The Shade of My Own Tree

by Sheila Williams

  “You and Troy will share this room. The bathroom is next door.” I said this triumphantly. The plumber finished up last night. The Loch Ness monster was officially dead.

  “Quiet time from ten o’clock until seven, no alcohol, no smoking in the house. It’s OK on the porch. Troy, there’s a TV in the room down the hall.” I set the garbage bag containing his clothes and toys next to the bed. “You can pay toward your room and board in kind.” I glanced up at the ugly grayish-beige wall. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done around here.”

  “In kind,” echoed Gloria. “What does that mean?”

  “Instead of paying money, you’ll pay by helping out with the cooking, cleaning, or gardening, painting—”

  Her face hardened and she stuck out her jaw.

  “Nobody said nothin’ about doing any work. I ain’t cleaning out no toilets.”

  I counted to ten before I said anything.

  “You’ll clean out the toilet that you use,” I told her. “That’s only fair. I’m not asking you to do anything that I’m not doing myself. If you want to stay here, you’ve got to help.”

  We glared at each other. Troy looked first at his mother and then at me.

  Gloria fiddled with her purse strap as she considered her choices. Finally, she said, “OK.” She dragged the word out like a bald tire over gravel. “I guess I could help paint a little. And I like to work outside with flowers and plants and things.” She looked over at her son. “Troy can do chores. Take out the trash and wash dishes, stuff like that.”

  Troy scowled.

  Gloria was still looking around the room when I left. I couldn’t read her expression.

  As I reached the landing to the first floor, I heard Bear lumbering around in the kitchen. Then I heard a series of sharp barks followed by a low woof. The woof belonged to Bear. The barks didn’t.

  I marched through the dining room into the kitchen.

  “Bear! What’s going on in here?”

  Bear, standing by the screen door, looked guilty as hell with his “what did I do?” expression.

  The expression of the other four-legged creature in the room was another story.

  Standing over Bear’s gigantic food and water dishes was a small, muscular box-shaped dog with a smushed-in face and a turned-up nose. If this pug weighed twenty pounds, I would have been surprised. He gave me a look that said I had the importance of a flea on his butt, then turned his attention back to the dog food that he was enthusiastically eating out of Bear’s bowl.

  “Where did you come from? Bear?” I looked at my two-hundred-pound mutt as if I expected him to speak to me. I have got to stop doing that.

  Bear whined as if to say, “What do you want from me?” and flopped into a heap on the floor.

  “You’re no help.” I turned to the intruder. “Excuse me?” Now I know that you aren’t supposed to approach animals when they are eating. But this dog was not intimidated or distracted. He gave me the look an English butler gives just before he says, “Madam is not at home,” and slams the door in your face.

  “Who let you in anyway?” But the screen door was unlatched and Bear had gotten into the habit of leaning into it so that it would open. I glared at Bear, who sighed and looked contrite.

  The pug continued to eat as if I were talking to myself. And, when he had finished, he delicately drank a few sips of water as if cleansing his palate. Good grief, a dog with better manners than mine! I would not be treated like hired help in my own house.

  Three days later, the pug was still hanging around my house. I posted flyers, but in the meantime I named him Wellington and let him stay. He and Bear patrolled the yard, chased squirrels, and kept the coach house cats from taking over my porch furniture. Wells was earning his keep.

  Oh, I had him neutered after I caught him marking each corner in the dining room. I don’t think Wells has forgiven me for that yet.

  After the first few weeks, between dealing with Gloria and Troy, housebreaking Wells, coordinating home repairs and my own dismal efforts at painting (wall painting, that is), I wondered if my sanctuary idea was going to work. Dealing with “OPP” (other people’s problems) and “OPC” (other people’s children) was taking me to the limit of my coping skills.

  The first confrontation with Gloria took place one afternoon when I came home early from a dentist’s appointment. That was when I discovered that Gloria’s daily routine was a little different than I thought. I came in the back door and almost did a neutron dance.

  The kitchen looked as if a tornado had hit. There were dirty dishes in the sink. Dishcloths lay in a heap on the stove. The linoleum floor was covered with black footprints. In the parlor, the sofa pillows were now stacked on the floor as if someone (someone small) had tried to make a fort out of them. There was something wet and sticky on the coffee table. The second-floor hall had a mound of dirty clothes on the floor and the bathroom was a fright. For a moment, I thought that the toilet bowl creature had returned.

  I tapped on the bedroom door, then peeked in. Gloria was sleeping soundly, a half-full ashtray of cigarette butts on the floor beside the bed. So much for the no-smoking-in-the-house rule.

  “What the hell is going on around here?”

  Gloria nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “Wh-what? What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “There are dirty dishes in the sink, clothes on the floor in the hall; the parlor is a mess; this room is a mess. And what happened in the bathroom?”

  “I-I was getting ready to clean that up,” she began.

  “Same way you were ‘getting ready’ to go to your appointment with Nancy?” I charged, referring to the counselor at the shelter. Gloria hadn’t shown up for her last appointment.

  “I can’t sit through that ‘I’m all right and it’s OK’ shit,” she snapped back. She fumbled with the cigarette pack.

  “No smoking in the house, remember?” I said. “And what about your interview yesterday? Did you sleep through that, too?”

  Her blue eyes widened and then darkened with anger.

  “I don’t ’preciate you talking to me like I was a kid or somethin’,” she growled. “I’m a grown woman. I take care of my own business.”

  “Well, you’re doing a piss poor job of it,” I growled back. Not very diplomatic of me, but you should have seen that bathroom! “You agreed to stay here and follow the rules. You also agreed to see Nancy once a week. As far as I can see, all you’ve done is sleep, smoke, watch TV, and use the bathroom. You aren’t helping me with the painting and you’re not doing much anywhere else around the house, either.”

  “I’ve been pruning the rosebushes,” she shot back.

  “One branch at a time?”

  She tightened her jaw. “That’s how you prune rosebushes.”

  “I see.” As far as I could tell, the garden was still an overgrown tangle of weeds and thorns.

  “I’m a little depressed,” Gloria said. She wasn’t very convincing.

  “Bullshit,” I snapped. “You’re the one who said she didn’t like that ‘I’m all right; you’re all right’ stuff. A little lazy if you ask me.” Wrong thing to say.

  At that, Gloria’s eyes blazed and her cigarette-sanded voice raised with anger.

  “What the hell would you know about it? No, I am not goin’ to counseling. I don’t want to sit there with Nancy lookin’ down her nose at me like I’m dirt on her shoe. Feelin’ sorry for me. Her degree don’t tell her nothin’ about my life. And now, I got nowhere to go and I’ve got to depend on you and your fancy house and nice things and all your goddamn rules. I just want to sleep it away. I want it all to go away.” She glared at me and took a deep puff on the cigarette that she had just lit. The smoke poured out of her nose. “I want you to go away.”

  Her eyes were wet, but her voice was still strong. “You don’t know shit about how I feel. Did you have your house burned out
from underneath you? All your stuff and your kid’s toys turned to ashes? Have you had your arms broke and your face beat up? And no place to go, no one to help you with a kid to feed?” A sob escaped from her lips and the weight of it hit me in the chest. “Scared half to death all the time? All the time?”

  Besides when I was with Pam and LaDonna, I kept it all inside. I hadn’t shared my pain with anyone. I mean, what was the point? My life was laid out like a freeway littered with broken glass and bloody washcloths, dark, ugly purple bruises, scratches, four broken ribs, three concussions, and two sprained ankles. If I’d put it to music, it would sound like a perverted version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”:

  On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me

  Four side punches, three bruised ribs, two black eyes,

  And a partridge in a pear tree

  I had kept it all to myself. But that was wrong. I was wrong.

  “Yes.” The word came out in a whisper, but Gloria heard it. She almost dropped her cigarette.

  “I used to sleep in a tight little ball because my back could take the punches better than my stomach could and … and because I’d already had broken ribs and if he hit me on the back of my head, it didn’t …” I stopped. This was a lot harder than I thought. “It didn’t leave marks that you could see and I could go to work the next day and not have a punched-in face.”

  Gloria was staring at me as if she’d seen a ghost.

  “I-I didn’t know. Nancy didn’t tell me that. I’m sorry; I—” Her words poured out in a rush.

  I blinked the tears back. “It’s OK. I should have told you. You’re not alone, Gloria. But the hardest part of this … this thing is that getting out of it is something that only you can do. I know this because it took me almost fifteen years to take that first step. And I suffered because of it. And my child suffered.” I looked at her. “I won’t lie to you and say that everything will be rosy going forward; it won’t.” Our eyes locked. “The dirty little secret is that it will never really be over. But you still have to take the first step. And leave.”

  It was a conversation that left both of us exhausted and sad. But it helped me to see things more clearly as I stumbled through my dream to make the yellow house a sanctuary for myself and for others. And Gloria’s attitude changed, too. She went to her next appointment with Nancy. Soon I noticed that the rosebushes in the front yard had been pruned.

  But there was still Troy.

  When I decided to open the yellow house to women refugees from violent marriages and relationships, I guess I forgot that many of them have children. Apparently, LaDonna felt that I could manage at least one child.

  I think she was wrong about that.

  Every day I found myself offering up the same prayer: “Dear Lord, please give me enough patience and restraint to keep from murdering this smart-mouth boy and burying him under the tomato plants. Amen.”

  It was a constant battle. A continuing litany of “quit” and “stop that.” His mother was never around when he was acting like a little ass. As far as she was concerned, he was a “good boy.” I referred to him as “the Beast.”

  He had taken to exploring the house, looking for secret passageways, hidden doors, and buried treasure. In the beginning, it was annoying because he would jump out from behind chairs or out of closets. After a while, though, I began to hope he would actually find a secret tunnel and get lost in it.

  Greasy spots appeared on my lace curtains in the parlor.

  “Troy, don’t wipe your hands on the curtains. That’s what paper towels are for.”

  “I don’t have to do what you say.”

  The delicate handle of a demitasse cup had been broken. That cup had belonged to a great-grandmother whom I remembered in the pleasant fog of childhood memories, a woman of white hair, vanilla cookies, and a Bible held in strong but arthritic hands. I fingered the little broken piece and wondered if Superglue would work. I could glue his nasty little fingers together and then he wouldn’t be able to bother my china treasures anymore.

  “Troy! Come here please!” I said this through clenched teeth. There were chunks of mud and grass on the rug in the front hall and scuff marks and tracks all over the kitchen floor.

  The screen door slammed and the little monster appeared wearing a surly expression.

  “What?”

  That does it. If there is one thing that I cannot stand, it is disrespectful children. I must be old-fashioned. The positive parenting/time-out/count-to-five stuff came in when Imani was little, but I couldn’t get into it. I watched the children that she went to school with terrorize their parents and challenge the teachers. Their punishment was a “time-out” that they blew off like birthday candles on a cake. At the mall, I held my daughter’s hand tightly as other children ran through the stores and their smiling parents (afraid to dampen “independent spirits”) threatened to count to three. They were never clear about what would happen when they got to three. It didn’t matter, though, because the little brats didn’t listen and their pleading parents ended up counting to three hundred.

  “Not ‘what,’ ” I told Troy, my jaw tightening. “You say ‘yes, ma’am.’ ”

  “I can say whatever I want,” he snapped. “My mom says I don’t have to do what you tell me to.”

  That was it.

  I grabbed him by the ear and marched off to find the source of my troubles.

  She was in the rose garden wrestling with a tenacious dandelion. The dandelion was winning.

  Gloria has a green thumb and the yard was beginning to flourish under her care. She can make any plant thrive, and landscape with the best of them. But she has a purple thumb when it comes to disciplining her child. I dragged that boy down the cobblestone path toward the back of the yard where his mother was working.

  Gloria was designing an English garden like one she’d seen in a magazine once. She had filled the beds around the porches with bright flowers. I now had “herbaceous borders” along the walk and near the coach house. I had lavender, holly, and even lilies.

  I was going to miss her. Because if she didn’t get this ten-year-old brat into shape they were both going out onto the sidewalk.

  “Mom! She’s hurting me!” Troy’s voice piped in.

  I released his ear.

  Gloria looked up and shielded her eyes from the brightness of the late-afternoon sun. “What’s going on? Troy, what’s the matter?”

  The little monster explained, “She grabbed me by the ear and it hurt!” He rubbed his ear and his sandy-colored eyebrows crunched together in a scowl as he glared at me.

  This remark got his mother’s attention.

  “What are you talking about?” Gloria stood up. She smashed out the cigarette she had been holding between her lips. Looking at me, she said, “What did you do to him?”

  “Troy, go into the house; your mom and I have to talk.”

  “Wait a minute! Who do you think you are, telling my kid what to do? That’s my job!”

  OK, if you want to play it that way.

  “Good, I’m glad that you told me that. Since you are the only person to tell him what to do, will you please tell your boy to stay out of the front room, keep his hands off the curtains, not break my china, and wipe his feet when he comes in from outside so that he won’t track grass, mud, and dirt all over the house? Oh, and if he talks back again, I’ll spank him. I will not be disrespected in my own house.”

  Gloria stared at me. Troy looked up at his mother with a hopeful expression.

  Gloria looked down at Troy.

  “Go into the house, Troy.”

  “But, Mom—”

  She silenced him with a look. He disappeared.

  “You have a lot of nerve putting your hands on my kid—”

  “Then you need to get him under control. I won’t have monsters in my house.”

  “My boy is not a monster—”


  “Brat, then.” I was on a roll.

  She threw the spade down.

  “I don’t have to put up with this shit.”

  “No, you don’t. And neither do I. There is such a thing as consideration and respect. There will be other women in and out of here. There’s the tenant in the coach house. I can’t have Troy running wild, breaking things and talking back.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. We just glared at each other with the small ivy-covered stone wall acting as a demilitarized zone. Then she blinked.

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “But don’t you touch him,” she added, emphasizing her point with one dirt-covered finger.

  “OK,” I replied. Probably best I didn’t touch him anyway. If I got hold of him again, he was toast.

  Chapter Seven

  Dana Drew joined my cast of “characters” not long after Wellington came to stay. As the writers of old would say, “thence” began a period of intrigue and speculation.

  She called so early one Sunday morning that I almost didn’t answer the phone and I had to resist the temptation to throw it against the wall. I didn’t because it might have been Bette (who likes to call early when she’s on her treadmill with Charles …) or Imani (I could never keep the time difference between Prestonn and India straight). So I cleared my throat and picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “I am calling about the apartment advertised in the paper.”

  The voice in my ear was deep and husky, with an exotic accent.

  “Yes?” I managed to croak out as I reached for a pen.

  “Is it still available?”

  She sounded like Greta Garbo, who, from all the reports that I had read, was still dead.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Good. Then I would like to make an appointment to see it,” the voice said. “May I come this evening?”

  “Of course.” I fumbled with the notepad on my nightstand. “How about five-thirty?”