by Lee Lynch
Bat, officially Batson, their mother’s maiden name, painted the outside of the tree house black before he enlisted, but only patches of the paint remained on the weathered gray wood. Stains on the inside walls could be maps of the world. There was a warped door that almost closed, and outside plywood window covers were hinged at the top, with hooks to shutter them. Jaudon, at age ten, built a narrow railed platform over the pond, big enough to lie on, and sawed out a pint size dormer window under the overhang of the roof so she saw more of the sky. There was an old window in the garage which she used to cover the hole—too big, but she hammered it down tight.
She nailed screening across the windows for the bugs, but the bugs were clever. One year the mosquitos got so bad she had the bright idea to soak the floorboards with citronella from Momma’s stash at the Beverage Bay office, but it stank to the high heavens and Berry wouldn’t visit at all.
After every storm she checked the tree house first thing.
The freight trains came howling across Eulalia Road towing gondolas of oranges, limes, lemons, and grapefruit. Hopper cars moved tons of phosphorous from the Bone Valley mines. Momma commented it was a wonder some train didn’t shake the tree house apart. Jaudon’s granddad originally built it for a young Pops who, some months after inviting Momma to visit the tree house, married her. He kept it in good shape for Bat.
Jaudon wanted to do whatever Bat and Pops did.
By the time Jaudon was three she was climbing the ladder. Pops seemed to know she would be as much of a son to him as Bat. Pops dragged her off the tree house ladder and smacked her on the behind time and again. For her fourth birthday, he stood at the bottom of the ladder and watched her climb it over and over, propping her up when she started to fall, until he saw she did it safely. At that point Jaudon planted herself in front of him, fisted hands on her hips, and he gave a roar of laughter. “You, Daughter, inherited the true Vicker spirit!”
Jaudon, proud, stood as tall as she could and never forgot his words.
Pops also laughed when Jaudon, age eight, over Thanksgiving dinner, announced to a houseful of relatives that she planned to marry Berry and live in the tree house. She went back to gnawing on her drumstick. When she became aware of the silence and Pops’s laugh faded to a cough, she looked up to see the family watching her. She excused herself, drumstick in hand, and jumped off her chair to run to the pond bench and cry. She never forgot that incident either.
Chapter One
Berry insisted Jaudon finish high school with her. She would help Jaudon catch up and take leave of those hallways the first second possible.
Early on, Pops had told Jaudon, with true merriment, that she walked like a sailor late from shore leave, knees hugging air, leaning forward into the wind to rush up a gangplank. At school she was called a circus freak. The bullies grabbed her books and scattered them. They pinched her behind and teased her more for crying. Humiliated, uncomprehending, emotionally scorched, at school she found no help. The teachers looked the other way—Berry never did.
By their junior year, Jaudon didn’t get any more girlish, but she made a good-looking boy, Berry thought. Jaudon was so energized, so excited, so much fun when they were alone together.
“Is it okay, Berry, that I get a funny pitter-patter in my heart when I see you? And how I’m feverish, but I never felt better in my life?”
“If it’s okay that I want to cuddle you into my lap and pet you till you purr loud as Toby. Or that I want to be in your lap so you can pet me till I purr.”
The school bus was still a trial. They agreed to ride it like statues to give no fodder the bullies could use to further torment them. Both of them endured name-calling, shoving, and—one day—a dead rat tossed onto Jaudon’s lap. She grabbed Berry’s arm to stop her from reacting, dumped the rat to the floor, and used her foot to push it under the seat in front of them.
Every weekday they escaped the school bus and dawdled through a sandlot of sad-looking grass to reach their redbrick high school. When the other pupils were far ahead, Jaudon sometimes looped around the smooth gray palm trees and leapt out at Berry for no good reason but pure silliness. School smelled of chalk dust and Pine-Sol.
Those were the best days. On the worst days, home at the tree house, Jaudon would cry and Berry would hold her, praying this cruelty would someday end.
Their classmates’ words were soon carried home to the adults in the small congregation of the church Berry, with reluctance, attended.
One Saturday she saw the pastor talking with Eddie Dill, the man-friend Gran took up with a few years after Grandpa died. As soon as they walked into Gran’s house on Stinky Lane, Eddie took hold of Berry, slapped her hard across the face, and slammed her against a wall. He pulled her to him, turned her around, and slapped her from the other side. He threw her into an armchair.
“Is it true about you and that Vicker girl?”
Berry held her cheeks. Her face stung. Her head throbbed from the nasty blows. She said nothing, her ears filled with noise, as if her skull was a bell Eddie had rung. She tried to find her inside place, her peaceful sanctuary, her time with Jaudon.
Eddie’s voice turned shrill. His breath stank of rotting teeth, his body of dead animals and swamp water. “Is it?”
It was true she loved Jaudon, but the other truth was no, what people said wasn’t true. Brought up to wait for marriage, they did no more than hold each other, to staunch tears, and out of affection. If it was her gran asking, she’d have said more, but not to this loathsome, depraved predator. He deserved lies or silence.
Eddie raised his bony hand again, his face misshapen with what looked like disgust. She rose up quickly, lifting her arm to ward off the blow. The side of his hand hit her wrist like a hatchet chop. She screamed in rage and pain.
Gran rushed at him. He swatted her away. Berry fled to her bedroom, the former laundry room. They’d moved the washer outside under a thickly fronded palm and the dryer into the living room. There was no other place for it, or her. She was scared stiff. With one hand and her legs, she rammed her bed against the door and her dresser against her bed. She jammed her rear to the wall and used her feet to reinforce her blockade.
Jaudon called her a girly girl; but there was no rule saying a girly girl couldn’t take care of herself. She wanted to run across the railroad tracks to 12 Pineapple Trail and ask the Vickers to call the police, but that would cause Gran to suffer and Berry suspected she suffered enough from Eddie Dill. Instead she recited the names of the trees she knew: pond pine, loblolly pine, sweetbay, redbud, grand oak, live oak, chickasaw plum, sweetgum, holly, cypress, bottlebrush, myrtle, magnolia, cedar, palm.
The stabbing sensation in her wrist was so bad she was about to sick up. Her head was swimmy. Help me God, or the Great Spirit that Gran talks about or some, any, powerful Thing. Her pleas came out in whimpers and she covered her mouth to hide the sound from Eddie. What did she know about Gran’s swamp vagrant? He seemed to have no history, no family. For all Berry knew, Gran took in an escaped prisoner. Lots of them fled to Florida. A hobo? A man who saw too much war? Her hatred was a torture to her, but she would not turn her cheek after this.
Another girl might run away from home. Berry knew she was lucky to have a home, what with no ma and pa. She ought to give up putting herself to sleep at night burbling MaandPa, MaandPa into her pillow. She often woke with a stuffy nose and red eyes. Gran put her hand on her forehead and concluded, each time, that Berry suffered from allergies. Berry would lie there asking herself, did Pa land in hot water with illegal gambling on their way to California and were they serving out jail terms? Did he gamble away the bike and try to resume the trip ever since? Get robbed and left for dead or lose their memories like in the movies? Were they too ashamed to come home after a losing streak?
No, Berry was a wicked child and drove them away. Was there something that made them suspect she was inclined to love a girl?
Other than loving Jaudon Vicker, she was a regular person. She
stayed and waited out Eddie’s anger. Gran knew how to bind a hurt wrist. No, she refused to answer Eddie Dill or be even a mite close to him again.
Gran wanted her to go to college, teach children like Ma—she dropped out early on and ran wild. With fair and conscientious teachers, Gran told her, she might have been comfortable enough to stay in school and get on in the world. It stung Gran when the teachers claimed the Binyons spoke as if they were gargling mush. Not all Floridians had deep accents, but the Binyons and the Vickers did. Gran didn’t always understand Berry, who occasionally sounded like her pa’s relatives. So Gran encouraged Berry to talk right if that was what it took for someone in the Binyon family to make a better life.
She heard Gran’s calming murmur and Eddie Dill’s grumbling, with the occasional loud, “Out!” Who was he to think Gran was going to let him send her away? She wished she could get her hands on his gun, or one of her own. She pictured herself shooting holes in him, over and over, cutting him down, one bullet at a time. The fantasy was soothing and conflicting. She shouldn’t want to harm a living thing, but outrage took her places she didn’t want to go and trapped her there. Who wouldn’t want to run her out if they saw far inside her head?
Where would she go if he got his way? To Georgia, where the last of the Garlands lived? The Binyons, but for Gran, were every last one gone from Rainbow Gap, chasing employment or being chased by the law. If she left, Jaudon would never finish high school and she might never see her again. Pain was clouding her thinking so she switched to prayer and became lost in conversation with her faith. What was her faith? Gran had schooled her a bit in what Berry’s Seminole great-grandparents believed.
Some Seminoles took up Christianity, Gran told her. The original tribe believed there was a Great Spirit and that critters and objects have their spirits set free when they die or break. The Seminoles hunted for food, but knew nature needed to maintain a balance, so they apologized to the animals they killed by a ritual of sweating and bathing after the hunt. Rainbows, the moon, and the sun were supernatural spirits too.
She listened to Gran, and took on those Seminole beliefs. The tribe’s words and notions held what she believed. She came by vegetarianism and the rescue of small animals naturally.
Her ancestors’ Great Spirit would guide her if she learned to listen. She was self-conscious about saying the Great Spirit, even to herself, when everyone she knew said God.
Gran tried to open her door.
Berry, without the adrenaline of terror, wasn’t strong enough to push her furniture from the door. Between them, they made a passage big enough for Berry, who had meager flesh on her fine bones.
Eddie Dill was in bed. Gran said Berry’s arm was too swollen to fix at home. “We’ll see the doctor tomorrow if you can wait. I don’t know how we’d pay for an emergency room visit. Take two aspirin every couple of hours.”
Gran rigged up a sling to keep the wrist motionless. One minute sweat seeped from Berry’s every pore, the next chills made her shake. They sat close together on the couch and Gran pulled the floor fan near so it blew on Berry.
“No, Gran. I’m colder than the deepest well water.”
She didn’t dare move her arm for the pain of it, but Gran had enough worries without a big bill. The doctor always let her pay over time.
“We best not send you to school tomorrow, pet. They’ll busybody us to death.” Gran looked toward the bedroom. “He’s too mean to live. If I thought he wouldn’t go into hiding out in the swamp forest, I’d tell the authorities.”
Never before had she heard Gran say a word against Eddie Dill. She never put up with him harassing Berry, but was otherwise meek with him.
Her hatred threatened to spill out in a slurry of words that would bury Gran in guilt. She dammed away her ill will. “Why do you stay with him, Gran?”
“He’s part Seminole, pet. He’s almost kin. A woman like me needs a man.”
Berry didn’t think she needed a man herself, didn’t think so at all. It was 1967 for crying out loud, a long time since Gran was young. Berry knew she would do fine with Jaudon.
Gran looked abashed, but her eyes smiled. “He doesn’t know I took out an insurance policy on him. I’m in the dark about where he gets to or if he’ll show up at all.”
She wondered if it would be as much of a relief for Gran to lose Eddie as it would be for her. She gave Gran a half hug. “You’re the smartest person I know.”
Gran scrutinized her eyes. “Thank you, pet. You’re so smart, never mind nursing, you’ll be a doctor. You have my grandmother’s eyes, so dark. She was a healer. I wish I’d had the interest to learn her secrets. I loved her, but she kept the old-fashioned ways. I wanted to be up-to-the-minute.”
She hugged Gran. “I’d be content as a healer, but a doctor?” She pondered the idea. “That’s not the road I’m on. If I’m a nurse, I can be closer to the people I help. You’ve said yourself, doctors like prescriptions and tests. They forget how to talk to their patients. I guess I wouldn’t mind someday running a clinic respectful of patients.”
They watched TV for a while. She dreamed about the future to keep her mind off her arm. At the advertisement, which was for Aero shaving cream, she came right out and asked Gran how come Jaudon had conspicuous hair on her face and arms, like duck fluff. Gran told her most women found themselves with hair they didn’t want, in places they didn’t want it, but they went on to marry and have kids.
After a while Berry said, “Can you imagine a man marrying a woman and waking up the first morning to find her in the bathroom shaving?”
“Does it seem so bad to you, Berry, your wife having whiskers?”
“She doesn’t. And Jaudon’s not my wife.”
“Of course she is.”
“Women don’t have wives, Gran.”
“Yes they do, and men have husbands. It happens all the time, everywhere. People fall in love, some people fall in love with people the same as them, some don’t. It’s human nature. After your Grampa Binyon’s death and your ma and pa going missing, life is too precious to quibble about the manner anyone lives. Your ways may be peculiar to me, and I know you think I don’t belong with Eddie. It’s beyond me why some people judge other people in matters of personal choice.”
“You think there are more people like Jaudon and me?”
“I know there are, my pet.”
Gran continued to call her pet despite knowing what was between her and Jaudon. The thought soothed her. She looked forward to telling Jaudon.
Berry didn’t sleep much that night from the pain. She was at the bus stop before Jaudon, wearing the unbleached muslin sling. She pleaded with Jaudon to go to school without her, so they wouldn’t miss anything.
Jaudon looked over her shoulder for the bus. Their driver never stopped the other riders when they spit and teased her with hateful, injuring words while she fought to hide her tears.
“I’m going to the doctor with you, Berry.”
“No, Jaudon, you can’t.” Gran didn’t want anyone to know Eddie Dill hit her and why, but this was Jaudon—it made sense to tell her.
Jaudon slammed her book bag to the ground. “We’re not safe at home anymore.” She scrunched up her forehead. “I guess we never were. Momma isn’t very nice to me either. She used to wrap a scratchy rope around my middle to keep me in place so she didn’t have to bother watching me while she sold cold drinks and strawberries at our roadside stand, before the first Beverage Bay opened. The rope stretched as far as I needed to go to dump melted ice out of the cold drink washtubs. When I was strong enough to wiggle free, she used a switch to keep me in line, the same one she had for Bat. But at least she was my mother. That son of a biscuit Eddie Dill isn’t even your grandfather. He better not show up at my family’s door. I’ll stay home too, in case.”
Berry gave her a reproving look. She might not agree with the church on everything, but prettied-up cuss words bothered her.
“Sorry.” Jaudon tried her best not to curse.
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br /> Berry prevailed over Jaudon, as usual. The school bus driver waited for her to follow Jaudon onto the bus. She displayed her sling. As the driver pulled the lever to shut the door, a football player from one of the new showboat houses on Lake Suggens called out, “Did you break your arm fighting off the weirdo?”
Berry surveyed the ground around her, picked up a broken piece of asphalt, and flung it at the football player with all her might. It would have hit him if she hadn’t been hurt. She yelled, “You better shut up or I’ll knock your teeth down your throat till you spit them out in single file.”
The bus pulled away and Berry wrinkled her nose at the puff of diesel. She imagined, as if she was praying, the Great Spirit protecting Jaudon and herself. She was lucky not to have hit that ignorant child with the asphalt but also wished she had. Her ugly words repeated on her like nasty burps. She sat on the ground until the dizziness and sweating passed.
Gran’s doctor pronounced a clean break and put her wrist in a cast. When asked how it happened, Gran reminded the doctor, in a long story, about the day Berry’s pa, as a kid, broke his leg. The doctor didn’t ask again. He should have been retired, or stopped drinking—she smelled the liquor. His hands shook while he wrapped padding around and around. She needed to take care to keep the kids at school from writing anything evil on her cast.
The visit to the doctor cost enough, but Gran took her afterward to buy a short, boxy, lightweight white jacket at McCrory’s, never asking anything, never talking about Eddie Dill or Jaudon. This was Gran’s favorite store out in Plant City, far from any big shopping center. It was the very first department store in the area and served non-whites, but the salesladies were all white. Berry shopped there twice before in her whole life. It was a wonderland with a little bit of everything, a big, plain building made magic by goods in cases of dark wood and glass. When they passed the furniture section she squirmed onto a red leather easy chair. She bounced once on a mattress, which irritated her wrist. A saleslady hurried over.