by Diana Estill
“Woman,” Kenny hollered from the living room, “bring me another one of them pies.”
I carried the last of my homemade dessert to him, the whole time willing one of those dewberries to lodge in his gullet. He couldn’t count on me to give him the Heimlich maneuver if that happened.
Retrieving Sean, I carried him into the bedroom to ready him for sleep. The night chill warranted footed pajamas, so I snapped him into the yellow terrycloth onesie that made him look like a downy duckling. I decided to teach him a new nursery rhyme before bedtime. Seated on my bed, with him in my lap, I hugged his chest to mine.
Sean pulled back, mashed his palms on either side of my face, and peered into my eyes. With one finger, he pressed the bulge in my bottom lip.
I recalled the photographer and what he’d said about his daughter, how she wanted to be like her mother. I’d never desired to be like mine. Yet it seemed I hadn’t strayed all that far from her path. Would Sean one day want to be a garbage man—or maybe a wife beater—like his dad? That unthinkable possibility was more than I could stomach. Perhaps he’d look to me for inspiration instead of Kenny. If so, I had little career guidance to offer.
I lifted Sean’s hands into a prayer position.
“Mommy!” he said, as though he were answering a million-dollar question.
“Yes. Mommy.” I gently poked his soft middle. “Seanny.”
“On-nee!”
No matter how dark my mood, Sean could always turn my despair into momentary delight. I grimaced, feeling the tightness in my swollen lower lip when I smiled. “Let’s sing a new rhyme tonight.” I tried to recall something we hadn’t yet rehearsed. “How about this one?” I clapped Sean’s hands together, setting a beat. “Pe-ter, Pe-ter, pum-kin eat-er, had a wife and could-n’t keep her….” For the first time, I really heard the words I was reciting. What was I teaching my son?
TWELVE
Momma arrived, ready to be my chauffeur. I’d enlisted her in what was sure to be, in Kenny’s mind at least, a crime. I had to find a job. It was either that or resign myself to a lifetime of poverty and staring at pavement. The prospect terrified me, though. At age fourteen, I’d found my first and only employment at a Tastee-Freeze. And after two weeks of wrestling with the soft-serve machine, I’d been fired for being too generous with my portion sizes.
Neta Sue had already come and gone, ecstatic over the chance to have Sean all to herself for the day. Daddy and Kenny had left for work. It had been a school day for Ricky. So Momma and I darn near felt like Cinderella and her godmother.
I greeted Momma, and then slung my purse over one shoulder, ready for a quick getaway. If Granny Henderson saw us, she would ask where I was heading. And then she might slip and mention it to Kenny.
“You’re going to wear that?” Momma asked.
I jumped into the passenger seat, slammed the car door, and motioned for her to hurry and climb in. “Wear what?” I surveyed my zip-up-the-front dress, one of the few I owned. The sheath’s bold yellow, black, and white vertical stripes made me feel taller than my actual five-feet, three inches. And the dress’s deep neckline provided a good focal point to reveal the closest thing I’d ever had to cleavage. I looked fine. But I couldn’t quite say the same for Momma.
Momma appeared as she always did, her hair a short bob of wiry chestnut and gray flyaways. Her thick eye lenses weighted down her cat-rim frames so much that her glasses rested on the tip of her nose. As usual, her beige cardigan carried enough electricity to power a small appliance, and her turquoise stretch pants had been dryer-shrunk into pedal-pushers. She certainly was no Mary Tyler Moore. And yet she’d instigated a fashion debate with me.
“It’s a little short for a job interview,” she critiqued.
Momma declared anything above the knee burlesque. Once, when I’d been in the ninth grade, at Daddy’s insistence she'd lengthened the hemline of every one of my dresses while I was at school. Of course, she’d failed to let me in on the secret, which had caused me to harbor a nightmarish fear that somehow I’d developed osteoporosis at age fifteen.
“No, it’s not,” I said. “It was either this or a gray miniskirt with metal studs on it, and I thought this was the better choice.” Thank goodness, Momma no longer had access to my closet. Otherwise, she’d have disposed of half my clothes.
Momma represented everything I never wanted to be. She modeled what wouldn’t work in my life and likely hadn’t worked well in hers, either. I’d witnessed her constant duty and had seen the reward—an indisputable amount of premature aging. If I’d gained anything from her instruction, I couldn’t name it. Though I needed Momma, inside I resented her for a role I couldn’t yet name but felt certain she’d played in my current predicament. The thought of her assisting me now seemed far-fetched. Her highest calling for twenty years had been to remain married to my father. She’d either decided or been trained early on to surrender to Daddy for the sake of peacekeeping, and maybe the Lord. What could she teach me about defiance, when she’d never exhibited any? But I had nowhere else to turn.
~
Keslo Electronics looked more like an army compound than an equal opportunity employer. An eight-foot fence surrounded the parking lots, where a few gates remained open, ready to ensnare those desperate enough to draw close. On that day, I was among them.
Momma drove through an entrance gate marked, “Employment Center,” and followed the arrows pointing to the smallest building on the site. “I’ll wait here, in the car,” she said. Exactly what I’d hoped, given how she was dressed. I didn’t want to have to worry about making two good impressions. One would be difficult enough.
I wandered along the sidewalk leading to a mostly windowless building, the entire time entertaining reasons why I might not be employable. My dress was, indeed, too short, though I’d never admit that to Momma. With a little luck, maybe it would distract from my plain face. I couldn’t type, and I’d never learned to sew. What employment skills could I offer? I doubted anyone would ask how well I could clean house or take care of a child. Nobody cared that I could shampoo away the worst cases of gray scalp. “No. I didn’t graduate from high school,” I imagined saying. “But I passed my GED test on my very first try.”
Inside the employment center, the main area smelled of stale smoke and fresh paint. A chipper-sounding receptionist sat at a tidy metal desk in the front of the room—an expansive area filled with dozens of applicants, most of whom were middle-aged minorities. “You’re number thirty-one.” The receptionist handed me a clipboard that contained an application form. “Please have a seat. We’ll call you shortly.”
My twenty-something-year-old greeter wore an emerald-green-and-white polka dot pantsuit. A solid white neckerchief hung knotted around her neck like a cowboy’s bandana, accenting her ensemble. Her long straight locks formed a V in the middle of her back, and her shoulders, erect and square, gave a hint of self-importance. She had her place, a job to do, and the freedom to do it. And good God, I wanted to be just like her.
The task I’d unknowingly applied for, however, wasn’t quite the one I’d envisioned. No sprawling secretarial desk. No paintings to brighten my workspace. No chance to say, “Thank you” or “Please have a seat” to anyone. I’d been screened and categorized for assembly work.
My interviewer bore a striking resemblance to my high school math teacher. Over his reading glasses, he studied me as he scribbled. “Date of your last period?”
I froze. No one other than Momma and my doctor had ever asked me such a question. “Huh?”
“I said, date of your last period,” he voiced a little louder. “You aren’t pregnant, are you?”
“No, sir. I’m not. “Geez, what did this have to do with the job? “About two weeks ago,” I blurted.
That must have been the answer the guy was looking for because as soon as I spoke, he handed me a plastic cup, told me to see the lab technician down the hall, and assigned me a date to report for duty. In the process, I lost whatever
had been left of my name’s value. I’d been reduced to a numeric identity. I’d become employee number 116901.
~
I didn’t immediately tell Kenny about my employment. And when I eventually did, he took it pretty much the way I’d anticipated.
“You what?” Kenny set down his plastic tumbler…hard, spilling liquid down its sides.
I tried to hide my fear. “You heard me. I interviewed for a job and got it.” I pressed my back into the dining chair.
“But I tode you not to!”
Again, I pictured a creature that might give me warts, but I didn’t dare correct Kenny’s language. Instead, I smiled and handed Sean a buttered biscuit. “Well, I did anyway.” I stroked Sean’s baby-fine hair. Like most two-year-olds, he was more interested in toying with his food than eating it. He picked at his bread, pulling it into smaller and smaller pieces. None of the morsels made their way into his mouth.
I eyed Kenny. “And they offered me two dollars and ten cents an hour, enough to get us out of this flimsy excuse for a house.”
Kenny shook his head and exhaled hard. “Damn it, Renee!”
He’d said my name, “Renee.” I couldn’t recall the last time I’d heard him use it. Normally, he’d have said “bitch” or maybe “woman.”
“Why’d you go and do this?” He squinted and looked at Sean. “Quit playin’ with that biscuit and eat it, son.”
“Do what?” I asked. “Try and find us more money?”
“You’re gonna do just like all the guys tode me you would—run off with another man.” Kenny’s eyes reddened in their sockets. “And bitch, I'm tellin’ you now, you better pray I don’t find you if you do!”
Maybe I’d become emboldened by employment. He wasn’t going to intimidate me. “We can’t live like this forever, you know. And you can’t force me to stay home for the rest of my life.”
Kenny sprang from his chair. He charged at me, stopping barely short of my face. “We-e-e-l-l, now, Little Miss Hoity-Toity. Don’t you think you’re smart all the sudden?” He leaned closer. “I can do anything I want to you, stupid. You’re my wife.” He stepped back. “If you don’t like it, then you can…Suck this.” He added a hand gesture, in case I’d forgotten where his snake was located, and sat back down.
Ignoring my protective instincts, I refilled Sean’s Tommee Tippee cup at the sink and continued. “Just how long do you think we can sleep in the same bedroom with Sean?”
“’Til we get something bigger.” With his filthy fingers, Kenny grabbed another sausage patty from the platter before him.
Returning to my seat, I pushed the basket of biscuits beyond Kenny’s reach. “And how are we going to manage that?”
“What do you think?” Kenny shot up again, this time with his hands balled into fists. “You think I got some kind of Magic Eight Ball? You think I got all the goddamn answers?”
Sean let out a burst of tears. He raised his arms high in what looked like an act of surrender.
“I don’t think you have the answers for anything,” I said, standing my ground. “That’s why I’m going to work, starting next Monday.” I slipped from my chair and angled toward Sean. But before I could reach him, Kenny clenched me by my neck. He forced my back against a kitchen wall and pinned me there.
“Go ahead, then. Take your sorry ass to work,” he growled, before releasing his hold on my windpipe. “But don’t ’spect me to be any different on account of it.”
Kenny hadn’t needed to tell me that. I didn’t expect him ever to be any different. That was why I knew I had to be.
THIRTEEN
I visited Granny to brag about my job and borrow her telephone. I figured she’d be happy to hear that I’d paid attention to something she told me. But it looked as though she’d been sitting on bigger news than I had.
“I been meaning to tell you.” Granny nodded at the pile of boxes stacked beneath her wall phone. “My oldest daughter, Stella, wants me to come to Arkansas. Her husband was a logger there. Died in an accident. Good man.”
“You’re moving.”
“Yes’m. Looks like it’s time I went on. I’ve done everything I aimed to do in this life. Even outlived Old Man.” Granny sighed. “Stella and me have had our disagreements. I want to make things right while I still can.” She limped across her living room and lifted a framed photo of a petite brunette woman from a shelf. “She never forgave me for staying with Old Man. If I’d’ve been able to leave ‘im, I would have.”
“What did he do to make her so mad?”
Granny opened her front door to let out some of the hot air. She’d been running her old gas heater too high again. Her place was perfect for baking yeast bread. But right then, it was the two of us cooking. She stared at something far away, past her front door, past Hawk Creek Road, something so distant that it had pushed beyond her point of forgiveness. “He did it to Stella...something a father shouldn’t do to his own blood.” She set the photo back in place. “And I’ll be taking it to my own grave.”
I could see she didn’t want to draw out the conversation any further, and I didn’t need to know the details. Her expression pretty much told the whole story. “When are you moving?”
Granny sat down next to me on her living room sofa. The furniture’s overstuffed cushions felt like giant bed pillows. A true granny couch, if ever I’d seen one. The blue floral-print fabric looked like something you’d find in a Southern quilt. She swatted me on one knee with her good hand. “Stella’s coming for me the end of next month.”
I was about to ask where in Arkansas Stella lived when Kenny hollered through Granny’s screen door. “Renee, you plan on feedin’ me and Sean lunch today? Or are you leavin’ us t’ starve t’ death while you’re over here a yackin’?”
“I better go,” I said. “Before Kenny wastes away.” I gave a nervous laugh and checked the doorway. “Real quick, let me tell you. I got a job at Keslo Electronics. And I’m starting tomorrow!”
“Oh, that’s the best. Yes it is. That’s the best thing you could’ve told me.” Granny’s toothless grin covered her whole face. “Looks like both our futures gonna be improvin’. Yes, ma’am.”
I let myself out through the screen door and said goodbye. Just then, it came to me how I was going to spend my first paycheck. On my own telephone.
~
I followed my escort, an older woman wearing a blue smock and a silver badge, to the KE100 Calculator Assembly Area. It felt like we walked about a mile before we reached the glassed-in bullpen situated inside a building large enough to swallow six K-Marts whole. I thought a major rainstorm might cause a roof that big to collapse. But I didn’t dwell on the idea too long because I had a higher chance of being flattened by Kenny than I did of being penned underneath my employer’s ceiling.
My foreman, Mr. Gibbons, placed me at workstation number one, at the head of the assembly belt. He said that was where he stuck all new employees because, from that position, they couldn’t fall behind. That made perfect sense to me. I didn’t want to be like Lucy Ricardo in the candy factory. I’d look pretty silly trying to eat trays full of calculators.
Station One set the pace for the entire assembly belt. I liked being first at most anything, so that position suited me. I’d show Gibbons. I’d work faster than he’d ever seen anyone go, and then maybe he’d notice, and I’d get a promotion, and then Kenny and I would buy a house, one with two full bedrooms and a solid cement drive. Maybe I’d work my way up to a position in Keslo Electronics’ Employment Center, where I’d hand out clipboards from my very own private desk.
My task was as simple as counting from one to ten, backward. That was how I had to load calculator keys. When trays filled with calculator front plates entered my station facedown, my assignment was to stuff each template with numbered keys. The girl to my right was in charge of the plus, minus, subtract, divide, and equal buttons, so I didn’t have to worry about them. At first, I didn’t understand why I hadn’t been given all of the keys to load
. But then I found out. Ten manual moves in a matter of seconds exceeded most people’s coordination skills. I concentrated hard and found my rhythm. And in no time at all, the process turned automatic.
Mr. Gibbons floated in and out of the assembly area. Through the glass interior windows on my left, I could see him drinking coffee and talking to another man in the hallway. Gibbons had a baby face and a full head of sandy-colored hair like Robert Redford. I guessed him to be in his mid-thirties. He was slender, I imagined from all his pacing. His short-sleeved pastel-blue shirt didn’t quite cover the sailor tattoo on his left arm, but all I could see was the anchor part.
Gibbons reentered the assembly area, sauntered over to me, and said, “Say-ay. You’re doin’ pretty good there.” He gave me a pat on the shoulder. “Can you go any faster?”
I nodded.
“O-kay! Show me what you got.” He returned to the opposite side of the glass where he spent most of his time. The way he studied the assembly workers, he might just as well have been a research scientist.
His remark was all I needed to hear. My fingers flew like those digits belonged to some kind of world-class pianist, hands moving at lightning speed. I was doing something well, doing something right. Finally, someone had noticed.
Soon I realized trays of calculators had been pulled off the belt at stations three, five, and six. I’d been going so fast that my coworkers couldn’t keep up with me. Gibbons would soon see that he’d chosen the right person to head this production. Already he might be planning my first promotion.
I surveyed the conveyor belt and caught the “evil eye” cast at me by a woman twice my age. She was the size of a professional fullback and looked like she might have already tackled one too many. Over her right eyelid, a four-inch scar cut through her brow at a forty-five-degree angle. “Hey, you,” she hollered at me.