by Leslie Wells
The next time I walked to town with Joshua, I posted the letter. Only after I had mailed it did I realize they would know where I was living from the postmark on the envelope. Oh well, I told myself, if they want to track me down here, so be it. They could see that I was doing all right and had a fine son. Depending on how things were going with Aaron, perhaps then I’d decide to come back home with them.
For several months after I’d sent the letter I expected Mother or Sibby to show up at my door, and whenever mail came, my heart pounded. But no one came to our house, and no letters of pleading or rebuke arrived.
• • •
It was when we’d been in our new home for about a year and a half that I made my mistake. Joshua was a little over two, and I was just so proud of him, it loosened my tongue. I was in the general store buying some cornmeal and a few other items that we needed when a lady approached and asked me all kinds of questions about Joshua—how old he was, where we lived, what his favorite foods were, and so on.
I guess it was out of pride, because unlike my normal reticence, I answered her questions and even gave her more. I told the lady where I came from, how my family hadn’t seen Joshua yet but I hoped someday they would, that Aaron’s family was from Potters Creek. I didn’t go into a lot of detail about Aaron; I just acted like he kept so busy working that we hadn’t had time to go see either of Joshua’s grandparents.
The lady was so curious and friendly that it was hard to resist her. In the end she asked if she could visit us. It was then that I came to my senses and said my husband was so busy, I didn’t think we could have company right now. But I appreciated it. In a very kindly manner she said that she understood, and went on her way.
Later that week I discovered my mistake. Two government men came to the house when Aaron wasn’t there and told me they were doing a census. They asked me a lot of questions about where Joshua was born, how old he was, where Aaron worked, where my parents lived, and so on. Something about their manner bothered me, but I felt I had no choice but to provide them with answers. The men finished with their questions and gave me a sealed letter for Aaron. Then they left.
It turned out Aaron had applied for the dole, saying his wife was crippled and mentally unstable to boot, and couldn’t take care of our son. He’d said that both our parents weren’t living, so he had to stay home to take care of Joshua, and therefore couldn’t work. He’d been using the dole money to buy drink, and then occasionally working for a local farmer for extra cash to keep us fed.
Apparently it was his saying that I was unhinged that tipped the government man in Aaron’s favor. He felt sorry for him, and decided to let him collect a check every other week, rather than just once a month as was usual. The lady I’d met in the store was this man’s wife, and he’d described Aaron’s plight to her. When she met me and I used Aaron’s name and told her where we lived, she realized that I was the person her husband had described, but that I was certainly not insane and could take care of my child quite well on my own. That shot down all of Aaron’s lies. The letter explained all this and stated that he shouldn’t expect any more checks from the government, and that he now owed back all the money he’d collected so far, for many months.
At the time, I didn’t know what was in the letter, as I dared not open it. I had no idea what the men were there for, or how it would affect us. Had I only opened that letter, perhaps I could have just run away with Joshua then and saved us so much trouble later on.
When Aaron came in that afternoon, I handed him the letter. He read it quickly and began shouting.
—Goddammit! What did you tell them? You’ve messed up my dole money, you idiot! Did you tell them I was able to work? Who have you been talking to?
Suddenly I put it all together. For a moment I saw the woman’s hateful, smiling face. I hurried Joshua out into the yard and then went back inside to face him.
—It was an accident, I began, trembling. I’d never seen Aaron so furious. —A lady in the store was asking me some questions about Joshua, and I—
—You what! Aaron grabbed my shoulders and shook me, hard. —You told her what!
—I—I told her that he was two years old, where we were from. She asked what you did, and I told her farm work. She just asked a few questions!
He started slapping me back and forth across the kitchen.
—I didn’t know! How was I supposed to know you were on the dole! I screamed, trying to avoid his huge hands. But he was everywhere. He bloodied my mouth with his fist, then grabbed the broom handle and hit me about the head with it. I yelled at him to stop, but could not escape him in the small room. I didn’t want to run outside because I didn’t want Joshua to see him hitting me.
—You idiot! You’ve ruined it now! How did you think I could afford this house, pitching hay? Now you’ve gone and ruined it! he screamed.
Joshua was crying outside the door to come in, but Aaron did not relent. He grabbed the iron skillet from the stove and hit me with it, then pushed my hands into the hot embers in the oven. I screamed again that I hadn’t known, trying to get my hands free, screaming how could he blame me when he didn’t tell me? But Aaron just cursed at me. Finally I broke away from his grip and ran into the other room. He cornered me, knocked me down to the floor with a cuff that swung my whole body around, and started kicking me. I tried to stay conscious so I could get Joshua inside when it was over, but at some point I eventually passed out. I believe he kicked me for a long time after that.
When I awoke it was the middle of the night. I felt as if I was on fire. My hands had blistered terribly, and my whole body seemed to be an open running sore. I was lying naked in the middle of the bed, and Aaron was sitting beside me. I tried to close my eyes again quickly, but it was too late; he had seen me open them.
A candle was burning on the floor next to the pallet, and tallow was smeared all over the bedcover. I guessed that he’d been burning me with the hot wax.
—I have a little surprise for you, he said, slurring his words. At some point he must have gone out to get something to drink.
—Where is Joshua? I croaked. My bottom lip was cut, and I tasted the warm curdle of my blood.
—Never you mind. You just think about what I’m doing now.
He reached down to the floor and held up the candle. I was so broken and tired I almost didn’t care what he was doing. I only wanted to know if Joshua was indoors, or roaming around frightened outside in the dark.
—Where is he? I asked, starting to rise. I had to stop to catch my breath.
—You’re not going anywhere, Aaron said, pushing me back down onto the bed. —You just hold still. I’m going to take care of your running off at the mouth right here and now. Now if anybody asks you any more questions, you aint going to even hear them.
He picked up the candle, grabbed my head, and twisted it to the side. Pain shot all over my face, and blood from my cut lip ran down my neck. I lay still, awaiting a blow. Instead, a searing began in the middle of my head, and I realized he was letting the hot wax drip into my ear. I screamed and tried to get away, but as always he was much stronger than I.
The sensation in my ear was unimaginable. He held me there for some time, writhing, and then turned my head to the other side. I screamed again as the hot wax dripped into my other ear, scalding what felt like the center of my being. I screamed and cried, but now I could not hear myself. I could not hear a sound I made, and eventually I stopped making any noise altogether.
The next morning we left the cabin and eventually wound up right outside Tarville, a dusty little town about ten miles from the North Carolina border, where we are now. Every so often Aaron checks my ears, and every few weeks he pours candle wax into them again to make sure I cannot hear. Once in a while, when he is digging out the old wax and putting in the new, I hear noises, but I cannot tell if they are coming from me or from outside of me. I have no idea if I have any hearing left, or not.
Sometimes he fashions the earplugs from wax
ahead of time and lays them on my pillow. He knows I will put them in because it is much less painful to push the soft, malleable wax into my ears than to have the scalding tallow poured in straight from the candle.
—Your silencers are waiting for you up there, he’ll grin.
He told me before we left that I was not to speak to anyone in the place we were going to, nor act as if I understood what anyone was saying, even if I could hear a little bit. I remember him mouthing the words slowly, the grits he was chewing like white ashes on his tongue.
—What about Joshua? I asked, unable to believe what he was telling me. —Can’t I talk to him?
Aaron shook his head. —Far as I’m concerned, you’re a deaf-mute now, he said, again speaking slowly so I could read his lips. —And the boy can just think that too. I don’t want his head filled with any foolishness of yours.
—But how long are you going to do this to me? Why don’t you just let me go back home? You don’t need to keep me here, I said, trembling and crying.
—I’ll keep you as long as I want, he replied. —You’re going to stay put right here and see after me as long as I want you to.
—It was only an accident. You don’t have to plug up my ears. I wouldn’t do anything like that again.
—I’m makin sure of that, Aaron said. —You won’t have the chance to.
• • •
The first few times he filled my ears with the hot wax, I tried to plead with him, but he has completely turned against me. Something in his mind has twisted, and cannot be made straight. To his way of thinking, I am now not to be trusted, one of the worst qualities in a woman, he says. He won’t listen to me begging him to stop, and when I try to talk to him, he hits me and tells me to shut up, that I got myself into this situation and I’ll remain quiet as long as he likes me to.
I hope that one day he will tire of me completely and let me leave with Joshua. But for some reason he wants to keep me here, under his control, where I am available to him for cooking and bedding and for venting the rage in him that drink unleashes.
Chapter Eleven
—The men are coming at seven o’clock, Aaron says, facing me squarely and moving his lips carefully to be sure I can read them. While at first it was hard to read lips, now I am very good at it. But I always act slower than I really am around him because I don’t want him to know how well I can interpret. Even half of a sentence is usually enough; most people around these parts are slow talkers anyway. The wax he puts in my ears keeps me from hearing anything, and I don’t get much chance to work on my lipreading except at church, since Aaron doesn’t say much to me. But Joshua is three now and is speaking more, and that’s good practice.
It’s after five, and I’ve got the corn boiling, the potatoes stewing in lard and stinking with onions the way Aaron likes them, and a piece of pork that came from God knows where hissing in the fryer. Aaron’s made his usual pronouncements about what a bad cook I am, how I can’t do anything right and how I’d better not ruin this piece of meat or he’ll knock me into tomorrow, even if the men are coming. Nary a one of them hasn’t given his own woman a black eye or two, he says, and I’d have to agree with that.
This is a rough bunch, not like the men from church. They show up in their overalls, smelly and hot, and start drinking before the food’s set down. I often wonder what the churchfolks would think if they knew Aaron belonged to this group, but maybe they’re members of their own secret sects. I have to believe any other gathering would be better than this. But that’s Aaron’s specialty, to pick the worst of the lot and throw in with them.
Aaron seems more jittery than usual, so tonight’s meeting must be important in some way. I can’t imagine what these grown men see in getting together once a month just to gab, for all the world like a group of gossiping women. There’s Ed Bean, whom I disliked from the start because of the way he eyeballed my walk, and Larry Thrush and Catwaller Jones. There’s Merris Coombs, who always has fishhooks stuck into his overalls bib, and Timothy Wellridge and Perkinson Bailey. Thomas Jones, Sam Jones, and Carlson Wellridge. And a few more stragglers who come and go in the dark and whose names I don’t know.
I hate these meeting nights because if it’s at someone else’s house, Aaron comes home in a black mood and takes it out on me. If it’s at our house, I have to cook for the lot of them. Not being much of a cook, it’s hard to know what to make or how to time it. If the food gets done too early and becomes cold or gets burned, Aaron is furious.
He seems to want to impress these men in the worst way, worse even than the men at Christ on the Cross Baptist that he worked so hard to join. The letter he pretended was from our “former church” to move our membership was a good one, I have to admit. Even if he did spell exemplary wrong. I didn’t point out his mistake, but no one at Christ on the Cross seemed to notice it. They embraced him as a fellow pew-warmer on the spot, just like he was their long-lost brother.
I believe Aaron thought he’d have it easier if he joined a congregation when we moved to Tarville. Maybe he thought they’d be handing out jobs where you didn’t have to sweat. But if he did, he was mistaken. He gets hired to hand and pick, like anyone else on two feet when tobacco’s in season, but nothing much beyond that for the rest of the year.
I poke the piece of pork with a fork tine once more and then go into the back room, where Joshua is playing with his pinecones. I stretch my arms out to him, reach under his arms, and lift him onto my hip. This motion almost makes me lose my balance, but I like holding him, and I’m going to do it for as long as I’m able.
—Hmmhmmhmm, I hum, my voice going up in the middle and then down again, which is his signal that it’s time to go to bed. I carry him up the plank steps just as he begins to protest, so Aaron can’t hear. I don’t want anything to set him off tonight.
As I reach the top of the stairs, a wave of heat stifles me like a heavy blanket thrown over my head. Even though I keep the windows wide open, it is hot as hellfire up here. Joshua clings to me, clutching my neck with both arms. My shoulders sweat from the contact with his skin. I breathe in his little boy scent, holding him tighter. He looks into my eyes and smiles.
—Mama, he says. —Not time for nighty yet.
He still waits for an answer sometimes. I just smile and kiss his forehead.
—Hmmhmmhmm, I hum again, and set him down on his pallet to change him into his nightshirt.
—Not time, Mama, he says again, tugging at my sleeve.
When we first moved here it took him weeks before he’d stop looking at me for an answer, but now he mostly talks to me from habit, knowing I won’t reply. These are the times I long the most to speak.
—Hmmhmmhmm, I hum insistently, slipping his arms through the sleeves.
The cloth is worn soft from so many launderings, and is frayed almost bare at the elbows. I’m going to have to come up with something else for him to sleep in once the summer’s over. The wind blew mightily through the chinks in the wall last winter. I can’t imagine how I’ll get anything from Aaron to trade for wool for new long johns, but somehow I’ll have to manage it. Aaron is still insisting Joshua wear things he outgrew last year. I’ve cut and mended and added on, but at a certain point he’ll have to have new clothes or he’ll be walking around in rags.
Joshua stops struggling and lets me pull the shirt over his head. I settle him on the pallet with his favorite wooden stick, the one I dyed red with berries, and let him chew on that, rubbing his back until he falls asleep. When he was younger I’d make him a sugar teat with a lump of sugar in a rag, dipped in milk, for him to suck on, but it’s been a long time since we could afford sugar. I always like to make sure he’s fast asleep before I go downstairs. Another way Aaron claims I’m coddling him, but I don’t want Joshua waking up and coming in on some of our nighttime scenes. I hope I’ll be able to put that off as long as possible.
I stumble going down the steps and stand still for a minute, making sure I didn’t wake him up. Joshua doesn’t app
ear in the doorway, so I know he’s still dead to the world. I continue clumping down until I make the bottom rung, and there’s Aaron frowning at me.
—tough as shoe leather, he says, indicating the pork.
Now I’m in for it.
—Hahahmm, I moan, and take a step toward the stove. Maybe I can soften it up with some water and salt. How I wish Mother had taught me something about cooking! A clout to the back of my head sends me crashing into the hot stove. I hit my chin on the pot cover and grab hold of the oven door to balance myself. The heat sears my hand. I had to use a lot of wood in the old iron cooker to get it hot enough for the pork.
Slowly I straighten myself and open the pot. I have to hold on until I regain my balance, even though it burns. I know it will antagonize Aaron more if I turn to look at him. He likes it when he can hit me from behind without my knowing when it’s coming. I try to stiffen my back in case he decides to get me in the spine, a favorite place for his well-aimed kicks, and brace myself against the stove. Nothing comes and I uncover the pork and clump over to the bucket and get a dipperful of water, go back to the stove, and pour it into the pot. The meat does indeed look vile, and if I cared anything about the coming company I would be embarrassed. But I do not.
The room feels empty. I turn around and see that some of the men have come into the yard, and Aaron has gone out to greet them. They are slapping each other’s backs in a vulgar way and seem to be congratulating themselves on something. I shudder to think what that might be. Maybe Merris Coombs caught a big catfish down by the river. I know from my covert lipreading that he prides himself on finding the best spots to fish.
I pour the boiled corn into a chipped bowl and stir the potatoes and onions one more time. At least this seems to have turned out all right. If they drink enough before they eat, they won’t notice that the pork is tough. It could be pig slops as far as they could care, once they’ve gotten far enough along into their jars. It has always surprised me that such a clear and innocent-looking liquid could cause so much meanness and crazy behavior. But I guess that’s one reason they like it so much. Father certainly did.