The Hollow Ground: A Novel

by Natalie S. Harnett

  “Stepmother,” Jerry corrected as he crossed back to his lawn chair. From the cheese platter he grabbed a wedge of Swiss. “Have some,” he said to Aunt Janice. As he dropped it on her plate, he growled, “Shut your mouth.”

  Aunt Janice took a swig from her second spiked tea. “Matter of fact it has the same cuts as the glasses we got from your cousins,” she said. “The ones who started a fight in the bathroom?” She looked again from me to Ma, her expression both hopeful and silly as if she were delivering a joke. “What a mess our wedding turned into. You should have seen it.”

  “Would have loved to have had you there,” Uncle Jerry said. He frowned at Ma and added, “If only I’d known where you were. All those years…” His words trailed off and he pondered the tea in his paper cup as if it swirled with leaves to read. When he looked up his eyes became like the tea, a kind of orangey brown that looked a bit like mine. “Just think of it, Dolores, if Little Jerry hadn’t been hit by that car and the two of us hadn’t been in the paper, you and I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

  “A miracle,” Aunt Janice said, shooting a loaded look at Uncle Jerry and pressing her hands together in a triangle of prayer. She wagged her head and tried to catch Ma’s eye, but failing that, snagged mine. She stared deeply at me and described the car that whammed into Little Jerry as he was crossing the street on his bicycle. “He just got up and walked away. Just a few scrapes. We came so close, so close to—” Unable to complete the thought, Aunt Janice dropped her hands, which upset her plate and knocked one of her cheese chunks to the ground.

  Uncle Jerry leaned over, picked up the piece of cheese, and flung it behind the chestnut tree. “For Chrissake, Janice, boys ride their bikes in the street all the time. It’s not my fault he got hit.”

  Right then Daddy stepped out from the tree shadows at the edge of the field. He waved to us and walked in that light, loose way of his, body leaning to the left, toward his bad arm.

  Uncle Jerry stood, stating how good it was to meet Daddy, but his tone still carried the sounds of complaint. He gripped Daddy’s hand, then thwacked him on the back, and Daddy practically danced away from him, his handsome face quirking a smile. Aunt Janice lowered her head as if she were tilting her bun toward him in greeting and he bent down to deliver a sloppy kiss onto the rim of her jaw. Head tilted back, she raised her eyes as if she might find an escape hatch in the chestnut branches crisscrossing above, but the dimples pocking her cheeks hinted that she enjoyed the attention.

  “Ain’t that hairdo pretty,” Ma said, nodding toward Aunt Janice. “Looks like a hamburg bun perched right on top of her head,” Ma added.

  Aunt Janice’s skin turned the faintest shade of bubble gum, making me feel extra bad for her. She hesitantly laughed, mouth quivering, and tilted her head which made her hamburger bun doo aim straight at Uncle Jerry. She knew she was being made fun of but couldn’t figure out why.

  Daddy maneuvered one of the aluminum folding chairs so that when he sat his knee almost touched Aunt Janice’s. I kissed Daddy hello and then sat on the grass by his feet, noticing he smelled of cigarettes and that wintergreen smell of the breath mints he’d sucked when he’d been drinking whisky.

  “How lucky am I?” Daddy said. “I get to sit near all the pretty girls.”

  Aunt Janice giggled nervously and Uncle Jerry grunted, but you could tell he wasn’t listening. He told us he’d served two tours in Korea and his eyes went kind of blank when he found out that Daddy’s mining accident had kept him out of that war.

  “Now let’s not go talking about no war on a day nice as this,” Ma said, swatting at flies. She offered a platter of sandwiches first to Aunt Janice, then to Uncle Jerry, telling me to serve the salads. When she handed Uncle Jerry a napkin, the pink eye shadow she’d used matched the rush of blood heating up her cheeks. “One day we’ll have you over to our home,” she said. “Soon as we have one, that is.”

  Uncle Jerry took a bite of a ham hoagie and as he chewed, said, “Well that’s something I wanted to discuss with you. With both of you. I’ve got a job in mind. At my dealership. It could work out well for you, Adrian. It’s not that.… physical. Paperwork and staying on top of the cars that come in. For repairs and cleaning. You’d be in charge of two guys. Good guys.” He turned to Daddy and swallowed, his lip raised in that partial sneer. “During the week you could live with us. Come back here on weekends. Till you get on your feet. Then bring the whole family down.”

  Aunt Janice quickly added, “Once you find a place of your own.” Fast as lightning Uncle Jerry zapped her a look that bolted her upright. “We have so little room was all I meant,” Aunt Janice explained.

  “I don’t want to move,” Brother cried from the boulder where he and Jerry perched, each with caps on, each flicking the lettuce shreds and tomato off their sandwiches.

  “Shut your mouth,” Ma said. Then smiling at Uncle Jerry she added, “Why, John Patrick, you’d be near your little cousin. And we could stay there permanent like. For good.” Ma wiped at her eyes and said the heat was making them dry but we could all tell they were wet with tears.

  Daddy didn’t say a word. He played with a pickle spear, like it was a cigar, and did his Groucho Marx imitation. “I couldn’t possibly take a job. After all, where would I take it?”

  “If it works out,” Uncle Jerry said, “you might get to run your own dealership. I’ve got plans in the works to set up another in Mechanicsburg.”

  Daddy bit the pickle and Ma said, “Ah, a job” as if she were saying “Hallelujah” and I knew she was thinking about never having to work at a mill and being like the ladies who lived in the mansions on the north side of town.

  “I’d be right there,” Uncle Jerry said, “making sure everything went smooth. Nothing to it, really. You’ll get the hang of it quick.” Uncle Jerry glanced over at Daddy, who was nodding but seemed more interested in rearranging the ham and salami on his roll than in discussing the job.

  “Any job that has nothing to it sounds like my kind of work,” Daddy said, winking at me.

  “How ’bout presents?” Ma said. “Huh, Brigid?”

  I knew Ma was looking to distract Daddy from saying anything further about the job for fear Uncle Jerry would take back the offer, but I didn’t like the thought of Daddy being away from us all week and I was hoping he’d say something more to blow his chances.

  “Look at her.” Ma laughed. “Little Miss Something Else. Trying to pretend she don’t care what present she got. Trying to pretend she’s cucumber cool.” With a flourish Ma presented the foot-long box to me, placing it in my arms like a baby.

  I turned the box over and slid my finger into the slit where the pretty rose paper was taped so that I could pluck the tape from the paper without damaging it.

  “Oh, look at her,” Ma said. “Rip it. We don’t need to save paper.” Ma rolled her eyes as if she hadn’t screamed every birthday and Christmas—“Careful! You think I’m made of paper?”

  I made one practice rip and when Ma didn’t say anything, I shredded it all, letting the pretty waste fall to the ground. When I turned the box over, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Inside the cellophane window of the box was a doll who looked just like Lady Maribel, the doll Ma had made me leave behind in Centrereach because we didn’t have room for her in the car. This doll though didn’t have a chipped nose or ripped lace trim. She had blinking blue eyes and the most beautiful satin dress I’d ever seen. My fingers went limp. It was the nicest present Ma had ever bought me. I felt as soft and pliable as the cloth body of the doll.

  “Show her to Aunt Janice,” Ma insisted, her face tight with impatience. “And to Uncle Jerry. Go on.”

  “She looks like you,” Aunt Janice said and Ma laughed. The doll didn’t look anything like me with her fair unfreckled skin and long golden hair. Uncle Jerry barely nodded at it and then Ma took it from my hands. “Eat your cake,” she said. “Don’t want her getting dirty. You can play with her later.” Ma sealed the doll back up in th
e box and placed it up against one of the tree’s big knotted roots.

  I knew better than to whine but I couldn’t take my eyes from the box even as Aunt Janice handed me a gift. Without waiting for Ma’s approval I ripped at the pink and white paper Aunt Janice had wrapped it in. “Chutes and Ladders,” I lamely declared, putting the game to the side. “Thanks.”

  “Open it,” Ma cried with exaggerated excitement.

  “But I play this all the time with Brother.”

  “No, she don’t,” Ma said.

  “Sorry,” Aunt Janice said, meeting my eyes. “We thought you were younger.”

  “Believe me, she acts a heck of a lot younger than her age,” Ma said, mouth drawn tight like she was sitting at her sewing machine, clenching pins between her teeth. To me she said, “Thank your uncle Jerry, too.”

  “Sure, sure.” Uncle Jerry said. “She’s welcome.” For the first time his tea-colored eyes focused on my face. “You know I think she looks a little like Mama. And like you, Doe.”

  “No,” Ma said, “we all know who she looks like.”

  Uncle Jerry narrowed his eyes at me. “Yeah. A bit.”

  “Who?” I said. “Who do I look like?”

  Ma handed me a plastic bag filled with garbage and nodded toward the pothole. “Go dump it,” she said to me. Then to Uncle Jerry, “I’ll tell you who really look alike. Little Jerry and John Patrick.”

  All the adults turned to look at the boys who’d wandered over to the pothole and were busy throwing rocks and trash into it.

  “Be careful, Little Jerry,” Aunt Janice called. “Don’t go falling in.” Her voice seemed to get swallowed up by the sounds of sobs choking the air. We all turned in astonishment to Uncle Jerry, who sat wiping at his eyes with the back of his big meaty hand. His voice got all phlegmy as he said, “I always felt so bad. I should have tried harder to find you.”

  “Nah, don’t feel bad,” Ma said. “You was too young.” Bending her fingers she pretended to admire her extra long, extra red nails. “’Course you could have found me later when you was a little older. But maybe you didn’t even know where they put me?” From Ma’s squint I could tell she was testing him.

  “When I was little they wouldn’t tell me where you’d gone. I kept asking and they wouldn’t say a thing. So I stopped asking.” He lowered his head in shame. “It wasn’t until I was out of high school, had just gotten engaged, as a matter of fact”—he glanced at Aunt Janice who was staring down at her clasped hands as if she expected something terrible to spring out from between her fingers—“It wasn’t until all those years later that I asked again. Pop said he couldn’t even remember the name of the orphanage. I don’t know whether that was true or not. But Mom, I mean Stepmother, remembered.”

  “I bet she did,” Ma declared in the voice she used to talk about the factory ladies she hated.

  Uncle Jerry wiped at his nose with a napkin. “All the orphanage would tell me was that you’d left. They didn’t know where. Did you run away? I’d guessed you had.”

  Ma’s face scrunched the way Brother’s did when he was about to bawl, but she busied herself putting away different foods. “I can’t believe you went looking for me,” she said. “That we missed each other. All those years.” Ma’s voice carried such loss that I involuntarily swallowed, as if I could swallow that pain for her. “You know something,” she said. “I don’t know if you got one to spare, but I’d love to have a photo of Ma. I used to have one. But it got stole from me. The day after I left the orphanage it got stole.”

  Uncle Jerry reached for the thermos of spiked iced tea and poured some all the way to the rim of his cup. “You bet. Absolutely. I’ll make a trip to—” He sipped the drink, smacked his lips and sighed. “I’ll take a trip to Elsie’s. She has the rest of Mama’s things. You can have whatever you want.”

  “How could you leave them there with her?” And when Ma said her, spit shot out from her mouth. “How could you not take them with you?”

  Uncle Jerry’s bottom lip thrust forward. “When Pop died, I don’t know. I never thought of it.”

  “So the bastard’s dead?” Ma looked up at a cloud shaped like two wolves kissing.

  “Looks like a storm’s brewing,” Daddy said. “Think we’d better pack it up.”

  Aunt Janice readily agreed but Uncle Jerry stayed quiet.

  “Did he suffer?” Ma said. “I’m his daughter, like it or not. I got a right to know.”

  Uncle Jerry described a slow wasting death filled with pus and bed-wetting.

  “Good.” Ma nodded, satisfied. And Uncle Jerry looked off toward the woodsy acres behind us, squeezing his clasped hands so hard his fingers turned red.

  * * *

  That evening, back at the house, we all picked at one of Gram’s bready meat loafs. Gramp and Daddy made meager conversation about football and the rest of us ate in silence. The energy that had made Ma talk nonstop that morning had turned into something else and me, Brother, and Daddy shared warning looks to keep out of her path.

  “What’s everybody’s problem?” Gram said. She had an elasticized pink hairnet stuck to her head with curlers nesting below it that looked like creepy fat caterpillars. “Don’t know what you thought would happen meetin’ your brother, Dolores. If he ain’t been there for you in the past, he ain’t goin’ be there for you now. Anyways, you two don’t know each other from two holes in the wall. ’Course things ain’t goin’ be sweet and nice between you.”

  Ma fiddled with her fork, her downcast eyes showing all the cracks in her eye shadow. Hours ago her hair spray had wilted and now her hair just drooped against her head. “Ain’t nothing sweet and nice with you, Rowena. We all know that.” Ma pushed back from the table and walked out the front door. We could see her through the window, pacing the walk, cigarette in hand, part of West Mountain glowing red behind her. Gram made as if to go after her until Daddy growled, “Mother.”

  “Leave alone,” Gramp said and Gram harrumphed but stayed seated at the table.

  After I finished the dishes, I escaped to my room, eager to play with my doll. Carefully I lifted her from the box and placed her on the desk. I couldn’t believe she was mine. I combed my fingers through her bright yarn hair and stroked the lace of her dress, hoping some of what made her pretty might rub off on me. I got so lost in fantasy that I never heard Gram open the door but there she was suddenly yelling at me, “What in the Lord’s name are you doin’?”

  “You said you’d knock,” I accused.

  Gram stepped in and looked suspiciously from me to the doll. “Twelve years old! Would you believe it?” Wearily she shook her head and sat on the lower bunk, my bunk, where she then gazed up at the empty space where Ma’s mattress used to be. She turned as best she could over her hump and clucked her tongue at Daddy’s werewolf poster as if she’d never seen it before. “I’ll tell you somethin’, girl. At twelve my mother wasn’t just hangin’ around playin’ with no doll. She was already out in the world earnin’ a livin’! Alone! The orphanage wouldn’t keep the girls past twelve years old. Twelve! There she was, just a young girl with no place to go. Nothin’ to eat. But she knew she had an aunt all the way over in Limerick. She was up near Dublin. That’s the other side of Ireland! Took her nearly a year of cleanin’ people’s houses to save the money to get there. And when she did, she knocked on her aunt’s door and told her aunt—her father’s sister, mind you—who she was, and as soon as she said her name, you know what that woman did?”

  “No,” I said, but I already felt the hurt of it, even though I didn’t know Gram’s ma, my great-grandma at all.

  “That woman, her father’s sister, acted like she had no idea who my mother was. Her own niece. Her brother’s daughter. ‘Mary Farmer?’ she said. ‘Don’t know that name at all.’ She called my mother a beggar and chased her off with a broom. A broom! And here you are with a doll. Doin’ who knows what when the door’s closed.”

  Her eyes were full of blame as she looked down at my fingers poi
sed in midstroke on the doll’s dress. Dumbfounded, I gazed down at my hand, wondering what terrible capabilities rested within it.

  Just then Ma breezed in. “I need a nap, Brigid,” Ma said, acting as if Gram wasn’t even there. “So shut the door and don’t let nobody in.”

  “Some people just don’t appreciate what they got,” Gram said, stomping her foot. She then walked out, leaving the door open so Ma would have to shut it, which Ma did with a slam. Ma sat on my mattress and wearily shook her head. Then her pretty face contorted in pain. She pointed at the doll. “Who told you to take her out?” In two quick paces Ma grabbed the doll. “I told you not to get her dirty. How can I return her if she looks all used?”

  “Return her?” I cried. Ma placed the doll on my bunk and began to carefully place her back in the box. My voice didn’t sound like my own as I said, “But you gave her to me. You said she was mine.”

  “Mine? Listen how selfish you sound.” Ma closed the box and the doll stared stone-facedly out at me through the little cellophane window. I tried to keep my voice calm, knowing it was the best way to handle Ma, but still I whined, “Please, Ma. I’ll do anything. I’ll stay in my room. I’ll do all the chores. I want to keep her so bad.”

  But as soon as I said that last part about wanting, I knew I’d said the wrong thing. Ma often said she couldn’t stand it when I got impatient, but I knew that wasn’t what she meant. We’d learned, Daddy and me especially, to pretend in front of Ma not to want what we wanted. That’s what she wanted—as confusing as that sounds.

  “Keep your voice down,” Ma said. “You know we can’t afford no doll. Don’t act like you don’t know. I do the best I can. The. Best. I. Can.” With each word, Ma thrust her thumb at herself. Then she started to cry. She glanced at the door with as much disdain as if the rectangle of wood was Gram herself. “You think I’d be here if it wasn’t for you kids. I’m sacrificed so you kids have a roof. Your daddy don’t do that. I do that.”