She could hardly stand to look at me. That night I lay in bed so full of hate for myself, and with longing for her to love me, that I hit myself in the face and pulled my own hair. I cursed myself, sobbing into my pillow while I thought how my ma would never love me again, how she’d never, ever look at me and be glad I was her daughter.
I lay up there under the eaves all alone, wishing I’d never been born, moaning and crying in pure misery. There was a deep quiet in the house I’d never felt before, a sorrow like someone had died. I waited for Crystal to come up, waited and waited, until it got so late I realized that Ma must have made a pallet on the floor for her downstairs. I was too filthy for my own sister to sleep with, and that sent me into a new fit of wailing. In all my life I’d never slept in that bed alone, and there I was, left for lost, forsaken by my own family. I thought I could hear my folks talking down in the kitchen, their voices going back and forth. I wanted them so bad, but at the same time I dreaded having to look them in the face. The open window tempted me. I pictured them all hearing the thud, running out the front door, and seeing me spattered like a pumpkin on the ground.
The sound of the car starting woke me the next morning. It was a bright day, like nothing at all was wrong in the world. The car idled awhile, sputtered, then headed down the hill. I didn’t stir from the bed. Before long I heard the pump working out in the yard, the kitchen door slam, the squawk of the chickens. I was dying of hunger by then, but I couldn’t bring myself to go downstairs. Jasper’s bicycle rattled down the hill. A metal pot clanked in the kitchen. Everybody was going about their business, and there I was rooted to the sheets.
I cringed when I heard footsteps creaking up the stairs. I slunk down and pulled the covers up to my chin. I could have died of shame when my ma opened the door and came in with a bowl of oatmeal. She looked so tired, it broke my heart. I didn’t say a word, just peeked over the top of the blanket.
“Sit up here and eat something,” she said in a cold voice.
I scooted up in the bed. The smell of those oats made my mouth water. She handed them down to me, along with a spoon. She’d put milk and sugar on top, the way I liked. “Blow on it for me,” I wanted to say like I had when I was little. I wanted to be her baby again, her little girl. But I just held the bowl in my lap, feeling the warmth through the blankets on my belly, where that baby was.
Ma sat on the edge of the bed. I wanted to throw myself on her, to bury my head in her lap. Instead I leaned against her ever so slightly, so she wouldn’t notice.
“Your daddy left,” she said in the same cold voice. “He’s gone to pick up your cousin Gordon. They driving up to Tulsa. Going to find Abel and bring him back.”
ONE OF MY jobs was taking care of the chickens. I had to feed and water them, muck out their coop, and collect the eggs. Every morning I dragged myself out of bed when it was just getting light and walked on down to the edge of the yard where the outhouse and chicken coop were about twenty feet apart.
The hens were locked up at night so no varmints could get them. By the time I got there they were raring to get out, crowding the door and fussing for the kitchen scraps I brought. I threw the food down, then went in to the boxes to get the eggs. A few hens were always still sitting. It was dark in there, and it smelled like the chickens, which—you might be surprised to know—is a nice smell, like a warm pillow. Makes you want to curl up and take a nap.
Anyway, I was still sleepy, so I liked being in there where it still felt like night. It had been about two days since my daddy went to Tulsa to fetch Abel, and right then I was happy for any chance to be out of the house, because I couldn’t bear for my ma to look at me, to see me in my shame. I put the eggs in a metal pail, then I stuck my hand under the hens that were still fluffed out on their nests. They were feisty, and might give you a peck or two.
I’d just begun to muck out the old hay and chicken shit when Jasper stuck his head in the door. He must have been about thirteen then. His voice was just starting to change and he’d grown about ten inches in the last year. “Better get your tail in the house, Toad,” he said. “Dad’s come home.” He kicked at the chickens that clustered around his feet, pecking at his shoelaces. “He’s got Abel.”
It’s funny what you remember. I pulled the rake one last time across the ground and, after all this time—over sixty years—I still can see those lines in the dirt. The little grooves perfectly spaced, the wavy pattern I’d made, the clean floor. I don’t know why it gave me such pleasure, maybe because it was the last few seconds of peace before I’d have to set the rake back in the corner, leave the dark henhouse, step out in the morning sun, cross the yard, and walk back into the house to face the music.
Ma and Crystal was there in the kitchen, getting ready to make soap. The windows were steamed and the air was thick with the greasy smell of tallow. Crystal met my eye with a look that said she was damn glad she wasn’t standing in my shoes. They both were sweating.
“They up in the sitting room,” Ma said. “Go on in there.”
The sitting room was really a screened-in porch at the front of the house. It was nice in the summer and evenings, when the breeze blew through. Now it felt like a gas chamber. I made my way toward it like I was a dead man walking, and really that’s how I felt, like I’d given up everything, just surrendered to my fate. I raised my arm, took hold of the doorknob, pushed the door open, stepped inside. The hardest part was knowing they were looking at me, forcing myself to raise my eyes and see their faces.
They must have driven all night. My daddy, who was always so careful about his looks, hadn’t shaved. I was surprised to see that his beard was gray near his temples and on his chin. He was a thin man anyway, but now his cheeks were sunk in and his clothes seemed to hang on him. He was tired, too, you could see that. All of it made him look like a hobo, like those bums we were seeing more and more often passing through town. But bad as he looked, he was nothing next to Abel.
It hadn’t even been a week since he’d left, but he looked like a different person. He stood up against the wall with his legs together and his arms by his sides like he did the first time I’d ever seen him at Ruby’s wedding. I remembered how he’d looked like a line somebody had marked on the wall, straight and narrow.
But his face! Oh Lord, his face. An outbreak of fever blisters covered his mouth and chin. From far away you might think he’d been eating a mess of berries, but up close you saw they were big open sores, swollen and oozing. His skin was deathly pale. Even his freckles were washed out, the color of some grub you’d find under a rock. And his eyes. They were sunk deep back in his head and they glittered like he was sick. You couldn’t tell the expression. They were like a wounded animal’s—a badger or a bear. Only other time I’d seen someone look like that was when my cousin Davis had run up from the river to get help when the man he worked with at the sawmill cut his hand off at the wrist. Abel had that same ravaged look, like he’d witnessed something he’d never get over.
We didn’t say nothing, didn’t make any move toward each other. Abel wouldn’t take his eyes off my face. Much as I was suffering, my heart went out to him, honest to God it did. You could see in one second how bad he was hurting.
My daddy leaned against the windowsill, his arms crossed over his chest. He said in a weary voice, “Toad, Abel here says that baby ain’t his.”
There’s times when it’s no use talking. Words weren’t made for those times. I was so crushed that I’d brought my father to look at me like this, to see me in this light. Him, a man who’d married my mother and had all of us right and proper, had brought us up and worked hard all his life, had never raised a hand to any of us, or showed us a bad example in any way. I turned my miserable face toward him and he knew without my saying that what Abel said was true, that I’d defiled our home and family in the worst possible way, not once but twice, with two different men.
I begged with my face for my daddy to do whatever he wanted
with me because I was pure out of energy—to lie, to scheme, to cry, or to explain. Even to live. I was too weary and worn out. Whatever my daddy had in mind when he made me, I wished he could undo it now. Say, I made a mistake, and stamp me out. That’s what I tried to tell him with my face, without saying the words.
It must have been a pitiful sight, because Abel gave a little whimper. I’d almost forgot him standing over there against the wall, but now he made a move toward me, like he was going to catch me from falling. My daddy held up his hand to stop him. I wish I’d never lived to see his face when he looked from Abel to me. I had no business being alive, no business being on this earth with other people.
“Get on out of here, Toad,” he said. “Get out of my sight and leave us be.”
I DON’T KNOW how long they talked in the sitting room. Not long. I walked out the front door and over to the side of the house. I was sick in the weeds there, my hands on my knees, the smell of the dry grass rising in the heat while I heaved. My eyes and nose ran. I went over to the car parked beside the house and sat down on the running board. Wiped my face with the hem of my skirt. Hung my head between my legs. Looked down at the dust.
They didn’t see me when they came out, but I watched Abel walk down the hill, that straight body moving out of sight. This baby wasn’t his, but it could have been, the way he’d been carrying on. I thought with shame how well I knew his body—his narrow ass with a dimple on the side of each cheek, the red hair on his legs, the knobby bones of his ankles, and his nipples, pink and tender as a little girl’s on his broad white chest.
My father saw me when he turned back toward the house. All of a sudden there he was, his shadow falling over me.
“What you doing sitting there?”
I looked up at him, the underside of his jaw, his head against the sky. “Nothing. Just sitting.”
He put his hands in his pockets and his foot on the running board next to me. He was wearing his Sunday boots, pointed with thin, oiled laces. They were scuffed now, dusty. I wondered how long he had been wearing those clothes, how he’d managed to find Abel and bring him back.
“That boy is one in a million,” he said, looking off across the sky like he was scanning it for signs of a storm. “He saved your life. You’re luckier than you deserve, and don’t you ever forget it.” He gave me one last look of sad, quiet disgust before he turned and walked away.
Me and Abel were married two weeks later, just like we planned. In my ma and daddy’s eyes, he could do no wrong. They loved him ‘til their dying day.
THE PROPOSAL
I expected Vitus an hour or so after dinner, like usual. Last night he was a little late. I started to worry, wondering what he might be up to. I went to the sliding glass door a couple of times to look out over the courtyard. Nothing but a few moths fluttering around the porch light.
No sooner did I sit back down than here he comes. He was carrying something, but when I went to let him in he put his hands behind his back so I couldn’t see what it was. He bowed real low. “Good evening, madame,” he said. “Tonight is very special.”
He sat me down on the edge of the bed, pushed the armchairs to the side of the room, and spread a tablecloth on the floor in front of the TV. He set a big basket covered in colored paper and tied with ribbon right in the middle. He lit candles in glass holders, four of them, and set them on each corner of the cloth. Can you imagine? When he was done, he dimmed the lights. He got down on the floor there by the cloth and patted the ground next to him.
“Come down here, Woozy,” he beckoned. “Come join me.”
Don’t think it was easy getting down on the floor, but after a lot of grunting and groaning, I managed. I felt so silly with my legs splayed out.
“It’s a picnic. A surprise from me to you.”
He got out his pocketknife and commenced to splitting the red cellophane on the basket. Inside was all manner of treats—three different kinds of sausage, two chunks of cheese, crackers, a packet of pistachios, dried apricots, chocolate-covered almonds, and more that I’m not remembering right now. It was all laid out in a bed of straw, and you could tell that none of it was cheap—even the basket, which was big enough to hold a good-size turkey.
I oohed and aahed and picked everything up and admired it. But that wasn’t all, because Vitus winked at me and reached around the corner of the bed and brought out a bottle of wine! He pulled two plastic medicine cups out of his pocket, twisted the top off the bottle, and poured us each a cup.
I was nervous about drinking the wine with my meds and all, but Vitus clucked his tongue and shook his finger and raised his cup in the air. “To us!” he toasted, and there was just no way I couldn’t drink to that, so I tipped back my plastic cup and took a slug. Not bad at all. He filled us up again, then he used his pock-etknife to chunk up the sausage and cheese.
We had so much fun! The candles shimmered and shadows played on all the walls so you could almost forget where you were.
“Pretend we’re on the banks of the Danube with the trees all in blossom!” Vitus said. He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “There are swans on the river,” he whispered, gesturing toward the sliding glass door. “Sailing so white and graceful downstream.”
My head was swimming. It was magic, like a dream. Every time I finished one snack, Vitus fixed me another. I liked the summer sausage and the darker cheese with the butterscotch flavor. I drank four or five medicine cups of wine. Wonderful as it all was, I couldn’t get comfortable on the floor. My legs got pins and needles and my back started feeling like it would crack in half.
“This is a lot of fun, Vitus, but I need a chair,” I finally told him.
He pushed my chair back to the middle of the room. I had a devil of a time getting up, but he helped me, and what a relief it was to have my butt on a seat and my feet on the floor. “Go on and get your chair,” I told him. “That’s enough now. Come on up here with me.”
I was just getting situated with my crackers and wine when I saw Vitus down on all fours, crawling toward me! It scared the be-jesus out of me!
“What’s wrong?” I cried, sending all my snacks flying. Just my luck. During one of the happiest moments of my life, the man I loved decided to have a heart attack.
But Vitus only smiled. He raised up off his hands and walked the last few paces on his knees until he was right up next to me, close enough to lean against my legs. “I’m fine, Woozy,” he said, beaming up at me. “I’ve got something to ask you.”
Did my heart ever pound! I saw what was coming and it was like running flat out into a wall. I couldn’t get a breath, couldn’t do anything but gasp and put my hands over my ears. Don’t ask me why, but I was scared to death of hearing what he was about to say.
“Cora darling, will you marry me?”
Well, it was right out of the movies. It just didn’t seem real. I knew what I was supposed to say and what was supposed to happen next—I’d seen it a hundred times, read about it again and again. But, I have to tell you, at eighty-two you don’t need those kinds of fairy tales, or at least I don’t. I love Vitus with my heart and soul, but after everything what’s happened in my life, I don’t need to make a show of it.
I took his hand and pressed it between my own. “We don’t have to get married, Vitus,” I said while I stroked his arm. “It don’t matter to me. It ain’t like we’re going to have kids or anything.”
Damned if a little spot of red didn’t bloom in each of his cheeks until his whole face was flaming. His hand went limp.
“Listen here, Vitus. I want us to be together. I want you and me to be in my house. To sit us down at that table in my kitchen and have our morning coffee. I want us to be able to walk out the back door and across the lawn and look over the fence there, down the hill toward the train tracks. It’s a peaceful feeling, Vitus. And I want us to have our own bed, a brand-new mattress where nobody ever slept before that you and me can climb in
to at night and sleep side by side with the window open and the smell of jasmine coming in on the night air. Fresh sheets, all cotton. When I wake up at night, there you’ll be. We’ll have the sweetest dreams, Vitus, and we’ll live out our lives there, just you and me.”
His eyes got moist. He blinked like words failed him. My heart filled to the brim. I leaned over to kiss him, but he brought his finger up to my lips. “I still want to get married,” he said, quiet but stubborn. “I want to be husband and wife—legal, in the eyes of the world.”
I’d hurt his feelings, the last thing I wanted. He’s everything and more I’ve ever dreamed of in a man. I’d never have another chance like this. And if I don’t marry him, somebody else will, and fast.
“I’m crazy about you, Vitus. If that’s what you want, then let’s get married.”
He took me in his arms and my doubts disappeared like spit on an iron.
“What a moment this is, Vitus. I’ll never forget it. But everything’s moving so fast. This is a big change.”
He finally got up off those poor knees of his and hobbled to the chair. When he’d sat down, he leaned closer to me and winked. “A big adventure. We’ll have the time of our lives.”
Well, this is just what I’d wanted, but now that it was happening, I was wary as a cat. Don’t ask me why. Maybe I was afraid to be happy, afraid that once I let myself it’d be taken away and I’d be in a worse fix than ever. On the other hand, I didn’t want to drive Vitus away. Let me tell you, I was torn in two. “We haven’t known each other very long,” I said to gain time. “You sure you want to rush into this?”
“I’ve learned to listen to my heart, Cora. A long time ago I decided to say yes whenever life gives me a wonderful opportunity. Why waste time when we can be happy?” He leaned back in his chair and sized me up, top to bottom. “What is your heart telling you, my dear? To play it safe and stay here, in this room, for the rest of your life? Or to take a chance on love and make a life with me in our own home?”
Breaking Out of Bedlam Page 21