by Gina Holmes
“Get up off the ground, Penny. The neighbors are going to think I’m murdering you in here with you carrying on like that.”
The ceramic tiles were cold against my cheek, and a crack in one of them pressed into my skin. I sat and gazed up at him. He wasn’t that much bigger than me when we stood nose to nose, but every year, he seemed a little taller. I felt like Thumbelina right then.
He grunted. “If you would put half the time you worry about having a crying poop maker into being a good wife, I wouldn’t be embarrassed to bring my friends into this dump.”
His words cut deep. Maybe because they were true. Our little tar-papered house had gotten to be a bit of a mess lately. I didn’t know it back then, but it’s clear as crystal now that I was dealing with serious depression. I kept the shades down and the fresh air out. I stopped cutting flowers and bringing them inside. I stopped doing most anything except the bare minimum of cooking dinner and washing clothes and dishes.
“I’m sorry, Trent.” My voice crackled.
He scrunched his face. “I-I-I’m sorry, Trent,” he repeated, mocking me. “I just want a baby so bad. That way I can spend even more time neglecting you.” He flicked the cigarette he had been smoking at me. The orange tip bit my forearm, and I jumped.
I looked down at my arm. A small half moon of red formed right below a yellowing bruise. I licked my middle finger and ran the spit over the sting to cool it. “You used to want a son too.” His father had neglected him to the point of pitifulness, and in our younger, better days, Trent shared his overwhelming desire to get a do-over and show his father what it meant to be a real dad.
“If wishes were pennies, I’d have more lazy women than I could feed.”
I hated him using my name as a pun, which is, I’m sure, why he did it. “If I’m so awful, why’d you marry me?”
He sucked his teeth and I half expected him to spit on me, but instead, he reached down and held out his hand to help me up. I had no reason to trust him, so I balanced myself in such a way that if he let go, I wouldn’t fall. But he didn’t. He pulled me to my feet and held me against himself.
“Penny, I don’t want you getting yourself so upset about whether or not we get young’uns. I wouldn’t mind a son, sure, but the only thing in this world I need is you.” He stroked my back.
Then, just when it seemed like he actually cared, he started in with the insults again. I made a comment he found disrespectful, and before I knew it, his fist cracked against my temple.
Flashes of light blinked around the room, and I dropped to my knees. My ears rang so loudly I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Slowly, he and his words came back into focus.
His top lip curled up over his teeth. “Next time I try and offer you a little constructive criticism, don’t you dare give me lip. You thank me, understand? I’m your husband and it’s my job to look after you. If I don’t tell you the truth, who will?”
Truth. I had no idea what that word even meant anymore.
I held my aching head, feeling a trickle of blood snaking its way into my mouth. I knelt on the floor for the longest time listening to him yelling at me to get up. He kicked me once, halfheartedly, but I refused to budge. I was in another time and place. I was the Princess Penny of my childhood, crying out for someone to save me.
God heard, Manny. He always does.
The next morning I woke up early, like I did every day, and fixed your father eggs. One bite was too runny, the next overdone. I apologized for not being a better cook, a better homemaker, a better . . . you name it.
He shoved the tail of his shirt into the back of his work pants and snatched the lunch I’d fixed him off the counter. I handed him his thermos of coffee, wondering what would happen if one day I just forgot to screw the top on. How badly would it scald him?
What a terrible thing to wonder. Take each thought captive, I told myself as he walked toward me. I flinched, not knowing if he was about to kiss me or hit me. That morning, I was lucky.
His work boots gave him a couple inches of height, so I had to push up on my toes to reach him. When my mouth met his unpuckered lips, he grunted as though I’d said something he disagreed with.
When he left, I walked to the window, feeling exhausted. The kind of tired that seeps into your marrow and makes your bones feel like lead. It was all I could do to keep my eyes open as I watched our rusty mopar tear out of the driveway and screech around the bend.
When it did, I noticed smudges of ketchup, and who knew what else, streaking down the once-white paint, now stained tobacco-yellow. I ran my fingertips slowly across the coarse living room wall, remembering Trent’s promise to paint it whatever color I wanted. Over the years, his dead promises had begun to line up like cars in a funeral procession.
I stood there for the longest time, my palm flat against the chipped paint, knowing I should grab a sponge and clean off at least the worst of the filth. Ought to clean a lot of things. But if the house was spic and span, he would just find something else to complain about, something a bottle of Windex couldn’t wipe away.
I was ready to head back to the bedroom when someone pounded on the back door. I had no friends, and my family was almost two hundred miles away. We lived a little out of the way with only two sets of neighbors on our street, both of whom steered clear of Trent, so I had no idea who it could be.
I looked through the open kitchen window, past the torn screen, at a woman who was somehow familiar. It took a few seconds to remember this church lady who’d brought me a cake the first and last time I had visited Sheckle Baptist, nearly six months before.
Trent and his buddies had eaten that cake in one stoned sitting. As he licked the orange icing from his fingertips, he told me church folk were a bunch of hypocritical killjoys that lived one way and expected everyone else to live another. I never went back, but the Bible she gave me to replace the one I’d lost to one of your father’s drunken tirades still lay hidden under the bed.
“Long time no see,” the church lady said. In the sunlight, her hair shone the color of corn silk and looked just as fine. Tiny wrinkles feathered out from around the corners of her eyes, but the rest of her skin was smooth, making it hard to guess her age.
“Long time,” I agreed. There was no way I could invite her in with the house such a mess—not that I wanted to.
As if she could read my mind, she laid the back of her hand over her forehead like she was Scarlett O’Hara. “Isn’t it hot as molasses out here?”
“Hot as what?” I wondered if maybe I’d heard her wrong.
“Molasses,” she repeated, then blushed as if just realizing what she said. “That’s what my mama always said. She didn’t make a whole lot of sense sometimes, bless her heart.”
I didn’t want to lie to her, so I just said, “Ma’am, I’m a little busy. Is there something I can do for you?”
She gave me a look like she didn’t much believe me. I didn’t care if she did or didn’t, so long as she carried herself back to her car.
“Well, I don’t want to keep you. I just was wondering if you had ever thought about visiting our church again?”
What did she care? It wasn’t like they were hurting to fill their pews or collection baskets. Besides, even if Trent was the tithing sort, 10 percent of nothing would still be nothing. Back then I didn’t understand concern for someone else’s soul. Your mama didn’t understand much of anything except survival, baby.
Inside my socks, my toes curled up tight. “I’m worshiping at home now.”
She squinted at me for an uncomfortably long time. “The Bible says you should belong to a church.”
I looked past her and the overgrown grass to the tractor tire leaning against a gutted Yugo Trent had brought home two years before, but hadn’t touched since. “No, it don’t, neither.”
She laughed. “Know your Scripture, do you?”
“My daddy made sure of it.” What I didn’t tell her was how he shoved it down my throat every time I didn’t do things his
way. I hated the deity my father presented as a giant principal in the sky, throwing down bolts of lightning and striking women dead for not obeying their husbands, or children their fathers. My mother’s version was far kinder. He was the sort that wiped away tears and picked you up when you fell. That’s the God I clung to, though I knew precious little about him then.
The lady brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “Hebrews 10:25 says, ‘Let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.’”
A mosquito must have bitten my chin because it started itching like mad. I scratched at the small bump and pondered that verse. After a few seconds I said, “It also says, when two or more are gathered in Jesus’ name, he’s there with them.” I was proud of myself for not only speaking up, but also sounding halfway intelligent for a change.
The strap of her purse slipped down her arm and she pushed it up over her shoulder. I don’t know if her blouse was silk or satin, but the shimmery fabric looked so beautiful and cool. I couldn’t help but wonder what something like that would cost. Probably more than our house payment.
“Very good. Penny, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right.” How much nicer my name sounded when it wasn’t being sputtered like a cussword. I figured I should quit while I was ahead. Besides, my back was getting sore from stooping there at the window to look at her. “Well, thanks for coming.”
She turned to go, but then paused and turned around. “I just have one question. Whom are you gathering with?”
The question caught me off guard, so I just gaped at her, feeling like the moron I thought I was. After a moment, I finally found my voice. “I am married, Miss—” I remembered too late I didn’t recall her name.
There was something about her smile that took away my embarrassment. “Mrs. Callie Mae Johnson. You can call me Callie. Your husband—he’s a Christian man?”
My face flushed. If Trent knew I was speaking to her, he would have me looking like a raccoon for sure. “I really have to go.”
Her smile faded. “Well, I don’t want to keep you, but we sure would love you to come sit with us again. This time bring your husband.”
I cleared my throat and studied my dingy socks. “He isn’t much on church.”
She let out a breath of air like she’d been holding it all her life. “Oh, I see. Well, you tell your husband he may be head over you, but God’s head over him. You tell him that.”
Although I said nothing, I thought maybe I would tell him. Maybe it would get him to think about a few things; though, of course, I knew better.
“You take care, Penny. Sorry to have bothered you.” She turned around and started down the back stairs.
“No bother,” I mumbled, wishing my house had been clean. A female to talk to might have been nice. Trent wouldn’t have to know.
She slid into a blue sedan that looked like it had just been run through a car wash and drove away. I looked around the kitchen, trying to see how my house might have looked through her eyes if I had let her in. The morning dishes sat on the table and counter, but that was understandable. I’d just fed my husband, after all. Besides the lining of dust along the baseboards, it wasn’t so bad if she didn’t look too closely. As long as I kept her in the kitchen it would have been fine, but if she had to use the bathroom, and a guest always seemed to have to, she would see what a pigsty I let my husband live in.
Shame warmed my cheeks. Trent was right. I should snap out of it and start being a better wife. No wonder he didn’t love me. No wonder God didn’t think I could handle being a mother. I hadn’t been faithful with what he had provided.
These thoughts should have motivated me to get it together and clean up, but they just sucked me drier. I made my way to the bedroom—blissfully dark—and lay down.
I dreamed that I was a bird. My wide, beautiful wings carried me high above the clouds, high above my troubles, onward toward heaven. The pearly gate was almost within reach when a boom of thunder hurled me back to earth. . . . I rolled over, burying my face deeper into the pillow. The racket grew louder. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I sat up.
Someone was pounding on the front door. Maybe the church lady was back. The forcefulness of the pounding told me that was unlikely.
Trent.
He must be home from work and forgot his key. I wondered why he didn’t come in the back. I almost never kept that door locked.
Supper! I didn’t know what I was going to make. I hadn’t even washed the dishes from breakfast, for crying out loud. He was going to kill me. I threw the sheet off and tore out of the room toward the front door. Excuses whizzed through my mind. I was sick, the church lady upset me . . .
The knocking grew more insistent as my trembling hands fought to turn the doorknob. When I opened the door, I almost fainted in relief to find one of Trent’s drinking buddies standing there instead of him. It was no surprise Boston reeked of liquor—he never didn’t—but he wasn’t stumbling for a change. That, along with the brightness of the sun, told me it was not as late as I feared. “Howdy, Penny.”
With a curt nod, I acknowledged him. Manny, I could not stand that man. Couldn’t stand any of your father’s so-called friends. The way I saw it, they were the reason for my constant isolation, our poverty, and in my twisted thinking, even for his affairs. I guess blaming them was safer than blaming your father.
He scratched his chin with those dirty fingernails of his. “I hate to be the one to tell you . . .”
It was like time stood still then. He’s dead, I thought. My husband is dead. And then a strange emotion came over me, one I hadn’t felt in a very long time. Hope.
So many thoughts bounced around my mind. What would I do first? Call Mama? Get a job? I could start going back to church proper every Sunday. Find out if my childhood friend, Lucy, had gone to college like she said she was going to do.
And then more somber thoughts. The funeral—how would I pay for it? Maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe I would just pack up my belongings and leave before anyone could ask me what kind of arrangements I wanted. But where would I go?
“. . . accident.”
“Accident?” Accident didn’t mean dead. The hope I’d been holding seeped out of my hands like grains of sand, quickly replaced by guilt when I realized I was disappointed.
Looking back, Manny, I shouldn’t have felt ashamed for fantasizing about him dying. I should have considered myself a woman of exception for not trying to kill him myself. But here’s a little marital advice for the future—if you start thinking your only hope for a happy future means the death of your spouse, it’s time to get some help.
“What kind of accident?” I asked.
He ran a hand through his thinning brown hair. “He’s in the hospital.”
Not dead. Thank God, I forced myself to think. “What’s wrong?”
“He cut through a pipe that still had fuel in it. It exploded in his face.” He kicked the doormat. “They took him to St. Joe’s. You need to get over there.”
A pipe exploded in Trent’s face? I feel guilty admitting this, but my first reaction wasn’t pity in hearing that. You know what raced through that head of mine? Great. Now he’s going to be even meaner.
But he wasn’t, Manny. It was the craziest thing.
THREE
IT HAD BEEN over a year since I’d first set foot in St. Joseph’s Hospital. That time, the doctor had told Trent to leave the room, then asked me how I ended up with a broken arm, a black eye, and a gash across my chin. After I repeated my lame story for the second time, she tried to hand me a card for a halfway house for battered women. Just in case I knew someone who needed it.
Thinking of that doctor now as I made my way down the hallway, I wondered what my life might be like if I had taken the card she offered. That, and how your father and I were ever going to pay for all of this if worker’s comp didn’t cover it.
As I passed a group of nurses, I had to re
mind myself they couldn’t know we were deadbeats, but something about the way one of them eyed me made me wonder.
I forced my gaze off her onto the glass-walled patient rooms to the left. Within each lay a poor soul attached to all kinds of tubes and gizmos I couldn’t begin to imagine the purpose of. Nurses hurried in and out of those rooms looking busy and burdened. A dark-haired man sat at the front desk, tapping his knuckles against a phone receiver as he stared at what I guessed to be a bunch of heart monitors. When I told him who I was, he pointed me to the last room on the left.
I hesitated and took a peek before entering. With his eyes patched with squares of white and his body hidden under blankets, I barely recognized him. His hair lay slicked back off his forehead, which was partially wrapped in gauze.
He shifted around in the bed like he couldn’t get comfortable. When I stepped into the room, the smell of cheap perfume slapped me in the face. Its source stood facing the window, dressed in skinny jeans, heels that belonged on a street corner, and a pink ribbon tying up stringy black hair. This was not the same woman with the nose ring and pocked skin I was reasonably sure Trent had cheated on me with last time.
I cleared my throat. Trent casually reached for the lidded cup on his bedside table and took a sip from the straw. He either didn’t know I had walked in, or else didn’t care. The woman, on the other hand, whipped around like I had screamed her name. The heavy streaks in her makeup told me she’d been crying.
I was suddenly conscious of my threadbare sundress, scuffed sandals, and eyebrows that desperately needed to be plucked. Ignoring her, I went to your father. “Hi, baby.”
He jerked his head back in surprise. “Penny?”
I stepped closer. “I’m so sorry you’re hurt.”
When he felt the air for me, I stepped into his touch. His rough fingers fell first on my face, then down my arm to my hand. From the corner of my eye, I watched the woman’s reaction. When she flinched, I knew she was no mere friend or coworker. You could have fried bacon on my face, but there was no way I was going to let either of them know how I felt—she didn’t deserve the satisfaction, and I didn’t deserve whatever Trent would give me for accusing him of what he was sure to deny.
