by Leah Weiss
I nod and raise my nose to sniff Daddy’s cigarette smoke that’s sometimes here. I rolled his cigarettes for him since I’m five, and I’m good at it. Today there’s no smoke to smell, just mold in the corners and yesterday’s fish.
I step back in the kitchen and start supper. It won’t do for Roy to come home and find nothing to eat. I put on a pot of beans, heat the iron skillet, and drop pieces of rabbit flesh in hot lard. The smell of grease gags me, and I press my knuckles against my mouth so I don’t throw up. Drop a dishrag on the floor and use my foot to wipe up the smear of blood from this morning. Pick up the plastic pieces of my broke radio and throw em in the trash. When food’s ready, I keep it warm in the oven and sit on the sofa, working on a plan while daylight leaks outta the sky and the wind moans low through the cracks round the windows.
“You done right fixing supper.” Daddy’s words sound down the hall. “A hungry man’s a mean man. Roy’s mean enough with a full belly. What you gonna do now?”
Let me think for myself, Daddy.
When I don’t say nothin right off, Daddy raises his voice. “Girl? You hearing me?”
I hear you. Don’t yell.
“What’s it gonna be?”
I don’t answer and he goes away.
Fifteen days since the trip to Spruce Pine to get married, and there still won’t a ring on my finger to cool the shame. I study the scorch on the tile floor where a skillet of fried chicken got dropped my second day as Roy’s wife and smoked up the place bad. Roy won’t happy one bit, but he don’t hit me on my second day as his missus.
The thing what got me beat today was I got careless. I got used to acting easy the past week Roy was off at the still or Lord knows where, but letting me be by myself. When he was gone, I keep my radio out and sing along and bake blackberry cobbler I eat outta the pan. I fill a canning jar with wildflowers like Aunt Marris does.
I forgot to watch out for that man.
I was singing with my radio and got a wooden spoon in my hand, pretending I’m at the Grand Ole Opry standing right next to Miss Loretta Lynn in front of folks to please. Her and me is singing together like this was what I was born to do, me swinging my be-hind to the beat and my foot tapping. It’s her hit “Don’t Come Home A Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind)” we’re singing, and I know every word by heart. That woman writes songs for me—even if I don’t call what Roy does to me loving no more.
The first time I seen a picture of Miss Loretta Lynn was in the Country Song Roundup magazine a coupla years back. She was on the cover, and Mooney showed it to me cause he knows I love her so. His copy of that magazine was as dog-eared as the Sears and Roebuck catalog he keeps on the counter. He told me the words of Loretta Lynn’s story inside while I looked at her pictures.
That’s how come I know she was raised in a log cabin in a Kentucky holler just like Baines Creek. In that magazine picture, she was sitting on a sofa stacked high with fancy pillows. Her dark hair had thick curls spilling over her shoulder. She showed her dimple and had diamond sparkles on her fancy dress. Said she sang at more than two hundred shows a year, riding from one place to another in her own tour bus. She had four babies before she was eighteen and is already a grandma. Miss Loretta is rich, but she’s my kinda people. She won’t turn up her nose at a simple life like mine. She could be my friend if she ever knocked on my door.
• • •
This morning, Roy musta come up the trailer steps quiet while I was singing with the radio cause I don’t hear him. He opened the door, sneaky. I feel a chill drift in and turned, still holding that silly spoon up to my mouth. When I saw him filling up the doorway, I stopped singing, but Miss Loretta kept on.
Without a hello or what the hey, that man pulled back his long arm and hit me upside the head with the flat of his hand. I grabbed my baby belly when I fell back against the sink, but, like a dern fool, I staggered back to my feet. He brought his arm down on my shoulder, and I dropped to my knees like a sack of feed. He kicked me in the back and rolled me over to my front with the toe of his muddy boot. Got down on one knee so I could see his devil eyes up close.
Roy drew back his fist clenched so tight the skin turned white, his temper trembling up and down his arm, and me trembling too. The smell that rolled off him was rotten. He held the terror there for me to see. I watched till I did something I never done before: I closed my eyes.
The place turned quiet cept for Miss Loretta ending her song and Roy breathing fast like a horse what’s been run hard. Then he stood and, quick as lightning, picked up my prized radio off the kitchen table, with the man saying, “That was Loretta Lynn, folks, Queen of—” and it crashed against the wall. That precious green plastic radio broke to smithereens and rained down on me. I stayed down with my eyes closed while he counted to ten to show he won.
Now, at the end of fifteen days tied legal to Roy Tupkin and me beat up three times for no reason I can figure, his supper sits warm in the oven and I’m working on a plan to get free. I’ll bide my time to make it right. When that day comes, Roy Tupkin’s gonna be sorry he ever messed with me and Loretta Lynn.
Gladys Hicks
“What’s your skinny ass doing here?”
“Wanna see if you was all right, that’s all.”
Sadie Blue stands at the edge of my yard and drags the toe of her sneaker in the dirt. A bright spot of sunshine holds her in its beam and shines through her skimpy dress. Her baby bump is the size of a honeydew.
“I don’t need you checking on me, girl. This ain’t your home no more.”
She takes a step back, and I feel a pang of regret. Or maybe it’s gas. I’m planted on my porch, hands on my hips and bun wound so tight my ears hurt. “I thought you was gone for good, now you legal and all.”
As usual, Sadie don’t say much.
“Well…you’re here…”
With weak permission, my grandgirl steps in the yard, and I turn and open the screen door. Like always, it slaps my heels when I enter, and I head back to the kitchen and the smell of last night’s collard greens.
Sadie comes in slow-footed, and I wanna hit her upside the head cause she’s meek when she’s under my roof. Instead, I slide the iron skillet onto the burner rough-like and slap in a mound of lard, then bark orders. “Peel potatoes and onions. Slice em thin. You slice em thick. I like em thin.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thin.”
I cut my eyes to see if she sasses me, but Sadie slices thin, then scoops up the pile of potatoes and drops em in the hot pan. She jumps back when the grease pops; her face stays empty. I plop down on the kitchen chair and my thighs settle over the edges. I sift through the thin stack of mail circulars with one hand and rub my knee with the other.
“Your joints ache, Granny?”
I don’t bother to say. She sees how swoll my knee is. I sip sweet tea and watch Sadie turn potatoes and onions, slice ham, and wash yesterday’s dishes. There’s grace bout the girl. Like her mama long gone from here, in this plain place Sadie won’t plain…and that galls me. I never got a speck of grace. I was born big-boned and grew tall in a family of runts, and I look down on folks ever since.
Sadie fills our plates from the stove and we eat without talk. Her eyes stay down, and mine stay righteous. When I’m done, I pull the chew outta my pocket and head to the porch glider like I always do to ponder troubles that stay too long. Sadie showing up jumped her to the head of the worry line. I sip on my jar of hooch I keep by the glider cause it softens my rememberings.
My grandgirl tied her hopes to a crappy man without a lick of promise. I could tell by the set of Roy Tupkin’s eyes and jut of his jaw that he was the sorry kind. Sadie was blind to danger. She sneaked out at night when she thought I was sleep but won’t. I looked out my bedroom window at her running cross the yard with her feet barely touching ground. For a stretch of time, she’d climbed into the front seat of Roy’s pickup with the tai
llights out. I coulda told her he was looking for easy and a woman’s life is hard, but she don’t ask.
“Got me three dead babies… Then Carly comes along, a runty girl too strong-willed for her own damn good—”
“Granny?” Sadie sticks her head out the screen door, wiping her hands on a rag. “You say something?”
I’m talking out loud and don’t know it. I look ahead and rock in the squeaky glider.
Sadie adds, “If you did, I didn’t hear you, that’s all.”
I keep on rocking, and she goes back to the kitchen.
I don’t like to look the fool. Truth is, sometimes I need to hear a voice even if it’s mine. I’m not use to somebody in earshot to pay attention so I stop ruminating and head inside.
“You gonna stay?”
“That okay?”
“No…but you’ll stay anyway.”
My ruminating is all off with Sadie here. I grip the banister and heave myself up the warped treads. Have to stop midway to catch my breath. At the top I rest again, then head to the bedroom that’s only changed for the worse in forty-one years.
This place belonged to my husband’s family three generations back. A unpainted house on the somber side of Bentwood Mountain. When I come as a bride it was enough, but time’s added a brittle coat of neglect. The feather bed sags deep when I climb into its valley.
While my body settles in, Sadie comes quiet up the stairs, steps over the loose board at the top, and closes her bedroom door with a soft click. Night sounds slide through the cracks in the walls. Sleep is gonna come. It always does, but so do rememberings. Sometimes they take me places I don’t wanna go. Sometimes they take me places I don’t wanna leave. I never know where I’m going when I climb in this featherbed.
• • •
“Push hard. You can do it,” Birdie orders. “PUSH.”
I push and push till I part the Red Sea, and out comes a tiny creature not meant for this world. Birdie’s face is fuzzy, looking young way back then, and I know the little one’s fate without her saying. She wraps it in a rag like leftovers, puts it on the floor, and starts to clean down there. A battle’s been fought and I lost again. Birdie leaves and takes the leftovers. I wonder if she’ll come back and don’t care one way or the other.
My body stinks. My hair is limp on a stained pillow. I lay in my mess and study watermarks on the ceiling. One looks like a railroad track to somewhere else. I follow a crack cross the ceiling to where it meets the wall, then runs down and out the open window to the redbuds. It’s bright outside. I squint against the glare.
Birdie comes back. She stands straight in midlife and gives me comfort words. “Gladys, let me clean you and finish up. Your work is done.”
She set on the stool next to my bed a pan of warm water with the sweet smell of herbs and a clean rag. Like I’m the baby, she works my nightgown over my head. Takes long strokes down my arms, under my ninnies, cross my empty belly, down my legs to the calloused soles of my wide feet that got cracks in the heels. Rolls my tired body one way, then the other way, strips the soiled towels and sheet from under me and puts on clean linens. The sheets are cool and dry against my washed back. The scent of mint that grows beside the clothesline clings to my cotton gown and sheets. Birdie’s face is smooth. Her hands are tender with sympathy and sadness. I appreciate the gift of her.
“You feel better now you cleaned up,” she says, and at her kind voice, I squeeze my eyes and out squirt skinny tears. They slide cross my temples and into my hair and ears. She wipes my eyes and brushes my hair with her stubby fingers. The last thing she does is put a cool pillow under my head, then leaves me with my loss.
Walter would have heard and taken to his corn likker. I’ll pay later for those nights he couldn’t have his way with me and don’t have a baby boy to show for it. For now, this clean space is mine to start to heal before he comes at me again. Tonight, this remembering don’t make me wander. It stays put on a bed that smells of springtime.
I don’t wanna leave.
• • •
At first light, I hear grandgirl Sadie in the hall outside my bedroom door, then she’s gone back to where she belongs. I don’t call out but let her and that baby inside her leave. I got to cause she’s the only one who can clean up her own mess.
I get up slow, head to the kitchen, and pull down the can of Luzianne on the shelf. While it perks, I hear, “Yoo-hoo. Morning, Gladys. It’s Marris!” My neighbor yells out like she always does when she walks into my house like the family she is and heads to the kitchen. She plops a bark basket of berries on my table, takes a chipped cup off the shelf, and pours herself some coffee before it’s ready.
“It’ll start a purty day, but a big rain’s coming,” she says, like I give a damn.
My anger spikes. “Why you do that?”
“Do what?” Marris asks, all innocent-like, and sips the weak coffee. She holds it with both hands with joints as gnarled and swoll with arthuritis as mine.
“Say your name every time you walk in.” I imitate her high voice for spite—“It’s Marris”—and watch her face fall. Then I add, “Like I don’t know it’s you coming through the door. How many times you been here? A thousand times? Ten thousand? I know who you is, for God’s sake.”
“I don’t count the times.” Her voice loses its lightness. “Don’t wanna surprise you, that’s all.”
Her tone turns downright dull. I’m disappointed at the easy victory. Some days, Marris fights harder to keep her sunshine. Today won’t one of em.
• • •
Marris is second cousin by marriage on Walter’s side. Since she was a girl, she’s lived around the bend, down the road, in a two-room house with a dirt floor she sweeps every day to clear out cobwebs. Marris used to have hair as red as coals cooked down in a fire. Walter would say in a rare time he was being funny, “You stick dough in hair that red, it woulda baked into a biscuit.” Now it’s gone to ash.
Not a thing’s wrong with Marris cept most days she’s more happy than a body has a right to be. Regular folks buckle under the piss and vinegar in this world. Not Marris. Her perky words irk me something fierce. Always have. Always will. I stand and pour myself a cup of coffee now that it’s ready, then sit again.
“Since you brought them huckleberries and you standing there staring at the wall, why don’t you fix a pie?” I throw at her, and the woman goes to work.
She sifts flour, cuts in lard, and adds spring water. She rolls out the pastry for the pie tin, adds the berries, sprinkles sugar on top, and is done lickety-split. While the pie bakes, she washes the bowl, the spoon, and her coffee cup and puts em away. Silence crowds the room. She hangs the apron on the nail, picks up her berry basket, and looks at me for the first time in fifteen minutes.
“Gladys,” she asks, “why you boss me round like that and be so hurtful?”
She leaves before I answer and catches the screen door so it don’t slam.
I stand and clutch the edge of the sink and look out the window at the garden that struggles in weak sunlight and sorry soil. The plot’s gone to seed cause I don’t bend the way I used to. My back and legs fail me most days. Few souls ever cross my threshold cept Marris…and she don’t count cause of the aggravating she brings. Most of the time she don’t even tell me gossip to lift my situation. What’s a body to do when she can’t care for herself no more and her house falls down? Just up and die?
When it’s cooked, I pull the pie from the heat and set it on the window ledge to cool. Dern if she didn’t put a four-leaf clover on top to throw the Scots Irish at me. I don’t smile. No, sir. Life’s too shitty. For a old woman, it’s more shit than I can shovel.
I can’t remember if I ever had a choice but to put one foot in front of the other and walk the line on a rocky road to nowhere. I pour more coffee, pick up a fork, and stab the heart of the clover. The first bite burns my tongue.
• • •
Marris was right. The rain comes late afternoon and settles in. The walls of the house get damp and stay damp, and shadows hunker down in corners and hide at the top of landings out of reach of light. I don’t believe in ghosts, but they still come round and mess with me. Footsteps fade. Doors open and close. There’s scratching in the walls.
I sip from my hooch that night and hope like a fool for a peaceful rest. Rain drums hard, and kitchen pots sit on the floor to catch leaks. Mad lightning and thunder howl through the holler, and branches lick the sides of the house. When I go to the bedroom, I throw a extra quilt on the bed to ward off the damp. There’s no easy rest for the weary. I lay in my bed waiting for sleep when a raw memory comes calling instead.
• • •
“Woman, you got a lesson coming.”
Walter stands at the edge of the bed, me waking up confused. I scoot back cross the mattress toward the wall, guilty, but don’t know what for.
“What I do?” I ask.
Walter unbuckles his belt. The leather slides out the loops with a familiar hiss and wraps round his calloused palm with the buckle dangling. He leans his head hard to the right. “You think I don’t know?” He reminds me of the mean rooster watching a worm he’s gonna peck to death. “Bout the man in my house?”
“What man, Walter?”
The belt buckle strikes, and fat welts pop up on my cheek. I whimper and lift bare arms to cover my face. Pull my legs up to make me smaller.
“That traveling man?” he snarls. “You think nobody’d see him?”
WHAP!
“Think a good neighbor don’t watch out for my welfare when I’m away?”
WHAP!
Baby Girl cries cross the hall. I try to stay quiet so the child won’t worry, but the belt makes the sounds for me. I’m bleeding. One eye’s swoll shut, and a finger’s bent odd. One more strike and he drops the belt, stumbles over the threshold, and clatters down the stairs. The screen door slaps as he heads into the day’s drizzle.