The room is quiet now. The somber kind of quiet, after someone tells a lie, when pink elephants lurk, hide and grow. Dell snubbed the cigarette onto Marilyn’s breast and walked towards the refrigerator. She pulled out a Schlitz malt liquor can. It was ten o’clock. When it came to drinking, Dell didn’t use a time clock, just her own clock. The distinct click, pop and fizz was as familiar to me as my own skin. Click. Pop. Fizz. Day after day. Night after night. Liquor high on the grocery list as flour.
I hear Maw Sue’s words in my ears. The enemy has an addiction waiting for you. Don’t fall into its trap. Something unfurled in my stomach. And then I remembered why I came here to begin with. “When is Maw Sue coming home?” I said ready to get answers. Real truth. My voice was as solemn as a funeral eulogy. It triggered the shadows to come out to taunt me, tell me what I already knew, but feared.
“She’s not coming back.” The shadow said. Dell chugged her beer. Papa Hart glanced at her, then me. He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t have too. His expression said it all. I-don’t-give-a-shit. The whole family is nuts. Where is my whiskey? It screamed anonymously in the face of pink, yellow and blue elephants, the whole freaking circus who made an appearance.
“Soon honey, she’s coming home soon.” Dell said glancing at me, then Papa Hart.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” She said. “She’s a tough old woman.” Her lips spoke the truth but her eyes leaked the truth beneath the truth, the horrible layer of pink elephants no one talks about. The thick, fat layer everyone covers up, hides beneath the skin, beneath the surface of the soul, beneath the hairline crack where things are not as black and white as they seem. Maw Sue said everyone has a hair line crack just waiting to fracture. It’s a fragile glass vase encased inside our hearts and it holds the truth about ourselves. If it breaks, in the least bit, the glass cuts us to pieces from the inside, out, and yet no one will ever know, because we are bleeding on the inside where no one can see. And right now, I felt my glass breaking, and slowly cutting me to death and I could do nothing about it.
“Now you run along, Willodean.” Dell said. She crushed the can between her hands. “Maw Sue will be home soon enough. Go draw her a picture or something.” Her mouse feet shuffled back to the other side of the bar. She sat in her bar stool and turned the tiny TV volume up until the voices drowned the room. Then she lit her puffing stick. Papa Hart discretely disappeared. Maw Sue would rather have herbs or rocks, or write a poem. Not a stupid picture and besides, I can’t draw dirt. If there’s one thing Maw Sue taught me—it’s use the gifts you’re given. Don’t hone in on something you weren’t born to do and waste time. My storytelling gift was an inherited trait from her and Papa Hart, both born storytellers of the family. She didn’t like giving him any credit whatsoever and Papa Hart felt the same about her. I kept my opinions about each of them to myself to not stir trouble.
“You will make a great fiction writer one day Willodean, with all those stories in your head.” She told me once. “Now unlike myself, you are the type to do something with it.”
“Fiction?” I replied. “There is nothing fiction about my stories. It’s real.”
How could she not know that? “It’s real as real can get.” I said again. My voice dressed up in a black veil, black dress, black hose and black shoes.
“Quote the raven, Nevermore!” I said quoting Poe. I have no idea why. My voice was serious. Monotone dread. In my vision, I saw a woman, a Barbie doll of vivid sorrow. A lady in dark clothing, like me dressed in black and surrounded by shadows swirling while she walked to her own funeral.
“You know what I mean” Maw Sue said. “—good story is a good story no matter how it came about, fiction or non.” She laughed then frowned almost in the same expression, if one could do such a thing. It was a common bond. A shared sight of things we knew. It scared her. It scared me. Together our visions saw the horrible. I was the black dress Barbie doll, a plastic heart, a plastic life, a plastic everything. I was standing over the freshly dug grave, dirt scattered everywhere, the ground hungry and waiting to swallow. My plastic black heels sank into the rich soil. I reached with my plastic arms and my molded hands till I reached my frazzled hair on top of my frazzled skull. In a knee jerk reaction, I plucked off my plastic head and held it out to my side. Just like kids pluck off the heads of their dolls. A multitude of Amodgian shadows swirled out from my neck hole. When I can stand no more of their fear, their dreadful blackness, I chunk my plastic head of frazzled curses into the empty hole in the ground. When the plastic head hits the body—gifts and curses spill out. Unused, undone, unfulfilled. My black dressed body leaned forward and fell—falling and falling and falling, slowly as if time had to catch up, while the darkness and held me, shadow after shadow, energy and lift, yearning for death, wanting death, and finally receiving my death. The whole closed up, the dirt swallowed us all and then my eyes spun open to light. Maw Sue and I were wide eyed at each other for what we had seen.
“So Maw Sue…how is it fiction if I see it in my head?” I said. Her eyes flickered with a wild that was not of this world. She didn’t have an answer so we simply stared into each other’s wildness, seeing the wild in each other, yet neither knew how to tame it. And to be truthful, if we wanted to. Maw Sue always said to tame something wild in nature is to kill it alive and only when it dies will it be free and wild again. Maw Sue struggled a wildness in her, as much as I did—the real and the unreal. Neither of us were able to tell the difference between the two. This was our curse.
I decided I would write her a story. Lord knows, I’ve heard enough of them to write fact or fiction to last a lifetime. I’ve heard fishing stories, epic war battles, dramatic narratives, biblical analogies, poems, fibs, death plots, love sagas, biographies, memoirs, cautionary tales, race car speed demons, outlaws gone bad, some hogwash and boatloads of cock and bull.
In Pine Log, stories traveled like wild fire, porch to tinker shop, through the rough thickets, across the oil tops, to the highways, pig trails and switch backs. It hit the barber shop, and dilly-dallied from house to house, neighbor to neighbor, and on more than one occasion, in a pulpit on Sundays, and lastly, if it reached Tessie Pearson’s house—it was pure legend. And when I say legend I mean, gossip. That woman made it her life’s work to know every bodies business but her own and she made sure others, knew others business as well. If Tessie didn’t know—the world was coming to an end, sure as a bear shits in the woods. That’s what Papa Hart said. I think the only commonality Maw Sue and Papa Hart had, was their dislike of Tessy Pearson.
I learned a lot of wisdom on front and back porches. Stories have messages, underlying insight of sorts, enough to make a person think and change. Stories packaged with wisdom from age and experience, lessons from the past carried over to future generations—except the hogwash. And the cock and bull. That was the liquor talking. ‘Ole timers say cock and bull doesn’t make a lick of sense, stammers around, knocks things over, gets loudly obnoxious and falls down drunker than that fellow they call Cooter Brown. I have yet to meet this Cooter fellow, but from the way everyone talks about him, he is mighty popular. You’d think as many times as he fell down, he’d learn to stay away from the liquor. Growing up can’t be easy. I’m beginning to think alcohol is a slow toxin to drink so they’ll forget they are adults. I can think of no other reason for their behavior.
Maybe Maw Sue is right—maybe one day I’ll write stories and be an author of books and stuff. I can think of nothing better if I could sit still long enough. Stories hold a magical power over me. I feel as though everything around me is connected, divine. The rain, clouds, sun, stars, trees, flowers, darkness and light. Come to think of it, it it weren’t for storytelling—I might fall apart. I ran off the porch but before I could hit the dirt, Dell yelled out the window. “And Willodean…” she said looking through the tiny mesh squares. “Don’t go in Maw Sue’s room.”
“Okay.” I said not really caring. “I never go inside that ro
om anyway.”
“Well good.” She said and then disappeared inside the kitchen. Little bells and whistles went off inside the house, inside me. Two of Maw Sue’s husbands died in her bedroom. Why on earth would I go in there? I’ve been inside the room while she exorcised her demons through her candle ritual. That was enough to keep me away forever and a day. I have enough dark rooms of my own. Dell sure was suspicious and adamant? What are they hiding? My mind went to wondering and I wasn’t even sitting in the wondering tree.
Bones
Crumbs are falling like rejected stars out of the night sky, tangling with the atmosphere, and arriving to earth with messages. Some are with light and airy, snow melting on my tongue, energy and hope, and others are spiked to wound and cut. Maw Sue said they come in their own time, their own place, their own way. She was right about that. Indeed, my life is changing, crumb by crumb, memory by childhood memory, day by day. I am so different than the crazy divorcee that lived with her parents only a year ago. Time is slow and challenging now, allowing everything to come into focus, a choice to be made each time. Before it was all or nothing, full throttle or sink in despair. I’m a little balanced now and find it odd as if I’m waiting for the preverbal chaos to descend, stir and destroy, take me back to where I was.
I have a cute little rent house on the outskirts of town. It has a small yard with a privacy fence and a lush evergreen garden I can get lost in. It’s small but tangled and when I venture down its path, it’s a maze of forest and trees that seem to multiply. I walk barefoot because it makes me remember my childhood. The delicate blades of green grass like tickles between my toes. The smells are intoxicating. Sweet succulent aroma of wildflowers, honeysuckle vines, tree bark, moon, stars, earth and sky. I have more good days now, than bad. One morning I awoke to someone chopping onions in my kitchen. It freaked me out, so I tip-toed through the living room, to the kitchen but no one was there. I heard the chopping sound again and jumped. It came from the window. I got closer to inspect and it was a mockingbird just tapping over and over again, seeing its reflection.
Spindly garden vines attach their fingers to what they can reach, climbing upwards like leaf ladders. Each morning I sit in my pajamas on a bench near the garden and close to the house. I drink a cup of coffee and listen to the blue jays talk amongst themselves or watch the blue birds splashing in the concrete bath. Creatures creep and crawl, buzz and chirp, slipping up and down branches and rustling through leaves. At night, it’s another world as if the lesser light transformed it at dusk by a cloak and veil. I stare with childlike eyes into the dark mesh of sky lit up with diamonds and the enormous moon which affectionately garnered my full, devoted attention as a child, and here lately, the same. The only thing missing is a wondering tree. I ask the man in the moon to help me find the little girl again, the one I left behind, sitting in the tree, or hidden inside the house, inside me. Just imagining what I might face, the unknowns, sends me into a palpable panic. Sometime last year, the therapist told me I was to deal with my feelings. Deal. Not react. Emotions were wild and loose inside me, roaring waterfalls uncontainable, destructive.
Seeing a therapist was a last ditch effort of my parents, in an attempt to straighten me out as if therapists hold magic wands, that instantly transform and cure people. Of course, it was a top secret mission in my family. Lena Hart couldn’t stand the notion of anyone in town finding out. I overheard Lena tell dad, “It won’t last. She’ll be out the door in no time. There is nothing wrong with her. Just divorce trauma. She’ll get over it.” It backfired. Lena about had a stroke. Instead of bolting as Lena suspected I would, I found therapy illuminating, plus finding out it rubbed her the wrong way, gave me a smug satisfaction, I hadn’t had since roller derby.
“What’d ya’ll talk about in there?” Lena would ask on the drive home. This was long before I climbed the wondering tree, rescued the crackle or bought Annie. It was during my lost days. Ups and downs, extremes, pain wild and numbing, dreams and heartache, pain and more pain, everything ran together, black and white, grays. I barely remember now—just smudges in my memory all ran together, chaos, mind churning, black and dark, out of control.
“Mm—I dunno. Stuff. Me, childhood…”
“What kind of stuff?” Lena said as her voice changed. Her eyes went slant and she’d stare at me a lot while she probed for answers. “Some things are not anyone’s business Willodean. You talk about yourself—Branson, marriage, your problems, all that crap but the rest of the family, like me and your daddy got nothing to do with it, you hear?”
You have everything to do with this. My heart flinched and I didn’t know why, just a tiny flutter and then back to beating. For the short time I was in therapy, I did learn things about myself, things I hadn’t before, or maybe I did, but I put them away. Come to find out, all those television sets in my head, those radios talking, and other voices need an outlet. I have such an influx of information in my head, it has nowhere to go. Nowhere to land. No place to park itself and form. It has no creative outlet upon which to manufacture itself. Go figure.
And since it has nowhere to go—it spins in chaos. Inside the house inside me. Me. I am the chaos. The first time the therapist mentioned it, I thought of Maw Sue, her warnings about channeling the gift, controlling the mind thoughts. How to do that is lost to me, buried in a room somewhere inside the house.
I called the therapist Doc, although her real name was Patricia Beaker. After several sessions, Doc told me I should release the material in my head by journaling, and it would also help to form the memories I have lost. It was better than taking a pill. The letters that formed words that formed thoughts in my mind to spin chaos, now find rest on the blue line of my spiral notebook, a bench marker, a landmark in order to help me find my way back. And then, out of the blue sky, Lena jerked me out of a session, paid the bill and that was the end of it. Therapy was over. On the way home, she told me I should be cured by now.
Lena-ology 101. Uh...alrighty.
I’ve been out of my parent’s house just long enough to remember what being alone feels like. Alone. I hate that word. It’s even scarier now that I’m on my own. No man to save me, rescue me, verbally abuse me. I am forced to come to terms with me. Myself. And I. This alone is enough to send me packing and running. Doc says I can’t run anymore. I’m in a place of confrontation. She said I can run, of course, it’s a choice, but I’ll circle the same mountain over and over until I take a different path and confront whatever is making me run. I’ve never been here, this place, me, myself, all alone, without a man, without a relationship, without someone waiting in the wings, to save me, rescue me, love me, and hate me, anything but alone. The stillness is akin to dying, or feels like it. It is hard to move forward. To know what to do next. It’s as if I’m waiting on some clearance method to engage and give me permission. I’m stuck it seems. Stuck. With no tree, no web, no crackle—just me and the house inside me. Just me and my man pillow. Alone. I hate that word.
I should be thankful, nonetheless. I have a good job and it keeps me busy. I’m a customer service representative at the bank. It pays the bills, plus it keeps my mind from dwelling that I’m single, alone, without a man. Doomed to be a garden lady who talks to birds. I also discovered the world has no favor on singles. Everybody is a couple, a plateau of twos, two plates, two glasses, double beds, reservations for two, matinee for two, blah-dee-blah-blah. Singles are an outcast. We are scarred, marked, damaged. People look at us with strange faces as if we are terribly barren, separate, unrepairable and dysfunctional without a mate. “Oh…poor thing” they say, “I’ll pray for you to find someone.” Or “I know a guy to fix you up with.” Or “Honey child, you need to find a man.” Or “It’s been how long since you’ve had sex?” The sex one usually sends them into a tizzy and they declare me as damaged as they come, top of the heap.
Not once do they talk about me as a woman, a whole person, and what I have to offer. It’s always about what I’m missing, what I lack, what I
NEED! Need. I hate that word too and have added it to my repulsed list of hate words banned from my dictionary, scratched out, cursed. The main topic of conversation is finding a nice man, hooking me up with a good man, what I’ll do when I find the right man, not making a mistake and dating the wrong man, dating several men at one time, going to church to find a good man, and lastly, and most desperately of all, and only as a last resort, hitting the bars to find any man. Prerequisite? Breathing.
GOD! It’s no wonder women are pressured to mate and end up totally screwed and marrying the wrong men. We listen to other people’s advice when we should trust ourselves. They don’t have to bear the results of those decisions, we do. I swear if one more coworker tries to set me up on a blind date again, I’m going to jerk them over this desk and hip whip the hell out of them, Midge Mayhem style. I mean, for Pete’s sakes—I barely know who I am—so what makes them think I have the time, the effort or the freaking brain power to get to know some other stranger and kiss his ass so he can love me back?
“But don’t you miss being intimate with a man?” they ask. Intimate? What the fuck is that? I know sex. I don’t have a damn clue what intimacy is. What is love for that matter? Do we know? All the dating advice chit-chat is driving me nuts. The alone time is driving me nuts. It makes me think too much and when I think too much, things get out of control. But other times, in the quiet moments, when I am at my most peaceful self—she slips in.
The little girl tracks me down inside the house, in the Seven room, mostly. We crawl up inside our crackle shell and ponder things. We try to sort things out from the perspective we see, feel, and hear. She takes my hand sometimes, and we wander the house, through various rooms to sort and seek, learn and remember, explore. The Seven room is our favorite because both of us can’t wait to be whole and complete, fingers touching, Seven. Sometimes, it seems so far away, a twinkle of star barely visible, fading into the night.
WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) Page 19