Winter Birds

by Jim Grimsley

  You are frightened, you cannot move.

  Her mouth forms some word you cannot hear.

  “Is he still out there?” she asks hoarsely.

  “Yes ma’am,” you whisper.

  She traces a curved line in the dirt. After a while she turns to you, and you understand she is coming back to you from somewhere, though you’re not sure she wants to. “I don’t know what to do,” she says.

  “He won’t come under here. He’d get stuck if he tried.”

  “Am I supposed to sit here like a pig all day?” Her face clouds with anger. You answer, “No ma’am,” softly. She faces you again, and with an exertion of will she sees you. “You shouldn’t have come here. There’s too much glass for you to be crawling around in the dark.”

  “I was careful.”

  She nods, but hardly seems to hear. Sinking back against the concrete pillar, she gazes blankly at the grayed floorboards overhead. She sets her thumb against her lips, and her eyes fill. She says the same word she said before, “Mama,” she says, and when you hear it you belly grows cold. She closes her eyes and says, “Oh Mama help me”; the words send a shiver through you as she runs her teeth along the back of her palm. Her face like an open window through which light pours. When she calls for her Mama again you feel as empty as if you had never been born, and what you fear but do not understand is that she wishes that were true, is that she is calling for what she never had. You crawl closer to her, your hands and knees making tracks in the dirt.

  You whisper, “Mama,” to her, and she watches you. Gently and slowly you touch her arm. Only for an instant, because her skin is cool and because she gives you a look that tells you not to press for too much; as if the whole flesh is a bruise.

  “I’m all right, son,” she says, “don’t worry.”

  From far off comes his voice. “Hello honey. You think I don’t see you? Well baby, even if I don’t see you I know exactly what you’re doing.”

  She signals you to be quiet and shrinks into the darkness.

  “You got that dog under there, don’t you?” He laughs, the sound echoing among the pillars, so you know he is on his knees leaning under the house. “You got you a dog to fuck, don’t you baby? To keep you company? I saw it crawling under there.”

  She makes a face as if the words stink, curling her lips.

  “Is it good to you, baby? I want to hear you moan.”

  At the edge of the house you see your brothers’ knees, and Amy’s too, a little distance from them, flashing as she runs to the corner of the house. She kneels and, even in the darkness, knows exactly where to find you. Gesturing to the front side of the house, she mouths words that are meant to tell you Papa stands there.

  You whisper softly, “He’s beside the porch.”

  Mama nods but presses her finger to her lips. Her hands silently rearrange the folds of her dress. She shivers. The dress has short sleeves. Her bare arms are white with the cold.

  You turn to Amy and embrace yourself with your own arms, as Mama does, shivering elaborately. Then you point at Mama. After you have gone through the shivering motion again, Amy understands, and soon you hear the distant closing of the screen door.

  One by one your brothers bend to look at you. Then, suddenly, they run for another corner of the house. You whisper, “He’s coming to this side, Mama, where he can see you.”

  “Let him,” she says. “Let him come get me if he wants to, I don’t care any more.” But her voice barely carries as far as your ears. After a moment she moves, slowly, round the concrete pillar to the side that will hide her from him.

  You see Papa’s feet against the fields. “You like it under there?” he calls. “You ain’t scared you’ll wake up a snake under there? I bet there are lots of snakes made their nests round where you are.”

  She carefully smoothes her hair to lie flat against the block, to shield her face from the rough cement.

  “You get your foot in a snake’s nest, they’ll bite you even in the dead of winter.”

  “Liar,” she says softly, “liar, liar, liar.”

  “Did you put your hand in any dog shit when you were crawling around?”

  She clenches her fists against her ears and shakes her head when his rough voice comes again. “You sure were a pretty sight crawling under there. Did your Mama teach you how to scoot under a house so fast? She must have raised you with the dogs. I know she used to run from her old man.”

  “You hush about her,” Mama whispers.

  “You told me how he used to take his bullwhip to her. To get the old sow moving, is what I reckon. Took a little whipping to make her fat ass do what she was supposed to do.”

  She makes a low sound that shivers under your skin.

  “Your Mama was so fat she probably didn’t even feel it.”

  Her faces dances from expression to expression faster than you can read; though some are anger and some are hatred and during others new tears well up and fall. Too numb to back away, you watch. Once you almost call for her and touch her, but as if she can see you through closed lids she backs away against the cold flat blocks and shakes her head. You shiver. You sit in a tight ball. You know your face is wet because the wind chills your skin peculiarly, but it only hurts when she says the word again, says Mama, Mama, over and over; but you must not make a sound. She is strangling, she clutches the pit of her belly, and what she sees is this: her own Mama crouched against a porch while her Daddy walks slowly forward, taking his time because he knows he has his wife in a corner, with no place for her to run. He uncoils the ugly brown leather rope as her Mama begins to plead with him to stop, please stop, against the glitter in her Daddy’s eyes as he makes the long whip wiggle in the dirt. When she runs he winds it round her legs and pulls her down. The whip is his power, and later your Mama would bathe the scars it cut into her Mama’s flesh. The story your Papa shouts under the house is true, your Mama will tell it to you someday.

  Maybe it has come to your Mama now: the knowledge that your Papa and her Daddy are the same man, that maybe the feeling your Papa first gave her was no more than that; maybe something in her made her pick Bobjay Crell because he was like the Daddy she had known all her life, and maybe the feeling never was love.

  She shudders, draws blind signs in the dirt.

  Knowing her children have watched her beg as she watched her mother beg.

  Maybe even that her Mama, in the last moment before the bite of the whip on her arms, cried for her Mama.

  She looks at you. Suddenly she opens her arms and draws you warm against her side, her soft ribs blowing in and out, raising and lowering like wings. “It’s going to be all right, isn’t it?” she says, stroking your hair.

  You whisper, “Yes ma’am,” though you don’t know and don’t understand.

  While Papa marches around the house, feet sinking in the grass, you move with your Mama to stay out of his sight.

  Your Daddy in Time

  When Allen crawls under the house to bring Mama a sweater, she sends you away, because of the glass, she says, though she will not look you in the eye. You are bound to cut yourself in the dark if you stay, she says. You should find Grove and take care of him. Allen watches you solemnly. He whispers that Papa is hiding at the front of the house. He keeps his distance from Mama. When you turn away she does not watch you go; she whispers, “Be careful,” to the air.

  You crawl slowly through the litter of jagged glass. Old cobwebs drift into your hair. You set down your hand onto the doll’s foot and the air whistles out. Once you look back at Mama and Allen, but their shapes are indistinct in the darkness; you can hardly tell which gray mass is which. At the edge of the house you hurry into the light. You do not see your Papa until his shadow crosses your hands.

  He is drinking from the bottle, long sucking swallows that make his throat muscles slide and convulse. He squints as if the whiskey hurts going down. Only when he tears the bottle from his jaw does he see you.

  You freeze. He replaces the bo
ttle in the bag without hurry. Soon it rests in the pocket of his coat. When he reaches for you he smiles. The good hand descends onto your shoulder. As he lifts you, a pain flashes through your arm. Maybe you squirm, or maybe he is afraid you will fall because the one hand can’t keep you steady. His grip on your shoulder tightens and tightens. You try to keep from looking at his face though you can smell his breath and feel the stubble of his beard. You do not make a sound. “You thought you were smarter than your Papa, but he caught you, didn’t he?” He hoists you higher, till you are level with his gaze. He curls his lips. “Ain’t you got nothing to say to me? You can hide with your Mama under a filthy house, but you don’t even want to talk to your Papa.”

  He gathers you so close you squirm to get away. In his eyes you see glittering light that makes you cold. You bend back your head to escape that sweetish smell of his breath that reminds you of clotting blood.

  “You hurt my shoulder,” you say softly.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he says.

  “You grabbed me too hard.”

  “I did not. Does it still hurt?” He gives you a dull stare, stroking your shoulder with his bearded chin. He sways with your weight, once nearly falling, catching himself against the corner of the house with the piece of arm. He pulls you close and stoops to see under the house. “Where is your Mama?” he asks, but you don’t answer. Your shoulder throbs more sharply with each pulse of blood. Once you see Duck behind Papa, pointing at you and calling. Out in the fields you see Queenie nosing among the cornstalks, belly swaying like a bruise. “You wouldn’t have got hurt if you hadn’t tried to be smart like your Mama. It probably won’t me who hurt you. You probably hurt your shoulder under that house.”

  “You grabbed me too hard, I felt it,” you say, counting the veins in the whites of his eyes, a red lace. Papa touches you with the piece of his arm and studies you. Suddenly you think he is sad. “You don’t want to talk to me, do you?” he asks.

  From far off you hear Amy shouting. You shiver, bare-armed in the November wind.

  “Answer me,” Papa says. “You ought to like me, because I’m your Daddy. But here I been carrying you for five minutes and you ain’t hardly said a word.”

  You feel the funny feeling in your belly that you get from the smell of whiskey. You say, “I don’t like it when you yell.”

  “I ain’t been yelling at you,” Papa says.

  “You been yelling at Mama all day.”

  He asks, in a softer voice, “Does your arm still hurt?”

  You touch it with your hand. The big ache is gone, leaving only the little, underneath ache that will gather and swell against the bone. The blood leaks out of the vein where he grabbed you. But you say, “It’s better now.”

  Queenie, at the edge of the yard now, pauses at the sight of Papa and walks slowly toward him, wagging her tail.

  “My arm hurts sometimes,” Papa says. “But I don’t say nothing, I don’t want nobody to think I’m crazy. The doctor can’t do nothing about it, because my arm’s not there.” He laughs. His teeth are yellow and flat. The sleeve swings idly. Queenie wags her tail and lopes forward, tongue quivering.

  Softly you ask, “Does it hurt now?”

  He hears you from far away. He shakes his head, not watching you, though you can see yourself in his black pupils. “It don’t mean anything,” he says. He nudges Queenie with his foot. “Bitch,” he says, “get away.” Queenie gazes up at you both, confused that no one will pet her. When she comes back he only pushes her away again, more roughly, his work boot pressing the place where her fat puppies sleep. She watches mournfully as Papa turns to the house again, stooping to search for your Mama. “There she is, at the front,” he says, and runs toward her with you bouncing against the bone of his shoulder, the pain in your arm increasing

  At the front of the house Papa stops beneath the sycamores that guard the house from the road. The branches darken the light falling from the gray table of clouds. The wind rushes through you, cooling even the ache. Can Papa feel the wind even in the arm that isn’t there? The sleeve streams back, hangs useless against the wind, and slowly falls. When Papa has a coat on, does the arm that isn’t there feel like it has a coat on? Does it feel naked? Does it hurt when another arm passes through its space?

  “Has she got out already?” Papa asks.

  He isn’t asking you. On the porch stands Amy Kay with Grove beside her, both watching you with fear on their faces.

  “You put my brother down,” Amy says.

  “I asked you a question. You better answer it.”

  “I ain’t telling you nothing.”

  Grove whispers past his fist, “You better leave him alone,” his voice so hoarse and soft the wind almost drowns it to nothing.

  “Put me down,” you say in Papa’s ear, and when he stares at you, you rest your fists against his neck as if you can push yourself away.

  Seeing the fists, he tightens his embrace till you can hardly breathe. “I’m still your Daddy,” he says.

  You make no sound, you hold your face perfectly still.

  “You don’t tell me what to do,” he says, “you don’t tell me to put you down.”

  You draw shallow breaths, you pretend the pain in your shoulder and ribs is for someone else.

  “Leave him alone!” Amy shouts, and then she hollers for Mama; but you only watch Papa, pressing your fists against the veins of his neck.

  Allen crawls out from under the house and runs to the porch, with Duck behind him.

  They call Mama now, watching you fight to breathe, and soon she comes out herself. Hands on hips, she watches Papa, the shadows of tree branches woven over her face.

  At once Papa takes on a look of expectancy.

  “Turn Danny loose,” Mama says.

  “I ain’t hurting him,” Papa answers, smiling.

  “No, you’re not hurting him, you’re squeezing him so tight he’s turning blue.”

  “Are you going to start your shit again, Miss High-and-Mighty?”

  “I said put him down, Bobjay. He can’t breathe.”

  He only smiles and squeezes you tighter. You dig your knuckles hard against his bones and arch your back, sipping the air since you can’t drink it. Papa gives you an ugly look that passes through you, but still your expression stays the same. You stare at the vein you have gathered in your hands. You count the slow swing of the empty sleeve back and forth in the air. “Put him down,” Mama says. “You hurt that youngun and I swear I’ll make you sorry.”

  “If he gets hurt it won’t be my fault. You’re the one had him crawling under that house.”

  “Who had me crawling under there? You son of a bitch, put him down!”

  Papa looks at you and laughs. “Look at his face. He ain’t scared, he hates his Daddy.”

  You turn your face to the sky.

  “Bobjay Crell, you put my youngun on the ground right now, you dirty one-armed son of a bitch.”

  Papa smiles a slow wide smile. “What did you call me?”

  “Put him down.”

  “No, what did you call me? You called me a one-armed son of a bitch. I want you to call me that again.”

  Slowly his grip on you loosens and you slide to the earth. Your shoulder throbs and you gasp for air, you kneel in the pale grass and breathe, breathe.

  Mama pushes back hair and says, “Danny, come over here now,” motioning toward the porch. But Papa steps toward her and she backs away.

  His face is darker than the clouds. “Go ahead and run.”

  “I can’t run. You hurt my leg.”

  After a moment he laughs. “Oh boy. You’re sorry you said it now, ain’t you?”

  “I was mad, Bobjay, I didn’t mean it.” She steps back. “Please leave me alone.” She backs up the steps, hands reaching for support she doesn’t find. There is only air, and Papa laughs, and takes a step each time she does, and says, “You can’t go anywhere else, honey.”

  The hand rises.

  A cry from the p
orch, Amy.

  Mama makes a low sound from the belly.

  “No, leave her alone,” Allen says.

  But the sound comes to you from such a distance, there is a hush on this grass where you are still catching up with air. Duck jumps off the porch and runs away crying, his hands on his ears. Papa is shouting something. Mama has already fallen, and is raising her arms to cover her face. Her voice surrounds you, entering like a knife, and you feel as if you bleed from the hearing. You look away from them, at the trees swaying serenely in the wind. But even then you can picture her face when he slaps her, and the sounds she makes rise round you in spirals.

  He makes her crawl into the house since she crawled under it.

  Says Don’t ever call me no one-armed sonofabitch baby.

  She says Please, please, I didn’t mean it.

  While Amy says softly Mama, Mama, sags against the porch post saying Mama, and Mama disappears into the house on her hands and knees with her hair falling over her face.

  The wind descends onto the house and fields, onto your face, onto Mama’s vanishing skirt and legs and new bruises, descends onto the trees and the river, a noise, a rushing that almost makes you cold enough inside that you don’t want to follow them into the house, that you don’t want to see her after he finishes with her.

  But when the door closes you stand. Their shouts are muffled by the house. You watch Allen and Amy and Grove. Allen goes to the door and opens it, and then Amy rushes inside with a strangled cry, only to run into Papa’s legs.

  Over you he hovers a moment, and a new cold rushes through you as he watches you. He has swept Amy to one side and Allen to the other. He gives you a long strange look. “My arm hurts now,” he says, and walks to the truck. Fishing the bottle from his pocket, he drains it and throws it in the grass. He starts the truck and backs down the driveway, and clatters away down the road, between two dark banks of trees.