by Byrne, Leigh
I had learned from similar past experiences, either I was going to have to drink the spoiled milk on my own, or do it her way and get a beating in the process. With tears streaming down my cheeks, I took it from her and forced it down, swallowing as fast as I could, first the bitter liquid, and then the congealed lumps.
When I had finished she took the carton from me, checked to make sure it was empty, and then grabbed one of my arms, and spun me back around facing the wall again.
A few days later, Mama brought me milk again, this time in a glass. When I took it from her, our fingers touched, and for a second our eyes met. The thought crossed my mind that it could be her way of apologizing for forcing me to drink the spoiled milk days earlier. I searched out her empty glare for a trace of kindness, and found none.
The glass felt cold in my hand. I brought it up to my nose and took a sniff. The milk didn’t smell sour. Still I sipped warily. It tasted sweet and mellow, and creamy gliding down my throat. I turned up the glass and guzzled, my heart soaring with joy, because it was the first time since before her accident Mama had done something nice for me.
Then just as I got to the bottom of the glass of milk, I felt a slimy lump slither through my lips and slide across my tongue, where it burst, releasing a rich, salty taste. Gagging, I pulled the milk away from my mouth. A clear string of slime ran down my chin.
“I read that raw eggs are good for you,” she said. “They make your hair shiny.”
22
To better support his growing family, Daddy took an office job as personnel manager for a local aluminum plant. Although he made more money, and his new employment was less demanding of his time, it put an end to the cafeteria food he had been bringing home for the family to eat.
Mama resumed preparing the family’s meals. Now that she was in complete control of what I ate, I rarely got what the rest of the family had. Instead I was given the uneaten scraps from everyone else’s plates—fat, gristle, and half-chewed meat. She also continued to plant strange things in my food and drink. She brought me sweet tea with bacon grease in it, a bowl of soup filled with hot peppers, and mashed potatoes with scoops of lard mixed in.
Then she began withholding food. Soon it was routine for me to be sent to bed without supper. On those nights hunger ripped at my insides, as I lay unable to sleep, and my thoughts were dominated by trying to come up with ways to get more to eat.
When I cleaned the house, I sometimes came across edible morsels on the floor, like soggy pieces of cereal my brothers had dropped from their breakfast bowls. When Mama wasn’t paying attention, I scavenged around in the trash cans for discarded sandwich crusts and apple cores.
My best opportunity to get anything of significant substance was right after everyone else in the family had finished supper, when Mama had me take the leftover scraps outdoors to feed our dog, Rusty. However, under her watchful eyes, swiping the dog’s food was no easy feat. She had calculated how long it took me to walk to the end of the backyard to dump the scraps, and if I didn’t finish within the allotted time, she came out to check.
Sometimes there were no leftovers from supper, no crumbs on the floor, or opportunities to dig through the trash, and I went to bed hungry. One night, after many of listening to my stomach growl, it occurred to me that the kitchen, right beside my room, was full of food. I decided to take the risk and slip in there to find something decent to eat.
Well past midnight, I tiptoed down the hall and peeked into Mama and Daddy’s bedroom to make sure they were sound asleep. On the way back, I passed my brothers in their bunk beds; I could hear their deep and even breathing. Gathering all my courage, I made my way to the kitchen, careful not to bump into anything that might create a sound and awaken someone. Just inside the doorway, I stubbed my toe on Jimmy D.’s schoolbook satchel, slumped in the floor where he’d left it earlier. I froze in fear and listened for the sound of Mama’s bed squeaking. The house remained silent, and so I continued with my mission.
As soon as I came to the refrigerator, I opened it, and using my bare hands, dipped into hamburger goulash and mashed potatoes left over from supper, and crammed them in my mouth as fast as I could. After I had eaten all that my belly could hold, I scrambled back into bed, proud of my accomplishment, and fell to sleep, satisfied.
My secret visits to the kitchen became more frequent, as Mama fed me less and less. Eventually I was slipping out of my bed for food almost every night. Each time I got a little braver, staying in the kitchen longer, eating all the leftovers Mama had planned to heat up for lunch the next day. Soon she noticed the food was missing and became suspicious.
I was standing in front of the open refrigerator with my mouth full of pecan pie when she caught me.
“Spit it out!” she said, shoving a trashcan under my mouth with one hand, and squeezing my jaw until my cheeks collapsed with the other.
I expelled the gooey pie, and it plunked against the bottom of the trashcan.
“You’re like a sneaky weasel, stealing our food while we sleep. You’re even beginning to look like a weasel,” she said. She smacked me on the back of my head with the flat of her hand. “Pop goes the weasel.”
23
Around lunchtime, on a Saturday, Mama brought me a plate, and on it was a huge slab of the hog jowl she used to season beans and turnip greens.
Even though I was starving, the mere sight of the hog jowl with its dense, yellow fat, encased in thick, bristly skin, repulsed me. But when she went and got the flyswatter, and stood over me with the wire end poised in the strike position, I knew I had no choice but to eat it.
I stabbed it with my fork, and put the entire piece into my mouth in an attempt to swallow it whole and avoid the taste and texture of the fat. But the bulk of it got stuck in my throat, and my body rejected it, and it plopped back onto the plate. I then tried to cut it with my fork, but it was too tough, so I removed and ate the rubbery outer layer of skin, only to have it come back up too, the bristles scraping my throat along the way.
Finally, after a half hour of chewing and throwing up, and chewing and more throwing up, Mama standing over me the entire time, I was able to get the hog jowl down.
For supper the same day, she brought me another plate of food. This time it was the good stuff—fried chicken, mashed potatoes, pinto beans, and cornbread.
I wanted to dig right in, but I knew better. After so many episodes of either being forced to eat something gross, or finding strange things planted in my food and drink, I was left to face the hurtful truth: even a seemingly kind act from her most likely had a covert cruel intention.
As I ate, I prodded around with my fork. The food seemed fine, but I noticed she was watching my every move, which made me suspect something was up.
When I had the last bite of mashed potatoes in my mouth, I felt a hard object scrape against my teeth. With my tongue I rolled it around, trying to figure out what it was. It was about half an inch long, and ovular, and tasted metallic. I had no idea.
The object was small enough to swallow, but something told me not to, so I slipped it under my tongue, and continued eating until I had finished all my food, and then put down my fork.
Puzzled, Mama took the empty plate from me. She lifted and checked under the fork, and then darted her eyes back to me. “Where is the bullet?”
It’s a bullet! “What bullet?” I asked innocently.
“Open your mouth,” she demanded. “Lift your tongue.”
As I lifted my tongue, I allowed the bullet to slide out, and then nestled it between my teeth and jaw. Somehow, she missed it.
“You ate a bullet, you stupid bitch, you stupid, stupid bitch!”
I’m the stupid one? You’ve got nothing better to do with your time than to feed your kid a bullet in some mashed potatoes, and I’m stupid?
As if she had heard what I was thinking, she slapped me solid across the face. Then she turned and walked away, disappearing into the kitchen.
I could hear her opening and s
hutting cabinet doors, shuffling cooking utensils around in the drawers, and then the rhythmic ping, ping, ping, of a spoon hitting against a glass, like she was mixing something.
When she emerged from the kitchen, she was carrying a jelly jar filled to the brim with a mustard-color concoction. With her free hand, she grabbed the hair at the base of my head and led me through the kitchen and down to the basement.
When we got to the bottom of the stairs, she pushed the jelly jar into my face. “Drink this,” she said.
I took the mixture from her and drank. I expected it to taste much worse, but it was pleasant, compared to some of the other stuff she’d forced on me. It was made of mustard, with hot sauce, and maybe some vinegar. Whatever it was, it must have been something meant to induce vomiting, because I lost my supper halfway through the glass. While I was throwing up, I managed to keep the bullet under my tongue.
When my stomach was empty, Mama went to the kitchen and got a butter knife. She then stooped down in front of me and used the knife to prod around in the slimy bits of chicken and beans and cornbread I had thrown up.
In a twisted way, I enjoyed those few moments she was at my feet, on her knees, poking around in my vomit.
She poked and poked, so intent on finding the bullet, I was fearful that if she didn’t come across it soon, she might split my gut open next. I decided to release it from my mouth, as if I had just thrown it up. As soon as the bullet hit the concrete, she snatched it up like it was a precious jewel. Then she took the remaining mustard mixture from me and without saying a word, stiff-armed me across my jaw.
I lost my balance and stumbled to one side. She got behind me and pushed me forward into the vomit. The palms of my hands, and my knees, smacked against the concrete floor.
“You dumb weasel!” she screamed.
She bent over, and with one of her hands applied pressure to the back of my head, trying to force my face into the vomit. As she pushed me down, I locked my elbows, and resisted her with all my strength. She pressed using her weight. As she shoved, my arms bowed, and I moved closer and closer to the vomit, until the tip of my nose was touching it.
Finally, I couldn’t hold her back any longer, and collapsed. My forehead slammed against the concrete floor, into the slimy mess.
With my face in the vomit, I kept fighting, until I managed to slip loose and raise my head again. She grabbed a broom leaning up against the wall and pointed the handle toward me.
I had been hit with the handle of a broom before, plenty of times; I remembered how the thin wood sliced into my skin. But I wasn’t ready to give up yet. Down on all fours, I stared at her square in the eyes, like a wild animal ready to attack, vomit dripping from my chin.
She hit me across the back.
I grunted from the pain.
She reared the broom up over her head and hit me a second time, and then a third, and a fourth. Just when I thought I couldn’t take another blow, she gave up.
She went up to the kitchen and got a roll of paper towels. “Clean up this mess!” she said, tossing them down the stairs to me.
I had vomit on my face, and I had just taken a beating, but still I felt like a winner, because for the first time I had been in control of Mama. However brief, the gratification I got from watching her down on her knees sifting through my vomit gave me a sensation of power I had never before experienced, and made me realize how strong I had become, and that I was capable of much more than I knew.
24
No one at school paid much attention to all the bruises up and down my legs and arms. Lots of kids had cuts and bruises from falling down and bumping into things. Mama was careful to whip me with the flyswatter, or a wire hanger, only where my clothes would hide the marks. When occasionally she lost control and busted my lip, or blacked one of my eyes, she kept me home from school until the wounds had healed.
During the school months, her physical attacks were the least of my problems. She had become more creative in her efforts to humiliate me in front of my classmates. She started out the year by making me wear the same dress to school every day. This went on for weeks. When it got old, she chopped my hair into all different lengths, so short in places it stuck straight up like the bristles of a porcupine. Whenever Daddy and my brothers asked her about it, she told them I had cut it myself.
Her manipulation of my appearance ensured that I was a total outcast among my peers. I often heard them whisper—hands cupped around their mouths—as they passed by me in the halls, “There’s the ‘weirdo girl.’”
I did my best to fade into the background. I alienated myself from the other kids and didn’t speak to anyone unless it was absolutely necessary. The girls in my class formed cliques and talked about their favorite TV shows and the slumber parties they threw. I had nothing to share, so I thought it was best to keep my mouth shut; that way no one would find out how different I really was.
In a sense I didn’t mind so much being an outcast at school.
It saved me the trouble of having to explain to the other kids why I couldn’t talk on the phone, or invite them over to my house, or tell them why my hair was stubby and my clothes were odd. Friends would have only made my life more complicated than it already was.
Still, in spite of all the humiliation and the loneliness, being in school was much better than being at home. It was nice to sit down in chairs like other people, and to be able to go to the bathroom, or get a drink of water, whenever I needed to.
I was fascinated with the water fountains at school; ice cold water was a luxury I seldom got at home. Each time I passed a fountain in the halls, I could not control the impulse to stop and drink until my stomach protruded.
My favorite part of school was eating in the cafeteria. Food was the only thing that brought me pleasure. But eating lunch at school was not enough, because Mama continued to withhold my suppers, and I was always hungry. Grandma had fattened me up during my summer stay with her, but within months I had lost the weight I’d gained while I was there, and had started to look gaunt. My face was drawn and forlorn. My skin was sallow, my hair was stringy and dull, and I had bald spots from having it pulled out so much.
About halfway through the school year, Mama decided to start making me late for class every day, so however ridiculous my appearance, it would surely be noticed when I walked in ten minutes after the bell had rung.
Ms. Wicks was my fifth grade teacher. I admired her because she was young and pretty. She had brown, wavy hair, and the skin on her face was always pink and shiny, like she had just scrubbed it. She wore soft, fuzzy sweaters of pastel blue and lavender, some of them with embroidered rosebuds and tiny rhinestones.
At the beginning of the year, Ms. Wicks liked me too. But after a while, the constant tardiness began to annoy her. She thought it was an intentional act of disrespect on my part. First she disciplined me by taking away my recess. Then, when that didn’t work, she called Mama.
The next day, after she had talked to Mama on the phone, she stayed in at recess with me, after everyone else had gone outside. “Tuesday, this tardiness every morning is going to have to stop,” she said. “It disrupts my class when you walk in late.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Wicks, I can’t help it.”
“Yes you can help it, Tuesday. I know you can because I spoke with your mother on the phone last night, and she told me you walk to school every morning. Isn’t that right? Don’t you walk to school?”
I squirmed in my seat, like it suddenly had become hot. “Yes, ma’am.”
She got up from her desk and walked around in front, leaning back against it. “Mrs. Storm said she has you dressed and out of the house in the mornings early enough for you to be able to get to school by eight o’clock.”
I fiddled with the corners of some papers on my desk. “But I don’t have enough time,” I pleaded.
“I know better! I also checked with your brothers’ teachers and found out they are hardly ever late. If they can make it on time, then surely you can
.”
I tried to tell her the reason my brothers weren’t late was because they rode the bus to school, but when I opened my mouth to speak she cut me off. “No more excuses! I’ve given you plenty of opportunities to correct this, and all you’ve given me is excuses!” She stood straight, and calmed her voice to a controlled, serious tone. “You will continue to stay in at recess, and in addition you will write an essay on why it’s important not to be late for school every day until you learn to make it on time.”
The next morning, as usual, Mama did not let me leave our house in time to get to school by eight o’clock. I ran as fast as I could, and I was close, but still I didn’t make it to class before the bell rang.
The following morning, I tried even harder, and again I failed.
After weeks and weeks of punishment, I guess Ms. Wicks felt guilty, because she gave in and allowed me to have my recess back. She learned to work around my tardiness, but she held it against me for the remainder of the year.
All the frustrations with being late to school, and then becoming a spectacle because of my appearance when I got there, spurred horrifying nightmares. I had the same one over and over practically every night. I called it my black pit dream:
It’s the first day of school, and I cannot find my classroom. I am late. I am driven by the urgent need to push forward, to beat the clock. The school seems large, the corridors vast. They widen before my eyes, and the lockers soar endlessly upward. The fluorescent lights are as far away as the sky. I’m late. I search for the office to ask for help, but I can’t find it either. Feeling the pressure of time running out, I try to hurry…faster…faster, but I can only move in slow motion. Finally I spot the office. It’s huge; the doorknob takes two hands to turn. I open my mouth to speak to the lady behind the desk, but the words that come out make no sense, as if I am speaking another language. Frustrated, I turn and run. I see a stairway; I go up. As I climb the steps, they cave in under me. I trip and tumble down them, landing in front of a room I believe to be my class. When I walk in, all the kids laugh, laugh loudly. “Wrong class,” they shout at once. They point at my clothes, my choppy hair, and they keep on laughing. I run from the room, and continue to search for what seems like days, until the bell rings. School is out. The other students pour out of the classrooms. They knock me down. I can feel them trampling on my body like I am rubble. I manage to get on my feet again and join the other kids. Pushing through the double doors, I follow them outside. All of a sudden, the earth opens up in front of me, and below is a black pit. I fall, spinning in somersaults gobbled up into the black hole.