Blood

by Allison Moorer

  Bel Hevi

  A word/expression of Creole origin. That sinking or heavy feeling you have in your stomach when you’re sad. How most people describe feeling when they’re homesick, or something is off-kilter. My best friend and I have always called it “the pit” because of the sort of hollow feeling it causes in the center of your guts. Belly heavy. We were delighted to find the feeling has an actual name.

  DADDY MUST’VE AGREED TO QUIT DRINKING FOR MAMA to have made the decision to go back again, because the night we got home he was trying not to. After my shower, I went into the living room and sat on the couch and found him restless and agitated. I think Sissy was hiding out in her room and it was just Daddy and me in front of the television, but I couldn’t watch anything. He was all I could see.

  No one said a word about him stopping. But I figured out what was going on when I saw no can of Budweiser or the avocado-green insulated tumbler with the white rim full of Jim Beam and water in reach of his right hand on the table that sat by his chair. He was struggling with himself. I’m not sure what his will wanted more, to drink or to not drink. He probably didn’t know either. His withdrawal was clear and it was pitiful. I watched his hands shake. He looked scared and pissed off at the same time. I finally just went to bed. I couldn’t watch what was happening. And I don’t guess he could do it since he was drinking again the next day.

  He might have even started drinking more than ever. Not long after Christmas, I sat in my bedroom on a Tuesday night and tried to study. My grades had turned terrible. Earlier that day at school, my science teacher asked me to stay after class. He asked me if everything was all right at home because he knew I could do better. I just nodded and said that everything was fine. I was too embarrassed to say anything else and haughtily walked out of the room, trying to cover my shame.

  I sat at the makeshift desk in my bedroom that night, telling myself I could turn my grades around. I heard the three of them in the living room. Sissy was with them much more often than I was. I know she thought she could protect Mama if she kept herself engaged; meanwhile I was always trying to find a safe spot and a way to disconnect, and by that time from all three of them, not just Mama and Daddy. Sissy had become untrustworthy to me as well. She had become aligned with them and not with me. I guess she had her own version of hillbilly Stockholm syndrome. We both had enough sense to feel the insanity of trying to bond with our abuser, but surviving was the job at hand and we had to get it done however we could.

  They were snacking on something Mama had made for supper and the biscuits she’d made to go with it. She and Daddy were in one of their rare playful moods. Maybe she’d decided to have a couple of drinks herself, which was also rare.

  “Do you want another biscuit, baby?”

  Daddy thought she had called him buddy. And he hated to be called buddy. I never did figure out why—just one of his idiosyncrasies I guess—but we all knew that he hated it. Mama wouldn’t have slipped up and called him that no matter how many drinks she’d had.

  “Don’t you ever call me buddy, you hear me?”

  Sissy chimed in.

  “Well, it’s better than son of a bitch.”

  With that, she got up and went to her room, scared, I guess, of what she’d allowed to come out of her mouth and what reaction it was about to provoke. Daddy followed her. Mama followed him. My heart started to race as I listened to what was happening down the hall.

  “Don’t you ever call me a son of a bitch.”

  He pummeled her with his fists like she was another grown man instead of the seventeen-year-old, barely one-hundred-pound girl that she was. All I could do was listen. I kept thinking I should get up and go help somehow, but I was glued to my chair. Mama tried to pull him off of her, crying and hollering at him to stop—he probably got in a few good licks with her too. Tears tumbled down my face as I listened to every sickening blow Daddy dealt Sissy. The sound of muscles and bones colliding with each other nauseated me, but I could not get up. What was I going to do? I knew that I would get hurt too and instead of stepping in, as she would have for me, I only protected myself.

  I’m so sorry I didn’t try to help her. She didn’t get a protector like I did but instead a useless, helpless little sister. I know there was nothing I could’ve done. I thought it all the way through to the end as it was happening, and when it did end and he left her alone to cry and cower in pain, I thought about my science teacher and whispered to myself that everything was not all right at home. Everything was not all right at all.

  The memory of that night hangs around my brain a lot more than I’d like. I’ve thought, so many times, about what it must feel like to have your father change the shape of your nose, to look in the mirror and see your face black-and-blue, and to have to look him in the eye after he did it. To have to look anyone in the eye after he did it. Shame serves as scaffolding for many maladies.

  I went to Sissy’s doorway to check on her when I thought it was safe later that night. She was cowered in the corner of her mattress, which was on the floor and up against the wall. She was up against the wall too. Her face was turned away.

  We got up the next morning and got ready for school as we always did. Daddy stopped us at the door as we were leaving. He stood in front of it in only a pair of blue jeans—no shirt—blocking our exit, and looked each of us in the eye.

  “Do you have any ideas about leaving?

  “Do you?

  “Do you?”

  Both of us just shook our heads no. I looked through the little tufts of salt-and-pepper hair on his chest, through the V-shaped patch of sun damage just above it, and tried to picture myself somewhere else and him getting the treatment he’d given Sissy the night before. I wanted him dead that morning. There’s a part of me that’s happy I don’t have to deal with him as an adult because I know I’d have to confront him about the awful things he did and the damage he caused. There’s a part of me that wants to so badly I can taste the anger boiling up from my stomach and burning my throat as I imagine finding the words to tell him how repugnant he was and how spectacularly he failed us.

  As soon as we got in the car Sissy started hollering and crying at Mama that we had to leave. She said that if we didn’t, she would run away and we would never see her again. I guess if Mama thought she’d had an argument to present she would’ve done so, but all she had to do was look at Sissy’s face to know that she didn’t. She just drove toward the high school, where she was going to drop us off like she did every other morning. She got in the turning lane. Sissy threatened again. She said she’d tell when someone asked her what happened to her face. And we all knew someone was going to, as it was obvious she’d been beaten up. Mama didn’t make the left and instead drove us to work with her.

  It was embarrassing for her and for us to have to walk into her office at the law firm where she did secretarial work for Mr. Bill McDermott, sit down in front of his desk, and tell him what happened. He knew Daddy wasn’t good to us in the first place. I’m sure he’d seen Mama come in to work shaking enough times, or overheard her trying to talk on the phone in low tones—of course Daddy called her at work constantly—to not be surprised by the latest debacle. He said that Mama and Sissy could both press charges and file a restraining order against Daddy. Motions were gone through to do that, but were ultimately not followed up. What we did do, though, was stay gone for three days.

  Mama’s best friend, Laurie, who also worked at the law firm, said we could stay with her until Mama figured out what to do. Mama instructed the office receptionist to tell Daddy she wasn’t there when he started calling, as she knew he would. He even ridiculously and unsuccessfully tried to disguise his voice a few times. We stayed at work with Mama that whole day, a Wednesday, and went home with Laurie that night. Her couch was fixed up with blankets and a few pallets were made on the floor. She was divorced and had two daughters too, and no extra room to speak of except for in her heart.

  All we had were the clothes we’d left wear
ing that Wednesday morning. We spent Thursday and Friday out of school for fear of Daddy coming to get us or just having access to us at all. I worried about my grades getting even worse due to my absences as we watched television and hid out while Mama went to work, probably trying to evade him too but ultimately caving in. Again.

  We went back to the trailer on the Friday after Mammy and Dandy came down from Frankville to talk some sense into everyone. I don’t know how they did it or why they got involved that time; maybe Daddy pleaded for them to intervene somehow and they did. I only remember going to a hotel room in Tillman’s Corner and visiting with Mammy while Dandy was off with Daddy somewhere. I wasn’t surprised we went back. I was just happy to get some clean clothes on when we got to the trailer. I felt numb in every other way.

  A few weeks went by. I woke up in the wee hours one morning and found him sitting on my floor like a little boy would. Sort of actively plopped, hands in his lap and knees jutting out to the sides. He was always bony and sinewy, but his middle had been softened by years and an excess of indulgence. He looked like a skinny drunk with a potbelly, which he didn’t like. He’d joined a gym and had started going two or three times a week, but it didn’t seem to be reversing the damage he had inflicted on himself.

  I opened my eyes. I don’t know if he said my name and woke me up or if I just felt him sitting there with his icy blue eyes boring holes into me.

  “Allison, I need your help.”

  I didn’t know how to answer and didn’t say a word in response. I just continued to lie still and breathe my breaths that had gone shallow and scared from whatever they had been doing in my sleep. He needed my help? I wish I could’ve given him some. But I couldn’t make sense of what he asked me to do. What was I supposed to do to help him? Was I not nice enough? Did I not stay far enough out of the way? How had I not been pleasing?

  It was sad to see him that way, sitting on the floor, asking for something from me, of all people. I was the person who could barely answer when he asked me a question, the person who couldn’t confront him about anything but almost killing our puppy, the person who shivered and shook instead of taking any sort of action no matter what was going down. I could only be pretty, keep my mouth shut most of the time, and give him a wide berth. Was he playing on the sympathy that he must have known he had in me? He knew I was soft. He knew I loved him. He knew I wanted him to love me. I would’ve done just about anything for his attention and approval, to win the consistency I so desperately wanted and needed despite the almost constant absence of it. All he ever had to do was utter “that’s my girl” to me and I fell under some sort of spell even though I was unable to trust him in any way, even though he’d disappointed me so.

  I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to make him feel better so I just lay there and cried. I let him say what he needed to say, which was that we needed to pull together as a family, that couples like him and Mama didn’t just throw away twenty years together. He didn’t mention the quality of the years.

  I could only make out parts of his face as he sat there in the dark. The shadows seemed appropriate. I wondered if Mama had prompted him to do such a thing as this. I wondered if she told him how emotionally fatigued we were of living with him and his violence, his roughness. Did he have to come talk to me so she wouldn’t leave him for good?

  I finally just whispered, “Okay.”

  The trailer sat in the middle of three on a lot that was just inside the gate of the school property. On the right, if you faced ours, was Bob’s. On the left was Jenny’s. Bob did animal husbandry and Jenny did horticulture. Jenny was the one with the dog named Dudley that barked to be let in at night. The one Daddy would holler at.

  Bob had a motorcycle and was riding it out in the pasture one day. I don’t remember what Sissy was doing out there, maybe helping Daddy do something, but Bob told her she could take it for a spin if she wanted to. Of course she wanted to. She took off on it too fast, like she was wont to do on things that could go fast, and the tires caught some loose gravel. She wrecked and went flying, and left about half the hide from the side of her abdomen on the ground. I didn’t know what had happened when Daddy pulled up to the trailer in the combine with her in his arms. He started hollering at me to call Mama at work and tell her that Sissy had wrecked on Bob’s motorcycle and we were taking her to the doctor but that he thought she’d be all right.

  He was all of a sudden acting like a daddy. He was worried about her and telling himself she’d be all right by saying that to me, and telling me to say that to Mama even though there was no way he could’ve known that she’d be okay. She had fainted in his arms on the way back to the trailer. I did as I was told and called Mama, then got in the van with him and Sissy and headed to the doctor in Mobile. She was lucid by that time, but scraped up, bleeding, and bruised. The doctor cleaned her up and bandaged what needed to be bandaged; nothing was broken or busted. Mama met us there, of course.

  Is that how I learned to forgive? Or is that how I learned to never forget? Did that deepen or weaken my distrust of him? Had he suddenly become dependable and caring? No, surely not. But what was that? I didn’t know what or who I could believe. How could he cradle my sister in his arms like a baby when he’d turned her face black-and-blue just several weeks before? How did he dare? I’m so damned mad at him for her. No, I didn’t forgive. And I certainly didn’t forget. What I did was become more distant and more confused. We were a mess. I was pissed off at everyone about it. I felt lost in our house and in the world. We were all trying to survive, but doing it separately together—under one roof, but isolated from each other.

  I was, however, learning to assert myself a little. I started by defying Mama one night during the spring of 1986 when she revealed to Sissy and me that she’d been to an Al-Anon meeting. She said something about not being able to handle any back talk, sassing, or anything but utter compliance and understanding from us because she’d been to said meeting. I knew exactly what she was talking about—I’d heard about these meetings—and I told her so. I asked her what she thought was so special about it, in my sarcastic, thirteen-year-old, budding-smartass way, and told her that if she expected a gold star for her attempt toward something healthy she wasn’t going to get it from me.

  I was mad at her. I didn’t trust her and I thought she was deeply ineffective by then. She’d dragged us in and out of our home so many times and (I thought by choice) made us live with Daddy when I saw clearly that being away from him would be so much better and would provide at least part of what I spent every day looking for—a little peace and someplace I could be safe and less disrupted.

  Mama told me to go to my room. I stood up to her, over her (I was the tallest female creature in the house by that time), put my hands on my hips, and said defiantly, “No.”

  She just stared at me. I stared back. I eventually did go to my room but made sure she knew it was on my own accord.

  Sissy graduated high school in early June, barely, and only did so because one of her teachers told her she’d give her a passing grade if she’d sing for the class one afternoon. She’s been singing to get by ever since.

  You wrote “Sky Is Purple”

  And it started with a chorus of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” Who did you want to have a closer walk with thee, Sissy? You? Them? Us?

  No good possibilities that day. Just an early morning slunk in on the stillest air to take away a part of you and leave in its place the echo of what you heard, the shadow of what you saw on the lawn that morning. To resonate, to reverberate, to ring, to vibrate, to bust out of your brain every day for all of the rest of your life.

  It was so thick that morning. Nothing seemed to move after those bullets did but you. You ran through a dawn as thick as syrup to get help, but everything had already been taken away but us by the time the sky turned purple, as you said.

  You changed but stayed the same.

  I changed but stayed the same.

  I can only unde
rstand but not say how that works inside a person.

  Protection

  The person to whom you are married tells you that if you leave him, everyone you love will die. There is good cause to believe the person to whom you are married when he makes this threat, because he has shown himself to be violent and unhinged. You have two daughters to protect. Two daughters who are your very world. Your instincts fight against each other constantly. Run, stay, run, stay. Run to get away from this person and save your life and everyone else’s. Stay to be near this person and save your life and everyone else’s. Break every tie with this person who is dangerous to you and those you love. Bond to this person who is dangerous to try to keep what he swears will happen from happening. Fight for your sense of self as he fights to constantly throw you off of it and lower your self-worth so that you don’t believe you deserve anything better than his abuse. Become so depressed you don’t even recognize yourself in the mirror.