Martha Calhoun

by Richard Babcock

  “That was the others,” said Bunny. Her voice sounded as if it were about to break. “The others did it, but she got blamed.”

  The lawyer took a step toward us and his arm shot out at me. “Your honor, that girl is driving this town crazy,” he shouted. “She’s driving the town crazy, and her mother’s not doing a thing about it.”

  Bunny bounded up and shoved the table so hard it clattered across the floor and banged into the front of the judge’s bench.

  “Jesus!” said the judge.

  “The hell with it,” yelled Bunny. “The hell with it.”

  “She’s nuts!” shouted Mr. Moon, jumping back.

  “Please—”

  “Hey!”

  “Nuts!”

  Sergeant Tony knocked over his chair getting to his feet. “Hey, lady!” he yelled.

  Bunny stared wildly at the three men. She opened her mouth, and her lips moved silently. Finally, she made a noise. Maybe she’d wanted to say something, but it came out just a screech, a long, rasping sound that hurt just to listen to. It seemed to go on for at least a minute. Everyone waited. At last she snapped it off. She grabbed her pocketbook, whirled, and stomped down the aisle. She fumbled with the door, thinking it opened in and not out. Finally, she swung it open, stepped outside and slammed it shut. The crash echoed back through the huge, hushed courtroom.

  THIRTY

  “It’s just craziness, that’s what it is. Craziness.” Mrs. O’Brien steered her station wagon along the rain-spattered streets and talked over her shoulder. “What did your mother mean—going on about having conversations with a baby? Didn’t she know who she was talking to? Didn’t she know where she was?”

  “It’s tragic,” said Mrs. Vernon, from the passenger seat in front. “Simply tragic.”

  “And I think Judge Horner was sympathetic until the end,” said Mrs. O’Brien. “He was listening, did you notice? Then all that craziness.”

  “Simply tragic.”

  The car bumped along Center Street. The windows, rolled up against the rain, started to steam over. From the back seat, I stared out through the blurry glass, half expecting to see an erect, elegant figure marching through puddles on the deserted sidewalk, her hair like a streak of sunlight breaking through the downpour.

  After Bunny had banged out of the courtroom, Judge Horner sent Josephine into the corridor to find her. By the time Josephine returned empty-handed a few minutes later, the judge had prepared a small speech. “This is a sad case for me, but not a hard one,” he said. “There’s love here between Martha and her mother, but in six years on this bench and over three hundred cases, I’ve learned that love alone is not determinant, that sometimes you need more. Young people have to have guidance, discipline, examples. The world is moving too fast, with too many temptations, for us to sit by and ignore a worsening situation if we find a home that lacks those qualities.”

  As he talked, he looked only at Mrs. O’Brien, as if he were dealing with things so subtle and complex that only she could understand him. “The evidence I’ve heard,” he continued, “clearly establishes that Mrs. Calhoun isn’t providing adequate supervision for Martha. Despite her love for her daughter, Mrs. Calhoun refuses to make even the most basic sacrifices to straighten up her personal life. The girl is being exposed to things that are better left to adulthood. We’re a small, country town here, and we don’t like to push our children. But with the kind of home life Martha experienced, it’s hardly any wonder that the incident with the Benedict boy happened.”

  Lowering his voice and speaking quickly, Judge Horner then said I was delinquent under the family law of Illinois. He told Mrs. O’Brien to prepare a report on possible dispositions, and he ordered another hearing in a week. In the meantime, I was to stay at the Vernons’. “All rise!” sang out Josephine, and we stood again. “Keep your chin up,” Judge Horner said to me as he left the courtroom.

  The rain drummed incessantly on the roof of the station wagon, and the women in front fell silent. Mrs. O’Brien sat forward and squinted through the windshield. I sensed she was exaggerating her concern over the condition of the road, overacting, trying to prove she really did care what happened to me. Finally, she steered the car to a stop along the curb in front of the Vernons’ house and turned slowly to face me in back. “This has been the saddest day of my professional life,” she said. “I feel I’ve failed.” She paused, but the sound of the rain hurried her on. “I think you and I worked together fine, Martha, but I just couldn’t reach your mother. Something about that woman was beyond me. I’m sure the failure was mostly mine.” Another pause, while Mrs. Vernon shook her head. “Anyway, I’m thinking of recommending that your case be turned over to a colleague.”

  “If you do, we’ll all miss you,” offered Mrs. Vernon.

  Mrs. O’Brien forced a smile. “I don’t like to give up, but sometimes the fit on a case isn’t right, and the best thing a social worker can do is let someone else try to help. Do you understand, Martha?”

  She seemed to be speaking from miles and miles away, from a place so far away and unimportant that there was no need to respond. I jumped out of the car. The rain was surprisingly cold and beat down almost painfully, soaking my hair and blouse. Running up the walk to the house, I saw Dwayne just up the block—a wretched figure, dripping rain, standing with his bicycle under a tree.

  By then, my plan was almost complete. It had probably been building in the back of my head for days, but I finally came to it as Bunny slammed shut the courtroom door. In the shock of that moment, I could feel, like a physical thing, the loss of everything I’d had. So that’s the way it really is, I thought. Bunny had worried that the others were siding with me against her, but, in the end, it was Bunny who finally drew the line. She was the one who slammed the door, closing me in with them. She was the one who pulled away. After all this, that’s what it had come to, I realized. Even Dwayne stood around in the rain, watching over me. Bunny just walked away. Well, if she can walk away, I thought, so can I.

  In Sissy’s room, I changed out of my wet things. Sitting down at the desk, I pulled some lined notebook paper out of a drawer and prepared to write Bunny a letter. The letter, too, had been building in my head, composed in bits of ideas and bunches of words even before Bunny had stomped out. Still, I had trouble getting started and sat for a long time with the blank paper spread on the desk top. I’d never written to Bunny before—maybe a note once or twice when I was playing, or a practice letter in school, but never something for real, something to keep. All that talking, all those words that had passed between us—gone, just sucked up in the air.

  Finally, I wrote a sentence, then another. Looking them over, the words were clunky and wrong, nothing like what I’d say if I were just talking to her, even angry and frightened as I was. I crumpled the paper into a tight ball. I had to get this right. It would be so easy to misunderstand. Again, I wrote a few sentences on the lined sheet. They still weren’t right. Words I could speak confidently, easily, knowing I could control them, seemed dangerous as shifty, black squiggles. What if she thought I didn’t love her anymore? What if she thought I blamed her for all that had gone wrong? I might never see her again; this could be the last thing she knew me by. I balled up that sheet, too.

  I’d been sitting there more than an hour by then. It was no use. On the next sheet of paper, I wrote: “Bunny, I’m running away. It’s too hard to explain, but this is the only way. I still love you more than anything. Don’t worry about me.” Then I signed my name.

  There wasn’t an envelope anywhere in Sissy’s desk, so I folded another piece of notebook paper into thirds and used Sissy’s scotch tape to make an envelope of my own. I put the letter inside, sealed the envelope with more tape, and wrote Bunny’s name on the front. Then I hid the paper packet in the pages of En Français.

  By then, the rain had started to let up. I took out another sheet of paper and wrote out another message. This one was for Elro. I told him that if he still wanted to take
me away, I’d go with him. All he had to do was come tonight to get me. I knew what I was doing, and I didn’t doubt myself. Letting Butcher touch me was nothing compared to this—this was everything. There’d be no turning back. But all my life, I’d tried to be careful, tried to get along, and look what happened. I knew it was time to go the other way.

  I folded the note and walked downstairs. I could hear Mrs. Vernon in the kitchen, chopping vegetables with that metronome beat. I slipped quietly out the front door and ran down the walk and up the block. A light, fine mist still hung in the air, and the leaves dripped rain. Dwayne wasn’t anywhere around, but I stood under the tree where he’d been waiting. In a few minutes, he came down Oak on his bike. He stopped in front of me. His clothes were soaked, and his black hair had formed into the matted curls you see on pictures of Greek statues. He almost looked handsome. I pressed the note into his hand and told him to give it to Elro when he got a break from work at the KTD. Dwayne stared at the square of paper.

  “C-c-c-can I read it?” he asked. His lips were turning blue from the chill of the rain.

  “Yes.”

  While he held his bicycle between his legs, he carefully unfolded the lined paper and studied the side with writing on it. He moved his head back and forth, following each line of what, to him, were unknowable scratches. Finally, he smiled and folded the paper up again. “Okay!” he said.

  “You won’t forget? Elro Judy.”

  “N-n-nope.” He climbed on the bicycle and pedaled furiously down Oak in the direction of the KTD.

  Later, Mrs. Vernon knocked and brought a tray of food into Sissy’s room. I told her I didn’t want dinner, but she said she’d feel better knowing that food was there if I got hungry. She’d made a chicken salad and scooped it onto a bed of lettuce. Bright red tomato slices made a flower pattern around the plate. She put the tray down on the desk, then stood looking around nervously. It’s possible she suspected something, because she didn’t go through her usual ritual of straightening up.

  “Do you want to pray with me?” she asked. “We can pray for your mother.”

  I shook my head and finally she left. Then I got into my pajamas and lay down for a few hours. At about ten, on her way to bed, Mrs. Vernon peeked in again. I told her I’d be fine. I waited another half hour and then got up and put on jeans and a blouse. I pulled the suitcase out from under the bed and packed a skirt and another blouse and some underwear. I wrapped a tissue around my toothbrush and packed that, too. The suitcase was barely a quarter filled, but I thought it was better to travel light. I’d brought a black leather purse along from home—an old purse that used to belong to Bunny and that I’d kept around for emergencies. I stuffed some tissues inside and all the money I had, around $15. Then I put the suitcase and the purse under the bed and lay down to wait.

  At midnight, the whistle blew over at the KTD. Soon, a few vehicles puttered down Oak Street. I kept expecting to hear a tapping at the window, but there was nothing. An hour passed, then another. It was already after two. I couldn’t bear lying down, so I got up and paced the room, walking back and forth from the door to the desk, until I realized that Mrs. Vernon might hear me. Then I flopped on the bed, lying crossways, and stared out the window. I just lay there and stared out for another hour. The night was remarkably still. The sky had cleared since the afternoon, and the rainstorm had polished the air. The stars came through sharp and bright. Across the dappled lawn, the Porters’ house was sullenly blank, unbroken by any cracks of light. I hadn’t seen Grandma Porter for a couple of days, I realized, but she must be all right. I would have heard if something had happened. After a while, the Porters’ brown, furry cat slipped out of a shadow and padded halfway across the lawn. It stopped suddenly, sat down, and looked up at Sissy’s window—spotting me, apparently, and curious to find someone awake. The cat watched me for a few minutes, but soon grew bored. It yawned and rolled its head, then slipped back into the shadows. Every now and then, a car would come down Oak Street, and my hopes would revive. But all the cars passed without stopping, and, eventually, none passed at all.

  Elro wasn’t coming, I decided. He might have had to go out to his father’s house to pack up, but that would barely take half an hour—an hour at the most. He obviously wasn’t coming. He’d obviously just been talking when he said he wanted to take me away. Now that I’d accepted the offer, now that I was really going to test his talk, he’d lost his nerve.

  I squirmed and rolled on the bed. That’s typical, I thought. Empty promises. I’d heard nothing but empty promises in the last two weeks. From Mrs. O’Brien, from Reverend Vaughn, even from Bunny. Promises that blew away and disappeared when the time came to live up to them. Now Elro. I should have known better. After all, he’d been drunk the times he said it. He probably didn’t even remember. He’d probably looked at the note and wondered what in the world I was talking about. I pictured him there at the back gate of the KTD, standing against a post, trying to read what I’d written. Maybe he wasn’t even able to read it. I saw the strain lines making circles around his eyes, his lips moving clumsily over each word. Why was that so familiar? Of course. In grade school, he’d been one of the worst readers in class, stumbling, struggling, fighting to make sense of even the simplest sentences. People would giggle—not so much because he was dumb, which he wasn’t, really. They laughed because he tried so hard. An oversized, gawky, slow-talking boy, deadly serious about things the rest of us dismissed in a moment. A strange boy. He had a bullying older brother who was always pushing him, needling him, and still Elro followed the brother around, hoping for the least bit of attention. And the mother—thin and frail with the softest, gentlest voice I ever heard. I used to imagine that her words were a kind of cloth that I could reach out and run my fingers over. Mrs. Vernon said she died last year. What from? For some reason, I imagined breast cancer. Now Elro and his brother and father were alone. Alone at the Gardner place, in the tenant house, Mrs. Vernon had said. I thought of them sitting at a table, having dinner. Alone.

  Like Bunny. She’d be alone, too, now that I was running away. Of course, she’d have Eddie, but that wouldn’t last. Pretty soon, he’d be gone like all the others. Then the next man would come and the one after that and the one after that. But how long could it go on? She was getting older. The men wouldn’t be chasing her forever. She used to joke that someday she and I would grow old together, just the two of us. She always said it with a laugh, but I could tell she was a little bit serious: Bunny and me keeping house, sharing secrets, always having each other. The idea comforted her. Of course, that’s not something that I’d want. I always hoped I’d marry and have my own family. But I never stopped Bunny when she made remarks about the future that way. I guess somehow the idea comforted me, too. Now, that was all gone. I could get by. As long as I didn’t get sent away, I could get by, I was sure of that. But what about Bunny? She was like a child, really. She needed someone to take care of her, to keep her out of trouble. I’d been doing that for years—almost since I could remember, I’d felt responsible for her. She was always on my mind: What was she doing? Was she okay? Did she need my help? Thinking back, I could see now that that responsibility could have been a burden, but I never resented it. I liked it, really. It made me feel important. Fussbudget. A fussbudget daughter. I was a fussbudget before my time. But who would look after Bunny once I was gone? Not Eddie, certainly. He was more of a child than she was. All her men had been children, none of them worth a thing when it came to responsibility. She’d be alone, truly alone. Like Edith, the old woman at the Buffalo Tavern. Alone and disgusting. How could I do that to Bunny? How could I leave her to that? Would her hair turn gray and frizzy, like Edith’s? Would her clothes be rumpled and smelly? She’d already started to drink too much—would she turn into a solitary, slumped figure in the corner of a lonely bar? How could I abandon her to that?

  My stomach was clenched up in knots, so I rolled over on my back and stretched on the bed, trying to relax myself. Elro
wasn’t coming, and it was just as well, I decided. This was a bad idea, one more mistake. More insanity. Worse, this was selfish. I’d be ruining Bunny, just to save myself. And what kind of life would be left for me, anyway? How far could I go with Elro? He was just a dupe, a way to get away. I’d be ruining his life, too. It was better he didn’t come.

  But was it really? I remembered how I’d felt in court today. I thought of Tom’s letter. Running away had looked like the only solution an hour ago. I’d been so certain, I’d felt almost happy. At least I’d be doing something to help myself. I wouldn’t just be taking it, letting them do things to me. There’s something noble about taking control—even in my confusion I could sense that. Maybe suicide was the answer after all. That would be taking control. I hadn’t thought of suicide since the night of the blackout, but now the idea started to seem reasonable again. I’d show Judge Horner. I’d show Mrs. O’Brien. I’d show the whole town of Katydid. I’ve got my pride, and I’m not going to take it.

  I started making an inventory of things around the Vernons’ house, trying to figure out the simplest, most painless way to do it. There weren’t any pills, except for that one old vial in Mrs. Vernon’s medicine cabinet—and who knew if they’d kill you. I couldn’t take the chance. I’d never seen a gun in the house, and, anyway, guns scared me. I wouldn’t want to end up feeling scared like that. A knife? Mrs. Vernon’s knives were certainly sharp enough. Or a razor. I could even take the blade out of the razor I used to shave my legs. But think of the pain and the blood. Would I have the nerve to draw a blade deep across my wrists? There must be another way. Tom used to joke about licking the light socket. Would that really do it? I imagined myself on my knees, underneath Sissy’s desk. What if it just burned my tongue? I’ve never heard of anyone committing suicide that way. How did people die? Old age, disease. Cars. That’s it, I thought. A car crash. Kids are always dying in car crashes. I’ll steal the Vernons’ car, take it out in the country, get it going a hundred, and then aim for a tree. Just another teenage casualty. It would be so simple. Only I didn’t know how to drive.