by test
"I don't want none of this evil shit, man."
The doors flew open. "You gone and done it, pal, you already won it." I walked out and headed for the stairs. The doors closed and the train pulled away. As its tail passed I turned to watch it go and found myself before a shelter. I hit the ON button and stood under the meager warmth of the heat lamp. Eddie would be coming around soon. What would I say to him? I stared into a sky as flat and gray as pressed tin. The train plowed around the corner and was gone.
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Won't Nobody Ever Love You Like Your Daddy Does
by Nanci Kincaid
I
Tammy's mother, Norma June, was a good-looking woman. Everything she did was like a good-looking woman, smile, laugh, tease with her teeth in a way that can't be explained. Smoke the friendliest cigarettes anybody ever saw, when she wanted to. And fix up. Serious fix up, with a drawer full of Merle Norman creams, lipsticks, eyelash cutlers, and powder she patted every place there was.
The women in the neighborhood could not decide what it was about Norma June that nudged her across the line to the good-looking side. Suzanne, her best friend, said it was her hair. She had good hair. Dark brown with shine to it and natural curl and a Falstaff beer rinse once a week. Some of the women said it was her eyes, green like they were, with eyelashes like lips. Eyes that sort of puckered up and kissed out at things. She had good skin too, and talked about Merle Norman like it was a relationship.
"Merle Norman has done wonders for me," Norma June said. "I swear by him, I do. Wouldn't be the woman I am without him." Of course, Norma June thought Merle Norman was a man, since she never heard of any woman named Merle. Besides, as far as Norma June was concerned that's what men were forto make a woman feel beautiful.
Norma June was married to Barton, who was big. A photo of him in his army suit sat on a table in the living room. It was the way he looked when she married himbig, and soft faced. Now he was just big. Filled up whole doorways being big. And Norma June had sense enough to know some things when she married Barton, like it would take a big man to be married to a good-looking woman like her.
Every Friday and Saturday night Barton took Norma June out someplace. He'd been doing it since before they even got married, taking her out to show her off. Sometimes they got a colored woman to come stay with their kids, Tammy and Tony. But as the kids got older more and more they just let the TV babysit. That and their big yellow dog, Sunset, who Norma June had named.
On Friday and Saturday nights Norma June locked herself in the bathroom and communed with Merle Norman while Barton made Tammy and Tony some mayonnaise and banana sandwiches. Sometimes he made hamburgers, or fish sticks. Got the kids some supper and glasses of milk in greasy tupperware cups
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and then got himself dressed to go, and sat on the sofa in front of the TV where Tammy and Tony were sprawled out on the floor, and Sunset was too. Sunset with that tail scraping back and forth on the hardwood floor, back and forth, back and forth, like one of those things that hangs down inside a clock and ticks back and forth.
When Norma June was finally ready she unlocked the bathroom door and entered the room like a vision. Norma June liked to wear black. She said it was her best colorblackand had lots of dresses she proved it in on Friday and Saturday nights. She waltzed into the room and made Barton smile as she turned around slowly in her beaded cocktail dress and little black patent slippers. Norma June twirled right up in front of the TV so everybody in the room had to notice. Tony said, "You look pretty, Mama." And Tammy said, "You sure do. Will you save me that dress till I grow up, Mama?"
"I sure will, Sugar Cube," Norma June said. "When you grow up then you and your Mama will share this dress, alright?" And Tammy reached out to hug her Mama, trying hard not to smudge her powder or smash her hair. Norma June blew a little kiss on her fingers and tapped it on Tammy's cheek. "There you go, little Sugar," she said.
Once Norma June was dressed to go it was not unusual for Barton to sit another half hour, him and the kids, while his wife went next door to the neighbor's houses, just two or three of them, to show how good she was looking since people were always interested in that. Her friends were, the ladies in the neighborhood.
Norma June tapped on the back door and tiptoed into the kitchen. "Yahoooo," she sang out, casual, like some woman coming by to borrow a cup of cornmeal. "Yahoooo, Suzanne, you home? It's me, Norma June. Wanted to show you my dress." And Suzanne barrelled out from the back of the house in her pedal pushers and her husband's shirt she was using for a maternity top and her flapping house shoes.
"Norma June Hartell. Let me look at you." And Norma June started twirling again. "Good gracious," Suzanne said, "if Cinderella went around in black dresses she could be you. Come in here, Jack," she yelled to her husband who was already on his way into the kitchen. "Come get a look at Norma June." Jack came in with his glasses on and a newspaper in his hand. He looked at Norma June still twirling around the kitchen, and nodded his head up and down.
"Doesn't she look pretty?" Suzanne said.
Jack just kept nodding. Then one of the babies started crying and Suzanne hurried to the back of the house, leaving Jack to see Norma June out. Norma June tiptoed out the kitchen door, smiling, and tossing her beer-flavored hair in Jack's face as he stood holding the screen door open for her. "Wish me a good time," she said.
"Have a good time."
"Oh, you know I will." Norma June started out across the yard. "Tell Suzanne
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I'll call her tomorrow and tell her everything." Jack nodded some more, and watched Norma June make her way to the next house where LuAnn and Blakney Steadman lived.
And when Norma June finally went back home to Barton, heavily dosed with admiration, she smiled and was almost mushy over him. She gave him little kisses and smoothed his hair with her hands, and straightened his tie that didn't need straightening.
When Barton and Norma June said goodnight to Tammy and Tony, Norma June patted Sunset, saying, "Be a good dog, Sunset, and look after the kids." And Barton bent over and whispered something in Tony's ear that made him smile and nod yes, then Barton said to Tammy, "Come here and give your daddy a kiss, little girl." And Tammy put her arms around Barton's neck and gave him a loud kiss you could hear. "That's a good girl." Barton said. "Your daddy loves you, baby." Then Barton and Norma June got in the car and drove off to the American Legion Hall or the Elk's Club or any place that had some music and liquor, and low lights or bright lightseither one. Any place where the people had sense enough to appreciate a good-looking woman.
Sometime after midnight Barton and Norma June came back home just a little bit drunk, or maybe more than just a little bit. Norma June took off her high heels and tried to tiptoe through the living room and back to the bathroom in her stocking feet so as not to wake up little Tammy and Tony who were sprawled out on the floor still in front of a jabbering TV with every light in the house on. The two of them, with the spread off Tammy's bed pulled over them, asleep on the hardwood floor, and Sunset there with them, her back-and-forth tail going. Norma June stepped lightly over the children, careful, in her unsteady, giddy, I-could-have-danced-all-night condition.
And Barton came in, stumbling behind her, with his shoes like those a big man wears. Shoes that sort of shake a floor. He reached down and scooped up the children, one in each arm with the bedspread drapped between them half on and half off. He carried them both back to their beds, flopped them down so gently they never even woke up, and he arranged their arms and legs some way that looked comfortable and pulled a sheet over them, and pulled the hair back out of Tammy's eyes. He did this with his whiskey breath and loud shoes. Aimed to place a wet kiss on each of their small faces, but was off target and kissed their hair, or an ear. Then Barton turned off the lights and went to bed himself, and waited on Norma June to take her makeup off and put her cream on. He always waited as long as he could.
II
When Tammy was almo
st twelve and Tony was nine, Barton lost his job at the meat-packing plant, but got another one within two weeks, traveling for Golden Flake Potato Chips. Had his own territory. They paid him by the mile, too. But
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it meant being gone most of the week, just coming home weekends, or sometimes being gone most of a weekend, too. But Barton made up for that. Made good money. Brought presents home from time to time. And in the summer when he could he took Tony with him on the road. A man and his boy doing a job for Golden Flake Potato Chips.
"Tammy," Barton would say when he left, "you take care of your Mama now. Hear me. And me and Tony will bring you something. What you want? A 45 record?"
"Doesn't matter," Tammy said.
"Look after your Mama now. Help her when you can."
When Norma June lost her Friday and Saturday nights to the potato chip company she took it all right. Better than anyone expected. Because, goodlooking woman that she was, she had friends. She had Suzanne and Jack next door, her best friends since the day they moved in. Suzanne that she whispered with at the line, hanging clothes, that she loaned a dress to every New Year's Eve until Suzanne gained all those extra pounds and couldn't fit into anything. And when Suzanne miscarried her second baby it was Norma June that lay down in the bed beside her and patted her back until she finally fell off to sleep. Patted her back like a soft little heartbeatand it helped some.
And Jack was a friend too, a quiet one, that didn't say much, but did not complain when Norma June gave Suzanne ammonia permanents in the kitchen which took four hours altogether and left supper so uncooked that Jack finally took the kids to Tastee Freeze for chili dogs. It was Jack that came up to Norma June's with a flashlight that time she heard funny noises at three o'clock in the morning and Barton was off in Moultrie. And it was Jack that went on and cut the grass for Norma June when her yard got to looking like a neighborhood embarrassment with Barton gone too much to keep it right. Jack would just go on and cut both yards as long as he was cutting.
Sometimes that first summer, when Barton and Tony were out on the road, Norma June got sort of dressed up and took Tammy out to a restaurant for supper. They would go someplace that had good fried fish and served half-price liquor to unescorted ladies. More than once they had got their whole dinner free. Good-looking Norma June and her daughter, Tammy, who wasn't but twelve but already showed signs of promise. Had those kissing eyes like her Mama. Soon as she was old enough to put some mascara on those eyes there wouldn't be no stopping the girl. People said that sometimes.
Once a man at the bar had walked right over to their table and picked up the check out from under a water glass, and when Norma June protested, he said, "Now, honey, don't argue. You and your sister here enjoy your supper. Y'all sure helped me enjoy mine."
And so Friday and Saturday nights kept on for Norma June, with or without Barton. From time to time when Barton came home, pulled up in the driveway like company coming, he'd get out with presents. Something foolish and useless
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for the kids that they always liked. Maybe nothing but some stalks of sugarcane to rot their teeth and make them sick. Maybe a record for the hi-fi, Purple People Eater or something. Once some coconuts with seashell feet, and crazy faces carved out and painted, and big earrings in each ear. But he brought Norma June presents in wrapped-up boxes, and she never unwrapped them so Tammy and Tony could see. She just took those presents and kissed Barton's face. Him eyeing her like he never saw her before in his life, his own wife, eyeing her while she goes to the back of the house and closes the door to open her presents.
"What you and your mama been up to?" Barton asked.
"Nothing," Tammy always said.
"Well, good," he said, grabbing Tammy up and swinging her around in the air, same as he did when she was six, same as he'd probably do when she was twenty-six. "Your daddy is glad to be home," he said. "Ain't no place like home. Ain't that right, Tony?"
"Naw," Tony said. "There's too many girls in this house when you're gone, Daddy. They run me crazy. I wish I could keep on going with you."
"You got to look after your mama and sister some," Barton said. "Women need a man to look after them, keep 'em out of trouble. That's your job when I'm gone."
"Tammy ain't no woman," Tony said.
"Well, she's gon' be. Soon as me and you blink our eyes a few more times your sister is gon' be a grown woman. Gon' be as pretty as her mama, and worry me to death like your mama did her daddy. 'Cause Tammy is just like your mama. Gets more that way by the minute. You can see that can't you, son?"
"No," Tony said.
Barton smiled at his daughterthe same smile he gave Norma June sometimesso Tammy recognized it, and knew to go to the refrigerator and get the man a cold beer when he smiled at her like that.
III
When Tammy was almost fourteen she started babysitting Jack and Suzanne's kids after school since Suzanne took a job at the hospital working the three-to-eleven shift. Tammy watched the kids until Jack came home, usually around seven, sometimes later. She got the kids their dinner, and Jack too. Sometimes he came home looking so tired and worn out that Tammy just stayed on and gave the kids their baths, got them into pajamas, and read them off to sleep. She was glad to do it.
Sometimes Jack sat at the kitchen table and smoked cigarettes and listened to Tammy read out loud. Other times he got a beer and went and sat in the living room with the newspaper, or watched TV until Tammy went in and said, "Jack, will you turn that thing down some. Your kids never will get to sleep with that
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thing blaring." She said that to a grown man and her not fourteen yet. And she liked it how Jack mumbled, "Sorry," and went over and turned the TV down. Sometimes turned it off. And put on the hi-fi, played Johnny Mathis or something nice like that that kids could go to sleep to.
And in her head Tammy started this game. It was about Jack and the kids. She played like it was her house, the kids were her kids, and Jack was her husband. Played it every day after school while she babysat. And when Jack came in from work she had him a place set, and some supper ready. Tomato soup maybe. Or tuna fish. And she kept things picked up, and mothered Jack's children like they were hers, because in the game they were.
When the kids got to sleep she straightened the kitchen and put the dishes away. Jack smoked cigarettes and sometimes took off his glasses. Tammy emptied his ashtray and talked to him as sweet as she could because she was practicing up for how it would be when things came true and she really did have her own house and kids and husband. Maybe a husband sort of like Jack, but probably not. Jack was sort of handsome, had hair so black it was almost blue (Suzanne always said he was part crowthe bird, not the Indian), and with his glasses off he had such nice eyes that Tammy could hardly look at him without being embarrassed. But he always seemed quiet and serious, like he was worried.
Sometimes she felt sorry for his kids. Half the time he forgot to pick up his little girls and swing them around when he came home from work. More than once Tammy had had to remind him to kiss them goodnightuntil she had just started bringing them in to him, the girls fresh out of the tub with their curly wet hair and Cinderella shorty pajamas, and Jackie, the baby, in his diaper with a bottle hanging from between his teeth and mismatched socks on his feet. She carried them in to Jack and sat them on his lapall four of themevery night, so he could love them and wrestle with them a few minutes and throw them up in the air and catch them. But it never happened just that way, mostly he sat quietly while the children swarmed over him, giggling, fussing, like so many pink puppies. Jackie always yanking at Jack's glasses, sometimes pulling them off. And when Jack said, in a too-loud voice, "Bedtime," then Tammy marched the children to their bedrooms and tucked them in, while Jack reached for a Kleenex tissue and began to clean his glasses.
So even though Jack was a good practice husbandfine for the make-believe life she was trying out every afternoon after schoolshe thought that when the time actually c
ame she would probably marry somebody more like Barton, big like that, and real nice. A man who would lie on his back on the floor, put his big feet on the soft bellies of her children, and fly them up in the air making airplane noises. A husband who brought secret wrapped up presents and called her "Babydoll," like her Daddy did her Mama.
