by Jane Bradley
With the crisp smell of morning, the crunch and whoosh of leaves, I walked toward the dull gray tarp on the ground. I slid in the narrow opening that seemed bigger than before. I knew the roof had been moved as I ducked in and smelled the difference. Something burned my nostrils. I knew the strong sharp scent of glue. I saw the beer cans, the crushed brown paper bags, the flattened metal tubes. I panicked, scraped my head on the jagged metal as I rushed out, sure somehow that someone would grab me and pull me back down. I ran, felt someone chasing me, even though I knew it was morning, and no one would get me because no one was really there.
The walls had peeled, the ceiling warped, and the junk had piled up in my mother’s old room. Magazines, clothes, a broken blender, the iron and ironing board never used, a vacuum cleaner caked with dust like a dead thing propped in the corner. The dresser was piled high with stacks of old bills, school papers, Christmas cards, a bowl of rubber bands, clumps of nails and screws, a box of S & H green stamps, hairbrushes thick with matted hair and dirt, black plastic Afro combs, and piles of newspapers. I pushed open the door, shoved hard against a paper bag that had fallen, spilling Coke and beer bottles across the floor. I remembered peeling the walls, then later finding colored chalk and drawing bright pictures on the gray plaster: pink peace signs and rainbows, a crooked warped attempt at a blue flying dove.
At one time my mother had slept there with my daddy and my brother, Glenn. I had always wondered how they could all sleep in that bed. But half the nights Daddy slept at the firehall, and most times when home, he fell asleep on the couch. It was her room; he had hardly lived there. He just brought home paychecks, groceries, and whiskey. He only lived there sometimes, the man with the loud truck, cigars, whiskey and an oily smelling collection of tools, knives, and guns.
I pushed the door open farther, the knob falling loose, broken, dead in my hand like the hard round head of my doll. I closed my hand over the cold metal shape of it, slid through the narrow opening, and went in.
I took my mother’s room without asking, claimed it the way a mouse gnaws its space in a wall. I carried the garbage and junk outside to the trash barrel one piece at a time. I burned what I could and stored what wouldn’t burn in the hole under the house where our dog once crawled to have her puppies, where my Sybil was born. No one noticed, and if they did, no one asked questions. They’d seen me crying in the yard, digging a little garden, planting seeds, sitting in the grass, leaning on a tree, staring up. They saw me cleaning the house like a wind-up doll, scrubbing woodwork, dusting, waxing the floor, crawling on my hands and knees in the yard to collect and throw out the broken sticks and stones. “Bad trip,” they said, shaking their heads, thinking it was a strong hit of acid that had broken me down.
I used a big butcher knife to hold the door shut, wedged it between the doorframe and the wall, then hid there, listening for the slightest push against the door. I watched the metal blade of the knife bend against the strain of someone’s weight. I cringed, silent, hiding, until laughing or cussing, some new stranger gave up and walked away.
My mother jumped from a cliff once. Proving her youth, she jumped with the boys from a rock bluff into a lake, and she dropped like a stone. She held her nose and stepped off into the empty air. I saw her face squinched tight as she fell with everyone cheering, “Go, Momma, go!” She went straight down, sleeveless summer shirt flapping up from the brown shorts that squeezed her white and fattening thighs, like a rock she splashed into the dark water, then finally surfaced gasping for air. She paddled toward the cliff, and they helped her out saying, “Not bad, Momma B.” She took a bow, and I watched from a distance knowing she was crazy, knowing they thought she was just a fat old woman who’d do anything they told her to do if they only gave her a cheer, a whistle, any kind of attention, any kind of praise. I saw my mother standing on a counter, showing her panties and singing for a doughnut. I knew then she would never change.
Days later at the hospital the doctor said pressure from the leap and smack against the water had burst a cyst inside her kidney. She had a severe infection, they said, and if they got her stabilized, and if she got through surgery, and if there were no unforeseen complications, she’d live.
A Christian group took me in, a self-made group that hung out in parks to testify and sing. They gave out free sandwiches sometimes, now and then baptized new members right out in front of everyone in the lake. I let them do it, let them put me in a man’s white T-shirt, lead me over the grass, rocks, mud shoreline, let the preacher grip my hand and lead me into that lake. I let him hold my nose with one hand, my back with the other and push me under, hold me down. He jerked me out shouting that I was cleansed, purified, forgiven for all my sins.
I lived with them in an old farmhouse in the country where we prayed together three times a day, where chores, food, and secrets were shared.
At prayer they spoke in tongues, taken by a force I could not feel or see. But something possessed them as they stood in a circle, squeezed my hands, smiled tearfully at the ceiling and swayed. Something filled them, made them speak about the mystery of God, and filled them with tongues of flame. I held their hands and watched them throw back their heads, their eyes closed, throats flushed with some inner heat as tongues waggled, babbled, and prayed. Possession again. I knew the signs. I’d seen Oral Roberts, and to me it looked like the demon had gripped them, that some demon was spitting, flowing, and burning its way out into the room through their tongues.
I met a boy named Mark. He carried a green New Testament in his pocket, and he always smiled. His parents were sinners, he told me, and that was why he had run away. He was going to be a preacher one day, he said, save his parents, save all those damned souls. He could quote the Bible and told me he had the gift of the spirit. “I’ll pray for you, Shirley,” he said. He was tall, and I liked his smooth-looking skin, his muscled arms. He had a lean man’s face, a full mouth, and wild shining green eyes.
He prayed with me whenever he found me alone outside, or busy doing some chore in a room. He would grab me, grip my head between his hands, and pull me hard to his chest. He told me if I believed, I would be reborn. I wanted that. I wanted to start a new life without dying, start all over just with a prayer.
One day his hands hurt, but I had learned they never hurt as much if you didn’t fight, so I didn’t move. I smelled the scent of his shirt and the medicinal smell of his soap. He pulled harder, so close I felt the bulge of him pressing in my belly. I closed my eyes and prayed that he was only praying, that the bulge between us would melt away.
“Your body is a temple,” he said. “Even Jesus knows that.” He pushed me down and pulled my clothes off. He grinned, not seeing me, but something else beyond me, something he would have. I was a doll again, and he was ripping my head off, my legs and arms, pulling at the punched hole between my legs to get inside. He yanked off my panties and spread me on the ground in the leaves. He shoved inside me crying, pushing me harder, until I was a dead thing squashed deep into the ground again. “Sweet Jesus,” he said, crying, “Oh yes, oh yes.” Then finally the shudder and moan that I knew meant it was over. He was up without a word. He yanked his pants closed, turned, and was gone.
By chance one day I saw Ruby at the park, sitting in a circle, passing a joint around with her friends under the trees. I told her I needed a place to stay, asked if I could stay with her, begged her, cried, and said she was my sister and she had to help me. She led me back to her circle, showed me to her friends, Dan and Linda, who sold pot and played in a local rock band. They were married, Ruby said. They had their own apartment and would give me a place to crash for a while. “Just a little while, man,” they said. Ruby made a deal, gave them cash and a bag of pot, and then I was passed off from hand to hand. “A couple weeks is all we can handle, man,” he said. I prayed that in a couple of weeks my mother would be out of the hospital and I could go home. “Deal,” Ruby said, closing up her beaded leather purse.
“Shirley’s no hassle, man. She’s quiet. She won’t eat much. You’ll hardly know she’s there.”
I slept on their couch at night and hid my blanket and pillow in the closet for the day. I lived in the cracks, hardly ate, and tried to stay out of the light, like a mouse, a bug, some unavoidable and annoying thing that lived in the woodwork, that wouldn’t do much harm. I stayed outside when they were home, scavenged my meals of peanut butter crackers, soup, and cereal when they left or went to bed. I tried to make myself a simple thing to forget.
One evening I came back to find them gone, the door shut and locked. I knocked and waited, got hungry, bored, and sleepy, then gave up and went upstairs to where I knew two women lived. They were always home. I stood at their door and listened to the TV blaring, heard them talking inside. I’d seen them around the apartment building. They always wore tight clothes and red lipstick, even when they took out the trash.
I knocked, and the older one opened it, her hair gleaming that dyed black color, and one hand holding a cigarette as she leaned out the open door. “What’s up, honey,” she said.
“I’m locked out.” I bit my lip to keep from crying.
She shook her head, disgusted it seemed, but she sighed and said, “Come on in. I’m Lois, and that’s Dimples over there on the phone.”
I’d seen Dimples sunbathing out back before with her cut-off jeans rolled high and her big loose breasts spreading like warm white dough under and out of the tight border of her halter top. Dimples. She did have a nice smile sometimes.
I looked at her bare foot propped up and stretching against the wall, saw the red toenails that matched her lips and chipped fingernails. Dimples was frowning. She wouldn’t look up at me as she listened to a voice from the brown phone tucked under her chin while she rubbed Vaseline into her heel and ankle, then stroking the traces of the grease up her leg.
“Have a seat,” Lois said. I sat and watched The Mod Squad gang run down a dark alley on TV. “I know you,” Lois called from the kitchen. “You stay with those hippies downstairs.” I heard her open a bottle and come back in. I looked up and took the Coke she offered, and watched her drink deeply from a bottle of beer. “Honey, you look beat.”
“I am,” I said.
She walked across the room, shook her head, stared out the window into the dark, and said, “Those two are lucky to find their own way home, much less think about you.” She left the room again, and I watched Dimples shift her weight, prop the other foot up and slap a glob of Vaseline onto her other pink and wrinkled heel.
Lois came back offering me a blue pill in her palm. She looked at me, saying, “Don’t worry. It’s prescription. It’s mild and will help you relax and go to sleep.”
She watched me hold it and study it as if by looking I would know if it was safe. “But I want to go home,” I said, wanting my real home, my mother, my life.
She handed me the Coke. “Take this for now and get some rest. I’ll wake you up when I hear them come back in.”
I swallowed it and let her lead me to the bedroom. I sat on top on the bedspread, took off my shoes, lay down and let her cover me with another quilt. “You’ll be asleep in no time.” But I was already feeling the pull of sleep like gravity as I watched the light from the next room shrink to the bright narrow crack of the closed door.
I woke to a man sitting heavily on the edge of the bed, his hand stroking up and down my back, smoothing my hair. I sat up. He was stocky and built like a bulldog with thick muscles at his neck and arms. “What do you want!” I yelled, but I knew. I had seen him working on his car in the driveway. I’d seen him turn his head, raise his eyes to follow me.
“Shh,” he said, stroking my wrist and squeezing my hand. I heard Lois talking in the next room, heard the noise of a Gravy Train commercial. “I’m Jesse. You’re in my bed, little girl.” He held the back of my head with his hand, moved closer, and nuzzled my face. “Just like Goldilocks,” he said. “But don’t worry, I’m a nice old bear.”
“No.” I tried to back across the bed, but he grabbed at my leg. I held a pillow to my body, hoping to hide my crotch, my neck, and nipples, knowing that would be the next place he would reach. “No,” I said. “Don’t touch me. Leave me alone.”
Lois called in like a tired mother, “Jesse, you get in here and leave that girl alone.” He looked at me, reaching for my shoulder.
“Jesse!” Lois stood in the doorway. “Jesse, she’s a kid. Leave her alone if she don’t want to mess with you.”
He stood. “The little cunt is in my bed.”
I stood and pulled on my shoes, squinting in the hard overhead light Lois had suddenly flipped on. I ran, hearing him yell, “What’s she doing in my bed if she don’t want it.” I got out and stood shaking in the hallway, waiting in the silence of my locked apartment door. I could hear them still arguing upstairs as I sat and waited with my eyes closed. Then I heard light footsteps. I looked up saw the bare feet of Lois coming at me, frowning and shaking her head. She stepped over me, unlocked the door, and shoved it open. “Get on in. Jesse’s the resident manager, honey. You be careful. Remember, he’s always got the key.”
I went in and locked the door behind me. I slept on the floor of the closet, made a bed of coats, pillows, and blankets, and slept like a mouse, heart fluttering, listening, ready to bolt at any noise. I thought how easy it was to say no. The word had leapt out my mouth like a frog. “No.” That was all I had to do. But I knew it wasn’t really that simple, knew it wouldn’t be so easy without Lois there like a mother, a real mother saying, “Jesse, you leave that girl alone.”
“No, no, no.” I’d say it forever now. I curled up tightly in the coats and blankets, listened to the floor creak above me, the TV droning, water running, the toilet flush. I could hear his heavy feet thudding like a giant. “No, no, no,” I said, not knowing then it was only the beginning, that I would spend years clenched tight, defying entry. I’d spend years fighting, saying no even to my boyfriend, the one I wanted, the one I couldn’t let have me even when he got in. I was in the eye of a storm screaming no, knocking down any chance for love in my flight, trapped in the center of my own dark storm.
My mother came back from the hospital, skinny and pale, one kidney gone. The parties returned with the bottles of whiskey, cherry vodka, and gin, the paper bags of Bactine for sniffing, the dancing and candles, the circles of smoke. But I was safe this time locked behind the door sealed shut with a knife.
I thought I was safe, but anyone can break a window. Anyone with the power and the authority could break it all wide open; I knew that soon they would come. Daily I watched the window for the slow-cruising unmarked cars, the detectives, the sure-to-come-sometime police. Nightly, I dreamed of crashing glass, and I mentally practiced how I would run. Twice they’d tried raiding the house looking for drugs, runaways, stolen merchandise, any kind of proof that my mother was running a disorderly house. “Disorderly house?” she’d say laughing, as if they thought she were guilty of not pairing up socks, or drying the dishes, not vacuuming up the dust balls that collected under the couch.
In my dream I would hear them in the distance, the boots and radio static with barking voices like Nazi soldiers tearing through a house to find the doomed Jews. But I wouldn’t get caught like Anne Frank. I would get away, grow up, and one day I’d tell the world what I knew. Every night as I struggled to sleep, I’d run through the plan in my mind. When I heard them crash through the front door, I’d slide open the window. I had prepared for this, greasing it with Crisco to make sure it would move without screeching and that it wouldn’t stick. I would be up and out, across the yard and into the woods in five seconds, if I didn’t pause to worry, if I didn’t get caught. I would take my secret path through the trees, take the long way around my neighbor’s fence, then crouching, hurry up the side of the yard, and slip in their concrete storage closet to wait there, hidden like a rat.
I w
as sleeping safely with my brother, Glenn, when the glass crashed. He was ten, had dropped acid, sniffed Bactine, and smoked pot, but he had never had a bed of his own. He slept with me, quiet, peaceful, and safe. He liked to watch me lock the door with my butcher knife. I told him we were pirates, that our bed was our ship, that strangers would fear us and never try to hurt us as we sailed safely in our bed alone. But this night a man yelled and crashed the glass with his stick, scattering shards over our blankets. I woke, head pounding to the sound of my brother’s scream.
He sat straight up in the dark, rolled off his side of the bed, pulled the knife free, and threw it as he ran toward his mother in the living room where she slept with her man, where I heard the cops already shouting, kicking in the door.
I lifted the top blanket to slide the broken glass away and folded the cloth over. Leaning, I looked out the window, seeing nothing but darkness, the bush beneath me, the woods beyond. I started to jump, but remembered my shoes. I crawled across the bed, reached to the floor for my sandals, pulled them on, jumped through the broken window and ran.
In seconds I was in the woods, crouching, glancing behind me for a cop, a police dog, the flash of a gun. I listened for screams and sirens, but heard nothing but the sound of crickets, the wind in the trees. I sucked in gulps of air as if I were drowning. It stuck in my throat where a knot was pounding, the blood roaring in my head as I ran.
I ran quickly past my turtle graveyard, and past the mossy rock where I had once sat and hid. Out of the woods and into my neighbor’s yard, I crawled across the grass low as a snake. I ran for the storage shed, slid in the door, gripped the cool wall, letting it hold, then envelope me. They would never find me. I was nothing but a cold dead concrete wall.