Unmaking Grace

by Barbara Boswell

  Chapter 7

  Patrick woke up with a throbbing head and a dark mood upon him. It hurt even to roll out of bed. He cursed himself silently for having drunk so much. As the night’s events floated back into consciousness, he moved to cursing Mary instead. Damn bitch! All he had done was go to the house to see whether Grace was okay. He had just wanted to see her, hold her against him, feel her breathing; but Mary had been a bitch about it, as usual, and had denied him that. She must have known by then that the boy next door, Johnny, was missing. Surely she should have been able to imagine Patrick’s distress at this news. What harm would it have done to let him in? To sit with Grace for a few minutes? It was the most horrible of times, police going mad, shooting children, and here Mary was, stubborn, defiant, denying him his duty to protect his family. Denying him the very thing that made him a man. He stood up, casting around for something to drink. In the little shack he now called home there was nothing. He did not even own a refrigerator—his meals, prepared on a single-burner gas stove, required few ingredients.

  Patrick had been doing all right. Mary had kicked him out many times before. This time, too, he was sure he’d be allowed back after a suitable penance. He had been determined to stop drinking for good. And though this split between them had been the longest yet, he had not touched a drop since they’d parted. He had stayed with his new job, turning up each morning ten minutes before starting time. He was making a go of this new life. He had left the old drinking friends behind. Once he had even gone to Mass, but he found he could not stand being within the confines of a Catholic church—the incense choked him and every time he went down on his knees he had the dizzying sensation of some big unseen hand trying to topple him. He left before the service was over, bathed in cold sweat, as if some ungodly force had wanted him gone. He found some solace at the big tent—less morose, no incense to choke him; all in all, a much more pleasant place. He’d even been baptized again, and the goodwill he’d received afterwards had helped him keep it together. He had been doing all right—until last night.

  Sick with worry about Johnny and infuriated by Mary’s callous words, he had had nowhere to turn. He had wanted to help look for the boy, but when he went to Tim and Rowena’s it was obvious he was not needed. He had wanted to sit with Grace, but was not wanted there either. He had needed the girl, perhaps more than she’d needed him, he now admitted to himself. He needed the coltish limbs, the just-washed child smell of her hair, the thin brown arms around his neck. He imagined picking her up like he used to do when she was a small child, when she’d wait for him at the end of the long passage and would charge at him the moment he’d step inside the door. He’d scoop her up, she’d throw her arms around him, and they would dance, she squealing with delight. Of course she was too grown up for all of that now, but last night Patrick had needed to feel that old connection between them. He admitted for the first time, as the feeling of impotence had subsided after Mary had turned him away, that he missed her.

  Patrick wondered again how Grace had gone from gurgling toddler, to laughing child who clung to his every word, to surly young girl. It was as if one moment she was there smiling up at him, and the next she had turned into a diminutive replica of Mary, eyes filled with recrimination whenever she looked at him. He knew he had not been the perfect husband and father—that the reality of his life fell far short from the vision he had had for himself on the day he had married Mary. He knew he could be cruel. He was ashamed, always, in his sober moments, of the way he had turned to violence. He knew it was a weakness, an addiction, like the addiction to drink. He felt contempt for himself with each failure to give it up, and then, sensing their contempt, turned his self-hatred outward, demanding respect. It had been a big disappointment to overcome when Grace was born, that she was a girl, especially after his first loss. But Patrick felt he had made a decent attempt, although he was bitter at first, to be a good father to her. Grace was quiet in nature, not at all a demanding infant, and he had found himself softening toward her even as he further hardened himself against Mary after the birth. He had desperately wanted a son and held Mary somehow accountable for this hole in his life. With Grace’s birth, the hole had become even bigger. But by the time she was two, Patrick could say that he loved her; loved the little thing who had crept into his heart.

  He did not believe in loving too much, in showing too much weakness or indulging a child in a way that made him think she was the center of the world. Patrick had no time for that. Children should know their place. Patrick parented according to a series of unwritten rules: the child should not approach or speak to him first; she should never talk back when reprimanded; she should have a healthy level of responsibility. There should be a healthy distance between parent and child, especially father and child. Yet when he could bring himself to enter into Grace’s world, on her terms, Patrick was enchanted by her attention to the tiniest detail, her questions, her sense of wonder at the world and the way it worked. He took her on expeditions into the bush, watched, a little awestruck, as she discovered this bug, or that flower, and lost herself in it. There was an innocence about her that disarmed him, and yet it also stirred up resentment in him, for was this state of grace not what he had known and lost, had spent the rest of his life trying to retrieve? He had known it at some point, but had unremembered it. It had not been protected and nurtured in him, and now it was lost. He hated his parents and the others who had forced it out of him when he thought about life in this way, and then, momentarily, hated the girl for her unencumbered state of being.

  It was in such moments that he would say something ugly, do something destructive, like squash the bug she’d been looking at. It was as if Patrick, in a state of half-jealousy, half-protectiveness, wanted to squash the innocence right out of her; as if by such an act, he could say in action what he could not articulate: who do you think you are, to have awe and wonder of this world? Do you not know who you are? Do you not know your place in this world, this country? Do you not know that dreaming is dangerous, and not for your kind?

  Whenever he had such an outburst, the child would react strangely. Grace would not cry or ask why he had inflicted a cruelty upon her. Instead, she would lift her eyes at him in hurt bemusement, never daring an utterance. As she grew up, that look came more and more frequently, sometimes overlaid with resignation, at other times with disgust, until one day, Patrick could not stand to look at her. He could feel the reproach in her gaze. Shame was replaced with resentment. He would think about his son, his perfect son, the one who would have looked like him and worshipped him, and he thought of the unfairness of it all, of how he was stuck instead with this creature and her accusatory eyes. Those eyes—wanting, wanting, always wanting something from him that he could not give. His feelings for Grace became a convoluted knot of love and resentment.

  Last night he had needed that loving little girl, and Mary had denied him. Half-mad, he had fallen back into old ways: frightened for Johnny, and missing his girl, he had gone back to the shebeen from which he’d exiled himself for six months. There he received a rousing welcome, and soon, with a whiskey melting the tension in his stomach, he wondered why he had ever stayed away. Just one, maybe two; he could handle it this time. He had not had a drink in six months and could now stop at any time. A pleasant, numbing warmth spread through his body. His shoulders softened, face relaxed. Grace was okay, the boy from next door would be found, he would get back together with Mary again. The second drink was easier to take; the third even easier. It was after midnight when he left the shebeen. He started down to his new place, then changed his mind and direction. Fuck it, he thought. She was not going to keep him away from his daughter.

  The house was swaddled in darkness. Even drunk, Patrick knew his approach should best not happen from the front door. There was no way Mary would open it for him, not after last night’s showdown. He thought about Grace, tucked up in bed. He would go to her window, say goodnight, give her a kiss through the bars; conspire against
Mary as they used to when Grace was still little.

  In his mind’s eye, Grace would be happy to see him. She would giggle a little and hold his hand, because surely she had missed him too? Instead, her screams startled him. Then Mary started screaming too. Lights went on inside the house and next door. “It’s me; it’s only me!” He’d shouted through the closed window. But by then the pair were hysterical and could not hear him. Tim, along with a convoy of men armed with batons, rushed over.

  “What is going on here! What are you doing, man?”

  “It’s me, Patrick! I live here. Fuck you! Can a man not see his own family?”

  That goddamn Mary. This was what she had reduced him to—a simpering coward, begging for them to recognize him. Worked up as they were about Johnny, it would take nothing for one of these men to plant a pole against his skull. Bitch! How could she do this to him!

  “Sorry, man. But why you crawling around like a thief?”

  “Can a man not see his own family!” he shouted again, bolstered in his righteous fury by the recognition that he was safe, that at least these men would not harm him. “I just want to see my family!” This time the words were accompanied by a wild, swinging fist, which shattered the girl’s bedroom window.

  “Come, come now, Patrick. It’s hard, but you know you have to go.” Tim was soothing in his tone, trying to dispel any looming violence. He had seen before what Patrick was capable of.

  “Come, Patrick, come. It’s time to go home. We’ll walk a way with you.”

  “Fuck you! I don’t need you to tell me when to come and go in my own fucking yard!”

  Nevertheless, far outnumbered and surrounded by men, Patrick allowed himself to be led away from the window and onto the gravel road. The men formed a laager around him and moved him down Saturn Street—his street, on which he no longer lived.

  Patrick did not remember how he’d gotten back to the little room he now called home. His head hurt. He picked up an empty enamel pot from the floor, went outside and filled it with water from a tap attached to the main house. He lit the gas ring and put the water on for coffee, then fingered the gash on the fist that had broken the window. It was far too late to go to work, and since it was almost noon, he would be docked half the day’s wages anyhow. It didn’t make sense for him to go, not the way his head was pounding, and with a useless hand. He summoned the night before into his thoughts. What the hell was wrong with Grace? How could his own child not recognize him? Did she do that to antagonize him, make him more of the bad guy than he already was? He hated that the neighbors had witnessed it all. After the last episode, the one that made Mary decide to finally end it, they had looked at him differently. He could feel their contempt in their stiffened spines when he passed them, even the men. He had only wanted to see his daughter, and then, this scene.

  Patrick needed to redeem himself. To do this, he would have to take his place again as head of his household. He knew that last night’s behavior was unacceptable, but if he could talk to Mary one more time, just one more, he was sure he would make her see that his frustration was a measure of his desperation to be back with them. I did this because I love you, he would say to Mary. It was true, and she needed to hear it. Patrick fixed upon a plan to go and see her again, a plan to make her see reason. She wouldn’t be home for a few hours, which gave him time to have just one drink. Yes, a drink would calm him and give him the courage he needed to convince Mary. He would have just one; he knew he could do it, and by the time she got home it would have worn off anyway. She wouldn’t even notice. And so, at noon, Patrick headed back to the shebeen for one last drink.

  Chapter 8

  Mary entered the bedroom where her daughter lay in bed. She put a steaming cup of tea on the bench beside her.

  “Morning, Grace!”

  She was already dressed for work, her face sharp and fresh from the colors painted there, but not even her most expensive potion could mask the circles under her eyes. The false cheer grated on Grace.

  “Is Johnny back?”

  “No, my baby. I’ve heard nothing.”

  She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. No words were spoken about what had happened the night before—that was not Mary’s way. Mary had been frantic in her rush to get into the bedroom after Grace’s screams and the breaking window woke her. Protective like a lioness, she’d grabbed Grace out of bed in one furious swoop and had locked them both in the main bedroom, shoving an ineffectual chair against the door for good measure. That was a well-worn routine: on nights before when Patrick’s seething threatened quick fruition, they often locked themselves in the nearest room that had held onto its door. Some nights he would leave them alone and go to sleep; some nights he broke through the cheap chipboard with one or two jabs of his fists. As a result, the doors in the house on Saturn Street had a lot of holes in them, which Mary patched up with pretty floral wallpaper that she kept for this purpose. But if a door was assaulted one time too many, it became useless and had to be removed. You could only patch a holey door so many times with wallpaper. If a bedroom door was removed, Patrick would transfer an unscathed door from a less private part of the house to the bedroom—there was never money to buy new doors. By the time he left, Mary and Grace had just about run out of functional doors. And though he wasn’t even in the house the night before, Mary’s old instinct had kicked in, and before they knew what was happening, she was locked safely with Grace behind her bedroom door. There they remained, silent, breathless, listening hard to the comforting voices of men from next door trying to coax Patrick away from the house.

  When they were sure Patrick was gone from outside Grace’s bedroom, they ventured back in there to survey the damage. Glass shards littered Grace’s bed. Mary gave the bedding a quick tug, shaking bits of glass down the back of the bed.

  “Just don’t put your hand down,” she warned Grace, while sweeping up the remaining shards into the middle of the room with a hand broom. Next Mary examined the damage to the window. The southeaster was strong, threatening to rip the remaining splintered edges out of the frame. That was the last thing they needed. Mary went to fetch her roll of wallpaper and her pot of wallpaper glue. She cut off a suitably sized rectangle and went to work.

  “Just until we can fix it properly, okay?”

  Grace glared at her, anger leeching through her eyes. Yes, of course. They’d fix it later, just like the rest of this broken down place would be magically fixed.

  “Get back into bed now, Grace.”

  “But the glass!”

  “It’s okay. I took it all away.”

  Her mother could be so stupid sometimes, Grace thought, as she crept into the bed, which felt defiled. Why couldn’t she just let her sleep next to her in the big bed?

  When Grace woke, the morning sun revealed a blacked-out window—a rotten tooth in an otherwise glistening smile. Fresh rage built in Grace as she wiped the sleep out of her eyes. Revulsion churned inside her: for the house, her father, even Mary; the ugliness of it all. And there was Mary now, with her tea and her stinking cigarettes, pretending that nothing had happened. Grace felt like hitting her.

  “Now listen, Grace, I want you to pay attention to what I’m going to say.”

  Another match struck the tinder against the Lion box; another cigarette glowed to life as Mary sucked on it, eyes closed with pleasure. “Yes, Mama.”

  “I have to go to work today. I wish I could stay but I can’t. Don’t go to school. You hear me? Don’t. I don’t want you to set a foot outside of this house today. Understand?”

  Grace nodded. She used to love school. It was the one place where she understood the rules, where, if she followed them, results were consistent and predictable. That was before the damned State of Emergency.

  “Stay away from the windows. If you hear shooting, any noise, I want you to drop on the floor, no matter where you are. Stay away from the windows, you hear? Don’t open the door for anyone: not your friends, not the neighbors, not Johnny, not police. And
especially not for your father. Do you understand me, Grace?” The gold cross bobbed up and down at Mary’s throat as she became more adamant, more animated, in her instructions to Grace.

  “Yes, Mama,” Grace assented, while inside her a voice screamed, Bitch! What kind of woman leaves her child when there are evil men roaming around, lurking outside the windows, shooting? Her father was right about Mary: heartless. Mary leaned forward to kiss her, but Grace pulled away.

  Mary, with wounded eyes, turned and left for work without another word. Smoke trailed in her wake. Grace heard the grind of her key in the security gate, and then there was silence.

  “Bye, Mama!” she shouted, too late. Mary was already gone.

  Now it was just Grace, alone in ugly old number twenty-one, which now had another scar, as it sighed under the assault of the southeaster. Grace hated the place: the walls weeping pieces of paint like oversized dandruff flakes; the cobwebs merrily suspended from the ceiling like forgotten Christmas decorations; the curtains, faded and encrusted with dust and dried coffee from the time when Patrick threw a full cup at Mary.

  She got up reluctantly and wandered into her parents’ bedroom, finding it in a state of complete disarray. The bed was unmade and Mary’s clothes were piled high up on the threadbare armchair in the corner, their colors and textures in stark contrast to the drabness of the rest of the room. On Mary’s nightstand an overflowing ashtray stood on top of an Agatha Christie thriller. Her empty teacup had lost its matching saucer, etching yet another ring into the surface of the nightstand. Grace turned to face her mother’s huge mahogany dresser with its winged, three-part mirror. She ran her fingers across the surface of the wood, gathering dust at their tips, and stared for a long time at her reflection. A pleasant round face, nut-brown skin, and adequately pretty eyes returned her gaze. An ordinary face—nothing to distinguish it from any other face you might see around here. Who would she become? More than anything, Grace wanted to be a beauty, the kind of beauty her mother was, the kind that turned heads, eliciting widened eyes and deferential bows. She wanted the kind of beauty that left men begging outside your door for one last chance to see your face. She fumbled with a few tiny bottles on the dresser, then unscrewed one of them and poured a dab of its contents into her palm. Elegant Ivory concealer. She warmed the contents in the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other as she’d watched her mother do a million times and dabbed it on her face with series of light, swift pats. The concealer sat on top of her dark skin like chalk on a board, refusing to blend—she looked painted like a clown, not elegant like her mother, whose skin tone was a perfect match to the bottle’s contents. Maybe some blush would settle it, she thought. With broad brushstrokes she painted on the peachy-pink, glittery powder her mother used. She followed it with a generous application of fuchsia lipstick. Maybe this would be the magic wand that transformed her into Mary.