staring at the swirl of sludge water coiling down the drain and don’t even hear the door creak open.
“You often clean strange people’s bathrooms in the middle of the night, Mary Kate?”
I freeze in place when I turn to see Smoothie rubbing his hands over his sleep-weathered face as he stares at me. With my lumpy ol’ white ass beaming up at him. Quite an unexpected sunrise he’s getting. I’m unable to move quickly enough, stunned as I am that another man is seeing me stark naked like this. I open my mouth to squeal but nothing comes out. My face must look like that of a bank teller who’s just read a stick-up note. Finally, after what seems like hours but is probably only a matter of seconds, I grab the mildewed shower curtain and wrap it around my body, then hoist myself to a standing position.
Shit, my nervous fingers rev up their engines. I’m naked as a jaybird. I’m naked as a jaybird. I’m naked as a jaybird they type. I can even hear my fingers tapping against the vinyl curtain so I clench them into typing-prohibitive fists around the plastic.
“Don’t you usually knock before coming into a bathroom?”
Smoothie holds his hands up in concession. “Oh, man, sorry. I should’ve knocked. I was so out of it I just opened the door and didn’t think twice that anyone else would be awake. Not to mention scrubbing the tub.” He grins, trying to make up for his rude entrance. The dimple on his left side is deeper than that in his right cheek, giving him a little boy charm. It’s really quite endearing, even if he did just walk in on me unannounced.
I point to the bathtub. “It was black. I thought I’d do poor Tammy a favor and clean it for her. Must be hard leaning over a tub scrubbing when you’re that far along.”
We’re silent for a minute. I hear the bed squeaking yet again in the distance. Damn. Poor girl.
“Did you need something?” I ask finally.
Smoothie starts to look a little uncomfortable, now that he realizes I don’t usually entertain men in the bathroom, particularly while undressed. He points to the toilet, and of course I realize there’s but one of them in the house.
“You want me to leave while you—”
“No, don’t worry about it.” He shakes his head. “I’ll just go out back in the woods.” Just one of the many advantages of being a man.
I stand, draped in the white plastic shower curtain, and notice him looking down. “I’ll leave you to your cleaning, then.”
As he walks to the door, he turns back toward me, gives me a once-over, whistles, and says, “Nice.” His smile is naughty and I look over to the mirror as the door latches shut, only to see my face has turned bright red. And that the white shower curtain is sheer enough to have not truly hidden my unclothed self from the studied gaze of Smoothie Cunningham.
#
I finish scouring the tub, get in, re-wash my body, rinse my hair, and dry off with the threadbare towel. I put back on my clothes and scrounge around in the medicine cabinet till I find an elastic for my hair, which I pull back, still wet. I head out to the porch to find Smoothie kicked back, breathing in the fresh mountain air like he’s on vacation or something.
“Have a good shower?” he asks me with a hint of mischief.
I nod at him. “All things considered.”
“Reckon we ought to get heading out before the lovebirds arise?” he asks.
“You heard them, then?”
“Hard not to.” I wonder if it bothers Smoothie, considering the last time he heard the bed creaking it was his wife and that other woman.
“Think we should let them know we’re leaving?”
Smoothie shakes his head. “I’m sure it’s best for all involved to just move on.”
“Let me at least leave a little thank you note.” I draw a notebook from my purse. My purse could be a model for emergency preparedness, with the contents therein. Richard calls it my Let’s Make a Deal purse—you know how that game show host Monty Hall would ask audience members on that show for crazy things in their purses. Nine times out of ten, I’d have it in mine for sure. In fact it’s a wonder I don’t have a toothbrush waiting in there for me. I do have floss, if that matters. I scribble out a note to Tammy and Earl, thanking them for their hospitality. I add an extra bit of cash for their troubles, and we slip out the door, letting it close gently behind us.
I pull out the keys, start up the car, and back out the gravel driveway and onto the road, en route to God knows where.
“Any idea where we’re heading?” I ask my co-pilot as we leave Haneysville, now a speck in the rear view mirror. All around us the fog spills across the foothills like a silken slip over the figure of a voluptuous woman, exposing a hint of provocative curve here and concealing a private valley there. The sky is awash in the cool lavender of dawn, and I can’t help but feel good about the day.
For a moment I wonder if Dick the dick has a clue that I’m gone. And for another moment I wonder if I’ll ever go back to Dick. A smile parts my lips as I realize I’ve made the break. There’s no going back now. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, my fingers type. I’m free. I’m really free. I roll down the window, pull the elastic from my hair, let go of the steering wheel for a minute approaching a tricky hairpin turn, and shoot it at Smoothie, hitting him in the head. He grabs the
wheel to negotiate the turn and shoots me back with it. I shake out my hair and start to laugh.
“You gonna let me in on the joke?” he asks.
I shake my head. “There’s no joke. I’m just feeling a little giddy, that’s all.”
I think the last time I felt giddy was when I was fourteen years old and stole my first kiss, on the back of the school bus with Ray Shifflett. Ray-Ray, we called him. Don’t even know why I kissed Ray-Ray except I had the chance. Come to think about it, it was probably the last time I seized the moment to do something completely out of character yet so entirely necessary at the time.
“Okay, then.” Smoothie rolls his eyes the way men do when they don’t get women. “How ‘bout we figure out where to next?”
He pulls out the map and starts to name little towns between Haneysville and Niagara Falls.
“How about Booteytown?” he asks, laughing.
I shake my head. “I’m pretty sure nothing good will come of being in Booteytown.”
His finger follows the ropey line of the road on the map, calling out possible pit stops. “Pittsburgh,” he says. “Nope.”
“What do you mean, Pittsburgh, nope? I’ve never been to Pittsburgh. Didn’t they once name that the best city in the USA? That sounds like just the right place to go.”
“I won’t do Pittsburgh,” he says, his face pinched in refusal.
“You won’t do Pittsburgh? What is that supposed to mean?”
“I just won’t—I can’t—go there.”
Well, if that’s not a story waiting to be told, nothing is.
“Let me tell you, unless you own up to why you won’t do Pittsburgh, then honey you are gonna do Pittsburgh regardless.”
“There’s just someone there. That’s all.”
“Yeah, sure. Someone there. And no doubt, despite a population of like three hundred thousand people, you’ll run into this person. It’s a woman, isn’t it?”
Anywhere But Here Page 6