With a Hammer for My Heart

by George Ella Lyon

  A neighbor woman stayed with us while Mother and Aunt Chloe went to meet the bus. I was dancing around like water on a hot skillet. Then the car pulled up. And my childhood ended.

  Whoa, there, N.C. Don’t get too fancy.

  I’d forgotten that he called me N.C. Blocked it out.

  What came in the door was not my daddy—it couldn’t be! He roared and moaned, tearing down the banner; he lunged against the barrels where I hid.

  “I got a new girl!” he bellowed. “Give her here!”

  I crawled farther back, squirmed between burlap sacks of rice and beans. Aunt Chloe found me. I had on so many crinolines, my dress wasn’t wet, but there was a puddle. She just scooped me up.

  “Here she is, Amos,” she told him, then whispered, “It’s okay. He’ll settle down. You got to meet your daddy.”

  She handed me to a man like the giant in fairy tales—all eyes and tongue and stubble. And he was filthy. I didn’t want his breath on me. I screamed and kicked. He held me tight, weaving. Mother pulled me away; fear and grief leaped out.

  “You’re not my daddy!” I shouted.

  She slammed me down and gave me a slap that has turned my head to this day.

  He leaned low, rolling his face up close.

  “And you’re none of mine,” he said. “Last thing I need.”

  Mother pulled him back and took him away. The neighbor changed my pants. I lay down on a couch back near the stove, Aunt Chloe’s afghan over me. All afternoon, Mother slapped me under the yarn and the fake daddy spat, “You’re none of mine!”

  That’s how we met.

  When I woke up, I wanted it to be a bad dream, but my cheek was sore and I was still in my party dress. After Daddy’d been home awhile, I got used to the feeling. Bad dreams are what you have when you’re awake: sleep is the good time. But I could never sleep enough. Fighting or crying would wake me, Daddy throwing things.

  After a few months, Mother put a lock on the room that Ardith, Delbert, and I shared. Except for random times when Daddy had a job, she kept us shut up in there. “He does better if he doesn’t see you,” she said. We would knock to get out if we had to go to the bathroom. Or if she needed to leave, she’d let us use our old potty. We were all way too big for it. She’d put it in the closet to give us some privacy. Also made our clothes stink.

  Then Mother got pregnant with Eddie. If she hadn’t, I don’t know what would have happened. Would they have somehow hung together? I don’t know.

  Daddy wouldn’t let Mother go to the doctor. He’d hardly let her go anywhere by then. He wouldn’t have let Delbert and Ardith go to school, but they were gone before he got up. “I’m not trusting you to no doctor,” he told her. “They’d as soon cut your leg off as look at you. Besides, I put the critter in there, I can get him out.”

  Mother had started looking real white and shrunken, even with her belly so big. I was only five years old, but I saw this and it scared me. I don’t know if he was beating her then. Sometimes I heard moaning through the wall.

  Then one morning after she sent the other kids to the bus, she told me to get back in my bed and she would get in Delbert’s. “We’ll pretend it’s the hospital,” she said. Daddy was in his dead-drunk sleep and I had no idea what she meant. I did what she said, though. In that house, you didn’t ask questions.

  Most of the morning went by and I got really worried. I didn’t smell coffee. If Daddy got up and there wasn’t any—

  Then I heard him groan, “Nora …”

  I put my thumb in my mouth.

  Springs creaked. He stood, hollering, “Nora!”

  I clinched my legs, my toes. He hated to be alone worse than anything. “Daddy,” I called, my chin just above the army blanket, “we’re in here.”

  He appeared in the doorway, a wedge. I had my clothes on, could run past him out of the house. But what about Mother? I’d been too scared of him till then to worry about her.

  “You females going to laze the day away?” He asked it very easy, walked in slow, and then stripped the covers off Mother’s bed.

  She was one big belly knot, panting. He jerked her up by the arm.

  “Get in your own bed, sister! Don’t you foul these babies’ sheets!”

  She tried to walk, but she staggered, gathered herself low, and rolled onto the floor.

  “It’s coming,” was all she could say.

  He nudged her with his foot, that’s all, but I jumped him from the bed like a cat. He flung me off and I slammed into the dresser.

  “Go, Nancy!” Mother rasped. “Out to the kitchen.”

  I started.

  “No, by God!” Daddy said. “Let her see where this life can get her. Set you right over there, N.C.” He gestured toward the bed she’d been in. I went.

  Mother caught her breath and then growled. My heart rose in my chest.

  “Towels, Amos.” The words came in between grunts. “In the chair.”

  He must have got them under her. My eyes were clinched, trying to force my heart back down.

  “Easy, honey,” I heard him say, sweet as a lullaby. “Almost.”

  Sounds came from her like somebody refusing to die. Then there were two cries, a quick shallow one from the baby and Daddy’s wail, “No, no, no, no!”

  “Amos!” Mother called.

  I had to look.

  The baby lay in Daddy’s bloody hands. He shook it, the little blue and waxy arms flailing. “Blood!” he yelled. “It’s all bloodl”

  He dumped the baby on the towels and ran from the room, the house. I sat there, frozen. A blue snake curled from the baby’s belly back between my mother’s legs.

  “Wrap him up, Nancy!” she hissed. “Give him to me!” I gave her the cold, silent baby, then helped her turn and scoot so her back was against the bed. “Cry!” she pleaded. Then, cradling the baby in her arms, she licked his face like a cat. Still no sound. She laid him in her lap, took his feet in one hand, and lifted him upside down. Hooking her fingers in his throat, she clawed out mucus.

  “Wa-a-a-!” the baby protested. “Wa-a-a!”

  She looked him over good, then bundled him back up.

  “You’re all right,” she crooned. “You’re all right.”

  I watched them. Something in me had lifted loose and was spiraling around the room.

  “I need your help,” Mother said, her voice pulling me down. “Go to the kitchen and get the matches and a knife. You’ll have to stand on a chair, so take your time and be careful.”

  Was she going to burn him? Cut him? Was she going to kill Daddy? My hands shook with questions.

  When I got back, she was nursing the baby and there was a bloody wad of towels beside her. Between it and him ran the blue snake.

  “It’s all done now,” she said. There were tears on her cheeks. “Oh, baby.”

  It took a minute to realize she meant me. She held out the arm not holding the baby. “Come here.”

  I put down the knife and matches and let her draw me close. She was so big and damp and cool.

  “You want a blanket?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” she said. “You hold him a minute.”

  She slipped a finger in the baby’s mouth and he wailed at being taken off the breast. Then, with me holding him, she struck a match and ran the flame all along the knife.

  “This won’t hurt,” she said, and snicked the snake in two up close to his belly, leaving just enough to tie a knot.

  “What is it?” The words clicked through my teeth. The baby cried hard.

  “The birth cord,” she explained. “It’s what makes belly buttons.”

  She leaned forward and took the baby from me. I just looked at them.

  “Now,” she said, “if you could bring a pan of warm water, a washrag, and some towels, I’ll clean up this man-child.”

  It came to me to wonder what we needed with another man. But I just went out to the kitchen. When I came back with the water, Mother said to look in her dresser drawer for a little gown. I d
id that too. Brought it back on top of the raggedy towels.

  I watched her wash him, a little bit at a time, keeping the rest wrapped up. He looked hard at her, like her face was water and he was the thirstiest person in the world.

  “One more thing,” she said, lifting her eyes to me. “I need the alcohol.” I didn’t know what she meant. “What I rubbed you with when you had fever.”

  “The stuff that stings your nose?”

  “Yes. It’s in the medicine cabinet.”

  I dragged a chair to the bathroom, but I still wasn’t high enough, so I climbed up on the sink. Opening the door was no problem, but whep I got hold of the cloudy bottle, my foot slipped and in catching myself I let the alcohol go. It hit the edge of the sink and glass went everywhere.

  “Nancy Catherine?”

  “I broke it,” I said, sobbing. “It’s all gone.”

  There was silence. I got down as carefully as I could. What if I cut myself? What if I bled?

  I was just coming out of the bathroom when she called.

  “See if there’s whiskey left on your father’s side of the bed.”

  I didn’t want to go near it, afraid the tangle of covers would writhe up and be him.

  “Go on!” she urged.

  I crossed the space as if it was a tightrope, then ran with the bottle to Mother. She winced as she took it.

  “What a baptizing,” was all she said as she poured some on the corner of a towel. “What a father and son,” as she daubed around the stub of that blue snake.

  LAWANDA: Here I am in American history class. People are giving reports they copied out of encyclopedias. It makes me want to scream. This afternoon I’m supposed to talk to Nancy Catherine. What can I tell her? It’s not like I’ve got anything to hide. The only thing is, it’s not quite true to say Garland never touched me. But it’s not what they think! It was one time when we were playing school. The bus was his classroom and I was some long-ago student: Miss Florie Adkins, Miss Reba Jarvis. We’d pretend I was there for an after-school conference and he’d go over things: grammar, the Bill of Rights, even poetry. Garland has books for everything.

  Well, I didn’t mind this. It was weird but kind of interesting to watch Garland turn into somebody else or slide back into who he used to be. But one day when I got there I realized he’d been drinking, and I told him I couldn’t stay long.

  “But you’re here for your lesson.”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s poetry today.”

  I felt like when Mom says it’s beans for dinner but I just nodded. He walked back to get a book and he fell. Didn’t seem to trip over anything, didn’t say a word. I called his name and ran back to help him.

  His eyes were closed, his mouth lost in his beard.

  “Are you all right?”

  No answer. I leaned down, put my hands on his shoulders, and shook him. His eyes squinted open.

  “You’re supposed to be like Sleeping Beauty and give me a kiss.”

  “You’ve got it backward,” I said, and offered him my hand. “The prince kisses her.”

  “Naw, it ain’t that,” he said, waving my hand away and grabbing hold of the seats to pull himself up. “You think I’m ugly.”

  “I think you’re beautiful,” I said. The words just fell out of my mouth.

  “I’ll take my kiss, then,” he said, leaning over to plant his lips not on my cheek but on my neck. I felt my face blaze. Garland looked disgusted.

  “Aw, Lawanda, ain’t you got no boyfriends?”

  “Sure. Well, a couple, sort of.”

  “What’re you turning into a tomato for, then? Go on, go on up front and set down.”

  I did, but I couldn’t answer him. It wasn’t the kiss I was blushing for. It was that I loved him and I didn’t know till then. Not like a boy, like another person. That’s why I could see he was beautiful.

  We never sit side by side in the bus. For lessons, Garland takes Father Connor’s seat behind the driver’s, and I sit in Mr. Ballard’s. So we’re opposite one another and pass the book back and forth.

  “Listen,” Garland said. “This here’s a sonnet.”

  “What does that mean? I forget.”

  “Miss Florie, your brains is butter. A sonnet’s a schemed poem. Got rhyme in certain places and a beat all through. Studies something. You listen. This is old Willie, number Twenty-nine:

  “When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,

  I all alone beweep my outcast state,

  And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

  And look upon myself and curse my fate,

  Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

  Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

  With what I most enjoy contented least;

  Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

  Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

  Like to the lark at break of day arising

  From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

  For thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth

  brings

  That then I scorn to change my state with

  kings.”

  When teachers at school read poetry, they make it sound like something you could never understand in a million years. The words are all locked together to keep you out. When Garland reads, it sounds like a garden and his voice opens the gate. Old Willie’s poem made me sad for that reason, thinking of Garland in disgrace, hating himself. But all I said was, “It’s not about you. It says ‘bootless,’ and you’ve got boots.”

  We both stared at his wrinkled work boots, the top layer of leather worn away.

  “It don’t mean without boots. It means useless.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now do you see how this thing works?”

  He handed me the big green book. I tried to read to myself the words he’d read but my eyes kept blurring. Finally a few tears splashed on the page.

  “You’re a good reader,” I said.

  “And you’re a sorry student, crying on my book!” He grabbed it out of my lap and slapped it shut.

  “But—”

  “Go on, Lawanda. Get on out of here. I can’t look at your ignorant face today.”

  “But Garland—”

  “Time’s up. Go!”

  My tears were gone and I was mad, but Garland was standing like a thundercloud over me and I didn’t want to wait for the storm. I shut my mouth and left. I’d passed the cornfield and was almost to my path when he leaned out of the bus.

  “Here’s something else from old Willie,” he called, waving the book. “ ‘I had rather live with cheese and garlic in a windmill!’ ”

  “Good-bye, you crazy old man!” I yelled, topping the ridge and starting down. Crazy and mean, too, I thought. Can’t stand it that I care about him. And whose fault is that?

  Now I see that’s a scary question. I’m the one who hiked up that hill.

  NANCY CATHERINE: I was supposed to meet Lawanda at 4:00 P.M., but at 3:30 the motel phone rang.

  “Mom says why don’t you come on and talk to me and then stay for supper,” Lawanda said.

  “Sure,” I said. “I don’t eat meat, but—well, never mind.” I was mumbling, trying to come to. “Listen, Lawanda, could I pick you up and we could come back here or go for a drive or something? I think we need some privacy.”

  “Hold on.”

  Footsteps, voices.

  “Mom says it’s late, but she’ll hold dinner till six-thirty.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “Just blow the horn,” Lawanda told me.

  …

  She was on the porch when I got there, and she ran down the steps, hair flying. She had on old jeans and a black sweatshirt with the ribbing cut off.

  “You look sick,” she said, climbing in.

  “Sick of my life,” I said. “That’s why I’m late.”

  She shivered, looked at her hand
s lying open in her lap. “You saw Garland?”

  “My daddy? Yes, I did.”

  “How is he?”

  We were back out on the road by now, headed the opposite way from the motel.

  “Tell me how to get to where he lives,” I said. “He wants me to check on his buses.”

  The lie was automatic, like the door that opens when you step in front of it.

  “I can show you,” Lawanda offered, “but I don’t think I ought to go up there.”

  “And how am I supposed to know what’s changed if I go by myself?”

  “I don’t know, but Mom and Dad are already—”

  “Don’t be a fool, Lawanda! You’re fifteen years old and he’s locked up in jail. If I can go, you can go. I’m in a lot more danger than you.”

  She just stared at me. We drove on. It was gray, gray— the sky the same color as the pavement, the unpainted out-buildings.

  Finally, she spoke. “Turn right at Slusher’s Market. That’s Hallspoint Road.” A pause, then: “What did the lawyer say?”

  “I didn’t call her.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know if I want to get him out.”

  “What?” She whipped around in her seat. I thought she might grab my arm, but she didn’t. I took a breath. “That’s what you’re here for. I wouldn’t have come to—”

  She made me mad.

  “You can’t control the world. Did you know that? Now settle down and tell me where to turn.”

  “Around this curve,” she said, “there’s a school-bus shelter on the right. Pull off beside that.”

  I did. Behind the shelter was a railroad, behind that the river, and behind that the mountain. Lord have mercy, I thought, and was shocked at myself—or at my mother’s voice, still strong in my head.

  “They’re up there,” Lawanda said, pointing across the road. I couldn’t see anything but a steep, grassy hill. We got out, crossed the road, and climbed.

  Lawanda’s a regular mountain goat. She was up at the horizon by the time I’d got myself started on a clear zigzag course. There was no path.

  “Slow down!” I shouted, already out of breath. She just ran horizontally along the hill as if standing still hadn’t been invented. When I got up even with her, the hill leveled off and I could see the withered garden, the rusty buses. “The old home place,” I said, and such a rush of gall came to my mouth that I spat right on the ground.