by CeeCee James
“CeeCee, nice things would happen to you all the time if you’d just be a good girl.”
“Mama, I will try to be better! I’ll turn over a new leaf! I love you!” I said, holding my hand over my heart.
Mama said she didn’t believe me. “You’d do what I want if you really loved me.”
I walked away from her with my head hanging back to my room. It was dark in the room, with the moon light shining on the lilac bush outside my window.
I flipped on the light and climbed the bed to study the window, looking for tiny pin-holes where a fairy might have climbed inside. How did the tooth fairy get in here? My reflection stared back at me, her hand touching mine through the glass. I began to jump up and down on my bed, and stare at her. She looked like a little girl, with blonde flyaway hair and skinny, bug bitten legs. I felt so much older than her. Who are you? *bounce* Are you actually me? Do you walk the roads alone? *Bounce* Do you vacuum and take care of the chickens like I do? *Bounce*
Also reflected in the window behind her was a cartoon poster that hung over my bed. The poster was of an old woman with a hefty wooden spoon and a scowl, dirty children hanging out of a giant shoe. Mama had once told me that I was like one of the woman’s bratty kids. Which one am I? I rubbed my thumb over the blonde girl hiding behind the shoe. Here I am.
Tired from jumping, I flipped off the light and lay in bed with my tongue stuck in the empty slot in my teeth. My bedroom was divided by a piece of white plaster board. Mama slept on her side, and I slept on the other. Her lamp was always on, and the light shone into my dark side through the crack where the board didn’t quite meet the wall. The blankets on the bed were a mess. I kicked my legs under them to straighten them and pulled them up under my chin.
Turning, I studied the crack. Can I fit them? I slid my fingers through the space and watched them go from dark to light. My fingers were marching ants as I moved them up and down the wall. There was a soft touch, Mama’s fingers against mine. I yanked my fingers back as a thrill shot through me. Rolling closer, my cheek against the cool wall, I looked through the crack, but couldn’t see her. I listened, and didn’t hear her breathing. I slid my fingers through again and again; wiggling and making them dance, hoping to get her to touch them again. In a sharp voice she told me to stop. There was scraping as she moved her bed into the living room, taking the lamp with her.
Chapter 7
~The Secret~
Another summer was trickling away. I would be starting kindergarten soon. My hair was white again from the sun, and I could whistle through the gap of my two missing bottom teeth. The sun stretched through the open front door across my lap, making a shadow-me on floor. I ate a sandwich at the table, chewing and watching a green inch worm slide down its silk thread in the door frame. I stopped, the sandwich half-way to my mouth. Mama hadn’t gotten up from her bed in the living room all day. Was she still sleeping?
Setting the sandwich down, I took quiet steps through the kitchen. The living room was dark, and she didn’t move on the bed. My heart beat faster as I stepped towards her. The blanket twitched suddenly, when she waved a fly away. I ran outside, snatching my sandwich up on the way out.
The day was extra quiet. When it was dinner-time I went back inside, and pulled out the peanut butter and orange marmalade (yuck, why does Mama get this?) and made myself another sandwich. Still no noise. I wiped the table with my napkin and crumpled it around the crumbs before tossing it in the trash, and went to bed.
I was almost asleep when I heard her moan. My eyes popped opened, seeing funny twirls and blobs as they strained in the dark. What’s the matter with Mama? Why is she crying?
The next morning she shuffled to the bathroom with her arms crossed holding her tummy, her face creased with pain wrinkles. She looked over at me standing in the kitchen.
“Don’t you tell anyone that your Mama is sick! It’s a secret! Don’t you tell no-one. Ever!”
She climbed back into her bed afterwards, her body moving in slow starts and pauses, until she finally lay flat with a sigh. From the kitchen I watched her roll to her side and moan from the pain.
“Mama, do you want some water?”
“Leave me be,” she groaned, “It’s your father who did this to me. We were fine together until I got pregnant with you, then he turned into a crazy person.”
I backed away, as tears stung my eyes. I would have done anything to make her better. I didn’t know how to fix her except to not be born.
Mama stayed in bed from then on. She had just enough strength to drag herself to the car and drive to the medical clinic week after week for tests. Each time, she came home frustrated. They couldn’t figure out what caused her to hurt so much.
It went on for months. She lay hardly moving, groaning with pain on her teeny bed. Before I left for school I put a glass of water by her bed. After I got home from kindergarten I helped her to the bathroom, supporting her as best as I could with her arm around my shoulder. The months whittled her weight down to sixty-seven pounds. She felt like a bundle of sticks in my arms.
I washed her hair while she leaned moaning over the edge of the white bath tub. As gentle as possible, I rubbed in the soap bubbles and then poured water from a cup to rinse it clean.
“Is it rinsed CeeCee? I can’t take any more,” Mama whimpered.
“I’m done, Mama. I’m done.” I patted her hair dry, wrapping it in a towel like a turban on her head, and then she leaned on me on her way back to the bed.
I helped dress her in her loose flannel jammies. She could barely lift her leg, while I slid the bottoms up. I scooted them up to her waist in tiny movements every time she whispered, “Ready.”
When her hair dried I brushed it with careful strokes; in the way I always wished she would brush mine. She waved me away with her bony hands, exhausted. I whispered, “Mama, you are beautiful.” And she looked at me with her sunken, brown eyes for a moment, before looking away.
After long months, Mama had a diagnosis from the doctor, a foreign word called _______, and the doctor prescribed Mama some medicine. I found the orange pill bottles lined up on the counter, ready to give to her when she asked. I wrestled to remove the lids and then counted out the weird shaped, colored pills for Mama. Rolling the pills around in my hand, I wondered what they tasted like. Are they sweet? They looked like candy.
One night, Mama was shaking non-stop in her bed. I climbed in the bed with her, biting my nail for a moment before I laid my hand on her shoulder. When she accepted my touch, I held her while she shivered with her knees pulled to her chest. Maybe I can keep her warm, so she won’t shake any more. It wasn’t often Mama let me do this, and I rested my cheek against her back and closed my eyes, my heart squeezing to feel her so close to me.
The next day, after Mama was settled in her bed, I ran outside to take care of our chickens. The chickens were our prized possessions because the eggs were all the food we had to eat. Mama couldn’t work or go to the store. I pulled white socks over my hands and stuck my head into the dark coop to look down the long line of their nesting boxes. The chickens squawked crossly and fluffed their feathers, and bits of straw and tiny feathers floated in the air while I crawled toward the first nest.
“Nice Chicken, good chicken,” I wheedled, my hand feeling for the warm egg. Her sharp beak stabbed the back of my hand. I shrank back and tried not to cry. Mama had warned me not to disturb the chickens or they wouldn’t lay eggs. I was afraid Mama would hear them squawking from the house, and I would get into trouble.
The queen bee of the roost, a fat old white hen named Tulips, waited at the end. Tulips had two white feathers that waved on stalks at the top of her head, and her squawks were more indignant and louder than the rest. She refused to give up her eggs and used her mean beak when I tried to get under her fat body. I had to leave them.
I opened the chicken door to their yard so they could scratch at the bugs, and ran my basket of eggs into the house. Then, I went back to their yard and grabbed
the water pan, muddy now with bits of grass floating across the surface, and carried it over to the water pump underneath the lilac tree. The water pump had a broken seal and didn’t work very well. I pumped and pumped the handle. It was heavy and awkward, and each time I pulled the handle down it was harder to pull. I grunted, and pulled it again, nothing but squeaks from the metal grinding together. Finally, there was a splash of water into the pan waiting below-- pump and splash, pump and splash. I wiped my face and dried my hands against my shirt and then heaved the metal pan up against my bony hip. I trundled it through the yard towards the coop.
Mama became sicker. It was rare we spoke, but now, because of the pain, she couldn’t tolerate any noise. She still needed me nearby to help her, so I sat all day at a little desk in the living room and colored in my book.
Her weakness meant the house became a mess, even though I tried my best to keep up with the chores. It also meant she didn’t have the strength to hit me anymore. I brought her glasses of water, and cooked her plates of yellow scrambled eggs. I put clean sheets on her bed. When she said thank you, I melted and gave her a smile. I couldn’t make a noise, but my five year old heart hummed with satisfaction.
My aunt picked me up one day after school. “You’re coming home with me. Your Mama had to go in for surgery,” she said. I got into the car, and it felt empty without my cousins. Why can’t I go home? I know how to take care of myself.
Mama almost died during her emergency surgery. She said when she woke up she felt the hand of God on her shoulder. I was never worried about her dying, so I was surprised to hear her story; I always knew that she would be okay. I took good care of her.
My aunt was grumpy with me while I stayed at her house. She scared me with her gruff commands and rolled her eyes when I didn’t understand what she wanted. I knew she didn’t like me. I had overheard Mama complaining about me to my aunt before.
When my aunt was at work, my cousins and I had fun. We watched Happy Days together on their tiny TV that ran off a car battery, and made weird sandwiches out of pickles, mayonnaise, mustard, peanut butter and potato chips. My Uncle Henry saw the sloppy messes after we finished, and he made us eat them to teach us not to waste food. The gooey sandwiches tasted gross, but we told each other the color our faces turned while we ate them. Purple! Yours is green! Yours has Polka Dots!
My cousins and I made armpit noises when we were supposed to be asleep, and pushed each other high on the rope swing. My cousin Christy taught me a hand game-- here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors, and see all the people. I giggled when I turned my hands over and saw my finger people. I learned how to make a cat’s cradle out of looped string, and carried pink yarn twisted around my wrist for a quick game.
One morning I woke up covered in grossness. I had diarrhea in the middle of the night. I sat crying in my bed until my aunt came up the stairs. She was furious. She grabbed me by the shoulders, threw me into a tub of cold water, and told me I was a disgusting child. My cousins were in the bathroom getting ready for school, and I was naked in the tub, my face hot, holding a wet washcloth to my chest. Poop floated in the water, and she dunked me under to wash my hair. That evening I was sent to my Grandparents.
My mind reeled from the quick way my aunt had pulled me from her house because I had been a bad girl. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to my cousins. I was going to be good for my grandparents, and not get into any more trouble.
They were Mama’s parents, and lived in a mobile home in a park. The windows were never opened in their house, and my nose wrinkled at the smell of old perfume. The first day I was there Grandma took a long nap. I sat on the cot in the spare room and played with a tiny monkey she gave me, waiting for Grandma to wake up.
Grandpa came home from work, slamming the front door. I jumped off the cot and ran out to the living room.
“Hi Grandpa!”
“Hi yourself. What for dinner?”
“I don’t know?” I sat on the couch, twirling my monkey by its arms.
“What? You didn’t make me pot roast and mashed potatoes?” He hung his hat on the hook and smiled at me.
I laughed, and Grandma came down the hall. She fluffed the back of her hair with her fingers. “Come on chickadee. Help me make dinner.” I jumped off the couch and ran to the kitchen.
“Let me see you walk as quiet as a butterfly.” Grandma said. We washed our hands- Grandma called them patties- and then grabbed the vegetables out of the fridge. Grandma taught me a song.
“Oh mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy. A kid’ll eat ivy too, wouldn’t you?”
The song twisted my tongue, and only made sense if I sang it slow. Grandma and I sang it fast while we washed the carrots and celery. It sounded like we had our own special language.
The next day my grandparents went to visit Mama in the hospital, and I was left to stay with a male babysitter. I played on the couch with my toy monkey. After a few minutes, I heard him come out of the bedroom. He stopped in the shadow of the doorway to the living room, his face silhouetted in the gloom staring at me. He didn’t say anything. He stared at me like he was hungry. The clock ticked loudly, and his eyes were unblinking. A ball grew in my stomach. I glanced away and didn’t dare look up at him again. Dread curled through all my limbs. I couldn’t pretend to play with my monkey any longer. I rested my hands on the top of the toy in my lap with my head down.
“CeeCee,” he said, “come here…. Want to play a game?” My stomach rolled, something wasn’t right. There was no one to keep me safe.
He grabbed my arm and pulled me to the bedroom. He shut the door. I tried to open it, and he leaned his shoulder against it, locking it with a click, and laughed at me.
“Don’t be a baby, this is a fun game! I’m not going to hurt you.” He told me to kiss --.
I objected, “No! Gross! I don’t want to do it.”
“Come on, just do it. It will be fun. I have a tootsie roll you can have if you do it. It will be fine, it’s just a silly thing. I’ll tell your mom you were a good girl here. That will make her happy. Won’t that make her happy?”
His pressure became greater and greater and finally I did it.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” He grinned, before getting up and leaving the room.
I was ashamed I did such a dirty thing, that I ran to the bathroom and scrubbed my lips raw with a scratchy towel trying to make them clean again. When I opened the bathroom door, he was there waiting, tall and scary. He loomed over me, and wouldn’t let me out.
“You better not tell anyone about our little game. If you tell anyone, I’ll tell your Mama what a nasty little brat you were while you were here. I will find you and I will hurt you. Zip your lips.”
He strode away. I ran to my room and shut the door. Shaking, I sat down and leaned against it.
The clock struck seven, disguising the key in the front door of my grandparents returning. I heard their voices in the living room, and tears blurred my eyes at their normal sound. My legs cramped when I stood up, so I shook them and walked out. I felt like a different person now. I was sure they could tell what happened.
Grandma called to me from the kitchen.
“Did you have a nice time?”
My head felt heavy when I nodded.
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“Yes Grandma.” I picked my monkey up off the couch and cuddled him to my chest, and then walked back to my cot. My stomach hurt. Will Grandma and Grandpa leave me again? But they didn’t, and Mama came home a few days later.
I watched Mama closely the first few days she was home from the hospital. She smiled a lot, even when she was alone. I didn’t know where my place was any more. Was it at the little table, or was it outside? I hope Mama remembers that I love her.
Mama spoke of the day she was taken to the hospital in whispered reverence. She told me how her father had picked her and drove her to the emergency room. She sighed with happiness as she told me how he
had tears in his eyes when he carried her into the hospital.
“He’s my knight in shining armor.”
“That’s good, Mama,” I said.
She poured herself some ice tea. I went outside to the fence and sat on the top rail, the tall daisies and blue bells tickling my bare feet that hung down. I heard a swish, and thought it was the cat, but it was Mama.
“Boo!” she said, and I grabbed the fence to keep my balance, so surprised to see her. “Isn’t it a beautiful day?” I nodded, a smile spreading across my cheeks.
Mama picked a few of the daisies and threw the flowers into the air. I laughed to see her act silly, and she laughed too. I wanted to keep her there, laughing with me, and started prattling on about school. Her smile shrank as she stared out at the field. Quick! Think of something funny! She raised her hand, cutting me off.
“Let’s just be quiet and listen to the birds sing.” So, I looked out at the field, and Mama leaned against the fence. I saw a little robin hopping on the road, and started to tell her, until I remembered to be quiet. It was wonderful, but at the same time, I squirmed inside. If Mama knew the secret, she wouldn’t want me anymore.
The next day I came home from school crying after being teased by a classmate. I lingered next to Mama instead of going straight to my room. She froze for a moment, as though she didn’t know what to do, and then pulled me stiffly on to her lap. She let me sit there for a minute. She had never done that before. Mama asked me about one of my fallen tears.
“What’s that on my shoulder, a rain drop?”
I was so overwhelmed by her physical touch that I giggled, and rested my head on her thin shoulder. I didn’t want to ever climb off her lap; I wanted her to hold me forever. This was the second time I remember Mama touching me when it didn’t hurt. I brought those two memories out every night and wrapped them around me like a blanket of Mama’s love, before I fell asleep.