Winter Birds

by Jim Grimsley

  In the bathroom you stop to pee and wash your hands. You take a long time with your hands, rubbing the soap on each finger separately.

  Your hands leave wet streaks on the towels, and the toilet, when you pull the handle, makes a roar that shakes the room.

  In Mama and Papa’s bedroom you stand still. Mama has pulled the curtains and drawn the shades. In the dim cool light the room feels like underwater, the cold air chilling your skin. The bed, catercornered, juts far into the center of the room between the two tall windows. Mama makes all the beds neatly first thing in the morning, squaring the corners, puffing the pillows into mounds and smoothing every wrinkle in the bedspreads with her hands. The wooden floor is swept clean and shines.

  Beyond the doorway you see the living room where Papa sits with his feet on the stool. You can see only his bare feet, white and laced with veins, and the smoke from his cigarette. Do they know you’re here? Allen sits with his back to the door, though he could see you if he turned around. Does Papa know you’re standing here watching the veins throb on his feet?

  In the dark bedroom you feel a little comforted. The hum and whine of the television you dimly hear. You wish you could stand here and refuse to move any farther toward that room where they wait. But the something that brought you back here from the river has not left off its calling.

  Mama calls, “Has Danny come back to the house yet? Was that him I heard at the back? It’s too cold for that youngun to stay out there this long.”

  Allen answers softly that he ain’t seen you.

  Papa coughs. The bare feet stir.

  You swallow and walk into the room. “I’m here, Mama,” you say in a voice so soft it hardly seems to reach to the walls. Papa glances at you and glances away. He cleans under a fingernail with his teeth, watching the window. Around him like a sweet-smelling fog hangs the scent of open whiskey bottles.

  Mama asks, “Did you hang up your coat? If it’s laying on that bed when I go back there somebody is going to learn something.”

  “I’ll go hang it up in a minute,” you say quietly.

  Everyone is here in the living room, where the heater hisses, blue fire dancing in the gas jets.

  Papa glares at you and says, “Close that goddamn door. You’re letting all the heat out.” The flat, dulled look in his eyes tells you he has been drinking a long time. You close the door without a word.

  The television makes noises that don’t register in your brain, but Papa watches it as if he understood everything. “It’s a good movie, Danny,” Allen says softly, and gives you a look that makes you want to be close to him. You find a place next to him on the floor, leaning against the couch. When you are close to Amy and the others you feel safe. You sit motionless and silent with them, pretending to watch the pale screen but all the while studying Papa. He bites a piece of fingernail and spits. “Spend so goddamn much money to heat this place and it cold as a bitch no matter what.”

  “There ain’t but so much one little heater can do,” Mama says.

  “You so rich you want to buy another one, Miss Big Talk?”

  “We might could afford one if you didn’t start to spend all the extra money we got to keep yourself happy.”

  “Tell me about it. You earn so goddamn much yourself. How much have I spent that won’t on you or your younguns?”

  “You know better than me.”

  “You know what started me drinking. I ain’t had nothing but a beer now and then, not till last week.” He glares at the kitchen doorway as if she stood there, though it is only her voice.

  She says softly and evenly, “Yes, I know what your excuse is.”

  You do not know what they are arguing about.

  But Amy catches your eye and mouths the word, “Delia.”

  Aunt Delia came to visit last week. Papa and Mama have been arguing since she left. Though as for that you had felt the anger gathering in your Papa’s silence since before you moved from the Light House.

  Papa pays no mind to Amy or to you, only stares at the kitchen doorway, clenched mouth working on words he doesn’t say, eyes glittering ugly so that you look away, afraid to have him catch you staring.

  Amy says the word over and over to make sure you know what she means, Delia, Delia, Delia.

  Mama cried because she found a thing in his truck. She thought he must have wanted her to find it because he didn’t throw it away. She showed the thing to Papa and wanted to know when he used it, because it was full.

  Mama said she didn’t want to handle the thing again, because she had already washed her hands, but she put it on the porch and Papa could go look at it if he really didn’t remember what it was.

  Papa said, “You are the sneakingest bitch I ever met in my life.”

  Now Papa stares at the kitchen doorway with the ugly expression stiff as a mask on his face. The muscles of his jaw work back and forth. He says, “You know. You know everything, or at least you think you do. But you might get in trouble if you keep on talking.”

  Mama bangs a spoon against the side of a pot. “I know what I saw.”

  “Your eyes are hooked to a stupid mind,” Papa says, “else a filthy one, to accuse me of what you accused me of.”

  “You want your children to know exactly what we’re talking about?” Mama asks. She appears in the doorway holding a peeled potato in one hand and a stirring spoon in the other. At the bright, stern look on her face Papa quails. “Keep talking,” she says. “They’ll know everything then, even if I don’t say a word about it, by the way you run your mouth trying to squirm your way out of it.”

  Weakly Papa says, “Ain’t nothing for them to know.”

  Mama simply watches him. After a moment she says, “You want me to show them what’s in the bag? They won’t know what it’s for but I could explain it. Tell me that’s nothing, Mr. Big Stuff.”

  He turns back to the television. Mama moves quietly out of sight. You can hear her in the kitchen, peeling this, stirring that, running water in the sink. Any other day she would be humming a song. You can almost see the expression on her still face, set not in a frown but tense and expressionless. Nothing shows through. Her hands move deftly above the stove that has moved with you from house to house all these years. Mama is like a wall today.

  Papa sits in the light from the window that falls cool and thin over his dark work clothes, over his unshaven face and bluish feet, the nails gray and ragged-edged because he does not cut them but waits till they are long enough to tear with his fingers. He turns his brown, worn face to the window and you wonder what he is thinking. You wonder whether his bare feet are cold. The piece of arm hangs at his side, sleeve tied in the clumsy knot that is all he can manage by himself. Nervously he bites first one nail and then another, though he has already chewed them to the quick.

  You settle back against the couch, smelling the Thanksgiving dinner, hearing Allen beside you breathing quietly, hands knotted in the hem of his jeans. Duck sits sullen on the couch, staring into his own hands. Grove is nearly asleep with his head in Amy’s lap, while Amy gazes at you, eyes wide and round.

  She sticks her tongue at Papa while he looks out the window.

  You nod but look away, wishing the day were over. Tomorrow Papa will have to go back to work.

  As if she has heard your thoughts, Amy nods too, twirling a restless finger through Grove’s tight curls.

  DELIA CAME to visit after she caught her boyfriend in a shed on top of a black girl from down the road. The sight of her sweet Carl Edward scrunched over the grunting vixen tore up Delia’s nerves completely; she couldn’t eat a mouthful for three days and couldn’t get to sleep for a week. Finally she said to herself, “Girl, you’re not going to sit here and pine to death over that no-good son of a bitch Carl Edward. If he wants to rut with ever woman north of Georgia then by God he is welcome to do it.” She decided she would go to visit her sister Mae Ellen, for Thanksgiving. So she sold the ring the son of a bitch had given her to a pawnbroker in Fayetteville, and used
the twelve dollars the pawnbroker gave her to buy a bus ticket to Potter’s Lake.

  Delia was apt to do anything when a man made her angry, and men were always making Delia angry. She was a little bit of a baby, Mama said. Mama liked Delia better than any of the rest of her family, but she didn’t like any of them much. At the beginning no one would have guessed there would be an argument at all. Papa was still drinking a little, but he had been in a good mood since the family moved into this new house, and Mama began to think he had forgotten about the photographer. He acted as happy to see Delia as anybody. He and Mama picked her up at the bus stop before he went to work, early one Monday morning, and the three of them drank coffee in the kitchen, telling each other stories and laughing so hard they woke you children in the back bedroom. Delia had brought three dresses with her in the brown paper sack she held in her lap, and that first afternoon she set up the ironing board in the living room and ironed all three. Only then did Mama notice one of them was the same orange sleeveless with the pleated skirt that Mama had borrowed from her sister to be married in years before. So she asked, “How in the world did you get that dress from Corrine?”

  “She said she was tired of it, because it’s so tight across the belly it puckers every time she sits down.”

  “She gave it to you?”

  “She sure did.”

  After a while Mama said, “I got married in that dress.”

  “Oh I know that, she told me.”

  Mama walked to the window. She listened to you children playing in the yard. “She swore she’d give it to me if she ever decided to get rid of it.”

  “Corrine is half crazy,” Delia said. “You know how she is about things like that. One day she’ll promise you something and the next day she won’t even remember she talked to you. I believe all that fat has settled onto her brain.”

  “She ought not to go back on a promise when it’s a special case like that dress. She knows good and well how much I wanted it.”

  Delia set down the iron. She gave Mama a smile that made Mama want to slap her across the face. Delia said, “Well if you want to know the truth, Corrine told me when she give it to me that I ought not to wear it around you because it would make you mad that I had it. But even if you get mad she said she wouldn’t care, because there won’t no reason for her to give away a perfectly good dress to a sister she never sees more than once in a blue moon. To tell the truth most everybody in the family is mad with you because you act like you’re too good to come see us nowadays, even when it hardly takes two hours to drive to our house.”

  “Well you’re the first one to come see me in I don’t know how long,” Mama said. “Am I the only one that’s supposed to do any traveling?”

  Delia set down the iron again and shook her finger. “You know Mama don’t have a car and can’t but halfway get around, fat as she is.”

  Mama laughed. “Who told her to get that fat? It’s not my fault if the fartherest she can walk is from the stove to the kitchen table. And how many cars do you see in my yard?”

  “There’s a car out there right now.”

  “With a battery dead as a cement block.” Mama flung the curtains together and paced. Delia whirled the skirt around the ironing board, finishing the top before starting on the individual pleats of the skirt. “Now I’m not the one who says all this, so don’t you get mad at me. Any time I want to see you I know I can get on a bus and ride. I had me a good time coming down here. And as far as the dress goes, I don’t even like it that much. You can have it if you want it.”

  “I wouldn’t take it now if Corrine and you both begged me to take it,” Mama said. Though in fact she was about to cry just looking at it, it reminded her of so many things. Days when Papa had both his arms, when they first met and he seemed so tall and good-looking and kind, exactly the man to take her away from her own Papa and her own family, exactly the man to marry. “You can wear it till it rots on your back,” Mama said.

  Delia lifted the dress to the light. “Honey, don’t be like that. You’ll make me feel bad, I won’t get any enjoyment out of it. It’s such a pretty color.”

  “Orange and green are my favorites,” Mama said.

  “But not together!” Delia shook her head wisely.

  “Be careful of the buttons. One of them was loose on it and I know that lazy Corrine never fixed it.”

  “I already resewed the buttons with good thread.” Delia admired the dress this way and that before draping it over the ironing board again, to press the pleats one at a time. “Actually, I only want to wear it so I can get your luck with my next boyfriend. I think Bobjay is so good-looking. None of the rest of our sisters got a husband half as good as him.”

  Mama didn’t exactly know how to answer that—she had never told her family much about Papa—and then Papa himself came home from work, slamming the back door shut and stomping his feet clean on the kitchen linoleum. Delia gave Mama a mischievous look and said, “Let’s see if Bobjay remembers which dress this is.”

  “He won’t remember it,” Mama said. The sound of his heavy tread made her nervous. When he came into the living room, his large, dark body cast a sudden gloom on her, and she was almost afraid to look up at him. But his hello was warm and happy. When she did look up, already feeling silly, she met his face descending with a light kiss. Delia giggled and said, “You two are like lovebirds! But look at this dress, Bobjay. Ain’t it pretty? Do you remember when you saw it before?”

  Papa reached for the dress. He carried it carefully to the window and studied it. He turned the pleats over and over in the light. “Ellen was wearing this when we got married,” he said quietly. “Weren’t you, Ellen?”

  “I didn’t think you’d remember,” Mama said softly. “You never had a mind for things like that.”

  “How was I going to forget it when you looked so pretty?” Papa asked. “Did Corrine finally give it to you? Seemed like she was going to keep it till she busted out of it.”

  Delia said brightly, “She give it to me, Bobjay. It looks so pretty on me I bet I can catch me a husband in it, like Ellen did.”

  Papa gave Mama a questioning look. Mama explained, “Corrine wants to spite me because I don’t come to visit enough. That’s what she told Delia.”

  Papa laughed till he almost spat. “If they were any family fit to visit we’d go see them any time you wanted. But the Tote family is nothing but trash as far as I can see.”

  “Bobjay!” Delia said.

  Mama hung her head. “He don’t like my family all that much, Delia.”

  “Ain’t nothing to like,” Papa said. “Except for you and Delia they ain’t nothing but a bunch of drunks and whores.”

  “Are you going to sit there and let him talk about your kin like that?” Delia asked.

  “I don’t mean you, I already told you that.” Papa laid the dress on the ironing board, and came away from the window. When he sat in his chair the springs gave a groan. “You and Ellen are about the only decent ones in the bunch. I ain’t faulting you.”

  Delia held the dress limp at her side. “Well I reckon your family must be the tip-top of society, the way you talk.”

  “At least my sisters all waited till they were married before they started having babies. And none of them ever screwed a nigger, that I know of.”

  “Hush Bobjay,” Mama said. “It’s nothing to start a fight about.”

  “I don’t like you telling me to hush,” Papa said.

  “You can think what you want to, but they’re not your people and you don’t know everything about them. It don’t feel good to hear somebody talk about your family like they’re common.”

  “But they are common.”

  Delia made an outraged little roar and turned her back on Papa, snapping the dress like a whip. “Both of you hush now.” Mama’s quiet voice filled the room. “Grove has finally got to sleep and I don’t want him to get waked up.” She stood, looking neither at Delia nor Papa, only hugging her sweater close against her i
n that room that was always cold. At the window she brushed aside the plastic curtains and leaned close to the glass. “I guess I better call Amy and the boys inside. It’s too cold to let them stay out so long.” The look on Delia’s face disturbed her. She went to the door and watched you and Allen and Amy and Duck play freeze-tag in the front yard, the dry grass like springs under your feet. Mama shivered in the open doorway. “All right you little heathens, get in the house and thaw out before you get so stiff you can’t eat the supper I’m cooking.”

  “What are we going to eat?” Allen hollered.

  “Fried chicken.”

  You shouted, “I get the white meat!” and everyone started to argue, laughing and chasing you, but you spun away, feeling lifted and bright in the cold. “I can have any piece of chicken I want, because I been It all afternoon.”

  “That’s because you’re the slowest runner,” Amy said.

  “Danny couldn’t catch a fly that was stuck in the mud,” Duck taunted. They laughed and you laughed, and Mama, still shivering, said, “I’m not going to come to this door one more time. Come in the house where it’s warm.”

  She was happy to fill the house with you children, and smiled over your heads at Papa, who watched you all and said, “Don’t make a whole lot of noise, younguns. I got a headache.”

  Only when Mama turned around did she see Delia had left the room without even unplugging the iron. She wondered if Delia had got mad and expected Mama to clean up after her; but no, even before Mama could order you all to march right back to the bedroom to hang up your coats, Delia appeared in the bedroom doorway wearing the orange dress. Mama closed the front door quietly.

  “How do I look?” asked Delia, twirling in the skirt till it billowed out.

  Mama nodded and smiled but couldn’t find words. Papa said something she didn’t hear—she was too busy noticing that Papa stared at Delia in the dress not exactly as if he were remembering it was what his wife had worn at their wedding. Delia had a larger, higher bosom than Mama, and the neckline cut to the shadow of cleavage. Delia’s legs were smooth and brown, where Mama’s skin was paler, and lightly freckled. “Do I look as pretty as Ellen did in it?” Delia asked.