Breaking Out of Bedlam

by Leslie Larson

  He thumbed through my chart—writing here and there, squinting at the pages, glancing up at me, adjusting his glasses—’til I thought I’d lose my mind. Finally, he pushed his glasses up on his nose one last time and fastened me with his icy stare. “Mrs. Sledge, according to these records, you’ve lost sixty-one pounds in six months. Your blood pressure has dropped twenty points. Your heart rate is down over 10 percent and you haven’t refilled your prescriptions for tranquilizers, antidepressants, or sleeping aids.”

  I let out a bloodcurdling whoop and did a little stomp dance. Marcos’s face flushed bright red. He put his hand over his eyes like he couldn’t bear to see me make such a horse’s ass out of myself.

  “Do I have the right chart here?” the doctor said, flipping over some pages.

  “Mrs. Sledge has worked very hard,” Marcos said. “She’s made a lot of progress.”

  “It’s a lot of Marcos’s doing,” I added, winking at him to show I appreciated all those cigarettes and snacks he’d brought me.

  “Well, whatever you’re doing, keep it up,” he said, not bothering to look up from the chart. I took advantage of it to stick my tongue out at him. He walked over and opened the door, and as he stood there waiting for us to leave he finally deigned to lay eyes on us. “I’ll see you in six months.”

  “Like hell he will,” I said to Marcos as soon as we were outside.

  I WROTE AND wrote and here I am at the end of this book. The second! Lord God Almighty! The pages flew by. These last five or six I had to write so tiny to squeeze everything in, they’re nothing but flyspecks on the page. I don’t know how anybody’s going to read it, but the way I’m feeling now I just got to keep going no matter what. If this place goes up in flames tomorrow all this working and remembering and writing I’ve been doing will be wasted. I been trying to think of a safe place to keep these books ‘til I’m dead, but the only thing I can think of is to go out and bury them somewhere, which seems silly, so I guess I’ll just take my chances.

  THE COMET

  I called Emma and told her I needed a new book, and look what she got me.

  “Why, Gamma, what did you do with the other two I gave you?” she asked in that silly little-girl voice of hers. “Are you using them for firewood, or what?”

  Ha, ha, ha.

  It seems like only yesterday she gave me the last one with the nautilus shell on the cover. “I’m making scrapbooks out of them,” I told her, which is true in a way. She don’t need to know nothing more because I don’t want her snooping around or flapping her lips to anybody else in the family. “It helps me pass the time,” I added, since I felt her hesitating on the other end of the line. Maybe she’s getting tired of shelling out the money.

  “Well, let me think. I—”

  “I’m making a keepsake for the family once I’m gone,” I interrupted. I guess she wanted me to beg. “You’ll see.”

  The long and short of it is she dropped it off on her way to work. She’s got a job at the blood bank, filling out forms for the people who come in to donate. I was at breakfast, so she left it at the office. One of them secretaries came to my room and handed it to me. I almost jumped for joy.

  Oh, this one’s a humdinger! The cover’s pitch-black. On the front is a comet with a long tail. Smaller stars swirl thick as flies in the background and a crescent moon peeks out of one corner. It’s all done in silver ink that gleams against the black leather like the real sky at night.

  That last book has thick pages full of chunks and chips, like they were made of a dried-up salad. I practically had to carve the words into the page, jabbing with the sharp point of that cheap pen. This book is a whole other story. It’s like a big, swanky Cadillac—you hardly feel the bumps in the road. The pages are bright white, smooth as glass. And the pen Emma got to go with it (yes, she remembered this time) is a felt tip with a thin silver barrel. Elegant is the word to describe it, like a movie star’s cigarette holder. It glides over the glossy paper like a skater on ice. Writing is a pleasure, I tell you that. Sometimes I doodle just for fun.

  I wish I could see everybody’s faces when they lay eyes on all these pages, every one of them covered with words I wrote myself, with no help from anybody. I marvel at it myself. Sometimes I flip through just to see all that ink.

  I can’t help but think how miserable I was when I started that first book, the one with the lavender on the cover. I would just as soon have died as go on living.

  What a whole different world it is now.

  Still, with all that’s happening here right now and so many things to think about, I got in the back of my mind that other story, the one that happened so long ago. It’s with me night and day, in my dreams, in my every waking moment. I’m getting that story straight for the first time in my life. I’m letting myself see what happened, watching myself like I was in a movie. Sounds crazy, but for the first time I see a person who was struggling, groping in the dark.

  THE HERO

  I didn’t lay a trap for Abel, didn’t snare him like a rabbit. More like I saw how things could turn out and stepped aside so they could move in that direction. I’m not saying it was right. But I was operating on instinct then, doing what I had to do. It was sink or swim. You never know what you’re going to do when your back’s against the wall.

  Abel turned out to be a gentleman. After all I’d heard about the Sledges, I thought he’d come on strong, but next to Edward, he was mild as a maiden. He didn’t lay a finger on me, didn’t even try. Oh, don’t get me wrong. He was willing, more than willing. But he waited until I gave him the go-ahead. I didn’t have much time to lose. All he needed was a little nudge. Once he got to a certain point, there was no turning back, and once he got a little taste, he had to have more. All hell broke loose then, believe me. That man thought he died and went to heaven.

  It’s no secret that sex is a whole lot different when you’re in love with somebody. Hard as Abel tried, much as he flailed and flopped, it wasn’t the same as with Edward. Only one thing got my attention, and it’s not at all what you’d expect. Like I told you, talking wasn’t easy for Abel. But I found out that the only time he had a lot to say was when he was making love. Then he couldn’t shut up! That man was a regular motormouth, like taking his clothes off jogged something loose in his tongue. He talked a blue streak about what we was doing, how he felt about it, and what he wanted to do next. Good Lord, the things he said! It took me aback while he was saying it, shocked the shit out of me. But later, when I was alone, his words played over in my brain. It’s like when they break a horse, the way they whisper to it constant under their breath. Don’t matter what they say—it calms the horse down. Abel’s voice lulled me. Those words spilling out of him made it easier for me, less like swallowing medicine.

  But that’s neither here nor there. The long and short of it is we’d been carrying on about a month when I told him I was expecting. I couldn’t wait much longer, because I was starting to show, or at least I could tell. I was more than three months gone by then.

  I’ll never forget Abel’s face. I was scared to death when I told him, remembering how mad Edward got, how he’d looked at me like he wanted to reach over and wring my neck. Well, Abel’s eyes flew open like he’d stuck his finger in a light socket. I held my breath, and then damned if his eyes didn’t light up and his mouth split open and all them spaced-out yellow teeth break out in the biggest grin I ever saw.

  I was so surprised, I forgot myself. “Ain’t you scared?” I asked. “Ain’t you sorry?”

  He took my hands and started mashing them up real good. If I wasn’t so dumbstruck, it would have hurt. Damned if those eyes of his didn’t get teary. “We just got to get hitched, that’s all,” he said, so choked up he could hardly get the words out.

  I felt so many things, all at the same time. Relief, of course, because in one fell swoop my troubles were over. My baby would have a home and a father. My own hide was saved, too. I w
ouldn’t have to face all them people with what I’d done and I wouldn’t have to figure out what in the world would become of me. But part of me felt like I’d just got condemned to prison, a life sentence. Because there it was, my whole life, spread out in front of me. Even then I wondered how I was going to get through it, if I was going to spend every waking moment ruing what I’d just done. I didn’t love Abel, but there he was, looking at me with all the love in the world. Oh, the shame! It nearly tore me apart. At the same time, I hated Abel for not being Edward. That’s right, even then! Oh, it was a mess! I nearly cried out, I was so miserable.

  Abel looked confused. “Ain’t that what you want, us getting hitched? Ain’t that what we been heading for all along?”

  Gratitude and guilt don’t mix, don’t sit right on your stomach. They pull you apart, make you feel like heaving. But I made up my mind then and there, on the spot, that I’d do everything I could to try and love Abel. I had a whole lifetime to learn how.

  My eyes were teary when I looked at him, but not for the reason he thought. I never planned to be with you, I thought to myself. All that thinking I’d done about Edward, all that imagining of our house and our children and our life together, that was all still fresh in my mind. I hadn’t pictured one thing about being married to Abel, and I didn’t want to start then.

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “This is where we been heading.”

  He put his arms around me and pulled me close. “You my baby girl,” he rasped, “and I’m going to take care of you.”

  There, I’ve gone and done it, I thought as I pressed my face against his hard, bumpy chest. I’d pulled one over on everybody. I heard him breathing and felt his heart pounding and told myself, good or bad, everything was settled.

  I TOLD HIM I was pregnant the first week in November. A couple days after that we told our folks we wanted to get married. We said we didn’t want to wait, we wanted to do it right away. Maybe they got the idea, because nobody asked any questions. Only Ruby kept eyeing me. Part of me feels like she knew what was happening right from the beginning. We set the wedding date for a month later, a Saturday morning, the twelfth of December. It wasn’t going to be nothing like Ruby’s wedding. Just our families, with lunch to follow at my folks’ house.

  Everything was slapped together and rushed. We didn’t have no place to live after we got married. The Depression was getting worse and even work there at the mine was slowing down, with more and more men trying to get the little work there was. Abel was hanging on by his fingernails and making next to nothing. So it got decided that we’d go live with his oldest sister, Dinah, once we were married. Her and her husband had a hog farm way out in the sticks, with a lean-to tacked on to the main house where we could stay. I dreaded it. They had five or six kids and I’d never met that woman in my life. Things looked bleak, but they were about to get worse.

  Abel and I got to fussing. He couldn’t see why we shouldn’t carry on with the sex like we had, but I told him we had to wait now, ‘til after we were married. I was already thinking of excuses to keep him off me. That should have told me something. He tried to abide by it, but by that time he was too far gone. He’d gotten a taste and he couldn’t do without. So, often as not, we’d end up bickering. I had my own gripes, the major one being piled up like kindling with his sister’s family. I couldn’t hold my tongue about how much I hated the idea, while he didn’t see a thing wrong with it.

  Round about Thanksgiving, he decided to go with his brothers to visit some kin in Tulsa, a last trip before he got married. Fine with me. I welcomed the break. Give me a chance to store up some patience so I could spend the rest of my life with him. So off he went with that pack of boys. They were planning to be gone three or four days.

  It was mild that year. That far into November and we didn’t have no freeze, or hardly any rain. With the banks failing and more and more people out of work, I got a sinking feeling that matched the one in my heart. People were getting desperate and there was no end in sight, just the days getting shorter and winter coming on. Meanwhile it was real pretty, the sky gentle and the trees going bare. My baby would be born in the spring. I couldn’t begin to picture what my life would be like by then.

  I was expecting Abel back the weekend after Thanksgiving. You’d think he was going to the moon the way he acted before he left, almost crying, saying how much he’d miss me, and he’d be back before I knew it, Don’t you worry, take care of yourself, I can’t wait to see you again. I appreciated him caring so much, I really did. I just wished I felt the same.

  So that Sunday after Thanksgiving, I was there in the kitchen with Ma and Crystal, helping fix our supper. We’d killed a chicken and I was plucking it. Jasper came round the back way and opened the kitchen door. He poked his head in and said, “Somebody here to see you, Toad.”

  Course I was expecting Abel. But Jasper had a funny look on his face. “He’s over there by the stump. Said he’d wait for you out there.”

  He went back around toward the barn and I pulled the last few handfuls of feathers off the bird. It was a red hen, with black speckles across its wings. I handed it to Crystal and washed and dried my hands. When I opened the door, the wind was blowing, making the dry maple leaves cartwheel along the ground.

  The stump was across the yard, over by a little copse of saplings. About as big around as a barrel, it had been there since I could remember. We split wood on it, and the top was crisscrossed with hack marks. He was sitting on it, hands in his pockets and shoulders slumped, looking down the slope away from the house.

  I was halfway across the yard before I realized it wasn’t Abel. The way he was sitting was different—his chest was sunk in, like his shoulders wanted to meet over his heart. As I got closer I saw he was taller and his hair was cropped close to his head, barely an inch long. It didn’t have that copper sheen like Abel’s, either. He turned and watched me coming toward him, but he didn’t make no sign—didn’t wave or nod his head, didn’t even smile.

  When I got up next to him, I could see why I’d thought it was Abel. The family resemblance was strong. He had the same square head, thick neck, ropy arms, and speckles covering his face. But this one’s eyes were closer together, hard and shiny as a snake’s. His mouth was pinched, puckered like it opened and closed with a drawstring. He was a few years older than Abel. Of course, I learned later it was his brother Enoch, the coldest man alive. He ended up working at the slaughterhouse, shooting steers in the head one after the other.

  He didn’t get up from the stump, didn’t take his hands out of his pockets or look me in the eye. I had a thought that I’m ashamed of to this day. It came to my mind before I had a chance to stop it that Enoch had come to tell me Abel had been killed. I didn’t have to marry him. I’d have the baby and live at my ma and daddy’s instead of his sister’s, and people would remember how me and Abel were going to get married, how he died right before the wedding, how our baby never saw its daddy. Later down the line, I could marry someone else, maybe even Edward. Hope surged up in my heart before I had time to scold myself, before I could think, Now, ain’t you ashamed?

  There was chips and splinters around the stump, and a pile of cut wood nobody had stacked yet. Smelled nice, that fresh wood. Enoch stared down at it, and since he didn’t say anything neither did I. He had big scuffed-up workboots on. The laces were knotted together in about a dozen places where they’d broken. I dug my toe in the chips, looked off toward the house where smoke rose from the chimney.

  “Abel ain’t coming back,” he said so sudden I jumped. He didn’t look up, just talked like he had a little speech he’d memorized, all in the same tone, without raising or lowering his voice. “He done cleared out. Quit the mine. He’s up in Tulsa. Staying there, looking for work. Say to tell you he ain’t coming back. Say to tell you, if you ask yourself, you know why. Say he ain’t never been done like this before in his whole entire life.”

  “What do you mean?” was all
I could say.

  “Mean what I said!” he snarled so fierce I stepped back. “Mean he ain’t coming back! Mean you ain’t going to see him! Mean he’s gone for good!” His snake eyes glinted. He pulled back his lips. He had a brown tooth right up front. His hands clenched on his thighs. He shoved himself up to standing. “You know the reason why!” he spit before he turned tail and hustled off down the slope.

  I turned, too, and half ran, half stumbled toward the house. I leaned forward, faltering over the ruts and bumps. The ground passed under my feet, my cheeks jiggled and my jaw clacked. My mind was racing, too. I figured one of Abel’s brothers—or maybe an uncle or older cousin—must have took him aside while he was in Tulsa. Must have said, Listen here, she’s playing you for a fool. Man talk. Or maybe he just got to thinking on his own. Figured things out, put two and two together. Didn’t matter how. I tripped on a rock up close to the house, almost fell flat on my face, but I kept on moving. I had to get inside. Had to hide.

  The back door always stuck. I jerked it with all my might, pulled it open. Ma and Crystal looked up, surprised. I went to pieces, fell apart right there with the boiling water and chicken feathers and heat from the stove. Collapsed in a heap on the floor, fell to crying like the world was going to end.

  THE REST OF that nightmare time is a blur. Ma took me upstairs and got me to bed, and that must have been when I told her, yes I did, I told her as best I could, that Abel had cleared out and I was pregnant, that my life was ruined and all I wanted was to be gone, dead, out of sight of everyone.

  My poor ma. People say folks turn old overnight at times like that, but while my confession sank in, her face changed into a young girl’s, a little lost girl who needed her own mother. “It’s a grave sin you’ve committed, Toad,” she rasped. She was right on the edge of crying, but she was mad as fury, too. She was disgusted with me, shocked at what I’d been up to. “A grave, grave sin. You better pray that Jesus can find it in his heart to forgive you.”