Liar's Bench

by Kim Michele Richardson

  But still, it wasn’t long after that supper when Mama settled into the hands of her former lover. Tommy, acting all sweet and clownish, courting her with flowers he’d lifted from the park across the street. And always making sure to give me one of those daisies, too. His day clothes were always spiffy, like he was stepping out for a night on the avenues.

  He took care of her, too. She’d caught a cold and got a smoking cough. Tommy went out and bought her the codeine cough syrup, and when she finished that, he bought more bottles. “A new refreshment,” she’d winked.

  He made Mama laugh, and they went out dancing a lot. I reckon that’s why she married him right away. But I never did like clowns. And, after a while, it seemed like this one made both me and Mama cry more than he made us laugh. Still, he’d always apologize with a pretty gift and blaze those sharp pearlies. After he’d gotten over his hangover, that is. Then they’d go dancing again. I guess that’s why she loved him better than my daddy.

  Maybe even better than me. Because it was less than two months later when Mama delivered me back to Liar’s Bench.

  Daddy was waiting, with arms spread wide. “You didn’t let all that ‘fancy’ corrupt you, did you, baby?”

  I looked up at Mama questioningly and she nodded her approval from behind her sunglasses. I fell happily into Daddy’s hug, sneaking a peek at Mama over his shoulder. And that was when I saw her heartbreak for the first time—her face seeming to slowly craze like a porcelain bowl picking up the hairline cracks after it hits the floor. I’d never realized just how big her losses were. Her sisters. Her parents. A husband. Now, me, her only child. But in that one glimpse, I saw everything. I was almost nine years old, and I didn’t know how to help her. But I knew that she couldn’t help me. I buried my face in Daddy’s chest, grabbing hold of my immediate little happiness before it could be snatched away.

  Wearily, Mama sat down on Liar’s Bench and looked across the street toward the old courthouse, lost in thought. When she cleared her throat, the words sounded strange—sad. “Mudas is too puny for the city,” she told Daddy. “She mewls like a sick kitten at every loud noise. Tommy and I feel it’d be best if she lived here with you. We’re moving north soon, to Chicago. Tommy’s been offered a better job. And I don’t think she’s strong enough for a bigger city.”

  Confused, I shot her a look. Instead of answering, she adjusted her sunglasses to hide the recent eye whap that Tommy had given her. Instinctively, I felt for the small of my back. It still hurt. Four days ago, I had gotten separated from her and Tommy in the city department store and started crying. Tommy’d called me a big baby—a chicken for making a fuss—and smacked my tail all the way back to the car. When we got back to the apartment, he’d taken off his thick belt and beaten me. But this beating was different.

  There’d been a big argument about it afterward. The biggest ruckus ever. Even when I’d clamped my hands over my ears, I could still hear the slaps on skin, the shouts, and the slamming doors. Tommy had finally stormed out of the house, yelling about how he needed some air. His “air” always smelled “a whole lot like whiskey,” Mama had screamed back, reaching for a refreshment.

  I was so afraid, I ran to hide, pressing my small body way back inside the closet, hiding under a pile of coats until Mama came for me and coaxed me out with a sugar cookie.

  Then she’d gone and emptied a bread bag and filled it with ice to help with the swelling on my back. When Mama had finished, she’d hurried to the medicine chest to get salve to spread across the welts. I heard her gulping down the bottle of codeine cough syrup that she kept in there, as she tended to her own swelling. After she was through nursing our wounds, she’d lit herself a cigarette and studied me for the longest time. The smoke settled into our silence, and for a minute I saw wounds bigger than mine. I’d reached up, hugged her neck, and patted her back. “It’ll be okay, Mama, it’ll be okay.” I kept petting.

  Then, for the first time ever, Mama cried on me. Scared, I patted harder. She finally stood and went into the bathroom. I heard her open up the cabinet again. Another sip of refreshment, and a few seconds later, she came out. Her breath smelled a lot stronger, orangier, like fruit and Tommy’s bourbon. She’d knelt down. “Keep your back covered at all times or else it won’t heal,” she’d said. “You can’t show anyone. Do you understand?” I’d nodded and sealed the promise with a kiss and two fingers, just like she’d taught me.

  But sitting on that old bench with her now, I couldn’t understand anything other than she was leaving me. I hooked my arm under hers and tightened, scooting closer to her. “No, don’t leave! Please stay, Mama.” I grabbed her hand, pulled it on top of Daddy’s and mine, and buried my wet face in the clasp.

  Mama stroked my hair. “Hush, sugar,” she quieted. “I’ll be back to take you shopping in the big city once we settle in. Now I’ve got to get back to Nashville and pack.” She untangled our hands, stood, then smoothed down the creases on her linen skirt and gave me a tight smile.

  Daddy jumped up, clasped her arms, his eyes sorrowful—pleading. “Don’t leave, Ella. Muddy is too young to have her mama so far away. She’s only nine, for God’s sake. Whitlock will just drag you through the gutters with him, and you know it. We can work this out if you’ll just give me another chance.”

  “Daddy will protect you from Tommy. Don’t leave us, Mama . . . don’t leave me.” I scrambled up from the bench, grabbing wildly for both of their hands. When I latched on, I held them together. “Please, Mama, I’ll be strong.” I pressed their hands firmly to show my strength. “Please stay with me, I promise—”

  But she turned her head, stiffening.

  I tried to run after her, but Daddy caught me. I watched Mama’s car head out toward Highway 24. Me and Daddy sat on Liar’s Bench for who knows how long—swapping stories, waiting, praying, and me, wearing off the tips of my fingers—all the while clinging to the ragged thread of hope that she’d turn her car back around at the Tennessee line.

  Seems I spent most of August sitting on Liar’s Bench, waiting for Mama to cross the Kentucky line. It would be almost three months before I’d see her again.

  Mama and Tommy ended up staying in Chicago for close to seven years, until Tommy ran out of bartending jobs and his daddy took ill. They moved backed to Peckinpaw at the beginning of ’72, just in time for his daddy’s burial and Genevieve Louisa’s birth.

  I looked down to find my thumb gliding over my fingers, nervously tap-tapping away, doing its old dance. I couldn’t bear sitting in my bedroom another minute, thinking about the past. I had to get out of this house.

  I peeked out my door and heard Daddy rumbling around downstairs in the kitchen. Now if I could just find my car key, I might be able to make it out of here without having to face him. I meant all I’d said, but it had been easier with that door between us. Just the thought of looking him in the eye made me blush with shame.

  I needed to get out of here. “Where’s my key?” I grumbled. Scanning the room, I realized that Daddy must have hidden it after my little display of emotion at Mama’s house, afraid that I’d drive off and do something stupid in my grief.

  “Damnit, I’m getting out of here,” I said to myself.” The key wasn’t on the nightstand, where I thought I’d left it. I went over to my window seat bench and lifted the lid, thinking I might have tossed it in there with some clothes. I rummaged through the quilts in the big bench, finding an old picture album, a box of stationery, useless papers, and a few clothes. No key. “Where could it be?”

  Then, I caught the shine of my shotgun peeking out from beneath a quilt. It was the old .410 that Papaw had used as a kid. When I turned ten, he had passed it on to me for rabbit hunting, along with his favorite saying: “You can’t catch a rabbit lessen you muddy up those boots.”

  My fingertips touched the cool metal and in one whipcrack of thought, I reflected about Mama—my grandparents—and the final escape of madness—and never-ending sorrow. I licked my lips and pressed a hand over t
he barrel. Oh, but to drive away this madness . . . to lie down beside them in green pastures and restore my soul!

  “Driving is a privilege, and one that I can take away.” Daddy’s voice was low and stern.

  Startled, I piled the quilts over the .410 and dropped the lid. I whipped around to find him standing in the doorway, with his arms crossed and his mouth set in a hard line.

  “You’re not the Department of Motor Vehicles,” I said, shaken.

  “I am today.” He lifted his coffee mug, before he turned and went back downstairs.

  When I heard his footsteps hit the bottom landing, I crossed the hall to his bedroom, intent on finding that key.

  I worked my way over to his armoire in the corner and opened its doors, doing a double take in the inlaid mirror. Shocked, I peered closer. My long brown hair was a tangled twist of knots instead of its usual soft curls. My nose, splattered with freckles, what Grammy Essie used to call “a redhead’s angel spit,” glowed like Peckinpaw’s only red light. I groaned. My eyes were road-map red, like the day I’d gotten caught in Grammy Essie’s cellar polishing off a jar of sweet dandelion wine. I was nearly thirteen. She’d yanked me out of the cellar and shamed me with a lecture on the evils of alcohol, carefully bringing Mama briefly into it, but I’d only caught two words: White trash.

  I shut the armoire door. “I’ve worked three years for that car,” I said to the empty room, my resolve growing.

  I reached on top of the bureau, fumbling for his leather jewelry box. Finally, I pulled it down and lifted the lid. My nerves lit into my hands, leaving me to fumble. The box slipped from my hands and the contents scattered across the floor.

  Dropping to my knees, I scrambled to pick up my car key poking out from beneath the corner of the bed and triumphantly stuffed it into my jean pocket. I stretched my arm across the hardwood to sweep the rest of the mess back into Daddy’s box, but I was distracted by a piece of twisted fabric looped around a ring. A small plastic bag labeled “Quality Hair Ribbons, $1.99” lay a foot away, bearing the stamped logo of Nettie’s Nest General Store. I scooped it up.

  “You leave here without permission, gal, and I will take off your bedroom door and store it in the cellar again,” Daddy said from the doorway. “And you will lose your right to privacy for the rest of the summer!” He set down his coffee cup.

  “Go—go ahead,” I stammered, rubbing my closed hand. “Just need to get out of here . . . I’ll be back by four.”

  “Don’t push it, Muddy. You know the rules. Leave the house without consent, you lose my trust—the trust that comes with the protection of privacy—beginning with your door.”

  “You’ve taken it off so many times, the lock only works half the time anyways.” I stood.

  “Muddy—”

  “I’m an adult now, seventeen,” I said evenly.

  “Only ten years older than seven,” he shot back, “and damn well showing it.”

  I raised a shaky fist and opened my palm.

  Daddy leaned against the doorframe, arms blocked, eyes tightly scrunched as if he didn’t see it, it wouldn’t be real.

  “Who’s—who’s the lucky woman this time? Which one of them gets this—the new secretary?” I clutched the piece of jewelry. Slowly, I disentangled a cameo ring from the ribbon and placed the piece down on the nightstand. The ribbon was all too familiar.

  “What’s this, Daddy? This is the same ribbon Mama was wearing.” I raised my fist and let the ribbon slowly unravel. “Everyone knows that Nettie sells in threes.” She always put an extra ribbon in the bag in case you lost one out of the set. Nettie was real thoughtful like that. My breath came fast and hot. “Daddy?”

  He pressed his fingers to his temples.

  “Daddy, you know Mama never wore ribbons and Tommy forbid her from wearing them. Why do you have the same pink ribbon that Mama had on her ankles when . . . ? Oh, oh.” I felt a tight squeeze in my throat. “Daddy, what is it that you’re not telling me? Please, please tell me.”

  He shook his head dismissively. “Oh, for God’s sake, Muddy, you’re not making any sense. Settle down! You know it was that horse’s ass Whitlock who pushed your mama to the brink. And now, look at you, you’re—”

  “Stop!” I flailed my arms. “She didn’t kill herself. Mama had the other two matching ribbons around her ankles when they . . . when they brought her out of that house. Wait! Did you give those ribbons to Mama? Hurt her? Daddy . . .” I doubled over. “How . . . What Tommy said in the police car . . . you know something about this, about what happened to her, don’t you? What did you do? WHAT—”

  His face paled. “Enough. I have a lot of grown-up business on my mind.” His eyes locked on the ribbon. “Now, Jingles says—”

  “I don’t care what Jingles says. You know Mama would never take her life.” Daddy moved over to the bed, lowered himself on its edge, and placed his head in his hands.

  I brought my own hands to my forehead in shock and winced as I touched the forgotten bruise I’d caught from Roy McGee last week. McGee. I had to tell someone about what I’d seen, none of it making sense anymore. I worried about breaking my last promise to Mama, disrespecting her last wish. But the story begged to be shared: the argument with McGee . . . I charged forward, teetering between anger and regret. I waved the ribbon in his face. “McGee was over at Mama’s when I was visiting last week.”

  Daddy looked up in surprise. Then recognition.

  “Yes. Yes, he was there. And he slapped her. Talk to me. You know something about this. I can see that you do.”

  He cast his eyes downward.

  “Maybe you and McGee both know something and you’re both hiding it!” I grasped into the heated air. “What is it?” I dangled the ribbon high, waiting. “Are you in deep with McGee? Maybe McGee’s pushing out Tommy, huh?”

  “Muddy! That’s enough! We can talk about all of this later, when you’ve had some time to calm down. When you can act—”

  “I bet you just couldn’t stand the thought that she was never coming back to you . . . back to a lying cheatin’ horndog!”

  Daddy dropped his elbows to his knees. “Jesus,” he moaned, looking up at me.

  I couldn’t look at him. Before all this, I’d never spoken to Daddy or anyone like this. And now, seeing him broken, shattered my own angry heart.

  I stared down at the floor, twisting the ribbon. I couldn’t bear seeing his hurt—his bewilderment—his disappointment in me. I balled my fists and fought the urge to go over and hug him—to beg his forgiveness.

  I studied the ribbon, flowered on one side and pale pink on the other. I looked up and saw his pained expression, a mist settling, red-rimming his eyes. A wave of fury buoyed me. How dare he? How dare he steal my God-given grief for his own!

  I rubbed the ribbon between my fingers. Mama’s ribbon. My head snapped up and my mind flickered with suspicion. “You have to tell Jingles everything,” I said woodenly. “Everything, Daddy. You’re the prosecuting attorney. How could you not?” I whispered. “Whatever it takes, I’m going to find out what happened to my mama.”

  I grabbed the telephone receiver off its black rotary dial base sitting on his nightstand and listened for the dial tone on our party line. I turned the finger wheel, mentally counting out four long rings. “Sheriff Jingles? Sheriff, it’s Mudas Summers . . . Yessir, it was a nice service yesterday. . . . Uh-huh. Thank you. I need to tell you, Sheriff; I’m calling because my daddy has some new information about Mama’s death that you really need to—” The sheriff cut me off with awful news of his own. My mouth fell open in disbelief. “Oh, oh. That’s just, well, I don’t know what to say. . . . All right, yessir.”

  I set the phone down in its cradle and slowly tied and knotted the ribbon around my wrist. Daddy’s eyes were still glued to the floor, but he was working his thoughts into his old knee injury, massaging absently with his hand.

  “Jingles says he found Tommy hanged in his cell. They just sent him off in the coroner’s wagon. Daddy, did yo
u hear me? Tommy’s dead . . . dead,” I said with a thimble of mixed guilt and relief. My fingers curled tight around the phone cord. “Justice . . . What he did to Mama after he hung her . . . Daddy?” I pleaded, waiting—wanting—and desperate for him to make everything right.

  His shoulders dipped lower.

  “I’m leaving.” I paused at the doorway, deep down hoping he would stop me if I gave him the opportunity.

  He didn’t.

  “And you called Tommy a horse’s ass?” I called coolly over my shoulder. “You’re the pecking chicken. Peck. Peck. Peck. Jus’ pecking away until you’ve shattered everything and everyone around you.”

  I blinked back the tears, making my way blindly down the stairs and out the porch door. I gave a hard kick to the gravel drive, scattering up chalk-gray clouds of pebbles and dirt. Another. Then another. “I hate you! Hate you!” I called out, stomping stupidly and fruitlessly.

  I paced back and forth in front of my car. “Daddy,” I shouted to the house, “I’m leaving now! Need your permission, please!” I paused to catch my breath, and looked up at the house and then over to Peggy, battling between defiance and duty. And gripped by the certainty that I would never be able to see home, or my father, the same way again. When Daddy didn’t show his face in the upstairs window, I cried out, “I’m seventeen, Daddy. Seventeen!” I raised my hands in the air, clenched my fists once, then held up seven fingers and swiveled them from my wrists. “Almost eighteen—eighteen and free, Daddy . . . an adult! Legal!” I punched through the grieving air. “Free and legal, Daddy!”

  I booted more rock, gravel slapped at my leg.

  “Hmph. Prosecute that, Mr. Prosecuting Attorney!”

  I swiped at the tears scorching over my cheeks as I jumped into the car.

  8

  Ghost Puppies and Scars