by Gina Holmes
“Are you hurting?” I asked, trying to keep the emotion out of my voice.
He touched the gauze patch on his right eye as if making sure it was still there. “Not too bad. They’re giving me pills every four hours. But I can’t see anything.”
He smelled of sweat and cigarettes. I wondered how he had managed to sneak a smoke in this place, but knew better than to ask. The question would only be treated like an accusation.
The woman in the corner began to sob. I wanted to yank her by her ugly black hair and run her right out of the room. She had no right to cry over my husband. Let her be sad over her own stinking man.
“I’m sorry, babe.” Trent sounded on the verge of tears himself. “I don’t know how we’re going to make it now.”
Before that moment, the only time I ever heard your father say he was sorry was after he’d sobered up and seen the bruises he gave me the night before.
“I could loan you money,” the woman whispered. She snuck a glance at me as she rubbed at the place on her arm above a faded rose tattoo. “I already told him I could loan y’all a little money until you’re back on your fee—” She cupped her face in her hands and went back to crying.
Since Trent couldn’t see me, I rolled my eyes. “Ain’t that sweet,” I said with a touch of sarcasm. “But we’ll get along just fine.”
He turned his face in my general direction and patted my hand. “That’s my girl. The Taylors ain’t no charity case, are we, One Cent?”
I didn’t know why he was talking to me sweet all of a sudden, but I didn’t much care. I liked it better than the alternative. “Is it permanent?”
He sighed and gave a half shrug.
The woman wiped the black from under her eyes as she stared down at my hand in his. “The doctor said they don’t know just yet. Only time will tell.”
I pretended like I didn’t hear her. Who was she to be talking to his doctor like she had a pony in this race? “Well, what did they say, Trent?”
“Norma’s right. Time will tell.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. Norma. Suddenly I hated that name.
She walked toward us and stopped at the end of the bed. “He was real bad when he came in. He already looks better.”
I couldn’t stand it a minute more. “Who are you?” I asked.
She looked to Trent as if he could see the question on her face.
He dropped my hand. “For crying out loud, Penny, don’t start. Norma’s our new supply clerk.”
It was all I could do to stop myself from saying something smart. “You gave him a ride here, then?”
She looked at the doorway as if contemplating making a run for it. “I . . .” She looked at Trent and waited for him to finish for her. When he didn’t, she continued. “An ambulance brought him in. I came soon as I heard.”
I couldn’t stand to hear one more word come out of her fish lips. “That’s very kind of you, Norma, but I’ll take care of my husband now.”
She frowned and looked at Trent.
He reached for my hand again, and I set it in his. Then he did something that made me almost forget she was even there. He brought my hand to his lips like I was his princess.
It was all Norma could do to keep it together as she said her good-byes. When she turned around at the doorway to look at us one last time, I bent down and kissed Trent’s lips. I had to fight not to cringe, knowing her lips had probably just done the same.
I listened to the click of her high heels fade down the hallway, then asked, “So how long have you worked with her?”
He dropped my hand and huffed. “C’mon now, Penny. If I had something going with her, would I have kissed you with her in here?”
Yeah, I thought. That’s exactly something you would do, because you like hurting women.
“We got bigger fish to fry than your paranoia.”
I wanted to say my so-called paranoia hadn’t been so crazy the night I opened the back door of our car to get a blanket and found him having what looked an awful lot like a lover’s quarrel with some bleach-blonde.
But I held my tongue. Trent’s eyes might be as useless as his memory, but his hands looked just fine.
FOUR
I HADN’T REALIZED the true weight of the boulder I’d been under until it lifted.
During the two weeks your father was in the hospital, the sky seemed bluer, the spring air sweeter, and for once in a very long time, there was peace in our home.
That morning I woke with the sparrows, dusted an already clean house, and even put on a little makeup just because I felt like it. It was afternoon when I decided it was time to give some attention to the flower beds.
I sat Indian-style on the grass I’d mowed the day before, wondering why Trent always made cutting the lawn sound like it was more work than building the Taj Mahal. If I had known how easy it was, I would have been doing it all along. To think, all this time, I was embarrassed about a yard I could have easily been keeping up myself.
Smiling at the realization, I plucked sprouts of rogue seedlings from between a grouping of wildflowers. The rainbow of blooms before me grew vibrant and healthy despite their neglect. I gently pinched the stem of the fullest pink flower, leaning in and sniffing its roselike scent, deciding I would add this one to the bouquet I’d cut for the kitchen table.
After I tamed the weeds, I lay down right in the grass, bent my arms behind my head, and looked up. The underside of the daisies set against the blue sky made for a striking contrast. Sunlight outlined the petals in shades of gold, and I sighed in contentment.
As I wiggled my bare toes on the grass carpet, a butterfly fluttered by, landing on a purple flower I didn’t know the name of. I watched it with longing. How wonderful it must be, I thought, to be able to just spread your wings whenever you like without someone following you around trying to swat you out of the sky. When the butterfly set off and a bumblebee moved in, a feeling of déjà vu washed over me. Scouring my mind, I tried my best to recall the memory fighting to surface.
I stared so long at the sky the sun blurred into a halo, and the memory I’d been searching for finally emerged. It was my thirteenth birthday, and I had insisted I was too old for a party. When the morning came without even the slightest bit of fanfare, I had to blink back the tears.
Sitting outside in my childhood yard, feeling sorry for myself, I had watched a bumblebee land on the honeysuckle vine next to me. He scurried flower to flower, feverishly collecting nectar as if it might be the only chance he might ever get. When at last he flew away, I noticed the vague smell of something freshly baked, and I knew before I even turned around that your grandmother was beside me.
She sat down and wrapped her arm around my shoulder. “Happy birthday, Penny.” She wore her thin brown hair pulled up in a ponytail, highlighting the streak of white at the nape of her neck.
I faked a smile. “Thanks.”
“Thirteen years ago today, your daddy rushed me to the hospital. You were the easiest birth. I knew you were going be something special when—”
I rolled my eyes in typical teenage fashion. “Not again, Mama.”
She untied her apron and slipped it from around her waist. “Too old for public displays of affection. Too old for parties. Too old for memories now too?”
I shrugged her arm off me and picked at a blade of grass.
Your grandmother looked up at the sky, smiled, and said, “I see a pineapple.”
Sneaking a glance upward to see what she was looking at, I said, “Not now.”
She lay back in the grass and pulled at my arm until I begrudgingly flopped down beside her. “All right, your turn, birthday girl.”
I wanted to be left alone, and at the same time didn’t want to be left alone, which I guess is the way kids that age feel most of the time. “C’mon, Mama, I’m not in the mood.”
She puckered her lips and pinched my side playfully. “Well then, maybe I’m not in the mood to give you your present.”
Her touch tickle
d, but I was too stubborn to laugh. Instead, I huffed. “Fine. I see a porcupine.”
She turned her head toward me and raised her eyebrows. It was then I noticed the fine lines starting to etch into her fair skin. “Penny Elizabeth Carson, you didn’t even look up.”
“Yes, I did,” I lied.
Her mouth twisted into a smirk. “Okay then, show me which one.”
I hurriedly scanned the sky. Not a single puff of white came even remotely close to looking like a varmint, but I pointed to one just the same.
She surprised me by saying, “Huh, I can see that.”
As I turned to see which cloud she was looking at, I felt like my heart would burst. She held her head to the side and squinted so hard it must have been blurring those clouds all together. I had no earthly idea why, but it made me want to cry. You make that same face sometimes, Manny, and it gets me every time.
Your grandma and I lay like that for a few minutes until she sat up suddenly and told me to come on in the house and get my gift already.
When I pushed open the screen door, I was hit with a chorus of family and friends yelling, “Surprise!” I couldn’t get the smile off my face as I scanned the small crowd. The happy smiles of my cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends all met me . . . and then my stomach sank. Of course Daddy wouldn’t be here. He’d be out working the field as if it were any other day.
Snapping out of the memory, I looked up at the sky, searching for pineapple clouds, and wondered how my parents could have ever fallen in love. Mama had to be one of the sweetest women to ever walk the earth. Despite Daddy’s barbwire personality, she had done her best to make both him and me happy. Some days I hated him for the way he treated her. Other times, like today, I just felt sorry for them both.
The difference between Mama and me was she would never voice her opinion if Daddy hadn’t asked for it, which he never did. At least I called Trent out on his bad behavior most of the time. Not that it made any difference. Maybe my mother had spoken up too, once upon a time. Maybe she just got tired of nothing ever changing, and eventually admitted defeat.
How was he treating her now that I wasn’t around to provoke him? Maybe things had gotten better between them. Maybe losing me had helped Mama find her voice or helped Daddy mute his. It had been so long since I’d seen them, they’d become like a far-off dream—the king and queen of a childhood fairy tale I once read.
I wondered if Mama could possibly miss me as much as I did her. And then I had an epiphany.
Trent was blind. He couldn’t check the phone records anymore to see whom I called.
My parents had only one phone number all their lives, and I hoped that hadn’t changed. I jumped up, brushed off my backside, and raced inside, nearly tripping over the hem of my dress. Resting my hand on the phone receiver, I closed my eyes and prayed for the words to speak.
I dialed their number fast so my mind didn’t have time to question my fingers’ memory. She picked up on the first ring as if she’d been standing beside that phone all those years, just waiting for me to call. Now that I’m a mother, I think she probably had.
“Hello?” She sounded so old, Manny. So tired.
My heart pounded and I lost my breath.
“Hello?” she repeated.
I think I might have whimpered then.
“Penny? Penny, is that you?”
I don’t know why, but I slammed the phone down so hard it should have cracked. When it rang right back, fear paralyzed me. It must have rung a dozen times as I stood there just staring at it.
Finally I found the courage to jerk it to my ear. “Mama,” I heard myself say.
My next words were, “Is he there?”
He was in the field, of course, same as always. I have no idea how long we talked, Mama and me, but there had been full light at the beginning of the call, and dusk by the time we hung up.
I told her of my courthouse wedding to Trent, about our little tar-papered house, and anything else I could think of. Of course, I left out the way Trent used his fists to tenderize my face on a regular basis. I suppose when I made her promise not to call me, she might have had her suspicions.
Joy and sadness both flooded my heart as we said our good-byes. There wasn’t time to dwell on either emotion, because the second I put the receiver in its cradle, it rang again. With a smile, I snatched it up, thinking Mama wanted to tell me she loved me one last time, but it was Trent hissing that he’d been trying to call me for over an hour. I felt sick to my stomach as I waited for the barrage of questions and accusations about who I was talking to, but all he said was, “I’m coming home.”
FIVE
TRENT FELT his way through the front door, hesitating with each small step—unsure. I tried to lead him by the elbow like I’d seen others do with blind people, but he kept pulling away from me. Staring straight ahead at nothing, he patted the air until his fingers finally touched the armrest of the couch.
He lowered himself, almost sitting on the copy of Gone with the Wind I’d checked out of the library a few days before. With a grunt, he knocked the book onto the floor as he sat. “Why bother cleaning up the place just because your blind husband might trip and break his neck?”
Blood rushed to my face as I picked up the book and set it on the table. “It is clean.”
He sneered. “Well, I can’t very well verify that, now can I?” He kicked off his boots in the usual fashion, then rubbed his stomach. “How about some dinner?”
I headed toward the kitchen intending to find something for him to snack on.
“Penny!”
I whipped around.
“Just because I can’t see, doesn’t mean I can’t hear you walking away from me.”
I walked back over—no, slinked was probably more like it. “I’m sorry, baby. I was just going to find you something to eat.”
When he stood, I noticed he was wearing mismatched socks—one black and one white.
“The fact I’m blind doesn’t mean I’m less of a man. You hear me?”
“I know,” I whispered.
He furrowed his brow and glared in my general direction. “You getting smart with me?”
Before I could answer, his balled fist thrust through the air. He intended to hit me, but thankfully I hadn’t been standing close enough. He fell backward, looking shocked as his legs went up and butt touched down. To me, his expression was more enlightening than funny.
His rage morphed into embarrassment. “Penny!” he yelled again, but the fight had left him.
At that moment I knew our relationship had changed, Manny. And your father knew I knew it. “I’m going to go fix you something,” I said.
When I brought him a ham sandwich, he surprised me by saying, “Thank you.” After he swallowed a bite, he felt around the plate. “You know I always eat two. I lost my eyesight, not my appetite.”
I sat beside him on the couch, keeping just out of arm’s reach. “I know, but that’s it.”
He turned toward me. “What’s ‘it’?”
“That’s the last of it.”
He licked the mayo from the corner of his mouth. “Round steak would be fine, then.”
“We’re out of bologna, too.” It irritated me to no end he didn’t suspect we were out of food. Why wouldn’t we be? He hadn’t given me grocery money in nearly a month. “I can fix you a bowl of oatmeal or tomato soup, but that’s pretty much all we’ve got.”
The color washed from his face. “What’ve you been doing, feeding the whole town while I was in the hospital?”
I slid a little farther away from him, mashing my hip into the armrest.
His face scrunched up like it always did when he was fixing to lose it. Then, as if remembering the earlier incident, the look melted away again. “That can’t be it.”
“There’s also half a bag of cornmeal,” I offered, “and a can of black olives.”
He slid his plate, with the half sandwich, down the cocktail table toward me. “You take it, then
.”
You could have bowled me over with a feather. Trent didn’t do stuff like that—selfless, I mean. The hardness trying to push its way into my heart pushed itself right out again. I slid the plate back to him. “I’m not hungry, but—” I hesitated—“thank you.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d thanked him for something out of genuine appreciation instead of fear. It felt nice on my lips.
He leaned back against the couch and turned his face toward the ceiling as if he could see something there. “This is bad.”
“What about the money you’ve been putting away?” Over the past few years, I’d asked him twice where the rest of his paycheck was going. The first time, he told me, “The rainy-day fund.” The second, and last, he kicked me in the tailbone and told me I’d better mind my own business if I knew what was good for me.
When he slowly shook his head, I knew his rainy-day fund had been more like a fifth-a-day fund.
I felt like I was going to be sick. “I could get a job,” I offered.
“No way.” He turned in my direction, looking past me at the door. “Who’s going to hire you? I’ll think of something.”
I hadn’t been interested in eating before I knew we had no money. Now I suddenly felt like my stomach was digesting itself. We’d been hungry before, and I had no desire to go through that kind of misery again. “I could go to the food bank. They help people like us all the time.”
He reached for me. I flinched until I realized he wanted to touch me, not hit me.
“Don’t say it, Penny. The Taylors ain’t no charity case. Never have been, never will. We ain’t got much, but we still got our pride, darlin’.”
And so for the next week, we lived on rations of oatmeal, corn mush, and your father’s pride.
