Up from the Blue

by Susan Henderson

  “I’m trying to find Shirl,” I said, but my words were slurred.

  Several voices asked, “What did she say?” And then there were many voices talking at once. “She’s looking for someone.” “What’s wrong with her?” “Is she sick?”

  It was harder and harder to stay awake. I felt myself cradled in the janitor’s arms, both of us on the sidewalk. And I heard him tell someone Shirl’s last name.

  The beauty of sleep is the way the world around you disappears. You forget you’re cold, forget there is something poking into your back. The problems you had, the worries, the dark, all of that fades away. You forget to care if your face is mashed against a near stranger’s shirt buttons, or if your feet hurt from blisters. For a moment, there is a perfect peace. And even as voices interrupt that sleep, the sound is far away, like a dream.

  “Tillie!”

  “Tillie!”

  I heard my name and that, alone, soothed me. I nestled back against the janitor and let myself fall into a deep sleep again.

  “Tillie!” It was my father. And the shaky, high-pitched voice that came after it was Momma’s.

  The janitor continued to hold me but he sat up straighter, and the cold rushed in where my cheek was no longer pressed against him. I tried to call back or wave my hand to let them know where I was, but I was too tired, and the janitor was warm and sturdy. I shut my eyes again.

  “Tillie!”

  “That’s my mom and dad,” I mumbled into his shoulder.

  “Over here, sir,” the janitor said, his voice vibrating in his chest and against my face. “Over here,” he called again, and this time, the noise jolted me awake.

  There was a whole crowd of people surrounding us—until they parted and my father pushed through. Momma stood farther back, near the car. The janitor helped me stand, and when I was steady, he let go. I felt a second wind, enough strength to make it to either parent—Momma, with her hands to her mouth and the car door open for me, or Dad, who made me so angry.

  Every step felt like effort, and I steadied myself on strangers as I walked faster until I was running. I ran toward my father, who stood soldierlike until the very last moment when he caught me in his arms.

  “You’re fine now,” he said. My earrings hurt when he pulled me close.

  “I’m so tired, Dad.”

  “I’ll carry you.”

  I kept my face pressed against his cheek, which was stubbly and wet with tears. I didn’t even hold on, but put all of my weight onto him and trusted he wouldn’t drop me.

  32

  Locked Doors

  OVER DAD’S SHOULDER, THE blinking sign above the bar lit up the crowd at intervals, as he carried me to our Volvo. The windows of the car were steamed, and even through the glass you could hear Momma sobbing. When Dad set me down, I reached for the handle, but the door was locked. The same thing happened when Dad tried his door. He knocked on the window. Momma shook her head, and Dad reached into his pocket for the key. Even more hysterical, she placed her hands over the lock so it wouldn’t open.

  “Mara!” he shouted. “Mara, for crying out loud!”

  I held to the side of the car, tired of the commotion, and not quite certain whether I was hearing my name or not. I stood up straighter. “Shirl?”

  She made her way down the street, and I called out louder, “Shirl!”

  “Ernie called our house,” she said, jogging closer. “He said, ‘Come get your little friend. Get here right away.’”

  “Who’s Ernie?” I asked, my lips and tongue moving too slow.

  “How can you not know Ernie? He cleans up your trash every day at school.”

  The man who’d let me sleep in his arms. I started to speak but was just too tired.

  “My mom didn’t want me to come. She called your house so someone could pick you up, but she said it’s too late for me to be out, and I have no business being on a street with a bar on it.”

  I was certain the woman glaring at me farther down the sidewalk was her mother. But she soon took her eyes off of me and turned, along with the rest of the crowd, to watch my mother move from lock to lock as Dad tried his key in the different doors.

  Shirl put her hands on her hips and shook her head in disbelief. “You better go before someone calls the cops,” she said.

  “Cops?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said. If some black folks had gone to your neighborhood and acted like this, they would have been arrested. Or worse.”

  “Not funny,” I said.

  “Who says I’m being funny?”

  “Tillie, get in.”

  Momma had finally given up her control of the locks, and Dad opened the door for me. He did not remind me to buckle, so I didn’t. As soon as I got inside the car, I felt how cold I’d been, how much my legs ached from running.

  Shirl stood beside our car, her mother now holding her hand and staring at me with the same expression of deep disappointment on her face that Shirl’s grandmother had shown. Dad slammed his door and started the engine.

  “Unbelievable!” he said, choking the steering wheel.

  Normally, in a neighborhood like this, we would lock our doors, even in the afternoon. That night Dad didn’t bother. As we drove past Shirl, I raised my hand to the window and she raised hers in reply.

  We moved down the short, dark streets, Dad gripping and ungripping the wheel while Momma wailed almost silently, her mouth open and drool running down to her chin. I used to work so hard to stop Dad from fighting with her, but I was exhausted and wanted to return to that feeling of sleeping against the janitor while everyone around me rushed to figure things out. I lay down in the backseat and watched the streetlamps fly by.

  “Do you even understand what you did?” he finally asked, practically spitting. He turned to the backseat to see if I was awake. I quickly closed my eyes. “You drugged her.”

  “I didn’t drug her,” she said, hysterical. “You’ve given her the same medicine before.”

  “Was she swelling from a bee sting? Did she have hay fever?”

  “Not so loud.”

  “You can’t give someone medicine when they’re not sick,” he said, not remembering to keep his voice down. “It’s wrong. Do you have any idea what could have happened tonight?”

  She answered with her face to the window. “I didn’t know she’d leave the house. I wasn’t the one who upset her so much that she ran off!”

  I couldn’t concentrate on the words, just let them float through my ears and back out.

  “Didn’t you even consider what happened before?” he said.

  “Of course I did!” Her voice was high-pitched, desperate. “I never meant to hurt her.”

  I’m sorry, Bear. I never meant to hurt you.

  He looked behind again to see if I was asleep, and once more I shut my eyes. “Don’t you remember how cold she felt? She hardly moved.”

  “Of course I remember. What do you think I am, a monster?”

  “Then what on earth was going through your head?”

  “Do you think I’m the only mother who gave her child something to help her rest? We had a little girl who wouldn’t sleep through the night. She always had more to say. More questions and requests. They taught me to add a little Sudafed to her drink at bedtime. The other wives. It was just to relax her.” She spoke too fast, squeezing her hair in her fists like she might pull it out in handfuls.

  “I can’t believe you’re defending yourself.” He lifted his hand off the wheel and she backed away. “It was to relax you. And it’s wrong!”

  “I know that!” She leaned against the door so hard I thought she’d fall out. “Don’t you think I know? Don’t you think I’ve suffered for that mistake every day?”

  “Then how could you do it again?”

  “Because”—she started to cry fiercely—“because she begged me. Because sometimes you just want to know that you can still make your child smile. You want to say yes to something.” Her voice cracked, and it was some tim
e before she spoke again. “You wouldn’t understand what it’s like to have to win your children back.”

  33

  Tumbling

  WHEN WE PULLED INTO our driveway, I kept my eyes closed and let Dad carry me to my room because I didn’t want to see Momma. He grunted as we went up the stairs, and held me too tight, like the anger had to grab hold of something. When we were halfway, I pretended to wake up. “I can go the rest myself,” I said, and he set me down, winded, and not in the mood to say anything comforting.

  Phil waited at the top of the stairs. “Dad?”

  “Not now, Phil,” he answered, already at the bottom again.

  I walked into Phil’s room, only so far as the cans lying on his floor. I felt groggy but not as tired as I wanted to feel now that I could actually crawl into bed and forget about everything.

  “Do you hear them fighting?” I said.

  “Sure, I hear them.” He unplugged his rock tumbler. Now I heard the quiet buzz of his electric clock.

  “I think this is it,” I said, my legs starting to shake.

  “Good riddance.” He took the tumbler out of its frame, unscrewing the lid.

  And now my teeth began to chatter. “Don’t you care if they break up?”

  “Not particularly.” He kicked through the beer cans on his way to the bathroom sink, where he rinsed the polishing solution off the rocks.

  He was good at this. He’d get calmer the more I got worked up. And then he could call me hysterical and needy, but I wasn’t going to let him trap me. Swallow, I told myself. Just swallow!

  I let myself imagine the end of their marriage as a relief. A chance to be free from Dad’s rules, to have a house of our own with bright colors and pictures on the wall again. We could drink soda whenever we wanted and spend evenings watching Rhoda.

  When he came back into the room I said, “I guess we’ll live with Momma,” trying for a calm expression on my face.

  “As her babysitters?”

  “Stop being mean.” My body wouldn’t quit trembling.

  “What? Do you think she’s going to get a job?”

  “Of course she is!”

  “And what job can she do from the couch?”

  “Why do you always have to hurt her? She does so much, and you don’t appreciate any of it.”

  “Does she cook or clean? Does she buy groceries?”

  I tried to push him but missed, falling into the cans. “That’s not the only thing women can do.”

  “Does she know the names of our teachers? Do you think she’s going to go to your stupid play?”

  “Shut up!”

  “All I’m saying is, she doesn’t do any of the things mothers do.”

  My breathing got faster, my legs knocking beneath me as I tried to get up. I grabbed a pair of jeans out of his hamper, ready to strike.

  And now he folded his arms and looked at me—hysterical, needy. I hated my brother for being so cruel. For being right. The lives we’d led outside the house—riding bikes, drinking Slurpees, and going to Pentagon picnics—never intersected with Momma’s world, even in conversation. You could not, no matter how hard you tried, imagine Momma buying groceries or cooking. You couldn’t imagine her getting dressed each day, or even answering the telephone.

  I felt the sensation I used to feel before I cried—though I didn’t, couldn’t cry anymore—a tightness in my throat, my face scrunching and stretching against my will. She would never be like other moms. We both knew it.

  “Jerk!” I yelled and swung the jeans at him, feeling, mid-movement, that I was too tired, too terribly tired to take another swing.

  He grabbed a handful of polished rocks out of the tumbler and threw them at me. I ducked on his floor, covering my head. The rocks smacked against me and against the cans, and I let myself feel the only kind of pain I was certain would come to an end.

  It was the drink Momma had given me that made me feel as if I was spinning. In the old house, when my hands were too weak to hold on to the cup, she would smile because I’d finally settled down. These were the thoughts I woke with, thoughts that seemed as unreal as a bad dream. I lifted my head, finding that I was still on my brother’s floor with a sweater over my shoulders. It was my father’s—the itchy one.

  Nothing but Phil’s electric clock could have told me it was morning. His room was always dark because of the flag covering his window, and there was no smell of eggs or toast cooking, no sound of rummaging in the kitchen. In the corner of the room, Phil tossed a can opener back and forth between his hands.

  “Dad wants us to get our own breakfast this morning,” he said. “Here, have a fork.”

  He opened two tins of ravioli, and we sat still between the beer cans, listening to the fight continue downstairs.

  “It’s over, isn’t it?”

  He shrugged like it was a stupid question to ask. There was such an ache in my gut, I couldn’t even think of eating.

  “What’s going to happen to us?” I asked.

  “We’ll live with one of them or the other.” He shoved two raviolis in his mouth at a time. Then, before he swallowed, he asked, “What was that thing Dad threw last night?”

  “The cup Momma made me. Remember? With the rubies?”

  “Yeah, I know the one.”

  “Momma said you knew where it was all the time I’d been looking for it.”

  “I didn’t know anyone considered it missing. I just packed it when I packed the rest of the stuff back at the old house.”

  “You were the one who packed it?”

  “It was one of the last things I found. It was under your bed, and I’d run out of newspaper to wrap things. There was only the cup and my model airplanes to go, so I packed the cup. It was already broken, so there wasn’t as much pressure to be careful with it.”

  “You packed my cup instead of your models?”

  “It’s okay. I don’t play with that kid stuff anymore.”

  I thought to tell him that Dad broke the cup, and then I decided not to. I didn’t tell him about the bitter drink, either. He didn’t need to know everything.

  “Here,” I said. “You can have my ravioli, if you want it.”

  As he took it, our parents raised their voices again. I wrapped my arms around my legs. “If they split,” I said, “I’ll go where you go.”

  He didn’t look up from his ravioli, but he stopped eating and nodded.

  We tried to keep quiet and out of the way, but we were too distracted for books or music or the partly finished puzzle sitting downstairs on the dining room table. In the end, without either of us saying anything to the other, we started to pick up the cans.

  At first, I put them neatly back on the shelf. Behind me, however, Phil dropped one can after another into the metal wastepaper basket, and when it began to overflow, he got a Hefty bag. We threw out every can—his Black Label, Genesee, Fyfe & Drum Extra Lyte, Schlitz “Tall Boy,” and even his Iron City Beer with the 1975 Super Bowl Championship Steelers on it. The sound was like shouting a secret we’d been warned not to tell, like we were agreeing about what that secret was, for once.

  After we were done cleaning up the cans, Phil kept going. He threw away cards, dice, framed pictures, trophies, and his notebook filled with newspaper clippings, until his room had nothing in it but a bed, stereo, stack of library books, and a rock tumbler turning a new batch of rocks in wet sand.

  Downstairs, Momma still wore the outfit from our shopping trip. Dad had changed clothes but hadn’t shaved and didn’t look like he’d slept, either. They no longer bothered to lower their voices. And when I stood in the doorway to Dad’s bedroom, he seemed irritated to see me there.

  “Tillie, this doesn’t involve you.”

  But it did involve me. I had spent the last year, if not more, trying to help Momma get better, trying to protect her from harm, trying to keep her in my life. Every bit of this fight concerned me, though I no longer rooted for anyone or anything.

  “Tillie, out,” Dad said. />
  “But I’m hungry.”

  Briefly, I caught my mother’s eyes, full of disgrace, before she looked away.

  “I said, ‘Out.’”

  I went only so far as the puzzle around the corner and tried to find pieces that would fit together. They waited till they thought I was gone, then, exhausted, Momma said, “I can’t take any more of your lectures. You only want to point out what you think is wrong with me.”

  “How can you even say that?” He threw or kicked something that landed with a thud on the carpet. “I’m trying to help you! Do you have any idea how much I’ve cooked and cleaned and looked after the kids so you can get better?”

  She started bawling.

  “Get up. Don’t lay on the floor when we’re talking!”

  “Just say it,” she sobbed. “You were happier when I was locked away.”

  “Fine. So tell me, what, if anything, will make you happy?”

  “Well, it’s not living with a man who has always wanted me to be someone I’m not. You seem to want some officer’s wife in a nice suit, who can’t wait to spend the day cleaning house!”

  “Sometimes, there are things you have to get done whether you like them or not.”

  “I was spending every day doing only the things I hated. Instead of washing dishes and trying to make cakes shaped like wreaths, maybe I wanted to travel from town to town, wearing a gold sequined gown!”

  “You’re impossible!”

  “Why? Because I dream of doing something I love? Because I want to spend my days doing something I find important?”

  “Do any of us count on your list of what’s important?”

  I walked closer, listening for the answer. She didn’t have one.

  “If you could just make some effort for us,” Dad said. “Just make us a priority. Make us more important than the television or a nap.”

  I had to back into the dining room to avoid Momma as she hurried from the room. She cried out like a wounded animal and turned into the bathroom, slamming the door, though it didn’t latch the first time and she had to slam it again. I heard the lock slide into place.