Crooked Hallelujah

by Kelli Jo Ford

  “I love you more than anything, my Teeny Reney Bean,” Mom would say after she fixed my hair, and then she’d pull me into her arms and squeeze. Just when it felt like she wasn’t ever going to let me go, she’d kiss me and point me toward the door. Then she’d stretch her never-ending arms and fingers to the ceiling, take a sip of water from a glass on the dresser, and fan her long, black hair over her pillow.

  I’d drop a few flakes of fish food into the bowl for Blinky, grab the lunch Mom packed before bed, and catch the bus at the little pond out front of the apartment managers’ office. I didn’t feel special using an alarm clock or locking a door with the key that hung from a string around my neck or walking myself down the sidewalk to wait with other kids for a school bus, but I think it makes Mom proud to say I am—and always have been—perfect.

  After I heard somewhere that goldfish grow as big as their container, I kept after Mom to let me put Blinky in the pond. She always told me the same thing, that 1) he’d freeze to death out there and 2) I was too tenderhearted. “You’ll be bawling for him as soon as you dump him, Reney,” she’d say and push her hair behind her ears. “And I’m not getting you another fish if you let this one go.”

  We got him at the carnival when Kenny, who was high on life and the Wild Turkey he’d snuck in his boot, got to feeling happy and calling us a family. He said, “I love you like my own, Teeny Reney,” and forked over enough money for me to play all the games I wanted. Then he rubbed my hair so hard that one of my barrettes pulled out and my hair fell into my eyes.

  Why Mom married him, I do not know. She was still half Holy Roller. Couldn’t help it, I guess. She only wore a bun to keep her hair back at work, but she still wouldn’t cut it. She parted it down the middle—like a hippie, she said—or pulled it back in two barrettes just like mine. She didn’t wear makeup and hadn’t even started drinking in those days.

  I was used to Kenny and how he got, though. I even missed him sometimes when he took off with his buddies and didn’t show up for a while. I came home from the carnival with an armload of junk, a little bowl of Blinky, and a mad hornet for a mom because Kenny got mouthy and jealous after his happy bubbles popped.

  I couldn’t get off the idea of setting Blinky free once I got on it. Maybe letting him out of his sad little bowl felt kind of like a good or right thing that God calls a person to do sometimes. Or maybe setting Blinky free to see if he got huge was just some kind of science experiment to me, because I don’t know if anybody can really love a fish.

  He was a really good fish, though. He swam happy zigzags at the top of the bowl when I came into the room. He even let me feed him by hand when the apartment was quiet. I kept him for longer than I’d ever kept anything alive. The carnival came and left and came back again, and I still had little Blinky swimming circles in our living room, watching us live our lives like a TV show he couldn’t turn off.

  My mom and Kenny argued. Sometimes they fought. I won’t say I ever got used to it, but I did get used to laying awake in the dark after the sounds faded, feeling nervous they were going to pick back up again. The night of their big knock-down-drag-out—their last fight—I lay in bed with my pillow over my head for what seemed like half the night when it started getting real rough. That’s when I busted through my bedroom door and saw Kenny holding my mom up against the wall by her jaw. He had her pushed up there so her neck looked long and skinny, like the rooster I saw my cousin slaughter with a knife he’d just sharpened. Mom was calm as the rooster that day. She looked as mean as him, too, her eyes staring at Kenny, daring him.

  When she saw me, she started trying to tell me everything was going to be okay, trying to get me to go back to my room. Kenny kept his eyes on her and wouldn’t let her down, so I kicked him. Then, on accident, I called him a sorry-ass pissant motherfucker.

  Mom and Kenny froze in place. It shouldn’t have been such a shock. What I hadn’t heard from Kenny I’d picked up from the apartment kids when we were hunting ghosts or making potions out of junk we pulled from the dumpsters.

  I wondered for a second if we all might laugh, but Kenny kind of shook his head, then turned his red eyes back to Mom and started yelling. The way spit was flying off his lips, I could tell she wasn’t going to take it much longer. I took off to the kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife, and ran at him screaming.

  His black mustache crinkled up like he couldn’t believe I’d do such a thing. He dropped my mom, who slid to the floor and wrapped her arms around me. I held on to my knife and kept it aimed at Kenny. He started backing up, blubbering about loving me like his own blood, patting behind him on the door until he found the handle. Once he got the door open, he stepped through it and didn’t come back to say goodbye.

  I sat on the couch watching Mom cry while she packed up boxes and trash bags full of our stuff. Little Blinky swam on the table next to the TV, watching. We were going across town to Granny and Lula’s, the only place we should have ever been as far as I was concerned. I knew Lula didn’t like animals in the house, so I asked one more time to set Blinky free. Mom said, “Reney, do what you want with your fucking fish.” Then she threw a roll of duct tape across the room. I was out the door before she could gather herself to say sorry.

  For a while, we stopped by the apartments to say hi to Miss Bee and Bones, the old couple who ran the place and lived in an apartment behind the office. Mom called Miss Bee more wisp than a woman. She had to pull around an oxygen tank, but her voice carried all the way across the parking lot to our apartment when she wanted it to. Bones towered above her, worrying over every little step she took. He had a dagger tattoo on his forearm that all us kids were sure meant he’d killed somebody in prison. Not that he gave us any reason to think that. They’d always kept an eye on us when we waited for the bus and sometimes even watched out for me after I got off the bus.

  When we came back, I always went straight to the pond and plopped down on my belly to look for Blinky. Sometimes I got so close that the tip of my nose dipped in the water and a goldfish came up and took a nibble. Every now and then, Blinky would come up to the top of the water and take a piece of bread from my fingers.

  Miss Bee would shuffle outside, dragging her tank. She’d stand there and smoke above me, talking about how I’d grown and complaining about the parties people were throwing. After catching up on the apartment gossip, Mom would disappear to have it out with Kenny. Miss Bee would hand over a big plastic jar of fish food she kept in her desk drawer and gripe about all the fish that got dumped when people up and moved. Sometimes while my mom was gone, I felt bad for what I’d done to Kenny or what I’d done to Kenny and her.

  There were more goldfish in the little pond each time we stopped, until I wasn’t so sure that we’d set Blinky free at all. The fish stayed on the surface looking for handouts and took on a sick yellow color. Miss Bee got wheezier and wheezier, and Bones stopped coming out to pass me butterscotch and tell me jokes. Mom stopped staying gone so long and coming back with red, been-crying eyes. Blinky stopped coming to the top. He got bigger and bigger until I wasn’t even sure which fish he was. Then Miss Bee died, and my mom said Bones got so sad he started drinking again and lost the place.

  A boy on the bus said the new apartment manager yelled at some kids for throwing candy in the pond and said he was going to fill that stinking mosquito trap in with concrete. The boy said he guessed it was true because the pond was marked off with construction tape by evening and had a bunch of sacks of Quikrete stacked around it. I had to keep wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt the rest of the ride home. I couldn’t stop thinking about Blinky and all those little apartment fish flopping around on the sidewalk suffocating.

  Mom’s old Pinto and a couple of other cars were sitting out front when the bus dropped me off at Granny and Lula’s. I ran into the house and slung my backpack in a chair without catching the screen door behind me.

  Mom jumped. She’d been sitting at the kitchen table staring, rubbing the scar on her hand. She shu
shed me, thumped me hard on the arm, and whispered, “Lula’s been having spells. Saints have been in there with Granny praying.”

  “Is she going to be okay?” I asked.

  “She’s stubborn,” Mom said, and her eyes started filling with tears. “Been resting for a while now.”

  “We have to go get Blinky,” I said, and she looked at me like I was crazy. I told her that the new apartment manager was going to fill in the pond and all those fish were going to die.

  She looked at the clock and chewed her pinkie nail. Instead of saying no, she said, “You don’t have your bowl anymore.”

  “It ain’t big enough anyway,” I said. “We have to take them to the lake. All of them. We have to set them free.”

  For some reason, that was all it took. Mom stuffed some trash bags in her purse and rummaged beneath the kitchen sink for a metal bucket. Then we were out the door. It took us an hour to scoop up all those fish with the mop bucket. The manager kept trying to talk Mom into going on a date with him but stayed out of our way. We splashed around in that mossy little pond with our pants rolled up, bumping heads and knocking elbows and butts. We didn’t stop until we got the last fish caught. Mom didn’t even complain when I splashed her, so I splashed her some more. Once we got all the fish in the trash bag, Mom tied it off and lugged it into the back of the car. She spun gravel taking off for Lake Tenkiller.

  Some of the fish were small, and some of them must have weighed two or three pounds. I got to thinking on the car ride that I wasn’t sure I’d seen Blinky at all.

  “What’s up, Bean?” Mom asked.

  “I don’t even know if Blinky was still in there,” I said.

  “Think I saw him,” she said. “Pretty sure I did.”

  I leaned my head against the window, watching the trees go by, and smiled.

  We pulled up to a public boat ramp and wrestled the big green trash bag onto the dock. We could only carry it a couple of steps before setting it down to rest. When we got to the end of the dock, Mom pulled at the knot in the bag with her teeth and helped me pour the water and fish into Tenkiller.

  Those fish shot off in every direction like fireworks. A few did great, leaping belly flops. A couple stayed close by the dock, coming to the top every few seconds. Mom and I sat there tossing them cracker crumbs, dangling our feet off the dock, and watching the sun gathering itself for bed.

  When we got back to Granny and Lula’s, the house was quiet. Granny stuck her head out the door to make sure we were okay and tell us Lula was finally sleeping. Me and Mom ate bologna sandwiches on the porch swing. Then we shared the sink while I got ready for bed and she got ready for work. I couldn’t sleep with Granny when Lula was sick, so before my mom left, she tucked me into her bed and checked my alarm clock.

  “You’re too tenderhearted, Reney Bean,” she said. Then she kissed my forehead and whispered, “Wish I was more like you,” before she turned off the light.

  That night I dreamed me and Mom were splashing around the banks of Tenkiller calling for Blinky. Granny and Lula were there. They were watching us from two lawn chairs they had sitting just in the edge of the water, and there was a glowing lantern between them. We waded all over the lake but couldn’t find Blinky anywhere. I wanted to swim deeper, but Mom grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go. She kept saying that the water was full of cottonmouths. And then I realized that it was, and I started crying. That’s when Blinky appeared, and all the snakes scattered. Me and Mom started hugging and laughing at the sight of him. That fish was golden as the evening sky and big as a blue whale.

  He nudged me onto his back, and I put out my hand for Mom. We waved goodbye to Granny and Lula. Then I hung on to his top fin, and Mom held on to me. Blinky dove all the way to the deepest part of the lake, chasing catfish and nosing great turtles, showing us all the treasures he’d found down there. My mom’s long black hair trailed behind us, and we didn’t have any trouble breathing at all. We held on when he leapt for the sun, shimmying high up through the clouds until we splashed back down into the lake.

  I woke up just before my alarm went off. Mom was curled around me, sound asleep, so I eased out of her arms and turned off the alarm. She mumbled something and turned over onto her other side. I pulled the covers around her and laid down next to her for a long time, remembering how it felt to be moving through water and clouds, both of us together.

  Annie Mae

  July 23, 1982—I never can forget. I got the news my poor lost grandson John Joseph passed when I was braiding my hair, fixing to walk to Dandy Dalton’s to pay on my grocery bill. I already had my purse under my arm when Thorpe Rogers called on the telephone. I couldn’t put any of the sounds he was making into words, but right off I knew.

  Thorpe Rogers preached on faith power in a special service the night before—Saints got to be sanctified, he said, got to live good and right so little lost ones can see light. He said it in his language and then he tried to make it right in Cherokee for me and the other old ones. Thorpe Rogers raised up his arms like a picture of Good Lord’s love—In Heaven, he said, we shall reap our rewards. Then his face kind of broke in two and he said—But we got to get there, Saints.

  We had a good, long service, like the ones that used to set my soul to burn. But going home I did not feel good. The Sequoyah Hills, always sweet to me, looked down like cold mountains. Even the moonshine on my arm felt like a stranger. Dear babies Reney and Sheila by me in the back seat did not make me better. Maybe I knew, but only in my heart first. John Joseph was going cold right then.

  The boy never could stay out of trouble, even when he was a little one. Cracked his head diving in Bluff Hole, July 3, 1972. He could hear a song one time and play it all the way through, humming it out as he go. Didn’t matter—he sold the electric guitar Thorpe Rogers gave him for five dollars so he could buy up Dandy Dalton’s candy, January 12, 1969.

  I used to back then put down things that happen in this nice notebook Lula gave me. Always put my thoughts in there as best I could, just for me. John Joseph passed the day before his own birthday, the day before this country would ever call him a man. After I put that down, I could not write another thing in here for a long time. The nice leather book was just ledger. I added up my charges for the month—

  39 cents, shortcakes

  89 cents, hairnet

  3 lbs. Crisco, 2.10

  25 cents, pop

  66 cents of Liver loaf

  1 dollar cash

  I stay on my knees after altar call ends now. But I don’t hardly pray. I look for pictures in the altar wood. Try to make out long-gone faces when I know I should lean hard on myself to get up and go back to my seat. I stay there so long the church goes still. I hear little ones rustling on pallets and sweet sister Saints praying—Thank you, Jesus. Thorpe Rogers and Lula start up again. They weep and moan with Good Lord’s love. My children, so strong in their chests. That muscle can only be from Good Lord. Cannot be me or their cowboy daddy, with his drinking and Good Lord knows what else.

  I feel hands on me. Skirts dance by, fan me cool. I know they pray this old Indian is finally meeting Holy Ghost, praying good like I should, with fire. Truth is, all I pray is to be able to pray. Maybe pray to be strong when I need to be.

  One night right before he passed, I woke to a broke front door and John Joseph asleep on the living room floor. He had 12 stitches sewed up over his eye. Drunk running around in Sequoyah County and an argument over a girl got him hit with a tire iron. He opened his eyes to me standing over him. He looked scared for minute but not of me. Then he came back to me. He stretched and poked his finger on the end of the thread holding him together. He said—She’s so pretty, Granny. He could not pray either.

  I shushed him. Lula was still asleep with one of her spells. She would be in a bad way with John Joseph there smelling like beer joints and the screen door broke. Thorpe Rogers wouldn’t let him come home from drinking no more already.

  I should have got on my knees and prayed. Drag
him by his hair and tell him—You pray! And tell my own self too that Good Lord was listening and believe it down in my pitiful heart. But I thought to myself—I will fix it. I put bologna on to fry and called my sister Celia in Hominy.

  Celia married an Indian like she should. A big Osage who spoke his language and went to college. A man who kept his hands where he should. He would have work for John Joseph.

  I blackened the edges like John Joseph liked and handed him the phone. Celia said—Nephew, you come stay with us, but don’t you come home drinking. He hung up and tried to argue, but Lord Lord, that boy listened to somebody finally.

  He went to Hominy and didn’t come home to Celia’s one night after he got up there. He took up with some running wild cousins and didn’t come back ever. Demons know fire too. Maybe demons chased him so hard that he could not slow down until he stopped for good on the side of the road where he came to such terrible awful rest after 18 years. Nearly 18 years.

  He told me before I sent him up to Hominy to die—Granny, them old boys and their tire iron ain’t got nothing on me. You should have seen them! And then he laughed, squinched up his busted eye, and doubled over. Black hair sticking all everywhere, needing a haircut.

  John Joseph tried to fix the broke door with masking tape and a screwdriver before he left. That boy fiddled all morning with the flapping door, singing Elvis Presley songs to me. Never fixed it right. It’s still stuck together with tape. Needs a new screen. I told him so that morning. I told him so and I sent him off to that highway in Hominy. I should have locked the door and never let him leave. Should have tried to scare him with the love of Good Lord. John Joseph probably would know better. That boy has a way right to my insides. He tapped the screen with the screwdriver and winked with his good eye. He grinned, said—I’ll take care of it, Granny.