I knew I was in trouble. It was the way Mama looked at me from across the dining-room table, like I had wandered off and left her, even though I was sitting right there. We lived on the Gulf Coast of Florida then, and it was a hot night, even with the thunderstorm going outside. I was studying my lines for the sixth grade’s spring play, and Mama wanted to talk. I watched her smear the perspiration on her forehead with the back of her hand, looking at me hard, and I could hear the rain coming down heavy, like waterfalls gushing onto the concrete around our apartment.
“So, tell me about Joan of Arc,” my mother said. She looked closely at my script for something to say, stretching her neck out like a crane on the beach picking at the sand. I pulled my script onto my lap, keeping my eyes low, knowing how sensitive Mama was and how she could tell right away if you didn’t want her around. But ignoring her made me feel ashamed. I could make Mama feel good if I wanted, make her laugh, like we were friends. I could put on a funny face, working out an expression like one of her disastrous dates — like the man who chewed on his spit in between saying things, letting his head roll back and forth like a loose ball at the top of a pole. She loved it when I would make a joke, and if I did it now she would wrap her arms around me, laughing.
But I couldn’t help thinking about the play, and how I needed to study my lines. I had the lead in Joan of Arc and both the dress rehearsal and the performance were the following day.
“I asked you a question, Arlen,” Mama said. “Are you ignoring me?”
“No, Mama,” I said, looking up from my script.
The rain was loud outside. Tornado season had struck, which meant the thunderstorms were all the more wicked and wild, tearing down the weaker branches with hot, heavy wind. I heard the wind rattling the window and then thunder cracked like a jar smashing on the terrazzo floor beside us. I jerked in my chair and thought of Joan, knowing that thunder wouldn’t have bothered her.
“Well, honey, tell me the story then. And how old is Joan anyway?” She was dipping her French fry in a glob of ketchup on a paper napkin. It was left over from our dinner earlier and it must’ve tasted cold and dry in her mouth.
“You already know about her, Mama,” I said.
Now she was hurt, and of course she would be. She was trying to give me some of her time. It was insensitive of me to turn her down.
“I do not know much about her,” she insisted. “She heard voices and she fought to free the French, is all I know. Am I right?”
My mother had gone to Catholic school, too. She knew all about Hail Marys and confessions and uniforms and saints and martyrs, and she knew about Joan.
“Yes, Mama. Joan’s the martyr. You know all about her,” I said.
“I do not know all about her. I don’t. That’s why I’m asking you. But I can tell you what a martyr is, child. Someone who does everything for you and doesn’t even get your attention in return. Someone who really breaks their back for you for nothing. Not even a little respect and attention. Oh, I know what a martyr is.”
Mama looked tired. It seemed she was straining her neck just to keep her head up and her face was flushed with heat. I thought Mama might’ve been in the play herself when she was my age, and maybe she had even been Joan, but then I remembered Mama was too shy.
I glanced down at my script and remembered the other girls in class I’d have to do my lines in front of and I panicked that I wouldn’t know them all.
“I don’t have time for you now, Mama,” I said, and I knew just how to say it. I wanted her to know she was a pest, and as she looked back at me she had that cold look about her face.
“What do you mean, you don’t have time for me?”
I sat quietly in my chair. It was nearly eleven o’clock and there was something about the heat and the rattling window that made me still. The apartment seemed to close in around me, the rain coming down, my script within my mother’s reach, feeling precious and vulnerable in my lap. I heard little Evan, my brother who was only three, begin to cry again in the living room and I wondered if Ryan, my older brother, had done something to hurt him. Ryan was thirteen and he was ever hateful. Whenever Mama got upset, coming after one of us, Ryan would tell her she was a bad and evil mother and that he was leaving her to live with Daddy on the other side of town. That was the worst thing you could ever say.
My mother had taken my brothers and me and moved out of Daddy’s big, wonderful house three years before because he called her crazy and because he loved Greta more. He had met Greta at an auto show where he was selling cars and she was handing out pamphlets and walking back and forth along the showroom floor, trying to get people to come and look. My father loved Greta right away, he said, and he wanted her to move into the house with him. He told me once that he was very, very sorry but this was how it had to be.
My father hated the apartment building where we lived now and didn’t like even to drive through the area. He was rich compared to us — even though he sent us checks and paid for our private schools — and now that we were gone and Mama worked on her own at the telephone company, he had even nicer things, like a smooth and shiny telescope on his patio for looking at the Big Dipper on a black night or watching sparrows and scissortail flycatchers in the day. Our apartment had a highway running right along the back and he thought that was an awful way to live.
I thought of my father’s house on Rosewood Lane. It was tall and white with strong, wide columns on the porch and big open spaces inside that you could move around and breathe in. It was a Florida plantation-style house, my father said, and had been built around a six-foot-wide attic fan. That fan was powerful and swept a light breeze through everywhere, touching you wherever you went, like maybe an angel in heaven would, stroking you and cooling you down.
I remembered my favorite spot in the house, the landing halfway up the wide staircase spiraling through the middle of the house right under the fan. I remembered playing with my dolls on that landing or sometimes just listening in on other people either upstairs or down, the cool air touching my cheek.
I felt the script in my hands getting wet from my sweat and the stale humid air inside the apartment touching my skin. I decided to make up with my mother, to tell her something about Joan, that she was only nineteen when she was burned at the stake. But when I looked up into Mama’s eyes, I knew it was too late.
“I do everything for you, you little shit!” she yelled — and it was true, she did — “and you don’t have the time?” She stood up, throwing back her chair, not caring if it splintered or broke or disappeared into the night. She had me on her mind. She grabbed at me and I pulled back and ran away with my script in my hands.
I was used to breaking my mother’s heart, as she said. But I could feel inside when I yanked back my arm that something was different about this time. And it wasn’t just the way I pulled back, or Mama’s wide-open eyes as she watched me. It was that this time I had planned ahead. I knew it wasn’t right. But I had nailed a hook lock onto my bedroom door, and I had said to myself when she had come after me a few days before that the next time I would use the lock.
“You goddamned kid,” she said, running. Ryan and Evan watched us race out into the hall, little Evan screaming louder. I got to my room, slammed the door, and hitched the lock. I held myself still against the door. I was a mean and nasty child. Fleetingly, I thought to open the door back up but then, sensing Mama on the other side, I leaned in hard on the door with my shoulder and foot and felt the tight, shallow beating of my heart.
“I do everything for you, girl, everything. I try and try to be a good mother, and you can’t even treat me with common decency. Common decency!” she yelled.
She yanked and pounded at the door, kicking too, and I stepped away, thinking that there wasn’t much space between us. Only a door. I imagined her sweating and getting messed up, wanting to get at me. She must have been surprised to find the door held back.
“You think I have nothing better to do than ask you about some stupid play that anyone could do? Anyone could do, you, you stupid, stupid kid! What have you done with the door? Let me in!”
I quickly scanned the room to see if anything precious lay out where my mother might destroy it. She wouldn’t be able to keep herself together when she finally got into my room, and though I knew she would feel sad about it later, she might tear up my things just the same. On my dresser I had neatly arranged many of my favorite things: the small porcelain ballerina my father had painted for me when I was little; a bowl of shells I had collected with Mama on the beach; the jewelry box my father had given me with two red cardinals painted on top, which was already cracked in two places that I had taped. And I had three small, droopy African violets set up at the end that I was growing in three different soils for science as an experiment. There were other things, too many to grab, so I left them all, and I hated myself for not protecting them. I wiped the heat from my face and hands and slipped my script into my top drawer.
“What do you think, I’ve got nothing to do but listen to you? You’re not everything to me!”
I heard Ryan yelling out something from the living room. He was in trouble, too, because he couldn’t keep Evan quiet. He never really tried. And when Mama began yelling back at him and Evan, I thought she might go after them instead. Ryan would deserve it. He seemed to delight in other people’s misery and I could tell by his tattletale voice, and the fact that he was hoping to move out and live with Daddy, that he was looking to make things worse for me.
I ducked into my dark, familiar closet, though I was too big to fit there easily and I could hardly breathe. I squatted stiffly atop shoes and books and other things I kept in there, my sticky knee pressing hard into the wall. I felt like a young girl soldier hiding in a hole. Then I gently slid the door closed and peered through its broken wooden slats, clothing draped down over my head. I wished that the apartment weren’t so hot and that I weren’t so bad.
“You best let me in there, Arlen,” Mama called faintly. I remembered her telling me how she had had to beg and beg to come back in the house when she was a girl and her parents had locked her out, and I imagined her using a voice like this one to finally bring them both around.
Suddenly Mama crashed through the door, ripping the lock out of the wall and sending a piece of it to crack into my vanity mirror. I counted in my head from five to three, then closed my eyes, opened them, and counted again, not thinking of numbers or seconds really, but of stretching out the time by occupying my mind.
The closet door slapped open and Mama yanked me out by the arm. Her hands felt cool and wet and they gripped me solidly, and she threw me out into the room. I sat up and shuffled backward into a near corner.
“What’s this?” I knew my mother meant the lock. “You keeping me out? Is that right? I show you my love, give you my time, and you lock me out?” Mama swept across everything I kept on my dresser like I knew she would and she smashed it all into the wall. “You want to keep me out?” she asked, after my jewelry box had cracked apart and tinkled on the floor.
“No,” I said, being careful not to move. Then my mother took off her belt, the one with the bright copper buckle, and she beat me on the floor.
It was some time before I began to stir. I knew Mama had gone but there was a certain sense in keeping still, in keeping out of the way. I sat carefully in the dark, listening in on Mama’s movement in the apartment. There was a phone call, though it must’ve been past the middle of the night, and some gentle talk with Evan, who always had a hard time sleeping. I heard the TV humming softly with faint laughter. It was peaceful in the house, though heavy and hot, and I waited until I felt in my bones that it was safe to move.
There was no more thunder, just light rain trickling along the side of the building. It was dark and difficult to see at all, except by faint highway lamps and headlights moving about on my things, but I could see enough to clear off my bed, take off my shoes — though not my socks or shorts or shirt — and set my alarm clock for 7:15. Then I crawled into bed and slid smoothly beneath one thin sheet.
I awoke with a start and was lucky I had not flinched, or maybe it didn’t matter now. It was dark and I lay perfectly still, but it was bad of me to think I had to. My mother loved me very much. She sat beside me, gentle, fragile, sweet. She smelled of cigarette smoke settled into sweaty cloth and she stroked my forehead, slipping her hand through my fine, damp hair and sliding it down my neck. It was not frightening. Mama was loyal and full of love. And even if she hadn’t been crying lightly, wiping her nose on the sheet, I would’ve known just how sorry she was.
But something in the way she suddenly began to confess all the painful reasons for her being so bad made me hesitate to comfort her. I thought of the confessional at school and of all the ugly things Father Warren must’ve had to hear every day when our class went in to pray, not just on Sundays. I thought of Penelope Higbee, who was also in the sixth grade and whose father had recently shot himself in the head with a gun, and how she must have felt ashamed. Everyone at school felt Penelope’s father had gone to hell and that she must be afraid to pray. I had watched her enter the confessional a few weeks after, and I’d wondered if she was confessing bad things about her father that no one else would know — or maybe things she had done to him that were so hurtful he felt he couldn’t live. I remembered my prayers to God and concentrated on the Lord’s Prayer in my mind, which was sort of a ready-made way of praying where you really couldn’t go wrong, telling God how much you liked his name, and how you’d try to make things down on earth as nice as they are in heaven.
I had heard it all before from Mama — how her mother had beaten her with a whipping stick and how her father had done horrible things a father should never do to his little girl — but I didn’t want to hear it this time, so I just lay in silence, pretending to be asleep, reciting the prayer in my mind until finally she collapsed beside me and slept, peacefully wrapped around me as though I were a baby in her womb.
In the morning, after breakfast, I became alarmed that I had misplaced my script. And, though I found it rather quickly, I was so relieved to have it back in my hands that I forgot about school and sat down on the floor to make sure that I knew all my lines.
“Why do you leave me in the hands of the English?” I recited to myself from memory, covering up the line with my hand. “I should be in the hands of the church. And why must I be chained by the feet to a log of wood? Are you afraid I will fly away?” It had been only one month since I’d gotten the part, and I was pleased with myself to already know my lines so well.
I began to imagine the stage in the auditorium with its plush red curtains that you could roll up in to find the dark, and the feel of the fat, rough rope that you hung on hard, pulling, to close the curtains or open them up. I thought of the long table on the stage that I would have to stand in front of as I addressed the men of the Inquisition, played by other girls in my class. There was an X of tape on the floor to mark where I needed to stand. I thought of my lines to King Charles and the Inquisitor, and their lines back, and I had begun to wonder if one of those parts might better suit me. Royalty and power were appealing, I thought, but I knew in my heart that Joan’s strong words and short hair made me eternally loyal to her. “If you tear me limb from limb until you separate my soul from my body, you will get nothing out of me,” I repeated by heart, and I had forgotten the bus completely.
“Boy, are you in for it,” Ryan said, peering into my room, buttered toast in his hand. “Your bus was honking and honking and now it’s gone.”
My brother stood tall and upright just inside the door amongst my broken-up clay pots, my violets lying like pulled teeth on the ground. He looked around the floor at my busted picture frames, my crayons scattered all around, my dolls’ bodies with their legs and arms in unnatural positions and their plastic doll house cracked in half, my jewelry box with the red cardinals in three pieces on the floor.
For a moment Ryan hardly moved, and then, like a soldier who may mean harm or good, he began to tinker with my jewelry box with his toe. He was somehow gentle with it and suddenly I had the feeling he might pick it up and tell me he could fix it.
“It’s a mess in here,” he said to me softly, and I loved him again. I remembered when he had shown me how to strike a match on the back of a match package, and also against the concrete of the parking lot. “Want some?” he asked, holding out his toast.
“Naw.”
He took his foot away from my jewelry box. “Dad’s getting me from school today,” he said. “I’m spending the weekend with him. Don’t worry, you won’t miss anything. We’re doing guy things. I think we’re just going fishing.”
“I already know,” I said, and it occurred to me for the first time that they might not come to see my play. “You’re not coming tonight?” I asked.
“Oh, I dunno. You want us to?”
I had the feeling of something going sour in my stomach. I thought of Ryan hitting me, and of Mama, and I wanted to hit them back. I was clutching my script in my hands and, without thinking, I made a small rip in it under my thumb, and then I felt ashamed. I felt my body grow weak and light below me, and for a moment I had the idea that I was too sick to go to school.
Then Mama appeared, slender, made up, lovely, and she nudged Ryan out of the way.
“Arlen, honey, you’ve missed your bus,” Mama said, coming in with that playful smile on her face. I could see she wanted things to be fun. “And it’s a good thing ’cause I’ve got your costume right here. Look, honey, I pasted gold sequins up here on the collar this morning.” She was beside me on the floor, not even noticing she had to clear a place, and she held the gold-and-silver tunic up under my chin. “Isn’t she darling?” she asked Ryan, who was finishing off his toast.
She stroked my hair and I took the tunic in my hands. It felt rough and heavy like I imagined Joan’s armor would, and it was shimmering like a fish in the water from the sun coming into my room. I loved it and I was proud of my mother for making it. She always said she wasn’t any good with her hands, but I knew that she was wrong.
I was only ten and Sister Mary Frances had told my mother that was young to be in the sixth grade. She thought that was the reason why I didn’t have good friends despite the fact that I had been in school with the same set of girls since the first grade. My grades were not good either and she wanted to keep me back. My mother had asked me what I thought, saying maybe she had been wrong to start me off so young. “I don’t know,” I had said, thinking about girls I knew in the fifth grade and wondering if I was dumb.
After that, I had spent some time thinking about who were my friends in the sixth grade, and who were not. I thought about Kimberly Crawford, who had dark brown eyes and hair the same color, which her mother pulled back in red or navy ribbons behind her head. Her hair was straight and her knee socks were tall, and I got to stand behind her in line every day when Sister Rosemary Agnes rang the morning bell for inspection. In the morning, every class except those in the high school had to line up on the blacktop in front of the school, the first graders down near the swing sets on up to the eighth graders next to the chapel and the auditorium.
The sixth grade lined up just in front of the steps to the school, and because we went according to height, we all had a perfect view of the nuns as they came out to check on us. But I was more interested in looking at the fifth graders on my left, who seemed small, and the seventh graders on my right, who were allowed to wear earrings and bracelets and seemed awfully tall. I wasn’t really any taller than Kimberly, but the sisters put me right behind her, and I liked it that way because she often turned around in line to say things to me like “Don’t you hate Sister Rosemary Agnes?” or “You better pull your socks up.” Then I remembered the time I had tripped into the dirt near the swings at recess and Kimberly and her two best friends, Lisa Valdes and Ginger Moore, had walked away from me saying things about being dirty that I could barely hear. Then one day, just after I had gotten the lead in the play, Kimberly asked me if I wanted to sit with her friends in their circle on the blacktop to eat my lunch. She said that at first they’d been mad I had the lead. They’d thought it wasn’t fair because Ginger had wanted the part of Joan and she looked more like Joan did, having short black hair, not short and blond like mine. But now they said Ginger had decided she didn’t really want that part anyway, except that Ginger wasn’t doing any of the talking; Kimberly was. But Ginger did add that she hadn’t wanted to memorize all those lines.
I knew I didn’t have any real friends except for Penelope Higbee, who I felt sorry for, but as my brothers and mother and I approached the Academy of the Blessed Angels in my mother’s white Chevrolet with the windows down and my Joan of Arc costume in my lap, I was feeling hopeful about making friends, and about going on next year to the seventh grade.
“Everybody loves your costume,” Kimberly said to me while the other girls were all changing right out in the open of the auditorium. Luckily, I had been the first one there and I already had on my brown tights and tunic before practically anyone else arrived. I had found ugly marks on my legs and two bruises on my arm that I couldn’t hide, but I knew people could get bruises doing almost anything and there was nothing you could do about them. So I had sort of stroked my arm softly as though I were smearing on makeup, thinking the dark, tender areas felt cool to my touch, and then I had forgotten about them. Now I was holding my boots, waiting to put them on because it was too hot to wear them for long and I knew my feet would sweat. “I love the tassels and sequins and stuff,” Kimberly said, lifting the collar under my chin carefully, and then Lisa Valdes pulled her away, giving me a certain look. “See ya later,” Kimberly said.
I hated Lisa Valdes and I thought she looked dumb in her soldier costume — a silver T-shirt and tights — but I kept watching her because she had on one of the silver soldier helmets that reminded me of a big metal ball or a mirror stretched all the way around her head. She took Kimberly over to Ginger, who was a soldier, too, with the same helmet, and some other girls I hadn’t noticed were their friends before.
All the girls were either changing or sitting around, waiting on Sister Mary Frances, who was the director of our show. I left my boots and walked in my socks over to Penelope Higbee, who was bigger and taller than almost anyone else in school, and certainly at least in the sixth grade. Penelope was a soldier, too, the kind without any lines, and she looked big and dopey in her costume. I sat down beside her, picking up her helmet and holding it in my lap.
“Hi,” I said.
“Do you know how long this goes for?” Penelope asked.
“No, but the bus will take us home anyway.” Penelope always rode the bus with me.
“No, that’s not what I mean. I just wanna go home.”
“Me too,” I lied. “Why?”
“Plays are dumb.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have homework I have to do, and anyway my mother isn’t coming tonight. She’s too sick and I have to come with my aunt.”
She said this like she was going to cry, her pink bottom lip wiggling slightly up and down on her very pink face and her foot sort of bouncing on its side. I got the feeling she was mad at me, and she took her shiny, smooth helmet out of my hands. I had forgotten her mother was sick, and then I remembered that was because I hadn’t believed her the first time she told me. Everyone said that because Penelope’s father killed himself her mother was too embarrassed to come to the school, and knowing the things people were saying about him being in hell, I didn’t doubt this was true.
“That’s too bad,” I said, and I remembered that my father and Ryan probably weren’t coming either. Now I was feeling low again, like my heart was resting down amongst my other insides, pushing on my stomach, and I didn’t want to feel that way. I was sorry for Penelope, but I wanted to get away.
I looked over at Kimberly and her friends. They were trying on Kimberly’s crown. She was playing King Charles and had on a long, blood red robe with white-fur trim and big blue and green rubies or something, like broken jawbreakers, all over. Her crown looked soft and matched the robe.
Then Sister Mary Frances walked in, swishing the way she did, dragging along the dust in the room. Her face was red like she was burning hot, and her small, dull eyes made her look somewhat cross, but she almost never was. She was a fine nun with a big smile and I loved her very much.
“All right, girls,” she said, clap, clap. Sister Mary Frances loved to clap her hands. She did it low and sharp and it helped keep us in line. All the girls were quiet and sat in the first two rows like we always did for play practice, only today everybody seemed nervous, rubbing their helmets or turning in their boots. This was our last practice, and tonight was the real thing.
“Want a Hershey’s kiss?” Kimberly whispered in my ear. She was in the seat behind me and she put two of them in my hand.
“Thanks,” I said back quietly, smelling the warm chocolate and wanting to press the smooth, flat bottom parts up against my face. Penelope was slumping beside me, and I decided to share. Then I noticed Penelope was the only girl with her helmet on, and it didn’t seem to fit her right; it sat too high up on her head. She looked like a baby sitting there, needing to be taken care of, and it made me angry to be her friend. I thought of her father, who was gone and wasn’t coming back, and before I tapped Penelope’s shoulder, I remembered in a flash that my mother loved chocolate and even said once that chocolate was her favorite food. I decided to eat one kiss now myself and save the other in my book bag for my mother.
I jumped off the bus at the end of the day and ran through the parking lot toward our apartment. I was feeling rather good about everything in the world, about knowing all my lines, about the kiss for my mother in my bag. I went through my book bag looking for my house keys and then I remembered it was a Friday, which meant my mother had come home from GTE at noon.
But I knew as soon as I walked into the apartment that something had gone wrong. It was the stillness, I think, or maybe I heard my mother sniffling in the kitchen and hadn’t realized it, because that’s the first place I went, and when I got there, I found Mama sitting on the floor in a rectangle of sun. She was up against the cabinets, like she could’ve been asleep except her knees were up. I knew that face, looking far away and up at something way beyond, meant that I wouldn’t be able to help her, but that I would have to try. I tried to imagine what could’ve gone wrong.
It was still only four o’clock and Evan was at preschool until five, and because of my play he would be going home with Kenny Conners and his mother after. I knew my mother had been alone for a while and I worried that she might be lonely. I thought of things I might have done to make her angry, or maybe Ryan had done — there were a few of those — but it didn’t make sense to guess and guess, so I began to gather clues. The broken plant pot next to Mama didn’t tell much either. It might have fallen, or Mama might have thrown it if she had gotten mad. Suddenly I felt sick of clues and games and dirt on the floor and my mother’s long, sad, trancelike face. I climbed up on a stool and watched Mama pull out a cigarette.
“My matches, baby,” she said. I found them and brought them to her.
“Won’t you sit next to Mama, baby?” she asked. And of course I did. I removed a piece of the pot from Mama’s lap and tried to wipe some dirt from her blouse.
“What’s the matter, Mama?” I finally asked, and I waited some time for her reply.
“Ryan is gone, Arly,” Mama said, and I stared into her wet, blue eyes. “Your daddy’s not bringing him back. Damn man . . . damn man,” she said, and then she started to cry, still saying things about that damn man.
It felt as though a shard of the broken pot had lodged itself in my heart, but I tried to be practical to keep from being sad. I knew what Mama meant by Ryan is gone and I knew that he would not be back, and that was just as well because Ryan had wanted desperately to go and he was awful anyway and Daddy was awful, too, loving that woman instead of Mama, except that I loved him so much and I couldn’t think of any of the reasons why I wouldn’t want him to come back for me.
I dashed out of the apartment and dropped down onto the gravel parking lot. The sun was bright and I looked up and stared right into it without blinking, knowing it could blind me, wanting to be blind and a baby that someone would take care of, hoping my daddy and mama would come out and do it, take me inside, cradling me, dabbing my eyelids and rocking me to sleep. Then I began to see round, black spots and I became afraid and buried my face in my arms, seeing black nothingness and constellations in my head.
Mama was calling out, though the noise had sounded for a while like somebody looking for their dog. I hated my mother now and wondered where I could run away. I thought of the auditorium at school or the chapel, the confessional with its small wooden seat so high off the ground my toes never touched the floor when I prayed there. I could curl up there in a small ball and close the curtain to hide away. And then I remembered Joan. What would Joan do? I didn’t really know. Joan was too far away, too long ago. I could never know what she would do. I heard my name again. I knew my mother needed me, and I ran back to help her.
It was 5:45 and I knew then we would be late for the play. I was supposed to be at the auditorium with the other girls at six to get into my costume, and Mama was still on the phone.
She had called the other GTE women who worked the same shift and were at home now, too. There was Carol and Bobbie and Luanne. They all told Mama the same thing: Daddy was rotten through and through. Heartless, just like a man.
I had made us peanut-butter sandwiches with grape jelly and had set them on the dining-room table for dinner. I was almost done eating mine, but Mama’s was still on her plate.
“I’m going right over there,” she was saying into the phone. I looked up at the kitchen clock and watched the second hand travel along. “He’s my baby, and I’ll go right over there and get him. I don’t care what he says. I’ll go there now and bring him home, you’ll see.”
I felt anger gathering in my elbows and hands, and I leaned hard on my elbows, mashing them into the table, wanting to break it apart beneath me. The wood felt solid against my bone and I figured the table would make a clean, loud crack if someone swung at it with a hammer or some other heavy tool. I kept pressing, my fists going sharp into my cheeks, my elbows feeling sore and bony underneath me, pressing hard, giving it all my weight, hoping the table would snap in two.
My elbows and cheeks felt tender, buzzing dull currents of pain to my brain. I assessed the danger to myself without pulling back, pressing and pressing, knowing I was bruising my bones. I knew I couldn’t break anything or ruin myself, become handicapped, by leaning on my bones. They would only hurt for a while and then the pain would disappear. Reviewing my safety in this way made me feel selfish and ashamed, and I turned my head to see if Mama had been watching, but she wasn’t. She was leaning lightly against the counter like a teetering puppet, touching her forehead, shielding her eyes, choking on tears like a child waiting to be held. I noticed lines in her face and a smudge of clay or dirt along her chin.
My elbows started to weaken. I could tell they were going to slide right out from under me, so I tried swaying my weight on one and then the other, but they popped right out anyhow, letting my chest smack against the edge of the table and making my plate clatter. I pushed myself back in my chair and slumped, feeling a line of pain across my chest. I looked back up at the clock.
“Mama,” I said, “it’s 5:47.”
“I know, baby,” she said back. Now she was trying not to cry. “I know, I know, Luanne, you’ve been through it all, too. And now I have to do what I have to do.”
“Mama, you want someone else to take me? Maybe Penelope can.” I was pinching my left hand — the fleshy part near my pinky — with my right, keeping myself in line. But Mama went right on talking. So I made a small circle with my foot, turning it around and stretching out my ankle, like I had learned to do in dance, thinking up what I would do next. Then I kicked the underside of the table hard with my shoe and I watched Mama’s sandwich fly into the air and her plate smash on the floor.
“Arlen, for God’s sake! Luanne, I have to go. You goddamned kid. Luanne, you’ve really helped, really, but I have to go. I’m going over there right now. Thanks so much, dear. Bye.” She hung up the phone and looked at me like I was wicked. “You can be so ungrateful, child. Don’t you see what’s going on, what’s happening to this family? This is important, see?”
“I’m sorry, Mama.” I got down on the floor and picked up the pieces of the plate and my mother’s sandwich, knowing what I had to do to make it to my play. I held the sandwich out.
“I don’t want that, darling. Get your things. We’re going now.”
“Where are we going? Don’t forget my play.”
“Me, me, me. I haven’t forgotten your play. We have plenty of time. It doesn’t start till 6:30.”
“I told you, I have to be there at six to get ready.”
“Well, then, let’s get a move on.”
Mama grabbed her keys, still wearing shorts, and walked out the door.
Mama parked out in the street and instructed me to wait in the car. There was a long, brick driveway up to my father’s house, but Mama didn’t want to put her car on his property. I looked up at the house, and I missed it terribly. It was tall, white, and lovely, the columns like a giant railing on the porch. The palm trees were full and lined up all along the open lawn, little purple and yellow flowers nestled in clusters beneath them. I sat there feeling heavy and thick, my head back against the seat, feeling the backs of my legs and arms sticking to the plastic. The windows were up tight, and I liked it that way. The heat was powerful inside the car, even at six o’clock. The air was on fire, pressing against my face and chest, seeping inside, making me red, slowing my heart. I thought of poor Joan, only nineteen when they burned her at the stake.
I watched my father let Mama in. I knew how she was feeling. She wanted to live there herself, in that house. She was hoping everything would be all right. I was hoping too. Daddy could be gentle sometimes and I hoped that he would find it in his heart to be tender with her today. I imagined the house inside when I lived there. I remembered dancing in the living room when I was maybe five, running back and forth, whirling my arms, feeling the sunshine from the windows and the cool air, pushed through by the fan, around me. And I remembered Daddy clapping, then taking me in his arms, kissing me, smelling like good soap and a little bit sour like the sheets in his room with Mama. We were dancing together and he sang like he did when he would put me to bed. That German song about me, his little Liebling girl. Mama would feel that way too, I knew, wanting him to hold her, to take her in his arms. But then she would see Greta.
I sat there, the plastic seat all sweaty underneath me, staring at the front door. The clock in the car was digital and flashed because something was wrong with the wiring. It said, 6:05 . . . 6:05 . . . , the numbers going up and up, pushing up like a thermometer, going into the future without me. I felt sleepy. I pushed my hair up off my forehead and it stuck, wet, off to one side. I noticed the wind pushing some dry moss along the road. Then it occurred to me that maybe I could get to school on my own.
I slowly straightened up, the plastic pulling at my legs, and tried to figure out if I could walk to school from Rosewood Lane. I cracked open the window, feeling a puff of air on my forehead, and I concentrated. I had walked from the apartment to school when I had missed the bus, and I knew the way from this street to the apartment, but it was confusing to think of the way to school directly from my dad’s. It made some sense to go back to the apartment and then continue from there, but that would include walking on the highway, which didn’t seem so much scary as just a bad thing to do. And the walk to school from the apartment would still be twenty minutes long. I began to feel angry and sick and I looked on the floor and seat for the car keys, even though I was sure my mother had taken them and anyway I would be too afraid to try and drive.
I thought of Penelope and wondered if she had already gone back to school. The clock flashed, 6:09 . . . 6:09 . . . , and I knew she had already gone. I thought of Penelope’s dead father. He couldn’t drive her to school anymore like he always had on special occasions like this one. He was in heaven now, or hell, somewhere up in the clouds or under the earth. It seemed selfish of him to leave without considering things like how Penelope would get around, but then again, being dead he would never get in Penelope’s way. I held an image in my head of Penelope’s father dead on their floor, her mother sick in bed, and Penelope free to do what she needed to do.
My mother’s voice came piercing across the lawn. She was in there screaming at my father, and I heard him yelling, too. I imagined Ryan inside, maybe in the kitchen eating ice cream with Greta, who was afraid of Mama. I wondered if I could somehow get to Greta if she would take me to my play. Mama and Daddy could keep fighting over Ryan, and Greta and I could slip out without taking any time.
Me, me, me, I heard my mother saying in my head, and I felt my stomach turn all slimy, like it wasn’t fixed securely inside. I remembered selfless Joan, and the soldiers who had been Joan’s friends — Lisa and Ginger and Penelope — carrying the logs up to the stake where Joan was tied. Joan knew the importance of sacrifice. But she had wanted to be free to listen to God, I knew. She had wanted to hear the gulls and the wind and God’s sweet, gentle voice. I thought of the awful dungeon where they had wanted to keep Joan locked away and, knowing that Joan couldn’t live like that and would rather die, I opened the door and got out of the car, and just then I could feel Joan with me in the air, floating along beside me.
I walked up the long, brick path to the house, hearing the shouting go softer and louder. The house became larger as I approached, but it was not unfriendly. On the porch was a green rocking chair where I had sat with Mama when I was small. I reached the door feeling light and weak. I thought to sit down in the rocker, but then I thought of my line from the play just before the soldiers set fire to Joan:
“Do you think I dread the flames as much as the life of a rat in a hole? If only I could still hear the larks in the sunshine and the blessed, blessed church bells that send my angel voices floating to me on the wind. But without these things I cannot live.”
I knocked lightly, and Daddy came to the door.
“Liebling,” he said to me, coming out and touching my head.
“Leave her,” Mama said, pushing him, and he walked back into the cool house someplace where I couldn’t see.
I imagined him going back to Greta and Ryan and touching them like a small family, arranging for their evening, talking about my crazy mother and hoping she and I would leave. I wondered what would happen if I ran inside and told my father about my play, and that Mama was just awful, and I wanted to live with him. I wondered if I could have my room back and play on the landing every day with my things. I wondered if I told him about my play if he would want to come. But then I remembered he already knew. He knew everything — about my play, and Mama, too. I wondered how he could hold all this in his head, and still go on without me.
Mama took my arm and pulled me to the car. I hated her grip but I knew not to pull away. I had to be careful not to distract her with a fight. When she got in the car, she leaned against the steering wheel and began to cry. The clock flashed, 6:22. . . . Then she reached over, tucking my hair behind my ear, and she touched my leg, squeezing it a little, like I was her baby and she was proud of what she saw. I wanted to put my head in her lap, but I was embarrassed and pulled away.
“I know it’s late,” Mama said, starting the car. “But we’ll be right there, OK?” She said other things, too, in a sad, peaceful way as we drove off, but I wasn’t listening to the words. I was looking out over my father’s lawn, noticing the house shifting away in a peculiar evening light. I wiped my face as the house disappeared, and began to fill up my head with thoughts of the stage, and my shiny gold costume, and my lines.
This story has previously appeared in Massachusetts Review.
— Ed.
