by Jim Grimsley
He kicks open the screen door. “It ain’t cold enough for a coat.”
“No, but it’s cold enough for a bottle, isn’t it?”
The frown settles deeper into Papa’s face, and the look in his eyes makes you afraid. “Keep it up,” he says. “You’ll get what’s coming to you. It’s a holiday today. Ain’t nobody going to tell me what I can and can’t do.”
“Go on then. Get out to the truck. You think I don’t know where you hide your whiskey? Right behind the seat in a little brown bag.”
“I know better than to think I got any secrets from you, the way you sneak around.”
“Why don’t you get brave and bring it to the house? I’ll tell you why. Because you know I’ll pour it straight down the sink. Even you can’t get any more on Thanksgiving, can you?”
Papa slams the door shut behind him. You hear his fading footsteps cross the porch and descend, you hear his fading whistle. When Mama turns the anger has drained from her face. She lays her hand on Amy’s shoulder and asks Grove quietly how he feels. Does he need more ice for his arm? Her voice is soft and dry as the wind through the cornstalks in the fields. All of you watch her, wanting to tell her it doesn’t matter about Papa. He can drink if he wants to, you don’t care. Nothing matters except that she wear some other look on her face. Amy says, “Please don’t worry, Mama, we don’t care about him.”
“I wish it won’t ever Thanksgiving so he’d have to work all the time,” Allen says.
“I ain’t even hungry,” Duck says.
Mama turns to the kitchen, folding the towel. “I’m not hungry either. All this good food cooking and none of us will want to eat a mouthful.”
You hear footsteps on the porch again. Outside, Papa hawks and spits. The sound makes you afraid, makes you hate him so much your whole body trembles, you picture him curling up in a ball and dying because you hate him so much, drying up in the heat of hate till he is small and smoking black, a dead leaf or a piece of ash, light, that the wind can lift away. But he ignores your imagination. Mama vanishes into the kitchen when she hears the doorknob turn. Papa stomps his feet on the heavy floorboards. Until he closes the door a cold wind floods the room. The flames in the gas heater dance back and forth, blown nearly to nothing. You can smell whiskey on Papa’s clothes. He staggers a little, falls heavily into the chair. The look on his face is slow, stupid and thick. He fishes a cigarette out of his pocket and fumbles to light it. He flips ash to the floor. Amy glares at him full of her own hate. Softly she says, “You got an ashtray right there beside you.”
When he turns to her she tries to meet his eye. He asks, thickly, ‘What did you say?”
She holds herself perfectly still. Her mouth is a pinched line. “I said you got an ashtray right there. You don’t have to strike ash on the floor.”
Papa leans forward. “Who do you think you are, my goddamn mama?”
Amy shakes her head, flushing a little.
“Answer me you little bitch. Who do you think you are, my godamn mama?”
“Don’t you cuss at my sister,” Grove says, sitting up suddenly, cradling his hurt arm under the ice. “She ain’t no bitch, you are.”
Papa blinks at him.
Leans forward as if he means to stand.
“I ain’t taking this kind of shit.”
Mama comes to the doorway, her shadow falling across the couch. Amy reaches for Mama’s skirt, so angry she is trembling. “Lay back down, Grove,” Mama says.
“Damn cow-eyed little bitch thinks she can stare at me like she wants to cut my throat, and then she talks to me like I’m a youngun and she’s raising me—” He points a thick finger at Amy, his face distended with blood. “Say it again, bitch. Say it for your Mama, she’ll be proud of you.”
Amy bows her head, taking deep breaths.
“Tell me what to do again! Come on and look at me that way again, you goddamn little whore. I’m still your goddamn daddy.”
“You don’t act like it,” Mama says evenly, stepping between them, washed white of blood. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, scaring your own younguns half to death.”
He turns to Mama now. Anger rises in his face like a red tide. “Somebody wants to fight today,” he says in a low voice. “Teaching these younguns to talk to their daddy like he’s a dog. Don’t you stand there and try to tell me what to do like I’m nothing.”
Mama answers, “I’m telling you this. When you’re drinking don’t you even look like you want to mess with one of my children. Do you hear me?”
“Listen to you. Don’t you sound tough.”
She pushes back her hair, her clear forehead blazing. “You think I’m joking? You want to be their daddy, then act like a daddy. Let them have a holiday like normal younguns, don’t come home drunk and raising hell, making them so scared of you they don’t know how to act.”
“Who started this fight? You and your goddamn filthy mind. If your younguns are scared, it ain’t nobody’s fault but yours.”
Mama’s anger changed to contempt. She made a face like she wanted to spit. “You stinking goddamn lie. That wasn’t my filthy mind I pulled out of your truck, mister. You want to see what I found again? You want me to show it to your children and tell them what it is?”
“Keep talking, little girl. You’ll be sorry you ran your mouth pretty soon.”
“You can’t make me any sorrier than I already am.”
“You’re crazy like the rest of your goddamn family.”
“What do you know about my family except what you want to know?”
“I know every sister you got is a whore.”
“What are yours?”
“I know your fat-ass Mama fucks niggers. Hell, you’re probably half nigger yourself.”
“Listen to the way you talk in front of your younguns.”
“Goddamn the younguns. Deny it, why don’t you? I said your Mama fucks niggers. I said you’re half nigger yourself.”
“My Mama ain’t done a thing.”
“She’s fucked a nigger, she’s fucked a nigger. I heard your own Daddy say so. Everybody in your family fucks niggers. Delia caught her goddamn boyfriend fucking niggers.”
“Delia?” Mama asks, quietly.
Papa flushes.
Mama says, “We all know about Delia, don’t we?”
Papa faces the gas heater, mouth set in a sullen line. Mama laughs. “All of a sudden you don’t have anything to say. My family is trash? Well what are you? Delia showed you, didn’t she?”
Papa says softly, “Maybe you better get back to the kitchen and finish your goddamn Thanksgiving dinner.”
“What’s the matter? Don’t you want to talk big some more?”
“I told you to get back to the kitchen. If you know what’s good for you you’ll do like I say.”
“Mama, please go back,” Allen whispers.
“Hush baby. He won’t hurt me.”
“You better listen to your son,” Papa says.
Eyes flashing, Mama answers, “I’m not scared of you.”
But when he stands, she steps quickly back. He laughs then, an ugly sound that rings against the walls. “Oh no, you ain’t scared, are you? Look how brave you are. Why did you draw back, baby? Do you think your husband wants to hit you? I was coming to get me a little kiss.”
“I know what kind of a kiss you want.”
“Then come here and give it to me, sweetheart. Come on. You’re the one who’s not scared of anybody or anything.” He laughs again, the deep laugh that tingles on your bones, and his face twists between sneer and frown. “Don’t worry, precious darling. I’m not ready yet. I don’t want to dirty my hands on anything as filthy as you.” Carelessly he turns to the door again, stands there with his hand on the knob.
“You got to have you a drink first, is that right?” Mama circles the chair slowly. “One more drink and you’ll be brave enough.”
“It don’t take liquor to handle you.”
“Oh that makes me laugh. If you don
’t need it why do you run out to the truck every fifteen minutes?”
His eyes in the soft light remind you of Amy’s dolls, glassy, dull and lifeless. “We’ll see who talks big when I get back,” he says, and slides through the open screen. Mama slams the door shut in his sneering face. Her hand pauses over the lock. “I ought to lock it,” she says. “I ought to make him bust it down, or else stand out in the cold till he freezes solid.”
But she draws her hand away at last. She turns, seeing nothing, hearing Duck whisper, “I hate him. I wish he was dead.”
“We all wish the same thing,” Amy says. “But it don’t do any good.”
“Nothing does any good,” Mama says, shivering.
From outside drifts the faint sound of the truck door opening and closing. In his absence you breathe, breathe.
Allen says, “It ain’t ever going to stop today.”
Amy strokes Grove’s hair. “Do you feel okay, baby?”
“I wish he would go away,” Grove whispers, and Duck lies along the couch next to him, softly kissing his face. You feel their warmth around you. But it doesn’t make any difference. When you lay your head back and close your eyes you want to see the river, the bending and unbending trees, you want to dream your family is dead, but you can’t get your mind out of the house.
But if you can’t dream any dream real enough, you can’t sit still either. You don’t want to be in this room when your Papa comes back inside. So you go to the kitchen to find your Mama standing over the sink.
She watches something beyond the window, something in the distant trees, and her eyes are sunken and dark. She strokes the veins of her neck with pale fingers. When she notices you, you whisper softly that you only came to get some water, and she makes room for you. You feel safe when you are close to her warmth and richness. You stretch on tiptoe to reach a jelly glass and fill it with clear water that tastes sweet and clean.
Outside the truck door bangs shut again.
“I wish he would go away,” she says. “Why doesn’t he leave if he hates us so much?”
You hear his footsteps in the backyard.
You hear the screen door on the back porch open and close.
You thought you were safe in the kitchen with Mama but now he is coming in the back way.
His footsteps ring on the porch.
“I hope you ain’t got this door locked, baby,” he calls.
Frightened, she shies away from the door, and you hurry to the far side of the room, to the dinner table.
When the back door opens you can see his swollen face past Mama’s frail shoulder.
He cannot even wait to shut the door before he spits, “Now, goddamnit, do you want to slam this door in my face?”
He stands so close. Beside him on the stove Thanksgiving dinner boils and bakes, sending off its smells.
“Go in the other room and sit down, Bobjay,” Mama says. “I got to finish cooking.”
“Goddamn what you have to do,” Papa says, stepping closer. Mama backs away. Papa says, “You still think you’re going to strut around like the queen of the world and look down your nose at me and tell me what to do? No, bitch. I said slam another door in my face while I’m in here, Miss High-and-Mighty.”
“I haven’t bothered you. Go on in the other room.”
“Are you scared now? Is the high-and-mighty bitch finally scared of something?”
“You want me to be, don’t you?” She runs a hand through her hair. “Go on and sit down, you’ve proved what a man you are.”
“No hell, I ain’t done near enough yet. I want you to slam another goddamn door in my face. I want you to act like you’re the goddamn man around here one more goddamn time so I can teach you what’s what!”
“I got to fix dinner, Bobjay, I don’t have time for this.”
“Fuck dinner, you lousy bitch.”
He steps closer. Mama shrinks against the freezer, her voice showing its fear at last. “Don’t you want to eat?” she asks, trembling, and even though you cannot see her face you know what she watches: know she cannot, does not dare, take her eyes off the fist that hovers in the air, the one good hand Papa has. “Don’t you want your dinner, Bobjay? It’ll be ready in a minute if you’ll go sit down.”
“Don’t you want to argue no more, baby? I thought you were so goddamn ready to argue you couldn’t piss straight.”
“I don’t want to fight, I want you to leave me alone.”
“Goddamn leaving you alone, you goddamn lousy bitch. Goddamn slamming a door in my face. It’s about time you learned a lesson. In this house you do what I tell you!” He shouts from so close to her she couldn’t run if she tried. Your brothers and Amy crowd the doorway shouting for him to stop; Mama sobs and Papa leans over her still shouting, “Goddamn you and your goddamn stinking bitch sister and goddamn these sniveling younguns and goddamn dinner to hell!”
She cannot stand still any more and tries to slide away from him. He has been waiting for this. She cries in dread when the hand moves toward her, and you hear the sickening noise it makes on her face. You see her head strike the refrigerator door. She cries a short sharp cry and her eyes close. He kicks her legs with the heavy boots and she crumples slowly to the floor; and then he whirls to the stove where the pots sit on the fire. He slams them across the kitchen, strewing boiling water and steam, potatoes, and beans everywhere, across Mama’s face and knees, across your arms and Allen’s pants. He shouts so loud you think the noise will rip him open. He turns to Mama again, who is curled in pain amid the wreckage of her dinner, but this time when he draws back his foot to kick her she rises. In her hands are the steaming potatoes whose heat she hardly feels. She slams them soft into his face and he jumps away with a cry; she might have gotten clean away from him if the same potatoes didn’t trip her as she ran. By the time she regains her footing, Papa is only a moment behind.
Amy rushes to open the bedroom door. Mama dashes through it, turning to see where he is with the look of something hunted. You hear them running through the bedrooms, you barely have time to open the back door on the porch so Mama can get through ahead of him. You slam it as hard as you can against Papa’s knees, and you and your brothers run into the yard; but Papa is on your heels, and gaining ground. There ahead of you, Mama has slipped again in the grass, and must stop to scrape the boiled potato from her shoe.
She is standing as Papa catches her, and he slaps her so hard it turns her head around. He knocks her to the ground and kicks her side, those ugly thick shoes against your Mama’s softness, and you start to cry for her.
He kicks once, twice, and you’re afraid she can’t move any more from the way she hangs her head; but no, quicker than Papa’s drunken reflexes she crawls under the edge of the house, on all fours like a dog.
“Now slam a door in my face, you bitch,” he calls, and the sound rises thick and sharp into the bare trees and the clouds.
He turns to gape at you children in the grass, and at the look on his face you do not hesitate, you run.
You hear Amy’s voice giving directions from the porch, and Papa’s feet on the dry grass; you hear, too, your Mama’s far-off sobbing from under the house. But that vanishes when you run to the other side of the house; you cannot hear anything from there; and then you realize that you alone came in this direction, where the house faces the silent fields and the blue line of the river, and for a moment your family is dead again, you have no family, you are an orphan facing the pines and dreaming.
But still when you close your eyes you see the twisting of your Mama’s head when Papa hits her; still across your arms is the raw sting of the boiling water; and in the wind that moans over the fields you hear your Mama again, faintly, crawling in the dark under the house.
You have sat down. Your stomach hurts. You realize you are wiping your eyes over and over again on your sleeve, because unless you do you can’t see.
“Get back under there!” Papa shouts, from somewhere close.
You hear Amy cryi
ng in the house.
Queenie, confused by the shouting, comes to you wagging her tail halfheartedly, unsure whether you’ll pet her or not. When you don’t move she pushes her wet nose into your face, and you lean against her warmth.
You hear Papa’s voice coming closer. If you ran for a door he might catch you.
You hear Mama crawling, taking sharp breaths. Papa stands around the corner out of sight, snarling, “I hear you under there.”
The crunch of dead grass under the dead leather boot.
You let Queenie go and then you crawl under the house, fast and light on your hands and knees, toward the sound of your Mama’s breath in that darkness through spider webs and shards of glass.
You hide behind the concrete underpinning as he rounds the corner. Outside in the light a cigarette butt falls to earth, and his boot crushes it flat. You flatten yourself against the concrete blocks, as he kneels to look under the house. He is so close he can hear you breathe. He rests the good hand in the grass. You count the hairs on the back of it. “Where is she gone?” he mutters, spitting into the dirt. He leans toward the house. His shadow falls across your knee. You freeze against the blocks, heart beating in stiff bursts. It seems he will wait there forever, listening. The wind moans far overhead, through nets of bare tree branches. Far off you hear your Mama’s ragged crying.
Papa spits again, stands and moves on.
You crawl slowly in the soft dirt that cakes your arms to the elbow. Careful to place your tender hands in the pure dirt, careful to watch for the glitter of glass.
You find a doll’s foot, hollow and flesh-colored. You find an empty Valvoline can, a rusted lawnmower blade, an old red hunting cap with the brim chewed by rats.
Mama hardly makes a sound now. But at last you find her, a paler shadow in the light that drifts under the house’s raised edge. She leans against another of the concrete supports, the blocks shielding her from the side of the house where Papa stalks her.
When she hears you crawling she gives a quick gasp and lifts something to throw.
You whisper, “It’s me, Mama.”
She recognizes you without relief or curiosity or even affection, with only a white look that makes you colder inside. You wonder if you should have come. The tears have dried to simple lines on her face, pale like scars. She breathes softly and watches you as if you were miles away. What you see in her eyes you don’t understand, but you will remember the exact shape of the gaze as vividly always as you see it now, carried like a cold stone in your brain. She has turned her sight inward, far from you and Papa, far even from this dirt she squats in, clutching her arms.