I wish she’d make me trousers, but she says it would be unseemly for a young lady of eleven and everyone in Baltimore would think she’s a bad mother. I think that’s silly. I wouldn’t wear them to school or church, and she doesn’t even know everyone in Baltimore, but when I told Momma that, she made a lemon pucker face.
I run my hand over the grass, letting it tickle my palm. When I first hear the sound, I think Daddy’s changing the radio stations, but it isn’t that kind of sound. It’s nails on a chalkboard scratchy, but deep too, like a tuba, only not musical. I’ve never heard anything like it before. Not ever. I turn my head to the right and the left, even though I can’t hear anything in my left ear on account of the measles I had when I was five. Momma said I was lucky. That year, 1942, a bunch of kids died from it.
I go into the garage, making sure my feet make noise so I won’t scare Daddy. Momma did that once and Daddy turned around with his lips pulled back from his teeth and his eyes all squinty. Momma pretended she wasn’t scared, but I know she was. Daddy sees me start to come in and nods his head a little, so I come all the way in.
“What’s that sound?” I ask.
“It’s The Chesterfield Supper Club. That’s Perry Como talking.”
“No, I know that. The other sound.”
His forehead goes all wrinkly. “What other sound?”
“That one. The one behind Mr. Como’s voice.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t hear anything.”
“You don’t?”
He tips his head closer to the radio and I’m afraid something might come out and grab him, but I know that’s about the dumbest thing I could think. “What’s it sound like?”
“I…” I scrunch up my face, not sure how to describe it. “It’s kind of scratchy, but not staticky.”
He gives another shake of his head and turns the volume down. “How long have you been sitting out in the sun?”
I shrug.
“Go on inside and get a drink of water. Your cheeks are all pink from the heat. You faint out here and Momma will have my head.”
I laugh, and he smiles a little, but it isn’t the same as it was before. The bad guys took that away, too.
—
The sky is ugly and grey but it isn’t raining yet. Momma tells me to stay close just in case, which stinks. I wanted to go to the creek and skip stones, but I go to the construction site instead, which is at the top of the street. There’s a fence around it so no one can go in unless they’re supposed to, and I hook my fingers through the metal links while I look for Daddy. Everyone looks the same though: dirty boots, dusty pants, and white hard hats with the Whiting-Turner logo. Right now, the ground is all hills and holes. Daddy says they have to make it even first, and then they can start digging foundations for the new houses. Dump trucks and bulldozers go back and forth, their engines rumbling, kicking up clouds of dust, and men shout to each other over the noise.
It reminds me of the city, where we used to live with Gramma and Gramps. At night, I sat out on the stoop with Gramps while he smoked, and on Saturdays, I walked to Lexington Market with Gramma and Momma. If I was good that week, Momma would let me get a hot dog from Polock Johnny’s and we’d always take one back for Gramps, too. Now we only see them on Sundays for dinner.
When the construction men all go home at the end of the day, it gets real quiet. It’s strange to hear only bugs outside. We have a concrete porch now with chairs to sit on, not a marble stoop, but I miss how the steps were always cold, even on hot days.
I like the woods, though. I was afraid they might cut down all the trees to build new houses—they’re planning to build lots of them—but Daddy says all the trees around the creek are staying put no matter what.
A few raindrops hit my hands at the same time I see Daddy. I give him a quick wave and run back home, hoping I can get inside before the rain falls heavier and my skirt gets too wet. I almost make it. Almost. I tell Momma that at least it wasn’t my brand-new skirt and she sort of nods, but I can tell she’s worried about the rain.
“Maybe it won’t thunder,” I say and she blinks real fast.
“Go on and play in your room,” she says.
I read Misty of Chincoteague, even though I’ve read it already. When Daddy comes home, he seems fine and he stays in the living room and reads the newspaper. The thunder starts when we’re almost finished eating dinner. Daddy jumps a little, and he keeps eating for a while, then he puts his napkin on the table and goes out to the garage. Momma starts clearing away the dishes, her mouth set in a thin line. I help her clean up and after, I stand in the small hallway just outside the door leading to the garage. Daddy has the radio up loud and he’s making sounds but I can’t tell if he’s laughing or crying and I’m not sure which one is worse.
I can hear the other sound, too. It isn’t louder, but it’s bigger. It sounds like it’s moving closer and staying still at the same time. It makes my bad ear feel funny, too, sort of stuffy and thick. Daddy says something, his voice rough and raggedy, and I lean against the door, trying to make out the words.
Momma comes around the corner and makes her lemon pucker face. “Eleanor Rose,” she says, her voice whispery, “come away from there right now.
“But Momma—”
“We’ve talked about this before and we don’t need to talk about it again. You let your daddy alone now.”
I want to tell her about the sound, but she has red circles high on her cheeks and her mouth is tight. She whips out her arm, pointing, and I walk away, but not before I see her touch her palm to the garage door with tears glittering in her eyes.
In my room, I listen, waiting for Daddy to come out of the garage, but he’s still there when it’s time for me to brush my teeth, wash my face, and get in bed.
In the morning, I tiptoe downstairs, smelling bacon and slightly burnt toast. On the table, Daddy’s plate is mostly empty, except for a bread crust comma. Momma’s plate is mostly full, but she’s on the back porch, smoking a cigarette, the smoke haloing her head. She comes in and sees me and takes a small step back, her eyes wide. She smiles, but it’s too big, how it always is after one of Daddy’s bad nights. At least Daddy was okay enough to go to work. Sometimes he isn’t.
—
Daddy’s in the garage again, but he’s in front of his work bench, holding a piece of wood in one hand and sandpaper in the other. He’s not sanding, just sort of staring at nothing. The radio is on, but low, almost too low to hear.
“Daddy?”
“Yes,” he says, the word as low as the radio. He turns his head towards me, and he blinks a couple times. “Hi, sweetheart.”
“What are you making?”
“A new picture frame for your Momma, but it’s a surprise so you can’t tell her.”
I cross my heart. He turns the radio up and for a while, everything’s okay. “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover” is playing and Daddy sings along with Art Mooney under his breath while the sandpaper scratches back and forth across the wood. Then I hear the noise again, behind the song, and for a second, I almost think it’s the sandpaper, but it’s too big. I rub my bad ear, trying to make the stuffy feeling go away.
“Daddy?” I say.
“Uh-huh?”
“I hear that sound again. From the radio. The scratchy one I heard the other day.” I bite my lip, hoping he doesn’t think I mean the bad day.
“Hmmm.” He drops the sandpaper on his work bench and turns the dial. The sound and the stuffiness go away as fast as a finger snap. “What about now?”
I shake my head.
He turns the knob again, back to the first channel. “Now?”
My bad ear gets stuffy again. I nod.
“Hmmm,” he says. “You sure?”
I nod again.
“So you only hear it on this one?”
“Uh-huh. Can’t you hear it?”
He crouches low, puts his ear close, and my stomach gets all worry-tight for a second.
“No,”
he says, “I don’t, but my ears aren’t what they used to be. It’s the new local station. Maybe they’re picking up some interference.”
Momma comes in the garage, wiping her hands on her apron. “So that’s why you two didn’t hear me calling. Unless you want your supper cold, it’s time to stop playing with the radio.”
“Momma, do you hear something?”
“I hear a bunch of gobbledygook,” she says.
“Ella says she hears something on this channel. What about you?”
“I hear a man telling me Lifebouy Health Soap can clean away invisible dirt.” She blows a quick bit of air through her nose. “Everyone knows Ivory soap works just fine.”
“You don’t hear anything else?” I say, twisting my hands together so I won’t tug on my ear.
“No. Now come on the two of you. Stop telling stories and get inside and wash up.”
Daddy looks at me, shrugs, and turns off the radio. But I’m not telling a story. I do hear it. I do.
—
Something wakes me up in the middle of the night and I scoot up until I’m sitting, with the sheets fisted in my hands. There’s a loud thump and Daddy yells. I can’t tell if he’s yelling at someone or not. I slip out of bed, creep to the door, and open it a crack.
“Momma?” I say.
The house goes quiet. A dark shape flits by, descends the stairs, and a door slams. It’s the door to the garage; I can tell on account of the thump it makes. Momma comes from her bedroom to my door, her steps slow. Her eyes are all red and puffy and she ushers me back inside.
“Go back to bed,” Momma says.
“But I heard—”
“Go now, please.”
“Were you and Daddy fighting?”
She shakes her head. “Daddy had a bad dream is all. Nothing to fret over.”
I don’t think she’s telling the whole truth, but I get back in bed. I think about Daddy sitting out in the garage in the dark with that awful sound. I think about dreams and war and stuffy ears.
—
When Momma asks me to help her with the dishes, I don’t gripe because her face looks tired and a little sad, too. She washes and I dry, making sure to wipe the top and the bottom of the plates. I try singing her favorite Peggy Lee song, hoping she’ll join in, but she doesn’t so I stop, and there’s nothing but the sound of the water, the scrub brush, and the towel. While I’m drying the last plate, she pours out a glass of iced tea and we trade. “Take this out to your daddy and hold it careful.”
“I will, Momma.”
I open the door to the garage slow, and Daddy’s in front of the work bench again, sitting on the stool he sometimes uses. The radio’s on, but I can’t tell what the announcer is saying. All I hear is the scratchy sound, and Daddy says, real soft, “I’ll do anything you want. Just make it go away.”
“Daddy?”
I take a small step closer. His face is as still as a mannequin’s at Hecht’s, the big department store. He doesn’t look like Daddy at all, and I have to hold the glass tight because it wants to slip out of my hands.
“Daddy?” I say again, my voice all whispery thick.
He blinks, shakes himself a little, and glances over. The mannequin is gone, and he’s Daddy again, not the sad-angry one, just the regular.
“Who were you talking to?”
He frowns. “No one. I was just listening to the radio.”
But he makes a funny face. I hand him the glass, and on my way out, I hear the scratchy sound again. Daddy’s drinking his tea and he gives me a little wave. I wipe my damp hands on my skirt. I think of how he was talking. Maybe it’s not just a sound; maybe it’s a voice, too. And maybe this daddy can’t hear it, but the sad-angry one can.
—
Daddy and Momma walk across the street to the neighbor’s for drinks, and they’re holding hands the way they always used to. I wait until they’re inside the house and go into the garage. The big outside door is shut so no one can see me.
The radio is small, much smaller than the older, fancier one in Gramma and Gramps’ living room and it’s made of brownish plastic, not wood. The front is a grille of ivory-colored plastic. I trace my finger over the raised letters: P-H-I-L-C-O T-R-A-N-S-I-T-O-N-E.
I turn the knob on the left to turn it on and up, but only a little. All I hear is Perry Como. “Hello?” I say, trying to make my voice sound strong and brave. “Are you in there?”
I wait and I wait and I wait and I’m about to turn the radio off when the scratchy sound starts. I cross my arms, ignoring the stuffiness in my ear. “What do you want?”
The sound keeps scratching, and I give it my good ear, listening hard. I can hear the shape of words, but I can’t tell what they mean. It reminds me of Gramma and Gramps’ neighbors talking to each other in Polish.
“Hello?” I say again.
The sound gets louder, and it’s angry, like a nest full of wasps all stinging at once or a hundred rattlesnakes with teeth dripping poison or an engine of some giant machine that won’t turn off, but it’s all of those things and none at the same time, and I scramble back, my ear all stuffy and my eyes burning with tears.
“You go away. Just go away and leave Daddy alone.”
The sound gets even louder, and it feels like it’s inside my head, pushing me, then it gets low again. I jump forward and turn the knob, my breath noisy in the sudden quiet.
“You leave him alone,” I say and run back into the house, slamming the garage door shut behind me. I stand there, trying to keep the tears in and rubbing my ear. Even though the stuffiness is gone, it still feels bad. I know I’m too big to believe in monsters, but that’s what’s in the radio. It’s a monster and it’s hurting my daddy.
—
Lunch pail in hand, Daddy kisses me goodbye. I tug on his sleeve and say, “Daddy, please don’t listen to that radio station anymore,” I say, so quiet that Momma, in the kitchen, won’t hear.
“Why is that?” he says, his face all serious.
“The sound in it, it’s a bad sound.”
“A bad sound, eh?”
I nod. “I think…”
“Think what?”
I lick my lips. “I think it’s making you sad and angry. When it talks to you.”
His face goes still and I swallow hard, afraid he’s going to get mad at me, but he gives me a little smile and says, “It isn’t the radio, honey. I wish it were that simple.” He ruffles my hair, kisses my forehead, and leaves. I scrub tears from my eyes. I don’t know what to do, but I have to make him believe me.
—
Momma and Daddy are talking in the kitchen, and I can tell it’s important; they’re both using their serious voices. I keep quiet and stand near the steps leading upstairs. They’d have to come out of the kitchen to see me.
“She thinks the radio is making you angry?”
“She thinks there’s something in it that’s talking to me and making me sad.”
Momma lets out a long sigh, Daddy makes a noise and says something I can’t understand, and Momma says, “Of course it’s not your fault, but you, we, can’t expect her to understand. Maybe you should stop sitting in the garage for a bit.”
Daddy says something else low.
“I don’t know. Maybe you could at least try, for her sake if not your own.”
A chair scrapes across the floor.
“Where are you going,” Momma says.
“To mow the lawn,” Daddy says. His words are so sharp they hurt me.
“But it’s getting dark…”
Momma stops talking as the kitchen door leading to the back yard shuts with a thud. I creep back outside and pad around the corner of the house. Daddy is in the small shed at the end of the yard where he keeps the outdoor tools. He comes out with a set of hedge trimmers and works on the lilac bushes that don’t need trimming. After a while, he lets his arm drop and the trimmers hang, pointed ends a few inches above the ground.
It isn’t full dark yet, but it’s close. His s
houlders don’t move so he isn’t crying or laughing or anything else but standing and staring. I want to run over and say something, but my mouth is dry and bitter, and I’m afraid if he turns around, he won’t be wearing Daddy’s face.
My heart feels too big for my body, like it wants to explode from my chest. I want my daddy, the one before the war, the radio, the garage, but I don’t know how to make him come back.
—
After I finish my eggs on Saturday morning, Daddy pushes his plate away even though he isn’t finished eating. He looks at Momma and she nods and he says, “Come with me a minute.”
I follow him to the hallway outside the garage door, but I stop in the doorway.
“Come on,” he says, taking my hand and giving it a tug. “I want to show you that there’s nothing inside the radio.”
I pull away, shaking my head so fast my hair smacks me in the face. “No, Daddy, please don’t.”
“Sweetheart, there’s nothing in the radio. I promise.”
“But there is, I can hear it.” Tears burn my eyes and I try to blink them away, but I can’t.
“I know you think you hear something.”
“I do. I do hear it and it makes my ear feel stuffy. It isn’t my imagination. It’s real. It is. And if you open the radio, if you do…”
He opens the big garage door and sunlight spills in. Then he unplugs the radio and turns it so the front is facing the wall. I stay near the doorway and cover my ears, even though they feel fine, even the bad one, while he unscrews the back panel. The garage is too big, too shadowy, even with all the light, and my heart is beating so fast, it hurts.
Daddy waves me over. I walk over slow, but I look at Daddy not at the radio. He smiles and it’s almost a real one, and I don’t want it to go away so I look. I see a bunch of glass things with silvery bottoms and tops; they all have PHILCO MADE IN U.S.A. printed on the glass in yellow letters. I see a red wire and a grey one and something round and metal on the left side.
Shadows Over Main Street, Volume 2 Page 8