by Tena Clark
“Hey there, Mister Lamar, Tena, whatch’all up to?” Hank asked, leaning against the open car window, happily ignorant of the answer.
Hank had been a star linebacker and at the top of his journalism class at the University of Southern Mississippi, with offers from some of the best newspapers from New York to Chicago upon graduation. But Lamar had no intention of letting Elizabeth leave Waynesboro with her new husband, and so he bribed Hank with a new house and a good job in an insurance company. Hank took the bait, but in the frustrated years that followed, he found solace in the bottle, a solace that eventually killed him.
But that day, he was still my handsome brother-in-law, and although I knew it wasn’t a social call, I loved seeing his smiling, sweet face.
“Tena, git in the backseat,” Daddy barked. “Hank, g-g-git in the car. You and me are g-g-gonna take a little ride.” Daddy’s lips barely opened as he spoke.
I jumped in the backseat and Hank got in the front. I watched his Adam’s apple bob in his throat as he swallowed several times. He seemed to finally understand it wasn’t a social call.
Daddy drove away from the curb with his trademark squeal of tires. Not a word passed between them, and I kept my mouth shut in the backseat. When we hit the outskirts of town, Daddy turned onto a dirt road, pulled over, and shut the engine off.
“I j-j-j-just got one question,” he said, looking straight out the windshield, not at Hank. “Did anything unusual happen this morning b-b-between you and my daughter?”
I looked at Hank and felt real pity for my brother-in-law. I loved him, and hated seeing him so scared. He swallowed again, and I watched one bead of sweat trickle down his face from his temple to his chin and drop onto his shirt.
“No, sir,” Hank finally said.
“I’m g-g-gonna ask you again,” Daddy said. “Did anything happen that I should know about, like you pushing Elizabeth up against the ’frigerator?”
From the backseat I thought, Oh my Lord, Hank, just say yes!
Hank swallowed hard. “Well, you know that Elizabeth can be a handful and that sometimes in a marriage . . . We had a little spat, like all couples, things might have gotten—”
Hank stopped talking because Daddy had pulled a gun out from under his right leg and cocked it. Then, calm as can be, he put the barrel to Hank’s left temple.
“I’m gonna ask you one more G-G-G-GODdamn time to tell me what you did to my d-d-d-daughter.”
“I’m sorry, Mister Lamar, sir, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Hank sputtered, the sweat now dripping from him like rain from a roof. “I’d had a little too much to drink last night and things got a little heated and—”
“Okay, then,” Daddy said, cutting him off. Then, as easy and smooth as a knife through butter, he uncocked the gun and tucked it back under his leg. “If I ever hear that you’ve raised so much as a f-f-f-fingernail to my daughter, they’ll find you f-f-f-floating facedown in the Chickasawhay. You got that?”
Hank was much bigger than Daddy, but Daddy’s gun was the great equalizer. Hank got the message.
His and Elizabeth’s marriage lasted seventeen years, but I doubt Hank ever again pushed my sister with any more force than a feather duster.
Chapter Eighteen
* * *
Without a wife to curtail his catting around, if in fact that had ever curtailed him, Daddy entertained his lady friends with an even more reckless abandon. One afternoon I was at the home of my friend Lynn, whose parents were hosting a barbeque. As the adults milled around the backyard, sipping their bourbon and Cokes and dirty martinis, they suddenly noticed something going on in a house across the yard and began pointing and snickering, the women holding their hands to their mouths in red-faced shock. I followed their gaze. When the adults noticed I too was looking, they hushed up. In the living room of the house, I could see a woman lying on the sofa, her skirt bunched up around her waist, and my daddy on top of her.
I didn’t know exactly what was happening, but I knew enough to be mortified. I burst into tears and ran inside to Lynn’s room. Lynn’s mother followed me in.
“Honey,” she said, reaching out to stroke my hair, “that was wrong of us. We shouldn’t have been looking and laughing.”
“I hate him! I hate my daddy!”
“Ah, honey, grown-ups often do things they shouldn’t,” she said.
When Daddy came to pick me up an hour later, she walked me out to the car.
“Next time you entertain, Lamar, I suggest you close the drapes,” she said, her voice tight.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice even tighter. “Tena, git in the car.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, my face swollen from crying.
Although he flushed a deep red down to his shirt collar and the veins on his neck looked like they were going to burst, he never admitted to her or me that he had been doing anything that afternoon for which he need apologize.
He would create elaborate ruses to avoid admitting his ways, at least to me. Once, rather than admit that he was taking his latest girlfriend on a trip out of town, he announced he was headed to Switzerland, and would be gone several days, maybe a whole week, and that he would bring me the “biggest, best present ever.” As mad as I was that he had left, again, I spent the days dreaming of the fabulous gift I’d get from the magical-sounding Switzerland.
When he returned, I ran out to meet his car, eager to see what he’d brought me “from Switzerland.”
“Here ya go, Monkey Joe!” he said, and handed me a peach-colored plastic umbrella.
I stood in the driveway stiff as a statue holding the ridiculous umbrella at arm’s length. First of all, did he not notice that I had never, ever used or wanted an umbrella, to say nothing of a peach one? I always preferred getting wet rather than carrying a silly umbrella. And second, in what universe did he think that a peach umbrella was proof of a trip to Switzerland?
“You got this in Switzerland?” I asked, the offending umbrella still hanging from my hand.
“Sure did!” he crowed. “You cain’t buy ’em anywhere else in the world!”
I knew that he was lying, that he probably hadn’t gone to Switzerland and had merely picked up the umbrella at some gift shop as an afterthought, but I never challenged him.
His inability to ever admit the truth made me crazy, but it was very, very effective: There was a part of me that for years believed that perhaps Switzerland was the only place that made peach umbrellas.
* * *
A few months after I turned twelve, Daddy bought me my first car, most likely in order to free himself from having to drive me around town. No matter that the legal driving age in Mississippi at that time was fifteen, he had come home with a navy blue 1966 Camaro when I was tall enough for my feet to touch the pedals. And I was, almost. I still needed a pillow behind my back, the seat pushed all the way forward, and my right toes pointed forward, like a ballerina’s on pointe, to reach the gas pedal.
Once in the driver’s seat, I looked at him standing by the car door.
“I don’t know how to drive a car, Daddy,” I said.
He lit a cigarette and threw the match in the dirt.
“You know how t-t-t-to drive a GODdamn tractor, don’t you?” he demanded.
“I guess,” I admitted.
“Then there you go,” he said, getting in his car parked nearby. “Same thing. I gotta get to work.” And off he sped.
Turns out he was right, and soon I was outrunning the county sheriff on Highway 84, spinning the Camaro into cornfields to hide and praying the dust would settle before they drove past my hideout in the tall rows. Sometimes when I got home and climbed out of the car, Beulah Mae, there to pick up Virgie, would be standing on the porch, laughing.
“Lawd have mercy! I done ’spect Mister Lamar to be gittin’ outta that car. You just like yo’ daddy. Y’all drive up, open the door, git one leg out, and that car still be movin’. I ain’t never seen nobody drive like y’all.”
>
She was one to talk, given her nearly killing herself and Virgie every day driving out to the farm. Still, I had to smile at her comparing me, a twelve-year-old girl, to the fearsome Lamar Clark.
Chapter Nineteen
* * *
After about a year of miserable living in Mobile, Mama came back to Waynesboro even more destitute than when she left, if that was possible, and moved into a run-down, two-bedroom house behind the grocery store. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I was soon forced to join her.
Georgia and Daddy, but mostly Daddy, had decided a girl of twelve needed to live with her mother. To her credit, Georgia had begged Daddy for years to let me move in with her and Bobby, but he’d refused, in part because he thought it would look bad and the town would be talking: What’s happening over at that Clark house? First Vivian up and walks out on him, and then he sends that poor little girl to live with her sister?
But I think his refusal also had to do with his wanting to teach me something. Sure, I wasn’t the boy he always wanted, but I had a good head on my shoulders and I wasn’t easily intimidated. Poisonous snakes and angry horses and shady bookies didn’t faze me. And while I didn’t have his ruthlessness, and was already too liberal for his tastes, I spoke my mind and could match his stubbornness toe to toe. He loved and hated my strong will, and he wasn’t so crazy about my big mouth when it challenged him. Still, we were a team.
So when he and Georgia came in to tell me I had to live with Mama, I didn’t understand why. I loved my mama, but his wanting me to move out felt like rejection, which sat like a cold, hard lump in my chest. And, I was scared. Not only would I be leaving the only home I had known, Virgie—my one rock, my one anchor—would be leaving my everyday life.
“Listen up. Me and your s-s-sister been talkin’,” Daddy began, looking over at Georgia who stood wringing her hands. “She agrees with me that you’re a young lady now, and a young lady needs to be livin’ with her m-m-mama.”
“Who says that?” I asked, instantly furious. I didn’t like that Georgia had been part of this decision. “I love Mama and take care of her when I visit, but why do I have to live with her?”
Georgia moved toward me and put her arm around me. “Honey, Daddy works all the time and you need to be with Mama. But nothing’s going to change. You’ll be able to visit her with me and Elizabeth and Penny whenever you want.”
I pulled away, hurt and enraged.
“You just need a babysitter to make sure Mama doesn’t burn the house down, or try to kill herself again,” I said, trying my damnedest not to cry.
Georgia looked at me tenderly, but Daddy lit a cigarette and put on his hat to leave.
“That ain’t it at all, it’s just t-t-time for you to live with your mama,” he said. “I work all the t-t-time and you need to be with your mama, that’s all.” He was done talking about it.
I looked at my sister, the woman who had always been there for me, and saw both sadness and resolve. It was done. There was nothing more to discuss.
* * *
On the Saturday of my move, I stormed around my room packing, fuming, and stuffing clothes and shoes and books into boxes and a couple of suitcases. As my mood darkened and my temper rose, I made the decision that I would never let anyone tell me where I lived or what I could do and couldn’t do ever again, starting with living in Mama’s grim little house. My entire life, I had been forced to accommodate my parents’ erratic behavior: Mama’s drinking, Daddy’s cheating, Mama’s leaving, and then Daddy’s being in charge. Just when I’d finally found a routine I could tolerate, a new way of life was being forced on me. I felt like I’d been tricked. Betrayed.
Virgie came in to check on me as I angrily slammed drawers and threw clothes I wouldn’t take into a pile in the corner.
“What’s wrong, baby girl?” she asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
I looked into her worried eyes and my anger instantly faded. I sat next to her and put my head in my hands.
“I don’t fit in anywhere, Virgie. I feel so alone. Nobody wants me.”
“Now, don’t be talkin’ nonsense, you gots plenty of folks who love you,” she said. I felt her large hand gently massage circles onto my back, the way it had for nearly my entire life.
I shook my head and wiped my eyes on my sleeve, straightening to look at her. She pulled her hand away from my back and tucked both of hers into her lap.
“But I just don’t fit in, anywhere. I don’t belong anywhere. Sure, Mama and Daddy and Georgia love me, but . . .”
Virgie looked at me for a long while, then turned to look out the window of my room and to the great magnolia tree behind the house. After several quiet moments she spoke.
“Well, you’s special. You’s my baby girl and you’s special and one day, you’s gonna find yo’ place. I’s promise you that.”
I put my arms around her and my head on her shoulder and we sat on the bed until we heard Daddy’s car in the driveway.
* * *
Once I had moved my suitcases into Mama’s house, they sat stacked in the small storage room that doubled as a bedroom at the back of the house. Mama slept on the couch. She’d always been scared of the dark, even with a loaded pistol under her pillow, but living alone had only made it worse.
I painted yellow daisies on the bedroom wall and got a lava lamp, and made the most out of my new home, but Mama wasn’t helping with the transition. She was mostly drunk or sick on the couch with what grew into an astonishing list of ailments, everything from pancreatitis and diverticulitis to pneumonia and heart disease and high blood pressure. She even suffered the loss of half her tongue because of her addiction to Aspergum. (Even more remarkably, it grew back!) Over the years—and I am not exaggerating—she spent hundreds of nights in the hospital, so many my sisters and I finally lost count. As the illnesses came and went, she consumed a staggering amount of pills. Doctors used to say, “If you and I need one pain pill, your mother needs three—her constitution is so strong.”
As her drinking had increased, along with a huge list of real ailments, she’d also developed a healthy case of hypochondria. She had always obsessed over every hangnail. Now, granted, she had drunk her pancreas into a constant state of painful inflammation, and her lack of anything resembling real exercise softened her bones and weakened her muscles. Her idea of exercise was to sit in a chair and move her arms up and down, in and out, for about five minutes. My sisters and I would listen to her latest complaints and cry, “Mama! Swear to God, we’re gonna put ‘I told you I was sick’ on your tombstone if you don’t stop with all of this!” She’d just smile and say, “You’ll see. Just go ahead, make fun of me.”
Unfortunately, it didn’t matter how sick she felt, she would still sit me down for her nightly Bible reading. It was only a chapter or two, but it was all I could do to sit through it. She’d been reading from the Bible my whole life, but sitting in that depressing little house, feeling trapped at the foot of her chair, and looking up at a cheap, backlit painting of Jesus knocking on some random door above her on the wall made me want to jump out of my skin.
So between her ailments and her oppressive Bible hour, I never quite settled into living at her house. Instead, I lived like a vagabond, moving between Mama’s, Georgia’s, Elizabeth’s, Penny’s, and the new house Daddy built closer to town after he sold the farm. He wanted no part of Vivian’s Folly after she left it. I bet he even toyed with the idea of bulldozing it into the gully like he had done with his parents’ house. Eventually he built a monstrosity I called the Mausoleum because it was made of gray marble and had gray marble pillars topped with gray marble lions lining the long driveway.
Wherever I laid my head at night, I trudged back to my mother’s in the morning to change my clothes for school. I’d walk into her small house, where the air was already thick with cigarette smoke, and she’d be on the couch watching television, her crossword puzzle in her lap. Sometimes, too often in fact, one of her boyfriends would be there as well, smokin
g a cigarette in the easy chair, nursing a cup of coffee and looking as old and tired as the chair he sat in.
On the mornings when it was just Mama in the house, she always, always had an errand for me to run.
“Hey, baby, go over to the Tastee Freeze real quick and grab me a malt,” she’d say, already slurring her words even though it was barely eight o’clock in the morning. “My stomach is sour and that’s just about the only thing I can think of that might taste good.”
“I bet your stomach’s sour,” I’d say under my breath, “a carton of cigarettes and a gallon of whiskey will do that.”
“What’s that, baby?”
“Nothin’, Mama,” I’d say, gritting my teeth against my anger and frustration. “I’ll be right back. Vanilla or chocolate?”
And so it went. Once back in Waynesboro, nothing really changed for my mother. Never having worked a day in her life, Vivian Clark wasn’t about to start. She had returned to Waynesboro as she had left a year before: drunk. She spent her days on the couch, drinking, watching television, doing her crossword puzzles, and underlining passages in her Bible. Although only forty-five years old, alcohol had finally begun to take a toll on her beauty and her skin—her jawline was sagging, she had bags under her eyes, and her cheeks and nose were sprinkled with gin blossoms. Her drinking started up first thing in the morning—a mug of coffee and a tumbler of bourbon on the TV tray by the couch. By the time night fell, she would more often than not pass out, with that same bottomless glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette burning between her fingers.