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Cruel Harvest

Page 15

by Fran Elizabeth Grubb


  “I’m going to sleep,” I said.

  “Me too.”

  I walked over to the quilt Daddy had thrown on the floor. I had gotten accustomed to a bed and pillow, so it was hard to get comfortable. Nellie shuffled about beside me.

  “You think they’re looking for us?” I whispered.

  Nellie did not say anything right away. I rolled over and could smell Daddy on the ragged quilt. I twisted onto my back, startled by a vivid flashback of a night long ago—me petting Brenda’s hair as she sobbed herself to sleep. A chill ran up my spine as I stared into the shadows.

  “They are not looking for us. They didn’t want us any longer,” Nellie stated flatly.

  “Why did they make him take us away?” I asked Nellie. “What did we do?”

  “They didn’t want us there no more,” she said. “That’s what he told us. That’s it.”

  “Maybe they are looking for us,” I said. “I wonder if Mama knows we’re gone.”

  “Hush up and go to sleep,” Nellie grumbled. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  I hushed but did not fall asleep right away. I listened as her breathing evened out and was replaced by the sound of insects in the woods. A fox cried out in the distance, sounding like an injured child. I shivered again and thought about everything and everyone we’d left behind.

  The crash of the door hitting the wall woke me with a start. The moon was full, and by its light I could see the silhouette of a man I assumed was Daddy. A jug hung from one of his fingers as he staggered into the cabin. The stringent stench of pure alcohol burned the inside of my nose.

  “I’ll show that mongrel witch,” he grunted. “Left me in prison to rot.”

  I knew from his words that somebody was going to get a beating. I tensed up and tried to stay silent. That didn’t work. He stumbled over our legs and cursed like a madman. He started kicking my legs and back. I don’t even think he knew what he was kicking. Nellie and I scrambled out of his way and prayed silent prayers that he would pass out. The past washed over me like a typhoon. I knew the nightmare was back, and we were right in the middle of it. Only this time, I was wide-awake. I did not want the pain. I was afraid of it. What I did not realize was that this night would be far worse than any pain he had inflicted on me before.

  Before morning, I awoke to Daddy sleeping between me and Nellie. When he stirred, his rough, dirty hand found my body. I lay next to him, unable to cry out for help and wishing I could die. I wanted to die. I wanted to forget forever the horrid quilt I was forced to lay on beside him, the abomination of a father violating innocent trust, the stench of mildew, whiskey, and my daddy that made me physically sick to my stomach. I was unable to stop him, and I felt like a trapped rabbit in a fox’s den. I cried silent tears and stifled the noise by holding my hand tight over my mouth. And at the same time I knew if I made a sound, he would kill me.

  I cried out in my mind, Daddy don’t! My body felt dirty, and I was ashamed. I thought it was my fault, that I had done something to cause this abomination. For some unknown reason, he didn’t consummate the sexual acts he forced on me and Nellie, not like he did Brenda, but the humiliation, disgust, and loathing was the same. He violated my body, soul, and mind and made me wish I could die and never be touched again.

  I didn’t understand how a father, even a bad father, could ruin his child’s life. I still don’t understand it. I said nothing to Nellie. She looked at me, and I guessed she knew. What she may also have known, which I did not that first morning, was that this was to be our lot. She must have known she was part of it now. We were alone together with him, without Brenda or Mama as a buffer. There were no limits to his repulsive acts, and nobody to stop him. We were his prisoners now, and we could never predict what his twisted mind might cause him to do. If we did not lay beside him on that filthy quilt, we would be beaten without mercy, and after the beating, the abuse would happen anyway. I suspected that he enjoyed our resistance so he would have an excuse to beat us.

  Every night, I prayed. I asked for Daddy to not come back home. Often, he came back too drunk to touch us. One morning, he awoke and grumbled about how ungrateful we were and how no one else wanted us. Then he ushered us out to the fields as if nothing was amiss. When we got there, the foreman was late. Daddy stood a little removed from the other workers. One man came over and introduced himself. Daddy grunted a response, but the man did not get the hint.

  “These your kids?” the man asked.

  Daddy nodded.

  “Their mother about?”

  “She’s dead,” Daddy said, a wicked smirk on his face.

  “That’s a darn shame.”

  “What business is it of yours?” Daddy hissed.

  The man shook his head and walked away. It was the last time that anyone there bothered to speak to us. Instead, we did our work and trudged back to the cabin. We went to the market and bought bologna and bread most days. Some nights Daddy sat on the one chair in our cabin and ate. All the while, he’d have a jar of white lightning or a quart of whiskey nearby. Once he started drinking, he just got meaner and meaner.

  “That nurse in the infirmary was a pig,” he slurred. “Stupid cow. She bought everything I fed her. She’s the one that helped me break out of the rat hole your Mama and sisters put me in!”

  I tried to ignore his words. Instead, I cleaned the cabin top to bottom, watching him swig from the bottle and mutter incoherently. I suddenly understood why Mama cleaned all the time. I did it in the hopes that I could stay out of Daddy’s way until he passed out.

  Although Nellie and I never spoke about it, I knew he abused her as he did me. She endured the dirty quilt much as I did, in utter silence. I noticed, though, she tried to stay out of his way as well. As I swept away cobwebs, she read in the corner, eyeing Daddy just as warily as I did.

  “Frances,” Daddy suddenly barked.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, my eyes on the floor, my heart missing a beat.

  “What are we picking again?”

  I blinked, confused and panicked. I thought it was a trick question.

  “Cotton, sir,” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  Daddy took another swig and his head bobbed forward. I realized he was poisoning his brain, killing his brain cells with the moonshine he was drinking. All I cared about, though, was that he fell fast asleep where he sat, sparing me and Nellie for the evening.

  Life stagnated for a time. Both Nellie and I dreaded being the one that had to go to sleep beside Daddy on the quilt. Nellie, always the brasher of us two, would blurt out her hatred for him and didn’t seem to notice if he heard or not. To silence her, fearing the wrath that would be lashed on her if he heard, I would take her place those nights. On other nights, I would pass my dinner to her, knowing what would befall her once the sun set.

  One night, Nellie sat petting me. It was to be my turn to endure, and Daddy was in a fouler mood than normal.

  “Where is this doctor?” he barked.

  I knew what he meant. He had heard that Mama let a doctor and his family adopt my baby brother, Robbie. Daddy had made his intentions clear before we left South Carolina. He wanted his son back.

  “I don’t know, Daddy,” I whispered.

  “You do, and I’ll kill you for lying to me.”

  I pleaded with him. “Mama never told us. One day we came home from school and he was just gone.”

  He slapped me hard enough to knock me off my feet.

  “Liar.”

  “Mama was never honest with us,” Nellie blurted out.

  It was not true, not really. I knew that Nellie was using another tactic, one I never learned. She was using Daddy’s utter hatred for Mama to distract him.

  “She was a lousy mother,” he spat.

  I knew he had switched to talking about Mama, so I inched away, not making a sound. A splinter lodged into my bare foot as I shimmied across the floor.

  “I don’t want to hear that name again, understand. She is a lyi
ng, backstabbing Jezebel.”

  Daddy went on like that for hours. The entire time I just wished and wished that he’d pass out. But that night it was not to be. When he ordered me to the quilt on the floor, I could barely breathe for the bile rising up in my throat. He took away everything, and reveled in the degradation. I knew in my soul how evil he really was. I suddenly understood how Brenda and Mama had been pushed so far as to consider murder.

  I started making up poems and songs in my head to help relieve the tension of life. This is one I wrote after I escaped.

  COTTON FIELDS AND FAITH

  Picking cotton for the farmer,

  feeling dirty, sad, and low.

  Blistering sun high in the heavens,

  cannot let my feelings show.

  Drag the cotton sack behind me,

  feels so heavy on my back.

  I dream of better days and freedom

  as I pick and fill the sack.

  My swollen hands are cracked and bleeding

  from the sharpness of the boles.

  Blood stains white cotton as I pick it

  with each handful that I hold.

  From dawn to dusk out here we labor,

  until too dark for me to see.

  The farmer waits up at the trailer

  to weigh my cotton sack for me.

  As I leave field and sack behind me,

  slowly now I walk alone

  To a sad and shabby dwelling,

  the farmer’s shack that we call home.

  Not to a bed or clean white linen,

  a frayed dirty quilt lays on the floor.

  And a meager meal to share with

  the little sister I adore.

  My sister’s cowering in the corner

  as I walk inside the door.

  Horror once again assaults me.

  Mama’s bleeding, daddy roars.

  Whiskey breath and heavy footfalls

  make me turn about to see.

  The face of terror, that’s my daddy,

  screaming angry words at me.

  When at last the whiskey takes him

  to the sleep for which we pray.

  Holding onto one another,

  we two sisters kneel to pray.

  Whispering quietly in the darkness,

  to the Lord above we say,

  Please, God, give us strength and courage

  just to face another day.

  God gave us strength to face each peril,

  with His love He lit our day.

  We could not have faced the horror

  without His light to guide our way.

  We knew He’ d free us from our prison.

  He always lights our darkest roads.

  God kept us safe and gave us courage.

  Jesus carried our heavy load.

  So the cotton sack, though heavy,

  and the terror of each night,

  Did not ever break our spirit;

  we kept Jesus in our sight.

  Chapter 16

  Attempted Murder

  “Brenda, Susie, where you at?!”

  The shout woke me from a sound sleep. For a moment I was disoriented, thinking my sisters had returned. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness around me, I began to understand Daddy’s words. More and more he was mistaking us for our older sisters, whom he blamed vehemently for sending him to prison.

  Even in the partial darkness, I could see the blood. It stood out, a dark, black path down his face.

  “Wake up!” he shouted. “I know what you told them cops. Only an evil daughter would testify against her own father. I’m gonna show you what happens to liars. Then I’m gonna beat you and that good-for-nothing sister of yours to death. I’ll crush your skull with a rock and bury you at the back of this cabin. Do you hear me?” He punctuated every word, bellowing like a crazed bear. I used to wonder to myself, Do you think we’re deaf? How could everyone in the state not hear him?

  He kicked toward the quilt, and we huddled together in the dark, trying to dodge his blows. There was nowhere left to hide but inside myself. I withdrew; each punch landed on a husk of a human. When he beat me really bad, or when I had to watch him hurt my sister, I tried to pull myself out of the scene. I asked God to give me strength and to take me away from this place. I tried to remember what Mama had told me before leaving me at Connie Maxwell.

  “Be strong; take care of Nellie.” I felt guilty that I was unable to protect her. Even though Nellie was twenty months older than me, Mama had always treated her as the youngest.

  Some nights, if he was in the house drinking, I would sneak out the door. There was a tree out front that had low-hanging branches. I climbed up and went as high as I could. There was a crook in the branches near enough to the top that I could nestle in and see the stars. I curled up there in the cool night air, the crickets drowning out the slurring cusses filtering through the open cabin door.

  Those rare moments, I was free of him. He could never climb up a tree even when sober, let alone ripping drunk. Some nights he’d come out looking for me and would stand at the base of the tree and strike the trunk with his fists.

  “Get down here, Susie! I’m gonna pay you back for sending me to prison.”

  “I’m Frances,” I told him for the hundredth time, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  I stayed up there until he got tired or he went back in the cabin and passed out. He’d stumble inside, and I would go back to looking at the stars. Soon enough, though, I realized this was not real freedom. One night when he went back in, I heard his roaring curses and the sound of slapping and a thick thud. I tried to drown out Nellie’s screams. I did not get out of my tree that night, but I knew I could never be free. If I broke free, then all his rage would fall on my sister. I never forgot the last words Mama spoke to me. Sometimes the guilt could be worse than just enduring his abuse. I tried to take Nellie’s place to keep her from being beaten to death.

  One night, after eating a sandwich, Daddy got up and went to the door. We thought he’d leave and we’d have some peace, but this night was different. He seemed to have a plan.

  “Get on out here,” he said.

  We followed him out to the car, wondering what new hell he had thought up for us tonight.

  “Get in the backseat.”

  Daddy drove us into town. He stopped at a beer joint on the side of the highway, and we all got out. Leading us inside, he told us to sit at a table near the door. He proceeded to take a seat at the bar. I watched as he spent the money we’d earned picking cotton on drink after drink. He swallowed down shots of whiskey. It seemed to me he was drinking a lot faster than usual.

  A woman tended bar. After a while, she noticed us. When she came over to our table, she had two comic books and two Cokes.

  “Here you go, kids, look at these,” she said in a kind voice. I hoped that she would talk to Daddy and keep him here until he passed out. He was so drunk already that I doubted he could drive us back to the cabin without killing us.

  We thanked her, and I watched her walk away. I started to read, hoping the story would take me away. After I finished the first book, we switched. I heard the lady talking to Daddy.

  “Those your girls?”

  “Yup.”

  “What’s their names?”

  “Brenda,” he slurred. “And that blonde one over there is Susie.”

  “Pretty names,” she said.

  “Not as pretty as you.”

  Not long after that, Daddy slammed a shot glass on the bar.

  “One more for the road!”

  The lady filled him up with whiskey, and he knocked it right back. The stool fell over when he stood up, and he had to steady himself on the tables as he headed for the door.

  “Get on out there,” he growled at us.

  Nellie and I followed him right out the door. Neither of us made a noise as we climbed into the backseat. The car engine roared to life, and I could see Daddy shaking his head like he was confused.

 
“You think I’m gonna let you get away with what you did to me?” he muttered.

  Something in the way he said that told me we were in real trouble. He had called us Brenda and Susie so many times that we knew it meant his mind was blacking out. Usually, this turned into a beating or some other abuse. That night, however, there was an intent in his drunken voice. He had threatened to murder us in the car so many times, but tonight was different. He had made up his mind. This was the night.

  When he pulled out onto the road, it didn’t take long for my fears to be confirmed.

  “Let’s see how brave you are when we’re all dead,” he said.

  Lights approached us from up ahead. I could see it was a massive semi. Daddy laughed like a wild man.

  “It’s all your fault. You drove me to this. I’m tired of putting up with you. You’re gonna die tonight!”

  He drove head-on right at that truck. The semi’s horn blasted, and I heard breaks squealing, but they were not ours. Daddy swerved just in the nick of time to keep from crashing head-on into the truck.

  “Stop, Daddy! Oh, please stop,” I begged.

  Nellie shrieked like death itself. I continued to plead with him.

  “Not this time, Susie,” he yelled back at me. “You’re gonna die for the years I spent in prison. You and that lying Brenda. I’m gonna run this car into the next phone pole I see and kill you both. Right now!”

  Screaming and laughing, he swerved off the highway toward a light pole. At the last possible second, he jerked the steering wheel, and the car narrowly missed the pole. Dust billowed in front of the car like a tornado crossing in front of us. Then he was back on the highway.

  He seemed to be feeding on our terror. The car barreled out of town on a dark two-lane road. The farther we traveled, the fewer cars we saw. Eventually it was just us and the darkness, and Daddy started in once again.

  “You think it was nice in prison, you lying heathens? Wait until your bloody brains are splattered all across the pavement. I’m gonna wrap this car around a light pole. See how smart you are then!”

 

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