What Happened to Hannah

by Mary Kay McComas

  Still, somehow she hadn’t been able to refuse him, climbing into the cab of his cherry red truck like most any girl in Clearfield might.

  The bird he’d wondered about in his barn turned out to be a common indigo bunting and he’d feigned disappointment that she’d already marked the specimen in the book he returned to her. He asked if they were nesting in her barn as well; and when she said she didn’t think so, that she’d spotted her buntings in the scrub field on the other side of the cow pond, he set about making up a ridiculous—and sort of amusing—story about the probability of their sightings being of the exact same buntings—Sherry and Jerry Bunting, maybe; and that perhaps flying around in his barn made them hot so they flew the short distance across their family farms to her cow pond to cool off. He emphasized the short distance between their farms and planted a seed about the size of an avocado pit as to how easy it would be for them to meet at the pond sometimes, too. To talk. About other birds.

  A bemused smile softened the line of her lips. Really. She couldn’t believe he expected her to fall for that kind of nonsense. It wasn’t like she was known for her quirky sense of humor. What was he up to? Why was she so eager to find out? And what if—

  “I’m going to slap that stupid look straight off your face if you don’t snap out of it, girl.” Her mother’s angry voice startled her. Anger in her house came in varying degrees and disguises and it wasn’t always what it might seem to be at first. This particular irritation was fear based—she could tell, and should have noticed sooner her mother’s sudden frenzied awareness of the time. “You picked a fine day to dawdle. Your Daddy’s been with Buzz Weims all day. They’re up in the barn and they’re both spittin’ mad about somethin’ or other, and if you don’t help me clean this mess up and get dinner on the table he’s gonna take it out on me.” She took the time to look pointedly at her daughter. “And it’ll be your fault this time.”

  Hannah was always hard-pressed to see the connection between her mother’s beatings and it being her fault but it didn’t matter, they were a team—Mama, Ruth, and her. They shared the beatings and the pain and the fear and the fault and that was the way it was, the way it had always been. Besides, she knew from experience that blaming someone else was all you could do when there was simply no more room to blame yourself for anything else.

  “I’m sorry, Mama.” She went for the large kettle of boiling water first—more heat and nervous sweat was the last thing they needed in the room. “What are we having? You can start it while I clean up. Where’s Ruthie?”

  “Cramped up again. We’ll be lucky if we can get her to the table.” Hannah set a half-empty crate of peaches on top of a full crate and looked up in time to see her mother’s stricken gaze and the blood draining out of her flushed face. “I don’t think I got anything out for supper.”

  To most everyone else in America the answer to that would have been a call for pizza or Chinese takeout or at the very least frozen dinners. In the Benson house it was enough to make your mother’s hands tremble before she could get a good grasp on the counter to keep herself from tumbling to the floor. It was enough to make the thoughts in your head whirl, to hurl every notion of Grady Steadman into the wind and every theory of peace, happiness, and normalcy into cosmic nothingness.

  They stood staring at each other—paralyzed, petrified—her mother’s eyes already welling with tears.

  “What . . . what about eggs?” Mama scowled but before she could speak Hannah went on. “Not breakfast eggs, not fried. An omelet. Old Mrs. Phillips taught me how to make them for her lunch because she likes oatmeal for her breakfast and she needs the protein and . . . well, there’s lots of different ways to make them, with cheese or vegetables or a little breakfast ham mixed in. I . . . I could make one for each of us with just the things we like in them. Something special for everyone. I’ll make a little one for Ruth with only eggs and cheese so she can leave the table sooner. And you can make the toast—”

  “How many eggs?”

  “I use two for Old Mrs. Phillips, I’ll use the same for Ruth. Three for us and four for Daddy to make it look more like a supper. A dozen?”

  The look they exchanged was not mother to daughter or vice versa—it was prisoner to prisoner on the verge of escape, telling each other that from this point on they were each on their own.

  “Do it and pray, girl. Do it and pray.”

  “There’s like a hundred-batrillion jars left down there.” Jeremy Long’s young and uncommonly sarcastic voice brought her back to the here and now. “Plus those there on the shelf that she did last summer. Anna said to empty those.”

  “Ah, no. Let’s not. I’ll pack those up myself and take some of them with us.” She had a sudden hankering for her mama’s canned peaches . . . and watermelon-rind pickles, if she still made them. And she knew for a fact there were just two shelves of jars left. “Is your brother down there with you?”

  He arrived at the top of the stairs. “No, ma’am. He’s up in the barn smashin’ cans which’ll be my job tomorrow ’less he smashed ’em all today, which’d be just like him cuz he always gets all the good jobs.”

  “I didn’t realize there were good and bad jobs in this nightmare.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, leaning the box of canning jars on the counter for a moment so he could take his time talking. “If I don’t get to smash cans tomorrow I wanna ride with Cal when he takes them to the recycling place so we can throw them all in this big container, and then when there’s enough they smash ’em again into one big square of smashed cans. It’s awesome. They collect all sorts of things there. Copper, steel, bikes. Metal ladders. They have a place that’s just for batteries, some are gigantic, man . . . and wire, too. Tons of it.”

  Why had she never before noticed how cute eleven-year-old boys could be? His brother Sam was a year older but likewise as chatty and friendly, with lighter-colored hair and a wiser, more experienced elder-brother look in his eyes. She could have gobbled them both up with a spoon, and wondered how on earth their mother had manage to raise two such pleasant children.

  Granted, she didn’t have much experience with families, but she had the impression that in the event of there being more than one child, that one of them had to be . . . a problem, at the very least. Even in Grady’s fairly normal-looking family, Cal appeared the calmer, less rash child. And God knew in her own family, Ruth had been the kind, sweet natured, tolerant Benson sister.

  Nature or nurture? She’d heard people debate the question before . . . they always had good arguments for both theories—good exceptions to both, too. Her mother believed, and had taught Hannah to believe, that anger and violence were her nature, part of her DNA and inescapable, though Joe and Dr. Fry alleged that, barring any physical anomalies—namely a brain tumor or a severe chemical imbalance—it was purely nurture, a pattern passed from one generation to the next like a gene. But without the intrinsic character to back it up, it was unwelcome and easily broken. Who to believe?

  She’d long ago decided to err on the side of caution with her genetic makeup and take it to her grave untapped. Fortunately, she’d been spared the sort of wild longings to procreate she’d heard some women get and, of course, had never started a relationship with any man with the intent of making it a permanent affiliation. Too many traps on that path—power, trust, truth. Love. The potential for life as horrific as her mother’s? No, overall it was safer, less worrisome to keep her genes to herself, shun serious relationships and protect the life she’d created for herself.

  But who knew kids could be so . . . fun?

  She gave Jeremy a smile and nod not knowing how to respond to his obvious delight with the recycling center except to enjoy it. “You’re still stacking those on the front porch, right?” She motioned with her head to the jars.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. Your mother’s here to pick you up. I’ll go up to the barn. Tell her Sam’s on his way, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Hey
, Jeremy?” She turned to him from the doorway—he did the same from the hall. “Thanks for your help today.”

  His grin was big and bright and easy. “Well, don’t tell my mom but it is kinda fun. I never seen so much junk in my life.”

  She laughed. “Me either.”

  She stepped out into the early evening air thinking of what little time she’d spent out of doors that day. She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes, picking out the scents of new moist earth and something sweet from the woods—bloodroot or Virginia bluebells maybe—and freshness.

  She’d spent most of her day with a Mr. Clayson from Charlottesville, who specialized in vintage magazines, the appeal there being not only the age but who was on the cover. His eyes twinkled over her mother’s cardboard boxes of nonsequential copies of TV Guide and the occasional McCall’s, Time, and Life taken, Hannah suspected, from some waiting room. He was less enthusiastic by the time he got to her father’s ancient hunting and fishing periodicals—also pinched, no doubt—that were not only dull and faded but falling apart, yet he took them, too, leaving a room full of dust with much less to settle on.

  The odd thing was, neither of her parents had been big on reading. Mama didn’t have the time and Daddy found it frustrating.

  She followed the stepping-stone path through the backyard that ran parallel to the rotary clothesline that still stood like the skeleton of an umbrella waiting to be draped with clothes in every season of the year, thanks to the stepping stones. Her mind flashed once more on her mama rubbing Corn Huskers Lotion into her red, cracking fingers and hands like a body balm from Saks. Hannah’s lips curved in an ironic smile as she wondered how long it had taken her to buy a dryer after daddy’s funeral.

  The barn loomed ahead of her, its familiar lines seen in a hundred million other barns across America; the big sliding doors still closed against the winter cold. Where the old farmhouse had weathered from white to gray, the barn had bled from red to brown to the same shade of dirt surrounding it.

  She approached the smaller, hinged door closer to the house, thinking of those omelets she’d made so long ago—light, fluffy, colorful with diced tomatoes, bell peppers, and cheddar cheese—sweat beading on her forehead, hands shaking, her stomach so nervous she was terrified she’d throw every tasteless mouthful right back up.

  Until her daddy finished, leaned back in his chair, and nodded.

  His voice always echoed in a room, filled it to the corners, but it wasn’t half as unnerving as having him look straight at her . . . which he did, his pale, icy blue eyes narrowed and speculating. “She says this meal was your doing.”

  She glanced at her mama, who kept her eyes on her plate. “Yes, sir. Old Mrs. Phillips taught me.”

  His gaze slid toward his wife and back again. “I suspect someone should be teaching you something in the kitchen by now.”

  “Oh, but she’s very helpful in the kitchen, Karl, I’ve taught her everything my mama—”

  “Shut up, woman!” Hannah watched her mama cringe and brace herself for a slap that didn’t come.

  When she looked back at her father, he was staring at her again. “Didn’t I say you could learn a thing or two from that old woman? She ain’t as weak and feeble as she lets on, is she?”

  “No, sir. Not feeble but she is—”

  “She pay you for the week?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, reaching into the front pocket of her shorts to retrieve the crisp bills that totaled the seventy-five dollars a week wage agreed upon by her daddy and the younger Mrs. Phillips, which didn’t—according to her and her dear old mother-in-law—have anything to do with the extra twenty-five dollars in her back pocket. She slid from her chair, careful not to scrape the chair on the floor as the sound had a tendency to scrape on his nerves as well, and walked the money behind her mother’s chair to hand it to him.

  He took it without a word and counted it while she returned to her seat.

  “Tight-fisted old bitch, but she pays on time and she beats the alternative.” That being having to sign an underage work waiver for Hannah to work almost anywhere else, leaving him open, once again, to the scrutiny of Social Services—a branch of the government that he despised even more than the IRS, for which he had nothing but loathing and contempt. “Also appears she can teach a mule-headed girl like you to cook a decent meal. Not a bad bargain, I’d say. Not bad at all.”

  Looking back, Hannah couldn’t help but wonder: Had her father known how delighted she was to get away from the farm every day; if he were aware of how kind and sweet Old Mrs. Phillips and her daughter-in-law were to her; if he knew what a thrill it was to see a cherry red truck bumping down the road toward her most every morning, and eventually every afternoon, too . . . would he still have thought he’d made such a grand bargain that summer?

  Of course not, she thought, yanking the barn door open with a fury she hadn’t realized she was feeling.

  Sam Long startled and turned to her still bent over the small disks of compacted cans he’d been retrieving from the old plank floor and stuffing into plastic bags. The weak light from a single bald lightbulb affixed to the wall behind him was enough to show his relief that the place wasn’t falling down around his ears after all.

  “Sorry about that.” She smiled at him then started looking around. “Your mom’s here to pick you up. I’ll finish this. We don’t want to keep her waiting.” She glanced into the large cardboard box that had been brimming with aluminum cans two days earlier to see it was all but empty. “Ten more minutes and you would have had this job all wrapped up.”

  Sam handed her the plastic bag. “Nah. I’m leavin’ those for Jeremy. He likes smashin’ cans.” Despite the sudden dull ache in her abdomen, she marveled again at Mrs. Long’s amazing child-rearing skills. Not perfect Stepford sort of boys, surely, but remarkably caring and giving. “Tomorrow while he’s smashin’ what’s left of ’em, I’ll go with Cal to the Recycling Center in Charlottesville. They have these big, awesome crushin’ machines there. They’re the best but they have cranes and backhoes and everythin’. It’s a really cool place.” He stood at the door nodding, and when she continued to gape at him, he grinned—big, bright, and easy. “Well, okay. See ya tomorrow after school, then. Bye.”

  And he ran off.

  And before she could recover from her disappointment that the Long boys were just your average, normal, goose-’em-every-chance-you-get brothers, the door slammed closed and left her standing in the dimly lit barn.

  All but the corner she stood in went black with shadow; the sagging loft overhead creaked ominous and oppressive under the fading light of evening that could be seen through the holes in the roof. She began to scoop up smashed cans . . . one, two . . . and to count to keep her mind occupied. Three, four, five . . .

  A cool breeze brushed across the back of her neck and she shivered. She thought she heard her father’s voice, calling her, and shook her head in denial.

  “One, two,” she started again, out loud.

  She groaned and covered her ears as the first shrill scream in her head threatened to blow out her eardrums. She flinched when it came again, her eyesight blurring from the pain. The palms of her hands were hot and damp and sticky.

  There was a cracking sound like lightning and the screams. Over and over.

  “Oh, God,” she whimpered as the pain buckled her knees and she sank to the floor, pressing her hands against her head to keep it from exploding. “Please, please stop. It’s not real.” Something wet on her face. She looked at her hands. Blood. Sticky, dripping from her fingers. “I can’t do it. I can’t. Please, please stop,” she whispered as she rocked her body to dislodge the panic rising up inside her, threatening to steal her sanity altogether. “Shhh. Shhh. Ruthie. Shhh. Please. Please stop.”

  “Ms. Benson? Hannah?” A strange, young, frightened male voice came out of nowhere. Somewhere in her mind she knew she needed to pull herself together, reassure him, pretend that whatever he was seeing was somehow normal behavior w
hile her muscles quivered in horror. “Are you sick? Are you hurt? Hannah? Should I call—” The expletive he uttered wasn’t unfamiliar just powerful and wrong for someone young to say, and then he started to shout. “Help! Someone help me! Hannah? Help! We’re in the barn.”

  “No. No, please.” It took a conscious effort to unclench her fists and clamp them to his arm and the front of his shirt, hoping the blood wouldn’t terrify him. She gulped air and tried to ignore the queer galloping of her heart. “Please. Don’t.” She peeked to see who . . . Grady. No, Cal. Oh, God. He looked terrified . . . despite the lack of blood on his shirt. No blood anywhere. It was all in her mind. “Please. I’ll be fine. I’m sorry. I—”

  “My dad’s here. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  “No! Cal, please.” With no little effort she pushed the sights and sounds back into the mental coffer they’d escaped from—something she’d done thousands of times before with no less labor. Her hands shook as she removed them, put them on the floor, and tried to push herself to stand up. “Please. I’m sorry you had to see this. I—” She tried to sound calm when she felt anything but. “I know how this must look.” She attempted a laugh. “You must think I’m crazy. I—”

  “No, ma’am. I don’t. Are you okay?”

  “Of course, I—”

  “Want me to call my dad?” Clearly, he wanted to call his dad.

  “I wish you wouldn’t.” Her breathing started to slow down and she couldn’t feel her heart battering against her chest anymore. “In fact, I’m going to ask you not to mention this to him at all. Beg you, actually.”

  She saw fear and concern in his face but also intelligence and understanding—another facial expression he’d inherited from his father. She found herself wanting to pour her whole heart out to him as she had his father in the past but . . . well, she wasn’t quite that far gone. Yet.

  “I . . . I have panic attacks. I used to. They’re rare now. I’m not on medication or anything anymore and I’m not a danger to Anna, of course. I promise. I was . . . It’s strange for me to be back here, is all. I believed I’d left it all behind.”