Southern Discomfort

by Tena Clark

  Daddy was far from sympathetic.

  “Look at you. You’re d-d-d-disgusting,” he said after her second baby had left her nearly fifty pounds overweight.

  Although it must have hurt her to her core, she didn’t appear to give a shit and continued to goad him. We’d all make a date for lunch with Daddy at his restaurant at the motel, and she’d walk in in one of her muumuus, cheap rubber flip-flops, and her hair in pink sponge rollers. Here the rest of us were all dressed in our finest, and Daddy in his sports coat, pressed trousers, and fedora, and she looked like she’d dressed herself from the Salvation Army. Which, come to think of it, she probably had. Lord, how that woman loved a bargain! She’d smile her devilish smile at us and plunk herself down in the booth, as Daddy cringed with embarrassment.

  If there was one thing Lamar Clark couldn’t abide, it was people who didn’t toe his line. And Penny’s fatal error was in never caring he even had one. I secretly admired my big sister for that; she just didn’t give a shit.

  Chapter Twelve

  * * *

  Throughout the last couple of years of their marriage, between about 1962 and 1963, and as Mama’s drinking escalated, my parents’ fights got downright dangerous. I would be playing in my room or the den and hear the voices rising behind their closed bedroom door and know it was about to blow. As quick as I could, I would gather my dogs and take off, just to get outside and away from the violence of their anger. I never wanted to come back in. But eventually the argument would die down as Mama tired, like a wild horse being broken. Her rage would ebb and flow until it petered out or she fell asleep. As violent as their fights were, with Mama landing punch after punch on Daddy as he covered his face with one arm and tried to subdue her with the other, I never once saw Daddy hit her back, or even try to. His sense of honor, while it allowed him to screw around on her at every opportunity, did not allow him to strike her. Ever. I don’t know why he didn’t hold that same sense of honor for Penny. I also think he was afraid of her, and wisely so. When she was drunk, she was six feet of pure, uncontained fury.

  One night, Daddy came home from work and saw that Mama had had a long day of drinking. Even when she was sober, Mama never cooked much, besides macaroni and cheese or onions and eggs. So on the nights when she was too drunk to go out to dinner, Daddy cooked. Well, “cook” might be too strong a word for what he did. He kept a stack of T-bone steaks in the freezer and would take two out, put them frozen solid in a cast-iron skillet turned up high—no butter or seasoning or anything—put a rock on the pan’s lid, and let them cook through until they were charred black and tough as rawhide. Eating dinner took some time because every bite had to be chewed until your jaw ached before the meat was soft enough to swallow. His other “specialty” was corn bread with jam and butter. He baked the bread in the same cast-iron skillet in the oven, then cut the loaf in half lengthwise, filled the middle with blackberry jam and butter, put the halves back together, and then sliced it onto the plate. That was dinner.

  While he waited for the steaks or corn bread to cook, he’d often pull an apple out of the fridge and a spoon from the drawer.

  “Feel like a little snack, Monkey Joe?” he’d ask.

  I’d jump up and sit next to him at the counter. He’d cut the apple in half and with the spoon scrape off a thin layer of the pulp and feed it to me, like a baby in a high chair. Spoonful by spoonful, he’d scoop out the apple, creating instant applesauce, until it was just the peel in his hand.

  On one of the nights Mama was too drunk to go out to dinner and as I ate the last of the apple off Daddy’s spoon, she appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  She wore a long, flowing pink negligee with matching slippers and a robe with fluffy pink cuffs and collar. In her left hand was a bottle of whiskey. In the right was her long-barreled, pearl-handled Colt .38. Towering over him, she raised it at my father, its barrel shaking precariously as she tried to focus her eyes. Daddy, looking down at the steaks in the pan, hadn’t heard her coming.

  “I can smell that little whore on you from here, Lamar,” she said, her words slurring, the gun swinging.

  Daddy slowly turned, saw the gun, saw me sitting on the other side of the counter, and looked at her.

  “Vivian, you just c-c-c-calm down and give me that gun. Tena Rix, you g-g-git over here, right now. Everybody j-j-just calm down.”

  I slowly slid out of my chair and walked around the counter. As soon as he could reach me, Daddy gave me a shove into the cubbyhole under the counter where we stored the garbage can.

  “You s-s-stay right there, Monkey, while I c-c-calm your mama down.”

  I crouched in the crowded space and listened to the furor above me. All I could see of Daddy was his legs as he slowly inched toward Mama.

  “Vivian, baby, c-c-come on now—” Daddy began, but Mama would have none of it.

  “You sonofabitch, I know where you’ve been. I can smell her.”

  “You are p-p-plum crazy. I been working late, that’s all.”

  “Shut UP!” Mama yelled.

  Daddy lunged for the gun and the two of them began wrestling like they were in a ring, Mama throwing punches with one arm while the other swung the gun at him with a vicious power, occasionally making contact with his arm or chest or head with a terrible thud. Eventually she tired, and Daddy pinned her down on the floor.

  “Tena,” he yelled, “grab the gun and go throw it in the pool!”

  I jumped out from my hiding place, came around the counter, and saw them entangled on the floor, Mama’s legs still kicking and her pretty nightie and robe all tangled up high on her thighs, Daddy’s suit coat nearly pulled off his arms. Both of them had ahold of Mama’s gun, and it waved above them. Ducking from the barrel’s direct line, I got a grip on the stock and pulled it from their hands. I held the gun out in front of me like a dead mouse by the tail, hurried out the back door, and threw it into the swimming pool. When I ran back into the house, Mama was on the floor weeping into her hands, and Daddy was standing at the kitchen wall phone calling Georgia to come help get her to bed.

  One day, after a particularly wild fight the night before, I came in from riding Frank around the farm to find the house eerily quiet.

  “Mama?” I called out. “Virgie?” I walked from room to room, but the house was empty. Down the long, dark hallway at the center of the house, all of the bedroom doors were open, except Mama’s. I tried to open the door, but it was locked.

  “Mama? You in there?” I jiggled the handle, but it was locked firm.

  Suddenly, Elizabeth appeared. Lately she’d started coming by the house on a more regular basis to check in on our mother. Constantly compared to Elizabeth Taylor and Gina Lollobrigida, right down to a trademark mole on her cheek, Elizabeth was by far the prettiest of us Clark girls, and at five feet ten inches, the tallest. She was the girl every other girl wanted to be and the girl every boy wanted to be with. Having been the baby in the family for eleven years, I think she felt somewhat usurped when I suddenly appeared, and I’m not sure she ever forgave me for it.

  “What’s going on? Why you hollerin’?” she asked, impatient and bothered by the noise of my yelling.

  I didn’t even realize that I had started screaming for Mama to open the door.

  “The door’s locked and I think Mama’s in there.”

  From behind the door, we heard Ray Charles’s song “Born to Lose” playing:

  Born to lose, I’ve lived my life in vain.

  Every dream has only brought me pain.

  Elizabeth tried the door, banging on it harder and harder with her fist.

  “Mama! Mama! I can hear you in there,” Elizabeth said. “You open up this door! Right now, ya hear?! Come on, Mama. Please open the door.”

  There was no answer. Elizabeth reached up and pulled a bobby pin out of her hair, unfolding it as she knelt down in front of the door. Her hands shook as she poked the pin into the hole on the doorknob. After a few stabs we heard the click of the lock.

/>   Mama lay on her back on the bed, dressed in her favorite pink negligee and matching robe with long ribbons that went from her collarbone to the floor. Her arms were spread wide, like Jesus on the cross, and her eyes were shut. She looked like an angel. A sleeping angel. Then I saw the blood dripping from both her wrists and I knew she wasn’t sleeping.

  Elizabeth screamed and jumped into action, grabbing towels from the bathroom. I stood stock-still, looking at my beautiful, tragic mama, wondering if she was alive or dead.

  Instead of calling the police, or an ambulance, Elizabeth wrapped Mama’s wrists and called Daddy and Georgia, who came within minutes. They loaded Mama into Georgia’s backseat and drove her to the hospital’s private entrance, in order to avoid the town gossip of a visit to the emergency room. I remained at home with Virgie, and waited to learn whether my mother had died.

  When Mama returned the next morning, her wrists wrapped in gauze halfway up her forearms, she moved slowly and allowed herself to be led to bed. When she was settled in under the covers, she looked over at me where I stood by the door, wide-eyed and unsure what to do.

  “Come here, baby,” she said, and I crawled up and nuzzled next to her, careful to avoid the bandages.

  “What happened, Mama? You gonna be okay?” I asked.

  She scratched my back with her nails, and I allowed myself to relax against her. “I’m fine, baby. I didn’t mean to do what I did. I was a little sad, but I’m fine now. Everything’s going to be okay, I promise.”

  I moved in her arms so that I could put my fingers on her back and gently rubbed them around, as she was doing to me, hoping to soothe the hurt away. As I did, I made a silent vow that from that moment on I would take care of Mama forever and keep her safe. It was now my job. She needed me, I could see that now, and I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her, ever again.

  Soon after Mama’s attempted suicide, I started sleepwalking and having terrible nightmares. I would wake up in the middle of the night trembling, my nightgown drenched in sweat. On really bad nights, I’d find myself standing in the swimming pool with Mama and Daddy waist-deep in the water next to me, their pajamas soaked, shaking me awake. Eventually it got so bad that Daddy had to put a lock near the top of the back door so I couldn’t reach it and get out. But I still managed to get out, dragging a kitchen chair to the door and unlocking it. Finally, he put a lock on the door that required a key. After that, they’d find me sound asleep and burrowed in the corner of my bedroom, scratching and clawing as I tried to get “out” of whatever cage my dream had locked me in.

  In the morning, I’d tell Virgie about my nightmares and she’d push aside the mop she was holding or the bucket she was filling and pull me into her lap, her arms so tight around me I could feel her heart beating.

  “My po’ baby girl. You’s safe now, baby chile. You’s safe now. Sho nuf.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  * * *

  By December of 1963, Mama had finally had enough and left Daddy for good. She at last had realized that she had to get out. If she stayed, she was either going to die by her own hand or wind up in jail for the rest of her life for murdering my father.

  At forty-two, she remained strikingly beautiful. I can still see her as she drove away from the farm, the windows open, her black hair whipping out behind her, her long, slender hands firmly on the wheel, her bright red, nail-polished fingers holding an unfiltered Pall Mall, throwing her head back as she exhaled a long plume of smoke into the wind. Commanding and free. I later understood just how miserable my mother was that day, but in her last moments in that house she was also mysterious, magical, and even dangerous, with a power born from having rediscovered her dignity. She squared her shoulders and held her head high as the car disappeared down the driveway.

  It would take me years to fully appreciate how incredibly brave she was to walk out on my father. Leaving a husband and a young child in 1963 Mississippi was practically unheard of. And she had no money of her own, no prospects. She knew when she walked out that she was walking out on a pampered life she’d never be able to re-create on her own. Most women who endured difficult marriages—and many of my mother’s friends did—simply bore the abuse, suffering in silence behind a mask of smiles. They ran the house and served sweet tea and hosted their bridge clubs and bragged about their husbands’ latest triumphs at work or on the golf course. If anyone suspected their torment, they never spoke of it.

  But when Mama dared to name her despair and point a finger at her abuser, she did something that was seen as threatening, plain and simple. This was an open act of rebellion against the deeply ingrained mores of the time, and people feared her defiance would expose an entire town’s sad secrets by inviting other women to say “no more” to their suffering sad marriages to bad husbands. The last thing Waynesboro wanted was Vivian Clark to become some kind of role model. And if she actually became one, it was only acknowledged behind closed doors.

  She moved into a two-room walk-up above the dry cleaners on Waynesboro’s main street. As cheap apartments go, it wasn’t too bad, although you could hear the dry-cleaning machines working 24/7 and smell their chemicals downstairs.

  She could no longer afford to pay Virgie the $7.50 a week that my father paid her. So Mama offered to pay her what she could afford: one dollar, just one day a week. Virgie accepted.

  I wish I could tell you that Mama was never happier, finally free of my father’s indifference to her pain. But she wasn’t. She was still witness to his endless string of female conquests, who paraded through town in their new cars, clothes, and hairdos. I have to hand it to her: Whenever she did see Daddy around town—at Petty’s Cafe or the bank or the post office—Mama always greeted him cordially, by name. But he would turn his head and ignore her, while every patron looked down at their plate as her “Well, hello, Lamar” hung in the air. She’d brought him enormous shame and he was never going to forgive her. No woman in her right mind walked out on a rich, powerful man, and no one left Lamar Clark.

  One day, a few weeks after she had left, Daddy figured my mother had learned her lesson above the dry cleaners and told me to get in the car. “We’re going for a d-d-drive, Monkey Joe. I called your mama and we’re going to go g-g-git her and bring her home where she belongs. This has g-g-gone on long enough.”

  I was delighted. I bounced up and down in the front seat as we drove into town. Mama was coming home.

  “I’m only g-g-gonna ask your mama once. If she refuses, th-th-that’s it,” he said, talking almost to himself, his left arm hanging out the car window, a cigarette between his fingers, his right hand on the wheel. “As far as I’m c-c-concerned, if she doesn’t come home now, she’ll be as g-g-good as dead to me.”

  I stopped bouncing up and down. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure that Daddy wanted her back because he missed her. With a sinking heart I knew he was going to try to tell her to come back not because he loved her, but because Lamar Clark always got what he wanted.

  We drove up to the dry cleaners and Daddy gave his horn three quick toots. Mama took her time coming down. When I saw her come out of her building, I jumped into the backseat. Mama opened the car door and got in the front seat. Daddy lit two cigarettes and gave her one, which she accepted, taking a long drag and letting the smoke out slowly. The car filled with their smoke. The concept of secondhand smoke being potentially lethal, especially to children in the car, was still decades away. Sitting in the backseat, I was simply invisible to them. They loved me, but I was invisible.

  “N-n-n-now you listen to me, V-V-Vivian,” Daddy began. “Enough is enough. It’s time for you to come b-b-back home where you b-b-belong.” Even with the stutter, Daddy’s voice was soft and smooth.

  I took a quick glance at Mama to see if she was buying it.

  She wasn’t.

  “I’m not coming back unless you stop your screwin’ around,” Mama said, her own voice strong but sad. “I can’t take smelling another woman’s perfume on you for one more night, Lamar.
And I won’t. Never again.”

  This time Daddy didn’t even bother to deny it. He didn’t tell her she was crazy, drunk, or that she should stop listening to foolish town gossip.

  “Ah, c-c-c-come on, Vivian. I take care of you, give you everything you want. You know m-m-me. It’s a habit I can’t b-b-b-break, but I’ve never loved anyone but you. Why, I’ve n-n-n-never had a baby with any of those other women, have I? Only you.” He sounded pleased with himself.

  I wondered if they remembered I was in the backseat. Even at ten, I knew it was an odd conversation to have with your child within a mile of earshot, never mind inches. I again snuck a peek at my mother. It wasn’t going like it was supposed to.

  “But I ain’t gonna s-s-s-stop screwing around, Vivian,” he continued. “This is just who I am. C-c-c-come on now, I’m not going to marry any of them! You’re the only w-w-w-woman I’ll ever love and you just have to get that into your st-st-st-stubborn head!”

  Although hardly sweet talk, for Daddy it was a show of his cards and one he would never repeat. He needn’t have wasted it on Mama.

  “You can go straight to hell, you sonofabitch!” she said as she jumped out of the car and slammed the door with such force the car shook.

  “Bye, Mama!” I cried, my fingers spread wide on the window.

  She reached out and matched her fingers to mine on the glass. “Aloha, baby,” she mouthed to me.

  As she stepped back from the door, Daddy put the car in gear.

  “GODdamn it!” he spat, and drove away in a squeal of tires, gravel flying in all directions.

  I looked out the back window and watched Mama grind out her cigarette beneath the toe of her high heel and slowly walk up the stairs to her apartment.