The Hollow Ground: A Novel

by Natalie S. Harnett

“Sure, Dolores, sure,” Uncle Jerry called up to her. “You rest as long as you want.”

  For what felt like hours me and Ma sat on Ma’s bed playing gin rummy. Through the window we could see Brother playing with his toy cars in the tree house Uncle Jerry had built. The tree house was two floors and wedged cockeyed into the branches of the mulberry tree. The boards of the house were streaked with purple and white bird poo and resembled one of those modern dot paintings Gram said wasn’t worth the board it was painted on. We played cards until the sun became a golden ball between the mulberry branches and Aunt Janice called, “Supper’s ready.”

  Ma sent me down alone and we picked at the platter of hamburgers and franks in silence for so long that I found my foot tapping the rhythm of the ticking clock.

  Eventually Stepma carefully placed her fork and knife at the top of her plate and her eyes combed over me. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Bullcrap,” Uncle Jerry said with a smile frightening in its scope. “Janice should have mentioned it is all.”

  Aunt Janice slowly chewed her last bit of frank like a cow working on its cud. “I thought I—”

  But when she got a look at Uncle Jerry’s face she didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Hate for there to be any problems,” Stepma said.

  “No problem,” Uncle Jerry said and then he went on to complain about the president. “Those Kennedys and their civil rights,” he said. “I’d like to see those freedom fighters get in a real fight. It’s gotten to the point where you can’t turn on the television without hearing somebody boo-hoo over colored’s rights.”

  Aunt Janice’s face went as smooth and white as the porcelain cups she served the coffee in. She shook her head in amazement. “And only a hundred years ago they were slaves.”

  Uncle Jerry nodded, “That’s right, Janice. That’s right. And believe me we’re looking at a time in our future when the white man won’t be top dog anymore. And it’s not as far away as you’d like to think. It’ll be in our lifetime. You wait and see.”

  Uncle Jerry looked at Stepma for agreement but all she did was sigh and move her eyes up toward the ceiling. It was right then I guessed she was thinking about Ma and I felt a little bad for her.

  After dessert I played with Brother in the yard. Dusk was still a ways off but the sun had turned orangey and within its long summer rays Brother was trying to set ants and leaves on fire with his magnifying glass. Little Jerry was playing in his mud pit, eager, I figured, to keep out of Brother’s way.

  Suddenly Brother looked up from his magnifying glass and his pointy little Ma face went soft and sulky. “Want home,” he said, reminding me that he’d said those same words when we’d moved from Centrereach to Barrendale, and I had the awful feeling that for the rest of our lives home was something we’d always be wanting.

  “So do I,” I said, remembering how gloomy Auntie would get when she’d talk about never being able to go back to her home in the Ukraine. For the first time I understood a little of what she must have felt and oddly enough that warmed me. To share even this sad thing with my long gone auntie brought her, for a little while at least, close.

  * * *

  Once it was fully dark Stepma announced that she was going to leave that night, not stay over, and she wouldn’t listen to anything Uncle Jerry or Aunt Janice had to say about it. She also wouldn’t listen to them about not saying good-bye to Ma. She gripped the wooden railing of the stairway to the second floor and walked so slowly up it I got the feeling she was hoping somebody would stop her. I shot past her up the steps, afraid of what she’d say to Ma, and I suppose I nearly knocked her down because she whimpered and took twice as long climbing the rest of the way.

  Ma sat on the cot, looking out the window, and I wedged myself between her and the pillow so that I’d be nearer to the doorway where I hoped to somehow protect Ma from Stepma’s words.

  “You ought to know he was mighty sorry for what he did to you,” Stepma said. “The awful things he did, to you, his own daughter. If he’d lived, he might have found you to tell you that. He was saved in the end. He accepted Jesus in his heart.”

  Ma flinched as if struck, but she didn’t turn her head. “He coulda accepted shit in his heart for all I care. Don’t you go talking about what he’d done. You’re the one who done something to me. Sending off a little girl. Because you was jealous of her. Jealous that she had her daddy’s heart.”

  Ma stood and looked Stepma dead in the face. “That’s what you couldn’t stand, Elsie. Tell it true. You couldn’t stand that he loved me more. So you sent me off. Separating me from my daddy.” And when she said daddy her voice splintered and she gazed down at the nightstand and all the trinkets it displayed.

  “You’re the lucky one, Dolores,” Stepma said, taking a step forward and crossing the threshold into the room. “Can’t you see that? I’m the one who had to live with him knowing what he’d done to you.”

  From the nightstand Ma lifted a porcelain bride that spun on top of a music box. It had been one of her ma’s things and Ma had told me she guessed it must have been a wedding gift from her ma’s parents.

  Ma’s eyes slid from the figurine to look at Stepma sideways. “Yeah? If living with him was so bad, why didn’t you leave him then?”

  “He wouldn’t have let me leave with you two kids. I did all I could think of to do. But tell me, Dolores. I can see it in your face. You remember now, don’t you? You do, don’t you?” Stepma took another step forward and rested her hand on the doorknob.

  “What I remember is that he let you do it. He let you get rid of me.”

  Stepma lifted her foot as if to take another step but instead she stood there with her heel lifted, rocking on the ball of her foot. “The shed, Dolores. The car seat behind it that faced the rabbit cages. Remember how I found you there on his lap with his hand—” Stepma dropped her heel and turned aside, glancing behind her into the darkness of the hallway.

  Ma fingered the delicate veil on the figurine. It was made of lace dipped in a hardener that made it all sugary looking. Softly she said, “He killed my rabbits because you asked him to.”

  “Remember you were holding one of the rabbits and squeezing it so bad it squealed and I screamed and—”

  Ma bent back her arm as if to hurl the figurine like a dagger at Stepma’s head. For a full minute it seemed she stood there poised, quavering in that position, until she suddenly brought the statue down onto the edge of the nightstand where it broke and fell. Then Ma stared at her cut bleeding hand as if it belonged to someone else.

  I cried out and rushed toward Ma, but she pushed me away.

  “It wasn’t you, Dolores,” Stepma said. “Don’t you understand. You didn’t do anything wrong. You couldn’t have stopped him. Forgive him. Forgive yourself.” Stepma lowered her head and took a step back. “Someday I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  Ma yanked open the nightstand drawer and grabbed a white sock that she pressed to her cut hand. “I ain’t never going to forgive you for nothing. I hate you with all my heart. I hate you with everything I got.” Ma tossed the bloodied sock at Stepma’s feet and then pushed her out of the way to run down the hall into the bathroom.

  Stepma and I stared at each other as we listened to the sounds of Ma heaving up her church breakfast. Once Ma got quiet, Stepma tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom door. She leaned her head toward the doorknob and said, “I want you to know it’s still your home, Dolores. He’s gone now and it’s still your home. I’m going to leave it half and half between you and Jerome. And if you ever need it, there’s always a room for you. For you and for your children, Dolores. I hope that makes it up to you somewhat. It’s all I know to do.”

  Then Stepma lunged toward the stairs as if afraid Ma was about to come out and beat her to mush. There was no sound from inside the bathroom though, so Stepma paused, gripping the rail, and looked over to where I’d poked my head out through the doorway. “Pray for her forgiveness, girl. For her to forgive.�
�� Then she slowly trod down the stairs.

  It was a while before Ma left the bathroom. She didn’t even ask if Stepma had left but she must have heard the commotion from the downstairs hall of Aunt Janice pleading with her to wait to leave till morning.

  Ma handed me a tin of Band-Aids she’d taken from the medicine cabinet and then silently held her hand out for me to stick the things all over the various cuts on her hand. When I was done Ma’s hand looked like Brother’s baseball glove that was marked all over with tape from where it had gotten busted. Ma then directed me to sweep up the pieces of the porcelain bride and to throw them in the outside garbage can because she didn’t want to have to look at them in her own wastepaper basket. Then she asked me to set warm wet washcloths on her forehead and wipe the toilet down with disinfectant because she didn’t want to hear nothing about no mess from Aunt Janice.

  Ma shut her eyes and said, “Try to keep quiet, Brigid. I need to rest.”

  So I did just that. I sat on the edge of Ma’s bed and looked from Ma to my reflection, vague and wavering in the darkness of the window. I wondered if Ma thought about how I looked like her daddy, how I had his way of looking. And I wondered if that was why she’d never loved me as much as she’d loved Brother.

  * * *

  The next day Aunt Janice got Ma an interview at the office where Aunt Janice used to work before she married Uncle Jerry. The job was to be a file clerk for two accountants. All Ma would have to do was keep track of their clients’ files, answer the phone, make appointments, and handle incoming and outgoing mail. From January until April fifteenth, Ma would have to work long hours. But otherwise she’d only have to work half days on Fridays.

  I went with Ma to the interview and waited on a bench in the park across the street from the office. When Ma walked out, she teetered slightly, pointedly ignoring the man who stood by a parking meter looking her up and down.

  As she neared the bench, she rolled her eyes and said, “What a bunch a retards they got running that place. Made me take a dumb test. Like I was a little kid! Wanted to see how I’d type a letter, they said. When things got busy they might need me to handle their correspondence, they said.” When Ma said correspondence her mouth turned downward in an ugly way. She lifted her hair and fanned the back of her neck with her scabbed-over hand. “They was all stuck up like Aunt Janice. But I convinced them by the end there was nothing to it. I can type good enough and what’s the big deal about answering the phone?”

  By the following afternoon Ma was all agitated, waiting for the call. “They said they’d call today and now it’s after three o’clock and that dumb bitch ain’t been off the phone since she woke up!” Ma said about Aunt Janice. “I think she’s talking about me too. You hear how much she’s laughing?”

  We were in the kitchen nosing through the refrigerator because Aunt Janice hadn’t bothered to make us lunch. Brother and Little Jerry were watching an old Western on the TV in the living room but still we were able to overhear Aunt Janice on the phone in the front hall. Laughing, Aunt Janice said, “Can you believe it, Linda? She actually handwrote part of the letter and some of the words are so badly misspelled you can’t even figure out what she meant. She thinks could is spelled c-l-u-o-d.”

  Ma’s head swung up like she’d heard a gunshot and next thing I knew she was running down the hall. Aunt Janice, seated at the little telephone table, looked up and screamed as Ma rushed toward her and grabbed the letter from out of Aunt Janice’s hands. “How you even get this letter? Was it all just a joke? Were they serious at all?”

  “Yes, they were serious. You should have told me you had no proper schooling. You know how embarrassed I am? You’re my husband’s sister. I recommended you.”

  Ma held her hand like she’d claw Aunt Janice’s face and Aunt Janice leaned back until her head was touching the mirror hanging behind her.

  “I had to handwrite it ’cause the cheap ribbon they gave me got all locked up,” Ma said. “Look at you with your bird’s nest hair and your phony way of talkin’. You’re the dumb bitch. If there’s any dumb bitch here, it’s you.”

  Ma then pounded up the stairs, sobbing so hard that she fell down halfway up them and had to yank herself up by the rail. Aunt Janice hadn’t moved and all she did was blink as Brother started pelting her with his little plastic soldiers. “Take that!” he shouted. “And that!” Little Jerry then started throwing little plastic toys at her too.

  “Shut up!” Aunt Janice screamed as I grabbed Brother and started dragging him up the stairs.

  In Ma’s room me and Brother found Ma seated on the cot, staring at the wall. “She thinks she can treat me like shit and get away with it? I won’t let her, I won’t let her.” And Ma pounded her fist over and over into the bedspread.

  And that was it. Ma packed her clothes and her ma’s things into Auntie’s old green valise. She had me shove Brother’s stuff into a couple of brown paper bags and within a half an hour we were standing out by the car and Uncle Jerry was handing us money. His mouth flexed like he was trying to form words but couldn’t. Finally he said, “Do you really have to go, Dolores?”

  Ma squinted her eyes at the house where we could see Aunt Janice on the phone pacing back and forth behind the living-room picture window. Ma worked hard to hold her tongue but you could see it there poking out beneath her chipped eyetooth like it was scratching an itch. “Don’t you worry now, Bropey. I hate seeing you upset. I’ll manage. I always have.”

  And Ma’s words set Uncle Jerry off and he sobbed again like he had at Pothole Park. His meaty red hands rubbed at the slobber on his face.

  “Don’t worry,” Ma repeated. “I been on my own before. I been on my own practically from the start. I can do it again.”

  “But we’re with you, Ma,” I said. “You’re not alone.” I touched her arm, wanting to hug her but there was something resistant in Ma when she was upset that wouldn’t let you near. It was like an invisible shield that kept us from touching her when she—when we—needed it the most.

  Uncle Jerry sniffled. “You’re the strongest woman I know, Dolores. Maybe even the strongest man.” His face turned red and he swatted at the air like he was swatting at his words that didn’t make sense. He added, “You know what I mean.”

  Ma’s glance toward Aunt Janice in the window could have sliced the woman in half. Ma tilted her chin proudly as if Uncle Jerry had been offering praise, but with the way his hands were clasped before him and his head was lowered, he reminded me of a mourner at a funeral. Ma’s strength was a kind of weakness for her, we all saw that. Maybe even Ma did because her eyes softened to a warm amber and she said, “I love you, Bropey. Thanks for taking me in.”

  Then she closed her hand on the money and called us kids to the car and told us not to look back, not even once. “Because if you do,” she said, “it’ll burn your memory for the rest of your life.”

  Twenty-four

  We didn’t know where Ma went after she left Uncle Jerry’s. She’d brought me to the bus stop with enough money to buy my ticket and pay back Gram. She let Brother hug me first, then she squeezed me tight. “Don’t go worrying about us or making things worse than they are,” she said. “I got a friend I can go to. I’ll call you soon.”

  But she didn’t. A full week went by before Uncle Jerry called saying she was in Easton and doing all right and he’d let us know if he heard anything else. He made me put Daddy on the phone and they spoke for several minutes, but all Daddy told me of the conversation was that Uncle Jerry was sorry for how it had all worked out.

  “You think she’ll come back?” I asked, hardly able to look at Daddy since finding him at Star’s.

  “Of course she will,” he said. “You know your ma.”

  And that statement just hung there for a while for us both to ponder. Then Daddy said, “Listen, princess, it’s over. You know what I mean. I don’t want to talk about it again.” And then Daddy left the house but he didn’t stay out that late and when he greeted Mr. Smythe
at 3:00 A.M. his voice was only slightly slurred.

  It was early July and warm but cooler than the hot spring had been. Fireflies lit up the dark hollows of the woods and no matter how bad things were, I couldn’t help but look on their glow as something magical. Sometimes late on clear nights after the fireflies quit their flashing I’d take a blanket into the backyard and lie down to star watch. Whenever a falling star shot a powdery white streak through the sky, I made a wish. Sometimes I wished something horrible would happen to Ma for all the hurt she’d brought us through, but mostly I wished we’d just all be together again and as happy as I’d always thought we’d one day be.

  I felt the worst for Brother because I imagined he’d be scared in a strange place all alone with Ma and whenever he was scared he coped by hitting himself. I pictured his pink Kewpie-doll mouth swollen red and his peachy cheeks yellow with bruises and didn’t know how Ma could bear to make him suffer so.

  Often I tried to do what Auntie had called “Mind Mail,” sending someone a happy memory or thought by imagining it into their brain. I’d picture Brother and then I’d think hard on the times we all picnicked at Culver Lake with Auntie or on all the quiet times me and Brother spent frog hunting up in East Woods, but of course I had no idea if my thoughts ever reached him.

  Now when Gram lashed out at Ma I didn’t care. Maybe it was because Gram was so caught up in working on the paperwork for her Great Idea that even her attacks on Ma lacked their usual bite. She’d say something like, “Lots of people have worse lives than she got and they stick around for them.” But she’d say it almost offhand and I’d just shrug or agree. Maybe it was Gram’s progress with the Great Idea that had taken the edge off our anger toward Ma and made us less snippy in general. Gram had tracked down a company in Albany, New York, that specialized in moving houses and she’d made arrangements with the Redevelopment Authority that entailed them buying the house from her—which they were required to do now that our neighborhood had been declared a slum—but instead of simply wrecking the place, they’d sell it back to her. Then she’d be able to move the house.