Maude

by Donna Mabry

  I sat next to her and put her head on my shoulder. “What will I do if he’s dead? What will happen to me and the baby?”

  “He’s all right. I’ll go get your father and make him go find Ellis and bring him home.”

  I went to the basement to George’s corner. He had a little bedroom set up there, with a chest of drawers, a table with a checkerboard, and a bed. He was sound asleep, snoring. I shook his shoulder. “Wake up, George. I want you to go find Ellis for Betty Sue. She’s all upset, and she shouldn’t be worried. What if something happened to this baby? It would kill her.”

  “What’s the matter with the two of you? He’s fine. He’ll be home when he’s through drinking. Just leave him alone.”

  “I said, get up and go find him.”

  Awake now, George looked at me. “And I said no! Now, leave me alone!” He rolled over and put his back to me.

  I wanted to smack him, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I went back to my room, where Betty Sue sat on the edge of the bed.

  “He won’t get up. Why don’t you sleep here with me? Ellis will be home in the morning.”

  Betty Sue set her jaw in a way I knew to mean she was determined. “If Dad won’t go look for him, I’ll go myself. There’s only two or three bars between here and the plant. He’s probably in one of them.” She turned to leave.

  “Wait,” I said, “I’ll go with you. I won’t have you out by yourself at this time of night.” I put on a housedress and a sweater and slipped on my shoes. As the two of us left, I put my arm on Betty Sue’s, not just to keep her close, but to slow her down. I didn’t want her to tire herself any more than I could help.

  We walked the long city block to Jefferson Avenue and stopped in the first bar we came to. It was the first time in my life I’d been inside a bar, and as far as I knew, the first time for my daughter. The light was dim. Most of the men sitting at the bar looked like they’d come from work and wore jeans. There were only a few women, and each sat with a man in the booths that lived the wall. I hated the smell of beer and it was almost overpowering. I felt uneasy, knowing I was in a place where I didn’t belong. I said a silent prayer asking God to get us out of there.

  Betty Sue took her wallet out of her purse and held up a picture of Ellis. “Has he been in here tonight? He might be with a tall, dark-haired man.”

  The bartender looked quickly at the picture and nodded. “Sure, they were here. They got loud, so I threw them out about two hours ago.”

  “Did you notice which way they went?”

  He shrugged. “Try down the street at Smitty’s place. Maybe they’re in there.”

  Betty Sue and I went down the street to Smitty’s. The bartender told her Paul and Ellis had been there and gone.

  We crossed Jefferson and went up St. Jean, to the last bar in the neighborhood. Looking in through the window, we could see Ellis and Paul sitting on the end of the bar next to the front door, laughing and drinking big mugs of beer.

  We opened the door and went inside. Paul caught sight of me and was so surprised, he had to grab the bar to keep from falling off his chair. Betty Sue walked up to Ellis and punched him right on the nose. There was a loud cracking noise, his head jerked back, and blood spurted out. He grabbed his nose with both hands and shouted, “Lord Almighty, woman! What’s wrong with you? You broke my nose!”

  “I’ve been worried sick that you were hurt or something, and the whole time you’ve been drinking.”

  She pulled back her arm and landed another punch on the same spot. This time, Ellis fell off the barstool and rolled around on the floor. Blood ran between his fingers.

  “Stop it!” Paul hollered. As far as I knew, he’d never had a single bottle of beer in his life. When he jumped up, everything he drank that day must have gone right to his head. He passed out in a heap on the floor.

  I looked down at the two of them, Paul out like a stone, Ellis howling, holding his nose, and bleeding while he rocked back and forth. “Lord, help,” I said aloud.

  Betty Sue wasn’t finished. She kicked Ellis hard in the stomach. He rolled up in a tight ball.

  “Get home, right now,” Betty Sue growled at him. Then she looked at the bartender and shook her finger at him. “You give him one more drink tonight, and you’ll have to answer to me.”

  He held his hands up in front of him. “Lady, he won’t get anything else here,” he said.

  Betty Sue wheeled around, kicked Ellis again, grabbed me by the arm, and barged out of the bar, almost dragging me behind her.

  Betty Sue sobbed all the way home. I could feel her tremble and knew it wasn’t from sorrow, but from her being so mad and relieved that Ellis was all right.

  I held my tongue, knowing that anything I had to say would only make the situation worse. I sat with Betty Sue at her place until Ellis and Paul staggered in. Ellis stood there, blood all over his shirt and pants, weaving back and forth, hanging his head.

  “Go on to bed,” Betty Sue ordered. The fire in her eyes sparked. Obediently, Ellis made his way down the hall, reeling from one wall to the other, and into the bedroom. I heard a loud creak as he plopped on the bed. Paul leaned against the door frame.

  I looked at him in disgust. “You aren’t coming in my house drunk. Find yourself somewhere else to sleep.”

  “Paul can sleep here, on the sofa,” Betty Sue said.

  She started toward the bedroom, but I was afraid of what she might do to Ellis if I let her go in there. I took hold of her arm. She still shook with anger.

  I tugged at her. “Come with me and sleep at home.” Betty Sue had told me that sometimes, Ellis had terrible nightmares. “You don’t need a drunk rolling around on you with that baby almost ready to be born. I was thinking about the Foley women and was afraid Betty Sue might kill Ellis in his sleep.

  Betty Sue took a deep breath and nodded. I could see her make an effort to pull herself together. She went to her room and returned a minute later with her things in a paper bag. Paul was already snoring on the sofa.

  By the time we got to bed, it was two o’clock in the morning. I lay there next to her, wide awake. I hadn’t been worrying about the baby when I asked Betty Sue to come home with me for the night. In all the years we’d been married, George had never laid a hand on me in anger, had never even spanked one of his children. He’d seldom even raised his voice. It was a curious thing, the streak of violence that ran through the women in this family. I wondered about George’s father and his disappearing like he did. Had he come home drunk one too many times?

  Paul didn’t come back from Betty Sue’s until after noon the next day. His eyes were red and swollen, and I could tell he was hung over. We were eating when he came in, and Gene just looked at him and shook his head.

  I asked, “Did you get your paycheck cashed?”

  He mumbled something and looked at the floor.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “I got it cashed at the bar.”

  “How much did you make?”

  “I made fifty-five dollars, take-home.”

  Gene piped up. “You ought to give Mom twenty dollars to pay your room and board. That’s fair.”

  Paul looked at him like that made him mad. “I don’t have it.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t have it?”

  “I spent it last night.”

  Gene stood. “You mean you spent your whole paycheck? You worked a five days in a row for the first time in your life, and you spent it all in a bar?”

  Paul stuck out his chin. “It was my money. I can spend it on anything I want.”

  Gene’s face turned red, and I saw him doubling up his fist. I stepped between them, “Paul will have another check coming. Now that he’s got a regular job he can pay his way. He won’t go drinking every week. Will you, Paul?”

  Paul gave Gene an ugly look. “No.”

  The next week he came home with his check. I walked down to the grocery store with him where he cashed it and handed me twenty dollars. Monday, he qui
t his job.

  Chapter 65

  Betty Sue had a healthy little boy, pretty and blond like Ellis. The delivery was fast. The cab barely made it to the hospital on time. I was so grateful they were both safe. I thanked God and hoped that things would be all right for Betty Sue from then on.

  No baby was ever more loved by his mother than little Tommy. As we always seemed to do with children, all of the Foleys, including Donna, adored him. I thought that maybe, now that he had a baby to think about, Ellis would stop going to bars, and for a while, he did.

  Eleven months later, Betty Sue had another perfect little boy and named him Terry. A year after that, she had a little girl named Patricia, and a few years later, another girl she named Linda. She asked the doctor how to turn off the machinery that had taken so long to get started. He gave her a thing called a diaphragm.

  Betty Sue finally had the family she always wanted. She had a nice apartment, and her husband had a good job. She should have been happy, but she wasn’t. She’d gained weight with each pregnancy, and didn’t like that now her body was like mine, what they call matronly in ladies’ dress shops.

  She also didn’t like that Ellis had taken to going on drinking jags every few months. He always sobered up in time to go back to work on Monday and never lost his job over it.

  He would take Paul with him from time to time. Paul wasn’t working, so I thought George must have given him money for beer. God knows, he would never get it from me. I never gave him a cent.

  Paul knew better than to come home drunk, so he would sleep it off on Betty Sue’s sofa. When Ellis stayed out late, Betty Sue would wait until midnight and then go looking for him. I stayed with the children while she was out.

  We were hanging out the laundry one morning when I asked Betty Sue, “Do you hit Ellis every time he goes drinking?”

  She blushed. “Not so much. I try not to hit him at all, Mom, I really do, but sometimes it just comes over me. I get so mad at him when he stays out late, I just can’t seem to stop myself.”

  I tried to sound unconcerned when I asked the question I really wanted to have an answer to. “I’ve never seen him hit you back. Does he?”

  “No, and I’m glad of it. He’s so big, he could probably hurt me if he wanted. He just holds me away from him until I get over it. He says he’s safe as long as his reach is longer than mine. He’s glad I don’t use a bat or something.”

  I finished pinning up the shirt I was holding and put my hand on Betty Sue’s arm. “I want you to stop that, Betty Sue. It isn’t Christian, and it isn’t good for the children to see. You won’t change him. The only harm you’ll do is to them.”

  I know Betty Sue could tell I was giving her a message from my heart.

  She looked hard in my eyes. “It’s going to be hard not to, Mom. When I get mad, I almost don’t know what I’m doing. That ugly feeling comes over me, and it’s like I could almost kill him.”

  “You have children to think of now. What if you did hurt him bad someday and got sent to prison? What would happen to them? I’m getting too old to be able to raise three babies.”

  Her eyes got big. “I won’t hit him anymore, Mom. If I get mad I’ll come here and tell you everything I feel, and I won’t go home until that feeling passes.”

  “I pray you can stick to that, baby.”

  Chapter 66

  Bessie and John bought a house in St. Clair Shores, about ten miles away from us. She and I talked on the phone every once in a while, but it wasn’t the same as seeing her all the time. The little storefront services we attended in the old neighborhood were too far away from the big house on Lycaste for me to walk to, and it was too expensive to take a cab.

  One week I took a bus. The Sunday bus schedule was slow, and it took me over four hours to make the round trip and attend the services. I would have to find somewhere closer to home.

  I’d made friends with Stella, the woman who lived around the corner, and asked her where she went to church. She said she wasn’t a church-going person and had no idea where I could find a Holiness Assembly. I looked in the big yellow telephone directory the phone company left me but didn’t find one.

  The next Sunday I decided to go to the little Ebenezer Baptist church a few blocks away. I got dressed and stood in front of the mirror to pin on my hat. I stood there every day to comb my hair, but that day, I looked at myself and was surprised to see how old I’d become.

  I kept my hair-chin length ever since that first time I’d cut it on the trip to Detroit from Missouri. When I was young, it was a deep brown. Now, it was a tired looking combination of different shades of gray and a little brown at the back. My waist was thick, my shoulders stooped, and the wrinkles on my face had deepened to crevices. I put on my hat and walked away from my reflection.

  Donna went to church with me. Having spent her entire life between Baptist and Holiness, Donna was comfortable in both denominations. On Sunday and Wednesday night, she attended the Baptist Church with her grandmother Mayse.

  I couldn’t help watching the service with a critical eye. Compared to my own church, the Baptists were so serious. The preacher delivered his message as if it were a school lesson and didn’t even raise his voice with any feeling. I was accustomed to a dramatic sermon, with the preacher pacing the floor and pounding on the pulpit.

  I missed music that made a joyful noise. The congregation at the Baptist church sang slow and quiet, as if they were afraid they would wake someone up.

  No one stood and testified, no one repented hidden sins, and, as far as I could tell, no one enjoyed himself. After the service, only a few people smiled at me and shook my hand as Donna and I walked out. Not one of them made an attempt to talk to me or invite me to come again.

  I never went back.

  Chapter 67

  I prayed day and night about the way things were at home. Paul kept getting jobs and quitting them after a few days, then going out with Ellis for a night on the town with the few dollars he earned. When they weren’t back by midnight, Betty Sue went from bar to bar, looking for Ellis until she found him.

  George didn’t see the problem.

  One Friday afternoon in 1957, Ellis showed up at the house. I could tell he hadn’t been home yet because he was still carrying his lunch pail. He said. “I’d like to talk to Paul, please.”

  I went back to the kitchen and sent Paul to the door. Ellis said a few words to Paul, who opened the door and went out, and as the two of them trotted down the steps, Ellis tucked his lunch bucket beside the porch bannister.

  They didn’t come home by midnight, and Betty Sue came over and asked me to come stay with the children while she looked for Ellis. I knew it was useless to argue with her. I went down to their apartment and fell asleep on the sofa. Betty Sue came home an hour later, pushing Ellis and Paul through the doorway. I didn’t say anything, just gave the sofa to my youngest son and went home.

  Paul still wasn’t home the next day. Betty Sue came over with the children to help me fix dinner.

  “Is Paul at your place?” I asked her.

  “No. Ellis is off work for re-tooling at the plant and they left around ten this morning. I heard them whispering together. I don’t know what they’re up to.”

  She came back later in the day. Ellis hadn’t come home and neither had Paul.

  Gene went to the basement to play checkers with George. Donna and I settled down to watch the afternoon movie with Bill Kennedy, a Hollywood actor who moved to Detroit and told his audience all about the stars in the movies he showed. Donna, now fifteen years old, loved the movies, and sat by me.

  Paul came staggering in the front door around four o’clock. I could see Ellis standing outside on the sidewalk.

  “Give me some money!” he demanded. “Me and Ellis want to go have a beer.”

  I crossed my arms and kept my eyes on the television. “Get out of here. I’m not giving you anything.”

  Paul held one hand against the wall to steady himself and went in my bed
room at the end of the hall. He came out carrying my purse and dropped it in my lap. “I only want a couple of dollars.”

  I clutched the purse. “I said get out of here.”

  Paul snatched the bag from me and started pawing through it. He had my wallet in his hand. I tried to take it back from him. He shoved me and I fell back in my seat, the wind knocked the out of me.

  Donna jumped up from the sofa, grabbed the wallet away from him, and handed it to me. She turned on him. “Paul, you know she’ll never give you money to drink. Why don’t you and Ellis just go back to his house and sleep it off?”

  Paul’s face turned red. “I just want a few dollars!”

  He knocked one of my pretty figurines off the table. I reached out to catch it but it shattered on the floor. Then he jerked the pillows off the chairs and sofa and threw them around the room. I grabbed his right arm and held it as tight as I could, but he picked up a small metal wastepaper basket that sat next to my chair with his left hand and threw it.

  It hit Donna right between the eyes. Stunned, she looked at Paul, then at me. Blood spurted over the three of us. Paul’s face went white, and he turned and ran out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

  In the basement, Gene and George had heard the shouting. It was something new in a house where no one ever raised their voice. They hurried upstairs to see what the racket was about. Gene was the first one in the room. When he saw the mess and his daughter standing there with her hand over her nose, blood running out between her fingers, he reeled as if someone had punched him.

  “What happened?” he shouted.

  “Paul came in and wanted money. When I wouldn’t give it to him, he had a fit.”

  Gene’s fists clenched. “He hit her?”

  “No, he threw the trash can, and it hit her in the face. He didn’t mean to do it. It just happened.”

  Gene ran out of the house. I jumped up and pulled at George’s arm. “You better stop him, George. He’ll kill Paul.”