JEWEL

by LOTT, BRET

  Divorce was there in her fingers as she brought that hand down and laced it together with the fingers of her other hand on the table and held them tight together, too tight, and I wondered how anybody couldn’t see there was something wrong, so wrong in my daughter.

  Burton and Wilman blabbered on and on with their questions about how things were back home, asking after old girlfriends and high school football teams.

  There sat Leston, too, him smiling all the while and nodding, a cigarette smoldering in his hand. He didn’t look at me, his eyes on his daughter and on his sons, them surrounding him in just the manner I knew he dreamed of. He drew in on the cigarette, held the smoke, and I wondered at what had held our own marriage together all these long years. Love was in us, certainly, but even when I’d decided to move our family to California without Leston’s blessing, I’d still pictured him going with us, even if I’d had to tie him to the roof.

  We’d been through it, I knew, too, and for a moment I marveled at the fact we’d not gotten divorced after all. Then Leston finally let out the smoke, chuckled at something Wilman said, and in that smile, in that smoke, I thought that it was precisely because of all we’d gone through that we were still together. Him without me wouldn’t have worked, just as me without him would have failed. I drew power from him, he from me.

  And now he was a new man, a confident and successful man allowed to laugh and smoke and call his boys over to work for him. Head of Maintenance. Leston Hilburn.

  I looked back at Billie Jean, and wondered from where she drew the power to smile as she did, to keep up the hiding she seemed to be doing so well. I wondered how long it would last.

  She answered the boys’ questions as best she could, gave out numbers and names and shrugged, too, when she didn’t know, then asked questions herself after this Gene her baby sister was about to marry, how tall he was, how they met, her all the while smiling.

  And again the magnitude and depth of what she’d been through pierced me, and I saw how all these words were working for however short a time to cover her, to keep her from the real topic that’d come out sooner or later. Again I wondered what it was I’d do to make good on that promise to her we’d talk about it, and the promise, too, I’d made to her children, that everybody’d know, that the truth would come out, that things would be fine. I had no idea where any of that would start.

  I called out, “Brenda Kay, bath time, ” and went to her, took hold of her hand, tried my best not to let my eyes meet on Billie Jean’s for fear of what she might see in me, Fear. Cowardice. Seeking refuge in my retarded daughter and what routine I could use to put off whatever a momma was supposed to do here and now, a divorced daughter and two new grandchildren on her hands.

  Brenda Kay stood right off, the transistor radio in her hand.

  “That radio’s from Gene, ” Annie said to Billie Jean. “It’s so cute.

  She won’t go anywheres without it. Momma even lets her bring it in and listen to it while she’s taking her bath.”

  Gene, I remembered. And Annie getting married day after tomorrow, and suddenly it was like Mrs. Zafaris and Annie in that dress had all been years before, not on this night. Not tonight at all.

  “Night, all! ” Brenda Kay called out as she walked along behind me into the front room, and I said, “We’ll be back for hugs good-night in a few minutes.”

  “I love you, Brenda Kay! ” Billie Jean said.

  “Love you, ” Brenda Kay said.

  The grandchildren were sitting in a circle on the floor, Matthe and Elaine right there and part of them. They’d gotten a deck of cards from the end table drawer. It was a Crazy Eights deck, on the cards pictures of clowns instead of diamonds and spades and clubs and hearts, and as we walked through the middle of the circle, Brad said, “Susan, do you have a six? ” “Go fish, ” Susan said.

  “Liar, ” Jeannie said, and I spoke up, said, “We’ll not talk like that here.”

  I glanced down, saw Matthe and Elaine both with their mouths open, staring at Brenda Kay, their hands fallen down in their laps to reveal every card they held.

  I stopped, said, “This is your Aunt Brenda Kay, ” and smiled.

  They said nothing, and Brenda Kay said, “Momma, bath! ” “Say hello, Brenda Kay, ” I said.

  “Hello, ” she said. She wouldn’t look at them.

  Brad said, “You guys, hold your cards up so we can’t see them.”

  But Matthe and Elaine didn’t move, only stared, and I saw in their faces how much there was to do, how much. These other grandchildren, the regulars, knew how to act around Brenda Kay just talk to her, smile, hug her when they came over. That’s all. And when she got cranky like this, just ignore her. It was my job to take care of her, get her bathe , lay out her clothes for the next day, get her to bed, keep her happy. My job.

  Robert said, “Matthe , do you have a nine? ” and Brad reached over to him, pushed his little brother’s shoulder, said, “It’s not your turn, dodo.”

  “Y’all behave now, ” I said, and we moved on toward Brenda Kay’s bedroom, and the refuge giving her her bath would give me. Matthe and Elaine’d be here tomorrow morning. They’d be here, and so would Billie Jean. Tomorrow.

  I turned on the light in Brenda Kay’s room, and there on the bed lay Jill and Timmy, curled up and pink and asleep, oblivious to everything, just babies not yet walking, asleep here in a house not their own, in a bedroom not their own. My grandchildren.

  “Babies, Momma, ” Brenda Kay whispered, and for a moment it was as if someone else had spoken, as though there might be some fine and lovely ghost haunting the room, the words easing themselves into my ear like warm light.

  She’d whispered, a sound she’d never made before, her words all these years so tight and forced and hollow in her throat. Brenda Kay whispered, and I turned quick to her, saw her with a finger to her lips, saw her mouth pucker up and watched her blow air out, what I knew was her imitation of somebody saying Shhh.

  Her seventeen, and still learning. Seventeen, and this new move in her, and I felt myself smile, felt my hands moving of their own up to her and hugging her, holding her hard, harder, maybe, than I’d held Billie Jean out there on the lawn. I held her tight, until finally I let go, pulled back, saw her smiling at me.

  I said, “Now where’d you learn that? ” She shrugged, still smiling.

  “Babies, ” she whispered, again that new sound out in the air, here in the universe, a new sound that signaled me there was always hope, even in the face of whatever ugly surprises the same old God could dish up.

  I gave her one more quick hug, then took her by the elbow and guided her back out into the hall, cut off the light behind me, led her into the bathroom, closed the door behind us.

  I sat on the toilet seat, said, “We can just undress in here tonight, ” and reached down, untied her white shoes. “Lift, ” I said, and she lifted her right foot, then her left as I took off the shoes. She lifted the right foot again, let me slide her sock off, did the same for the left.

  Next I reached up, started unbuttoning her blouse for her like I did every night.

  She was still smiling, still had a hand up to her lips, still blew out, so very pleased at my reaction, at what attention she’d gotten out of it. I finished with the last button, started to slip the blouse off, and said, “Now you tell me who taught you that, little girl. Mr. White? ” “Whisper, Momma, ” she whispered, and brought her hand down just long enough for me to take off the blouse. Still she smiled.

  “Now turn around, ” I whispered, and she smiled even bigger, her teeth showing now. Our moves were rote in us both, us here at our nightly task, and she turned her back to me so I could unfasten the little white cotton brassiere she started wearing two years ago. But it was the whispering that was different, and I wondered how long this game might go on in our lives, how many days or weeks or years. I smiled.

  I undid the brassiere, dropped it next to the blouse, whispered, “Let’s turn around, ” even as she wa
s turning. I whispered, “Was it Mr. White?

  ” She shook her head, her finger still to her lips.

  I reached up, put my hands to the elastic waist of her slacks, started easing them down over her hips. Once I’d gotten them down to her knees, revealing like every other night the series of scars across her legs like red maps of some strange and made-up countries, scars that made my stomach twist the same every time I saw them, I closed my eyes, whispered, “So who was it taught you to whisper? Was it Annie? ” The slacks were down at her ankles now, and she lifted her feet again, slowly kicked them off. I opened my eyes. She stood before me in just her cotton underdrawers, her finger still up, the transistor radio tight in her other hand. There were her breasts, small and insignificant, the nipples the palest pink imaginable.

  I leaned over to the tub, twisted on the water, let it run on my hand.

  I looked up at her, said, “Was it little Susan? ” “Whisper, Momma, ” and I could barely hear her for the water into the tub. It was warm now, and I took the white plug from the edge of the tub, settled it into the drain, and felt the bathroom warming up. The tiny room was suddenly a fine and beautiful place, green tiles up the walls around the tub, wallpaper Burton and Wilman’d put up earlier this year on the rest of the walls, great sailboats out at sea, sails all rigged up and full. Two gold-painted plaster angelfish hung on the wall behind Brenda Kay, a magazine rack filled with old Reader’s Digests sat next to me between the wall and the toilet, a soft and pale green rug lay on the floor in front of the sink beside Brenda Kay. Steam lifted into the room now, and I breathe it in, filled my lungs.

  I sat up from the water, kept on with the game. I whispered, “Was it little Susan? ” She shook her head.

  I reached to her waist, started peeling down her underdrawers. The little window up above the bathtub was open, let the warmth from the water fog up the room more than otherwise, and now the room was cozy, the refuge I was looking for, what I wanted while I thought things out, put off taking hold and making it work for however long I could, even if just until we were through with this bath. Just that much.

  “Then who was it taught you? ” I whispered.

  I got Brenda Kay’s underdrawers down to her ankles, let her lift her feet up yet again, and saw it.

  The steam in the room made me have to hold the underdrawers up closer to my face, and I held them in my hands, held them and stared.

  There at the crotch was a bloodstain the size and shape of an egg.

  Nothing new, yet still a surprise, a simple and sad gift from God.

  I looked up at her, saw her through the thin steam smiling at me, whispering something, her finger at her lips and the rush of water into the tub keeping whatever word she uttered from reaching me.

  Yet even through the rise of tears in my throat, through the rise of the knowledge of what exactly this in my hands meant, even through that I managed to whisper, “Who taught you to whisper? ” one final time.

  She leaned closer to me, didn’t even see the bloodstained underdrawers in my hands, or if she did, didn’t think it had anything to do with her, which, I saw, was the truth, her bleeding every month’d never mean anything other than dirty underdrawers, than her momma having to check the seat of her pants four and five times a day just to make certain she wasn’t soaking through. What I held in my hands would never mean anything.

  Her smiling face wasn’t six inches away when she stopped leaning toward me. She took her finger from her lips.

  “Dennis, ” she whispered, and put her finger to her lips again, blew air out.

  I let my head drop, closed my eyes. I said, “Get in the tub.”

  “Whisper, Momma, ” she whispered, but I only leaned over to the faucet, turned off the water, said full-voiced, “Get in the tub, ” and heard how the sound of my voice banged off the tiles in here, how it ricocheted and rounded in this tiny room, at the same time shattered any sense of refuge might’ve been in here to start. It was gone, and suddenly I knew it’d never existed. Refuge from my life wasn’t possible, of course, not even here, in a bathroom in a house in Manhattan Beach, the house filled with children and grandchildren.

  And then, as if God’s slap had been lost on me, as though I hadn’t just seen in the bloodstain in my daughter’s underdrawers, in her whispered word that you could never take refuge from your life, never get away from what you had to do before you, somebody knocked on the bathroom door. No surprise at all. Enter trouble. No news here.

  “Momma, ” Burton said. “Momma, you better come on out here, ” he said.

  “Billie Jean, she’s crying out here. She’s crying, and so are Matthe and Elaine.” He paused. “Momma, ” he said, “all hell’s breaking loose out here.”

  “Just a minute, ” I said. I was still there on the toilet, still had my eyes closed. “Just wait, ” I said.

  I heard Brenda Kay climb in the tub, settle herself, then heard the transistor radio come on, some silly rock and roll song, a girl asking again and again for somebody named Kooky to lend her his comb.

  “Momma? ” Burton said, and I opened my eyes.

  I said, “I’ll be out in a minute or so.” I said, “Crying’s good for you, ” and I swallowed hard, stood from the toilet, then got down on my knees before the tub, took the washrag from where it hung on the faucet. With my other hand I reached for the bar of soap nestled in the corner where the walls and tub met. I put my hands with the soap and rag into the warm water, started lathering it up.

  “In a minute, ” I said, and started in on Brenda Kay.

  CHAPTER 31.

  WHAT MORE CAN I SAY EXCEPT THAT I UNDERSTOOD LESTON WHEN HE came home from work one evening in April, him in his white dress shirt and thin black tie, his black pants and shined wing tip shoes, standing there in our kitchen. Brenda Kay sat at the table, the transistor to her ear, in her other hand a thick green crayon held tight, her hand squirreling out with the greatest of efforts the rows of letters she’d been making for three months now, the huge and joyful triumph of them, What is there for me to say, except that I understood him when he smiled down at Brenda Kay, touched her hair with one hand, with his other loosened the tie at his throat, then looked at me. A cigarette hung there at his lips like always, across his face a smile that creased his eyes nearly closed, this man Head of Maintenance at El Camino College, my husband.

  He tapped ash into the handprint ashtray Brenda Kay’d made so long ago, and said, “We’re moving back.”

  What is there for me to say, except I understood him? Because I did.

  Though I hadn’t known it was coming, I could have seen it if I’d dared pay that kind of attention to him. There were clues, his life moving along with no help from me, as I could tell. Just moving, while I’d always been all eyes on Brenda Kay.

  The first clue had come years ago, when I’d stopped pressing the gray uniform he’d worn for so long, traded in for the dry-cleaning allowance and the shirt and tie. And there had been the way he’d made love that night, the power that’d returned to him and his hands, how he’d held me.

  And lately there’d been the clue of his new interest in what Brenda Kay was interested in. There was a new program on the television, !

  “American Bandstand, ” a man named Dick Clark running the thing, on the program all kinds of musical bands every Saturday morning. We’d gotten the television as a gift from Burton and Wilman not long after Annie and Gene got married, my little Annie and her husband with a baby of their own now, Laura, and with another one on the way. Brenda Kay watched the program every time it was on, and now she could see the boys and girls who sang the songs she listened to on the old transistor Gene’d given her, her eyes wide when those groups sang, even wider when the children in the audience were shown dancing. On Saturday mornings when Burton or Wilman or, now, Gene weren’t over and helping out, Leston’d sit right there alongside her and watch with her, point out to Brenda Kay teenagers dancing who seemed funny, the two of them laughing in the front room while I wen
t about my Saturday chores of cleaning the kitchen, vacuuming, all else I had to ignore during the week when I was at Brenda Kay’s school.

  Leston’d been there through Dennis, too, had assumed a sort of position in things by volunteering himself to go over to his house, square off with his parents, even Dennis himself. I’d just smiled at his ideas, at how he still thought children and their problems could be solved with muscle and weight, as though Brenda Kay and Dennis were nothing more than kids whose parents didn’t want them to date each other. For two years now the battle’d been on, I’d forbidden the two of them to ride together, sit with each other, share food or pencils or anything else.

  All of it in vain, of course, still Brenda Kay would come home and whisper to me, laugh at the mention of his name, or she’d see a boy and girl on “American Bandstand” dancing away, point at the two of them, holler out, “Dennis! Brenda Kay! ” But nothing more than that came of the two, no wavering in the way things between them fell. I didn’t know if it was because of me and what I’d resolved to do that night two years ago when she’d first whispered his name to me, or if it had to do with Dennis’ mom, Terri L’Coste, her full aware of what was up and as resolved to keep the two apart as I was. Nor did I know if it weren’t just the two of them themselves, this seeing each other in the faces of teenagers on the television all they could know of love.

  And there had been the giant clue Leston’d given as to the future of our days here in California. It was a clue I hadn’t seen at all, one that came the day she gave to him the first row of letters she’d ever made, those B’s labored and forced and hard, but B’s all the same. Mr. White’d been stone resolved not to start her in on letters and such, her not testing in at a suffficient level for him. But I’d seen him working with the children for years on their letters, and I took to filling in the afternoons until Leston pulled in, with working on her name one letter at a time, first through the curves in the letter B, then the straight lines, until she was making one and two and three of them of an afternoon. We never told Leston what we were up to.