The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir
Page 4
I screamed and my body went stiff. I had seen Audrey get violent, but never like this. Matt picked himself up off the rug, his face crimson, a red checker stuck to the center of his forehead.
Aaron squeezed his eyes shut and started to cry as loudly as if he’d been the one who’d been hit. Now Audrey’s head swiveled in his direction. I knew what was coming and raced for the walker, but she arrived first, grabbing it with both hands and shaking it as hard as she could. The baby wailed and Audrey turned the entire contraption upside down, slamming Aaron’s head into the rug. I knelt down to pull him upright, but Audrey grabbed my hair, pulling me sideways and throwing me down onto my back. I quickly rose, but she yanked the sleeve of my shirt, pulled me close, and bit down on my arm. Her jaw was so tightly locked on it that I couldn’t pull away. I shrieked with pain.
“Matt, help me!” I cried.
“Ruthie, we gotta get out of here!” I looked over and saw Matt and Luke standing in front of the open door to the yard, Matt now holding Aaron. “Hurry, Ruthie!”
I pushed so hard against Audrey’s forehead I saw my fingerprints white on her pink skin, and still she wouldn’t let me go. I lunged for my sister’s head, pulling the top of her hair back. She screamed, and I felt my body thrown forward, propelled by Audrey’s hard slap on my back. I teetered but didn’t fall. I ran out the door and slammed it behind me.
“Hurry, Ruthie, keep running!” Matt yelled.
I looked over my shoulder. The living-room door was open again. She was coming. I ran faster, my heart pounding and my breath as thick as smoke in the cold morning air. I stopped and turned. Audrey was planted in the front yard, her feet hip distance apart, shifting her torso from left to right and gripping her hands together.
“Why isn’t she following us?” I said.
“Ruthie, hurry up! Run!” Matt yelled back at me with Aaron still crying in his arms.
I did, and soon enough I caught up to my brothers, who had slowed down once they realized that Audrey had stopped. I was still in my nightgown, sweating and freezing at the same time. The calmer I became, the more I shivered.
Aaron was still crying a few minutes later when a beat-up, white Ford pickup rounded the corner. Matt sniffled and wiped his red, runny nose with the sleeve of his wool sweater. “Is that Lane’s truck?” He craned his neck. “It is! And Mommy too!” We ran toward them.
“What the heck are you guys doing out here without your coats on?” Mom said, rolling down the window and popping her head out. Matt talked so loud and fast he almost collapsed.
Lane reached his head over the black steering wheel and raised his light brown eyebrows at us curiously. “I’m glad you guys are all okay,” he said. He looked at me and smiled, the lines of long crow’s-feet visible at the edges of his blue eyes. His sandy-blond hair was longer than he usually wore it and was combed away from his face. His sideburns reached almost to the edge of his jawbone.
Now in Mom’s arms, Aaron had stopped crying and began to chew his thumb. She scooted next to Lane on the bench seat and put both of her feet on the driver’s side of the stick shift as if she couldn’t quite get as close to him as she needed to. I crowded in between her and my brothers. The truck smelled like the manure that was crusted on the sides of Lane’s work boots and the black grease that always stained his calloused and cracking fingertips.
As we drove past the gate, Mom gasped. Audrey was still standing in the muddy yard, rocking from left to right, picking nervously at her turtleneck, which had a hole now the size of a grapefruit. Her teeth chattered, her face was pale, and her lips had turned a purplish blue. Mom pushed all us kids out of the way so she could jump out of the cab. Aaron still on her hip, she approached Audrey and reached for her hand. As soon as Mom touched her, my sister stopped moving. She blinked, her head slowly turning in Mom’s direction. “Mom,” Audrey said in a monotone voice through chattering teeth, “I’m cold.” Mom took Audrey by the upper arm and led her through the open living-room door.
My brothers and I followed my stepfather into the house as he carried the groceries in through the kitchen door. Lane always walked with his left toes pointed out and a slight limp, the legacy of an old knee injury. He set the groceries on the kitchen table and poked his head through the entryway into the living room. “I’m going to tell Alejandra that you’re back now and I’m stayin’ here tonight,” he said to Mom, his voice matter-of-fact, smooth and deep. “I’ll be right back.”
“Sounds good,” Mom said, sighing.
4
Count your blessings;
Name them one by one.
Count your blessings;
See what God hath done.
Count your blessings;
Name them one by one.
Count your many blessings;
See what God hath done.
Lane strummed his acoustic guitar after a Christmas Eve dinner of boiled beans, cottage cheese, and warm corn tortillas. With the barrel heater in the living room blazing, his voice rang deep, smooth, and loud over the rest of ours. If my family had had a theme song, “Count Your Blessings” would have been it. My siblings and I knew the lyrics by heart, and Mom and Lane would sing it to us anytime we complained. It represented a core belief of theirs: we should be grateful for every little thing God had given us. That Christmas Eve, the words reminded me of the boy in the box and the other children I’d seen in Juárez the day before, and the lyrics rang true. They made me feel almost righteous for living without, as if being poor were the same as being humble and good.
Whatever our financial situation, Mom always found a way to buy us gifts. That afternoon she had wrapped the presents she’d purchased in El Paso and stacked the candy-cane-striped packages under the window in the living room. Every Christmas Eve began with Mom’s reading the story of Jesus’s birth aloud to us. Lane didn’t believe that December 25 was Jesus’s real birthday and therefore didn’t see any reason to celebrate the holiday, not unlike many other members of our church. But in keeping with the traditions of her American family, Mom celebrated Christmas with us kids every year. This year, because Lane was with us, Mom asked if he would read the story for her.
Mom had trimmed his sideburns and cut his hair. She sat next to him with Aaron on her lap, and her hand massaged Lane’s back in time with the rhythm of his voice. Audrey sat on the couch next to Mom. The rest of my siblings and I encircled them on the floor. My upper arm still ached from Audrey’s bite that morning, and I started to feel sleepy until Lane read the part where Joseph sat Mary “upon her ass” before their trip to Bethlehem. I think Mom must have said a different word when she read the story. I was certain she had never read the word ass. Matt and I looked at each other, red in the face, and burst into giggles.
“Knock it off,” Lane said sternly. “The story of Jesus isn’t something to laugh at.” I put my hand over my mouth to cover my smile and swallowed my laughter. Lane continued reading.
Soon Mom pulled out the mismatched-socks box from our bedroom to prepare for Santa Claus. I picked the biggest sock I could find, inserted my fist all the way to the toe, and carefully examined the sock for holes. I gave it to Mom and she attached it with clothespins to one of the wire hangers that she’d hung from the back of our plastic kitchen chairs.
“The real meaning of Christmas isn’t about presents and stockings and candy,” Lane said. I turned around and saw he had picked up his acoustic guitar again. Whenever he did that, another round of “Count Your Blessings” couldn’t be far behind. “It’s about the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
He cleared his throat and sang solo while we readied ourselves for bed:
Count your blessings;
Name them one by one.…
The only blessing I could think of was what might be coming the next morning, when I hoped I would discover an old sock so heavy with candy it would hang elongated and distorted from the chair.
That night, unable to get the sock out of my mind, I lay awake for a
n hour. I had to pee but I fought the urge for as long as possible. When I could hold it no longer, I got up, walked to the kitchen, put a stool up to the refrigerator to retrieve the red plastic flashlight and roll of toilet paper that we kept on top, and made my way to the kitchen door.
I hated few things more than getting up in the middle of the night and walking alone to the outhouse, but at least on this night the moon was half-full; the dark blue sky was clear and dotted with stars that brightened the cold air. Long before the flashlight’s beam found the outhouse, the smell of stale urine guided me toward the eight-foot-tall, unpainted wooden box that rose out of the ground like a dead tree trunk. I knew it would be completely dark inside except for the light that streamed through a small crescent moon carved into the door. Its knob was a piece of wood nailed to it, and its hinges were made of rubber cut from recycled tires, which made the door rigid and hard to open.
One step up onto a small wooden floor and there I was, standing over a hole while I held my breath to keep from sucking in the stench that would make me retch. I turned around, crouched down, and placed my behind over it, supporting myself with my palms to guard against splinters in my cheeks. One interminable moment later, I hurried out of the rickety door, sucked in the cold air, and walked quickly back to the house, my heart pounding inside my ears.
* * *
CHRISTMAS MORNING, ALL of us ran for our stockings, unclipping the clothespins way before Lane and Mom woke up. The socks were indeed stuffed, though mostly with peanuts, which didn’t feel like a treat as we always had peanuts around the house. I was happy to find two mini Almond Joy bars and an orange mixed among them.
Count your blessing;
See what God hath done.
After we emptied our stockings, Matt sorted through the wrapped gifts, read whom each one belonged to, and handed them to us. We had two each. While we felt and shook our packages, Mom and Lane got up. My stepfather, already dressed and ready to feed the animals and milk the cows, peeked into the living room, bid us good morning, and made a quick exit. Mom came in soon afterward and announced we could open our presents. I tore into my biggest one first and ripped open the red-and-white candy-cane paper to reveal a previously opened cardboard box that had been taped shut. Inside was a white plastic Ferris wheel, its Fisher-Price sticker faded and peeling, with four little boy and girl figurines. These, plastic and dull, looked as if they had been left out in the sun. The figurines’ round bottoms still nested easily into dusty round holes on the Ferris wheel. One figurine looked like me: she had light freckles on her cheeks and was dressed in navy blue, her hair pulled back into a blond ponytail. I would have been jealous of her long hair—Mom always cut mine short—but her ponytail had somehow been chewed off and tooth marks were on her head.
Luke also received a weather-beaten Fisher-Price toy—a red farmhouse with a farmer figurine, a horse, a cow, and a little, pink pig. They had little, round bottoms just like my figurines, and the whole thing was identically tattered. Once we realized that our figurines were interchangeable, we played with our new used toys for hours. Luke opened and closed his plastic farmhouse door over and over, and each time it closed, a loud moooo came from inside the door, and he laughed out loud with watery eyes as if he had never seen anything so amazing. I liked the way a cow could go straight from the farmhouse to a Ferris-wheel ride and back again. We were thrilled by our new toys, exhausted as they were.
Count your blessings;
Name them one by one.
Count your many blessings;
See what God hath done.
5
By the following summer, I had turned six and I decided I was old enough to help my brother Matt with his farmwork. The alfalfa fields glowed green under the hot desert sun, and the peach trees were covered with green leaves and small, unripe fruit. A dense pecan grove created several acres of cool shadows behind our farm, and although the house still smelled of mice, it was brighter and warmer in the summer light.
That summer had seen two exciting developments on the farm. First, electricity had finally stretched to our corner of the colony. Lane had dug narrow, shallow trenches and buried electrical wires to ferry the current to his shop, where it powered his tools and the irrigation pumps on our farm. He promised that it wouldn’t be long until he would wire our house and Alejandra’s. He had also installed a toilet inside our house. The bathroom was the first door on the left in the hallway, a narrow, gray room that smelled like wet cement. The toilet itself was not new, naturally. The seat was scratched, the tank was missing its flushing handle, and a five-gallon bucket filled with water sat nearby. This, we were instructed, was how we could flush the toilet until Lane could locate a functional handle.
At nine years old, Matt could milk a cow himself. He had been assigned a relatively benign brown ruminant. One evening at dusk, I decided to go with him to the corral behind Lane’s shop, which was about fifty yards from the back of our house, right next to the corral. I wanted to see milking firsthand. “Why are you followin’ me?” my brother said, annoyed by my presence, squinting over his shoulder with mock-menace. “Go back inside and help Mom.”
“I don’t want to. I want to help you milk the cow.”
He ignored me, looking straight ahead, and began to walk faster.
I picked up the pace and could soon hear Lane’s cows mooing and the buzz of the flies that swarmed around the five filthy animals and feasted on the manure-covered ground beneath them.
As I approached, I inspected the cows’ movements with caution, my shoulders tense. Directly in front of the corral lay a large, open well, which also made me nervous. I had always been afraid of it; the black surface of the water was far below ground level. I could never watch when the boys would run straight for it, scissoring their legs wide as they leaped from one crooked edge to the other. Loose dirt would fall into the hole, and it always took a few seconds to hear the hollow sound of a splash.
Resigning himself to my presence, Matt warned me to stay away from the cows’ swinging tails. I watched as he tied his cow’s two back legs together with thin baling wire so that she wouldn’t run away while he milked her. He sat down on top of an overturned bucket and made a big show of his competence, reaching confidently toward the cow’s swollen, pink udder. Then he stopped and looked up at me, his chin pointed out, and his eyes peering from underneath his cap.
“Ruthie, don’t ever stand behind the cow,” he said with a sternness beyond his years. “If it gets scared, it’ll kick ya in the teeth and knock ya flat on your butt. Its legs are skinny but they’re real strong, and its hooves are solid bone—”
“I know, Matt.” I sighed. I concocted an offended face and refused to look at him, sighing again as I waited for the sound of milk to hit the bottom of the empty bucket. Instead, I felt a stream of warm liquid spray my forehead and drip down my sunburned nose and cheeks. I whirled around and slapped Matt, who couldn’t stop laughing, which incensed me further. My face was hot; sticky milk had seeped under my eyelids. I yelled as loud as I could for him to quit it.
“Oh, stop being such a big baby.” He laughed as he returned his attention to the milking bucket.
Eventually, the sting left my eyes and I sat and stewed in silence. Every once in a while I would glance at Matt out of the corner of my eye as he squeezed milk into the bucket. Soon it was three-quarters full and covered with frothy bubbles.
The bright blue skies outside the corral had grown darker, and the clouds above looked as foamy as the milk. The sun had at last set behind yellow bales of dry hay that created a cool, triangular shadow over the cows. Matt outstretched his right arm to balance the weight of the bucket in his left hand as he walked slowly back to the house, taking care that the milk didn’t slosh on his jeans. This made it easy for me to keep up.
Lane’s truck was parked in front of his shop. My stepfather had left the door to the shop wide-open and was sitting inside on an empty paint bucket, his shoulders hunched forward over a wooden workbe
nch. He was welding, something he did all the time now that the shop finally had electricity.
The leather gloves he wore had grease-stained fingertips, and the sleeves of his checkered shirt were tucked inside the gloves. A large, gray welding mask obscured his face, protecting it from blue, orange, and yellow sparks. Matt gave the whole scene a quick glance as he trudged onward with his milk bucket, but I couldn’t resist stopping to watch.
I didn’t say a word, but Lane somehow sensed my presence anyway. He pulled his torch away from the metal and peered at me through the helmet’s rectangular glass, his eyes smiling. He extinguished the torch’s blue flame and lifted up his mask to rest it on his head. He smiled again, his eyes tired and puffy under the mask’s gray rubber strap wrapped around his forehead.
I never knew my father, and Lane was only an occasional presence in our house, so having grown men around was strange and vaguely frightening, but Lane’s smile was friendly, so I walked inside. The shop was dark and reeked of grease and gasoline, which smelled sweet and appealing compared to the corral’s manure-and-cow stench. “What are you making?”
“I’m building a funnel for our grinder motor,” Lane said gently, describing the shape in the air with his hands. “Your mom needs this so she can grind corn and wheat. That’s how she makes our bread. I’ll bet she’ll show you how to use it when I’m finished, and you can learn how to make bread too.” He picked up a hammer and pounded a few times on the cooling metal. “Everybody needs to learn how to help out with the family. Ya know what I mean?” Lane took off his mask and set it on the dusty cement floor.
“Can I milk a cow like Matt does?” I blurted out.
Lane raised his eyebrows in surprise as he peeled off his gloves. “So, you want to help with the cows, do ya?” He sighed. “Well, milkin’ cows is hard work. Maybe you can have your own cow to milk when you’re about ten. By then, your hands will be big and strong enough to squeeze all the milk out of a cow. You know, Ruthie, if you don’t get all the milk out, it’ll dry up inside the cow and it won’t be able to give milk anymore.” He threw his gloves on the ground. “But your mom might need help with other things.”