Buy a car for five hundred dollars.
I gasped. I’m gonna what? It was the weirdest thought. Crazy, at best. It wasn’t from me? I mean, why would I think such a silly thing? If it wasn’t my thought, then whose thought was it, and how did it get there. Buy a car for five hundred dollars. The 500 neon sign blinked in my head, over and over. Is that what I need to do? But how? And why? And most of all, where? The whole matter was ridiculous, and I almost pawned it off completely but on second thought, I also listened to a small voice inside me or outside me or something. And then I climbed a tree and hugged a man pillow and wrote on a mirror with lipstick and a whole host of other kooky things. So what makes this less ludicrous? I wondered…
Pots and pans clanged from the kitchen. I made my way there pondering if Lena had recovered from my second bout of birthing pains. After a week of tree climbing and false suicide jumps, I reckon she’s been on the phone with half the neighborhood trying to explain away the crazy genes of her daughter. Past experience has taught me, any conversation with Lena Hart required prep and prayer and a stiff drink. And one Xanax. And an additional one in the pocket for backup. It had been years since I’d been able to decipher her moods and I don’t remember the code book as much as I did when Mag and I were little. I entered the natural habitat of the pessimist cautiously. It was exactly as I suspected. She saw me and nearly shit a blue goose.
“Lands alive.” She said in shock. “You came out of your hole. And..and you washed your hair.” Her chin dropped and her hand lifted to hold it up. “Good Lord is that, is that—makeup?”
“Uhh-huh.” I mumbled. What’s the big deal? I prepared myself for the onslaught. And just as I knew she would, her eyes drew up in little slants of speculation.
“Where do you think you’re going all dressed up?” She said abruptly in panic. “You haven’t been out of that room in months? Why the sudden change?” Her eyes grew leery on me like a hawk waiting to pull out the claws. “Are you okay? Are you hearing things again?”
Her face said she really didn’t want to know the answer. “You—understand—what—I’m—saying?” Her voice rained down slow syllables of doubt. My eyes fluttered and did what they always do when confronting a dark cloud. They retreat in little circles, fleeing to the back of my head. The rebellious side of my namesake inside the house, inside me, acted out.
“I—wish—I—didn’t—hear—you.” The little girl shouted. Yelled. Screamed bloody murder. But that was her, inside the house. Willodean, the adult remained rooted in silence, enduring like a Willow tree.
Bending but not breaking. Broken but standing. Swaying but determined.
I sat quickly on the bar stool. It was painful like sitting on a handful of tacks, naked.
“I’m fine mother.” I said. I got up unable to sit still. I paced the kitchen, fighting the floating bubbles, the rebel cries and the insurgence of crackle crusaders pounding in my fully charged renegade heart.
“I plan on jumping out of the tree tomorrow.” I said. Sarcasm. Revelry. Flags.
Lena stopped frozen, then slammed the pot on the counter. “You think that’s funny.” Her code thermometer was spinning and I didn’t have a code book. “WHAT is wrong with you? This isn’t a joke?”
“Crazy people do that Lena.” I said shrugging. “Make jokes. Oh my God, lighten up.”
But Lena Hart was in no mood for my dark humor. She never was.
“Do I need to make you an appointment with Doc?”
“No.” I said loudly. “God. Can we just not talk about it? Just once. Okay? I just came out of my room for the first time innnn—months. I think that’s progress. I don’t need a therapist to help me put on my clothes…see?” I grabbed my shirt with my hands. “I’m fine. Pants, hair, makeup!” I pointed to each one as if I was in first grade and learned to dress myself. “Can’t I just drink some coffee or eat breakfast or do something normal?” Who was I kidding? I wasn’t normal.
Lena went rouge. Silence simmered between us. She turned and took her frustrations out on objects, banging, slamming, burning. It was pure art form in our household. A Mantle piece creatively established like a family creed, typed up, signed by an asshole lawyer and neatly framed in the living room as a reminder. It was as southern as front porches, sweet tea and saying “Hidy ya’ll.” And my mother was a master at it.
It said, “Why no, my daughter isn’t crazy. Why no, my husband doesn’t drink. Why no, I’m not keeping up with the Jones. Why no, Mag is not materialistic. Why no, nothing is wrong with our family. We have no curses, no mental illnesses, Why no, my family tree is not flawed. We are birthed from the finest of blood. blah, blah, blah. Pink Elephant!
Thank God for the left over coffee. The liquor cabinet eyes me with a demon glare and for just a second, I want to indulge, instead, I pour a full cup of coffee in hopes it will render my urges to null. I had two cups of caffeinated glory while listening to the insistent banter of banging, clanging, and slamming but mostly, the brutal silence of words not spoken. It was the pendulum on the family clock, frozen and suspended in a time warp, where my ears hear the screams of suffering inside the unspoken madrigals of harmony, inside my house of secrets. For a mere second, I lost myself in its muted madness. Finally I jerked myself out of my haunted house to find my hand trembled with the cup, spilling out drools of coffee on the counter. I got a grip just as Lena turned around. The magic number 500 appeared suddenly in my mind, again. Shut up! Go away. Again and again, 500. Buy a car for 500. As ridiculous as it sounded, I couldn’t let the notion go. I thought of the leaf crackle, the wondering tree and all the small things that have changed me in subtle ways, in only the last few weeks. They must mean something. They must. So I went for it.
“Mom…” I hesitated. “I need a car.” The room turned deadly still. Stiller than still. I try to fill the gaps of void with words to avoid falling into the abyss.
“You know Mom…so I can go to work. Move out. Get my own place.” I wait in the dead zone. I shuffle the coffee cup across the table, making noises, anything to fill the terrible void that causes my ears to bleed. My family reeked of dead zones. It was a constant effort to avoid them. Nothing existed in the dead zone. No squeaky clean dishcloth sounds, no swoosh-swoosh of water, no clanging of pots, no clinking of china, no slamming cabinets, no burnt chicken—just silence. Pure, southern as sweet tea, cut your wrist, call it a day, maddening silence.
Right when I thought I would sink into mortal despair, the insane premonition took its place in my mind as if it had a home there. The muse stood firm and blocked all channels of doubt, interceptions and debris. Hope held strong. My vision saw it before it was. A shield of faith and 500. I had to act right then and trust it or lose it forever.
“Can I borrow five hundred dollars to buy a car?” I said in one lightening breath. I had no belief of the words until they left my lips, leaving a smear of clear gloss that tasted like tart cherries. The pink elephant gasped. The little girl squealed in delight. The Amodgians lifted up in an uproar inside the house, inside me but they were unable to get out of the room, for faith held its shield and left them to bounce off its protective glare like bugs splattering a bumper. Lena spun around to face me with a look on her face I hadn’t seen before. Even the code book threw up questions marks. I couldn’t help but envision me as a little girl sitting in the wondering tree, defiantly staring her down and screaming, “I am not coming down! Not until you agree.” But I wasn’t up a tree, I was in the pessimistic lair of Lena Hart and things were different in her cave. I waited for my eyes to recoil like they always did when waiting on an answer but they didn’t roll, twinge or retreat as usual. And then I see why. They are stuck in Lena Hart’s blinding stare. She has a dishrag in one hand, a cast iron skillet in another and her jaw is gaping open like a Venus flytrap, waiting on cynical flies to land and hatch cynical babies. Then they’d rise up and take over the world, extinguish hope for good, mark it out of the dictionary, banish it forever.
“You can’
t find a car for five hundred dollars.” She said. Her tone was unbelief. “Pfffttt, you’ll be lucky to find a hubcap and four tires for five hundred dollars if that. I mean, have you seen the price of groceries now days?” She went on and on, turning ever so often to give me that parental look of you know nothing. “That’s all you need is a piece of crap car to break down on the road somewhere. Then some maniac will haul you off and…”
Oh, crap. I braced myself.
“Lord, its bad.” She said leaning on the cabinet. “Why I just saw it last week on the news, some naïve college girl. And do you know…” she pointed her finger at me sternly, “They haven’t found that girl yet. Nope. This world has gone to hell in a southern hand basket, I tell you. It wasn’t like this in my day. I didn’t smoke that marijuana stuff and drugs….no, I barely drank. Jesus. Mom. Shut up. “And your daddy and I, we want to go to Washington one day but I heard they are nothing but drug heads up there. So there goes our trip. Hell in a hand basket.”
“Oh my God, mom.” I said cutting her off, unable to take anymore. I almost missed the four walls of my miserable bedroom. It was better than this, for sure. “I know. We all know. You never done nothing. You’re a saint. You should be canonized or something, okay, okay, everyyybody knows this ‘cause you don’t shut up about it.” At this point in the conversation I am looking for dead zones to fling myself into them, on purpose. “Jesus Mom! I mean, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Throw the baby out with the bath water.” My insides were boiling over so much I had to walk the kitchen to drive it out of me.
“Well.” She said. “I never…” Her eyes glazed over. “And besides, it’s the truth. The world is dark and people are wacked.” She scanned the distance for a dark harbinger and she found one, her favorite one. “It’s going to get worse.”
And there it was. The doomsayer. Five words. Five hopeless words. My mother’s lack of hope always puzzled me. For as long as I remember she’s been this way. No matter what positive conversation one might have—it always turned to despair in the end. The same disappointing, bubble popping dark cloud of cynicism.
“It’s going to get worse.” The world according to Lena Hart always gets worse. I fight the film of hopelessness like a deathly fog drifting my way. I focus my thoughts. Faith and 500—Faith and 500. I say it over and over hoping it wasn’t just some illusive chamber of my mind playing tricks or a fake room inside the house, inside me. Besides, I learned a long time ago to never—ever, in a million dark years—to answer Lena’s doomsday statements. Pandora’s Box has nothing on her. Lena lamentations are devastating.
Jesus loves me. This I know.
In my vision, I sat in the wondering tree, felt the breeze on my skin and watched hope arrive on the horizon. A leaf crackle, tree climbing, crumb filled hope.
“Mommmm.” I said in an outburst. “Five hundred. That’s it. I don’t need anything fancy.” My voice was whiny and pleading. “Just something to get me here and there.” It was hard talking to a cloud of doom. I felt like I was five years old begging for a piece of gum at the candy counter. Saying the words out loud made them real to me, as if they connected one to another, manifested a map, lighted a pathway and brought the vision to life, inside me, in my gifted eyes and hearing ears. It was beyond me and bigger than me. More than me. Made for me. Lena Hart was steadily scrubbing the dishes. Soap particles flew across the room, little bubbles filled with rainbows only to be popped by a wand of sharp cynicism that shattered them, pop, pop, and pop.
“—fancy?” She said turning around. “Five hundred dollars? I say not.” Her voice flattens full throttle. Her hands scrub viciously, expelling grime, food particles and my ridiculous words. Forks, spoons and metal pans land like bullets inside the stainless steel sink, killing my hope, my dreams, my faith and 500.
“Why don’t you let your daddy find you something?” She held up a soapy coffee mug. “Besides, if you want a piece of crap, you can always get that from your Uncle. And from the look of his yard…” she rolled her eyes at me, “he’s got plenty of junk.” Lena thought salvage yard southerners should keep their junk hidden unlike my uncle, who thought it was part of his prideful heritage. Of course, I knew what Lena was doing. She was trying to alter my course, shift my fate to a realistic road and make a sweet crumb of hope, taste bitter. I leave my body momentarily to gather my wits. I feel the hot shine of the sun on my face while sitting in the wondering tree. I linger to the back woods behind our house and smell the fresh scent of pine. I see the glow of red eyes and tiny clawed feet and hear laughter. Clang! Bang! Two realms emerge. The adult and the child. My body is invaded. A seven year old crosses paths with a twenty-two year old and together they throw a temper tantrum inside the lair of the pessimist. The past mingled with the present. Everything was the same. Everything was different.
“I DON’T want to ask Dad.” I said slamming the porcelain coffee cup on the table. Lena spun around not amused with my backtalk. She pulled her bangs off her eyes leaving a trail of soap bubbles in the strands. “I don’t want one of Uncles cars.”
My heart beat erratically. “I can do this. I can. I know you don’t think I can—but I can and I will. I know I have problems. God…I mean, I know.” I looked at Lena, stared right through the gaps that separated us. My hands rubbed my jeans till my knuckles burned. “Seriously. I know I’m not perfect. I’m messed up. Shit. I know that. But at least give me some credit Lena.” Her face sunk and her eye flinched. She hated being called Lena. She no doubt held it against me but she never understood me anyway, so what did it matter. “If you don’t like me, fine. Whatever. But at least, at least… I’m trying to get through this. One day at a time. That’s all I can do. You think I like being divorced?” Eye to eye we stared. Her chest breathed in deep heaves.
“I don’t. I hate it. But yet here I am. I’m here. I’m alone. I gotta deal with it. How?” I shrugged. “I have no idea. But I got it whether I want it or not. That’s it. Happy now?”
Lena has a downward look that says I must have hit the crazy button inside me and she longs to know where it is, so she can turn it off. Dismantle it. Take it apart—fix it for good. I think she’s spent her life looking for that button.
Faith and 500. Faith and 500. I say it in my mind to convince myself that the words are real. I hear them, feel their fit and try them on for size. Doubts filter in. The dark days of youth come to mind. Slumber, pitch, shadows, voices. I retrace my lost days in elementary, junior high, high school, those awful, brutal days when I wondered hallways with no memory, couldn’t find my locker, brain fog, afraid to say anything to anyone, always late for class, unable to tell the teacher why. I didn’t have pens, paper, no supplies. I came to class unprepared mostly. Some days I couldn’t get out of bed, and I’d miss the bus. Other days when I did manage to find my locker, it was a garbage dump, scattered homework assignments, candy bar wrappers, empty cigarette packs, and other objects I didn’t remember. If the Amodgians did anything to me, they must have started early on, and used memory muzzling on me—and it certainly worked. I was a mess. I remember closing the locker and wondering if I’d ever find it again. I wondered what could possibly be wrong with me to make me this way. I blamed myself. I was simply different, badly different, messed up. My memory lapsed when it wanted, and how it wanted. My mind had a mind of its own. “What do you do with your school books? Eat them?” Lena would say.
“I don’t know.” I said. And it was the truth. I had no idea. It was like this other person was using my body, doing things with it and didn’t bothering telling me. That girl doesn’t seem real to me now. The fog is beginning to lift a little and I can actually see things I couldn’t see before. No one actually knew the real me, not even Maw Sue, although she knew me better than others. I felt alone, separated, distanced from everyone in the world as no soul could understand.
The little girl inside me, on the porch, in my past, she vowed to never let go and always find her way back. But the sad girl, the ugly
girl, the girl that didn’t fit anywhere—found it difficult to hold on. I wanted to simply vanish. Not exist. I was dying inside for someone to love me, accept me, see me. Really, really see me. Yet at the same time, the fear of doing so, the fear of exposure, of rejection was overwhelming and too much for the girl who wrote grotesque poems of dying and fantasized about her funeral and if anyone would bother to come. Clang. Bang. I had forgotten where I was. Going out of mind in the pessimistic lair is dangerous. I had to snap back quickly. When I did, I find Lena slit eyed and defeated. I decided to try again. One last time.
“Okay mom. Listen…here’s the deal.” I threw up my hands for lack of anything else to throw. “You either trust me or you don’t. Simply as that. You either let me borrow the money or you don’t. Either way—I’m going to get on with my life…I have too.” Faith and 500. Faith and 500. The words, the vision echoed in my head over and over, giving me hope with each breath, each startling look. It was surreal. I pondered the words, ate them, consumed them, let them transform. I spoke my peace. I let my voice be heard. It was like breathing for the first time. The words mine. Foreign but mine. The voice, familiar yet vague as if locked away for ages, without access, until now. I sat in amazement and see my reflection in an aluminum pan hanging on a prong against the kitchen wall. The girl I loved. The girl I hated.
WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) Page 13