A Place Called Wiregrass

by Michael Morris

The young lady tucked strands of hair behind her ear and leaned forward. “I’m sorry?”

  “Her name’s not new—she was born with it.” I sat tall with the wooden chair, spine pressed into my back, pleased I had out-smarted someone with two diplomas hanging on her office wall.

  Miss Baxter opened the manila file and quickly ran her fingernail down the white page. I just imagined mistakes were far and few between for the likes of her. The most pressing issue in her life was most likely whether she had the time to get those fingernails manicured weekly.

  “Okay, here we are. Four weeks ago, Cher told her teachers that her last name had changed. She said that she was taking her father’s name of LaRouche. Lacretia began calling her ‘La Roach’ and pretending to spray insecticide at her.” Miss Baxter crinkled her perky noise.

  I jumped up from the wooden chair and threw my bag over my shoulder. “Where is she?”

  Miss Baxter looked up, her mouth opened. “Mrs. Jacobs, Lacretia was suspended as well. Now there is no…”

  “Get Cher out here right this minute.”

  During the ride home I said nothing, and Cher sat in the passenger seat with her arms folded. Fingernails had left crimson marks down her right cheek. A sign of valor over the name of the man who stopped contributing to her well-being the second his seed helped form her. The very idea made me hit the steering wheel with the palm of my hand. It was still vibrating when we pulled up to the trailer.

  Cher bolted from the car and stomped through sand and crabgrass. I studied this stubborn human who weeks earlier snuggled with me in my bed. I could only wonder what air castle LaRue LaRouche had seduced her with over the phone.

  She tried to open the door, and when she realized I had the key, she put her hands on her hips. Her toe tapped the concrete steps like she was too important to wait.

  This had gone on long enough. The phone calls, the daydreams, it would all burn up today. Slowly walking towards the door, I plotted my next move.

  When I unlocked the door, she bolted to her room. The pine bedroom door had almost slammed when I blocked it with the base of my arm.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” I said, still feeling the tingle of the door on my arm.

  She jumped on her bed and reached to turn the radio on. I leaned over and grabbed the radio. Brushing up against her, I could almost see rays of anger bouncing off us. I slammed the off button so hard, the radio tumbled to the floor.

  “What’s gotten into you?” I stood with my hand propped on the closed door. I had her trapped, and she would listen to me if I had to hold her down and pour the words into her ear.

  She rolled over on to the bed, her face buried in the pillow. The same pillow that entombed the photo of the family that was never meant to be. “Leave me alone!”

  “How can I? I’m the only person on the face of this earth who cares a thing about you. And what do I get for it? Your hateful words, your bad attitude, and now this.”

  “You hate me,” she said, swinging her face up to glance at me and then retreating into the pillowcase.

  “No, uh-uh. You’re not pulling this crap on me. I love you, and I’m the only one.”

  “My daddy loves me.” I could make out the muffled words as they fought to be heard from under the pillow.

  “That does it. Look at me!” I fell to the bed on my knees and pulled her shoulders upright. She tried to let out a scream, and the terror in her eyes reminded me of how I must’ve looked the times Bozo came after me. My grip loosened. “Please don’t do this,” was all I could say.

  So much for my big plans of truth and honesty. I wanted to cry, to beg her to stop calling LaRue. To make her push him out of her life. This was all my fault. I had let it go too far, and now didn’t know if I could tell her the truth that would stop it.

  “I am, you know. I am a LaRouche. Why can’t I be called by his last name? It’s mine. It’s mi-i-i-ne,” she screamed. Her tortured screams brought to mind a toddler falling to the floor and tightening her legs in a fit of rage.

  I looked inside her blank brown eyes, clouded with tears. “Trust me, he doesn’t want you,” I calmly said.

  “He does so,” she screamed and threw her head back in torment. The tears and moans tore the fibers of my being, and when I tried to hold her, she pushed me away with her fists.

  The thuds on my chest reminded me of when I tried to tell Suzette she should never marry LaRue, pregnant or not. She fought me, tried to slap me, and refused to let me break her dreams. I gave up and she won. She said she refused to allow me to rule her life. Instead, she let him break her and throw her into prison when he was done with her.

  Sitting on the bed listening to Cher’s tormented screams, I decided I would die before seeing family history repeat itself. “He doesn’t care a thing about you,” I continued in the most civil tone I knew. “I love you. I love you.”

  “Shut up,” she said, sticking her fingers in her ears. I yanked her arms down and forced her to hear me. “He didn’t care anything about your mama, and he won’t care anything about you.” Her arms twisted in my grip.

  She gagged and carried on so that I thought for a second she might be having some sort of spell. Like a mental patient. Like Richard.

  “I love you. Me—not him. I’m the one who loves and sacrifices for you. It’s me. Me.”

  “I hate your guts.” A stream of clear liquid ran from her nose. “I hate you!”

  Tough love ended right then. I was not prepared for this. She said it as forcefully as I had told her I loved her. Cher would drop me and the sacrifices I made for her over a make-believe daddy. An air castle that had a big crack down the side of the wall. A crack invisible from where she sat on her puffy cloud.

  “Fine.” I dropped her arms and let her cough and gasp for air. “You want to live in a dream world, go right ahead. But I’m telling you, he ain’t like you think.”

  I had my hand on the knob of her bedroom door when she screamed for the last time that afternoon. “You’ll see when I’m living with my daddy in his brick house. And you’re here in this dumpy place!”

  Like daggers landing in the flank of a bull, the anger overwhelmed my hurt. I turned and stormed the eight steps to the end of her bed, and she jumped with a scream. I snatched the zipper of her pillow and pulled out the little photo of her dream world, the biological parents she was too young to clearly remember.

  “This is what you think life with him is?”

  “How…How did you?” She stood at the end of the bed, hair matted on her face by the tears.

  “Well, honey, you got another think coming. This is your dream, and this is reality.” I tore the wallet-size photo faster than any store-bought shredder. I kept the pieces tightly in my grip, knowing if she could she would glue the memory back together. As soon as I cleared the way, she slammed the door as hard as she could. Walking past the door to the garbage can, I could hear her muffled cries over the baritone-voiced radio announcer. “Mostly sunny skies today with a high reaching eighty-six. Just a gorgeous May day here in the Wiregrass area.”

  The smell of butter melting in a frying pan filled the trailer the next morning. After a sleepless night, I decided to offer an olive branch. But I knew it would take more than French toast to cover up the lashes we gave each other with our tongues. At three I got up and eased into her bedroom door to make sure she was still there. Cher was curled in a fetal position, fully clothed; her red blanket was tossed to the end of the floor. If only she could stay so peaceful, I thought and laid the red blanket across her bare feet.

  I had already called and told Sammy I would not be at work. “Under the weather” is how I explained it, but in reality I was sick with fright. She barely mumbled when I greeted her with “Good morning.”

  “I made you some French toast.”

  She stumbled in her wrinkled blue jeans to the kitchen table and drowned the brown bread with maple syrup. I sat down with my cup of coffee and tried to offer another branch.

  “Listen, last
night…”

  “Am I going with you to Miss Claudia’s today?” She looked me dead in the eye like we were negotiating a contract. Then when she licked a stream of syrup off the side of the plastic bottle, I was reminded that she was not the adult in this situation.

  Cher’s punishment for impersonating someone she was not amounted to cleaning all of Miss Claudia’s windows and painting the wicker swing on the side porch and the flower boxes. She would also wash Miss Claudia’s and Richard’s cars, her usual job. But this time I refused to let them pay her, even for the car washes.

  “Erma Lee, don’t be too hard on the girl.” Richard stood at the kitchen door, sipping his coffee.

  With Miss Claudia I would take advice. From him I dismissed it the moment he parted his lips. “Need more coffee, Richard, before I throw this pot out?”

  Cher even had her lunch outside under the oak tree, the same seat where Sam, the yard man, ate his lunch the two days a week he worked at Elm Drive. “Bless her heart,” Miss Claudia mumbled while poking a fork at a breast of fried chicken. She took a bite of the crispy meat and turned to look at Cher from her kitchen window. But I was unmoved. Mama was right about some things, I decided. I had spoiled Cher and was now reaping the consequences. I said little to Miss Claudia and Richard that day. I wanted to be the hired help. I wanted to come and go as I pleased without them interfering in my life.

  “You and Gerald go out for your usual steak supper last Saturday?” Miss Claudia asked while I dusted the mahogany stair rail.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She stood a minute longer and opened her mouth to speak, but then walked away. The tap of her cane faded, and she closed her bedroom door.

  I was in no mood for such foolish thoughts of romance; I had a crisis in my midst. Miss Claudia was sitting in her bed, reading the newspaper, when I entered with an armload of folded underwear to place in her chest of drawers.

  “Cher was just here washing my window, tapping the glass, and making all sorts of monkey faces.” Miss Claudia pouted her lips and scrunched her nose. She giggled, and I only offered a smile.

  “I declare,” she said, and her laughter died. “Erma Lee, you said this all started over the kids teasing her about her name?”

  With my back to her, Miss Claudia could not see me roll my eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Has this happened before?”

  “No, not really. Where do you want your scarves to go?” I slightly turned to see her hazel eyes burning a hole through the inside of me.

  “Top drawer is fine, thank you. Listen, turn around where I can look at you.”

  Just what I did not want to do. I sighed a little too loudly.

  “Now what in the world is going on? It’s me now. I’m your friend.”

  “She just got in trouble at school is all. Some girl picked a fight with her.” I hand-dusted the top of the drawer. Anything to prevent looking at her.

  “All this over her name. Why, Cher is a lovely name. I don’t see anything a’tall wrong with…”

  “It’s her last name. Her last name,” I said out of utter frustration to make her comprehend my problems. “She changed it. Told all the teachers she was going by LaRue’s last name…her da…her biological father.”

  Miss Claudia picked up the magazines off her bed and tossed them on her nightstand. “The poor girl’s just confused.”

  I sighed, not expecting Miss Claudia to understand. Whatever we had in common concerning taking licks from a man, she didn’t have all the problems I faced. She had an imperfect child, but he lived next door, not in a prison. She didn’t face the loss of love and hope from the one person you believed would change a mess of destruction. “It’s more than all that. You just don’t understand.”

  “Well, try me.”

  “No, just forget it. I just never should have…”

  “Erma Lee, you’re just all to pieces. Now I’m concerned about you. You don’t want me to worry about you now, do you?”

  I stepped towards the chair by her bed and ran my fingers over the brocaded fabric on the armrest.

  “What’s the matter with the child pretending? She’s having an identity crisis. She needs to know who her people are.”

  “I’m her people,” I said, pointing into my chest. “She needs nobody else but me. He won’t have her, I keep trying to tell her.” My voice echoed down the hall and greeted me once again. I reeled my emotions back and got onto myself for getting out of control. She sat there and looked at me. She was expecting more, signaling me with her eyes that she was tough and could take it.

  “Is this man dangerous for her?”

  All I could do was look down and nod my head in shame. Shame that my own daughter had brought evil into our lives. Shame that I couldn’t stop it. Finally, after what seemed two hours of silence, I sat down in the chair by her bedside.

  “He’s real dangerous. That’s why this is not just some schoolyard fight. I should’ve seen it with Suzette too. My daughter was raised with fighting and screaming all the time. You can just imagine how bad. And I don’t blame her for running off and marrying the first thing who looked over his shoulder at her. Not much different than me, I reckon. I tried to tell her what a mistake I made marrying so young, but Suzette knew more than me.

  “Bozo or me, neither one liked LaRue. Can you blame us? She met him when the carnival came to town. He called himself a ride engineer. I saw through that bull. The carnival was always littering the airport field after they left town, and in my book LaRue was just one more piece of trash they left in Cross City. LaRue got a job working construction, and after his third paycheck Suzette got pregnant. Lord knows, I begged her not to marry him. I told her I would raise the baby while she finished school. She cussed me for everything under the sun and told me I wanted to keep her chained. That was LaRue talking, I know that now. They snuck away the next morning. I didn’t hear from her until a week later when she told me they found a rental house in Shreveport.”

  “Well, I declare,” Miss Claudia said with her chin propped on her knuckles.

  “Yeah, LaRue always had a big scheme. He was going to paint houses, or he was going to own a gas station, always something. Except any money he made went straight up his nose. But I will say at first Suzette tried. She was even a good little mama for a few months. I don’t know how long it took her to get doped up, but soon we knew something wasn’t right. Cher was just a year old when they were flying high. New vehicles, lots of jewelry. Then next thing you know, we weren’t hearing from them. I’d send a letter. No response. Call on the phone and get no answer. I called for a solid week before one morning I called and got a message saying the phone had been disconnected. I called in sick at the factory and drove straight over to Shreveport. Calling it sixth sense or whatever, I knew something wasn’t right.

  “I went up the small steps of the blue rental house expecting nobody home. The yard was scattered with plastic bags and beer cans. I pried the front door open with a rusty jackknife I found by the side of the house. As soon as the door popped open, the smell of old beer and urine nearly knocked me back out. Clothes and shoes were piled all in the middle of the floor, and the sofa Bozo and me gave them as a wedding gift had been torched. I first thought some type of Charles Manson gang had come in and killed them all. I pulled my shirt over my nose and stepped over beer cans and bottles of Wild Turkey. Half-eaten McDonald’s hamburgers with white mold on the buns still sat in yellow containers on the kitchen counter.

  “The kitchen table and chairs had been tossed in all directions. You’d a thought a hurricane hit the place. One empty can of cat food sat on the floor next to the refrigerator. I opened the refrigerator door, and the stench of rotten food made me gag and my eyes water. I turned to run out the front door and tripped over a bottle. When I got up, I looked up and saw her. Just sitting there in the corner of the room. Behind a turned-over keg, wild-eyed and shaking, with her mouth wide open. It was Cher. They just left her there like some empty bottle they were
through with.” Tears fell freely on to my arms. I sat just as still at the courthouse the day the jury convicted Suzette and LaRue of child abandonment and neglect.

  I put both my hands over my eyes. “Cher stayed in the hospital for two weeks, dehydrated and in shock. If it hadn’t been for that one can of cat…” I bent my head down and tried not to bawl like I had when I grabbed her up in her soiled clothing and ran out the front door of that blue shack. It was the last time I really cried in front of Cher. The doctor at the hospital told me this was no time for sissies. Cher needed rocks, not mud.

  I never heard Miss Claudia leave the room, but I felt the soft touch of her bony hand on my back. My face was hot, and when I leaned up, I saw her standing before me with a glass and a lace handkerchief.

  “Take a sip of Coca-Cola,” she said, handing me the handkerchief at the same time. She sat in the wingback chair next to me. We were silent for quite some time. I figured she wanted to make sure I had gotten it all out of my system. Or maybe she was waiting for an ending. If only I had one to offer.

  I blew my nose and cleared my throat. “They found LaRue and Suzette two days later. High on crack, in some fleabag in Las Vegas.” I inhaled and blew the air out hard like I imagined a marathon runner would do headed towards the finish line. “Suzette had even been selling herself,” the words trailing with the last puff of air. “She’s in prison, not in a state home. I lied, okay?”

  I looked at Miss Claudia, waiting for her to scream and kick me out of her house, to do something, anything. But she just sat there with her head tilted towards her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry for lying to you. Look, I know how this must seem to you with me and my history…”

  “Now, you’ve done nothing but try to take the girl and give her a decent raising. Does she know about all this?”

  I jingled the cubes of ice in the blue-swirled glass and shook my head. “I know I ought to tell her. But she’s a good girl. And with all the drugs and mess kids get into.” I suddenly looked up at her as if I had another bright idea, “Do you want me to leave?”