by Tawni O'Dell
She sits in the middle of Mom’s rug and looks up at me with her coppery eyes and nods.
I leave and lock the door behind me. Our house is very old and the two upstairs bedrooms have doors that can be latched from the outside but not from inside. This has always given me the creeps.
I’m halfway down the stairs when she starts to cry and scream for me. I put on my coat, hat, and gloves, grab Dad’s dinner pail, and run for my bike.
I’m a strong kid. Tough as wire. A real tomboy. Even with the weight of Dad’s dinner pail slipped over my handlebar banging against my knee and the cold burning my lungs and making my eyes tear and turning my fingers to ice inside my thin gloves, I make good time.
When I come over the last hill approaching the complex and see the knot of miners still waiting for the mantrip, I begin to sob with relief.
I drop my bike and start running toward them. My legs and arms instantly turn to jelly once my adrenaline stops pumping, and I can barely carry the heavy pail. I have to use both hands. I take my gloves off to gain more traction. I watch my legs move beneath me, but I don’t seem to be making any forward progress.
Beverly is one of J&P’s smaller concerns and much younger than Jojo: a simple slope mine that was made by blasting a couple entries into the hillside, laying down some track for the mantrip, and installing a conveyor belt and some cast-off cutting and loading machinery brought in from one of their larger, more lucrative mines in the southern part of the county.
Six years earlier one of those mines had been the site of the second deadliest mine explosion in the history of Pennsylvania. Up until that time the general public considered Stan Jack’s mines to be about as safe as they could be, which to a miner’s way of thinking was like saying some ponds aren’t as wet as others, but after Gertie blew, killing half the male population of the town of Coal Run, even Stan Jack had to be more careful.
I drag the bucket toward my dad.
The sky and the hills are the same shade of pale lead. A weak sun has begun to rise behind a thick layer of dirty clouds, but it isn’t giving off enough light yet for the two dozen shivering, yawning miners to be able to make out the features of one another’s faces. They stare at the ground, stamping their heavy steel-toed safety shoes and blowing warm air into their cupped hands, while watching the first spits of snow float into the shafts of yellow light given off by their helmets.
One of them notices me, points, and nudges a buddy in the arm.
Soon they’re all looking in my direction, all of them smiling except for my dad.
“Would you look at that?” I hear Jimmy’s brogue. “Penrose is gettin’ room service.”
A chorus of low, rumbling laughter floats toward me, and I feel immediately better. I love the deep tones of men’s laughter much more than the cackling of women.
“You forgot your dinner, Daddy,” I say when I finally arrive in front of him.
Lib and Jimmy are standing next to him. I know they’re much older than me—around the same age as my dad—but today they seem young. Even younger than me. Yet they don’t look like children, and I know I’m a child.
For the first time ever I notice how smooth and unlined Jimmy’s face is and how the fringe of hair sticking out from beneath his miner’s helmet is the glossy auburn color of an acorn’s bottom. I notice the mischievous way Lib smiles around the toothpick jutting from between his teeth. Even though it’s cold, he has the sleeves of his coveralls and the long underwear beneath rolled up to his elbows and his pale, muscular forearms look like they’ve been carved from hairy marble.
There’s another rumble among the men, this one of praise. My dad takes the dinner bucket from me and gives my head a rub.
I don’t dare look up at him.
The others begin to trudge to the mantrip, and he follows along.
Lib lags behind. He finishes smoking his last cigarette for the day and tosses it on the ground, where he crushes it with the tip of his steel toe. He kneels down in front of me and takes my small clean pink hands in his big callused ones, sprinkled with blue-gray scars like bits of pencil points broken off beneath the skin. He rubs them to try and get some circulation back in them.
He’s only been back from Vietnam for a year, and I still thank God in my prayers every night for keeping him safe.
“You’re a good kid, Shae-Lynn,” he says.
Then why does my dad hate me? my brain screams, but I will never say those words out loud with my voice.
I breathe in the heady smell of him—tobacco and machinery grease and a hint of minty toothpaste almost masking his morning shot of whiskey—and nod.
He stands up and reaches into one of his pockets and hands me a chocolate bar.
“For the ride home,” he tells me.
Up until he says these words I’ve forgotten about the ride home, then I suddenly remember Shannon and I’m afraid again for a whole different reason.
I ride back to the house imagining the worst, but everything turns out to be fine. Isabel’s car is parked in our driveway. She babysits Shannon while I’m in school. It never occurred to me to call her for help.
I fly into the house and find her at the kitchen table feeding Shannon her breakfast.
“Shae-Lynn,” she gasps. “I was worried. Where were you?”
“I, I…,” I gulp.
“You should have left me a note.”
“Is Shannon okay?”
“She’s fine.”
Isabel gets up from the table, wipes her hands on her apron, and comes over to me to give me a hug.
While she holds me I watch Shannon staring at me from her high chair.
I know my dad will give me a good beating tonight because I embarrassed him, but at least he will be in a better mood than if he’d been hungry all day.
What bothers me more than thinking about what awaits me later tonight is the look in Shannon’s eyes right now.
She hates me. There’s no denying the sentiment burning in their brittle depths.
I WAKE UP with a start, feeling sick and shaky. It takes me a moment to shake off the memory. It wasn’t a dream. I remember everything as clearly as if it happened yesterday, except for Shannon’s eyes. Was that merely my subconscious embellishing or did she really look at me that way and I didn’t notice it? Or I didn’t understand it? Or did I notice it and choose to ignore it? Have I been repressing it all these years?
I ran out on her. It was only briefly, but maybe it was enough to make her never fully trust me again.
I look at my alarm clock. It’s almost 9:15. I never sleep this late, even on Sundays.
I sit up. My head starts pounding and my whole body aches. I curse my stupidity, like I always do the morning after a fight. During the fight I’m always convinced I’m doing the right thing and I usually thoroughly enjoy myself, then the next day when I’m tending a torn lip or a bruised rib or scraped knuckles, I begin to wonder if maybe I used poor judgment. I suppose it’s similar to the way a hungover woman feels when she wakes up in bed with a fat, smelly stranger she thought looked good the night before. Except my battered self is no stranger to me. For me it’s like waking up sober with a fat, smelly husband of thirty years I can’t get rid of.
Bits and pieces from last night start coming back to me. E.J. continued on his way after our talk in the parking lot. I hung out with Kozlowski a little while longer at Jolly’s, but he wanted to go back to his motel early. I didn’t get any more useful information out of him. Shannon was asleep when I got home. I ended up watching Bonanza reruns with my arthritic dog.
I get out of bed and check my naked body for marks before I slip on my robe. I have a big purple bruise high on one thigh and another bruise on my forearm near my elbow. I check my face, too, in the mirror on my dresser. No marks there.
My wood floors are cold. Outside my window the sun is shining brightly, but it’s about to disappear behind an ominous bank of steel-blue clouds slowly taking over the sky like cigar smoke filling up a room. I vaguely
recall people talking last night at Jolly’s about the possibility of snow flurries today. The warm spell is over.
I remember there’s something I’m supposed to do this morning, but I can’t remember what it is.
Gimp is missing from his corner. My bedroom door is open a crack. I walk out into the hallway and hear sounds coming from my kitchen.
Shannon is sitting at my table eating breakfast and looking through a book. She’s already dressed in a pair of pink maternity overalls over an even pinker sweater and looks well rested and freshly scrubbed.
Gimp is sitting at attention at her feet with his tail swishing the floor. Occasionally she hands him something off her plate and his tail swishes faster.
I smell bacon. I know I don’t have any bacon in the house.
I remember what I’m supposed to do this morning.
I rush back into my room and throw on a gauzy lavender miniskirt sprinkled with violets and a long-sleeved white T-shirt that covers the bruise on my arm. I yank on my Frye boots and grab a bulky, rusty orange sweater coat in case it does turn cold later.
“Hi,” Shannon greets me, smiling. “I made some breakfast and coffee. Want some?”
“I’ll have some coffee. No time for anything else,” I say as I open one of my cupboards and take down my Steelers travel mug. “I’m running late. Gotta get to church.”
“You go to church?”
It’s the only explanation that came to me, but I regret it instantly. Any mention of church always makes me think back to my mother’s funeral. It was the last time I set foot in a church.
I used to go with her when I was very little. I loved putting on a pretty dress, even if it was the same one I’d worn the week before and the week before that. I loved the happy songs we sang in Sunday school about Jesus taking care of all the little children: red and yellow, black and white, we were all precious in his sight. I loved the Bible stories our teacher told us using colorful felt characters on a felt board with emerald green land and a turquoise sky. I loved the macaroni wise men covered in glitter and tied with pieces of red ribbon we made at Christmastime and gave to our families to hang on our trees.
A brain aneurism was the technical medical explanation for Mom’s death.
“Complications of childbirth,” people whispered around and above me at our house after we buried her in the church cemetery, as they dug into the casseroles and a rainbow assortment of Jell-O salads crowded onto our dining room table.
“The angels have taken your mommy to live in Heaven with Jesus,” the ladies who had brought the box of clothes for Shannon several days earlier told me, kneeling down to my level, caressing my cheek, and playing with my curls.
“Screw the angels,” I replied, and watched as they drew back from me, stunned and repulsed.
I was always hearing my dad say “screw” this and “screw” that and lately E.J. had started saying it, too, although never around his mother, who would have washed his mouth out with soap. I didn’t know the literal meaning of the expression, but I was certain of the sentiment.
Now that I had seen the reaction of the church ladies, I was doubly sure.
“And don’t touch me,” I thought to add, then went to hide in the big protective shadow of my grieving widowed father. I was finally beginning to understand why he didn’t like those ladies. Or the angels.
“Sure,” I say now, blithely. “Sometimes. Where’d the bacon come from?”
“I brought it with me.”
“It’s travel bacon?”
She laughs.
“It’s a craving. Remember how you used to crave blueberry Pop-Tarts when you were pregnant with Clay?”
“Yeah, I remember that.”
“And remember how you used to hide them in your dresser drawers?”
“That’s because if Dad found them, he’d eat them.”
“He paid for them,” she says, her voice turning defensive.
I watch her curiously.
“I realize that,” I reply simply and wait to see if she’s going to continue to champion his behavior.
“You couldn’t expect him to be sympathetic about stuff like you having cravings. He was never very happy about you being pregnant. You can’t blame him for that.”
Saying he was not very happy about my pregnancy is a little bit of an understatement, but I don’t correct her.
“No, I guess not.”
“Especially since you didn’t even know who the father was. Although I suppose that was a lot harder on Clay than it was on Dad.”
I don’t say anything to this.
I’m perfectly happy with the story I made up for Clay about the identity of his father. He thinks he was a truck driver who I allowed to seduce me with a hot meal followed by a night at the Red Roof Inn before he continued trucking on his merry way the next morning.
I chose a truck driver because I wanted the culprit to be someone passing through who Clay could never track down. I chose a one-night stand so I could claim to be ignorant of his full name and background. I chose to explain the act as a consensual, enjoyable, youthful indiscretion with no blame, shame, or regret attached to it by either party. I’d rather have my son think I was a slut than a victim.
I’d also rather have him think his father never knew about him and might have wanted him instead of having him know what really happened. Sometimes a good lie is better than a bad truth.
Shannon seems to think she’s hurt my feelings when she hasn’t. I’m impervious on this subject.
“I’m sorry,” she says, dropping her eyes to the open book on the table.
I realize it’s one of the National Geographic books she was making fun of last night. It’s the volume on Africa. I recognize the photo of a beautiful, bald, swan-necked girl swathed in scarlet and tangerine fabric whose face looks carved from coal.
She closes the book.
“I guess I have no right to talk, considering my kid isn’t going to have a father either,” she says, and runs her hands over the impressive mound of her belly.
“I’m sorry he ran out on you.”
She shrugs.
“I’m going into Centresburg to pick up a few things.” She changes the subject.
“Why don’t you wait until I get back and we’ll go together?” I suggest.
“No. I don’t want to bother you. It’s stuff I can do by myself.”
“Okay. I’ll see you later then.”
I give Gimp a pat and call him a traitor, then I place my hand on Shannon’s shoulder and kiss the top of her head the way I’ve done a thousand times in our distant past.
All the love I had for her as my baby sister is still here inside me, but so is the same icy numbing certainty I’ve had for the past eighteen years that my baby sister was gone. I don’t feel any differently since she’s returned.
I think about Clay and the way he became his own man without discarding or damaging my little boy. Maybe Shannon hadn’t been capable of this. Maybe she wasn’t able to evolve. Maybe this grown woman in front of me has the remains of my Shannon inside her and she’s been walking around all these years, a tomb.
I back away from her.
She doesn’t turn in her chair to watch me leave but goes back to eating.
“Give my regards to God,” she calls after me.
Chapter Nine
I FIND PAMELA JAMESON waiting for me at the Holiday Inn, sitting stiffly on a brown- and orange-striped sofa, holding a Styrofoam cup with wisps of coffee steam crawling from its lip, watching hotel workers clean up the remnants of a wedding reception through a pair of propped-open ballroom doors.
The smell of chlorine is so strong, my eyes begin to sting within seconds of walking into the lobby. I hear splashing and shrieking coming from the pool area and the occasional bellow of a parent.
Pamela smiles at my approach, not because she’s pleased to see me again or because she feels any further obligation to show signs of politeness now that our employer-employee relationship has been esta
blished. It is an expression of pure relief; I am the signal that her escape is imminent.
She stands to greet me.
Today she’s wearing jeans that have been strategically, professionally weathered, and a blazer of pale green and white seersucker over a pale green shirt. Her leather shoes are flat and pointed and the same color as the shirt. I fleetingly wonder what would happen to her mental well-being if I were to suddenly force her to put on a pair of bright purple stilettos.
“Good morning,” she says.
“Hi,” I say back. “How was your evening? How did you sleep?”
“It was terrible,” she replies. “There was a wedding going on until all hours, and there’s also a bar here in the hotel.”
“Yeah, I know. Houlihanigan’s.” I nod my sympathy. “It gets pretty rowdy on weekends when they have live music.”
“I’d hardly call it music.” She begins kneading the space between her eyes with the pad of one index finger. “It was this horrible pounding beat and these screeching guitars.”
“Well, no one would know to look at you that you had a sleepless night. You look fine.”
I have a feeling nothing ever affects her face. I have a vision of her peeling it off at night and laying it flat on a bedside table, then getting up first thing in the morning and ironing it on a low heat before putting it back on again.
“That’s nice of you to say,” she tells me.
She picks up her purse, a twin to the bag Shannon carries, and begins walking to the revolving door.
I realize that she and Shannon have the same hairstyle, too: straight and shiny, blunt cut, the ends grazing the shoulders. The only difference is the color: Shannon’s is a mahogany brown; Pamela’s is a metallic blonde that matches her SUV.
I imagine them sitting side by side in a Manhattan hair salon laughing and sipping champagne while a stylist stripes their heads with highlights. Then the two of them shouldering their matching handbags and going shopping for charm bracelets and red cowboy boots and pink maternity clothes.
The problem is I can’t imagine it. The Shannon I used to know wouldn’t have been able to spend five minutes around this woman’s condescension. She would never have accepted a single gift or favor from her. To do so, according to our dad, would have been worse than accepting charity; it would have been admitting Pamela Jameson was better than us, and no one was better than us except him.