by Diana Estill
He stopped cold in front of me, his eyes scrolling my body, his head tilted to one side. In one hand, he gripped the Remington, and in the other, he held a grocery-size paper bag. “What the shit?” He set the sack down on the bedroom floor. “Where the hell do you think you’re goin’ all done up like that?”
“I ain’t going nowhere. Don’t be silly.”
Kenny stared at me through squinted eyes. “Then how come you’re all fixed up? What’d you do to your hair, anyway?”
I turned a pivot to show off my new do. “I straightened it with a hot comb. Don’t you like it?”
“It’s okay.” He gave me an accusing glare. “You tryin’ to impress somebody with those little tits of yours?”
Little tits. That was exactly what the boys in school used to say to me. “You’re tits are so tiny you got to wear falsies,” they’d scream loud enough for everyone on the school bus to hear. One day, David Lassiter’s voice had been among the hecklers. It must have been one of his darker times, a day when he was desperate for peer acceptance. But he’d gained it at my expense. And I’d been furious. With my head held high and my chest thrust forward, I’d walked, expressionless, down the bus aisle and then stopped in front of him. “Give me your hand,” I’d said. And when he did, I directed his open palm underneath my shirt and slipped it inside my bra cup. I let his hand linger there for about as long as a firefly lights up, time enough for him to confirm what he was touching was authentic breast tissue, but too short a stint to bring him any real kicks. “Feel like a falsie to you?”
But this wasn’t high school, and there was no part of me that Kenny hadn’t felt. I had little to offer in defense. “Of course not.” I frowned. “Why do you say things like that to me?”
“You wanna know why? I’ll tell you why.” Kenny stared at me with what felt like X-ray vision. “’Cause if you ever screw around, I’ll hunt you down like an animal and shoot you in the back.” He pointed to the rifle he’d dropped on the bed. “Don’t you think I won’t, neither. And while I’m at it, I’ll save a couple shells for your boyfriend.”
SIXTEEN
The worse Kenny acted at home, the better I liked working outside of it. He graduated from daytime garbage removal to nighttime street sweeper operator the same week I moved from evening assembly to daylight inspections. For a couple with only one car and no money for childcare, I considered our alternate work schedules a good fortune. I could have been happier only if I didn’t have to see Kenny’s mug for that hour every weekday between our work shifts’ start and stop times.
After I’d learned to prevent solder bridges, those accidental connections that caused calculator brains to short out, Russ promoted me to the testing center where I received the white-glove treatment. I had to wear a pair of those mitts every day. Russ said the gloves were necessary to keep my nails from scratching the micron-plated gold bezels that accented those fine plastic calculator cases. “We don’t want any oily fingerprints on the lenses,” he explained. “Keslo Electronics prides itself on shipping only products that meet the highest standards.”
My new friend Pearly worked directly across the table from me. From time to time, she’d bend her head and look under the bright factory lights that hung low between us. Her work gloves made her dark hands looked like they’d been dipped in marshmallow cream. She was about the friendliest and most talkative woman I’d ever met.
“You got kids?” Pearly asked.
“One,” I answered. “A three-year-old son.”
“Damn. You too young to have chil’ren yet.” Pearly laughed. “And here I is, almost too old to have any.” She rolled her eyes wide. “Ain’t right.”
“What do you mean, too old?” Pearly didn’t look a day over thirty to me.
“Thirty-five. Married nine years and never used birth control. Look like it ain’t going to happen for me.” Pearly swiped a cotton-covered finger across a calculator lens. Checking the display, she punched in several numbers. “Say, did they tell you where they’s movin’ you when they brough’cha here?”
“Nope. Just said, ‘Follow me.’ So I did.”
Pearly passed me the calculator she’d been inspecting. “Turn it upside down.” She studied me carefully.
I stared at the lit numbers and read, “7734.” The display looked fine to me. It didn’t appear to be a reject. That was what we called the products that failed our inspections. At home, that was what Kenny called me. “You’re a total reject, Renee.”
“You got to turn it upside down,” Pearly repeated.
I spun the unit 180 degrees and looked at the display again. I could see what she’d been trying to show me; the lens displayed the word, “hELL.”
“You got to entertain yo’self someway around here,” Pearly said.
I liked her right from the start.
Like me, Pearly didn’t have much formal education. But she knew more about dieting than anyone I’d ever met. In fact, she was on a new one every few weeks: a grapefruit diet, a breadless diet, a beef jerky and cheddar cheese diet, a lettuce at every meal diet, and a sugarless diet, to name a few. And nothing irked her more than to watch me down a king-size chocolate bar and Dr Pepper during both our daily fifteen-minute breaks.
“Damn, if you don’t eat that shit and still have a skinny ass,” she’d tease. Her outspoken ways didn’t bother me because she was good-natured and laughed about most everything. But she didn’t joke much about kids. She wanted one badly, worse than she wanted to lose weight. And it didn’t help that Rosemary, the woman who sat to my left, had six of them, at least one of which was always sick with strep throat or tonsillitis. Rosemary was a walking billboard for birth control pills, an invention she’d obviously never been introduced to. Because of her large brood, Rosemary needed work more than the rest of us. So whenever overtime was offered, Pearly and I let Rosemary have first chance at it. The two of us had husbands. And unlike me, Pearly was fond of spending time with hers.
“G-ir-ir-l, my hus-band done made me the best apricot cake,” Pearly bragged one Monday morning.
I about fell out of my work chair. Kenny would sooner have missed Saturday Night Wrestling than to have been caught playing Betty Crocker. “Your husband bakes cakes?” I fought the urge to snicker.
“Wha’choo mean? You don’t think I’d marry me a man who can’t cook, now do ya?” Pearly patted her rotund belly. “A man’s gotta work as much as I do, if he wants to stay around my house. I don’t put up with none o’ that laying up and acting crazy.”
Pearly’s husband, Jarnell, commanded a beer truck all day, and to hear her tell it, drove Pearly all night. For someone married nine years, she was having way more fun than she should have been. Well, if she was telling the truth, which I prayed she wasn’t. Otherwise, my life was short of even more than I’d imagined.
~
I wouldn’t win any mother-of-the-year prize for saying it, but I enjoyed the eight hours a day I spent at work. I did miss Sean. And I envied the time Kenny and Neta Sue could spend with him while I focused on consumer products I had no use for. However, the best part of my day didn’t occur at work or home. Those moments happened when I sat in the driver’s seat.
Kenny’s disregard for auto care aided my plans to acquire a personal vehicle. He showed his Fury the same respect he gave me, which might explain why the Plymouth blew her engine.
Neta Sue loaned us the thousand dollars required for repairs. But she said she didn’t have a solution for how Kenny or I would get to work during the week the Fury would have to stay at the mechanic’s shop. We’d run her plum ragged if she tried to chauffeur us back and forth for different work shifts. Certainly, she’d have missed the beauty sleep no one could deny she desperately needed. So Kenny and I had bummed rides home on Friday, and now we had two days to devise another plan.
I thumbed through the Penny Saver News looking at the auto ads. “Maybe we should get a second car,” I said, as if I’d just inherited a million dollars.
“Mayb
e we should go to Disneyland, too,” Kenny taunted.
“No, really, I’m serious. We can’t be left like this every time the Plymouth breaks down.” I’d found a chance to work on what little existed of Kenny’s reasoning. “We could use our tax return for a down payment.”
We’d received a $200 refund check that neither of us had felt obligated to confess to Neta Sue. If she had a grand to spare, she didn’t need her loot half as much as we needed ours. For that reason, we’d accepted her money and kept quiet about our own.
Kenny scratched his scalp. “We can’t afford nothin’ fancy.”
That was all I needed to hear. Within less than an hour, we were stubbing our toes against tires.
At a used car lot, I eyed a cream-puff Monte Carlo that I could imagine riding high inside. The Chevy’s baby blue body and sugar-white vinyl top practically screamed my name. But the sticker price said something more like, “Mayor’s daughter.”
Kenny pointed to a jeep that might have been used last by military, possibly in Vietnam. I gave him a have-you-lost-your-marbles stare.
Eventually, we settled on an older model Mustang, its twelve hundred dollar price painted in shoe polish on the windshield.
“How do you want to title this?” the salesman asked.
Before I could speak, Kenny blurted, “In my name.”
The sales dude scrawled something on triplicate carbon paper. “Just you?”
“Just me,” Kenny confirmed.
I let him have his big moment. I had my car, so it didn’t matter what anyone wrote on paper. Kenny could put his name on the title and all over the note, too, if doing that made him feel like a winner. But I intended to be the primary driver of that Mustang, and I would pilot it as if it had wings.
~
At last I could make my winter commutes by myself every day, with all the windows rolled up. For an extra reward, the likes of Kenny’s music—Black Sabbath and Jethro Tull—couldn’t interfere with my more Manilow-like daydreams. I could even stop on my way home and pick up some candy for Sean when I had a little leftover from the lunch money Kenny gave me.
Most days while I drove the two-lane country road leading home, I’d entertain thoughts of what awaited. Mentally, I’d compare the scene I’d like to find against the one I expected to encounter. Once I’d discovered Sean’s Big Wheel parked on our porch, its back tires punctured with holes from where earlier he’d been spinning out in our gravel driveway. Imitating his dad, I suspected.
When I’d asked Sean about the Big Wheel tires, he’d floored me by saying, “I been thinkin’ of tradin’ it in, anyhow.” Where would a three-year-old ever get such an idea? I chuckled as I recalled Sean’s remark.
Home, I parked my car in the driveway next to Kenny’s and drew a deep breath.
Ten steps inside the entry door, Kenny sat sprawled across the sofa watching Sean drag the last of his toys into the living room. On the coffee table were two dirty, cereal-crusted bowls. Yesterday’s clothes, empty soda cans, cookie bags, and moon pie wrappers decorated the floors. In front of the TV, a spill of grape soda formed a sticky pond that already had claimed one of Sean’s socks.
“’Bout time you got home.” Kenny said, looking at his watch. “Sean’s hungry.”
“So why didn’t you feed him something, then?” In no mood to hear his sorry excuses, I sauntered past Kenny and into the kitchen. From the looks of the place, he’d plowed through every snack food item on hand. I opened the refrigerator.
“Be-cause you ain’t been to the grocery this week!” Kenny yelled.
He knew there was plenty of food inside the cupboards. There just wasn’t anything in there that he could fix without turning on a burner. I pulled a carton of eggs from the fridge and set them on the stove. Egg salad sounded good to me. I’d make some right after I cleaned up the purple lake in front of the TV.
Passing through our bedroom, I mentally noted every hazardous item within Sean’s reach. There stood the Remington in the corner next to our bed. No doubt, the rifle chamber was full.
“Is this gun in here loaded?” I shouted.
“Of course it is,” Kenny said. “You expect me to shoot an intruder with an empty gun?”
Most evenings when Kenny left for work, I was ready to throw him out the door. But I never did. In our marriage, Kenny was the one who did all the shoving. I only thought about tackling him the way some folks dream about climbing Mount Everest or winning the Olympics.
Every evening after Kenny made his highly anticipated departure, I’d straighten up the place, turn off the television, and put Sean in my lap. Often we’d grab the Sears catalog and look at toys together while Sean pointed out what he next wanted to receive from Santy Clause.
After Sean went to bed, I’d listen to some Moody Blues and Seals & Crofts albums and flip through the catalog some more. Sometimes, when I listened to my favorite song, Hummingbird, I could feel myself flying, soaring to a place where picket fences instead of dangerous roads and active railroads bordered every yard, to where friends and family gathered, to a fictional location where love, instead of fear, kept us all connected.
Someday my real mate, the one I should have had, would arrive to rescue me. Whoever he was, he’d conquer Kenny with kindness instead of brute force. I didn’t know what he’d look like. David Lassiter, perhaps. Or maybe Burt Reynolds. Or possibly Jesus.
I spent hours inventing fantasy lovers. Sitting alone at night, I imagined every detail of their appearances. The Wish Book came in handy then, too. Particularly helpful was the men’s underwear section.
By the time Kenny arrived home in the wee hours of the morning, I’d usually fallen asleep. Often I dreamt about making love to a guy I hadn’t yet met. I succumbed to my make-believe partner fully, in ways I’d never give in to Kenny. I lived for this man, endured for him, waited patiently for his appearance. And I would wait for all eternity before I would resign my destiny to Kenny.
~
I told Pearly, “I’m going to leave him as soon as I can save up enough money.”
She turned out to be more sympathetic than I’d expected. “Can’t say I blame you, shugah. Been me, I’d done shot his sorry ass.”
I thought about the rifle Kenny kept next to our bed. Repeatedly, he’d warned I’d better never try and leave him. Any time Kenny felt he was losing face or ground, he resorted to violence. “He’s probably going to shoot my butt, if he finds out,” I said.
Pearly pursed her lips and thought for a second. “You just tell me when you’re ready. Me and Jarnell will bring his truck over, and we’ll get you outta there.” She seemed over-enthused to get in the middle of something that at best could be dangerous and, at worst, fatal. If I’d had half her gumption, I’d already have been a free woman. But then again, if I’d had Pearly’s fortitude, Kenny would have been a dead man.
On our way to lunch, I grabbed my purse and followed Pearly out the door.
“You better put that pay raise you’re getting in the credit union,” Pearly directed, as if she thought I knew something about banking. What few bills Kenny and I couldn’t take care of in person, we paid with money orders. Kenny cashed my paychecks before I even had the chance to look hard at them.
“Kenny’d find out,” I said, already feeling defeated.
“How’s he gonna find out?” Pearly looked at me like I was twelve instead of twenty. “Your pay ain’t gonna go down none, if you do this right. Have your statements mailed some place ’sides home.”
Pearly was the most headstrong woman I knew, other than maybe Neta Sue. She could plot and scheme better than a soap opera villainess. “Come on. Follow me,” she said. “I’ll show you where to go to open an account.”
I followed Pearly inside a room marked, “Keslo Electronics Credit Union,” and at her insistence signed up for automatic payroll deposits. She showed me how to hide ten dollars each payday from Kenny, money he’d never miss. After I’d finished filling out the paperwork, I said, “We’d better hurry, i
f you want to eat today.”
“Girl, I ain’t missin’ a meal over this,” Pearly said. But after seeing what she had in her lunch bag, I had to wonder why not.
“What the hell is that?” I eyed her sandwich with disgust—two split weenies and some hot mustard stuck between a couple slices of white bread. “What kind of diet are you on now?”
Pearly’s eyebrows arched. She gave me an indignant look. “I’ll have you know it’s a diet that works. I done lost five pounds. And my Ontie lost twenty.” She pulled two boiled eggs and a banana from her sack. “It’s called the egg, weenie, and banana diet,” she explained really serious-like. “You eat nothin’ but weenies the first day. The second day, you eat nothin’ but boiled eggs...all you want...and the third day, you eat nothin’ but bananas.” She retrieved an overripe piece of monkey fruit from inside her bag. “And on day four, you can eat all three.” Peeling her banana, she volunteered, “I’m on day four,” though she failed to explain the bread.
“That’ll work.” I giggled at her expression. I didn’t want to make her mad, seeing as how she’d gone out of her way to be helpful to me. But I felt I had to point out the obvious. “You could eat anything that way and lose weight. You’re not taking in enough calories for it to matter what you’re eating.”
“Aw, hush. You don’t know nothin’ ‘bout dietin’, no way.” Pearly pointed to the package of chips I’d just opened. “I don’t know why I even talk to you about it.”
“Why do you want to lose weight so bad? Especially since your husband loves you just how you are.” I popped a handful of corn chips into my mouth and chased them with a swig of soda pop.
“I know he does. But I don’t like being this size. And I don’t like the way people look at me when I go places, like they think I’m gonna eat up all the food in the buffet ’fore they get to it.” Her voice broke. “But the worst thing is when people asks if I’m pregnant.”