by Byrne, Leigh
After the nurse had taken my blood, Dr. Jernigan came back in the examination room and talked to us some more. He said that when his sister experienced pica, he did some research on it. He found out it was more common than he thought, and that there were people all over the world who ate not only chalk and paper, but everything from dirt to cigarette ashes. The more he talked the more normal I became.
“What is her name, your sister?” I asked him, longing to put an identity to, and to make human, this woman who had saved me.
“Pamela Sue—we call her Pam for short.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Pretty doesn’t do her justice. She was homecoming queen in high school.”
Like Mama! I thought. “Wow!” I said. “Does she still eat chalk?”
“No, but she says she still wants to sometimes, and you probably will want to eat paper for a while too, even after we get your iron level up. Most pica patients say eating nonfood items becomes an addiction, a way to relieve anxiety. When your test results come back, if indeed your iron is low, I’ll start you on supplements right away, and that should help.”
A few days later, Dr. Jernigan called with the results of my blood test. As he had suspected, my iron level was low. He wrote a prescription for supplements, and Aunt Macy and I went to the drugstore that afternoon to get it filled. I took one of the pills in the car before we got home.
“Now, Tuesday, remember Dr. Jernigan said that the iron supplements won’t work right away,” she reminded me.
“I know, but it won’t hurt to get started.”
She laughed. It sounded like a laugh of relief.
55
After I moved out, Daddy called me at Aunt Macy’s at least once a week, but to keep peace at home, he didn’t tell Mama.
Our conversations were usually short. Mostly we talked about what I was doing in school. Each time before we hung up, he stalled, acting as if he wanted to say something more, but didn’t know how. There were things I wanted to discuss with him too, but I never could summons the guts. Afterward, I was always left disappointed that we never broke the surface of what really needed to be said. Our inability to talk about the past was almost as damaging to our relationship as the past itself.
My frustrations with our phone conversations led me to believe the effort to have a relationship with him wasn’t worth it, that I would be happier if I cut off all contact with him. For a while I refused his phone calls. I even went so far as to throw away everything I had that reminded me of him—birthday cards he’d sent, and pictures he’d given to me. I thought if I no longer had these traces of him in my sight, it would be easier to let him go from my life.
But then they would come back to me, the sweet mornings of my early childhood, when I lay in my bed listening to him singing in the kitchen as he made breakfast. The times he came to my room to tell me he loved me, with an obscure sadness in his eyes. How each passing day, he grew more despondent and more consumed with guilt for what he was allowing to happen, his gaze dropping lower and lower each time I saw him, until he could no longer make eye contact with me. When I thought of this, I always went weak for him again and later found myself digging in the wastebasket for the mementoes I had thrown away.
From an early age, because of my love for him, my view of the significant part he played in my unhappy life at home was distorted. It was my heart that defended his actions for all those years, persuading me that his weakness was only where Mama was concerned, and his devotion to her was what crippled him. He appeared strong to the public world, his very presence commanding respect from everyone around him. But at home, behind closed doors, he was forced to let down his façade and be dominated by a disturbed woman. This overwhelming pity I felt, coupled with my empathy for him for having been another one of Mama’s victims, always managed to suppress any resentment I harbored.
As I grew older, my mind sometimes told me to blame him for everything, to make him pay for not helping me, but my heart wanted nothing more than to curl up in his lap and hear him say he loved me.
Now, a teenager, I’d grown to hate his passiveness, his need to escape confrontation, and to turn away from the uncomfortable issues in his life. While I hated these traits, which to me defined him, defined his character, and while I had lost some of the respect I’d once had for him as a man, I could never bring myself to hate him. He was still, and would always be, my daddy.
“Hold on a little longer,” he had said when I was eight. In some ways I was still holding on, waiting for him to come through. I wanted to believe that one day he would keep his promise and make everything right.
On a Sunday morning, after church, Daddy came to Aunt Macy’s for a visit. When he arrived, we embraced. It was good to have him hold me again, but I could still feel something unyielding wedged between us, something with the rigidity of a thick wall.
Aunt Macy prepared tuna sandwiches and potato salad for lunch. She toasted and buttered the bread of the sandwiches, and made the potato salad from real mashed potatoes. While we ate, we were able to laugh and engage in lighthearted conversation. After lunch Aunt Macy offered to clean up the kitchen, so Daddy and I could take our iced teas out onto the front porch and talk.
As soon as we got outside, he brought up the forbidden subject. “I want to say some things to you about what happened with you and your mama.” He raked his fingers through his hair. It was a familiar gesture, something he had always done when he was nervous. “You know she was never right after her accident,” he said. “When she started acting strange with you, I assumed it was because of the brain injury, and that she would get better, like the doctor said. I kept hoping it would all stop.”
“But even if her brain injury caused her to mistreat me, it still wasn’t right.”
“No, of course it wasn’t, honey. That’s not what I’m saying.” He drained his glass of tea. “After the first time she went too far, I thought—hoped—it was an isolated incident. We had an argument over it. Then there was another incident, and another argument.”
I understood what he meant, how things got out of hand quickly. Every day she continued to test her limits with him. The more she got by with, the more empowered she became, until after a while it was evident to her that neither he, nor anyone else, was going to stop her.
“I know you tried in the beginning,” I said. “I haven’t forgotten the times you went to battle for me.”
“When she wouldn’t stop, I considered leaving. God knows I love that woman with every fiber of my being, and still I thought I should divorce her for what she was doing to you, even though I knew in my heart she was sick. But I was afraid to, afraid she would get custody of all of you kids—the woman usually does, you know—and then there would have been nothing I could have done to make your life better. Bottom line is, after I let it go too far, I didn’t know how to fix the problem. All I knew to do was to get you away from her as much as possible. That’s why I took you to your Grandma Storm’s every summer.”
He was trying to convince me—and himself—of what he was saying, that he had taken his only recourse, been forced into his decisions. But his eyes revealed that he still carried the burden of his guilt, and he had not been able to forgive himself.
“I’m thankful you at least did that, Daddy.”
“Tuesday, I want you to know I was wrong. I should have done more. I don’t know what I should have done, but I should have done something. I guess I didn’t want to face how bad the situation had become.” He raked his fingers through his hair again. “I am so, so, sorry.”
I could have left it at that, given him a second chance, started all over with a blank canvas, and I felt like I was right on the verge of following through. But my pain and anger got in the way, and I ended up lashing out at him instead.
“I can forgive you for not doing anything early on,” I said. “But when the social worker came to the house, you had the perfect opportunity to help me, and you didn’t.”
“Come on, T
uesday, do you really think the social worker would have simply whisked you off to a loving home somewhere? Believe me, that’s not the way things would have played out. It would have been difficult to prove what happened to you.” The way he put it made it sound as if I had been the victim of some unfortunate accident that he’d had nothing to do with. “You know your mama can be pretty persuasive. She would have made it hard for me to convince the social worker she was capable of such cruelty. And even if I did, at that point, how would I have explained why I had allowed it to go on for so long? What if we both had been deemed unfit parents? They might have taken you and the boys away from us, and placed you all in different foster homes. Our family could have been ripped apart.”
I hadn’t thought of that. He was right; no matter what he did, the ending was sure to be ugly. “So there was nothing you could have done to help me without hurting everyone else in the family.”
“Maybe it was the wrong decision, but at the time it seemed like the only thing to do.”
There was a short stretch of silence. “I wish you could have known the person I fell in love with,” he said, his face softening with affection at the mere thought of Mama.
He fell in love with the beautiful and strong young woman who once took care of a sick daughter all by herself. He believed there was good in her because he had once seen it. He kept hoping she would get better, and he wouldn’t have to give her up. He loved me too, but not nearly as much as he loved Mama, and when it came to the ultimate sacrifice, he couldn’t come through for me. His fear of losing her was too great.
“I did know that person!” I shouted. “I loved her too! But she went away, and the one who replaced her was horrible to me!”
“The bump on her head is what changed her. It wasn’t until after her accident that she got the notion that somehow it was your fault Audrey got sick, and there was no convincing her otherwise. Something was knocked loose in that fall. She never mistreated you before she fell down those stairs. Remember your eighth birthday?”
“So she does think I gave Audrey the flu?”
“Yes, but she thought that before she fell down the stairs, and she didn’t blame you for it then. Besides, you weren’t the only one in the house with the flu. Any one of us could have given it to Audrey. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Rose singled you out.”
“I know why.”
“Why?”
“Because I am to blame.”
“Oh, honey, that’s ridiculous!”
“Does Mama know about the bubblegum? Did Audrey tell her before she died?”
“Bubblegum? Rose never mentioned anything about bubblegum. What on earth are you talking about?”
“I let Audrey chew on some bubblegum from my mouth the night before I woke up with the flu. I’m the one who caused her to get sick.”
“Maybe you were the one who gave her the flu. Or maybe it was me. I got sick the same time you did, remember? And I kissed Audrey that night before I went to bed.” He got up, walked over to where I was sitting, and knelt down in front of me. “Tuesday, I can’t believe you have carried this with you all of these years.” He put his arms around me. “It wasn’t your fault Audrey died. If it hadn’t been the Hong Kong flu that killed her, it would have been something else. Audrey was a very sick girl, and she had already lived much longer than she was expected to.”
“But there’s more, Daddy. I wanted Audrey to die.”
“I’ll bet your brothers secretly hoped she would die too. I mean, she did make life harder on all of us, and there were so many things we couldn’t do as a family because of her. Hell, as much as I loved that kid, there were times when I was jealous of her, because she took so much of your mama’s attention.”
“I want to believe you, Daddy, but it would help if I could talk to Mama and find out what she thinks.”
“Tuesday, we both know that’s a bad idea. It won’t get you anywhere to talk to your mama, because she refuses to discuss that part of her life. Somehow she has managed to block out everything she did to you.”
“How do you know she won’t talk about it?”
“Because I’ve tried to get her to, many times.”
“Well, if she has blocked it all out, then why does she think I left home?”
“She thinks you are a troubled teenager. She thinks you had to leave because you tried to hurt her.”
“Oh, she remembers that part, huh?”
“All I’m saying is you may have to find a way to deal with what happened to you without talking to your mama about it. If you ever want to try to have a future with her, you may have to learn to let go of the past.”
“I’m not sure if I know how to do that, Daddy.”
“I realize you’ve suffered, Tuesday, but I think you may have forgotten, your mama has suffered too.”
“I know. She suffered! She had a crippled daughter who died young! I get it, I do, but that didn’t give her the right to take it out on me.”
“No, of course not, but it still doesn’t change the fact.”
Aunt Macy walked out onto the front porch, all smiles. “Anybody up for a game of croquet?” she asked.
Before he left, Daddy went to his car and pulled some sheets of notebook paper from the console. He brought them to me. “I was taking out the trash the other day, and I noticed your mama had thrown out a journal she had started right after Audrey died. There aren’t many pages; she only wrote in it for a couple of months. I kept some of it for myself, but I brought you a few entries where she had written about you. I thought you might like to have them.”
April 7, 1970
My name is Rosalind Marie Storm. I am starting this journal because my husband, Nick, says I should write down my thoughts and feelings, that purging might help me deal with my pain. My Nick is the smartest man I know, so I will give it a try.
I guess I should begin by writing about Audrey, because losing her is the source of my pain. Before she died I had the perfect family, two girls and two boys. Some people may say my family was not perfect because of Audrey, but I say she is the one who made it perfect. She was an angel on earth, and now she is an angel in heaven. She gave me a purpose. Now that she is gone, my life feels lopsided. There is a hole where she once was. But I have to go on. I have other children who need me, two wonderful boys, and I still have a daughter, my beautiful Tuesday.
April 12, 1970
I’ve been thinking, and have come to the conclusion that Tuesday is most likely the one who gave Audrey the flu, but it wasn’t her fault she died. My angel had already lived much longer than the doctors told me she would. Tuesday is a smart and sensitive little girl and I am so afraid she will blame herself. I have been watching her closely for signs. So far I think she’s okay.
July 11, 1970,
It’s Tuesday’s birthday! She’s eight years old! I bought her a special gift I can’t wait to give her. I’m going to fix all her favorite foods, and of course I’ll bake her favorite cake, German chocolate. I want to make her day perfect to let her know how much I love her.
For days I read the journal again and again, running my finger over the words “my beautiful Tuesday.” I kept thinking about my conversation with Daddy, replaying it in my head, vacillating between throwing the last shovel of dirt over my past, and digging up the old bones. Although I had taken comfort in his words, I could not get closure from what he had told me. I needed to talk to Mama. She had the answers I thought would help me move forward.
A week shy of my fifteenth birthday, I asked Aunt Macy if instead of buying me a present, she would drive me to Kentucky to surprise Mama with a visit. She was not enthused with the idea, because she, like Daddy, was afraid it might end badly. But after two straight days of my persistent begging, she caved and agreed to take me anyway, against her better judgment.
56
I was standing outside Mama’s locked bedroom, staring at the flickering television light coming from the crack under the door. She had made it clear that sh
e did not want to see me, sending word through Daddy that she had a dreadful migraine and would likely be down for the day. But I refused to give up. I kept thinking she’d have come out to go to the bathroom sooner or later.
Two, three, four hours passed—nothing happened. Then I saw her shadow flit across the floor. A square of folded notebook paper appeared at the bottom of the door.
The sight of the note irritated me. I had a sudden urge to wad it up into a tight ball and pop it into my mouth, like a gumdrop, and chew it until it was nothing more than a sweet, starchy pulp in my teeth.
But I couldn’t. Daddy, who didn’t even know I ate paper, was standing right behind me, and so was Aunt Macy, to whom I had made a promise that I would make a serious effort to stop. And I hadn’t eaten any for almost three months, at least not a substantial amount. Every now and then, I snuck a nosh—a straw wrapper here, a section of toilet paper there—but nothing like before. The craving still remained, although not as strong as it once had been. The doctor had warned me it might, especially during times of stress.
I stooped down, picked up the note, and flipped it around to see if my name was written anywhere on the outside. It wasn’t. I unfolded it and read, in Mama’s familiar backward-slant handwriting, these few words: I’m feeling under the weather, and wouldn’t be good company today. Go home with Aunt Macy and enjoy your birthday. It was unsigned.
Carefully I refolded the letter, following the creases Mama had created, wondering what she had been thinking as she’d run her fingers across the seams.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but she’s not ready yet,” Daddy said.
Aunt Macy put her arm around me and pulled me in to her. “It’s getting late, honey. It’s time we go home now.”
In the car I looked out the passenger window as Aunt Macy backed her old Buick out of the drive. I had been so sure about my idea to surprise Mama with a visit, so sure it was the right thing to do, the right time. On the drive up, I had daydreamed about our reunion, envisioning it to be tender and cathartic, culminating with both of us in tears, our arms wrapped around each other, the beginning of a new life together. It never once occurred to me that she might refuse to see me on my birthday. If she would not see me, I had no choice but to walk away. But I knew if I walked away, and we had no contact, we may never bond again as mother and daughter, and the damage to our relationship, and the pain between us, would never be resolved.