Southern Discomfort

by Tena Clark

  “Now, you remember this, T-T-T-Tena Rix,” Daddy said as we drove back to the farm, his fingers turning white because he was gripping the steering wheel so hard. “You can never, ever t-t-trust a woman,” he began. “You give ’em everything they c-c-could possibly want, build them the f-f-fanciest house in town, buy them the p-p-p-prettiest clothes and b-b-b-biggest diamonds, and look how they treat you. Like shit, that’s how. Don’t you ever trust a G-G-G-GODdamn woman, and I don’t ever want to c-c-catch you thinkin’ like one neither!”

  By then he was just talking to himself, his words turning into the low mumble of disjointed thoughts he often fell into. In fact, my father did a lot of muttering, a low rumble of incoherent words to an invisible companion. He often sounded like a motorboat idling at the dock before taking off across a lake. And if you interrupted him asking, “What in the world are you saying, Daddy?” he’d jolt out of his “conversation,” slap his thigh, and say, “Okay. On to it.” So I left Daddy to his ramblings and turned to look out the window at the passing fields, thinking about Mama back in her little apartment above the dry cleaners, lighting a cigarette and pouring a drink.

  * * *

  In a matter of just a few weeks, my mother and father became the first couple I ever knew to divorce in Waynesboro, maybe in all of Wayne County, Mississippi. The judge turned out to be a cousin of Daddy’s, so the paperwork was rushed through in record time. I don’t know how my wealthy father who bought new cars more often than most people changed their oil, came up with the figure, but somehow he agreed to pay Mama $150 a month in alimony. People in Waynesboro were scandalized. The richest man in town was throwing mere scraps at the mother of his four children. But as bad as it was, it could have been worse. Just months before my parents’ divorce, a man in Calhoun County, Mississippi, petitioned the courts to reduce his alimony payment from $10 a week to $10 a month, and won. Daddy’s alimony, while only a pittance of what he could afford, just barely covered Mama’s rent over the dry cleaners, food, gas, cigarettes, and of course, whiskey.

  As only a child would think, I imagined she left because of me, not in spite of me. Otherwise, why wouldn’t she take me with her? I wouldn’t learn until years after her death that she sold every piece of her jewelry, most of her furs, even two Japanese porcelain lamps she cherished, to pay lawyers in an attempt to gain my custody. But Daddy had more money and more power, and he made sure she lost her case while spending every dime she had. I’m not sure he wanted me, necessarily. He just didn’t want her to win.

  Chapter Fourteen

  * * *

  With my mother out of the house and my father preoccupied with work and whatever new lady friend he had on his arm, I spent a lot of time alone and grew up fast. I had to. But I was still a ten-year-old child at heart looking for adventure, and I found plenty on the farm—from riding poor Frank right through the newly tarred driveway, where he got stuck solid up to his fetlocks, to shooting just about anything that moved with my BB gun, to all but burning down the barn when Burke and I were playing cowboys and decided to light a campfire in the hay bales. The days were full of animals and BB guns and make-believe games.

  The nights were another story.

  Every evening after Virgie had left for the day and Daddy and I returned from eating supper in town, I’d begin my pleading.

  “Please, Daddy, don’t leave me alone tonight.”

  “I don’t know what you’re t-t-talkin’ about, Tena,” he’d say. “I was here all night.” Or: “I was j-j-just out in the barn.” Or: “I ran a quick errand.” Never once did he say: “I’m so sorry, you’re right, I did leave you alone, and I’ll never do it again.” He always insisted that “of course” he was with me all night.

  But he wasn’t. Night after night, I would wake up in the dark and instantly feel the empty house around me. I’d tiptoe to his room and find the bed perfectly made, no sign of Daddy. One night, I went to his room to find him and saw an oddly shaped lump in the bed. Slowly walking over I lifted the covers and found not a sleeping Daddy but two pillows positioned to look like a body.

  Spooked by the empty house and the even spookier shape of the pillows under the covers, I ran to the kitchen, grabbed the biggest knife I could find from the drawer, tucked my nightie into my step-ins, and ran barefoot across a football-size field to Elizabeth’s house.

  Every night I begged him not to do it again.

  “Daddy, please. Stay home with me, all night.”

  “You’re just a sc-sc-scaredy cat, Monkey Joe, with some k-k-kind of imagination on ya. But okay, I p-p-promise. I’ll be right here.”

  But again that night, and many nights after, I found myself alone in a house that seemed to go on forever with dark shadows and strange noises.

  A few months after Mama left, Daddy took me to Disneyland, just the two of us, on a trip he decided would make everything about Mama leaving, and the empty house, and my escalating fears, somehow “okay.” I couldn’t wait to go, not only for the rides, but also for Daddy’s undivided attention. But mostly I was thrilled about going to Disneyland because I knew, just knew, that Daddy wouldn’t dare leave me alone in a hotel room like he did at home, so I’d be safe for two, maybe three, whole nights.

  Daddy suffered through the Matterhorn and It’s a Small World, and even 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, with his hands clenched on the bar in front of the seats, his lips closed tightly across his face. I actually think he was more frightened than bored, but he soldiered on.

  That first night, Daddy tucked me into bed, closed the bedroom door, and went into the living room in our suite to have a cigarette. I snuggled into the sheets, sleepy and sure that Daddy would stay close by all night.

  But I was wrong.

  I awoke and listened for him in the other room. Silence. I got up, opened the bedroom door, and called, “Daddy?”

  I was alone in our huge suite at the Disneyland Hotel. Still in my nightgown, I took the empty elevator down to the front desk.

  “Excuse me, sir. I can’t find my daddy,” I told the night manager.

  Shaking his head, he came around the desk and took me by the hand.

  “Come on, honey, I’ll go help you look for him,” he said.

  We found Daddy by the pool, lighting a woman’s cigarette and drinking a whiskey sour.

  “Why, I was just on my way up, Tena Rix!” he said.

  “Don’t you think, sir, that your little girl is too young to be left alone in the room? She was very frightened,” the night manager said, his voice respectful, but he scolded Daddy in a way few did.

  “I haven’t been gone five minutes!” he said, jumping out of his chair. “I just came down to grab a smoke.”

  At least my father had the decency to blush. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that Daddy shared, if not my terror, at least some of my worry about the evils that lurk in the night: He bought the only kidnap and ransom policy Mister James, Burke’s dad and our insurance salesman, ever sold.

  * * *

  Even with Mama out of my day-to-day life, she still tried to do what normal mothers did: She drove me to doctors’ appointments, took me shopping, and on Thursdays, picked me up from school. Well, at least that was her intention, but, more times than not, I was left sitting on the curb for what was sometimes hours, waiting.

  One hot and muggy afternoon in April, I waited in air thick enough to chew, sitting on a curb that burned my butt through my thin cotton dress. Behind me, everyone left the school—first the other kids, then the teachers, then the principal. Finally, the last person to leave, the janitor, stood behind me, jangling his keys.

  “Your mama comin’, Miss Tena, or is that boy who works for your daddy fetchin’ you today?”

  “Yes, sir, Mama’s comin’, she’s just late, s’all.”

  I put my head down pretending to read, hoping he wouldn’t ask me any more questions. “She’s always late,” I whispered into my collar.

  “You sure she’s comin’, then?” he asked, soun
ding not at all sure.

  “Yes, sir. She told me she might be a little late cuz she’s gettin’ her hair done.”

  That seemed to satisfy him, and he locked the big double glass doors and moved toward his car.

  “Okay, then, I’ll be headin’ on home. See y’all tomorrow, Miss Tena.”

  “Yes, sir.” I waved in his general direction, still pretending like my book was the most fascinating read of my life.

  As he drove away, I looked down the road, willing Mama’s yellow Cadillac to appear around the bend. It didn’t. But then again, I knew it probably wouldn’t. It was Thursday, and Thursday was Mama’s one day to pick me up from school. Daddy knew she had trouble remembering, so the other four days he had Mayfield do it.

  I loved when Mayfield picked me up because not only did I not have to worry that he’d forget me on the curb, we liked the same music and we’d play a game of who could name the song on the radio first. The car would fill with the sounds of Billie Holiday and Nat King Cole and Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong and B.B. King and Muddy Waters. Mayfield would wait a few lines, allowing me time to name the song and artist, then together we’d yell it out. He never scolded me for tapping my pencil or fingers on the dashboard, and he would turn the radio up as loud as it would go and we would sing along as we drove through the steamy streets on our way back to the farm. He knew a lot about the music, explaining the difference between rhythm and blues and gospel and jazz and how all the best music was “colored” folks music. I decided right then and there that if I ever got the chance, I wanted to make music just like the “colored” folks did. Those rides with Mayfield made me laugh, and the music would linger in my head for days.

  But Thursdays were different, they were Mama’s day, so Mayfield wouldn’t be coming. And neither, it seemed, would Mama. Not only did she get her hair done every Thursday before she was to pick me up, but it was getting on four o’clock so she’d have been drinking for hours by now. She never forgot her hair appointment, but somehow she nearly always forgot me. I guess getting her hair done was about all she could handle for a day. I just prayed I wouldn’t be there ’til suppertime, like I had been once too often.

  A few times, after having waited for hours and as the last of the afternoon sun disappeared behind the school, I had to go to Bobby’s service station on the fringe of the “colored” part of town, about a fifteen-minute walk along a dark dirt path in the ditch by the side of the road. At least when I got there, I knew I would be greeted by a friendly face and a safe ride to the farm.

  On the drive home, I’d beg Bobby not to tell Daddy that Mama hadn’t shown up because I knew there’d be a fight. But as soon as Daddy saw the car pull up, he’d know anyway and call Mama, screaming about what a “worthless drunk” she was and “cain’t you even remember your own daughter waitin’ for you on the curb?” Even with her out of the house and living in her own apartment, there was always a fight. Even, once, when I was being wheeled in for surgery.

  It happened after Mama had left, and the house was emptier than normal, so most weekends Daddy let my cousin Rita Faye spend the night with me. One morning, Daddy loaded us into his farm pickup to take Rita Faye back home after a sleepover. It was a cold morning and the roads were slick with ice. As we crossed the first bridge over the river, we all felt the truck swerve, then fishtail over the uneven planks. Rita Faye and I exchanged wide-eyed looks. Unfortunately, Daddy’s answer to fearsome road conditions was not moderation and care; he floored it, I guess thinking that the faster we got there, the better. As we crossed the next bridge, the truck went into another spin and before any of us could register the shock, we slammed into and over the guardrail, the front end of the truck hanging precariously above the river, fifty feet below.

  I must have blacked out because the next thing I registered was screaming—both Rita Faye’s and mine. She was looking at what she thought was a caterpillar on the floor of the truck, but on closer examination she saw that it was actually my eyebrow, which had been torn off. Looking over at me, she saw my head lying in Daddy’s straw hat, filling it with blood. I sat up and turned to Rita Faye, who was still screaming. Her nose had been cut wide open between the nostrils and blood streamed from it like a hose. But I was unsympathetic.

  “Shut up, Rita Faye! It’s just your nose that’s cut. Look at me!”

  With that, Rita Faye passed out cold.

  When we eventually made it to the emergency room, it was filled with irate Atkinson women, all still in their housecoats: my sisters; an assortment of aunts, including my aunt Mary, Rita Faye’s mother; and of course, my mother. They were all screaming at my daddy, but none so loud as my parents at each other.

  Lying there before they sewed twenty-eight stitches into my head, my only thought was, Please, get me into surgery so I don’t have to hear any more of this.

  Chapter Fifteen

  * * *

  Virgie still worked five days a week at the farm, as well as the one day a week she cleaned and did laundry and ironing for Mama. With nine children of her own at home, I don’t know where Virgie found the time, or the energy. And, it would take me years to even wonder if her own children resented all the time and love she showered on me when I was little. Why wouldn’t they? I can’t even imagine Virgie’s exhaustion when she finally set foot back in her little house, ten hungry bellies awaiting their dinner, a pile of laundry to wash by hand, and a long line of bodies to bathe and tuck into bed.

  It was never discussed or negotiated, but in addition to her other jobs and life, she stepped seamlessly into the role of my caretaker, at least to the extent that she could make me feel safe at home. She was a sanctuary, trying to ease the hurt and pain and neglect caused by my dueling parents.

  “You knows they love you, baby girl,” she’d tell me, rocking me in her arms. “They does. They jus’ got problems, tha’s all.” And then, as if she’d forgotten I was on her lap, she’d murmur, “My po’ lil’ baby girl. Dunno what’s gonna happen to my baby.”

  Unlike my mother and father, who were often too preoccupied to bother with me, I could always play with Virgie. Sometimes when I found her bent over the tub, scrubbing the white porcelain with Comet and a rag, I’d sneak up behind her and yell “Boo!” in her ear. Predictably, she jumped, the cheap shiny wig she always wore to work went flying off her head, and the two of us ended up on the floor, holding our bellies with laughter.

  On lazy afternoons, when the farm was quiet and the laundry needed hanging out back on the line, Virgie included me in the chore as if it were a holy ritual.

  “Come on, baby girl, I gots some laundry need hangin’, and I be needin’ your help,” she’d say, and I would run for the pins, stuffing as many of them as would fit in the tail of my shirt, which I held up like a bowl, and followed behind her out to the line, careful that my bare feet avoided the thorny stickers in the grass. She worked her way through the laundry basket, hanging sheets and shirts, pants and panties, towels and washcloths, piece by piece. As she moved down the line, she would reach down, silently requesting a pin, and I would place one in her hand, like a nurse offering a scalpel to a surgeon, truly believing my task was just as important. Whether it was the quiet of the surrounding fields or the sharing of a simple task or the gentle respect she bestowed on me in asking for my help, those moments remain as dear and sweet as any I have.

  But my favorite thing was when Ramey’s Rolling Store came rumbling down our road. Like many a rolling store throughout the South, Ramey’s was an old school bus that had been painted blue and converted into a mobile grocery store, serving rural Wayne County and selling ice cream, candy, Coca-Cola, soap, flour, and an assortment of other foods and household goods. The tradition of rolling stores serving the outlying regions of the South lived on here and there until late into the twentieth century, but had mostly died out by the 1970s when cars became much more accessible, even to the rural poor.

  When Ramey’s Rolling Store was about a half mile from the
house, it would cross the old bridge over the Chickasawhay River, making a loud RATTA-TAT-TAT-TAT as the tires drove over the wooden planks.

  “Come on, Virgie! It’s almost here!” I’d yell, and run to Daddy’s closet to dig for money in his pockets, where I was always guaranteed to find a small fortune in nickels, dimes, even the occasional quarter. Virgie, who would never rifle anyone’s pockets, let alone her boss’s, would stand by the door.

  One time, I spied a large hatbox on the shelf and asked her to take it down for me. When I lifted the lid, I sat back on my heels, wide-eyed. Virgie took one look and collapsed in a heap onto the bed.

  “OhmyLordhavemercy!” she said in one breath, her right hand going to her bosom, her left covering her mouth.

  In the box were rolls of $100 bills gathered by rubber bands and thrown in randomly, not stacked or organized and definitely not counted, by the look of things. Maybe as many as twenty or thirty rolls, and with the typical roll fitting fifty bills, we were looking at about $150,000, maybe more, in that hatbox on the closet shelf. Lord have mercy, indeed.

  “I ain’t never seen so much money,” Virgie said in what was surely the understatement of her life. “Didn’t know there was that much in the whole world,” she said, her eyes only getting larger as she mentally counted the rolls.

  I didn’t want to admit that I not only knew there was that much money in the world, but that seeing rolls of it stashed in a dusty hatbox neither shocked nor surprised me. I had seen Daddy casually handing out $100 bills my whole life, so part of me figured he had a stash somewhere. Maybe others. Actually, definitely others, and probably even larger than this one. Turns out I was right. Over the years, and whenever stuck for birthday or Christmas presents, he’d give us all cash. One birthday I was handed a $500 bill, on another a $1,000 bill, back when they still printed them. Lord only knows what those rolls of bills added up to.