The Sound of Gravel

by Ruth Wariner

  As our parents fought, the table shook against Aaron, who raised his arms for me to pick him up. But before I had the chance, Lane slammed Mom’s body hard onto the kitchen floor. I heard the dull sound of her head hitting the cement and saw her glasses fly into the puddle of milk.

  She screamed, and her hand reached for the place on her head that had made contact. “What the hell are you doing to me?” she shouted. “What are you doing to me?” Her eyes were swollen; she crawled frantically across the wet floor. “Kids, please help me find my glasses.” She continued to sob as her cotton blouse, now twisted up, revealed the elastic of her nursing bra and a purple scar from her C-section.

  Lane’s hands shook as he lifted his shirt, revealing a pale, round belly that hung over his brown leather belt. His face, as red as his shirt, stared down at his trembling hands as he reached underneath his stomach. Unfastening the silver buckle, he pulled his belt from the loops on his jeans in one motion.

  “If you’re gonna act like a big fat baby, then I’m gonna treat ya like one.”

  He pushed Mom back down and straddled her bare belly, slamming his knees against the floor. I watched in shock as her shoulders were thrown backward and her head hit the cement again. Aaron began wailing with his mouth wide-open and his eyes closed tight.

  “Stop it!” Mom yelled, lifting her head up. “Stop it, Lane. You hear me? Stop it right now!”

  His eyes and lips open wide, his teeth bared like a snarling dog’s, he pulled her back down by the hair. Matt picked up Aaron, and we all backed into a corner of the kitchen.

  To our horror, Lane lifted his belt and began lashing Mom’s bare belly, the leather exploding like gunshots as it snapped against her arms and shoulders. “I’ll stop it when you do what I tell you to do! You hear me?!” He whipped her again and again.

  Suddenly, Mom quit struggling. She covered her face with her hands and her body went limp, even as the lashings continued. She sobbed and screamed but no words of protest could be made out.

  It was a long time before the beating ceased, and longer still before Lane got off her. For an eternity he just sat there, red-faced and breathless. “That’ll show you who’s the boss around here.” He straightened his knees and stood straight up, still hovering over Mom’s motionless belly. As he wiped the sweat from his brow, she kept her face covered and wept loudly, her body shaking from the sobs.

  Lane put his belt back through the loops in his jeans and looked down at her one final time. “You shut up when I tell you to shut up. I gave the showerhead to Alejandra, and she’s gonna keep it.”

  “Get out of here! Get out of here, and don’t come back!” Mom cried out from underneath her palms. As if to obey her, Lane stepped over Mom’s body, walked right past us without so much as a glance, and slammed the door. The dark, wet sky rumbled with thunder while Mom lay on the kitchen floor and wept.

  We were all still frozen. Aaron’s screaming had turned into a sniffle. Audrey’s rocking had stopped. The house was quiet except for the sound of Mom crying, the rain falling, and the roof leaking.

  Finally, she sat up on the floor and looked around, still without her glasses. Matt picked them up, rinsed and handed them to her. They fit more tightly on her now-swollen face. She thanked him weakly and pushed herself up from the floor, righted the fallen chair, and slid it under the table. She picked up Aaron, carried him from the kitchen, and called out to us over her shoulder in a hoarse voice.

  “You kids have bread and milk for dinner. And, Ruthie, will you bring me a bottle for Meri?”

  With that, she lifted up the tattered sheet and walked down the hall to her bedroom.

  9

  The potholes filled with rain overnight, and Matt, Luke, and I kept our heads down as we sidestepped muddy puddle after puddle during our long walk to school the next morning. None of us had seen Mom since she’d left the kitchen, and no one said a word about the incident the night before. We didn’t even look at each other. Mom and Lane had argued before, but he’d never beaten her like that.

  At morning recess, I couldn’t concentrate, not even while standing in line for hopscotch. I kept throwing my stone marker outside the lines, hopping in the wrong circle or square, and had to keep repeating my turns. Natalia and Brenda asked if I was okay, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell them what had happened. As I fumbled my way to the end of the hopscotch line one more time, I found myself behind a stocky, blond girl who turned around and smiled as if she knew me. She was taller and in an older grade. I had seen her on the playground before.

  “Is your name Ruthie?” she asked in a sweet, high-pitched tone.

  I looked up, a little taken aback that the girl knew my name. The sun had started to peek through the clouds, and I had to squint to keep the light out of my eyes while studying her.

  “Yes.”

  “Is your mom’s name Kathy?”

  “Yes,” I said, not feeling much like chatting but curious nonetheless. “How do you know my mom?”

  “My mom knows your mom.”

  “Oh.” We moved up the line. It was almost my turn again.

  I watched as the tall girl put her hand over her eyes, spying something off in the distance. It was Luke playing basketball. He looked as clumsy and disoriented as always, taking wide steps across the court with his tongue sticking straight out of his mouth, his muddy shoelaces untied, only half of his blue T-shirt tucked into his jeans. The tall girl giggled with her hand over her mouth. For the first time, I felt embarrassed to have a brother like Luke.

  “Hey, Ruthie,” she said, laughing, “is it true that your mom has lots of retarded kids?”

  I turned away from the game and stared back into the sun. “What do you mean?”

  “My mom told me that your mom has lots of retarded kids,” she repeated slowly. “That they’re kinda stupid and have lots of problems.”

  I blinked, rubbed at my temples with my fingertips, and tried to count the number of problem kids in my family. Audrey must be one, and maybe Luke was another. Meri was too little to tell, but Mom did say that Meri had trouble knowing how to suck. To me, Aaron seemed pretty smart for a little boy. He was learning to talk and he always made Mom laugh. Matt was definitely smart. He could read. Then again, he might be retarded too because he got carsick a lot. I didn’t know.

  “Oh, my gosh, Ruthie.” The tall girl giggled again and slapped her leg. “Are you retarded too?”

  It stung, hearing that, and I thought I would cry. Maybe I was retarded. The thought of it terrified me and made me wonder about the times Mom had called me stupid and how everyone seemed to understand Spanish except me.

  “Hey, Ruthie, it’s your turn,” yelled someone from behind me. I turned around and pushed my feelings deep down. No way was I going to cry in front of my friends. “Hurry, Ruthie. It’s your turn,” someone else said. I hopped forward, stepped on the line, and was out right away. The tall, blond girl laughed at me. I went back to the end of the line and folded my arms across my chest. I didn’t want to play anymore.

  As if on cue, the sound of a sputtering engine startled me out of my thoughts. Tracing the noise to its source, I was surprised to see Mom’s Microbus stopped across the highway from school. I couldn’t believe the bus was working! I couldn’t remember the last time Mom had driven it. When the traffic cleared, she sped over the highway and into the school’s muddy driveway. Her tires splashed water everywhere as they came to an abrupt stop. From the playground I could see Audrey in the front seat and Aaron standing in the back, waving at me and smiling with bright red cheeks and his thumb in his mouth, still wearing his baby-blue pajamas. Meri was in her car seat next to him, wrapped in pink baby blankets. All the schoolkids turned around to look at the Microbus. We weren’t used to having people drive up in the middle of the school day.

  I looked for Matt and Luke on the basketball court, caught their eyes, and we all started to run toward Mom. She didn’t even turn the engine off. She just opened her door, stood up with her feet on t
he running board, and popped her head out over the van’s white roof.

  “Kids,” she yelled. “Get your stuff. We’re leaving.”

  “Mom said to get our stuff,” I reiterated to the boys. We hurried into our classrooms, grabbed our pencils and notebooks, threw them into our plastic schoolbags, and ran back out to the van. I was so glad to get out of school, I splashed right through the mud puddles, and when I threw open the sliding door, it felt lighter than ever before. My shoes, socks, and pant legs were soaked, but I didn’t care.

  I picked Aaron up, scooted him over on the other side of Meri, and took his seat by the door. Matt and Luke jumped onto the seat behind me, and I slammed the door closed. The tires splashed through a puddle as Mom sped out of the driveway. I waved good-bye to Natalia and Brenda and looked at Mom’s reflection in the rearview mirror; her face looked sticky, red, and swollen. She had obviously been crying more.

  I looked at Audrey, who had a deck of worn-out playing cards in her lap. Then I knew we were going on a trip. “Hey, Mom, where we gonna go?”

  She glanced at me through the rearview mirror. “We’re gonna go live with Grandma and Grandpa for a while.” Her voice was scratched and weak. “Do you kids want to go live with Grandma and Grandpa in California for a while?”

  “Yes!” my brothers and I screamed simultaneously.

  Mom never slowed down, not even for the wet potholes, and I had to hold on to the door to keep myself from being knocked to the floorboards. “When are we gonna leave, Mom?” I asked.

  “Is Lane coming with us?” Matt added.

  Her voice was stern. “We’re leaving now. I want you to get your clothes ready right when we get home.”

  “Is Lane coming with us?” Matt asked again.

  “No, he’s gonna stay with Alejandra and Susan. I’m leavin’ him.” At this, she started to cry and fished out a tissue from the blue Kleenex box between the seats. “They can have him. He doesn’t love me, and I’m nothin’ to that man but a baby-makin’ machine.” Tears now streamed down her cheeks from underneath her glasses, and she blotted them with the tissue.

  “Thank God Lane’s not comin’,” Matt said with a nervous, quick laugh while he chewed on the nail of his pinkie finger.

  “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, Matt,” Mom said.

  “Yeah, Matt, don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” I repeated.

  “Oh, be quiet, Ruthie,” my brother shot back.

  As soon as we got home, we crammed our clothes into plastic bags and threw them into the back of the van. Mom flattened the gray vinyl seats and packed them with quilts so we could lie down if we wanted. She bolted out of the driveway as if she couldn’t get away from that house fast enough, and within a few short minutes we were on the highway headed for the Texas border. I gave Meri a bottle while I lay on the quilts and looked outside the window. I couldn’t stop thinking about how we would get to see my cousins more often. They wouldn’t be as far away from Grandma and Grandpa as they were from LeBaron. A rainbow rose from a mesquite field in the distance and split the gray clouds in the sky. I imagine it had been there all morning but I’d been too sad to notice it. Seeing it now, I took it as a sign from God, a sign that everything was going to be okay.

  PART II

  BABYLON

  Clockwise from left: Luke, Matt, Audrey, Meri (on Mom’s lap), Aaron, and me.

  10

  Magically delicious. That’s how I would later come to think of the time we spent in Strathmore, the tiny San Joaquin Valley town where my grandparents lived. I first heard the phrase from the Lucky Charms leprechaun on TV, who ended each commercial for his cereal with “They’re magically delicious.” I agreed! Before we went to live with my grandparents, I had started each day eating mush. Suddenly, pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, and green clover marshmallows were among my oats in the morning.

  Once we pulled out of LeBaron, Mom drove continuously, all that day, night, and well into the next morning, straight through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, until at last the Microbus was enveloped in San Joaquin’s thick, white fog. Matt and I pressed our faces against the chilly windows, seeing nothing but white as the ebb and flow of farming smells indicated a succession of rural communities along the two-lane highway. Here and there, what looked like giant, gray robotic chickens would appear—Mom said they were oil derricks—pecking at the earth before disappearing into the mist.

  When we arrived in Strathmore, it felt as if we had dropped into a town in the middle of an orange grove; the air was thick with the scent of sweet orange blossoms. The neat, orderly rows of small, rectangular homes looked like an Emerald City, and at its center was my grandparents’ olive-green, three-bedroom house. The manicured, lime-green front yard had two oak trees that framed the house perfectly. Grandma kept a flowerbed of orange and yellow marigolds next to the front door, along with neat green shrubs, and pink roses under the living-room and guest-room windows. From the first time I saw it, I felt warmed from the inside out.

  Mom balanced Meri on one arm and reached for the shiny silver screen door, but before she could knock, Grandpa surprised us by pulling it wide-open. His gray eyes twinkled as he gazed at what must have been quite a sight—seven nomads, dirty, hungry, and exhausted.

  “Well, hello there.” His smile was wide enough for us to see the full extent of his perfectly straight dentures, and his voice was raspy from an old smoking habit. What little hair he had was greased back from his forehead, gray streaks across a pink landscape. “Come on in!” His shoulders shook with a short laugh, and his eyes flashed like a playful child’s. His voice was tinged with hints of a Texas twang, a legacy of his boyhood in Plano, where he’d been one of ten children in a monogamous Mormon family.

  Grandpa gave Mom a one-armed squeeze and welcomed each of us as we walked through the door. Then he leaned forward, gently grasped Meri’s opalescent face with a red, leathery hand, and kissed her forehead. “She’s a pretty baby, Kathy.” He patted Mom on the back gingerly.

  My grandpa kept the thermostat at seventy-five degrees minimum, so their house was always warm—so different from the barrel heater and drafty walls we had known in LeBaron. My grandparents’ brown-and-white-speckled carpet—as opposed to our cracked concrete floor—made us feel cozy, insulated from the outside world. The house even smelled warm, like a breakfast of maple syrup, waffles, butter, and coffee.

  Grandma stood in the kitchen, where she had been preparing breakfast, her thin forearms crossed over a pale blue housedress that she wore with matching slippers. Behind her, morning sunlight streamed through the window and lit up the big, white curls on her head like a halo. She met Mom where the living room started and the kitchen ended and said, “Well, hello there,” echoing Grandpa. She closed her eyes behind silver-framed bifocals while she hugged her daughter. They separated, and for a moment Grandma held Mom at her shoulders and seemed on the edge of giving a speech. Instead, her arms went limp and dropped to her side. “You must be tired, Kathy.” Grandma took Meri from Mom’s arms and Mom started to cry, her shoulders shaking. She dropped her purse to the floor, collapsed onto the living-room couch, bowed her head, and rested it in her palms. I watched her and didn’t understand how she could be crying when I was so happy.

  Grandma’s eyes resisted a glance in her daughter’s direction and remained fixed on Meri. Grandma’s eyes were watering too. “Oh my gosh, Kathy, this little baby girl looks just like a movie star. She even has a mole over her lip like an actress in an old movie.” Now tears rolled down Grandma’s cheeks, though she still refused to look up. “I swear she’s one of the most beautiful babies I’ve ever seen, and I’m not just sayin’ that because she’s my grandbaby.” Grandma bent forward and buried her face in the bundle of blankets that swaddled Meri.

  I watched as Mom patted her eyes with a Kleenex one final time before putting on her glasses. She seemed unable to look at anyone else in the room, her head hung forward, her shoulders slouched. Grandpa sat quietly in his l
eather La-Z-Boy chair with his head in his hand, his eyes wide and vacant, as if he didn’t have a clue what to say.

  11

  The following Monday morning, we woke up to Grandpa’s alarm clock instead of a rooster’s crow. Its soul-shattering buzz didn’t so much wake us as shock us to life. Then, another shock: we had to go to a new school. The house already smelled like hot coffee by the time I was out of bed. I dressed and went to the kitchen for breakfast and found Grandpa slumped over the oval, faux-oak kitchen table with a mug of coffee at his side and his face hidden behind the newspaper. Grandma looked hunchbacked as she fried her husband an egg on the stove. Toast popped out of a white plastic toaster. My grandparents looked at us and said good morning with smiles. Grandma asked each of us what we wanted for breakfast. I chose cornflakes with sugar and milk.

  “Pass the lechee, please,” giggled Grandpa, who never tired of mispronouncing leche if he thought it might get a laugh, which it always did, at least from those of us under the age of ten.

  Not until I’d almost finished my second bowl of cereal did Mom stride into the kitchen with her navy-blue purse straps already over her shoulder. She had on mascara and pearl-pink lipstick, and her hair was curled back. “You kids ready to go school?” she asked as she bit her pearl-pink lip. Matt, Luke, and I stood up from the table, picked up our jackets off the arm of the love seat, and followed Mom outside the front door.

  I had to squint to keep the bright California sun from stinging my eyes as we made our way to Strathmore Elementary, which sat directly across the street from Grandpa and Grandma’s. The walk hardly took a minute, but it was long enough to catalog a lifetime of differences between our new home and our house in LeBaron. In LeBaron, our walk to school had been along dirt and gravel roads lined on each side by sharp barbed-wire fences with crooked wooden posts. My brothers and I had walked with our heads down as we avoided potholes, kicking stones with the tips of our tennis shoes. We’d watch cows graze in green fields of the surrounding farms, picking up friends as we got closer to school, and walking with them the rest of the way. We didn’t know anyone but Grandpa and Grandma in Strathmore. Instead of pastures and cows, we saw sidewalks, shiny chain-link fences, a crosswalk with bright white stripes, and stop signs so new they looked glossy.