Billie Standish Was Here

by Nancy Crocker

  And Mama, she’d laugh and egg him on, making him repeat a story he’d just told the day before. It was like they had been in a coal mine or something, dragging home every night dirty and discouraged and too tired to talk. And now they were partners in some kind of secret celebration only the two of them had earned.

  It was them and me—a team and a nation of one. I guess it always had been. But now they felt so smart and there was so much they didn’t know I couldn’t stand to look at them. I could barely be in the same room.

  What made the nightmare even worse was that while Daddy came out looking smart, Mama had found a whole new way to be mean. I couldn’t believe the things she said about Miss Lydia at our kitchen table and the dirt wasn’t even tamped down on Curtis’s grave before I heard her make a joke to Missy Hambrick about it being “a heck of a way to cut down on the grocery bill.”

  This was the old woman who had lived across the street from Mama her entire married life. Her only child was dead, by her own hand. And Mama found it laughable.

  I’d always been afraid of her and tried to please her even when I suspected it was impossible. Every time she flew into one of her fits, it’d make me try even harder the next time.

  Now I was beginning to suspect there was less to Mama than meets the eye.

  One thing I didn’t doubt for a second—Miss Lydia had been right when she said, “I got a pretty good idea your mama’s no smarter than mine was.” Oh, did I thank God every night Miss Lydia had convinced me we were the only ones who needed to know the truth. Then I thanked God she was still alive.

  And although I was afraid it was something that would send us both to hell some day, I thanked God that Miss Lydia had made sure there was one thing I’d never have to be afraid of again.

  Sure as rain.

  Chapter Seven

  I  f the town had been dead for over a month, it was more alive than ever when folks moved back. There were cars and trucks going all day long. Dogs were yapping and kids were yelling and laughing and snotting all over the place. I realized I’d gotten used to the quiet. And I’d liked it.

  It was still too wet to get into the fields, so Mama and Daddy were mostly around home the next week or so after the river crested. Mama kept me too busy to think about much of anything other than trying to do things exactly the way she liked. I pretended I still cared.

  There was a trip to Milton to restock the pantry. Catching up with the laundry took two whole days with the wringer machine and backyard clothesline. Then there was the slapdash cleaning I’d been doing that Mama now had time to inspect.

  We took our meals at the table together for the first time in months, but those two spent that time yakking at each other like they were still high on the adrenaline that came with Being Right. Either that or they were discussing the separate sections of paper each had their nose buried in. I might have been watching them on TV for all the interaction offered me. Not that I had anything I wanted to say to them.

  In the evening after the dishes were done, I’d go to my room and think about Miss Lydia. I hadn’t seen her since Curtis’s funeral. I knew I ought to go over there but didn’t know what I could possibly say. Thank you for killing your son for me? I knew in my heart that’s what she had done. Miss Lydia was way too sharp to have mistaken Curtis for a prowler. Even if she had been nervous about her neighbors being gone, like people were thinking.

  Over and over I heard her saying, “He’ll never, ever hurt you again. Trust me.” And that was only a couple of hours after what he had done.

  I kept going back over it, trying to figure out the exact moment she had decided what she would do. It seemed important to know—I guess because it still seemed impossible she had done it.

  And I kept seeing her sitting in the dark in her nightgown. A shotgun across her lap. Waiting. I wondered, did she cry? Did she pray? Did she ever think “I can’t do this” and unload the gun?

  I had been over every inch of Miss Lydia’s house and I knew where that shotgun lived. It stood barrel-up in the back corner of the coat closet inside the front door. I knew the shells were in the bottom drawer of a kitchen cabinet under the dish towels. I knew she kept the gun unloaded and hid the shells where Curtis would never come across them.

  So she had loaded the gun especially for him.

  Mirrors can play all kinds of tricks. One of them happens if you stare into one up close until your mind goes blank and your focus goes soft. What you think you see slowly changes until it looks like you’re about a hundred years old.

  I learned this right around that time. It was an accident, and not a happy one. Because I swear after staring in the mirror for a while it was Miss Lydia’s face looking back at me.

  That’s when I cried for the first time since I’d left her house that day. I cried like I might never stop. I was crying for both of us.

  The first day it was dry enough for my folks to go back to the field, I was still in bed when the phone rang a few minutes before noon. I jumped up and answered. It was Miss Lydia, sounding shaky.

  “Billie Marie?” she said.

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Honey, I was wonderin’ if you’d go up and get my mail along with your all’s and come by for dinner. I’ve made meat loaf and apple dumplings.” Two of my favorites.

  I felt as gangly and stupid as I ever had, which was saying something. “Ohhh, Miss Lydia. You didn’t need to—”

  “Didn’t need to. Wanted to.” It was almost exactly the conversation we’d had that first day we had become the whole town. I had to smile in spite of my stupid self.

  I still wanted to say no, but “okay” is what I heard coming out of my mouth. “Just give me a few seconds to throw some clothes on and brush my teeth—”

  “Lord, child—” She interrupted me, then caught herself. “Okay, then, you just come when you’re ready.”

  I wasn’t sure I would ever be ready. But I mumbled something she took as a “yes” and hung up.

  By the time I’d been grunted at by Lewis McEntire and was heading back home to drop off our mail, I was shaking. It felt a lot like when Miss Lydia first suggested I not tell my parents about Curtis. I was afraid she was going to pretend nothing had happened, and making like everything was puppy dogs and lollipops was more than I thought I could live up to just then. I’d rather stay home by myself.

  But just as sure as Curtis had not gone unblamed and unpunished, Miss Lydia didn’t try to make me pretend anything. She had a big smile on her face when she opened the back door but, as soon as our eyes met, her face fairly crumpled in on itself. Then we were in her kitchen hugging each other and bawling.

  We rocked back and forth like we were taking turns being the mama and the baby. It was a long time before either of us could say anything that sounded like words.

  “What’re we gonna do?” I bawled.

  Miss Lydia blubbered right back. “Best we can, child. Best we can.”

  When we finally calmed down enough to let go, we stood at the kitchen sink together and splashed water cold from the faucet onto our faces. Then we shared opposite ends of a tea towel and went to sit down at the table like it was something we had voted on.

  Miss Lydia’s face was red and blotched as a newborn’s. My eyes felt swollen as a toad’s. I was self-conscious about making eye contact even though I figured we looked about the same. Or maybe it was because.

  “There’s dinner, like I said, if you want it.” Miss Lydia was as quiet and polite as if I were the preacher’s wife. She said, “I don’t feel very hungry just yet.”

  “No, thank you.” I felt a little prim myself. “I don’t care for anything to eat right now.”

  She nodded. “Iced tea?”

  “I’ll get it.” I jumped up.

  But she was already starting to haul herself out of her chair and I rounded the table just in time to smack into her. It wasn’t enough of a collision to hurt either one of us but we did start laughing. She was probably as surprised as I was that sp
ider webs didn’t fly out of our mouths, it’d been so long since we’d laughed. We were still smiling when I said, “You sit down there. I know where everything is.”

  Of course I did and it helped my nerves to get the glasses out of the cabinet where I had put them dozens of times after drying them. To open the right door for the sugar bowl. Go straight to the drawer with the spoons. Have everything feel familiar. My breathing slowed down to normal as I cracked an ice cube tray and started filling glasses.

  I was glad to sit down across from her and feel like smiling again but I still had no idea what to say. When she cleared her throat, I sat up at attention.

  “How’re your folks?” she asked.

  “Same as always, I suppose.”

  I must have looked surprised. “Didn’t mean to start anything, child. I was just making conversation,” she said. “Your daddy must feel pretty good about stayin’ put till the river crested.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I answered. “He’s the smartest man he knows these days.” I hadn’t meant it to be funny but it was, and we both chuckled.

  Thinking about Daddy feeling smart was all it took to remind me what he didn’t know. Then it occurred to me that if we had moved out of town I’d have been nowhere near Curtis. I felt sick.

  “I know,” Miss Lydia said and I wasn’t sure what I had said out loud. “Believe you me, Billie Marie, I’ve gone over it a million times. If only your daddy had hightailed it out of here like everybody else . . . if only you weren’t helping me out Curtis mightn’t have even known you were around, seldom as he was . . . if only if only if only and it doesn’t change a thing.”

  I nodded. “I keep going back to how if I’d just jumped out of the truck, or broken away before he got me inside the schoolhouse . . .” It felt normal to be discussing this out in the open. How strange.

  “That sounds a whole lot like blaming yourself and I won’t have it.” Miss Lydia lifted her chin.

  “No, no, no,” I corrected her. “I’m not saying it was my fault, I just keep thinking if there’d only been that one second . . .”

  “—you could’ve stopped it? But there wasn’t, so you didn’t? I tell you, I won’t have it!” Her eyes were blazing now.

  She was right. I hadn’t thought of it as blaming myself, but by thinking of all the things I might have done and hadn’t, it was about the same as saying I caused it. Huh.

  “I just wish . . .” I started, but that was the same thought put into different words. It still wasn’t right.

  “Me, too, honey. I wish a whole lot of things. Me, too.” Miss Lydia was staring off somewhere past my shoulder.

  “Since we’re talking . . .” My heart started pounding. “Can I ask you something?” I took a sip of tea and felt ice cubes chatter against my teeth.

  She pulled herself back from wherever she had gone. “Of course you can.”

  “Are you sorry . . . I mean, have you ever thought since . . . that you wish you hadn’t done what you did?”

  She looked confused. But to me, there was only one thing to consider. I was wondering how to word an explanation when her face finally settled. She knew what I meant.

  “I’m sorry that I had to,” she said, as matter-of-fact as she might have been telling me the blackberries were ripe out along her fence.

  I felt a terrible churning inside. “But—”

  “NO, child. I will tell you as many times as I need to, I am only sorry I had to.” Her mouth worked silently for a few seconds. “As for right or wrong? I don’t know. That’s for God to sort out, I don’t claim to have His judgment. But I am not sorry.”

  I nodded. She meant it, I knew. Now if I could just figure out how I felt.

  Miss Lydia read my face. “But since we’re talking, Billie Marie?” She waited until I looked at her. “We always can. I want you to know.”

  I didn’t know what she meant and shook my head.

  “We can talk about this. I don’t expect it to be fun and it might be painful as hell—”

  I was electrified. Now she had brought up God and hell both.

  “—and I’m not claiming to know the right answers to anything, but you can ask. Anything. Anytime. I don’t want you tryin’ to hold this in.”

  She knew. Of course. She would. We stared at each other. “You understand me?”

  I nodded, still held by her eyes.

  “Now. Anything else you want to ask me? Or tell me?”

  I looked away to think. Finally I said, “We probably ought to start unwrapping your knickknacks and put them back where they belong, don’t you think?”

  She made a noise like a pressure cooker letting off steam. “Lands, child, you . . .” She shook her head and smiled. “Sure we should. But I think I could eat some meat loaf now, how about you?”

  “Yeah, I’m hungry, too.” I hadn’t realized it until I said it.

  “But Billie Marie—”

  “I know. I know.”

  “I mean it, honey.”

  “I know, Miss Lydia. I really do.” I spent a few seconds building the next sentence in my head. “And I appreciate that more than I’ll probably ever tell you.” She smiled. “But I’m having a real hard time sorting this out and right now all I needed to know was were you sorry, and now I do.”

  She nodded. “As long as you know—”

  “I know. I truly do.”

  “You are not alone.”

  I just swallowed and nodded.

  We worked until about six thirty, then stretched like two cats and called it a day. Miss Lydia went to her bedroom and came back with her purse. Before I could open my mouth she said, “Don’t start with me, child,” and handed me a dollar.

  I understood. This was her way of making some things normal again. And I realized that was exactly what I had done when I suggested we work on her knickknacks.

  I wasn’t afraid or mad like before. We weren’t pretending everything was the same, we were just hanging onto the things that were. I took the money, gave her a quick hug, and took her garbage with me on my way out.

  I was surprised to find Mama at the kitchen stove after I’d banged through the back porch door. I almost blurted out, “What are you doing here?” before I remembered to start weighing my words again. I was home.

  “Hi, Mama,” I managed.

  She turned with the smallest of smiles. “Where’ve you been?” she asked. That might have come off as natural from anybody else. From Mama it sounded suspicious and a little envious, like whatever I’d been up to was probably some kind of forbidden fun.

  “Miss Lydia’s,” I answered. “She cooked din—”

  That was all I got out before the tornado blew in. Mama whirled around so fast the wooden spoon in her hand slung spaghetti sauce around two walls. Her face was already red and headed for purple.

  “WHAT?” She bellowed. “What in the hell were you thinking? You know I don’t want you over there anymore!” She was advancing on me fast.

  “Mama, wait!” I said. My head buzzed. “I didn’t know anything of the kind, and I—”

  She didn’t need to hear. “Well, you know now, you little idiot! What are you trying to do—get yourself killed too?”

  It wasn’t the first time she’d called me an idiot. But it was the first time it made me mad. Just like that, zero to sixty in about three seconds.

  “Now, listen to me for a minute.” I fought to sound calm.

  “I don’t have to listen to you! You listen to me!” she yelled and SWACK! Tomato sauce flew into my left eye as she slapped me hard across the cheek with the bowl of the spoon.

  Half my face was on fire. My mind raced and my fingernails dug into my palms. I noticed for the first time that I was tall as her now.

  I picked up one of the aluminum-framed chairs at the table and hurled it at the stove as soon as I realized it was in my hands. The sauce pot went flying and a red wave splashed onto the wallpaper and started a wide, gory trail down to the floor. The pot and its lid clattered on the linoleum.

>   Mama’s jaw dropped, but she wasn’t speechless long. “What in the hell—,” she started.

  I picked up the chair left closest to me. I could feel a pulse pounding at my temples, but a strange calm enveloped me at the same time. I was so blind angry with every cell of my being that it all canceled out and left me quiet at the core. Like the eye of a storm.

  “Stop cussing at me or this one goes through the window,” I told her.

  Well. No cartoon character ever looked so wide-eyed with surprise. The way I remember it now I almost laugh, but it was pretty grim then.

  Her eyes narrowed and I swear her ears laid back. She fairly hissed at me. “Have you gone completely crazy?”

  “Maybe.” I was still holding the chair, ready to heave it through the window now just because throwing the first one had felt so good. “It’s entirely possible. Look who raised me.”

  She raised the spoon like she might hit me again. I lifted the chair between us, legs out. Like a lion tamer.

  “If you hit me again, you better knock me out.” I didn’t recognize this person talking. “Because if I’m still conscious, I’ll lay you out flat.” Whoever she was, she meant it.

  A few thick seconds ticked by. Then all the air went out of Mama and her arm went down to her side. She was staring, zombie-eyed, and muttered, “My own child—”

  I matched my voice to hers. “—doesn’t like being called an idiot?” I wiped at my face and rubbed my eye. “Doesn’t enjoy getting hit—and burned, to boot?”

  We looked at each other until she blinked. Then I set the chair in its place at the table, turned to go clean myself up, and didn’t look back.

  My cheek hadn’t blistered but even a gentle washing hurt. When I finished it looked like I had a port-wine birthmark. There was a bloodshot spot toward the corner of my eye but it had stopped stinging. I stared in the mirror acquainting myself with this girl. Then I took a deep breath and headed back to the kitchen.

  Mama was exactly where I’d left her. I walked past, got the dishcloth, started wiping sauce off the wall and wringing it back into the pot that still sat on the floor where it had fallen.