by Jane Bradley
I’d never be like that. I was a good girl, just like Shirley Temple. I’d never show my bottom to anyone except the doctor and my mom. “Keep your knees together like little ladies,” Momma said. “It isn’t nice to show your underwear.” Sometimes I’d ask, “What about Shirley Temple?” and she’d snap, “That’s the movies, now you just shut your mouth and do like I say.”
She had us trained to respond to the snap of her fingers, a snap that cracked like a whip to my ears. I see her still snapping and crossing her middle finger over the index finger as signal for us to put our knees together, straighten up and sit like good little girls. She said, “I won’t have people thinking my girls are trash.”
I learned posture by being forced to pace the living room with an encyclopedia on my head. I liked “D” best, because it wasn’t too thick, and I loved to flip through it and study the pictures of dogs, famous dams, and the illustrated history of dolls. I remember the weight of the book balanced on my head, tilting and sliding off when I giggled, the relief and praise when I made it across the room without it falling down. I was the best of all of us. I practiced. I took a book on ballet from the library and studied posture. I learned to bend my knees, raise my arms, lift my legs without moving my head. I could be a ballerina like the twirling plastic figure in my musical jewelry box. I wanted to be in her pink painted-on outfit, wear the tiny crumbled piece of netting that was her tutu. When I opened the box, she would bounce up on a little spring attached to her feet, and if wound, would twirl balanced on her long pink legs in front of the small diamond-shaped mirror glued against the lid.
My ballerina would never bleed like my mother. I studied her smooth molded plastic skin. Her legs were sealed shut. She would never bleed like my mother who sat on the toilet, spread her legs and made a sour face as she took the soggy bloody pad from between them and unclipped it from the white elastic belt. Her face had a disgusted look as she wrapped the pad in toilet paper, and pushed it into the trash. I could smell it, the metal-sharp dirt smell of blood. “Why do you bleed like that?” I asked.
“Because a woman has to,” she said.
“Does it hurt?”
She stood with the fresh pad hidden securely now between her legs, bent to the sink and washed her hands. “You get used to it,” she said. “Like anything, you get used to it all.”
I could hear my sister’s words: “You don’t want to grow up. It just gets worse every year.” And I wondered if my sister bled too. Was that what made a whore? Blood between the legs? I knew it was bad, could see that from the look on my mother’s face as she shoved that soggy stinking tissue-wrapped pad deep into the trash. Already I was embarrassed for something I didn’t own yet, dirty, leaking blood. Already I was trained and ashamed.
I liked to help my mother clean. I would dust the end tables, dry the tableware, arrange, rearrange it all neatly in the drawer. I liked things neat. Daily I would wipe my shoes and slip them back in the shoebox the way I tucked my baby dolls into their cardboard beds. I liked to help do laundry and would stand over the open dryer door, breathe the clean smell, close my eyes to the warm soft heat as I reached in and grabbed the thick terry cloth towels. I held them close as I carried them to the kitchen table where I would fold them neatly, getting the corners straight, breathing the smell, feeling the warmth as it spread and vanished into the cooler air.
As my mother sorted dirty laundry from the hamper, I tried to hold my breath against the sour smell of bath towels, damp socks, the oily dirt and cigar smell of my daddy’s clothes. I crouched on the floor just to be near my mother. Waiting, I mashed soap powder between my hands and rubbed the soft oily feel of it into my skin.
Once I heard her gasp, and I looked up to see her staring at my daddy’s undershorts in her hands. I saw soft wrinkled fabric, the faded blue line print running up. My daddy’s shorts. He had lots of pairs like these. I had folded and put them away in his drawer many times before. She looked as if he had hit her. Then I saw that blank dead look she took on whenever he yelled at her: “Bitch, slut, whore.” I stood and saw that she was staring at dried, red-brown smears on the fabric where he opened his shorts, pulled apart the snaps. She was crying. She wadded up the fabric and whispered, “You son of a bitch!”
“What?” I said reaching.
She yanked them away and yelled, “Don’t touch that!” She yelled in that same voice she used once when I found a dead rat in our backyard.
“Your daddy is a bastard,” she said, as if I knew what the word meant. I hugged her thigh and wanted her to hold me. She glared. I wanted to run but was afraid to be alone. I stepped back, put my hand on the cold green metal of the dryer and watched her grinding my daddy’s shorts between her fists, her teeth clenched.
“What’s wrong with Daddy’s shorts?” I said, knowing it was blood. I had seen the way dried blood looks on dishtowels. I bit my lip to stop the trembling and asked, “Why don’t you tell me what it is?”
“It’s blood,” she said, suddenly cool and calm as if she were telling me that it was raining, and that was why I couldn’t go out and play.
“What happened to Daddy?” I asked.
She stared at the smear on the cloth as I watched her face and saw her slip away, knowing that I was alone. Then suddenly her voice came deep and slow, distant like an echo from the bottom of a well. “It’s some whore’s blood,” she said. “Your daddy was screwing some whore, and he didn’t bother to take off his shorts.”
“Did it hurt?” I said. It made sense that when a man stuck his thing inside a woman she would bleed.
“I wish it did,” she growled. “I hope his goddamned cock rots off.” She threw the shorts on the floor and stomped at them again and again as if killing a snake that wouldn’t die.
I covered my mouth with my hands and ran out the kitchen, down the steps, and outside. I ran through the rain, went to the edge of the yard, crouched and hid there under the hedge. I stared at my house as if any minute a monster would come roaring out, something huge and bloody and screaming, foaming at the mouth. I pressed my hands into the cool grass, dug into the black dirt, and yanked up fists full of grass. I buried my nose in the fresh wet smell of things growing, rain, earth, grass, life.
Some days I refused to wear dresses fearing that someone would catch a glimpse of my panties under all those crinolines, that starched stiff skirt. Some days I refused to wear pants or shorts, seeing in the mirror the curve of my butt, the words ringing in my head every time I walked away from a grownup, hearing a little laugh, “Look at that butt, look at that cute little round butt, got a butt like a peach, a little ripe peach.” I could hear Daddy Gene’s joke and the men all snickering: “You know why a woman’s like a peach?” I didn’t get the answer, something about round and furry and juicy. I wouldn’t eat peaches after that. My sister was right. Life was getting harder, dirty, sneaky, and mean.
But I was still the good girl, more frightened of my daddy than ever because I knew his secret. He had stuck his thing inside a whore and made her bleed. At night in the dark I’d slip my hand in my panties and feel the soft folds of my skin. At any sign of moisture, sweat, any sign of dampness, I would throw off the covers and run to the bathroom, peer between my legs, and see if I was bleeding. My mother had said all women bleed, and in my mind, when you bled you were a whore. I wanted to be my little plastic ballerina, wanted my legs to be pink plastic, molded together forever. My ballerina would never bleed.
So I worked to stay the good girl. I didn’t eat much, never argued, mopped the floors and used my spare time to clean rocks and sticks from the yard. If I couldn’t say anything nice, I wouldn’t say anything at all.
It worked. My daddy never hit me. I was the good girl, the one he’d come to crying after his fits of beating, breaking, his crazy storms of rage. He slammed the cat against the wall once for nudging his foot while he sat watching TV. His arm swooped, and he caught her, threw her smack
into the wall. I heard the thump, watched it slide down to a heap on the floor, eyes staring, mouth open leaking a pool of dark blood soaking into the orange and white fur. I stood choking on my own trapped air. I couldn’t scream, stood there gasping, head ringing, until it all faded as someone took me by the arm and pulled me away.
I was the bait used to soothe his savage moods: “Shirley, go talk to him, go on, try to calm your daddy down.” What would Shirley Temple do? I had seen her climb the steep path in Heidi, had seen her play, create a space for herself with straw and a blanket in that scary old man’s house. She had kept beaming, oblivious to his rudeness, his roughness, his hostile stares. She walked straight to him, smiling, believing sincerely that since he was her grandfather, he must be good. She wouldn’t see the danger and had no other options. She was orphaned. She couldn’t go back down the mountain alone.
The man I called my daddy sat leaning against the table, sad and broken as he looked at his workboots, the stains on the wood floor, his calloused, black-nailed, oil-caked hands. He felt me come toward him, looked up, crying as he reached for me and shook his head. He always took his wallet, gave me all the money, twenties, tens, fives, singles. “You take this, baby,” he’d say as he pushed the bills in my hand, “I’m sorry, baby, sorry as hell.” I could smell him, had to hug his neck, hold my breath against the stink of his cigars and whiskey, his awful, drunken, dirty sweaty smell. I squeezed the money in one hand, and felt my mother watching as I held my breath. Why me? Why did he always cry at the sight of me? Was I so like Shirley Temple that a glimpse of my sweet open face could flood a man in guilt? Maybe even a monster was capable of shame. “Go on, take it,” he said, giving me the money, kissing my face, his mouth wet, slobbering on my lips, the rough stubble of his beard tearing at my skin. “I’m a sorry no-good bastard.” I hugged him for as long as I had to, then ran crying, throwing the money at my mother as soon as I got out of the room.
I had once loved this man without effort, a stranger who took me in and raised me as his own girl. And he loved me. I gave love back and called him my daddy simply because he was there; but I was learning. Nothing came simple. Even love was something bought, something paid for.
When we needed groceries I was the tool. My mother planned it, snuck a penciled list in my pocket, told me to ask Daddy if I could go with him when he went to the store. He’d bathe, shave, even throw on Old Spice sometimes, and we’d go to the big new grocery, not the Piggly Wiggly or the Buy-Rite, but the big one that had foreign things like Matzoh crackers and Chinese bean sprouts, Italian sausages and dried fish. He’d wave some new thing at me, baby corn, Greek olives, even a can of rattlesnake meat once. He’d offer, “You want this, Shirley? You want me to get this for you?”
If he knew how I feared him, it would have killed him. He looked so happy and proud, carrying those bags of groceries back out to the truck, with me following, popping caramel Sugar Babies into my mouth, unable to do anything but nod and smile, my teeth sticking together from the thick sweetness. He never knew I hated going, hated following his cigar, workboots and clean overalls. I was forced by my mother to go. She’d grab me on his paydays and say, “You ask him if you can go with him to the store. He won’t say no to you, Shirley, he never says no to you.”
“But I don’t want to,” I’d say, “I’ve got homework, I’m tired. I’ve got a headache. I don’t want to go.” I’d complain weakly, not really fighting because I knew any battle with my mother was lost.
She’d push me down the hall to go get ready, saying, “One day you’ll learn to think of somebody besides yourself!”
But I loved him still for loving me, for buying me treats, showing me how to draw cartoon figures with quick free sweeps of a carpenter’s pencil in his thick hand. He showed me card tricks, made me laugh by pushing out his dentures with his tongue, making them rattle; he’d do anything to get me laughing when he was sober. A good man or a bad man; I always knew by the smell of him. I could tell by the way the truck was parked in the driveway when I came in from school and could sense from a distance whether it would be a good day or a bad day. Possession. I’d seen it on Oral Roberts. I was sure demons hid in those whiskey bottles called Heaven Hill. Some days I wanted to call Oral Roberts, Mighty Mouse, Popeye, Jesus, Peter Pan, anybody to save us from my daddy when he was possessed.
I could have killed him one time. He asked me to, begged me crying to please shoot him so we’d all be better off.
My mother was in the bathroom washing blood from her mouth. Sally and Glenn had run out, and Ruby was already gone. I was there beside him because my mother had grabbed me, pulled me by the arm and forced me between them, said, “Shirley, stop him! Don’t let him do this to me.”
I was crying quietly, unable to look at my daddy, couldn’t take my eyes off the painted splotched leather of his shoes. He dropped back, sank in a chair, then pulled the gun from his pocket, slid it across the table, and said, “Shoot me, honey. Goddamn it, you’d all be better off.”
I stood there frozen and cried. He grabbed my arm and forced the gun into my hand. It wobbled heavily in my palm, the butt of the gun slipping on the wood of the table. I could smell, see the smear of Momma’s blood on his hand and wanted to vomit. I hated him, but had to stop his crying, the tears from splashing on the table, had to stop his sniffing, sobbing gasps. It took both my hands to hold the gun steady. I felt the thick weight of it. He wanted to die, and I could kill him. “Just squeeze right there,” he said. “It’ll just take a second.” He forced my hands to aim the gun at the center of his chest. “Just squeeze. You’ll all be better off. Your daddy’s no damn good.”
I thought of it, imagined squeezing the trigger, the blast, his falling over, dead and silent and still. My mother would run from the bathroom yelling, “Shirley, what did you do?” And I’d say, “I did it.” I would be a hero, but I would also be a killer, and would go to jail. I played over in my head all the times I wished he’d die on the way home in his truck, the times I prayed my momma would shoot him in a fight. I held the gun and wondered if they’d really put me in jail. My uncle, Daddy Gene, was a policeman, and he’d told me how they kill killers. He had shown me the handcuffs, let me feel the cutting click metal of them on my wrists. He’d shown me the guns, the police car with the back seat like a cage. They’d put me there for being bad. I’d be surrounded by policemen like Daddy Gene. He had taken me for a tour of the prison once, had shown me the dank concrete room where they kept the electric chair. I could see the wooden chair on the raised platform, the buckles and leather belts.
But he wanted me to shoot him, I would say. I’d tell them he wanted it. I’d cry and say I was only doing what my daddy told me to do. And it would all be over, like the times he’d finally passed out and the house was quiet and still. It could be like that always if I squeezed the trigger; quiet, peaceful, and still. If he had known how much I was tempted, he would have never given me that gun. He didn’t know the rage of the girl who had sat in his lap, and looked so much like Shirley Temple, who colored pictures of her daddy flipping pancakes high in the air.
I threw the gun across the table and ran. I heard nothing as I tore through the kitchen, suddenly fearing he would shoot me now for not doing what he’d told me to do. I pushed open the screen door, ran down the steps, across the yard and into the woods and hid. I wanted to hide forever until someone could promise me, promise me and keep it, promise me that I was safe. Finally I heard my sisters calling from the yard, “Shirr-leey, Shirr-leey. He’s gone. Come on back. He’s gone now.” I came to the edge of the woods and peeked out to see the empty driveway. I went in and helped my sisters heat beans and fry potatoes with onions for supper. Then we watched TV and ate cereal before we crawled under the covers and, dreading the sound of our daddy’s truck, tried to find our way into sleep.
I walked home from school up a long hill on a tar and gravel road, past small brick houses, blocks arranged in a new suburb t
hat grew around the school, past blackberry bushes, honeysuckle, woods where moss-covered rocks and saplings grew thick, woods full of copperheads, ring-necks, and king snakes. I saw two lizards once, clinging, wrestling, gripping each other with taut-muscled thighs and tiny claws. I thought they were fighting, and I stood watching until, feeling my presence, they scattered off into the woods and tumbled into the fallen leaves. Now, I know it was spring, already hot humid and thick, warm moist spring. They were mating, not fighting, some wild animal version of the act I grew up to call making love.
“God looks after drunks and little children,” Momma always said. “But not enough,” I’d say, breaking crayons for the smell of them, and scrawling mean, furious designs on my paper. “Count your blessings, Shirley,” she’d say. “One day you’ll learn to appreciate things.” She’d show me pictures of starving children in Africa, the piled bony dead remains of concentration camps, people twisted and deformed from some mysterious disease. “Somebody’s always got it worse than you,” she’d say and I could never cry out, “But what about me?”
A doll’s head can be filled with water if you drown her in the bathtub. You can squeeze her plastic cheeks together, make her squirt a stream of arcing water, splashing harmlessly into the air. You can drown a doll, then hold her up and watch her pee, see the clear water trickle from her hard round white belly through the precisely punched hole between her legs, watch the water trickle over her plump thigh and calves, see it drip from the curve of her feet to her plastic molded toes.