Crawlspace

by Lonni Lees

  “Beautiful for you maybe,” she replied with a sigh. “Go. Just go. I’m tired of having you under foot.”

  The girls were out the door before their mother could exhale another sigh. Or change her mind.

  “Let’s hike up the road and sit in the field,” said Jilly. “That’d be nice.”

  By the time they reached the clearing they were out of breath. They flopped down on the grass, looked up at the clear blue sky and relished the silence. The only sounds were birds chirping and the hum from an occasional passing car. From here they could see the city below, with its tall buildings enveloped in a golden haze of smog and the freeway that snaked its way out of town. Jilly chattered like a magpie as her big sister told her stories. Megan told her that the clearing was their “laughing place”, like in the old Uncle Remus stories. And it was. Anyplace but home was as welcome as two weeks at summer camp. But after a few hours in the field it was time to head back down the hill. And home.

  “Let’s pick wild flowers,” said Jilly. “I’ll bet Mommy will be really happy if we bring her flowers.”

  Megan knew that by the time they got home their dear mother wouldn’t be anything at all. Just a crispy critter lying electrocuted on the basement floor. An unfortunate freak accident, like in the movies. But they gathered flowers until they could hold no more and headed back down the hill. Jilly hummed all the way home, looking forward to a smile from her mother. Megan knew it would take a heck of a lot more than a fistful of wild flowers. Experience had taught her that, but her sister was happy and she didn’t want to spoil her mood. She loved when Jilly smiled, making laugh lines around those big blue eyes, round as marbles and full of innocence. She couldn’t remember herself ever being that sweet. Not ever. They walked into the house—and silence. A good sign, thought Megan to herself. Ding dong, the witch is dead.

  They entered the kitchen and fished through the cupboards until they found two vases in which to put the flowers. Megan wondered how long it would be before Jilly would notice their mother wasn’t there. Should she let her go into the basement? Should she discover the body herself? They each filled the vases from the sink tap and arranged their displays. They held their vases out, admiring their handiwork.

  “What kind of mess are you making now?” Said their mother as she stormed into the kitchen.

  Megan nearly jumped out of her skin and her flowers crashed to the floor, shattering the vase. Shards of broken glass swam in the water as it spread across the floor. Her mother stomped over to where she stood and hit her in the face. Hard.

  “What was that for?”

  “If you’re that jumpy you’ve got a guilty conscience about something.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You always do something and that little love tap was for something you just didn’t get caught for.”

  “It hurt.”

  “It’s supposed to hurt.”

  “Look Mommy,” said Jilly, trying to distract her. “We brought you pretty flowers.”

  Her mother looked at the flowers and said, “They have bugs on them.”

  * * * *

  When she had the opportunity, Megan went to the basement. By then the floor was dry but that wasn’t the cause of her failure. The frayed cord didn’t reach the floor. It arced from the ironing board to the electrical outlet, hovering about six inches from the floor and where the water had been waiting to do its job. Just six lousy inches.

  It was time to come up with another plan.

  Her mother liked to take long, leisurely baths on Sunday afternoons. Enter plan two. When her mother was downstairs, Megan sneaked into the master bathroom and looked around. The shelves were filled with expensive perfumes, boutique bath salts—and bath oils. Lots of bath oils. She picked up a bottle that had been previously opened and recognized the aroma. It smelled like her mother. She wrinkled her nose and walked over to the tub, uncapping the bath oil. She poured some into the tub, smearing it around the bottom and sides until she was satisfied there was enough to do the job. Slip. Fall. Bump head. Get dead. By tomorrow their nightmare would be over once and for all.

  She heard the phone ring and could hear her mother’s voice yelling from downstairs. From what she was saying Megan knew she was on the phone with Daddy again.

  “I changed the locks, so don’t even try to come over here. And don’t ever again try to call the girls. They don’t want to talk to you.”

  What a liar.

  Then a moment of welcome silence.

  “I’m going to have your cell phone number blocked, how do you like that?”

  And she slammed down the receiver.

  When the phone rang again she didn’t answer it, just let it ring and ring and ring, like a futile plea from the other end of the wires.

  “Shut up,” Allison screamed, holding her ears. “Just shut the fuck up.”

  Megan could hardly wait for Sunday. Her mother was tightly wrapped in mean and nasty. She hurt Jilly and she hurt Daddy and she enjoyed every minute of it. Megan didn’t mind so much when she got hurt, she was tough and could handle it. But it broke something deep inside of her when she saw her mother hurt the people she loved. It just wasn’t right and it sure wasn’t fair and it had to stop. It was her job to stop it. And she needed to end the rage building inside of her once and for all. She didn’t want it there. She didn’t want to feel that way. It was something her mother put there and she wanted it out. She didn’t want to end up like her mother, hating the world and taking it out on everybody else. She just wanted some peace. And she wanted her father back. Sometimes you just do what you have to do, she told herself. And that night she slept like a baby.

  * * * *

  Sunday afternoon Megan and Jilly sat on the floor of their bedroom, the Monopoly board between them. The house was unusually quiet and their mother had distanced herself from them all morning, leaving them to play, undisturbed. The girls had prepared sandwiches for lunch and had taken them to their room. Jilly nibbled on her peanut butter and jelly sandwich as they played, smudging jelly on her game piece and onto some of her Monopoly money. Megan’s sandwich sat on a plate beside her, uneaten. She was too excited to eat. Today was the day they’d get their father back and everything would be right. Today was the day their mother would take her final exit.

  “The quiet is almost scary,” said Jilly. “I keep waiting for her to explode through the door.”

  But she didn’t.

  Megan smiled when she heard the water running into the bathtub down the hall.

  “She’s taking her bath now,” she said. “She’ll be in there for hours.”

  “Good.” Jilly moved her game piece and landed on Park Place. “I’m buying it,” she said, triumph in her voice as she counted out her money.

  The water stopped flowing into the bathtub and Megan listened, waiting for the final thump.

  And it came.

  Followed by a stream of obscenities. “Goddamn sonofabitch! Jesus fucking Christ!”

  “What was that?” said Jilly, rising from the floor and racing towards her mother’s room, Megan following behind her.

  Jilly opened the door to the master bath, “Mommy? Are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not okay,” said her mother. She was sitting in the tub rubbing her ankle. “I slipped on the damn bath oil. You’d think at twenty dollars a bottle....”

  “Do you want me to help you?”

  “No, I’ll be okay. Just leave me alone so I can enjoy my bath,” she said. “Damn, my ankle hurts. And my hip. And damn near everything else.”

  “Are you sure?” said Megan, “I could....”

  “I just want to sit here in the warm water. It’ll help,” she said. “Now just go away and leave me in peace.”

  Shit, thought Megan as they left the room, the bitch has more lives than an alley cat.

  * * * *

  Monday morning the girls awoke to the sound of their alarm clock. There would be no father at the breakfast table so Megan took charge. They
took off their jammies and put on their school clothes. Megan picked up their jammies and gathered their clothes from the previous day and carried them downstairs to the kitchen. She opened the door to the half-basement and tossed them down, then turned back into the kitchen to make them some breakfast.

  “It was kinda nice not hearing Mommy stomping around yesterday. I guess it’s hard to make so much noise when you’re limping,” Jilly said, then added: “But I’m sorry she hurt herself.”

  “Yea, she was hopping around like a one-legged tap dancer,” Megan smiled.

  “Can we call Daddy?” Jilly whispered, afraid her mother might somehow hear her, even though she was fast asleep in her bed.

  “Mommy fixed it so we can’t.”

  “We could call him at work.”

  “He’s not there yet, it’s too early.”

  “We could leave him a message. We could tell him we miss him.”

  Megan reached for the wall phone and dialed, then punched in her father’s extension and handed the phone to her sister.

  “Hi Daddy, this is Jilly. I miss you Daddy, when are you going to come for us?” She was starting to cry, so Megan took the phone from her.

  “Daddy, we love you and Mommy lied. We want to see you so bad. We’ll try to call again when we can. I love you.” And she hung up.

  * * * *

  At 3:15 in the afternoon the school bus pulled up at the gate to Mira Vistoso and the girls climbed down and out of the bus, carrying their backpacks full of books and homework. Jilly held one piece of paper in her hand. She waved it in the air as they headed for home.

  “Mommy will be happy,” she said. “I got a gold star.”

  “I’m very proud of you, Jilly. You’re so smart.” Megan always said the words she knew Jilly wouldn’t hear from their mother. “You’re going to grow up to be somebody really important, maybe even the president.”

  “You really think so?” Her blue eyes shone with delight.

  “Oh, I know so. I know lots of stuff.”

  When they entered the house Jilly ran from room to room, the paper with the gold star in her hand, looking for her mother. “Mommy, Mommy, I’ve got something to show you.” But her mother wasn’t in the kitchen, or the family room, or in the living room. “Mommy?”

  “Maybe she went somewhere,” said Megan.

  Jilly ran through the kitchen and opened the door that led to the garage. “Her car’s here,” she said. “Her car’s right here in the garage.” She went back into the kitchen. “I’ll go look upstairs, maybe she’s taking a nap or something.” And she ran upstairs, gold starred paper in hand.

  Megan saw her mother’s purse sitting on the kitchen counter, where she always left it. An uneasiness swept over her. She opened the door which led to the half-basement and that’s when she spotted her mother lying at the foot of the stairs, at the bottom of the lazy man’s laundry shoot. She wasn’t moving, so Megan started down, kicking away the few items of clothing that remained scattered on the steps. She saw her own pajama bottoms that had somehow twisted around her mother’s ankle and caused her to lose her balance, hurling her down into the darkness. Her mother was cold to the touch and she wasn’t breathing. Her immediate thought was, it’s about time. But then the reality of it slapped her in the face harder than her mother ever had. She was looking down at a dead person. White skin, blue lips, stiff fingers reaching upward. Wishing her mother dead was one thing, but seeing the reality of her cold, bruised body was something else. It was ugly. And it was final. A lot more final than just wishing her to go away to some nameless place beyond her reach. A part of her was relieved, a part of her horrified. Megan ran back up the stairs as fast as she could, slamming the door behind her, heart pounding.

  “Mommy’s not in her room,” said Jilly as she walked into the kitchen. “What’s the matter Megan, you look funny. Like you’re gonna throw up or something.”

  “We have to call 911. And we have to call Daddy.”

  “What happened?”

  “She fell down the basement steps.”

  “Is she okay?” Jilly started towards the basement door but her sister stopped her.

  “I think she’s dead.”

  * * * *

  By the time Daddy got to the house, the cops and paramedics and crime scene investigators were already there. Questions were asked and answered and asked again. Photographs were taken. Allison was finally taken away, covered in a white sheet. It wouldn’t take long for them to verify their first impression—she was the unfortunate victim of an accidental fall down the stairs. A lot of accidents happened in one’s own house. She was just one more statistic.

  Megan and Jilly and their father sat at the kitchen table for a long time, exchanging comments over the tragedy, but none of them seemed as sad as they should be. Each one tried to hide the relief they felt while they said all the right words and hugged each other and managed a tear or two.

  As the two girls headed upstairs for their bedroom, Jilly said, “I’m so glad Daddy’s back. I missed him.” Then, half way up the steps, she stopped her sister. At first she seemed perplexed, then, looking straight into her eyes, she asked: “Did you push her?”

  “Of course not. We were at school. They said she was—they said that it happened hours ago.”

  “But she disappeared, just like you wished for.” She looked at her big sister, awe and admiration on her face. “It’s like you’ve got some kind of magic.”

  “No, sometimes accidents just happen.”

  And, hand in hand, they ascended the stairs.

  POSSUM

  Jolene was young but she’d already given up on any childish dreams of a better life. Life just didn’t get better in these parts, and she knew the sooner she accepted that fact the sooner she could deal with the reality and monotony of day to day survival. Her momma had somehow figured it out, and her momma before her, so how hard could it be? And why didn’t any of them pass the secret of it all down to her? Being her husband’s punching bag sure as hell hadn’t been the reality she’d bargained for, but that was the truth of it, bruises and all. And it wasn’t like he hit her every day anyway, only when she was asking for it. Only when she got out of line. She just had to figure out where that line was and learn not to cross it. But the line kept changing, like the shoreline at Black Cedar Lake in the sweltering heat of summer.

  The house was a cracker-box, cloned with a million others during the optimistic post-war boom that spread across the country. The progress seemed to have spread everywhere but here, except for the few houses that were erected for returning soldiers to buy cheap upon their return from battle. The kitchen, a time-worn poster child frozen in the 1950s, wore broken pink tiles and faded linoleum floors. Jolene Crowder stood at the kitchen sink, staring through the broken window pane as she scraped off last night’s crusted dishes. The bruised clouds that hung in the morning sky matched the marks that ran up her left arm, blue and grey and angry.

  Jolene eyed the beat-up travel trailer parked at the back edge of the yard. Looking like a silver turtle with a humped back, it hid in the shadows of turning autumn trees along the railroad tracks. Hard to believe two people could have lived in that, much less one person on a good day. But you do what you gotta do. She was less trapped than when she and Beau lived in that can of dents, but she felt trapped nonetheless. Their home, if one could call it that, had sat at the back of Ma Crowder’s place. She guessed Ma Crowder wasn’t too bad for an in-law. Not too bright, as things go, but she seemed okay and never gave them a hard time about anything. At least Ma’d given them a place to camp when Beau had shown up with his knocked-up teenage bride. Back then it was just Beau and her and a kitchen full of meth fumes. About six months along she’d convinced Beau the smells weren’t good for her—and sure as hell wouldn’t do once the kid arrived. “If I wasn’t cookin’ meth we’d still be living off Moon Pies and RC Cola,” he’d reminded her. It took a lot of begging on her part and a lot of hitting on his, but he finally rented them a
real house. It was the only battle she’d ever won. Her only victory in a war she knew she’d never win. It was still in Hooper’s Holler, just up the road a piece. She figured it was likely the last right thing he’d do for them, but at least it was something. He’d towed the tin can into their new yard, and set up his lab while Jolene tended the baby and the house. It was the only order in her life. She wondered how life might have come out if she hadn’t been knocked up at fifteen with no way out. She was likely headed to being a grandma by the time she hit thirty, like most every other dumb kid in the Holler. It was their legacy, handed down from one generation to the next, like an old family bible or a set of chipped dishes.

  Thinking on it wasn’t gonna change weeds into rose bushes. Hooper’s Holler sat at the edge of nowhere, populated by bad teeth and bad choices, with nowhere to go and no way to get there. In Pappy’s day the hills were filled with stills and shotgun fire, while her generation had replaced them with meth labs and Saturday Night Specials. That’s all the progress they knew and likely all they’d ever know. But the folks there in the Holler were built strong and stubborn as pit bulls and played the hand they were dealt as best they knew how.

  “Maaaaaa!”

  Jolene pivoted around at the sound of her baby’s wail.

  “Faw down, go boom,” he whimpered, sprawled across the linoleum.

  She walked over and picked him up, held him close as his bottom lip jutted out and quivered. “Poor baby,” she said. “Possum go boom and mama make better.” She held his face close to hers and covered it with noisy kisses. “Mama kiss Possum’s whiskers,” she repeated until he started to giggle.

  “Tickle,” he laughed.

  She carried him across the kitchen and lowered him into the high chair, kissing him gently on the top of his head, then mussed his sandy curls before heading to the stove. By the time she’d walked across the room his chin was resting on his chest and he was dead asleep. Jolene figured when you’re birthed into the eye of a hurricane you learn to sleep anywhere, anytime. Her sweet little Possum made it all worthwhile—the beatings, the nasty words, all of it. She removed six strips of bacon from the fridge, placed them in the cast iron skillet and lit the propane.