Not Without My Father: One Woman's 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace

by Watkins, Andra

  “Yessir! I feel like I know you already.” She waved Mom inside. “Mrs. Watkins, you just leave those things right there. I’ll take care of unloading all that. Let’s get this girl to bed.”

  I started to follow Carol up the carpeted stairway, but Dad’s voice stopped us. “You got any rooms on the ground floor? I cain’t do stairs.”

  “Dad—”

  But Carol slipped past me and patted Dad’s arm. “Oh, Mr. Watkins. I know better than that. Why, you’ve single-handedly sold I-don’t-know-how-many of Andra’s books, haven’t you? And you’ve driven all over half of Mississippi. And I saw where you took her to get that glorious fried chicken. You’re one hearty fellow.”

  “You wouldn’t believe I’m an eighty-year-old man, would you?”

  Mom smiled behind her hand while Carol wove her spell. “Eighty? No. I’ll never believe it.”

  When she tackled the stairs again, Dad was right behind her. “Yeah. I’m mighty spry for an old man, ain’t I?”

  Mom and I watched them ascend, their conversation drifting from the second floor. I leaned on the bannister and sighed. “I think we’re in very good hands.”

  WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN

  The Bangles

  Mom couldn’t sit still at the beginning of my third week. “I’m going to walk with you, Andra.” She tied a green scarf under her chin and handed the car keys to Dad. He let them dangle from his fingers, like he was mystified by them.

  I reached an arm around stooped shoulders and whispered, “Thanks for staying, Dad.”

  Seeing Mom and Dad together, I didn’t know whether his decision to stay was sound. I was a shrieking shrew for suggesting the trip. My svelte, fit mother made Dad a wobbly old man. Substantial, but teetering. Almost ready to fall.

  Mom watched him angle himself into the driver’s seat. “I’m worried about your daddy, Andra.”

  Since I could remember, Mom started a third of her sentences with ‘I’m worried about,’ a habit I inherited and spent much of my adult life trying to break. Worry was a crutch for the mind, the worst outlet of the imagination. It was—

  “Yeah. I am, too.”

  I couldn’t hide what I felt on St. Patrick’s Day. A week before my forty-fifth birthday. Dad shoulders drooped before my eyes. I worried he wouldn’t make it to Nashville. Wondered whether he’d wake up the next morning or stroke that afternoon. He gobbled sugary food and complained every time I made him move.

  But I didn’t have to tell Mom. She knew.

  We were watching him die.

  I stretched to banish worries, to combat Mom’s harried thoughts. Even the happiest, healthiest people die a little every day.

  Two hundred and ten miles of Mississippi behind me. Two hundred and thirty-four to go. I wondered why I hadn’t met swamp creatures. Or been chased by Swamp Thing. For two weeks, my world was a Mississippi swamp.

  Like my relationship with Mom. The surface read peaceful, but one never knew what lurked beneath the scrim of black water. What might fall fangs-first from twisted trees.

  We fell apart over curtains, fabric that unraveled over a decade.

  In 2001, Mom and Dad came for their inaugural visit to my new house, and they immediately took over.

  “I thought I’d make you some curtains while I was here.” Mom opened a bag and pulled out patterns and scraps of material. “I really like this dusty mauve color.”

  “Mom—”

  She held it next to a window. “I’ve got a whole bolt in the car.”

  “Mom—”

  “Let me get it, and we can see what it—”

  “Mom, I don’t want mauve curtains!”

  She opened the garage door. “Oh, don’t be silly, Andra. You’ll love it.”

  I took the stairs two at a time. My bedroom. If I made it, I could figure out—

  “What are you doing, Dad?” He was in my closet, fumbling through my color-coordinated skirt section. “None of that stuff fits you!”

  He moved to my dresses. “I’m just making sure this wall is stable.”

  “You’re looking for my files to find out what I paid for this house! That’s what you’re doing!”

  Dad’s cackle of acknowledgement didn’t stop his snoop session. He was my father; he thought he had a right to know everything.

  Mom sauntered into the bedroom, trailing fabric. A bloody bridal train. “This will probably look better here, too. I don’t really like those filmy curtains, and—”

  “Get out! Getoutgetoutgetout!!!”

  I pushed them onto the upstairs landing and banged the door closed. Mom’s crime scene material seeped through the crack. I locked myself in the bathroom to avoid seeing the consequences of the thrust I made, the gash I inflicted.

  It was my first attempt to be free.

  I was thirty-two years old.

  At the sink, I splashed cold water on my face. Water was water.

  Right?

  When I went downstairs, Dad was gone, and Mom sat, straight-backed and wounded, in front of her sewing machine. She fingered a ragged corner of material and wouldn’t look at me. “What’s the matter with you, Andra? I thought we’d make curtains together, like we did—”

  “That’s the problem, Mom. You thought. You didn’t ask me.”

  “But we had so much fun together at your other house all those years ago.”

  “Almost ten years ago, Mom. I was barely twenty-three then.” I stalked around her, a wounded animal fighting for its turf.

  “So? We’re the same people. I still enjoy decorating with you.”

  My fist stung when I hit the table. “But you’re not decorating with me. You’re coming into my house—my house—and taking over.”

  Her cheeks glowed red. “But you’ve always liked me to take care of you, Andra. I thought—”

  Thoughts. Her thoughts constricted my chest until I couldn’t breathe.

  I hated her.

  The innocent way she always twisted circumstances to fit her world view. Dogged conviction that her way was best. Her incessant need to define the woman I should be.

  I couldn’t exist that way anymore. Even if it meant destroying her.

  “I don’t need you to take care of me, Mother. I can take care of myself. Clearly. My house is even bigger than yours.” She cowered in the chair, her fingers a blur of nervous energy, but I couldn’t stop. “I don’t want curtains. And if I ever decide I do, I’ll pick them out myself. This is my house. My house! Do you hear me?”

  More than a decade later, we stood together at milepost 210, in the heart of our own wasteland. Our Nowhere.

  Mom buttoned her sequined sweater and adjusted her hat. “I’ve been going to the gym four hours every day for more than a year. I do seven miles on the treadmill. Surely, I can keep up with you.”

  “Okay, Mom. You win. You’re in way better shape than me.” I chewed my tongue and focused on stretching my calves. White flag flying, I surrendered to her will. “What’s Dad gonna do while we walk?”

  I stiff-walked his way, my feet and ankles refusing to loosen. “Dad! Mom’s gonna walk with me. Just a few miles.”

  “Maybe all of it.” She sidled up to me. Hand on hip. Face a made-up palette. She wore the look she employed when she required me to make my bed or eat some godawful thing.

  “You can’t walk fifteen miles, Linda.”

  I wanted to high-five Dad and shout, “Way to take one for the team! I’m so glad you said it.” But I settled for a few moments of lightness to start my day.

  “You’re just jealous because you can’t, Old Man.” Mom didn’t know much about baseball, but she was master of the verbal home run. She pranced up the road before he could argue. Cloudy eyes watched her.

  “Well. I’ll go on up to Line Creek and wait, I reckon.”

  “Just drive to milepost 212. See how Mom feels when she gets there.”

  Dad followed the rhythm of her retreating step. “But she’s determined to walk with you the whole day.”

  “I
know. But I have a feeling she might change her mind.”

  “I don’t know. She’s pretty stubborn, that woman. Kinda like you.”

  “See you, Dad.”

  I gimped away before Dad could remind me how much I was like my mother, because I didn’t want to be like her. Impeccable coiffure in every situation. Always worried about appearances. Convinced she could exercise her way to immortality.

  Behind her grace and flawless presentation, Mom was the most obstinate person I’d ever known.

  My knee bones screeched together as I rattled up beside her. “I told Dad to go a couple of miles and wait.”

  “Why? I’m doing at least five miles today.” She quickened her pace and kept a few steps ahead of me.

  My ankles threatened to snap when I tried to match her, but Mom widened the gap. “If you can do fifteen, I can do at least half that.”

  I stopped next to an impressive ant hill. Tiny creatures zoomed along the ridge and penetrated multiple holes. Did they ever get tired of doing the same thing, day after day after day? Of having identical conversations?

  Shaky breath rattled my rib cage. “I’m not going to—” But before I could finish, her hips shimmied ahead of me. I leaned over and put my hands on my knees. My feet already throbbed, and my hips wouldn’t stop squeaking. “Mom, what I was trying to say is I’m not going to race you up the Trace. Nobody’s timing this. We don’t have to be anywhere.”

  “I’m not racing anybody.” I could barely hear her, still pumping her legs at full speed.

  Thirty minutes with my mother was an emotional slog through a week of fifteen mile days, but I redirected my thoughts to daffodils, daffodils, daffodils. I hobbled up beside her and put one hand on her arm. “I know you can do this faster than me, Mom. I concede defeat, because I’m really tired.”

  “Well, I can see how you would be. I just want to feel like I’m getting some exercise.”

  “I understand, but I decided last week that my walk isn’t a race. Hurrying to finish keeps me from experiencing the journey. I want to savor it, you know? See the colors change with the light and hear birds and animals and heed whispers in the breeze. Do you think we can do that? Just walk at a normal pace? And enjoy the quiet?”

  Mom fixed the angle of her hat and retied the bow. “Of course. It’ll give us a chance to talk.”

  “But I don’t want to talk, Mom. I just want—”

  “I heard what you said, Andra, but I don’t see how you can stand all this quiet. It’d drive me crazy.”

  “It does. For a while. But a place can have a lot to say when we listen.” I stepped into a reasonable pace, where I could breathe without panting, and Mom walked beside me. For blissful minutes, we were in sync. Sunlight streaked the road, and trees sprouted baby leaves. Hips and knees and ankles finally released. I relaxed, determined to begin my week with a positive outlook.

  Until Mom sighed. One of her impatient I-can’t-believe-I’m-being-asked-to-endure-this exhalations.

  I gripped the edges of zen and turned to her. “All right, Mom. What do you want to talk about?”

  Because Mom always had to talk. Until recent months, I avoided her phone calls, let them go to voicemail rather than listen to her yammering. When I told her I needed to go, she always responded with, “Okay. Did I tell you about…..” Thirty minutes later, I shouted at her to hang up.

  I couldn’t stand the person I became during interminable conversations with my mother.

  On the Trace, there was nowhere to go, no way to staunch the flow of words. No ‘send to voicemail’ button. I breathed into the Onslaught of Linda’s Feelings.

  “How’s your daddy been?”

  Well.

  I didn’t expect that.

  “Why? Did you miss him? I thought you’d enjoy not having to listen to the blare of the television.”

  She twisted her rings. “I did enjoy it. For a few days. But one morning I got up, and I sat in the living room, and I said, ‘It’s too quiet’.”

  I laughed. “Yeah. Dad’s world is pretty loud.”

  “That’s because he can’t hear a thing. But it was hard to be alone. I didn’t realize how much I’d miss him. So, how’s he been?”

  “Oh, you know. An endless supply of strangers to talk to. Junk shops galore. Loves selling books. I think he got along okay with Alice.” I stumbled over an ant hill and kicked the dirt. “It’s just—”

  “What?”

  “Well, I never realized how weak he is, compared to a couple of years ago. I also didn’t know about the, ah………well, his toilet issues.”

  “He’s gotten worse since his appendix ruptured. I worry so much, Andra. He’s just like his sister was, right before she had her stroke.”

  My mind raced back to the worst night of the trip.

  “Did I tell you about Dad’s waking me up in the middle of the night?”

  “He keeps me up every night, Andra. That sleep apnea machine……I hear it in my room. Well, your room. I sleep in your room now.”

  Does any child ever want to think about her parents sleeping together? Especially when that child knows what happens between her own sheets?

  But my parents not sleeping together was another little death, an admission that a necessary part of their relationship was over. What was an adult child supposed to say to a parent who made that fragile concession?

  I’m sorry?

  You must be so relieved, because I don’t know how you slept with all that noise for decades?

  Do you miss sex?

  Yuck.

  I couldn’t go there.

  Cowardice found me instead. “There’s Dad. Up ahead.” The nose of the Mercury Grand Marquis jutted into the road adjacent to milepost 212.

  “Oh, I’ve got at least two more miles in me. I’ll tell Roy to go on.”

  I dug my heels into primordial dirt. “Wait. Before we get to Dad, I need to tell you something.”

  Mom walked a few steps and stopped. Dad doddered from trees, several rolls of toilet paper stuffed under one arm. Even from a distance, I saw the stain along the butt crease of his khaki pants. “Oh, Roy…….” Mom whispered.

  “Dad’s not doing well, is he?”

  “Well, he is eighty. And overweight. His nutritionist told him the other day, ‘If it tastes good, Roy, don’t eat it.’ Which just makes him more determined to make bad choices, as I’m sure you’ve seen.”

  I stared at my father, the person who was larger than weakness, bigger than pain. Before he got into the car, he wheeled toward the woods, tearing another roll of toilet paper from the dwindling pack.

  “I had to help him off the sofa the other night. He couldn’t even get up to go to the bathroom.”

  “I told him he needs to do more to strengthen his legs, but I don’t know, Andra. He’s a Watkins.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Those Watkinses, they don’t like to push themselves.”

  I was a Watkins, and I pushed myself. Every damn day. Just like Meriwether Lewis. I showed up every day. On schedule. And I forced pulpy feet another fifteen miles. And another. And another.

  I loosened my sandals to let my toes breathe. “I guess I’m not a Watkins, then.”

  Mom took in my distended, bandage-swaddled toes. “No, you’re not. You get this crazy determination from me.”

  I ground my teeth through the torture of standing, and envisioned what it must be like for Dad. Every day. All the time. “But what happens when he really can’t get up, Mom? What do we do then?”

  I touched her shoulder, but she shrugged beyond the weight. Like she could sidestep the looming situation with Dad. She crossed the highway and waved. “Roy! I’m going to do a couple more miles with Andra! Is that all right?”

  Dad shambled through trees, two rolls of toilet paper lighter. “Okay. I’ll just drive on up the road, to……what? There a parking lot up that way, Andra?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. You’ve got the map.”

  “Huh?”
/>   “The map! Look at the map.”

  “Oh. Right.” He opened the back door. Toilet rolls unspooled like party streamers. He emerged with his full map of the Natchez Trace Parkway. It cascaded open, a waterfall of paper. I tried not to notice his pant stains or the stink.

  “Ain’t no restrooms in this whole stretch today.”

  “Well, that isn’t stopping you from turning the Trace into an outdoor potty party, is it?”

  My joke was a stinker. Nobody laughed.

  Dad crumpled the map. “I’ll just drive on up the road, Linda. When I see a place to pull off, I will. And you can decide what you want to do when you get there.”

  “Don’t go too far, Roy. I mean, I’m fine, but, well…………you might need me before I’m ready to quit for the day.”

  He tugged the seat of his pants and studied his feet. “That’s right. I might.” After he winched his way into the driver’s seat, he started the car and pulled onto pavement.

  When I was sure he couldn’t see us in the rearview mirror, I whirled on Mom. “Just what are you two not telling me?”

  “We tell you everything, Andra.” She toggled her hat and turned her back on me.

  GREEN ONIONS

  Booker T & the MGs

  I remember the first time I messed my pants. I mean, not the very first time, you understand. But the first time I did it in front of other people.

  I was a six-year-old boy, riding the bus home from school, and I got this powerful gas. Musta been something my mother put in my lunch, or the consequences of dipping into her snuff. Whatever it was, it needed to get out.

  I looked around that bus and figured we was a bunch of kids. All kids stink. I never climbed on that bus without getting my nostrils full of smells. All stale sweat and dirty bodies and rotten food.

  So I thought I could pass a little wind, and nobody’d know the difference. It’d just blend with the other stuff.

  Only it wasn’t just air that came out.

  Well, I didn’t know what to do.

  Them kids started pinching their noses together, and looking around, and climbing all over the seats, “Who tooted? Where’s the baby who messed their pants? We don’t got no diapers in elementary school, baby. Here, tootie-tootie-tootie.”