The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir

by Ruth Wariner

  I turned to her older sister. “Sally, does Lane ever kiss you on the mouth when you’re alone with him?” I felt the hot sun beating down on us, and the smell of toasted pine nuts filled the air. Sally’s eyes widened; so did Cynthia’s. They turned to look at each other, then back at me, their expressions blank. Then tears began to form at the corners of Cynthia’s eyes. She turned her head down, pulled her legs to her chest, held her face in her palms, and began to sob. Sally too began to cry, her twelve-year-old body trembling as the truth struggled its way out of her, and she looked at me with an expression I had seen before, in the mirror.

  “All right, then. Thanks, have a good day,” said a deep, dreaded voice in the distance.

  Our eyes darted up. Lane stood in the door of the store, looking back at the manager. My stepsisters and I straightened our backs against the hard metal cab and pulled ourselves together. I sniffled and pinched my runny nose with my fingertips and wiped my hands on my jeans as Lane appeared beside the truck and poured the pine nuts from a Dixie cup back into the bag beside me.

  “Anyone want to ride home up front with me?” he asked in his nice-man voice. We shook our heads and said no thanks. We didn’t look at him. He climbed back into the truck and drove us home.

  My stomach twisted as I sat on the thin living-room carpet in Alejandra’s trailer that night with an untouched bean-and-cheese burrito on a paper plate over my lap. Sally, Cynthia, and I had gone for a walk around the trailer-park loop trail once Lane had parked the truck, where I’d discovered that their experiences had been almost identical to mine. Like me, each had thought she was the only one who’d been harmed, but unlike me, they had never told their mother. My stepsisters and I were afraid that our moms wouldn’t believe us, or that we might be punished. Then again, it would be a lot harder for our mothers to doubt all three of us, so we vowed to go together to tell them the truth that night. My stomach balled up and the skin on my face felt hot. I was no longer alone in my suffering, but still I dreaded the night’s confrontation.

  It was Alejandra’s turn with Lane that night, and as we walked back to the camper, I asked Mom if I could talk to her in private. It felt crazy to be asking this of a woman who was carrying one baby in her arms and felt another tugging at her pants, but Mom said sure, we could talk before she put the little ones to bed.

  We hadn’t been inside the camper two minutes when we heard a light tapping at the door. As I opened the door, Micah climbed up onto a seat near where Mom had laid Elena.

  “Mind if we come on in?” said Susan sweetly. Sally and Cynthia were just behind her. The two seemed as nervous as I was, with tight faces and closed, straight lips. I made room for them all as they stepped down the narrow space between the stove and the tiny fridge and sat at the table.

  Mom put a pink baby blanket over her shoulder, covered her nursing breast, and lifted her blouse beneath it so that Elena, still just a month old, could nurse. The camper grew completely silent except for the sound of the baby’s sucking.

  “What’s goin’ on, girls?” Mom finally said. Susan stood in the narrow hall with her forearms folded between her pregnant belly and her chest. She nodded as if she’d been about to ask the same question.

  My stepsisters and I looked at each other as if wondering who should speak first. I decided it would be me.

  “Mom, do you remember what happened with Lane in El Paso?” I said, my pulse pounding in my neck and my eyes boring holes into the tabletop. I looked up at her. She nodded. “He never stopped.” I fought as hard as I could to keep from crying.

  “Are you sure?”

  I looked up, surprised to hear the deep skepticism in her voice. She was squinting from the glare of the bare lightbulb over her head, but I no longer felt intimidated. I told Mom and Susan everything, describing all the times Lane had pulled me onto his lap and put his hands on me when he had asked me to run errands with him. Then Sally and Cynthia explained that he had done the exact same things to them.

  Susan looked wide-eyed, obviously stunned, and turned to Mom, who appeared shocked and perturbed.

  “Well, how come you girls haven’t said anything before?” Susan asked.

  “He said that if we told anyone,” Sally answered, “it would make you mad and you’d feel bad.” She put her elbows on the table next to mine, drew in the stifling air, and held her chin in her hands. Mom and Susan looked at each other again, their faces unchanged.

  Elena had stopped nursing, and not until Mom looked down as if she’d completely forgotten a baby was there did I realize I’d gotten through to her. She put Elena on her shoulder and patted her back, the rubber sole of her shoe tapping at the same time. For a while I thought she might be at a loss for words, but then came the torrent of questions.

  “Are you sure you’re not just saying this about Lane because you girls don’t like him?”—“When did all this happen?”—“If this really did happen, why didn’t you come to us with it sooner?”

  I corroborated Sally’s story in a tired voice, sounding like a teacher who’s told her student something a hundred times.

  “Lane told us not to tell you because he said we would hurt your feelings, and we thought we’d get in trouble and he’d whip us with his belt.” My stepsisters nodded in agreement.

  “We were embarrassed,” Sally added. “We were afraid that you wouldn’t believe us. But now there’s three of us…”

  As her voice trailed off, I watched Mom closely, afraid that she thought we were lying. Finally she put her hand over her mouth, bowed her head, and caught a few tears on her fingertips as they fell down her cheeks. As hard as I tried to be calm and grown-up, the sight of Mom crying was too much for me; my eyes welled up and my throat tightened.

  “I don’t believe this is happening,” Mom sobbed. “What are we going to do?”

  “I have no idea.” Susan’s arms were still folded over her round belly. “I guess we should talk to Lane about this together so he knows all three girls came forward.”

  “Let’s get the kids in bed,” Mom said, after the two had stared at each other a moment. “We should talk to him tonight while all the kids are asleep.”

  “Alejandra won’t like it if we bother him on her night,” Susan added.

  “I don’t care about that.” Mom sounded partly angry and partly desperate to find out what Lane had to say. She sniffled and wiped her nose. “We need to get to the bottom of all this tonight.”

  Late that evening Mom finally returned to our camper from her meeting with Lane and Susan, but I was still wide-awake, waiting to hear what had happened. Instead, Mom walked right past me, a dark figure whose face I couldn’t make out, and went to bed.

  * * *

  LANE USUALLY CAME to get me and take me to go sell pine nuts each morning. But the morning after Sally, Cynthia, and I told our moms about what had happened, he didn’t come. Mom said Lane had asked one of Maria’s younger brothers to go with her to the Safeway parking lot.

  “Why isn’t Ruthie going to work today?” demanded Matt, who was forever watching to make sure I did my part.

  “She’s stayin’ home with me today,” Mom replied. “I need to go grocery shoppin’ and need some help cleanin’ up. You go on and mind your own business.” Once he and everyone else had left the house for jobs or play, Mom sat me down across from her at the table. Elena was in her arms, nursing again.

  “Ruthie, Susan and I talked to Lane for a long time last night.” Mom’s eyes were closed and her head was turned away. “And he said he’s very sorry for what he did to you girls.” She took in a deep breath, leaned back against the foam seat, and rested her head against the window. “He even cried real hard when we talked about it.”

  Mom opened her eyes to check on Elena’s nursing, still without looking at me. “He promises he’ll never do anything like that again.” I watched her draw in a breath and blow it out slowly. “And I believe him. I know in my heart that he’s ready to repent, and”—at last she looked at me with watery ey
es, her lips lowered at the corners—“I think he deserves another chance.”

  She broke out in sobs but collected herself when she registered the shock and fury on my face. “I know that’s not what you want to hear, but, Ruthie, I want you to listen to me real well because you need to understand that Lane is a good man. He has some problems, but God can help him get over them. Jesus talks so much about forgiveness in the Bible. He says that we should forgive seventy times seven times, and your dad always talked about how important it is to give people another chance.”

  She continued for a bit longer, but I had drifted away, realizing that my earlier suspicions had been correct: Mom seemed perfectly willing to sacrifice me for Lane. This can’t be, I told myself. I must be misunderstanding.

  “I’m not going to forgive him, Mom. I don’t want to live with him anymore.”

  “I know you don’t, Sis, but it’s not in God’s plan for women to be single.” I looked at her quizzically. “I want what God wants, and I know this is the right thing to do.” Elena had fallen asleep. Mom laid her onto the blanket beside her. “He was crying, Ruthie.”

  I wondered how it didn’t occur to Mom that I’d cried too, countless times over the years—tears of pain, tears of anger, tears of shame. But that morning, I couldn’t cry. I was beyond tears. Finally realizing that Mom couldn’t protect me from my stepfather made me feel too sad to cry. It was as though something in me just closed up.

  “I want you to know, Ruthie, that if it happens again—if it ever happens again—you tell me right away, and I will leave him for sure.”

  Mom tapped her forefinger hard on the tabletop as she spoke those last words, and I knew that they were no more sincere or true than the nonapology Lane had given me so many years ago in El Paso, when he had promised he would never touch me that way again. Apparently my mom could lie to her own daughter with as much ease and confidence as she had when she lied to the social workers and border patrolmen. The only difference was that this time, it seemed as if she had actually convinced herself that she was telling the truth.

  “For now, Susan and I are gonna pack our things and go back to LeBaron for the rest of the summer, so you girls can have a break before school starts again. Lane will stay here with Alejandra and keep workin’.” She looked at me as if she expected an expression of gratitude.

  Now it was my turn to avoid her gaze.

  “Life is gonna get better, it’ll all work out for the best,” she continued weakly before she broke into tears again. “This is one of those times when we have to show God we have the power to forgive.” Her sobbing increased until her words were almost unintelligible. “Just like Jesus taught us in the Bible.”

  She folded her arms on the table and buried her head in them. That night, as she and I raced to ready the camper for the trip back to LeBaron, I caught her occasionally wiping her eyes and sniffling. She shed many tears that day, but I didn’t think a single one of them was for me.

  PART IV

  BREAKING

  Elena and Micah in front of our house in LeBaron, 1986.

  29

  Over the next few months, I did what I could to avoid Lane during his rare visits home. In the fall, Alejandra’s family returned to LeBaron, and Mom enrolled me in fifth grade and Aaron in third at Alma Dayer LeBaron, a low-cost private school named after LeBaron’s founder, my grandfather. The school, across the street from my dad’s church and boasting the same white stucco walls, had been built while we were living in California and El Paso. Because their families didn’t have the extra welfare money we did, Sally and Maria went to the Mexican public school across the highway, and I found myself missing our time in New Mexico as I entered a classroom where I didn’t know any of the other children. But all the classes at Alma Dayer were taught by mothers from the church, which made the situation much easier. Sally, Maria, and I spent time together whenever we didn’t have to babysit or attend church services.

  On Friday nights, we dressed in our Sunday best and took square-dance lessons at the church from Lane’s mother. We shuffled awkwardly through the Virginia reel, the fox-trot, the two-step, and the waltz. My half sisters Natalia and Brenda would join us for this weekly ritual of watching and laughing at the boys, who hadn’t yet grown into their Wrangler jeans and cowboy hats. On weekends we went to rodeos our relatives held at different ranches on the outskirts of town and rode borrowed horses along the dirt roads through vast, dry landscapes of mesquite and cacti.

  While I kept myself distracted from my troubled home life, Matt was experiencing a very different kind of struggle. Even though I hated how much he teased my siblings and me, I had to admit that my oldest brother was smart. He had always performed exceptionally well in school. He had learned to read and write early, excelled in math, and had been on the honor roll consistently since first grade. While some parents might have seen Matt’s grades as a reason to nurture his intelligence and keep him in good schools, for Mom and Lane this meant that by the time Matt was twelve, he’d acquired all the skills he needed. They took him out of school before he finished the sixth grade, and he never went back. Lane said it was more important that Matt—and several of his stepbrothers—pick and sell pine nuts all over the western United States to help provide for the family.

  But there was more to Matt’s troubles—much more, as I learned one Saturday afternoon in the middle of winter. The bitter bite of a frosty, wet cold snap had washed away the autumn leaves, and once again the barrel heater was working overtime in the corner of our living room. The smell of burning wood mingled with the scent of roasted red chili peppers and warm corn tortillas. Mom had made enchiladas for lunch, which meant spicy red sauce and homemade white cheese layered between corn tortillas and topped with a fried egg.

  The rest of us having eaten and her nursing of Elena complete, Mom finally had time to eat herself. She handed me the baby to burp and sat down to a quiet meal alone. Mom hadn’t even taken a bite when Matt charged through the kitchen door, bringing with him a whining gust of winter wind. Mom’s hand stopped before the fork reached her mouth, her eyes following her son as he paced frantically in front of the table, his wet rubber-soled tennis shoes squeaking over the cement floor.

  Matt’s face was bright red from the cold. The acne on his chin and forehead had a purplish hue, and his expression so twisted in anger it looked as if he were wearing a scary Halloween mask. For the first time in my life my brother frightened me. He put his hands on the plastic chair opposite Mom and leaned hard onto it.

  “I’m not working for Lane anymore,” he said, his voice even but powerful. Mom’s eyes widened and her chin doubled as her head drew back. “He never pays me for my work, and I’m sleeping in a camper in the back of a truck in the middle of winter!” Matt paused to take a breath and Mom just stared at him. “I’m going to San Diego to work with my brothers,” he said defiantly.

  Mom placed her fork on her plate, cleared her throat, and replied calmly, “Look, Matt, you know that those government checks are barely enough money to feed us. This family depends on you now.” I was surprised by the indifference in Mom’s voice, as if she was deaf to any criticism of Lane. “You’re doing a real good job,” she said quietly. “Don’t you turn your back on us now.”

  Matt threw off his jacket, scraped a chair across the floor, and sat down, tapping his toes on the cement floor. His eyes scanned the kitchen nervously and he chewed his fingernails as he considered his options.

  “Besides,” said Mom, her voice rising, “I wouldn’t dream of letting you go off into a big city on your own. You’re fourteen! There are temptations out there you don’t even understand.”

  “On my own?!” he shouted. “Mom, Lane leaves me alone in the States all the time. He left me and Hugo in Santa Fe for two weeks. We slept in the bed of the camper with nothin’ to keep us warm but two sleepin’ bags. I almost froze my butt off! Nothin’ to cook, no water, no way to wash ourselves or our clothes. We looked like a couple of damn cochinos!”


  “Don’t you cuss in front of me,” Mom said angrily, leaning forward and meeting his stare with her own. “I’m your mother.”

  “Okay, fine.”

  “You show me some respect, I don’t care how mad you are.” She shoved her plate to the middle of the table.

  “But, Mom, he didn’t leave us one cent. Not one cent, Mom.” Matt was on the verge of tears and my heart bled for him. “If we hadn’t sold a few pine nuts every day, we would have starved.”

  “Oh, stop it!” she snapped. “You weren’t going to starve. Stop exaggeratin’. You should be countin’ your blessings. We don’t have lots, but we have never starved.”

  Matt bowed his head and began to weep. “Mom, I can’t stand it anymore. I hate Lane. I hate him.” Matt’s shaggy hair shook with his body each time he let out a sob. I wanted to cry with him, but even more I wanted our mother to take him in her arms and say she was sorry for the ordeal she had put him through.

  “Loren said he’d pay me twenty-five dollars a day while he teaches me drywall,” Matt said. “He told me I could live with him, sleep on the couch in his apartment.” Loren was one of my dad’s sons, a few years older than Matt. He and several other half brothers had left LeBaron a few years earlier to work construction in Southern California, and my brother wanted to follow in their footsteps.

  Matt rested his elbows on the table, rubbed his swollen eyes with his palms, and continued to cry. The more he did, the more Mom kept her eyes fixed on the table.

  “Mom, don’t you see—if I’m actually getting paid for the work I do, I can help out more with the family,” he murmured. “The dollar goes a lot further down here. And all my brothers are there. It’s not like I’m going to be on my own. You know?”