Rise--How a House Built a Family

by Cara Brookins

  Drew wiggled the plywood down into place, yelling while he did it. “Hope! Mommy’s hurt! I need your help!”

  Hope came up the ladder while I turned to walk toward it. Rafters were spinning, but I was pretty sure it was just an immediate response to the hit, not a symptom of a serious head injury. Blood dripped onto the plywood and the tops of the ceiling joists we’d worked so hard to straighten after leaving them out in the rain. It soaked into the insulation, dropping like bread crumbs to mark my path to the ladder, down it, and to my bedroom, where I sat on the floor.

  “Get me some ice and a washcloth,” I said, as though those were things we would actually have. Jada started taking her sock off but I waved for her to stop. Hope brought a roll of paper towels, and I shook the Sheetrock dust off them before pressing a handful to my left eyebrow, which had become the focal point of the head pain.

  “You need to go to the doctor,” she said.

  Drew swung down from the attic opening without using the ladder. “Definitely. That’s a lot of blood,” he said. “How bad is it?”

  “Head wounds bleed a lot. It might not be that bad. I need a mirror.” I didn’t want to go to the doctor. I was too tired to sit in an ER. Not only that, I hated the idea of stitches. Yuck.

  Drew disappeared and we sat quietly, mopping up blood. When he came back, he was carrying a four-foot-long wall mirror for my bathroom. I laughed. “I’m not getting ready for a cocktail party!”

  “All I could find.” He laughed, too, and propped the mirror in front of where I sat cross-legged in a little cloud of crumpled red paper towels.

  It took me a minute to work up the courage to lift the pressure off and look. A long cut under my left eyebrow gaped open and started bleeding again. But it wasn’t the cut that caught my attention, it was my hand. The entire back of my left hand and my middle and ring fingers were purple and bruised. The fingers were obviously swollen. How I hadn’t noticed that injury, I’d never know. I flexed the hand and winced. The fingers wouldn’t bend all the way. Typing was my livelihood. Whether the eyebrow cut needed stitching or not, my hand needed an X-ray. Damn it. I didn’t have time for injuries.

  “Ewww,” Drew said, looking away. “It’s going to need stitches for sure.” He hadn’t noticed my hand and I kept quiet.

  “I probably should have it looked at. Let’s get everyone home and Hope can drive me to the hospital. No hurry. It’s just a precaution.” I stood up, marveling at how little my calf hurt compared with my head and hand.

  Roman and Jada didn’t even know I’d been hurt until we called them to leave. Jada had lost her shoes somewhere in the house, and we finally gave up and left them there. When we got back to the house, Roman cried, wanting to go with me, but Drew finally lured him away with popcorn and a bad ninja movie. “Cookies, too?” Roman asked, milking the bribe for all he could.

  Hope packed my hand in ice while I held a second pack on my head. It was strange to have my kids taking care of me. And it was also frustrating to have accomplished so much with the house and feel weak and broken instead of strong. I thought of runners at the end of a marathon. They looked a lot more beaten than bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. But this was not what I had imagined when I was standing outside the tornado-broken house, and it wasn’t what I felt that Caroline expected of me.

  I wanted winning to hurt a lot less.

  In the waiting room, I read a book on my Kindle, and Hope pinned room-decorating ideas on Pinterest. The usual cast of crying babies and tired elderly sat around us, worrying through their own pain with little interest in their neighbors. Hope had brought a bag of almonds, and a bottle of water for each of us. If I didn’t feel like an ice pick was protruding from my brow, I would have enjoyed the reading break.

  When I was finally called into the back, everything went as expected at first. They took me to Radiology for an X-ray of my hand and surprised me by taking one of my face in case of a fracture to the orbital socket. I hadn’t thought of that. They followed the painless radiation blasts with a very painful wound irrigation. The male nurse was a newbie and managed to drench my shoulder, back, and then the entire bed with saline solution and had to change the sheets and bring towels to mop my clothes dry. By the time I resettled, we were moved from our curtained room to an examining room with a door. I worried that it meant my hand was broken. I could not build the rest of the house with a cast on. Instantly, I was depressed.

  A sturdy woman with bright red glasses and white hair so thin she was almost bald came in and sat down beside the bed. Hope ignored her, still decorating the house through Pinterest.

  “I’m Pamela,” she said, patting my leg. “And I just wanted to come in and chat with you for a while, hon.”

  I nodded, wondering who had told her I was a writer. It wasn’t as though I was well known enough to have fans seeking me out, but every time someone learned I wrote novels, they either had a novel they wanted to write, or they wanted me to write the story of their life into one of my novels. I closed my eyes, trying to summon the energy to show interest in her story and give her solid information about a career versus a hobby as an author.

  “Good news is the hand isn’t broken, and neither is your skull. Just banged up. Now tell me about this cut here, and how you got it. Okay, hon?” She patted my leg again. “And what did you hit with that hand? It’s really banged up, now, isn’t it.”

  I told the story again, wishing she would write it down so I didn’t have to repeat myself. She had asked a half dozen more questions and pointed at the network of nasty bruises and scrapes covering my legs and arms before I figured out what was going on. I laughed, first a little chuckle and then for real. Hope and Pamela sat up straight, eyes wide and on me, then darting to the door, wondering if they should go for help, call someone to scan my brain.

  I waved them down. “It’s just ironic. You think this is evidence of domestic violence, right? And after all those years of sporting my husband’s bruises on my neck and hips, when not a single person asked about them, now I get hurt in an attic and alarm bells sound.”

  Pamela smiled, tight-lipped and noncommittal.

  Hope looked back at her phone screen.

  The doctor rapped his knuckles on the door, then came in before we invited him. “How’s everything going here? Getting things sorted?” He had a British accent, and I wondered how he ended up in a Little Rock ER. He leaned in close to look at my cut, swiveling a magnifying glass on a pole between us for a better view.

  Pamela relayed the attic story, doubtful but coming around, and I promised it was true. “Trust me, I know domestic violence. I’m free of that now.” Maybe it wasn’t entirely true. Matt’s hands weren’t around my throat on the average Tuesday night, and we hadn’t seen Adam in years, but fear has a long reach. They were still hurting me through the dents and craters they’d left in my self-esteem. The doctor was more interested in my house-building project than a domestic-violence threat. We chatted about energy-efficient building and passive solar. Then he suggested that it was time to start stitching up my face, and I balked.

  “What are my options?” I asked, eyeing the door and mapping the best getaway path.

  “You made a hole in your head, and we have to close it. Not a lot of great options for that. At the very least I have to glue it.” He leaned in for another look. “Longer than I’d like for glue though. If you split it back open it’s more likely to scar.”

  He pinched the gap together a few times. I closed my eyes and kept my breathing even, pretending the razor knives of pain were no big deal and hoping that would help make the wound look small enough to be glued back together like a chipped lamp.

  “If you think you can stay out of attics for a while, we can give the glue a try.”

  The counselor left and sent in a nurse with a tray. I imagined it holding nothing but a big tube of epoxy. We continued talking about the various stages of building a house and more energy-efficient options. I wasn’t sure if he was genuinely interested in con
struction or merely trying to verify that my beating had come at my own hands.

  Hope never looked up from her phone, partly because she was lost in Pinterest land, but also because she was nearly as squeamish as I was. A peek at my sliced-open eyebrow through a magnifying glass would have undone her.

  “… I believe those laws are in place for a very good reason, and I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Doctors and patients aren’t supposed to have personal contact. It’s a professional relationship. I believe that, and I support those laws. I really do,” the doctor was saying.

  What was his name again? And what in the world was he talking about? Of course I was uncomfortable; he had a buffet-style warming lamp inches from my head and was pinching a deep gash in my head. Laws about personal contact? Something was wrong. A snake of warning slithered down my spine. This was something else. He wasn’t talking about houses, abuse, or wounds anymore. I must have squirmed along with that snake.

  “Whoa, now. This is going to sting, but it’s vital that you stay absolutely still for about three minutes. I’ve got to hold this glue in place while it sets. You can’t move.”

  I almost nodded, because the warning snake had stolen my tongue, but I caught myself and held still, steadying my breathing and trying to slow my heart. His hand was pressed over my left eye, holding it closed. I wanted to close the right eye to block out his distorted face through the magnifying glass. It had turned him into something surreal and nightmarish.

  He leaned in again, worsening the effect. “Now let me know if this makes you uncomfortable,” he whispered. “I’m going to put something in your hand now. I’m letting you know so it doesn’t surprise you. Stay absolutely still.”

  I did stay still, but due to fear paralysis rather than obedience or curiosity. I’d seen movies about perverted things that happened in doctors’ offices and nurses who stood by silently. What in the hell was he about to put in my hand? It wasn’t just the nurse, either. The door was open about a foot, and my daughter was in the room.

  What is happening?

  I felt a scream clawing up my throat. Caroline would scream, but even when a bead of sweat dripped down my temple, leaving a tickle trail, I knew I wouldn’t scream. I knew I would stay frozen in shock and fear.

  He shifted his shoulders sideways, expertly keeping the hand holding my face together and perfectly still. My left hand was on the bed beside me, palm up, with an ice pack on the bruised knuckles. The rough edges of a tongue depressor slid across my fingers and they closed around it. A flood of embarrassed heat flooded through me.

  “Ignore that if it makes you uncomfortable,” he whispered. “I’d love to talk more about the house though. If I build my retirement cabin, I want to go in with as much information as I can. Do it right.”

  My hand throbbed from the grip I had on the tongue depressor, and I wondered if it was one of the grape-flavored ones they used to give my kids when they were cranky. My mind was so tired and bruised that I had slipped into a state of deep distrust that turned this curious doctor’s gentle outreach into something ugly and terrifying. Adam had made some headway in his effort to break my mind along with his own.

  I relaxed, this time for real, and had time for two deep breaths before the doctor pulled back and smiled at his handiwork. “I’ll put a little tape on this. Try to keep a neutral expression for a while. No extreme laughter. No crying. Doctor’s orders.”

  I smiled, but only on the right, and closed both eyes. Taking control of my mind was not an overnight victory. Two steps forward, one step back.

  “Stay still for a few minutes. The discharge nurse will be back with paperwork. It was really a pleasure meeting you.” He put out his hand and shook my good one. “Be careful, now. I don’t want to glue you back together again.”

  “Thank you. Next time let’s bump into each other in the plumbing aisle, or selecting carbide drill bits or something.”

  He waved at the door, never seeming to notice the roller coaster of confusion and fear I had just traveled over a tongue depressor. As soon as he was gone, I looked at it and found his personal e-mail address in blue ink, scribbled out once and then rewritten below. Of course I would e-mail him some tips about house building when I had a chance, and I would also keep the stick as a reminder that it was okay to relax and trust. Not everyone had something dark and nefarious in mind. Some people reached out for friendship (grape-flavored friendship in this case)—something I had forgotten how to do years ago.

  * * *

  Mommy guilt is a powerful monster. I had worried from the start of the project that the kids would wake up one day and refuse to lift a hammer ever again. They weren’t two-year-olds (well, except for the two-year-old), so there was little I could do to force them if they really decided to rebel. The real problem was, they hadn’t.

  We were all in as a team from the start. We’d had days when one of them would feel discouraged or so exhausted they cried from muscle pain, but there was never a day when they just up and quit. We catered the day’s music to the downhearted and gave them the easy tasks or the best job on the site—playing with Roman. It never took long for spirits to rise. I respected and admired their strength and determination. But paradox of paradoxes, that’s exactly what bothered me.

  They were missing so many of the everyday high-school and middle-school experiences that I had sworn over their cradles they would have. Poverty had robbed me of many things as a teenager, and I hated that my decisions had put my own kids on the outside of normal.

  Jada managed to stay on the basketball team through the school year because it was one of her classes at school instead of multiple after-school practices. But she had fallen behind and wasn’t planning to be on the team in the fall. I wondered if part of the reason was the summer ball practice she was missing.

  Drew had dropped out of band and didn’t have a single extracurricular activity. Thanks to social media and his school classes, he maintained a few good friendships. But he was missing outings to movies and paintball fights.

  Hope was old enough that our work was affecting her future in a more profound way. She had become involved in local politics and was offered a position at the beginning of summer as an intern at the Democratic Party of Arkansas under Bill Gwatney. She was planning to become an attorney, to change the way domestic-violence victims were treated in court, so the internship was an important foundation for her career. I wavered for only a minute before I told her to take the job. And she was diligent about working double time cooking and cleaning at the house we lived in and building on the job site whenever she wasn’t at her internship. It made things more complicated, but it was the right thing to do, deadlines be damned.

  She decided to attend the Democratic National Convention in Denver, with the hope that her hero, Hillary Clinton, would be the Democratic nominee for president. It was going to be an expensive trip, so she set up jobs cleaning several houses in order to raise the money. She would miss the first couple of days of her senior year because of the trip, but it would be more educational than anything she could pick up in a textbook.

  By August, her schedule was taking a toll on all of us. She was exhausted by the extra work, and we were so far behind schedule that we desperately needed her help.

  “I think I’m going to quit the DPA,” she told me late one night while we were gluing the first narrow slats of cherry hardwood across my bedroom. “I got an offer to work on a local campaign that will be fewer hours until we finish the house.”

  “That’s a bad idea,” I told her. “You gave the DPA a commitment. You shouldn’t go back on that. It’s your word.”

  She argued the pros and cons of each job, and I listened without giving more advice. She knew where I stood, but she also knew that my policy was for each of the kids to manage their own lives from the time they turned thirteen. I was there to guide them, of course, but I let them make their own life decisions. My own grandmother had been on her own by thirteen during the Great Depression, an
d through most of human history it was considered near adulthood. Obviously, they weren’t fully on their own, but after they hit thirteen they did their own laundry and their share of the household work. With all that responsibility, it seemed only fair that they also became responsible for their own class selection and planning for their futures. Five years of cushioned decision making before they were fully on their own was the best way I knew to prepare them for the real world.

  Hope decided to quit the job, and I supported her. Because that’s the other part of my policy. After I gently give my opinion, I’m behind them all the way no matter which way they go.

  The Wednesday after she quit, I was at the office and my phone went nuts with e-mails and text messages from friends.

  Have you heard from Hope yet?

  Is Hope at the DPA?

  Where is Hope?

  Oh my God. Is Hope there?

  Let me know if Hope needs anything.

  I imagined car accidents and all manner of horrible things. Hope didn’t answer her phone. The DPA was only blocks from my office and I had heard sirens screaming by, but as far as I knew, she wasn’t supposed to be there. She had quit. Would she have gone back for any reason?

  By the time I finally reached her, I had scanned the local news and heard the worst of it.

  Bill Gwatney, the chairman of the DPA—and Hope’s boss only days before—had been assassinated. He was forty-eight.

  “I just respected him so much,” she wept over the phone. “He was a mentor. He promised he would be there for me when I went through school and was looking for a job in politics. And he was always just so positive and supportive.”