by Byrne, Leigh
Lana Page, the lady who lived next door, came out of her house and walked up to the chain-link fence separating her yard from ours. “Hidy, Rose,” she called out to Mama.
Mama lifted her head. “Hey, hon!”
Mama called everyone “honey” or “hon,” and her favorite phrase was “bless your heart.” Daddy said she was such a sweet talker, she could call somebody a scum-sucking bitch, and begin the sentence with “hon” and tack “bless your heart” on the end, and it would sound like a compliment.
Mama had always been one to keep to herself. Even at her best, when she went out into the yard, she was willing to talk only briefly with the ladies in the neighborhood about light subjects, such as fashion or cooking.
She hated nosey people, and if someone overstepped her tight boundaries, she was quick to shift the conversation so they wouldn’t have an opportunity to pry into her life. If that didn’t work, she would suddenly act like she smelled her beans burning, even if she wasn’t cooking beans at all, and then take off running into the house to tend to them. Growing up, I never once saw her socialize with the neighbors without a fence in front of her, and an imaginary pot of beans cooking on the stove.
“I’m fixin’ to put on my bathing suit and lay in the sun,” said Lana. “Why don’t you come over and join me?”
“Oh, honey,” said Mama, cupping her hand over her eyes to form a visor against the sun. “I’m not baring this pale body!”
Lana chuckled. “Don’t be silly, Rose, you look great!”
Mama brushed off Lana’s compliment. “Now, if I had your figure, Lana,” she said, stringing out her words like she was stringing bubblegum from her mouth, “Pale or not I’d put on a bikini every day and strut all around this yard!”
“Oh, Rose, shut your mouth! Come on, get your suit on and visit with me for a while. We’ll catch up on some girl talk.”
“I would, Lana, really, but I’ve got to get up from here in a minute and make these hungry young’uns some supper. I’ve got pinto beans on the stove right now.”
“Okay, then.” Lana turned and walked back toward her house. “But the offer stands if you change your mind.”
Most of our neighbors who lived on Maplewood Drive were like Lana, Southern small-town friendly, waving whenever they saw you, whether they knew you or not, stopping occasionally to chat. She and her husband, Jack, like all the young couples that lived on our street, were typical middle class of the seventies. The men were dominant heads of their households, responsible for the financial support of their families, and most of the wives were content to be homemakers and stay-at-home moms. Every couple had at least two children, many of which were around the same age. On summer afternoons the smell of burgers grilling filled the air, the badminton nets went up, the croquet sets came out, and the yards were crawling with happy kids.
Our neighbors were friendly, but they were also aware of the boundaries that separated their private lives from one another—invisible boundaries, but still as impassable as the chain-link fences between their yards. They didn’t press too hard to get into your business because they didn’t want you poking around in theirs. That was the Southern way, the way Mama said it should be. She said it was of no concern to anyone what went on in the privacy of her home.
8
It started out as a typical summer day for us. Daddy went to work, and Mama did her chores around the house. My brothers and I played out in the yard until about noon, when a steamy rain came from out of clear skies, forcing us back inside.
Mama brought out the Clue game to keep us occupied, and served up what was left of my birthday cake. When Daddy got home from work, we ate supper, and then he and the boys went down to the new den, while I stayed upstairs with Mama in her bedroom.
She decided to take one of her long bubble baths. While she was soaking in the tub, I sat at her vanity and fingered the perfumes she had displayed on a gold filigree tray. The delicate jewel-toned bottles of many shapes and sizes intrigued my eye. I picked up each one and sprayed my neck twice, like I’d seen her do.
I went over to the closet, and pulled out her black silk robe, put it on over my clothes, and then slipped my feet into her furry pink house slippers that were on the floor directly beneath it. With the robe trailing behind me, I modeled in front of the mirror, striking various glamorous poses, trying to mimic the beautiful women I had seen in the Sears catalogue where Mama ordered our school clothes.
When I got bored, I decided to join the rest of the family down in the den. When I came to the bottom of the stairs, I saw that Daddy and Jimmy D. had the mattress on the floor, and they were playing the flying game. The flying game was something Daddy had invented to entertain Nick when he was a toddler. At eleven Nick had gotten too big to play anymore, and was sitting in one of the beanbags watching television.
“Hey there, Tuesday,” Daddy said, when he saw me. “Wanna play?”
“Sure!” I said, and ran to him. I never passed up a chance to play the flying game.
Daddy, while lying on his back, bent his knees and pulled them in close to his body to get ready for me to climb on. Meanwhile, I leaned forward, resting my chest and belly on the soles of his feet. When he was sure my weight was balanced, he slowly extended his legs upward until they were perfectly straight.
High in the air, I closed my eyes and stretched my arms out as far as I dared, pretending to be an airplane, or a bird soaring in the sky. Daddy, at six feet seven inches tall, had the longest legs, but I wasn’t afraid of being so high because I could sense his strength beneath me. And whenever I needed to, I could open my eyes and look down at his face for reassurance.
After Daddy let me “fly” for a while, he suddenly separated his legs, allowing me to slip off his feet and drop in front of him. Then right before I fell, he caught me in midair. He never gave warning as to when he was going to do this, so each time my heart raced like crazy. But I trusted him enough that it didn’t enter my mind that he might let me fall. And he never did.
After several turns each for Jimmy D. and me, Daddy’s legs wore out, and he announced the game was over. Tired from playing, we all cuddled up on the mattress to watch television. Just then Mama poked her head in the doorway at the top of the stairs, and told us she was going into the living room to read for a while.
No one in the family but Mama ever spent much time in the living room. In contrast to the casual ranch style of the house, it was decorated formal Victorian. Heavy, tasseled, dark-green draperies hung to the floor over the picture window. In front of it, proudly perched on cherry ball-and-claw feet, was a mauve tapestry sofa. In the middle of the room was Mama’s marble-top cocktail table flanked by two Queen Anne chairs. On one wall was a drop-leaf table, and on another a cherry wood secretary desk with a Gone with the Wind lamp on top of it, and a collection of ceramic Victorian figurines inside the hutch.
Some nights Mama sat in the living room all alone in one of the Queen Anne chairs, with a cup of hot tea or a glass of wine in her hand, gazing up at something seemingly out of her reach, a gentle yearning in her eyes. That night she curled up on the sofa with a book.
After a few hours of watching television, Daddy, the boys, and I were ready to go upstairs. On our way to bed, we passed by the living room and noticed Mama had fallen to sleep reading. It was not unusual for her to doze off on the sofa. Sometimes if she was sleeping well, Daddy let her stay there for the night.
He got a blanket from the linen closet in the hall and covered her up, and then turned off the living room light. The boys went on to their beds, and Daddy walked with me to mine so he could tuck me in. “I’ll be right down the hall if you need me,” he said. But I wasn’t afraid; I had no reason to be. Mama was on one side of me, and Daddy was on the other.
Through my sleepy haze, I heard Mama call out, “Audrey, are you okay?” Words I had grown accustomed to hearing because she still woke up often through the night, thinking Audrey was calling for her.
“I’m coming!”
yelled Mama. “I’ll be right there!”
Then a loud cracking sound that bounced off every wall of the house brought me upright in my bed. The sound reminded of the time I was at one of Nick’s baseball games, and a player broke a wooden bat against a ball.
Daddy and the boys came charging down the hallway, and I jumped up and joined them. Nobody said it, but I knew we were headed for the living room, where Mama was.
When we got there, we saw that the sofa, dimly lit by streetlights shining through the window, was empty. Without hesitation Daddy turned back and bounded through the kitchen and down the dark stairs to the den. Nick flipped on the light to the stairway, and he, Jimmy D., and I followed.
Mama was lying at the bottom of the stairs, her head and shoulders on the floor, and the lower half of her body sprawled across the stairway. She was not moving, and a small puddle of blood was near her mouth. Daddy rushed to her and felt around on her neck for a pulse, and then turned and ran back up the stairs, pushing us kids along in front of him. “Everyone in the living room,” he said, and grabbed the phone receiver off the kitchen wall and called for help.
As soon as he hung up the phone he ran back to Mama’s side. I watched from the top of the stairway as he got down on his knees. “Please God, not my Rosie!” he pleaded. “Don’t you dare take my Rosie from me!” He looked up above him, and I could see the tears rolling down his face. “I can’t make it without her!”
I knew he loved Mama, as much as a child my age could have known. I had heard him tell her practically every day, and I had seen it in his affection for her, which he openly displayed. But that night I remember feeling how much he loved her, the power of his love, and the depth.
It was the first time I had ever known my daddy to cry. He had always represented strength and safety to me. He was the one who chased the monsters away, and held me when I was hurt. Seeing him in such a weak, desperate state shook me at the core of my sense of security, and I began to tremble with fear.
Within minutes an ambulance had arrived, and its red lights were tracing around and around the living room walls. Daddy went next door and got Lana to come and stay with my brothers and me, so he could follow Mama to the hospital. Nick, Jimmy D., and I all sat on the sofa, unusually close to one another, and still as statues. We watched out the window as the paramedics loaded our mama into the ambulance on a stretcher, not knowing whether or not we were ever going to see her again.
9
This is what happened: Our house was laid out such that one end of it was a mirror image of the other. The living room, kitchen, and my room, which was originally intended to be a small den, were at one end, and two bedrooms and the bathroom were at the other. When you walked out of my parents’ bedroom and took an immediate right, you were in the boys’ room, which used to be Audrey’s. When you walked out of the living room and took a right, you were at the top of the stairway leading to the den. Half asleep, and thinking she was in her bedroom, Mama, in her frantic effort to get to what she thought was Audrey calling out to her, walked out of the living room and took a right, running full force into what she thought was Audrey’s bedroom, but was actually the stairs to the den.
From her fall down the stairs, Mama suffered what Daddy called a frontal lobe brain concussion. She also bruised one shoulder and hip. The puddle of blood I had seen around her head was from a laceration down the side of her face that required several stitches. Daddy said she had most likely cut it on the sharp wooden corner of the bottom step.
Daddy spent every night at the hospital with her. He got his mother, Grandma Storm, to come from Nashville to stay at our house and take care of my brothers and me. Mama was in the hospital for just under a week, but it seemed like an eternity.
Finally the day she was to be released arrived. My brothers and I woke up early, got cleaned up, and helped Grandma Storm straighten the house. Then we all sat in the living room and waited for Mama to come home.
When we saw the station wagon pull into the driveway, we all ran out of the house, but Daddy stopped us in the yard and told us to go back inside and wait for them. We went back in and sat on the sofa, and watched from the picture window as he pulled Audrey’s old wheelchair out of the back of the station wagon, unfolded it, lifted Mama from out of the car, and lowered her into the chair.
It took them forever to make it up to the house, and when at last they were at the door, I was disappointed, because the person Daddy wheeled inside was not my mama. The strange woman had a bandage on her left cheek where Mama had cut her face on the stairs, and she resembled Mama, but her head appeared larger, and her eyes that glared into the empty space in front of her were much darker.
She didn’t even look at my brothers and me when Daddy pushed her by us in the living room. That’s when I knew it was definitely not Mama; she would never have ignored her kids, no matter how bad she felt. Daddy had obviously brought the wrong person home from the hospital by mistake, and I told him so. But he kept insisting it was Mama, and he even went so far as to wheel the stranger into their bedroom and put her on Mama’s side of the bed.
For the rest of that day, and the days immediately after Mama came home from the hospital, she spent most of her time sleeping. She only got up when she had to go to the bathroom. If she needed something from the kitchen, she had Daddy, or me, or one of the boys get it for her. This made me worried, but Daddy assured me it was a good thing because the doctor had said rest was the best way to heal a brain concussion.
During her second week home, she got out of her room more. Once in a while, she even stepped into the backyard to get some fresh air, or to watch my brothers and me as we played outside. But when she was out she was careful to keep her distance from the neighbors. If by chance she saw one of them, she threw her hand up and waved, but she made sure to avert her eyes from theirs, as she tucked her cheek to her shoulder and hurried back into the house. Daddy told us she did this because she was ashamed of the scar on her face.
After Mama had been home from the hospital for a few weeks, she started insisting I be by her side at all times. “Stay in here with me, Tuesday,” she said. “Sit down here on the floor beside my bed so I can see you.”
I did as she asked, but it was hard for me to sit still for so long. After she fell asleep, I slipped out of the room to play with my brothers, only to have her call for me to return when she woke up. Out of frustration I asked Daddy why she only wanted me with her, and not my brothers.
“I’m not sure, honey, but if I had to guess, I’d say maybe she’s afraid something will happen to you, like it did to Audrey. Maybe she’s more protective with you because you’re a girl.”
He then explained to me that the doctor had said head injuries like the one Mama had sometimes caused personality changes, and therefore she might not act like herself for a while. But he assured me it was a temporary condition.
His words satisfied me, and made me feel proud that I was so important to her.
It was late in the afternoon. Mama was sleeping, and I was sitting on the floor by her bed listening to the rest of the family as they moved about in other parts of the house.
Daddy stuck his head inside the doorway and said he was going grocery shopping, and he was taking the boys with him.
I wanted to go too, and I begged him to take me, but he told me it would be more helpful to him if I stayed home with Mama. He said he was going to stop and pick up some burgers on the way back, and as a special reward, he would get me a strawberry milkshake.
Soon I heard the door shut behind them, and the house got quiet. Hours passed. The room grew darker and darker, until I had nothing to look at but the glowing numbers on Mama’s alarm clock. I fixed my eyes on them and watched the minutes slowly flip away.
At seven thirty, she stirred. Suddenly she sat up and turned on the lamp beside her bed. When the light hit her face, I saw that it was red and bloated, and her eyes had bags under them. Her hair was flat on one side, and it stood up at the crown, like a wind
blown flame.
With dazed eyes she searched out the room, confused and disoriented, as if she had forgotten where she was. When she spotted me sitting on the floor, she squinted to focus on my face and cocked her head, first to one side, then to the other, like she was trying to figure out the species of a creature she’d never seen before.
Then her deep woe registered, and she sank back into her pillow and cried. “I want to sleep forever,” she said. “Please God, let me sleep forever!”
She slung one of her arms over to the nightstand, knocking off a glass half-full of watered-down tea, and groped around until she found a bottle of pills the doctor had prescribed to help her sleep. She propped herself on one elbow, twisted off the cap, and poured the shiny, red capsules out into her palm. Blinking hard, she stretched open her swollen eyes to get a better look at the pills. She poked each one with her forefinger, then stuffed them back into the bottle and returned them to the nightstand.
She picked up the phone and dialed. Someone on the other end answered, and she said into the receiver, “I just called to say good-bye. I can’t take it anymore without Audrey, so I called to say good-bye, and to tell you that none of you will have to worry about me ever again.” Then she slammed the receiver down, and reached for the sleeping pills.
The phone rang almost immediately. “Tuesday, answer that,” Mama said. “It’s your Aunt Barbara. Tell her I don’t want to talk to her. Tell her I’m going to swallow this bottle of sleeping pills. Answer the phone now, and tell her what I said.”
I picked up the phone. “Hello.”
Mama was right. It was Aunt Barbara, Mama’s sister.
“Tuesday, is that you?” she asked, sounding surprised to hear my voice. “Let me speak to your mother, honey.”
I offered the receiver to Mama. She shook her head no. “She doesn’t want to talk,” I said to Aunt Barbara. “She’s going to swallow her sleeping pills!”