Around the edge of the house I could see your grandmother in the far end of the yard, and she was throwing sheets and pillowcases into a trash fire. I didn’t care why; the only thing that mattered was seeing you and getting some sleep. I had a moment of panic when I found our room empty, the bed stripped, and the window wide open. It took a while for my heart to stop pounding even after I realized that the shower was running. Of course, she was in there. I took off my filthy overalls and sweat-stained underwear. I would join her. How long since we’d done something normal like bathing together—or even laughing together? It seemed an eternity. And that’s how long your screaming seemed to echo.
The warm water felt good on my head and shoulders, even though I was so weak I had to kneel in the tub. Wherever the beaded spray touched me and ran down, the gnawing inside would quiet. The running water stopped them from eating at me, like the stroking from my grandmother’s hands. It was a welcome revelation because I had only gotten in there to try and wash away the putrid smell that had permeated the air in the bedroom and turned the bed covers gray and slick. I didn’t want you to find me in that condition. But I could still taste the rot inside of me. I opened my mouth to let the water spray in. Rinsing and spitting it out was to leave a yellowish slime around the drain, and rinsing again was to begin to feel the real texture of my tongue. I tried to drink, but I gagged. That was all right—staying under the water was enough.
I gripped the side of the tub and raised myself to my feet in order to get closer to the spray—yes, let it pour down over me—and to feel this calm inside. Could it actually be killing them? Turning my face upward, I moved it from side to side so the water could spray into my ears and nose. I soaked my hair, bent my neck, and raised my arms up to let the clear streams falling from the shower head cascade over my body. You see, they were the same color as the water. And it took me a while to notice that the spray from the nozzle was thickening and that there was a difference in the weight of the long watery beads clinging to my flesh. Before I knew it, they were pouring down over me and crawling into every opening of my body—some even pushing their way in through the corners of my lips. Screaming only allowed more of them to slide down my throat.
They were the hollow eyes of a lunatic. I don’t know how I got you out of that tub into the bedroom, fighting and ranting the way you were. It took my entire body to pin you down on the bed with my elbows jammed into your upper arms and my hands locked around your face, forcing you to listen as I said over and over that it was only water. Pressed under my chest, your heart was beating as wildly as mine, the muscle spasms in your throat rippling the flesh as if it were alive. Your fingernails were digging into my back, but I kept you locked down in that position until your eyes began to focus and the spasms subsided into a gentle trembling. I stroked your wet hair and showed you my hands—You see, baby? It’s only water. I ran my fingers along your jutting shoulder blades, collecting the tiny droplets to hold in front of your face. I did the same for your arms, before trailing my fingers over your sunken midriff, the insides of your emaciated thighs—all to show you that it was water.
Your muscles began to relax and you brought your hands around to cradle my face. The trust in your eyes crushed me. I couldn’t attain my ultimate desire to get inside and change places with you, but I tried the best I could. You fell asleep almost immediately afterward, your arms still clutching my back. For a long time I didn’t move as I rested with my body inside of yours, feeling your steady heartbeat against my erratic one. I managed to leave without waking you and went into the bathroom to turn off the shower. As I put up the toilet seat, I thought it was a drop of semen on the end of my penis, but after I urinated it was still there. I used the thumb and forefinger to pry off the clear jellied substance and bring it nearer to my eyes. I looked at it from several angles until I was certain that I held a live worm. I smashed it between my fingers. It left a yellowish smear with the odor of rotting garbage.
I stood at the bedside, looking down at your wasted body as you mumbled in your sleep and made abortive clawing gestures toward your throat, your stomach. Everything blurred in front of me. My eyelids stung as if they were being washed in hot, molten metal. A fluid metal that burned as it rolled down my cheeks into the corners of my mouth. I put my hands up to my face, it was only water.
She meets him at the gate of the garden to save him as many steps as she can. Without a word, she hands over the ledger and walking cane. But she tries to tell him with her eyes how hard she knew the journey was. Harder, ’cause he’d been beaten down to believe. And it was gonna be harder still, ’cause he was taking her way. It ain’t a proud man in front of her—his pride wasn’t needed—but it wrenches her inside that he’ll be traveling without it. Wrenches her inside that the other way—his way—is to lose him. So she tries to say what little strength she has is his. That she’ll stand by that gate with her hands outstretched to grasp his when he brings ’em. She don’t say none of that. She don’t even watch as he slowly takes that bend away from the other place. She done already turned her face to the sky that’s well beyond the tip of the pines. Hot. Vacant. It ain’t a prayer. And it ain’t a plea. Whatever Your name is, help him.
The last mile. I didn’t bother to swat the mosquitoes and gnats biting me or to wipe the sweat off my face. The air was so heavy I had to pant through my open mouth, and whenever a gnat flew in, I’d spit it out and keep going. To stop for anything—a cut and muddy knee, a cramp in my side—would be to think about what I was doing; and I couldn’t afford that. The cane and ledger had to be gripped tightly because they were covered with a smooth wax that melted in the heat, coating my palms. But at least I could put my weight on the cane, so it helped me to keep moving even with the bruised knee.
I slipped again trying to climb over a fallen palmetto, and twisting to avoid cutting myself on its sharp leaves, I lost my balance totally—the cane flying in one direction, the book in the other—and I ended up sprawled out on the ground. Trying to get up with only one good knee was almost impossible, I had to crawl toward the cane and use it for leverage. But where was the book? Surrounded by gnats and with the perspiration stinging my eyes, I couldn’t see it among the bushes. That indecision would have opened the door to thought, and thought was certain to stop me. A breeze came out of nowhere. A strong breeze that cooled my skin and rustled the oak branches, sending the hanging moss swaying back and forth. I heard a fluttering to my left. The ledger was wedged between two rocks, the pages turning in the wind. That breeze stayed at my back until I entered the chicken coop.
The stench was overpowering. I couldn’t breathe in that raw manure without wanting to gag. I rushed back out into the fresh air, but with nothing in my stomach, I brought up only a mild aftertaste of ginger and honey. The second attempt was better. I took shallow breaths, which helped me to bear the smell. The light was so dim, how would I be able to find a red hen? There was only row after row of yellow eyes, glinting at me from all sides. The northwest corner of the coop. North would be to my right, west straight in front of me. It was the only nest in that corner, a low pine box filled with straw. The huge red hen seemed to be in a trance; she sat there immobile until I came within two feet of her. The feathers around her neck began to swell as she emitted a deep throaty hiss, followed by a garbled set of short sounds, her throat vibrating. Her eyes never left me, and when I came within another foot, she struck.
She flew at my legs. I pushed her aside, and tried to reach behind the nest. Too low—I would have to get farther down. A sharp pain seared through my ankle where she was ripping through the denim with her beak. Kicking backward, I heard a high shriek, and the whole place exploded in rumbles and cackling. Quickly falling down on my bruised knees, gritting my teeth against the pain that radiated through my temples, I wedged my hands behind the nest. A blur of red feathers, she sank her claws into my wrist and a beak like rapid gunfire began tearing at my left hand. I ripped my skin trying to get her claws out of me before flinging he
r on her back. I turned the whole nest over, eggs bursting and splattering into the straw. Another shriek. She came at the side of my face. I raised my right hand to protect my eyes; blood spurted from a pierced vein. I threw her again and hurriedly dug at the loose straw and manure in the corner. Nothing. There was nothing there—except for my gouged and bleeding hands. Bring me straight back whatever you find.
But there was nothing to bring her. Bring me straight back whatever you find. Could it be that she wanted nothing but my hands? Another blur of red feathers. The hen flew up, her claws sank into my shoulder blades, cutting my shirt into bloody strips as her weight carried her sunken claws ripping down through my back. I tried grabbing her from behind—my right hand, my left hand. Both hands attacked with her beak and spurting fresh blood. In desperation I threw her off. And when the hen came at me this time, I took up the walking cane and smashed her in the skull. I brought it down again and again. I went through that coop like a madman, slamming the cane into feathery bodies, wooden posts, straw nests—it was all the same. The air was choked with feathers. The noise was deafening. The cane broke, I grabbed up the ledger and kept going until I got a stitch in my side. That finally made me stop. I looked at it all and began to laugh. A tight, airless laughter that got no further than my chest as I sank into the middle of the floor. My forehead bowed to my raised knees, my torn hands grasped in front of me—I laughed. When I could breathe again, I threw my head back and the laughter finally came with sound. There was nothing that old woman could do with a pair of empty hands. I was sitting in a chicken coop, covered with feathers, straw, manure, and blood. And why? I looked around me again and kept laughing until it started to hurt. Why? I brought both palms up, the bruised fingers clenched inward. All of this wasted effort when these were my hands, and there was no way I was going to let you go.
I managed to get up from the floor. There was a dull throbbing behind my breastbone that steadily worsened as I made it outside into the sunlight and looked past the silver trailer to your grandmother’s house. It was barely fifty yards, but at the time I didn’t know that I was dying. I thought I had sprained a muscle when I lost my head inside. Now my mind was perfectly clear: I was to get over to that house, because I was not going to let you go. When I reached the dogwoods on the west side of the road, the throbbing was beginning to turn into an iron vise in the middle of my chest. I put one foot on the paved road and glassy needles splintered throughout my brain. The house was wavering in front of my eyes. The road felt like water under my buckling knees. It was impossible to cross over, make it up those porch steps, and into our room. I did it. But I was too cramped to even unbend my body on the bed beside you.
The worst thing about the blinding pain that finally hit me was the sudden fear that it might mean the end. That’s why I gripped your shoulder so tightly. But I want to tell you something about my real death that day. I didn’t feel anything after my heart burst. As my bleeding hand slid gently down your arm, there was total peace.
Miranda knows she got no more reason to stand at that gate. He went and did it his way, so he ain’t coming back. The morning presses on and she finds herself with a lot to do. In the pantry she rolls up bundles of dried herbs into clean strips of cloth. Now that Baby Girl was going to live, she had to be nursed back to health. And Miranda makes sure to bottle up plenty of tonic for a sedative. She scrapes the pot clean that held the balsam, rinses it, and hangs it up to dry. She closes the shutters upstairs, makes the bed, and sweeps the floor. Ashes get taken out of the fireplace, the kitchen sink and stove gets scoured. She drags the rocker inside from the verandah and finally shuts the front door. Catching Cicero takes a while, but she manages to get him into his sack.
The walk through the woods is longer than usual, since she ain’t got her cane and the hickory limb she stripped keeps bending. Back at her trailer, she’s got windows to open, a pool of water to mop up from the ice melting in her freezer, and fresh mash to be given to her chickens. After all is done, she goes inside the coop to look around at the bloody straw, the smashed eggs, and scattered bodies. Now, she has the time to cry.
I thought my world had come to an end. And I wasn’t really wrong—one of my worlds had. But being so young, I didn’t understand that every hour we keep living is building material for a new world, of some sort. I wasn’t ready to believe that a further existence would be worth anything without you. There was just too much pain in it. Yes, I thought often about suicide and once made the mistake of voicing it. I had never seen Mama Day so furious—never. George, there was actually hatred in her eyes. There ain’t no pain—no pain—that you could be having worse than what that boy went through for your life. And you would throw it back in his face, heifer?
It took me almost three months before I was well enough to leave Willow Springs. Three months in which I had to be told that certain things had happened—your business partner coming down from New York, the will that requested a cremation—it all passed in one continual fog. The season changed into what they called a slow fall, which meant there was little difference between late November and August. The weather would remain just like summer until suddenly frost hit. And it was a long journey by train, because Mama Day refused to fly. Coming out of Penn Station, I was shocked to see how gray and dirty everything was. A cold rain was swirling piles of trash into the gratings of overflowing sewers with grimy mud splattering my open-toe sandals and stockings. The smell of wet cardboard as the makeshift huts put up by homeless men and women dissolved in the rain. And the ceaseless noise: impatient car horns, swearing bus drivers, a dozen hawkers of cheap umbrellas and plastic hats. This couldn’t be the same city I had seen with you.
I would rather have had Grandma with me to close up the house; at least she would have realized how draining it was to walk back into those rooms on Staten Island—I wanted to drop on that sofa and stay there, perhaps forever. But Mama Day, arms akimbo, put me right to work—A house that’s been sitting for three months needs a good cleaning. And it was the oddest feeling, as if we’d just left that morning. My bathrobe was still in a pile on the floor, a few hairs in the sink from when you had shaved, there was even a sprinkling of coffee grounds on the kitchen counter. Straightening it all up, I knew you had to be coming back in that evening. Instinctively, I reached out to stop her from moving your slippers near the bed—No, George will get angry. He likes his things just so—until I heard the thought. In silence, I let her move them. And in the silence of our room that night, it wasn’t hard to return to the belief that you would still be coming back. I always slept alone that time of year—wasn’t this the playoff season? But when I got no long-distance call in the morning to tell me what some team I never cared about had scored, I became suspicious of the order in our house. Could it be possible that you weren’t going to open that mail stacked so neatly on the table? After all, I was reading my half and paying the overdue bills. And the thank-you notes I was sending out for all those sympathy cards—well, I had the better handwriting. But those official-looking letters from your accountant, lawyer, and insurance company addressed to Mrs. George Andrews—a name I rarely answered to. Maybe it was just a typographical error; they would just have to sit there for you to handle.
When it finally hit, it hit hard. And it took something as simple as a brochure from the Wallace P. Andrews Shelter for Boys—a friendly reminder that your annual contribution hadn’t been received for that year. You see, this was one check that you wrote out yourself and nothing made it late. If Grandma had been there, she would have held me when I broke down and cried. Mama Day only said that for a long time there would be something to bring on tears aplenty; but she was saving her comfort for the day when I had stopped crying for myself and would have that one final cry—for you. God, I thought her cruel. How could my grief be about anything but you?
It took me years to know what she meant. I certainly didn’t know as we packed up your things, and any crazy object would set me off: a spare button, a box of drafting
pencils, a worn envelope with errands scratched on it—you name it. And the ones I thought would hurt—our wedding quilt, the calfskin and gold-leafed copy of King Lear I bought for one of your birthdays, your collection of football programs—all got crated up without a whimper. Then there were the things I couldn’t touch at all: the medicine cabinet, for one, and dozens of photographs, which Mama Day sorted through and kept for herself. No, I didn’t want to see any of them. I didn’t want anything from that house but my clothes and a few personal belongings. The wedding ring I wore was enough from you to keep.
We were going to be loaded down coming back to Willow Springs anyway. Mama Day had cashed in the touring tickets I bought her and took the ferry over to do her own sightseeing—can you imagine? With all I had to worry about, there she was, wandering through the streets alone, dragging in shopping bags full of junk souvenirs from Woolworth’s. Plastic ashtrays shaped like footprints, Mario Cuomo dolls, drinking cups from the hollowed-out head of the Statue of Liberty, “Hug Me—I’m Jewish” T-shirts. She said she’d give them away along with her ginger cookies for Candle Walk. I tried to tell her that what she saw in midtown was not New York, when she jumped in to tell me that the man who owned that little coffee and sandwich shop squeezed in between all them high risers—just offa Broadway or thereabouts—why, it had been in his family for three generations. And she had written down the recipe for his mama’s homemade sausage. And surely I remembered that there woman we passed last week, sitting near the railroad station, the one with the red umbrella—she used to be an opera singer. And down in all them tattered bags she had a picture of herself shaking hands with the head of Carnegie Hall. Told her all about the place—Lincoln Center, too—so it was one stop she didn’t have to bother to make. No, she’d seen plenty of New York right in midtown to last her. Any city is the people, ain’t it? And she finally realized how I’d found somebody like you: New York was full of right nice folks.
Mama Day Page 36
