Call Me Cockroach: Based on a True Story

by Leigh Byrne

  After we had filled our plates, I braced myself for the interrogation to come. But no one asked me a single question; no one addressed me at all. They talked around me about the best way to get the wild taste out of deer meat, and debated who had really won the corn-hole championship last summer. In one way, I was relieved nobody asked me any uncomfortable questions, and in another way, being disregarded by them hurt my feelings.

  When the meat platter had been reduced by three-fourths, and the mac and cheese bowl was empty, someone finally acknowledged I was there. “So when ya’ll getting married, Tuesday?” Lilly asked.

  Before I had a chance to answer, Bobbi interjected, “Better be quick because ya’ll ain’t sleeping in a bed together until you do.”

  “Oh, Mom, we ain’t gonna do nothing.” Chad lied. There had yet to come a day when we were together that he hadn’t tried to nail me.

  “I know you’re not because I ain’t giving you the chance,” Bobbi said.

  Lilly’s husband glanced up from his plate, smiled sleazily at Chad, and said, “I know somebody who’s gonna be making a trip to Illinois real soon.”

  “You’re damn straight,” Chad said. “I think I’ll take a personal day tomorrow.”

  Everyone looked at me and laughed. My face was hot. I didn’t have to see it to know it was glowing like a stoplight.

  MR. AND MRS. CHICKEN

  Early the next morning, Chad and I went to Shawneetown, Illinois and got a marriage license. The county clerk told us there was a chapel down the road where a minister may be able to perform the ceremony. He offered to make an appointment for us to get married the following day, after our twenty-four hour waiting period was up.

  On the way home, we stopped at the only jewelry store in Sullivan, and Chad bought the cheapest wedding bands they had. We were back at his parents’ house in time for lunch. Again, the entire family was there. The large kitchen table was starting to make sense. The Sutton togetherness made me uneasy, and yet I found it to be endearing, and couldn’t wait to be a part it. This almost unfathomable promise of having a family drew me to Chad even more.

  Lilly and Brenda had finished eating and were lighting cigarettes. Everyone in Chad’s family smoked except for Bobbi. Theirs was a nervous, frantic habit. They fired up the first cigarette of the morning with shaky hands, and then throughout the day they lit one after the other—sometimes one off of the other. From across the table, through the veil of smoke in the room, Bobbi eyed me as she chewed on a toothpick. “So why ain’t you living with your mother?”

  “She doesn’t want me to.” I slid a cigarette from Chad’s pack and lit it up. Usually I only smoked while drinking with my friends, but the impending conversation called for a cigarette.

  “What did you do to make her mad?”

  “I didn’t do anything. She’s hated me ever since I was little. She abused me.”

  “I don’t believe in all that abuse horseshit. Kids don’t want to do what they’re told, and then they holler abuse when their parents try to teach them right from wrong.” Bobbi plucked the toothpick from her mouth and threw it into her empty plate. “And she don’t hate you either; there ain’t a mother alive that hates her kid. You should tell her you’re sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For whatever you did to make her kick you out.”

  Chad broke in. “Mom, Tuesday doesn’t have to make up with her mama if she doesn’t want to. That’s her business.”

  “Well… I suppose it is. But that don’t make it right. Kids should respect their parents; we do the best we can.”

  After supper, Chad and I went for a drive to get some “alone time,” as he put it to his parents. I knew he really wanted to get laid. But I wasn’t in the mood. As soon as we were in the car, I asked him why his mother didn’t like me.

  “Oh don’t mind her. She’s real protective of us kids, that’s all. She didn’t like any of the in-laws in the beginning. Don’t worry she’ll come around.”

  He was right; she would come around. After all, I would soon be her daughter-in-law. She had to like me, didn’t she?

  When we pulled up to the chapel the next morning, I began to get jittery for the first time. Up until that point, the whole marriage business had seemed like a game—a game of chicken—between Chad and me, like two children, each stubbornly waiting for the other to back out.

  Everything had happened in a blur. I met Chad at the liquor store. He told me he loved me. We agreed to get married because he was tired of driving back and forth between Sullivan and Nashville, and I needed somewhere to go when Aunt Macy started her new life with Edwin. We ate with his family three times, bought a marriage license and rings, and now there we were at the chapel getting ready to seal the deal. Or—as Chad had told one of his friends over the phone the night before—seal our coffins.

  After Chad parked the car, we sat outside the chapel for a few minutes staring at the door while he finished a cigarette. We were taking our game of chicken to the limit. This is it, I thought. This is where he calls the whole thing off. We will return the rings and I’ll go begging back to Aunt Macy…

  “Are we going in, or are we gonna sit here and watch the leaves blow by?” Trudy said from the backseat. I’d forgotten she was back there. We’d asked her to come with us to act as a witness. She was between jobs and didn’t have anything better to do, so she agreed.

  Chad and I opened our doors and got out of the car at exactly the same time. I had on a pale yellow shift dress Aunt Macy had made for me. It was the closest to white of all the dresses I owned. He was wearing jeans and a blue button down shirt Bobbi had ironed for him before we left. Trudy was the most dressed up of the three of us, in a tight, black skirt and a ruffled white blouse. She had perfectly smooth hair, like a big platinum helmet, curled under on one side, flipped up on the other—a style much older than she was.

  We marched in single file up to the chapel—Chad, me, and then Trudy, who struggled to walk through the gravel in spike heels. The orderliness of our movements was a stark contrast to the collage of chaos floating around in my head: Aunt Macy’s crying face, ball-peen hammers, and Bobbi chewing on a toothpick, shooting accusatory expressions my way.

  When we got to the entrance of the chapel, I adjusted my dress and fluffed my hair. Chad put his hand on the door handle and then turned around. “Do we just go in?”

  I didn’t know, so I looked behind me, at Trudy. “Of course we go in,” she said. “It’s a church for Christ sake. Anybody can go in.”

  Inside, an older, scruffy-bearded man in a faded black suit walked up to greet us. “Reverend Templeton,” he said, shaking Chad’s hand loosely. “And I’m guessing your name is Chad, and you’re here to marry one of these lovely girls.”

  Chad pointed at me. “This one. The other one’s my sister.”

  “Got your license and rings?” asked Reverend Templeton.

  “Yep” Chad had my ring on his pinky, and I had his on my thumb. He pulled the folded marriage license from his back pocket and handed it to the reverend.

  “And I see you brought a witness.” Reverend Templeton nodded at Trudy. “Looks like everything’s in order. Shall we get started?”

  Rigidly positioned beside Chad—both of us in front of the reverend—I scanned the empty pews for Aunt Macy, even though she’d told me she wouldn’t come when I called her the night before. I hoped somehow she’d changed her mind. Naturally I thought of Mama. I didn’t want her to be there, but I needed her to be there, or the idea of her. I thought of Daddy too, and the weddings I’d seen in the movies where teary-eyed fathers walked their daughters down the aisle to give them away to become wives. What would Daddy think of Chad, a man who couldn’t have been any more opposite from him? Not long before his wreck, he had given me some advice about choosing a husband. “Be sure the man you marry makes you feel good about yourself,” he’d said. Now, three years later, I wondered if I had made the right choice.

  After a couple of I do’
s, it was all over, or, depending on perception, had just begun. We stopped at a liquor store on the way back to Sullivan and Trudy bought us a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Chad talked her into filling his cooler with beer too. We had supper with the family and not one person congratulated us. After we’d eaten, Chad and I changed clothes to go out partying with his friends, which meant driving out to some secluded place in the country and getting drunk, maybe smoking a joint.

  Chad chose a spot not far from his house for the party. On the ground, in a grassy area, he spread a blanket he’d swiped from his bed, and then brought out a Coleman lantern, and the cooler of beer. His friends all showed up in one car. One of them brought a jam box, which he turned up to the max. It was a cool night, but not too cool for us to sit outside in our hoodies. We all plopped down on the blanket and started drinking.

  After almost two hours, we were pretty well lit. A guy named Troy, who was invited only because he supplied the pot, rolled a fat joint and passed it around. I didn’t care for pot. The last time I’d smoked it with Sheila, I became so dizzy I had to crawl over to some bushes and throw up chunks of Big Mac, so when it was my turn to take a draw, I waved it off.

  Since I was the only girl there, I was getting a lot of attention. The more liquored-up everyone got, the friendlier they became, especially Troy. He sat close beside me, and every time I emptied a can of beer, he got me another one. Under the influence of alcohol, I didn’t notice Chad fuming on the other side of me until suddenly he sprang up. “Hey motherfucker, you do see that ring on her finger, don’t you?”

  Troy stood facing Chad. “Yeah, I see it. What about it?”

  An image of the ball-peen hammer popped into my head. I jumped to my feet. “Chad, please don’t fight!” I begged, pulling at his arm.

  “You stay out of this,” he said, shoving me aside.

  I squeezed in between him and Troy. “Please, Chad, you’re embarrassing me!” He shoved me aside again, this time hard enough for me to fall.

  In the movies, when a girl gets pushed down by a guy, she whimpers and holds whatever body part that got hurt. Not me. I got up, charging like a bull, and pushed Chad back, and down into the gravel road. Next thing I knew we were rolling around on the ground. Chad and I were close to the same height, but he probably outweighed me by a few pounds. I knew I was strong, stronger than most girls, due to all the strenuous work I had to do as a kid, but while we were wrestling, my strength astounded even me. At one point, I actually thought I could beat him up, however I soon found out I couldn’t, because he was much stronger. He overpowered and straddled me, and then pinned both my wrists above my head. I could feel the gravel digging into my forearms. I bucked my hips and threw him off of me enough to where I could squirm out of his hold. When I went for him again, one of his friends pulled me off.

  “What the fuck!” Chad yelled, as he got up and brushed himself off. “Are you crazy trying to fight me like a man? He started half-laughing, acting like he hadn’t been serious while we were fighting, like he’d let up on me because I was a girl. His friends laughed nervously with him. “I could kill you if I wanted to!”

  “Nobody’s ever gonna hit me again!” I screamed.

  “I didn’t hit you!”

  “You pushed me down—same thing!”

  He stood staring at me for a second or two before the light in his head switched on. “Oh yeah, I forgot; your mama beat on you when you were a kid, so now you think everybody’s gonna beat you.” He started walking toward me. “Come here, baby,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  I dodged away from him. “Just don’t ever hit me again!”

  “I’m not gonna hurt you ever again, I promise.”

  Everyone else was getting their stuff together to leave. It was time for Chad and me to go home too.

  That night, with Bobbi’s permission, Chad and I slept in a bed together for the first time. We had mandatory wedding night sex, and then turned our backs to each other. As I drifted off to sleep, I thought about what had happened earlier. There were two things I’d learned from my fight with Chad. One, I was no longer a victim, because if anybody ever hit me I would fight back. And two, Chad and I both were a little bit crazy.

  LITTLE MAN, BIG GUN

  The days were long while Chad was at work, sitting in a dreary house with Bobbi watching soap operas and game shows on TV. After I made the bed and took a shower, there was nothing else to do. Chad told me his 442 was parked in the driveway if I needed to go somewhere, but there wasn’t any reason to get out. I had no friends there, and I was broke, except for twenty dollars from my last paycheck.

  When Big Chad changed to second shift at the mine, I was glad, hoping his presence would buffer the awkwardness of Bobbi and me spending our days together in silence. But like his son, Big Chad was a man of few words. Now there were three of us in the house not talking.

  A couple of weeks after Chad and I moved in, Bobbi came barging in our room in the middle of the night and flipped on the overhead light. She was in a tizzy. “Chad Jr. did you see your daddy at the mine today?”

  Chad squinted in the light that flooded the room. “No, I didn’t see him.”

  “Are you in such a hurry to get home these days that you can’t even bother to look for your daddy?”

  “Sometimes I see him going in as I’m coming out, but sometimes I don’t. He was probably somewhere smoking with his cronies. Why you wanna know?”

  “Cause it’s going on one o’clock in the morning and he ain’t home yet.”

  Chad sprung up and stepped into some jeans that were draped over a chair by the bed.

  “What does this mean,” I asked Chad.

  “It means Dad’s out on a drunk, that’s what.”

  Chad and Bobbi rushed into the kitchen, and I followed. Trudy called the hospital to see if Big Chad was there. Then she tried the jail. After both places were ruled out, Chad grabbed his car keys and said he was going to the bars to look for his dad.

  “I’m going too,” I said.

  “Oh no you’re not. These bars ain’t no place for a woman.”

  Half an hour later, Chad came back and told us he saw his dad’s car at the Hot Spot, a seedy night club right outside of Uniontown. “The Hot Spot closes at three o’clock,” he said. “After that, he’ll either come home or hang out at some other drunk’s house.”

  “Thank you Chad Jr.,” Bobbi said, wearily. “Guess all we can do now is wait.”

  “I’m going back to bed, or I won’t be fit for work tomorrow,” said Chad. “Come on, Tuesday.”

  Seemed like we had no more than dozed off, when I heard the bedroom door squeak like it always did when somebody opened it. The sound of heavy footsteps followed the squeak. In the dark, I could barely see the outline of Big Chad’s diminutive body standing by Chad’s side of the bed. He had something in his hand, but I couldn’t make out what it was. “This is my goddamn house,” he said, in a raspy voice.

  Chad stirred. I turned on the light beside the bed and saw the object Big Chad held in his hand was a gun—and it was now aimed at Chad.

  “I know it’s your house, Dad,” Chad said.

  “Who in the hell do you people think you are coming in my house sleeping in my bed and eating my food?” He cut his eyes over at me.

  “I’m your son, Dad, and Tuesday’s my wife. Remember we got married?”

  By this time, Bobbi, who must have fallen asleep on the sofa, had entered the room. Trudy popped in behind her. “Big Chad, what are you doing?” Bobbi asked.

  Big Chad aimed the gun at Bobbi. “You better get your fat ass outta here before I shoot you too!”

  “Put that gun away!” demanded Bobbi. “That’s your son!”

  “He ain’t my son; he don’t look a thing like me! He looks like a damn chink!”

  Bobbi took a step forward. “Please put that away before you hurt somebody.”

  Big Chad raised the gun and pointed it at Bobbi’s face. “I’ll shoot you!” He made a sweeping moti
on with the gun “I’ll shoot you all! I’ll shoot who I damn well please because this is my house!” He directed the gun at Chad again. “Get your scrawny ass up out of my bed and come with me to the kitchen; I wanna talk to you.”

  Chad, wearing nothing but his underwear, got up out of bed and walked to the kitchen with Big Chad holding the gun to the back of his head. The rest of us followed.

  “Come on, Big Chad, put the gun down,” Bobbi pleaded again. “Let me fix you some breakfast.”

  “I ain’t hungry, and if you tell me to put this gun down one more time I’m shooting somebody.”

  We all sat down at the table. Using his free hand, Big Chad pulled a cigarette from a crushed pack of non-filtered Camel’s in his shirt pocket. As he went to light it, he got a piece of tobacco on his tongue and spit it into the air. Everyone at the table jumped. He took a long drag from the cigarette and blew the smoke up above his head. “Now, here’s the problem,” he began, eyeballing Chad. “You say you’re my son but I don’t believe you. I’m gonna need you to prove it.”

  “Prove it?” Chad asked. “How am I supposed to do that?”

  Bobbi cut in again, “You know he’s yours…”

  “I thought I told you to shut up!” snapped Big Chad. Then he turned his bloodshot eyes back to the matter at hand.

  “He’s short like you,” Trudy offered.

  “That ain’t provin’ nothin’. Chinks are short like me too.”

  Trudy tried another approach. “Hey Daddy, Hot Spot will be open again here in a few minutes. Let’s you and me go down there and get us a drink.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea; we’ll do that as soon as I finish up here.”