Abruptly, the puppy’s movements ceased. I leaned in closer and prodded the sac. Nothing. I started to cry. I knew the puppy had died.
I ran to the phone, my fingers shaking as I dialed the number of the Lori-Li Lounge. Mama could barely make out what I was saying between my sobs. She told me she would try to come home, but in the meantime, I needed to break open the birth sac of each puppy and towel his face. The puppy had suffocated, she said.
Freckles delivered a second puppy before I heard Mama clamoring up the metal steps. I tentatively broke open the gooey sac as Mama rushed into the trailer and knelt down beside me. I was still crying.
“It’s not your fault,” Mama said. “She must have mated with a larger dog and couldn’t deliver them by herself. Look, another one’s coming. They’re going to be fine.”
But I couldn’t stop thinking about the black-and-white one that died. I wished over and over that I had trusted my intuition. When I shut my eyes to fall asleep, I saw the puppy struggling to free itself, and me sitting there, only inches away, watching it die.
MONTHS LATER, after Freckles’s puppies had been given away, I stood at the ironing board in the living room, pressing a shirt I planned to wear to school that day. One of the girls accidentally knocked over her juice onto the picnic table where Mama sat, disheveled, dark circles under her eyes. Words flew back and forth between her, Vicki, and Nancy until Mama slammed her fist down on the picnic table and said, “You better shape up or I’m sending you to the convent.”
Vicki and Nancy looked at each other and back at the empress. “Go ahead,” they said.
Mama narrowed her hazel eyes into a steely stare. “I’m not bluffing.”
Vicki and Nancy had no intention of backing down.
I stood aghast, watching the showdown, still holding the hot iron.
“I’d rather live in a convent anyway,” Vicki said defiantly.
Nancy nodded in agreement. “Go ahead and send us,” Nancy dared her.
I watched a fire rise in Mama that threatened to burn down the whole trailer. I had no idea how to put it out.
“You think you’re so smart; get in there and get your jewelry to give away,” Mama ordered. “They won’t let you bring it with you to the convent.”
Then Mama whirled around, looking wildly into my eyes. “You feel the same way?” she snapped. “You want to go to the convent, too?”
Vicki and Nancy had nothing left to give Mama. Her moods and rages had taken their toll on all of us. Mama’s fury had become as bitter as the howling winds sweeping through an icy canyon. No matter how hard we tried, we constantly fell short. We didn’t wax the floors right; we were too loud in the morning; we weren’t grateful enough for the sacrifices she made. The list seemed endless.
But still, I didn’t want to go to the convent. I didn’t want Vicki and Nancy to go, either. I wanted . . . What did I want? I wanted to worry about what outfit to wear to school that morning. I wanted all the pain and craziness to go away.
“Please don’t send us away,” I cried. “I don’t want to be sent away again.”
“Okay,” Mama acquiesced. “You stay here and watch the girls. I’m driving those two to school to check out.”
There was no victory in what I felt. Vicki, Nancy, and I had been on the front lines together, taking care of the house and Patricia, Brenda, and Joni. Had I deserted them? Was I a coward for wanting to stay?
Vicki and Nancy got dressed, came back into the kitchen, and obligingly handed over their meager stash of chained necklaces, bracelets, and rings. They followed Mama out the trailer door and drove away.
I fielded questions from the little ones. Why is Mama so mad? Where are they going? When will they be back? Their questions were my questions, too. None of them were answered until Mama opened the trailer door less than an hour later.
“Get into the back,” Mama shouted, herding Vicki and Nancy into the back bedroom. I heard her in there hitting, slapping, spanking, and yelling, “This will teach you a lesson.”
Afterward, Vicki and Nancy were sore and bruised—especially Nancy, who bruised easily. When Mama saw Nancy the next morning, she instructed all of us to say that Nancy had fallen at the skating rink and people ran over her with their roller skates. Nancy repeated the story exactly when a gym teacher saw her changing her clothes and asked what had happened.
Still, there was something oddly triumphant about Vicki and Nancy’s demeanor. They told me Mama had pulled up in front of the building and ordered them to go to the principal’s office to withdraw from school. They opened the door and began walking up the sidewalk, but Mama opened the car door and yelled at them to get back into the car.
At that point, they knew they had won. They called Mama’s bluff and, to them, it was worth a pound of their flesh. I, too, benefited from their sacrifice. Mama never again mentioned the convent.
Unfortunately, there were other dragons to slay.
IN THE early years, Mama seemed fine 90 percent of the time. But since our move to Grand Junction, Mama’s dark days had increased in number and magnitude. She hated nights more and more, as if she were afraid of the dark.
I observed her one morning after I had risen to see the thin light of dawn revealing itself through the kitchen window. From where I stood at the kitchen sink, I could see Mama still reading her nursing manuals from the night before. To keep herself company, she had slid a bottle of Mogen David wine under her nightstand. I watched her swallow some pills with the wine instead of water and turn off the light. It was as if she needed daylight to fall asleep.
If Mama did sleep, she often had recurring nightmares, like the one of me drowning. But the scariest thing Mama told me had nothing to do with nightmares. Not long after the morning I had watched her from the kitchen sink, Mama confided that she had been seeing little people at the foot of her bed—for real.
“They talk to me and won’t go away, unless I turn on the light,” she said, blowing on her cup of steaming coffee.
I stared at her in disbelief. A sickening dread filled me. What did she mean, “little people”? Leprechauns? Fairies like Tinker Bell? She had to be dreaming. In order for her to be okay, she had to be dreaming! They couldn’t possibly be real.
Mama searched my face, like maybe I had an answer. The fear that flickered in her eyes was unfamiliar to me.
It didn’t occur to me to confide in my sisters, laughing and watching television in the back bedroom. I wanted to be strong for them, so they wouldn’t feel afraid. I wanted to be their oak tree, a place where they could find refuge when things spun out of control. So I buried Mama’s confession safely away inside me, hoping her little people would go away.
Maybe if I helped out more. Judged Mama less harshly. Maybe I could do better at school, make her proud of me. I came close to confiding in my science teacher, Mr. Gilroy, the day he asked about the assembly.
“Are you excited about tomorrow?” Mr. Gilroy asked after class.
I stared at him blankly, trying to recall what was happening tomorrow.
“About your induction into the Junior Honor Society,” he added.
“I don’t know about it,” I said.
He looked surprised. “I’m sure I saw your name on the list.”
“No one said anything.”
“Your grades are good enough,” he said. “I was on the committee. At tomorrow’s assembly all the Junior Honor Society students will be recognized onstage. Your mom doesn’t know, then?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t even sure Mama would come if she did know. I couldn’t remember her ever showing up at school for a field trip, PTA meeting, class conference, or anything—except the time she talked to my science teacher in Odessa about paddling me in front of the boys.
“Let’s go to the office,” he said.
“Wait,” I said. I realized I was alone with an adult who knew about things like molecules, atoms, and electricity. Things that were real, but you couldn’t really see. Maybe . . .
&nbs
p; Mr. Gilroy turned toward me, expectantly. What could I say? Do you believe leprechauns can be real? If somebody thinks she sees leprechauns, is she okay? I couldn’t imagine where to begin, and my tiny window of opportunity disappeared.
I went home and ironed my favorite dress, trimmed with wide zigzag rows of dark brown rickrack. That night I went to sleep with rollers in my hair. I left Mama a note on the kitchen table asking her to please, please come to school the next day. Daddy was out of town.
Mama wasn’t awake when I left the next morning. That afternoon, the student body gathered in the auditorium for the assembly. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I searched for Mama in the crowd but couldn’t see her. When I heard my name announced, I walked down the dark aisle toward the stage.
I recognized the back of Mama’s head; she had pulled her black hair into a stylish French twist. When our eyes met, I was astonished to feel tears form in my eyes. I hadn’t known it was possible to cry with joy until that very moment. I stood tall onstage, smiling out at Mama. I didn’t know if I was prouder of myself or of her for coming.
MAMA CALLED me into her bedroom. She did that a lot—called me into her bedroom to sit on her bed to talk. Not so long ago, I helped her wrap everyone’s Christmas presents. She told me confidentially that Aunt Eunice had not sent Nancy a gift. Because of this, Mama bought an extra round of gifts for all of us girls, which she intended to say were from Aunt Eunice. I wasn’t sure why, but Mama wanted Aunt Eunice’s gifts to be wrapped the prettiest of all.
We covered the boxes in shiny blue paper decorated with brown pinecones. Mama cut strips of brown ribbon and showed me how to fashion large bows. For the pièce de résistance, Mama shook a can of fake snow and lightly dusted each bow with white flakes. I had never seen more beautifully wrapped packages.
On Christmas Eve, when we traditionally opened our gifts, Mama turned to Nancy and asked if she would like to pass out her mother’s gifts. Nancy beamed as she proudly handed each of us a gift box with a lavish bow sprayed with delicate snow.
That’s how it was with Mama. One moment I admired her more than anyone, and the next I wished she would become someone else. The last time she invited me into her bedroom to talk, it hadn’t gone so well. I tried not to get upset when I saw her rubbing rose water across her skin, or when she asked me to zip up the back of her light blue dress that plunged into a deep V in the front, revealing her cleavage. But Mama picked up on my disapproval anyway and told me for the umpteenth time she wasn’t ready for a rocking chair and a shawl.
I couldn’t imagine why she wanted me in her room again so soon.
She sat shoulder to shoulder with me on the bed, which was unusual. I felt her warmth through my shirt. She bowed her head, her dark hair falling across her cheek, hiding her eyes from mine. She took my hand. Now I was worried. Had the little people been talking to her again?
After a long moment, she said softly, “I’m dying, Terry. I’ve got a kidney disease.”
I couldn’t stifle my moan as I slid off the bed and put my head on her knees. I don’t know how long I sobbed there, feeling her tears dropping onto my hair as she stroked it. After a while, she pulled me up onto the bed beside her again.
“I don’t want you to tell anyone for a while. Not even Davy.”
I nodded.
She took my hand. “Especially not the girls.”
“I won’t.” I sniffed. She didn’t need to tell me that.
We sat there with our hands, mirror images of one another, cupped together. Faint blue rivers ran just below the surface of the skin on the undersides of Mama’s wrists. I wanted to touch her; to stop time, to hold on to her so she couldn’t ever, ever leave.
How could this happen? How could I survive without her? What would happen to us after she died?
Her secret gnawed at my insides week after week. I watched for the slightest change in her health, fretted over every headache, and if she slept too late, crept to the door of her bedroom to make sure I could see her breathing.
The sharp edges of her impending death cut me at all moments of the day and night, at home and in school. At night, my cat Boots curled up beside me and I often cried into his fur.
I remember well the night Mama told me she was dying. What I don’t remember well is the day I realized it wasn’t true.
I may have become suspicious the day Mama and JoAnn bought their blond wigs. They planned to go out dancing in them. All I know is that I looked at Mama one day and thought, This woman isn’t dying.
I felt angry and betrayed. Is that why she had wanted me to keep it a secret? Because it wasn’t true? Did she want my sympathy so desperately after the convent catastrophe that she would lie to me? I should have been relieved. My nightly prayers had been answered. Mama was going to live! How could I be mad at her for not dying? I didn’t know, but I was.
That was the miasma I stewed in when JoAnn came over one night and sat on the couch visiting with Mama.
“When I tell you to do something, young lady, you do it!” Mama snapped at me. “Do you hear me?”
I didn’t respond.
“I said, ‘Do you hear me?’”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Yes what?” she asked.
“Yes ma’am,” I said in a deliberate smart-alecky voice that caused Mama to fly off the sofa toward me and slap me across the face.
“Don’t you sass me.”
I covered my stinging cheek with my hand and walked to the back hall to rewash the clothes that had gone sour in the washing machine. Mama was mad because I had forgotten to take them out and hang them on the line.
JoAnn had five children of her own and knew something about being the mother of a large family. She had been aware of Mama’s demands on us for a long time. I heard the concern in her voice when she asked Mama, “Jean, don’t you think you’re being way too hard on Terry? She’s young; she can only take so much.”
I didn’t hear Mama’s response, but I didn’t need to. JoAnn’s words tore open the smothering sac I had been struggling against. I had begun to wonder if Mama’s dissatisfaction stemmed from something intrinsically wrong with me. JoAnn set me psychologically free. I wasn’t flawed. Mama’s displeasure wasn’t my fault. I could finally lay down the burden of trying to make Mama happy; it was no longer mine to carry.
Mama with two rodeo horses
Denver City, Texas
HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL.
I sat up tall when we rolled into Denver City (population 3,500) on State Highway 83, seven hundred miles southeast of Grand Junction. This move coincided with summer—Nancy, Vicki, Patricia, and I had been able to complete an entire year of school in one place. As we drove through town, Daddy pointed out the high school where Nancy and I would be enrolling. The school was surprisingly large and modern, with stadium bleachers and a football field. Daddy said the high school football team had won the Class AA State Championship three years earlier. We would soon learn that the downtown merchants closed early to allow people time to drive to out-of-town football games.
Towns like Denver City arose for various reasons in the West—water, agriculture, cattle, gold, the railroad. Denver City’s genesis was oil. The city claimed to be the last West Texas town created solely on the discovery of oil. Indeed, the tallest landmark was the orange flame that burned day and night on top of the Shell flare stack north of town. The wind blew southerly the day we arrived, carrying the smell of sulfur all the way down to the Dairy Mart on Broadway, where we ordered and ate our noon meal. Daddy’s company was covering our moving expenses, so our meal was gratis.
“A round of chocolate malts for everyone,” Daddy told the waitress.
That alone could account for my feelings of optimism.
Every time we moved to a new town, we arrived with a clean slate, a chance to start over. Sitting inside the Dairy Mart, I felt almost at peace. We had no bad memories of this town, no neighbors gossiping, and no present worry about Mama or Daddy. Mama was downright perky. I ha
d forgiven her for living, but not for lying. She had breached my trust. Even had I wanted to, I couldn’t unfry that egg.
I knew Mama would stay fairly close to home in the beginning. I watched her make honest attempts to try harder whenever we first moved. Plus, it took her a while to establish herself at the local watering holes. However, Mama would soon learn, none too happily, that Yoakum County was dry. No alcohol could be sold. Not that banning the sale of alcohol stopped the locals from drinking. To the contrary, anyone wanting beer or liquor drove sober across the county line to Hobbs, New Mexico, then drove home intoxicated, trying to keep the car’s headlight beams somewhere on the pavement. Outside of drunk drivers, jackrabbits were about the most hazardous obstacle on the sparsely traveled, straight-line highway between Denver City and Hobbs.
It wasn’t long before Mama knew the route by heart.
I can only guess how the conversation went when Daddy told Mama we needed to move again. Not that anything had gone all that well in Grand Junction; even Mama must have realized she had been sucked into a quagmire of depression. But, for economic reasons, we had to follow Daddy. When the distance between Daddy’s rig and our trailer became too great, the company no longer covered Daddy’s traveling and living expenses. They expected him to relocate. If Mama wanted Daddy’s full paycheck, the only option was to pick up stakes.
Daddy didn’t care so much why Mama agreed to move, only that she agreed. If he wasn’t blind to her faults, he was certainly tolerant of them. He continued to offer her enough love for the both of them. Though I saw little evidence of Mama reciprocating Daddy’s love, I was grateful for Daddy’s unwavering devotion. I couldn’t imagine our world without him in it.
He handled our household of females with aplomb, joking that he wished he had stock in the companies that sold toilet paper and sanitary napkins. He was as dependable and comforting as my oak tree on Grandma and Grandpa Vacha’s farm. Brenda and Joni loved to climb onto his back and ride him like a horse. Patricia often snuggled under his arm. Vicki, Nancy, or I might drape a casual arm around his neck while he sat at the kitchen table. Daddy was as uncomplicated as Mama was complicated. With Daddy, you got what you saw—no dangerous undercurrents, just a good man working long hours trying to make ends meet for his family.
Moonlight on Linoleum Page 16