by Ninie Hammon
“…ain’t rightly sure what it was come over Lloyd,” she said, in that soft voice of hers that commanded attention. “Course there was a time there in the beginning when I didn’t know nothin’. When a good day was makin’ it to the end of it.”
Will stopped her. She’d been clearing off the table, doing the job Jamey’d bailed on, as she spoke. He motioned for her to come and sit beside him on the couch.
“I should have been here for you…” he began. “You needed—”
“Honey, what I needed couldn’t nobody give me! Didn’t matter who was here. That kind of hurtin’, ain’t nothin’ makes it bearable.” She stopped. “Was times I nearly come right out of my skin. I’d be just standin’ there and I’d realize I’s sobbin’ and I didn’t even know it.”
She looked past him, her eyes fixed on a reality he couldn’t see. “You cain’t do it all at once. Nobody can. That much grief, you cain’t take it all in one gulp. Bowman. Ricky Dan. Even Ed.” She smiled a little half smile and didn’t try to hide her mouth. “Poor Ed, the onliest one of my brothers I ever talked to about real stuff, heart stuff. The others’d go on ’bout how to skin a coon or catch the weasel that had got in the hen house and never said nothing that mattered.”
She took a breath.
“So I grieved ’em one at a time. I’d say, ‘Today, I’m gonna grieve for Bowman.’ The next day, I’d grieve for Ricky Dan. Then Ed. It’s the onliest thing a body can do it. Try to swallow it all at one time and it’ll choke the life right out of you.”
Her quiet voice got so soft it was almost a whisper. “I took to the closet. There in the beginning, I had to. The house was so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat. I’d turn on the television loud as it’d go in the living room and the radio in the bedroom. Then I’d plug in that fancy Hoover vacuum cleaner Bow bought from that nice young man come to the door.” She looked a little sheepish. “And I’d take it with me into the bedroom closet in Ricky Dan’s room, sit down on top of a pile of his stinky shoes, his shirts and pants hangin’ down all around me. I’d hit the switch on the vacuum and that little bitty space’d fill up with noise...” There was a beat of silence. “…and then I’d scream. Loud’s I could, scream and wail ’til my voice give plumb out. I’d beat my fists against the wall ’til my hands was black and blue.” Then she whispered. “I wanted to make more noise than the roar under the mountain, because my hurt was bigger and powerfuller than the explosion that took ’em from me.”
For a moment, she had the look he’d seen on her face when he woke up and found her beside his hospital bed. Her eyes—they were blasted, scorched, vacant hollows in her face you couldn’t bear to look into and couldn’t stand to look away from. You could see into her through her eyes, all the way down to the bottom of her soul. You could see through her, too, like she was as translucent as a piece of tissue paper. And in some way he was never able to understand or explain, he could see his own reflection in her eyes. He wasn’t translucent, though. He was filled to the top of his head with darkness.
“I wasn’t the onliest one, of course. We’s all half crazy. I looked around at the memorial service we had ’cause we didn’t have no bodies for a funeral, and it was like I’s lookin’ in a mirror. Grief had marked our faces so’s we all looked like family.”
She seemed to realize that she’d gone there, to that place. You could see her close up, batten down the hatches as he’d been taught in the Navy, so a storm couldn’t come along, pour water down through them and drown you.
She rose abruptly, continued to clean and took up her monologue about Lloyd where she’d left off.
“For years after, Lloyd wasn’t no fit human a-tall. He run with the wild ’uns, drank and lord knows what else, got Norma Jean Phelps pregnant so he married her, and then I heared he knocked her around some. I cain’t testify to that, mind, but I seen her once in the grocery store with sunglasses on.” She gave him a disdainful look. “Like her wearin’ sunglasses to buy a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk in Aintree Holler was any less noticeable than the black eye they was coverin’ up.”
She put the orange juice into the refrigerator and stood with a dish towel in her hand.
“Then it was like overnight, Lloyd up’n changed.” She turned to face him. “Will, he was so different, I wanted to reach out and rip the Lloyd mask off ’n him to see who was really underneath there behavin’ that way. ‘You need anything, Granny?’ he’d say. ‘Can I take the kids to the picture show, or bring you some fresh tomatoes?’ It was Lloyd run me and Jamey to the hospital that night the boy had the croup so bad he liked to died. Lloyd went and got JoJo her first day of high school when she called home bawlin’.”
“Ricky Dan didn’t like Harlan County High School much either,” Will said quietly.
Granny smiled. “No, he didn’t, did he. You’s the only one made it through to graduate.”
They sat quiet for a moment. And it was a good quiet.
“Jamey Boy probably woulda liked it, though, if he’d got that far.” Granny’s smile grew wider. “You can see it, can’t you, Will? How he’s like his daddy, only…pure. Just light, t’hout nothin’ grown-up in him to cloud it. Sometimes, I look at that boy and he near blinds me.”
“Yeah, I can see it.” For two decades, Will couldn’t even think about Ricky Dan Sparrow without the pain of it driving him into a bottle. But after he got sober, the pain didn’t go away, but he came to terms with it. And when he did, he cherished his memories instead of running from them. In his mind, he had often tried to tack words on to what it was about Ricky Dan that had made him so special. All he ever came up with were greeting-card homilies. They were true, though. Ricky Dan Sparrow was good. So was his son.
“How far did Jamey get in school?”
“Fifth grade. But I ain’t sure how much he learned ’fore that and how much his teachers passed him on ’cause they didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”
“Well, at least not going to school gave him all day every day to work on his ‘arts,’ so—”
“Not ever day.” She paused for a beat. “Jamey Boy’s got a job, Will. He’s a miner. I thought you knowed that.”
“Jamey?” Will felt like someone had kicked him in the belly.
“He’s been off this week, but he’ll—”
“You let that boy…?”
Granny looked like he’d slapped her and Will instantly wished he could call the words back.
“You think I wanted to? Think I didn’t wish I could lock him up in his room and never…?” She let out a long, slow breath. “The mines is all there is. Same now as when you’s growin’ up. It’s what we do. He’s a growed man; ain’t my place to—”
“I shouldn’t have said that, Granny. I’m sorry.”
“Came a time I couldn’t protect him no more. JoJo neither.” She spread her big hands out in front of her in a helpless gesture. “And right now, it’s JoJo needs protectin’.”
“JoJo?”
“I ain’t got no idea what’s eatin’ at that child, but some’m is. Oh, she’s always been…fragile like. Her mama was that way—you ’member? Kindly delicate, like if you wasn’t real careful, she’d break apart in your hands. And losin’ Darrell like she done…”
Granny told Will the story of JoJo’s marriage at 16 to a “nice young fella” who was killed in a mining accident before their first anniversary.
“She was finally coming outta that…and then bam! Some’m happened. She went up Lexington ever weekend the last part of the summer to see Becca, this friend of hers goes to UK. Then one Saturday mornin’ she went and come right back home ’fore supper. But the girl who come back to the holler that afternoon wasn’t the same one left. And she ain’t been the same since.”
“How so?”
“Won’t eat. I bet she’s lost 10 pounds and that girl didn’t have it to lose. Don’t sleep, up all hours of the night, roams around the house. When she does sleep, she has nightmares, cries out all pitiful like. She picks at herself, got
sores on her hands. I’ve done all I know to do to get her to tell me what’s wrong, but she’s closed up tighter’n a new boot. Won’t say nothin’.”
Granny stopped. “You don’t s’pose…could you talk to her, Will?”
“Why me?” But Will had to admit he’d seen something in JoJo’s eyes he recognized. Desperation, maybe. Or despair. He could relate to either one.
“I just thought maybe you could reach her. Somebody’s got to.”
There was such yearning in Granny’s plea Will couldn’t refuse. “Okay, if you want me to, I’ll give it a shot. But she just met me, Granny. I can’t imagine why she’d tell me anything.”
Granny put the dish towel down. “And you don’t have to tell me nothin’, neither. Nary a thing you don’t want to, Sugar. It’s ’nough you’re here; I’m powerful content with that.”
That was Granny. Her train of thought would set off full steam one way and without warning she’d derail it and take off down a track in the opposite direction. You had to hold on tight when you talked to her or you’d get thrown right off the train.
He took a breath. “I have to tell you…”
“It’s a mighty heavy load you’re carryin’ ’round, son.” Her voice was soft, her eyes tender. “Don’t you think it’s time to put it in a sack and leave it sittin’ by the door?”
That’s what she’d always told the boys when something was bothering them that dragged down their spirits. She’d tell them to tie it up tight in a sack and forget about it. It’d be right there anytime they wanted to pick the burden back up again; they could leave it by the door so they’d know where to find it.
“Me ’n you, we got to have us a serious talk, so how ’bout we sit ourselves down in a coupla days…Friday mornin’, maybe, and you can open up that sack and we’ll clean it out together.”
Friday morning seemed right, fitting. The truth should come out before the anniversary of the explosion, a couple of hours short of two whole decades too late.
“All right, in the sack it goes.”
Granny nodded, didn’t speak, only looked at him.
“You’s like smoke, you know that, Will. You’s there, but you ain’t. I’m askeered to reach out my hand to touch you ’cause there won’t be nothin’ there a-tall to grab.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Granny,” he said softly. “I won’t vanish on you.” He almost said he’d never vanish on her again, but he was not a man in any position to make promises.
Her eyes welled with tears and she suddenly got very busy scrubbing a non-existent speck off the countertop.
“Actually, that’s not entirely true,” he said. “I am going somewhere right now. I’m going into town. Want to walk down the hill with me?”
There was such a stricken look on Granny’s face that for a moment Will thought she must have totally misunderstood him.
“I’m not leaving, Granny, just walking into town. You want to come?”
“Cain’t.” That was all she said, and suddenly there was a whole herd of nonexistent spots on the countertop that needed to be wiped. “You go on ahead; tell me ’bout it when you get back.”
Then she began a noisy redistribution of large pots and frying pans in the sink creating a clatter that was clearly Will’s cue to leave.
But why wouldn’t Granny go with him?
CHAPTER 12
JOJO STOPPED BY the post office and picked up the mail on her way to work so the mailman wouldn’t deposit it in the mailbox in front of the trailer. She’d done that every day for the past month—told the postmaster she’d ordered something as a surprise for Granny.
She took the handful of circulars and bills from the clerk at the window and tuned out his daily, unsolicited report on his son’s accomplishments out there in the wide world, how he was about to graduate from the University of Louisville and was considering law school. She’d gone on a date with the guy once and figured he’d ought to take up lawyering. A more complicated occupation—like an elevator operator who had to learn the route—was way more than he could handle.
She thumbed through the small pile of envelopes as she walked to her car. Then she stopped. Froze. There it was, the envelope she’d been expecting. It was addressed to Joanna Darlene Sparrow and it had the official seal of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine Research Center. She tore it open, ignored the letter inside and stared down at the check, made out to her for $300. It was about time!
Then a little half smile played across her lips. Actually, the timing on the check was absolutely perfect. Now she had plenty of money to buy herself a one-way ticket to Nowhere At All.
The words on a poster tacked to the bulletin board near their table in the Student Center catch JoJo’s eye.
Wanted:
Students to Participate in Research Study Summer Session—$300
She nudges Becca and cocks her head toward the poster.
“That mean what I think it does?”
Becca glances at the poster. “They have those things in here all the time. The med school research center’s always looking for guinea pigs.”
JoJo has a standing invitation to visit her friend Becca at the University of Kentucky, and though the college campus is as foreign to JoJo as stepping off a rocket on an uncharted planet, anything’s better than spending every weekend in Harlan County. And she knows it’s good for Becca, too. Her life is tough. Becca had been chubby in high school; she ballooned in college. Now, she is well on her way to 300 pounds. Always shy, Becca has made no friends at school. It helps to see a familiar face and hear a mountain voice.
The two girls had been inseparable, joined at the hip their whole lives until their sophomore year in high school when JoJo dropped out of school to marry Darrell. Becca graduated and went off to the University of Kentucky in Lexington, joked that the scholarship she’d gotten paid her to be the school’s “token, barefoot, toe-in-the-sand hillbilly.”
When JoJo visits, Becca takes time off from her job at the cosmetics counter at the Walgreen’s on Man Of War Boulevard and they wander the stores in Fayette Mall—window shopping, of course; that’s all either one of them can afford—and hang out together in the coffee shops around campus. In the past 6 months, JoJo has started to flirt back with the guys she’s met there.
“You ever done one of them studies?” JoJo asks.
“Once. Why?”
“What’d you have to do?”
“It was a stupid color-recognition thing. We went into this little room in the psych building and looked at swatches of fabric in solid colors—red, blue, and green. Then we sat outside for 10 minutes and went back in and had to pick those colors out of plaid fabric with half a dozen different shades of reds, blues, and greens. I think they were trying to prove that the mind doesn’t have a true memory for color—at least mine didn’t. But I got paid 50 bucks for one afternoon.”
Becca looks at the poster and back at JoJo.
“You interested in that one?”
“Maybe. Sounds like an easy way to make $300.”
“Paying that much, they’ll get a lot of takers. I’d sign up if I didn’t have to work.”
JoJo reads the rest of the poster out loud.
“Participants must be between the ages of 18 and 30, willing to provide family medical history and submit to blood tests. Time requirement is 3 hours a week, from noon to 3 P.M., every Saturday between August 15 and September 30. Payment of $300 will be made within 30 working days after the last session. Interested persons should fill out the questionnaire below and return it to the University of Kentucky College of Medicine Research Center before July 31, 2000.”
“You reckon you have to be a student to do it?”
“Why would they care? If you’ve got a pulse and you match what they’re looking for, they’ll take you.”
JoJo got back into her car, tossed the mail on the front seat and drove to the Jiffy Stop. She was early, so she sat in the car and read the letter that had accompanied the check. Her lip beg
an to tremble and a tear slipped out of her eye and slid down her cheek. When she reached up to wipe it away, the blow-up figure out front of the store caught her eye. A fifteen-foot-tall yellow tube with floppy arms and a grinning face bounced and swayed its herky-jerky dance as air was pumped up through it from below.
JoJo hated that figure! Almost went out one night after work and sabotaged the pump so it would lay there limp instead of standing out front having seizures all day.
The creature reminded her of the skinnys.
She sits in a featureless room with a table, two chairs and a large mirror on the wall. The mirror’s really a window where the researchers watch what happens in the testing room. If you look at it just right, you can see the faint outlines of the people behind it, particularly when they open the door in the back of the room and the hall light shines in.
On the table in front of her are kids’ blocks and simple puzzles. She’s been told what to expect, but she cringes anyway when they bring in the first skinny—that’s what she came to call them later because they were all emaciated, looked like escapees from a concentration camp.
The woman appears to be 10 or 15 years older than JoJo, but it’s hard to guess her age the way she jerks around, flails her arms, rolls her eyes and emits a haunting wail that seems more an attempt to speak than a scream.
JoJo only makes eye contact with the skinny once. It’s after they’ve been together in the room for over an hour. JoJo performs simple tasks, stacks blocks and puts puzzle pieces together and the skinny tries to do the same things. After the skinny propels the puzzle off the table with a jerky arm movement, she looks into JoJo’s eyes. It is a pleading look, a panicked look. A look of such pain and fear it freezes JoJo’s heart. It hits her then, for the first time, that there’s a person locked away inside that flopping, jerking body, a prisoner who can’t get out, can’t even cry for help, can’t do anything at all except scream with her eyes, a wail of terror, anger, fear—and disgust. Her eyes are all she has left.
