“Hello.” She answered as if I was a pesky sales man. The cork popped off my never-talk-to-my-mother bottle and I spewed like old champagne wet with regret. She tried to cut in a few times but the bitter bubbles drowned her out. When the bottle was empty, I met the bedfellow of my childhood as familiar to me as my own hand. The brutal sounds of dead air churned on the other end of the phone. It was the dead zone. The pink elephant sat on my chest taking breath. I fell into that state of awkward self inflicting punishment I had always known. Ghosts slithered out from the phone receiver, crawling from the tiny holes that held our voices, until they hovered a large cloud over the bed. I waited. I hoped for hope. Waited for hope. Dreamed of a knight in shining armor—HOPE. In my heart, my mother said, “Chalk it up as a lesson learned Willodean and move on.” Her normal negative voice would be replaced with a more positive bubbly one and I’d nourish in the encouragement. “Life will get hunky-dory, you’ll see. There is a big world out there. Time for you to see it. No time like the present.” Her voice primed with affirmations. Her sure footed ladder of positivity would allow me to climb new heights. “You’ll find your way. I just know it. Keep at it. Love is out there.”
Instead, I could hear her breathing on the other end. My heart broke with every second that passed. Looking back on it now, if she would have gave me a speck of sand, just a mere itsy-bitsy tiny molecule of anything but negativity—anything—I believe with certainty, my life might have turned out different. Maybe I’d had the strength to leave, pack my shit in a suitcase and march straight to the court house. Oh. But. That. Didn’t. Happen.
Looming Lena, dark cloud of doom did not say the words I needed. No. Not at all. Instead, I was pelted with I told you so’s as thick as hail chunks. The more Lena talked, the more I felt obligated and tangled up in southern duty. A stampede of pink elephants roared and charged through the house, ravaging everything in sight. The conversation turned one sided. It was hard to keep up. Pretty soon, it wasn’t about me at all. It was her life, her pains, her marriage, her stuff. How does this happen?
“You made your bed now you lie in it.” She said finishing me off. Pink elephant kick to the gut. The spittle of damnation from her lips, so fluid and raw, I thought it would seep through the lines of the phone and fry anything it touched. No sympathy, no words of motherly wisdom, no consoling hope of tomorrows.
“Whaaat?” I said desperately in unbelief. My voice rasped with hurt, disappointment, confusion. What were you thinking Willodean? What did you expect? My inner dialogue devil was having a field day. The one time I admit to myself that I need her—which is by the way, the hardest motherfucking thing, I have ever done in my life. And I get this?
“You made your bed now you lie in it.” The mantra of her words repeated themselves in my head. The dialogue devil mocking them. There is no hope. No hope for you Willodean. No hope. Now go make your bed. Lie in the mess you made.
When I could no longer stand the demented megaphone in my head, I slammed the receiver down. A wailing cry baby was wrestling inside of me. My chest rose and heaved, my breath labored, my eyes watered, and my lips quivered. No. Don’t do it. Don’t give in to her. You will not cry Willodean. You will not break. You will not cry. Do you duty. Do not cry you big baby.
I don’t know how long I sat on the bed I made. I was joined by my bedfellow, silence. The dead zones of dead zones. I had never felt more alone; God forsaken alone. Trapped. No way out. And so without hope, I pushed the child down, and locked her inside the room, inside the house. In a glazed trance of duty and southern etiquette, I got up from the bed I imperviously made and walked to the kitchen. I opened the cabinet beneath the spice rack and took out the brand new aluminum pan my mother gave us as a wedding present. I saw my stone reflection in its pewter hue like a crystal ball.
“That’s a good southern girl” My mother said smiling through it. “It’s our duty to make them happy. That’s the way it was meant to be.” In her bluest of blues, I saw myself. I slammed the pan down on the stove and turned the dial. I grabbed the Hamburger helper out of the cabinet and poured it in the pan. I went to the refrigerator and took out a pound of meat along with a bottle of tequila. I found two shots glasses and filled them up. I drank them quickly. The burn was like new flames in my throat. I walked over to the stereo and turned it up full blast. Ironically, the perfect song played out from the speakers and I sang the lyrics out loudly, as if I wrote them myself, inside the house that built me.
Sometimes I feel I've got to Run away
I've got to Get away
From the pain that you drive into the heart of me
The love we share
Seems to go nowhere
And I've lost my light
For I toss and turn I can't sleep at night
[Chorus]
Once I ran to you (I ran)
Now I'll run from you
This tainted love you've given
I give you all a boy could give you
Take my tears and that's not nearly all
...Tainted love (Ohh)
Tainted love…
I sang at the top of my lungs. I danced around the kitchen, spoon in one hand, shot glass in the other. One, two, three shots, till I lost count. The big pan of stroganoff boiled over. Branson would be home soon. Maybe I’ll make him a pie. A man’s heart is through his stomach. Right? From that day forward… I took the punishment of my sins. I lay in the bed I made—until it almost killed me.
In hindsight, I have no idea why I needed my mother’s approval to begin with? Why didn’t I just leave on my own accord? Why did my mother’s opinion weigh so heavy on me? For that matter, why does anyone’s opinion carry so much weight with me? It’s like I can’t make a fucking decision for myself, so I look to others to do it for me. What the hell? Something inside me grew bitter, sour, bad tasting and anger festered. It was like the vision of the angels who burned from the inside out, thrashing about possessed of something dark. I’m not sure who I was more upset with, myself, my mother, or Branson. Maybe all three. I drank so I couldn’t see or feel the dark angels inside me but I could still hear their screams.
I drank to forget. Branson drank to forget. We both drank to forget our mistake, our bed, our lie. We were walking, talking bottles of liquor, clear and transparent, empty without anything to give—to each other—to anyone. Our reflections mirrored off each other. Neither of us liked what we saw—so we drank. Hide the truth. Deny its presence. I didn’t understand him. He didn’t understand me. Every day I walked a tight rope in eggshell shoes, stranded above a dark bottomless abyss that waited to swallow me. I tried to get out, remove myself, run, or do something to change how I felt, but ended up in the same sorry mess. It was an endless search to find a place, a fit in this world, a peg in this marriage, simply a centerpiece of me. I needed to fit somewhere but where? I needed a crown on my head and a mold for my feet, a centerpiece to say this is where I belong, right here, right now.
But everywhere I looked, numbness, absence, emptiness—in my marriage, on my skin, in my heart, in my mind, inside the house. The inner devil dialogue told me to do more, be more, love more, change, you’re not good enough, drink more, be someone else, put on a mask, don’t be yourself, be better, be different, be more, go, go, go, busy, busy, busy, more, more and more. I was on a collision course just waiting to crash.
The more my needs were unmet, the more I depended on a man for my lack. Branson was unavailable to meet my needs and it drove me batty. I desperately latched onto him trying to gain some sort of control. The weight of his emotions so attached to mine, I could barely separate them from my own. He was sad—I was sad. He was happy—I was happy. If he didn’t feel good, I didn’t feel good. If he was angry, I thought it was something I did or didn’t do, so I hunkered down more. The whole world seemed to ride on my shoulders and the tightrope beneath my eggshell feet was thread bare. “But No,” I screamed. “No, Willodean. You cannot break. What will happen if you break?” I poured another drin
k. I took a pot out of the cabinet. I opened a bag of spaghetti. I turned the radio on loud. I sang. I danced. I cooked. I silently hoped for a better tomorrow. I made my drink. I made my bed. I lived the lie.
On rare occasions something dark leaked out of me. It came in a fury of rage during routine fights with Branson. “Stupid, lying, crazy bitch.” He said glaring at me with disgust. Hate foamed in the corners of his mouth. The argument was about money but no matter what the argument was about, I was always a bitch. No money, how we spent money, how hard he worked for money, how much money we didn’t have, and no matter what I did, right or wrong, or in attempt to fix it, make it better, it all came back to me.
“How dare you question me?” He said clenching his fist. A missile of spit particles flew through the charged air between us. I lost my breath.
“After all I do.” His brown eyes grew into hard specks while a heat rose up in me. Heat, terrible heat. It rose up through my gut, gurgling through my throat, heat and fire, pain and more pain. “You buy shit every goddamned day.” He said. “You have no fucking right to question me. I work in this household. I bring home the money. What the hell do you do?”
His voice always like this, one sided, accusatory. He diverts and directs all fault my way, me, me, me. But I'm wondering why he's talking money when he just walked in the door at five AM. He should have been home at eleven thirty. Where the hell has he been all night and what was he doing? More so, who was he with? My head was spinning, a rapture of endless wrath, blending together.
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—lift off. I exploded.
“Yeah I do have a right.” I screamed. “I have a right to know where my drunk ass husband has been all night so don’t put this on money. Money has nothing to do with it. Quit trying to make me crazy you piece of shit for brains. Couldn’t you have called me or something? Picked up the damn phone and tell me you were out screwing some whore?”
I ran across the room, picked up the phone, jerked it from the wall and threw it at him. Shocked with my own behavior I stood there replaying it in my head. Oddly, it felt good. He ducked but it didn’t slow him down.
“It’s none of your damn business where I’m at.” His voice was a growl and then he laughed as if my anger was funny. The room was quiet except for his teeth grinding, a blade sharpening for the next swift cut. He mouth wrinkled around his cigarette as he took a long disgusting drag. He never took his eyes off me, while he dropped it on the linoleum floor and stepped on it with the toe of his Red wings. It was a dare for me to say another word, make a move. But I didn't have to—his cigarette may have been snuffed out but he ignited into a madman. He went from calm disgust to tee-total psycho. His normal brown eyes went into a wildness I had never seen before, stages of yellow and green, devil red. A plate, a flashlight, a book, dishpan, bag of chips, cup of pens, a lotion bottle, my camera, ALL went flying and crashing across the room in a tornado fit. He rambled with rage, violent and slurring words I didn’t understand and when he could find nothing else to throw, he came at me. He pinned me against the wall. I could fell a nail head stabbing me in the back as he pressed against me with his hard hips. I could smell the rich stench of alcohol and tobacco on his breath. “You wanna talk shit now woman?” He said biting my ear just enough to keep me still. I flinched a little but couldn’t move. “Why are you here Willodean?” his voice was gritty, hateful. “You don’t love me. Who you been screwing? That guy at the grocery store, huh? The one who talks to you every time we go in there? Was it good? Does he give you what you want?” He slammed his body against me in punishment. I know better than to answer him when he talks crazy—because there is no arguing with crazy. He goes into a spin of looney talk that never makes sense. I have no idea where he's going with it and if I try to make sense of it, it will backfire and drive me mad and I’m pretty sure that’s the intention.
“Where did you go today? I know you haven’t been here. Were you with him?” He screams slamming his fist into the wall making me jump. What the hell is he talking about? I've been home all day. I have no idea what he’s talking about. I haven’t screwed anyone. I was faithful. His words were twisted and made no sense, harmful, awful words beating me down, letter by letter like a pounding fist, raging chatter verging on lunacy. I had heard this talk so much during marriage I began to question my own sanity—as if I HAD done the very things he said. It made me doubt. It made me wonder in my mind and to keep from losing it, I had to just endure it and wait itll it was over.
“After you fuck him, he’s just gone throw you away when he’s done. Nobody will have you. Nobody.” He said. Word assaults, one after another, spirit breaking, confusion, mess. Would it have made a difference if I’d done this or said that? The chaos of my inner life matched the chaos of my outer life. Pretty soon, everything went black and fused together. I hated who we were together. Toxic. I hated who I was when I was with him and without him. Bearer of all wrongs, Willodean Hart Spates had had enough. I snapped like a green pea in my mama’s pea shelling, southern sap hands. The rebel of my namesake came out and by God, if I was going to go out—I was for damn sure, going to go out knowing that I got a few punches in for good measure.
Split second overload of madness, temporary insanity, house of dark shadows shit, wild and out of control, pent up emotions let loose discharging on anything and everything. He was ranting again. Louder and more obnoxious, bringing up the whole kitchen sink, things I don’t remember saying or doing and quite possibly never happened to begin with, except in his sick twisted mind games. His hands lock onto my each side of my head like a vice, getting tighter and tighter as he presses me into the wall. A ramble of word assaults rage out of him, not fluid enough for me to decipher. Lip spit dripped from his mouth and I could see a swirl of venom flicker in his dark eyes. He blamed me for everything. I wanted to scream but his hands held me firm, squirming underneath the pressure of his grip, then he just let go and let me slide down the wall. When I gained breath I went mad. I lost it. Months and months of hate formed a hard slat paddle the size of my palm. I didn’t care if it hurt me or not. I was numb anyway. I lurched at him. A sizzling skin slap broke the room. In a split second, it was over. The entire room settled silent. The plates in the dish rack clattered, my hand sizzled and his left cheek flamed red as if we were standing in hell’s kitchen. My lungs expelled all air while the hands of the hell clock above the refrigerator moved in slow warps, shivering gaps of seconds between each number, little hushes of fear because it knew, like me, what was next. I named it the hell clock a few months after we moved in, a few months after that infamous phone call. Make the bed. Live the lie. Every time I heard a tick from the damn clock—it reminded me of my insignificant existence, inside this insignificant marriage. A tick—tock, a slow, moving, every hour, on the hour, misery of death.
In that second, after I slapped his face, I wanted to simply vanish. TICK! Swoosh! TOCK! Gone. I prayed the Shadows would take me away and lock me inside the numbing room. Their hell wasn’t as bad as my own hell. Instead, I made my bed. I lived the lie. I took my punishment. Branson’s face filled with a boiling fester of the devils due. He came at me, eyes red and wild. My bones rattled from impact. His thick fingers wrapped my neck like a python. When I couldn’t feel air—I saw stars and tears from the centerpiece, and they spun out of control, out of my reach, taking me with them. I hated him. I hated myself. I hated the world. I morphed, mentally and physically from my body, leaving this cruel, awful place I never understood. I entered a place of in-between, a realm where the little girl appeared to me. She showed me myself. I am floating, fragile through the swift wind, above her, while she runs through the fields below me, looking up and grinning. I am attached to her, by a string, tugging at her wrist, soaring, rising, and falling. It is blissful. I am free. I see memories of days past, when I am flying close to danger, and then tragedy. I wrap around a tree limb. The little girl tugs to snap me free and I drift down to the ground, wounded and broken. I
am a kite. I was meant to fly. She patches me up, tends to my bruises, and launches me to the winds again. I kiss the clouds and feel the shine of the sun on my fragile paper heart. This continues each day, sometimes I fall, or get tangled up and when I do, the little girl mends me, tapes me back up, reassembling strings, and retying the ribbons. She paints over my scars with bright colors to disguise the bruises. There are days I snap loose and that is when I face turbulent winds of change and lose my direction, lost in the horizon without anything to tether me to the earth. Sometimes I lose hope and tell myself that I am just a dumb ‘ole kite. I mean, who says a kite has to fly when I can sit in the corner, undisturbed, useless and packed away, with no worries of scars, or bruises. No risk, no challenge…no rewards.
“You’re supposed to fly.” Says the little girl. “It‘s your destiny to fly. You‘re made to fly. You‘re a kite, you must live out your namesake. Remember what Maw Sue says—a seeker has to do what a seeker knows it should, regardless of the cost. And for you, you are a kite and you are meant to fly.”
The apparition of my vision fades. My head is pounding and heavy and I try to lift it but a striking blow keeps me down. I’m not sure where I’m at. I’m lying flat, white panels, small and blurry come into vision, a hundred eyes turn to ceiling tiles. I’m on the floor of the kitchen. I hear the ominous ticking of the hell clock while the kitchen spins. A few seconds later, I manage to upright myself and crawl to the window by the sink. The driveway is vacant, Branson’s truck is gone. I sink to the floor, exhausted, hurting and drained of life. I am reminded of the vision. I am the white kite, grounded, broken, torn.
WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) Page 28
