Flannery touched the pearl button at the top of her pale yellow sweater, nervously tugged.
Mark whispered something to the maître d’, and, without hesitation, the man led the couple into the big dining room.
Crystal goblets and silver sat atop red linen-draped tables. The tinkling of fine dishware and soft chatter of folks floated across the room.
This was not the darkened cellar of the Seelbach. The expensive cigar, aged bourbon-soaked, whispery room that Thomas had treated her to. Appreciatively, Flannery took in her surroundings. Fancy-dressed people were served by men who were all gussied up like dandies. This was something bigger, a clip of what could be better for folks who were better. She was impressed and a little scared.
Quickly, they were seated at a center table. Two groomed waitstaff wearing tuxedoes and white gloves served them water, bowing slightly to Mark, uttering clipped sentences and putting on city airs.
Mark ordered a martini for himself and an iced tea for Flannery, then picked out dishes she couldn’t pronounce, quickly dismissing the two hovering waiters.
Flannery and Mark talked a lot during the meal, and mostly about him.
She fell for the slow, smooth-talker, marrying him at the end of her sophomore year. Then: “Stay put here where you belong, honey doll,” Mark insisted. “You don’t need higher learning to be a good wife. My dear mama, rest her saintly soul, took care of her man, never once neglecting her duties, never once needed the book learning for that. I’ll take care of you. I sure don’t want my lovely bride dirtying her lily-white hands working for others.” Mark sweetened and topped it pretty and draped it over like a warm quilt on a chilly day, adding Scripture from Ephesians, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.”
It wasn’t long before Flannery dropped out of college to fully undertake her wifely duties. And by the time she found out about her husband’s cheating ways, she was ballooned with pregnancy, with twins at that, their second year of marriage not even tallied and toasted.
Many times, Flannery smelled the perfume on him, waited for him until supper grew cold, telephoning his office at the seminary to no answer.
The first time she called him out for cheating, he looked at her like she was daft.
The second time she accused him, he yelled at her and called her stupid for reading trashy books and silly women’s magazines that put sinful notions in her head. The third time, he smacked her, though lightly, then more forcefully as time pushed on.
She had dismissed it while they were dating. The quick anger. The insults that he softened with an “only teasing ya, honey doll” innocence.
He had struck her the first time on their seventh date, accusing her of flirting with another guy after she’d dropped her books and the student helped her pick them up.
Mark Hamilton had hit Flannery hard enough that she tasted blood. Immediately he begged her forgiveness, blaming his actions on too much work, his pencil-pushing professors for overworking him, the long-winded sermons he had to go around and preach.
The next morning after that first incident, Mark showed up on her doorstep. “Forgive me, honey doll,” he’d begged. “Let me make it up to you.” He lifted a forlorn smile. “Please, Flannery. I promise that ol’ devil has scatted off my shoulder for good.”
He drove her to a flower shop. Inside, he waved a fat wallet at the shop owner.
“Pick your apology,” he said to Flannery, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Grant me your forgiveness.”
Embarrassed, Flannery grabbed the nearest flowers, a posy of daisies.
“Those? Not those little ol’ weeds.” Mark shook his head and snapped his fingers at the owner. “Wrap every damn bloom in this shop, every bud, every leaf, and send them over immediately.” He pulled a pen out of his jacket and wrote an address on a slip of paper for delivery.
“Send enough for my next twenty transgressions,” Mark said. “Hell, for the next hundred years. I intend to marry this girl.” He bowed to Flannery.
Flannery had been shocked. And when all the girls in her dorm oohed and aahed and told her how lucky she was, she believed them, nearly bursting from the conviction when the flowers overflowed her dorm room and out into the hall. The girls giggled and called him a darling, a knight in shining armor. “A real dreamboat, the perfect catch,” they declared, toting off vase after flower vase to their own rooms.
The flower shop trip played in Flannery’s mind many times over the years, and she never brought another flower into her house. Just the smell sent her reeling, had her choking, leaving her skin crawling.
During their first two months of marriage, he’d shoved her a few times, knocked her out of his way when something upset him. Something could be any little thing that ticked him off, with the scary somethings always on the verge of boiling over into something much bigger.
By the end of their first year together, Mark had grown bolder. When she forgot to put the mayonnaise on the dinner table, he jerked the tablecloth off, sending dishes, food, everything crashing to the floor and a plate flying at her face, blackening her eye.
Soon her minor transgressions started adding up, and, by 1955, when she became pregnant, Mark sermoned her punishment, preaching she was ungodly, a sinner, and a blemish on his eternal soul.
By her sixth month of pregnancy, he began watching how much she ate, taunting her with names. “Pig face, fat ass,” he’d needled her, until her stomach soured and she was shamed from the table.
Flannery’s mama would call to chat, but it seemed to irritate Mark, and soon, he’d answer most all the telephone calls, telling her mother that Flannery needed her rest.
A day shy of her seventh month, Flannery stood in the kitchen preparing his dinner. Uncomfortable, tired from having to serve him another late supper because he’d been at church with yet another professor, Flannery waddled over to her chair with a platter and took her seat across from Mark.
She passed him the fried chops, but he wouldn’t take one. Instead, he stared down at his empty dinner plate, his jaw twitching.
Flannery fearfully wadded her napkin in her lap, her chest tightening, heart thundering as she tried to figure out how she had wronged him this time.
Her eyes scanned the table, the condiments, dishes, glasses, and came to rest on the silverware.
He gripped a fork above his plate, and she saw his knuckles whiten.
Flannery felt the terror bead up on her forehead, heat her neck. Instantly, she realized her mistake and reached over to correct the place setting for him, but it was too late.
“How many times do I have to say it? To the left. Left!” Mark stabbed her hand with his fork. “Again, you’ve set the silverware on the wrong side of the plates,” he barked into her screech.
A few days later, Mark said he was going to a professor’s church sermon at the Southern Word Baptist Church. He didn’t come home until the morning paper hit the stoop, drunk, smelling of woman and wearing his tomcatting on a telling collar.
When Flannery heard the car door slam, she jumped up from their bed, gave a quick brush to her hair, and hurried into her robe and satin, high-heeled house shoes. Mark had bought her the red slippers trimmed in feathers for Christmas. Winking, he’d told her, “wear ’em always, in the bedroom for me, like one of those beautiful burlesque dolls on a matchbook cover.”
Flannery stood at the top of the steps watching him slip through the front door. Her eyes pulled to his clothes as she wrapped her robe closer, tightened the belt over her bloomed belly. She glowered at him when he mounted the stairs, flicking at his lipstick-stained shirt as he moved past her. “Don’t think you’re going to leave that for me to clean,” she snapped.
“Watch your mouth, fat ass,” he growled over his shoulder.
“You can just take yourself back to where you got that and have your whore wash it.”
He wheeled around and wrapped his hands around her neck, squeezing.
Clawing at the air, she nabbed h
is chin with a nail.
He jerked himself out of his fit, surprised. “I’m sorry,” he said, and released her with a small push. “You make me do this—”
But Flannery stumbled, and her arms flew out from her sides.
A putty of fright piled into Mark’s stretching grimace, and he yelled and grabbed for her.
Flannery reached wildly back for him, then brushed the banister, missing both, tumbling down the stairs, her screams caught in her bruised windpipe.
She awoke to the smell of disinfectants coating the floors of Saint Anthony Hospital. The cold glare of fluorescent lighting bounced off pale-green walls, shot up from polished floors, circling nearby voices.
Flannery squinted and looked around, tried to pull herself up, but her bones were too busted and sore. She wanted to call out, but her jaw froze halfway and lit a fire inside her ears, spreading to her head.
They had put her in a six-bed ward with other mothers. That was almost the worst part of it all. Then Mark strolled into the room with her delivery doctor, the distinguished Dr. Vickers from over at the university. Her husband was telling the good doctor how careless and godless she’d been with the pregnancy.
“My wife,” Mark said to the doctor standing at the end of her hospital bed, “refused to take care of herself. Tripped because she insisted on wearing those damn high-heel slippers even though her feet couldn’t fit into them anymore. Took up with the devil with some vodka nipping too.” Mark looked pitifully down and clasped his hands in prayer.
Vodka, she thought, muddled. No. There was no place for vodka in Kentucky. But Mark kept a flask of it, sipped from it quite a bit. She’d seen him take up the habit lately, doing it at first light, even. Flannery couldn’t stand the smell of the cough-syrupy liquor, the nose of the sickly bitter tang she found on Mark’s breath that he claimed could never be detected.
Honey Bee’d always said that a Kentuckian, a gentleman, would never rendezvous with vodka, never light the Southern tongue with potato juice.
Honey Bee, she mouthed, aching for his strong, protective arms.
Flannery moved her feet, wiggled her toes, trying to feel. Lifting her head slightly, she looked to see if she had on the slippers. Weak, unable to, she collapsed back into the pillow.
“Shameless,” Mark said to the doctor.
Flannery tried to find her voice to deny it all, but could only manage raspy squeaks.
“You know how it is, lad,” Dr. Vickers groused quietly. “Some of these hens aren’t made to sit on the soft nest.” The old doctor squeezed Mark’s shoulder and then looked over his spectacles down at the bed and chided Flannery. “Mrs. Hamilton,” he gruffed, “as your doctor I must say it is a woman’s duty to take care of her husband and children. A good wife must first be a godly woman—must care for the vessel that carries the child. Even the wildest creature knows this,” he preached to her failures.
Flannery turned her face away from the man, trying to bury it and her shame into the thin, lumpy hospital pillow. But the very worst was when she finally saw the babies, their babies.
Two women rested in iron beds across from her, their eyes filling with horror and pointed blame, shooting daggers her way. Cradled in their arms lay content, sleeping newborns.
Flannery lifted a wanting arm, wishing she could for one second, hold the babes, cradle them to her breast.
One of the mothers covered her baby’s head with her hand, shielding the infant from Flannery’s disgrace, as if it might infect her newborn.
“Mrs. Hamilton”—the doctor tapped her shoulder—“did you hear me? . . . Twins, a boy and a girl . . .”
A boy and a girl? Flannery slowly cut her eyes back up at the doctor who hovered close above her face. “Patricia and Peter,” she said, faintly calling the names she and Mark had decided on long ago when they’d gone over all the birth possibilities. A girl would be named after her sister, and a boy for Mark’s dad. “Where are they, my Patricia and my Peter? Where are my babies?” she asked unbelieving into his foggy cloud of speech. Flannery turned her head back to the mothers across from her.
The doctor mumbled something about the babies, something fleeting about her “body not being suitable for carrying babies anymore . . . lost . . . something had been torn, gone missing inside.”
She moved her hand down to her stomach, felt the flatness under the bandages, a fiery pain rippling, a loss that stabbed its finality deeper. “Missing?”
“No children for you . . .” his words muddled. “The Cesarean section . . . Your husband signed consent . . . Sterilized,” he lit more forcefully, and his spittle landed on her cheek. “For your own good.”
Flannery tried to speak, lift herself up, but her tongue thickened, her head felt too swimmy. “What do you mean? What . . . s-sterilized?” The cold question lay lodged in her throat.
The doctor’s face blurred as he leaned sideways and whispered to her husband. “You did the right thing. My sympathies to you, Mr. Hamilton. I’m sorry for your losses.”
“My babies. My poor, poor babies. Gone to my Heavenly Lord too soon.” Mark shook his head. “Gone to be with my saintly mother.”
But Flannery couldn’t hear them anymore. Her own thunderous screams, the pounding of her fists against the bedrails roared up hot into her ears.
Mark and the doctor placed her in a locked ward for a month. Kept her long enough that when the nurse came in with the medicine tray, Flannery’s hands took on a mind of their own and trembled as if they spoke for her, reaching out in silence.
Flannery spent most days sitting in a chair beside her hospital bed in the dark, dingy room waiting for her medicine. She loved the yellow ones better than the white ones that they’d given her the week before. The only thing that really stuck out from it all was the pills. The yellow ones made her float high, high, higher until she was up in Heaven with her babies.
One day the nurse took two Valiums from the tiny paper container filled with pills and handed them to her. Flannery didn’t wait for the water.
Lifting Flannery’s right arm, the old nurse inspected it. “Mrs. Hamilton, are you poking yourself again? You are. What did I tell you? If you keep this up, you’re gonna be here till the ’60s, forever.”
Flannery shook her head no, and then nodded a yes. She didn’t want to tell the nurse she needed to forget. She needed to forget for a while how everything was gone. But when she felt the pain, she had hope, a safe province to retreat to without fear of Mark taking it away. Absently, Flannery rubbed the wound.
“Where is it?” The nurse fumbled around Flannery’s lap until she found the pencil that had made the marks.
She ripped it from the pocket of Flannery’s gown. The flimsy covering was brushed aside, exposing another puncture wound on Flannery’s leg.
“Good night!” the nurse said with an equal measure of wonder and disgust. “You’re a crazy one all right. And already up to three pills, and still, this . . .” She smacked the side of Flannery’s leg several times, left it red and smarting, then wagged a nicotine-stained finger in her face. “He’ll have you on the blue ones if you don’t stop doing this kind of thing to yourself.”
“I like yellow,” Flannery said softly.
“You’re a bother.” The nurse shook her head. “Batty,” she muttered, then gave Flannery another pill. “This should keep you outta my hair for a while.”
Yes, the yellow ones. Like floating on a yellow river, Flannery thought. Yellow is my favorite color. Better than the white ones. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Flannery wanted to clap out the word in a cheer. Instead she greedily swallowed the pill and pulled the baggy hospital gown back over her knees. Leaning back into the chair, she closed her eyes, dismissing the nurse. In a while everything was sweet from her peak of Yellow.
They held her in the psych ward three more weeks. She was sure Mark would’ve left her there forever if Mama hadn’t found him out. By the time Mama rescued her, Flannery had left her lapping, sunny Yellow river for Blue. Bigger Bluer ski
es.
CHAPTER 23
Flannery hated that Hollis could make her feel weak and scared, take her back into her old fears so easily. She had needed years to regain some control, to feel any wanting for a life after Mark and the babies. She glared hard at Hollis, pushing up the muster to light back.
“It’s not right to leave it all like this. Something bad had to have happened to them,” she said stonily, rolling down the car window for air.
Hollis gripped the steering wheel and cut his eyes at her. “Lot of things in this world ain’t right. And I’m going to right this my way, peaches. I aim to give my brother a fine burial, and, if you’re smart, you’ll give your sister a decent one too. Let it rest now.”
“Folks need to know,” she pushed. “Everything you know and didn’t say.”
“Shut it down, Flannery. Zip it.”
“W-we have to tell. You have to tell what you know. I have to tell what I know. It’s a sin—”
“It’s my church now. Mine.”
“Hollis, you gotta tell—”
“Shit. They’re dead, Flannery. Nothing’s gonna change that. We can’t help them now. We have to deal with the facts as they stand. I’m not about to go putting my life, my family’s reputation—and yours—on any line because of what they did.”
“What? What could they’ve done?”
“You don’t even want to know about the shit Patsy buried in the dirt on Ebenezer. But I’m going to tell you anyway, and maybe it’ll shut you up once and for all. Her shamelessness is right out there under the elm. Buried her panties under that elm, she did. Your sainted sister? Played both me and Danny good. Do you hear me, peaches? Hear what I’m trying to tell you? If you’re smart, you’ll leave it be. For God’s sake, girl, just leave it alone!” Hollis yelled at the windshield, spit flying from his mouth.
Flannery cowered, stunned into silence, her eyes filling.
In a second Hollis reached over her knees, hit the glove box with his fist, popping it open. “Get yourself a tissue, and get yourself together for your mama’s sake.”
The Sisters of Glass Ferry Page 17