Most of us, me included, wet our pants.
So a person was better off keeping romantic information to herself around other Maloneys, because the dead ones had stern, unsmiling expectations and the live ones might scare the tea out of you when you least expected it.
What took place the next spring later became known among my relatives as The Day We First Saw It Coming. It had to do with me, Roanie, the McClendon sisters, Easter, and evil.
The McClendon sisters lived in a cluster of shabby little houses and trailers in the woods north of town, on a dead-end dirt lane named Steckem Road. I had access to a spectrum of lurid, half-baked gossip, so I’d done my share of snickering over Steckem Road’s whispered nickname. Stick ’Em in Road.
I knew it involved men and women and their private parts, plus I had a vague idea about what was being stuck where. I also knew, from remarks I overheard at home, that if any of my brothers ever so much as set foot on Steckem Road, Mama and Daddy would skin them alive.
Mama would have skinned her brother Pete if she could. It was a well-known fact, even among us kids, that our Uncle Pete Delaney spent half his time with the McClendon sisters on Steckem Road. I had heard enough about his notorious habits to know he was the shame of the Delaneys. That might explain why his boys, Harold and Arlan, were so mean. Embarrassment makes some people use hatefulness as a protection.
There were four sisters—Daisy, Edna Fae, Lula, and Sally. Daisy was the oldest, about thirty-five when I was seven, though her bleached yellow hair and the hard lines around her mouth made her look older. She had a husband, but nobody had seen him in years. She had two nearly grown sons who’d already run away from home and two scraggly, half-grown girls whom my Uncle William Delaney, the county judge, and my Aunt Bess Maloney, the county social worker, had sent to live elsewhere for reasons nobody explained to me.
Daisy spent most of her time with Big Roan Sullivan. In some strange way I think she loved him.
Edna Fae and Lula had had a whole pack of husbands, and the latest models looked like stray dogs waiting for a better offer. “You could throw a handful of marbles at Edna Fae’s and Lula’s tribe of children and not hit two that have the same daddy.” That’s what Grandpa said.
Sally McClendon was sixteen, the youngest of the sisters. She’d already dropped out of high school, and her main hobby was stealing makeup and perfume from my Aunt Jean’s Dime to Dollar Store, and I couldn’t fathom why she didn’t just buy the stuff, it was so cheap. But worst of all, Sally had a baby. A son. I couldn’t understand where she’d gotten him, with no husband around. I had heard that Sally was Uncle Pete’s favorite McClendon sister.
My Aunt Dockey Maloney said the McClendons were evil.
“Evil exists to teach us the difference between right and wrong.” That’s what Aunt Dockey told us, and she, being Uncle Bert’s wife, and him the minister of Mt. Gilead Methodist, was as good as a preacher herself, so she ought to know.
“God presents us with choices,” Aunt Dockey lectured at Sunday school and family get-togethers and any other time she had an audience. “He says, ‘Now here’s this path and here’s that path. Here’s a sin and here’s a virtue. And if we choose according to His commandments, we never go wrong.’ ”
Aunt Dockey made righteousness sound like comparison-shopping at a mall. So I understood why our town needed the McClendon sisters. They were a lesson in what happened when people ignored God’s shopping list. They survived on welfare checks and odd jobs, doing laundry and cleaning houses for people in town, supplemented by what they earned from the men who visited them. Uncle Pete, I decided, was just plain strange for wanting anything to do with such women.
When I was older, I understood that the McClendon sisters were poor, uneducated, and abused. But at seven I only understood that they aroused both pity and disgust in my family. Polish those feelings with well-intentioned religion and you get charity.
That’s how Easter got tied in with the whole mess.
I’m ashamed to admit that I already thought of Easter in terms of goodie baskets and egg hunts and frilly new dresses, not of solemn celebrations of Jesus ascending to Heaven. The mountains were speckled with white dogwood blossoms and the soft green palette of new leaves, the yards around our house burst into patches of yellow jonquils and red azaleas; the air smelled sweet and warm-cool, and the bugs hadn’t come out yet. There were calves and chicks and kittens and puppies to play with, and a whole new clan of wild, gray Peter Cottontails bouncing across the long driveway between the front fields, and the fields began to trade the empty brown surface of winter for a primer coat of green stripes.
I couldn’t be solemn. I was Mama and Daddy’s only daughter; I was the Easter princess. Everybody got new clothes to wear on Easter Sunday, but mine were special. Mama bought me a pale pink dress with imported lace at the neck and a skirt so ruffled that it stood out from my waist like a shelf. I had new white patent-leather shoes and sheer white knee socks with pink roses embroidered on the ankles and a broad-brimmed white straw hat with a pink ribbon that trailed halfway down my back.
The Saturday before Easter was egg-decorating day. If there’s one thing you have on a chicken farm, it’s eggs. The Monday after Easter, by the way, was egg-salad day.
We spent the whole Saturday in the kitchen, boiling eggs and dipping them in vinegar-scented pastel baths. Josh and Brady were too old and serious for egg decorating; Hop and Evan hung around but wouldn’t admit they wanted to participate, but Mama, Daddy, the old folks, and I decorated up a storm. No Fabergé designer for Russian royalty was ever more intense about egg art than we were.
We put some of the eggs in a dozen small Easter baskets along with candy and Bible pamphlets. Those baskets were for the poor McClendon children of Steckem Road. Aunt Dockey and Mama and some other church ladies delivered the baskets to them every year.
I raced downstairs in my nightgown on Easter morning. And there, in the center of the library table in the living room, sat my personal huge, pink Easter basket exploding with pink cellophane and pink bows and a soft pink poodle doll. Mama and Daddy peeked at me from the doorway.
I said dutifully, “Thank you for the poodle doll,” then shoved it aside and went for the good stuff—foil-wrapped marshmallow eggs, and marzipan chickens, and a giant chocolate rabbit with yellow marzipan eyes, all nestled in a bed of green cellophane grass. I tore the rabbit from his plastic wrapping and examined his molded perfection with my fingertips. I could already taste his richness, imagine his hollow innards, his delicious shape.
Evan strode into the room dressed in his blue Easter suit and white silk tie, his red hair slicked down, his white Bible in one hand. He was only twelve, but he was going through a holier-than-thou phase.
“This isn’t what Easter is about,” he announced. “I think we should wait.”
“Evan’s right,” Mama allowed. “Claire, don’t eat that candy until after church.”
I had the rabbit halfway to my mouth. Oh, temptation. Oh, interrupted greed. Oh, the sin of chocolate lust. Oh, bunny.
“Claire,” Daddy warned, drawing my name out.
“Oh, dammit,” I blurted out.
Doomed. Doomed the second that word passed my lips. The Lord had not risen so that Claire Maloney could say “dammit” over a chocolate rabbit.
Which is why I had to sit out the Easter egg hunt and donate my beloved basket, chocolate rabbit and pink poodle and all, to the McClendon children of Steckem Road. And I had to go there, too, with Mama and Aunt Dockey and the other ladies, on Easter afternoon, to see why I should be humble.
The McClendon place reminded me of Sullivan’s Hollow, with paper trash littering a bare-earth yard shared by a half circle of tiny, dilapidated houses and rust-streaked trailers. There were no flowers and no shrubs, and the forest cast long shadows on two ancient sedans with bald tires and duct tape plastered over their broken windows. Skinny dogs crept around, shy and standoffish, like the children. The porches sagged with junk. Edna Fa
e’s latest husband was stretched out on a couch under a tree. His mouth was open. He snored. His shirt was unbuttoned and he had one hand jammed down the front of his jeans.
“May the Lord bless us for our bounty and help us help those who cannot help themselves,” Aunt Dockey said as she pulled up the parking brake of her Cadillac.
“Amen,” Mama said.
“Please wash this place clean of sin,” intoned Sarah Kehoe, Mama’s first cousin, from the backseat.
“And please punish men who have ten dollars to waste,” added Mama’s older sister, Irene.
“That’s all it costs Pete each time?” asked Ruby O’Brien, Daddy’s cousin-in-law. I adored Cousin Ruby. She ran a dress shop and let her children draw on their bedroom walls. She was a little flighty and always blurted good questions in front of us kids.
“Let’s change the subject,” Mama said, glaring at Ruby. “Claire, you stay by the car. Hand out a few eggs if you want to. We’ll get the Easter baskets out of the trunk after we’re done inside.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I was relieved. I wouldn’t have to go into one of those foul-looking houses with them. Wouldn’t have to sit in a prayer circle.
“Talk to those kids about Jesus,” Aunt Dockey told me. “And make them say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ for the Easter eggs. Teach them some manners.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
We got out, and the ladies made a fuss over the rag-tail boys and girls, who shuffled their feet and didn’t answer but darted excited glances at me in my ruffled pink splendor and at the basket of Easter eggs I lugged from the backseat. I was glad I hadn’t worn my hat. I suddenly felt embarrassed, and depressed, and a little foolish.
Edna Fae and Lula and Sally strolled out to meet us. They were dressed in tight jeans and tight low-cut blouses, with lots of makeup on their faces. Sally had already been inducted into the McClendon big-bleached-hair club, and she had the kind of body that looked like ripe cantaloupes were stuffed in a thin paper sack. Edna Fae and Lula were intermediate versions of Daisy and Sally. Together the four of them would make a Dorian Gray gallery—Daisy’s tough, worn, cemented sensuality, Edna Fae’s and Lula’s fading freshness, and Sally—I knew exactly what Sally would look like eventually, after too much hard living had sucked the juice out of her.
I was so busy staring, I nearly dropped my basket of Easter eggs. “Well, ain’t you pretty?” Sally said to me in a sly, boisterous way. She leaned too close to me and grabbed a handful of my long hair and stroked her fingers through the curls, all the while staring into my face. “You look just like a strawberry shortcake with blue eyes. Them eyes. Bright as sapphires. You just take in the whole world with them eyes, don’t you? What you thinkin’, little queen?”
I was thinking, You mess with my hair again and I’ll give you a tittie twister, but I was already on thin ice with Mama, so I kept quiet.
Besides, Mama sidled over and got between us. Polite but cool as a little brown-haired lioness in a mauve suit and pumps. She didn’t say a word, but Sally backed off. Sally was scared of Mama and Mama’s sisters.
“Where’s Daisy?” Aunt Dockey asked. “Isn’t she going to participate in our prayer meeting?”
“Aw,” Edna Fae said, lighting a cigarette and nodding toward one of the houses. “She ain’t up to it.”
Lula giggled and covered her mouth.
Aunt Dockey got a flat-lipped, squinty look on her face and stared hard at the house. “I see. I’ll speak to her later.”
Mama took her box of charity food from the trunk, then bent close to my ear and whispered fiercely, “You stay by the car. Stay away from Daisy’s house, or I’ll skin you alive.”
Whoa. I was in the same league with my brothers. I nodded.
And then, unhappily, I was alone in the yard with a dozen grimy, barefoot kids ranging from my age on down to some who were barely old enough to walk, all of them staring at my basket as if they’d like to knock me down and take it.
“Y’all want to hear about Jesus?” I asked. Silence. I sighed. “Y’all want some Easter eggs?” Quick nods and outstretched hands.
I fished among the hard-boiled eggs and found the candy ones first, because every kid knows the real eggs are a disappointment once you get past the decorations. But the McClendon children didn’t care. They snatched candy eggs and real eggs with the same fervor, and admired them with wide eyes, and touched the decorations, and then tore off the wrappings and peeled the colored shells with dirty fingernails, and ate slowly, relishing every bite.
I was doubly ashamed of myself and mad at this awful place, this sad place and its left-out children, and I knew, for certain, that the McClendon sisters only put up with a bunch of praying rich women so that their kids could get a little free Easter loot. They were bartering with us, the same as they did with the men.
And I thought about Roanie, who was so proud, and how his daddy was so mean, nobody had ever dared go down to Sullivan’s Hollow to bribe him with Easter eggs. I was glad—shivering, goose-bumped thankful—that Roanie hadn’t been turned into a charity exhibit like the McClendon kids.
I heard a car coming down the dirt road, the rumble of an unmufflered engine, and lo and behold, as if he’d materialized from my thoughts, Roanie drove his daddy’s beat-up truck into the yard.
My mouth fell open. He was only twelve years old! Yet he rolled that vintage rattletrap into the yard and jerked it to a stop, and he pushed the door open and climbed out. Then he froze, staring at me with an almost painfully surprised expression. His T-shirt was dirty and his bare ankles showed between his jeans and his worn-out tennis shoes.
He was only twelve, and he’d driven to Steckem Road to visit the awful McClendon women. “What are you doing here?” I demanded hoarsely.
My accusing tone stamped the surprise out of his face. All emotion receded behind a flinty mask. At that moment the front door of Daisy’s house banged open.
Daisy ran out wearing a bra and a pair of cutoff jeans, her gold-plated hair tangled around her face. One of her eyes was swollen shut. “You come git him, Roanie! You come get that son of a bitch outta my bed! I ain’t gonna put up with his shit no more!”
The kids scattered like roaches when a light’s turned on. I stood rooted to the spot, fascinated and afraid. Roanie walked into the house with his fists clenched beside him and his head down. Daisy flew in behind him, cursing.
Oh, Mama, come out here and bring your pistol. That’s what I tried to shout, because I knew Mama had put her little .32 revolver in her purse, but my mouth wouldn’t work and neither would my feet. I was all ears, listening to Daisy’s muffled voice and the crashing noises, and then the low, slurred boom of Big Roan Sullivan’s voice. “Git out of my face, bitch, or I’ll hit you again.”
The door slapped open and Big Roan staggered out, lopsided on his metal leg, bare-chested, the waistband of his tan trousers hanging unfastened beneath his hairy beer gut. He was huge and black-haired and had a jaw like a bulldog’s. His bloodshot eyes settled on me and I froze. “Don’t need no Maloney starin’ at me,” he said loudly. “Hymn-singin’, Bible-thumpin’ hypocrites—don’t you look at me, you little fluffball.”
I backed against Aunt Dockey’s car and gaped at him. He staggered down the steps toward me.
“Leave her be, Big Roan,” Daisy ordered. “She’s just a little girl.”
“Shut up.” He limped forward, swinging his arms. “See that youngun over there?” Big Roan swung a hand toward a barefoot baby boy with light brown hair. Sally must have seen him from the other house, because she bolted outside and snatched the baby up.
“Big Roan, you stop!” she yelled. “He ain’t yours. Don’t you mess with him!”
He grunted at her. “I ain’t got nothin’ to mess with, you bitch. Gov’ment sent me off to fight and left me poor.” Big Roan swung toward me again. “Your daddy and his kind—gov’ment sent them where they’d be safe. I done their dirty work for ’em.” He slapped his metal leg. “I come back, what do
I get? A little piss-wad of gov’ment money and a free shithole for a home. You quit lookin’ at me! Quit it!”
Roanie ran out of Daisy’s house and down the warped wooden steps. He got between me and Big Roan. “Go on,” Roanie shouted. “Get in the truck.”
“Get out of my way, boy!”
“It ain’t her fault she’s rich,” Roanie said. “She ain’t done nothing to you.”
“Boy, when I want you to talk to me, I’ll beat some talk out of you!” Big Roan pointed at me, then at the baby boy in Sally’s arms. “Cain’t let a poor girl alone, can you? Cain’t even admit you done it. Just shit on her and her kid and pretend he ain’t worth nothin’.”
“You’re just mad ’cause he’s too good to be yours,” Sally screamed.
I thought I’d swallow my tongue. My knees shook. They were all crazy. Big Roan jabbed his finger toward the little boy. “That youngun, you know what he is? You ask your Uncle Pete. That there’s your fine Uncle Pete Delaney’s thrown-off bastard!”
My Uncle Pete’s? Daisy got between Sally and Big Roan. “Big Roan, keep quiet!” she mewled. “You want to git us all in trouble?”
Roanie made a sound like a wounded dog and shoved his daddy. Big Roan lost his lopsided balance and sprawled on the ground. Roanie stood over him. “Git up,” he said between clenched teeth. “Git up.”
“Don’t gimme no orders, boy!” Big Roan swept one thick arm out. He caught Roanie around the ankles and jerked his feet out from under him, and Roanie went flat on his back. The breath gushed out of him and he gasped. Big Roan rolled onto him in a flash, pinning him by the throat. “Don’tcha gimme orders, boy!”
Roanie coughed and struggled, latching both hands around Big Roan’s wrist. “Let him go!” Daisy shrieked. “You’re chokin’ him to death!”
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