Calling Home

by Janna McMahan

  She heard logs shift in the fireplace and went back into the front room to check. He’d need to get a screen or the place was going to burn down. She sat on the floor as close to the flames as she dared and hugged her knees to her chest, something she wouldn’t be able to do much longer. Pretty soon she would start showing and then the whole world would know. She opened her chemistry book, but the symbols were all jumbled and a tear dropped down onto the page.

  She hadn’t intended to lie, hadn’t expected Kerry to insist they get married, but when he immediately assumed the baby was his, was so willing to take responsibility, she went with it. She had felt relieved that Kerry was willing to share the burden. She hadn’t thought about anything past that, but as the weeks slipped by, that fantasy faded. She had thought that she would have an ally, but now she felt more alone than ever and didn’t have the courage to come clean. If she did, she would be a whore, just a girl who screwed around and got what she deserved.

  In her dreams she committed suicide; sometimes blew her stomach out with one of her father’s handguns. Other times she slit her wrists in the bathtub. She thought about killing herself almost daily now, had opened her night stand and counted the pills in the bottle Liz had given her the day of Will’s funeral. If she took the whole bottle would she die a peaceful death? Just drop off to sleep and leave a pretty, pregnant corpse? Or would the pills just cause her to lose the baby? If she lived, would she be hauled off to jail for murder like poor Maria Shaw? Then it would be Shannon’s vacant face peering up from the newspaper clipping. Maria had been so desperate and confused that a knitting needle seemed like a logical choice, and now, Shannon understood that. It was possible. Her aunt’s tatting needles might be too small, but some girls used metal clothes hangers, and there were plenty of those around. Would that work? Could something as simple as a hanger give her freedom from life as a liar, raising a rapist’s child and watching life pass her by?

  Shannon hugged her knees and rocked. The tractor’s rumble drew near the house and then drifted slowly away. She still had the money. Could she find a place that would give her an abortion when she was nearing eighteen weeks? She’d say she lost the baby and nobody would be the wiser. Kerry would be off the hook and she could go on to school and never have to think about what had happened to her. But if she couldn’t find a clinic, if nobody would help her, she would do it. She would.

  31

  Shannon flushed the swirl of corn, pizza, and milk that had been her school lunch—a food combination she had always found suspect. She pulled a few frail rectangles of toilet paper from a dispenser and blew her nose and settled again on top of the lifeless heater in front of the bathroom window. The weather was unseasonably warm and the sky looked ready to drain. Of course it would rain this weekend. It rained every Easter without fail. All her life she had hunted eggs in soggy grass, her little socks and patent church shoes drenched by the time her basket was filled with fissured pastel eggs. Mist began to speckle windshields on the cars in the parking lot below.

  Easter had always been one of Shannon’s favorite holidays because her grandfather’s chicks came around that time. When you stepped into the warm cocoon of the brooder house, the mass of yellow fluff on wiry legs would move away from the heat lamp and corner together, screeching their panicky peeps. Her grandfather always ordered a few colored chicks to amuse the grandkids—purple, green, and orange. The children usually petted them to death. Shannon could only remember a couple that had lived until mature pin feathers pushed out stained baby fuzz. The colored chicks had to be separated out because the group would turn on any difference—a gimp foot or funny eye would be singled out and pecked to death. Farmers called it cannibalism. Shannon called it high school.

  The principal had been right when he said other students wouldn’t be kind to her. Everybody avoided her like it might be catching, but what she hadn’t counted on was the animosity of the teachers. Her gym and health teacher was the worst. Even though she still made Shannon dress out in the ugly red-striped cotton uniform like the other girls, she wouldn’t let Shannon do anything, not even walk the rectangle of color that ringed the gym floor. She said it was too risky for Shannon to exert herself. So Shannon sat at the top of the bleachers, where she watched the energetic cheerleaders pummel the other girls at volleyball. When they studied human reproduction the teacher directed questions to Shannon, as if she had more understanding of the concept than the rest of the girls. The teacher’s picking made Shannon think about throwing herself down the bleachers in hopes that she would lose the baby and horrify the gym teacher at the same time.

  By her calculations, she was nearly six months pregnant, but she could still hide her tummy bump under butterfly tops, and except for her swollen breasts, she appeared normal. Shannon intended to stay in school as long as possible. Her mother had been strangely silent about everything and went about life as if nothing had changed. She didn’t pressure her to get married or move out. The only reaction her mother had was when Shannon had told her she was being forced to leave school.

  She hadn’t intended to blurt it out like she did. Her mother had let her drive that day instead of riding the school bus, which Shannon hated. She had an hour or so after school before she had to pick up Virginia at the factory, so Shannon had gone out to Green Lawn Cemetery. Inside the small administrative house, a girl named Tammy showed her a map and told her where to find Will. Shannon hadn’t been there since the funeral, and she had been so freaked out then that she didn’t remember much.

  Up front, in the oldest part of the cemetery were what Shannon thought of as tiny old-fashioned tombstones. Farther back, starting about the turn of the century, people got creative and bought beautiful headstones with soaring angels and towering obelisks for their loved ones. At the far edges a few ordinary headstones stood, but most were slabs set into the ground; from a distance only a thin metal vase stuck up. Shannon found the row Tammy had said and counted out to the last ring of stones. The flower situation seemed to be the reverse of the headstones—no flowers in the old part, but bright plastic flowers spewed from nearly every vase in the new section.

  Shannon could tell that the flowers at Will’s spot had been recently placed. They weren’t sun-bleached and rain-rotted like others. Her mother and Aunt Patsy came regularly. At first they had asked Shannon to come, too, but eventually they stopped asking. The wind was punishing, and Shannon kicked at Will’s stone, her hands shoved deep into her pockets. William Boyd Lemmons, 1962–1980, Beloved Son and Brother. Shannon pulled out a joint she had rolled from Will’s bag she’d taken from his glove box the day of the funeral. She cupped her hands and leaned into the folds of her coat to light it. No one else was around. There was no need to hide. She inhaled deeply and scrunched down next to the grave.

  “Hey, Will,” she said. “I bet you’re cold down there.” Smoke flowed from her lips. “I sure wish you were here. You’d know what to do.” A sense of calm tingled out to her cold fingers and she stopped shivering and stared down at the grave. It looked no different from the other graves. Robust grass had grown over it in only half a summer and then died in the winter. There was no way to tell from the ground how long the occupant had been there.

  Shannon wiped bitter wind tears from her cheeks. “Shit,” she said. She sat down in the dead grass and began to pluck handfuls that she let sift through her fingers and settle on Will’s grave. “What am I going to do, Will? I hate this. I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want a baby to raise. I told Kerry I love him, but I don’t. I’ll hate him if I stay here. Shit. Tell me what to do. Where are you when I really need you?” She cried then, the type of cry that pulls from deep within and makes you strange for a while afterward.

  She sat stoned and dazed; when she came to she was unsure how long she had been that way. She checked her watch and remembered she had to pick up her mother and stumbled numbly back to the car. She waited outside in the factory parking lot while women filed out. Plumes of smoke jetted from tailpip
es and Shannon thought about pollution and then thought that it didn’t matter one bit. Things that used to consume her thoughts seemed unimportant now. Nobody cared about air pollution around here, so why should she? Her face was still red and her nose running when her mother plopped into the passenger seat. Shannon pulled out of the parking lot and drove down Main Street toward home.

  “Want to stop at Coyle Drug and get a chili bun?” Virginia asked. “My treat.”

  “No thanks.”

  “You look half froze.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You don’t look okay.”

  “They’re trying to kick me out of school.”

  “What?”

  “Principal told me that if I don’t get married that I can’t come to school. Says it’s distracting to the other students.”

  “Like hell.”

  Shannon was surprised by her mother’s reaction.

  “Like hell,” she said again.

  “I don’t mean literally kick me out. They want me to home-school through the end of the year.”

  “You don’t want to?”

  “I’m getting ready to take the SATs. I can’t bail out on my classes now. Besides, I don’t want that showing up on my transcripts.”

  “Then I’ll talk to them. They won’t kick you out.”

  Shannon hadn’t expected her mother to be concerned about this.

  “You’d really do that for me?”

  “Damn straight. Women always get the short end of the stick. We do most of the work with the family and house but don’t get paid a dime. We work just as hard as the men at the factory, probably harder, and still they make more money than we do. Girls get pregnant and they’re forced to leave school, but the boys just go right on like nothing happened.”

  “That’s what I told the principal. It’s not fair!”

  “If they want to force your hand on this, I know a lawyer.”

  “Who?”

  “Somebody I contacted about divorcing your daddy.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m sick of everybody acting like girls aren’t worth a dime. You know, when you were born people asked me if I was upset that you weren’t a boy. I loved Will, don’t get me wrong. But I was every bit as proud of you as I was of Will. I was glad to have a girl. I felt like I had a boy, but when you came along I felt like I finally got my girl.” Virginia pulled her coat around her. “If they want a fight, then it’s a fight they’ll get.”

  Her mother had been as good as her word. Virginia Lemmons had taken action, had stormed into the principal’s office, throwing around words like “lawsuit” and threatening to call the ACLU and the Louisville Courier-Journal. After that, nobody pressured Shannon to leave. Now that there were only six weeks of school left, she figured they didn’t feel it was worth pursuing.

  Shannon bent over and brushed her hair down, then flipped it back from her face and sprayed feathers into place. She put drops in her red eyes and rolled gloss on her lips. Once again, she had tenuous control of herself. When she reentered chemistry class the teacher stopped talking and everyone turned toward her. Her tiny teacher, Mrs. Badgett, said, “Take a seat, Miss Lemmons.”

  Outside the lab’s windows, at the edge of town, drab clouds churned the sky. A boom of thunder was softened by distance. A light spatter of rain tapped the windows and Mrs. Badgett launched into something about the table of elements, but Shannon wasn’t listening. She blinked, wondering what she was seeing. Marble-sized hail was bouncing off the roof of the next building. Everyone rushed to the windows. Hailstones grew larger and were soon dancing from asphalt and the line of yellow buses behind the school.

  “Aw, shit,” somebody said. “That’s going to kill my car.”

  “All right,” the teacher said. “You’ve all seen hail before. Back away from the windows.” A transistor radio crackled to life. “Turn that off,” Mrs. Badgett said. “Everybody sit down.” Students slumped back into seats, eyes still trained on the weather that had now turned to bursts of light like distant artillery.

  An alarm shredded the silence in the hall.

  “Fire drill now?” a girl said. “We can’t go outside in that!”

  “Tornado alarm!” the teacher said. “Everybody downstairs. Right now. Be calm.” She moved to crank open windows. Students flooded to the door, pushing and laughing while they joined others in the hall moving toward the stairs. Shannon was one of the last in the classroom. Mrs. Badgett put her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide.

  “Go, Shannon!” the teacher cried. “Go!”

  The cauliflower topped cloud tapered down into a shuttering gunmetal funnel that mowed through houses in the neighborhood behind the parking lot. Each time it made contact with a building it would pause to chew. The dark cone spewed a haze of debris as it churned toward the school.

  “Oh my God,” Shannon whispered. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.”

  “Go!” Mrs. Badgett pushed Shannon into the hall and took her by the arm. The woman had a grip like talons and she dragged Shannon along. “Go! Downstairs now!” Lollygagging students recognized the teacher’s alarm and began shoving. A bottleneck formed on the stairs. When they finally reached the first floor, Mrs. Badgett let go of Shannon and shoved her under the stairs. “You’ll be safer here. Stay here,” she said. She started barking orders at the other students. “Everybody down. Stop talking. Get next to the wall. Cover your head. Everybody down.” Students crouched, their heads against the painted block walls.

  A boy next to Shannon was the one with the radio, and he turned it on. It beeped, beeped, beeped, and then a mechanical voice said, “This is the emergency broadcast system.” An announcer came on. “We’ve got tornado warnings for Green, Baylor, and Adair Counties. People in these counties should take shelter in a basement or in the inner rooms of a house. If you’re in your car and spot a tornado, don’t try to outrun it. Get out and lie in a ditch or get underneath the girders of a bridge. Take shelter. Lowest spot, folks. If you live in a trailer, get out.”

  Even though the radio’s volume was high, the tinny announcer’s voice was hard to hear over the pulsing alarm. Both were suddenly drowned out by a terrorizing thunder.

  “The train sound!” a girl cried. “It’s the train sound!”

  Everyone hunkered against walls. Shadow engulfed the school and Shannon had a strange sinking sensation, like all breath was being forced from her. The cafeteria windows shattered with such force that it shook the building’s foundation. Students yelled and screamed. Wind ripped through the school, sliding metal chairs and tables out to the front corridor like ghosts playing a game. Lunch trays clanged against walls. The front windows of the school imploded. Paper was sucked down the hallway like a white river with students as stones on the bottom. Trophies tumbled from smashed display cases and basketballs bounced furiously. Screams were lost in the sound of twisting metal. Another explosion rocked the school and air current that had blown down the hall suddenly reversed and began to suck. Students clawed frantically at anything as they slid toward the school’s entrance and gym. They clung to each other and doorways. Shannon gripped a rail on the stairs, closed her eyes and prayed. Bits of debris like sandpaper scrubbed her face. Her ears popped. Long sections of bleachers shot by in another reverse of wind, and people tumbled with the fragments. The roof atop the stairwell ripped away, and Shannon felt lifted up and she gripped harder. Doors along the hall slammed open, shut, open, shut. Lockers vibrated. Bulletin boards ripped from walls and sucked out the gaping stairwell. An overhead projector smashed into the wall behind Shannon, sending a cascade of thick glass over her.

  Then it was over. The roar moved away, paper fluttered down, balls bounced, upended furniture crashed, bricks rained through the hole torn in the roof and bounced down the stairs. The crush and thump of objects dropping back to earth were as if God had opened his hand and let everything in the world fall. Hysterical students screamed. Some tried to stand and a few began to wander. Pale teachers yelled, �
��Stay down! Everybody stay down!” Principal Gabehart wobbled along the corridor, his hands cupping the sides of his face, asking, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” Students meekly nodded their heads yes. Shannon felt cold rain and wondered if any of the second floor was still there. She moved out of the rainy stairwell, and to her left the school seemed intact except for walls stripped bare and windows missing in the doors at the end of the hall. To her right, everything was gone. There was no cafeteria, no school offices, no entrance with shiny trophies. The gym had only partial flooring and the jagged edges of walls that surrounded it, but no bleachers. One basketball goal stood as if nothing had happened. Pipes hissed, spewing water and steam from a maw that had been locker rooms. Teachers were corralling injured people into an intact classroom. A few took off for the parking lot. Others stumbled in the debris.

  Shannon tiptoed her way past ice cubes and frozen waffles where a freezer had spilled its insides. A food bar was intact, with corn and pizza still nestled in silver steaming trays. The lunch ladies huddled in a shell of their kitchen, crying. Contorted metal wrapped trees in the back of the school and Shannon realized it was a tuba, French horns, and other unrecognizable wind instruments. A piano sat upright in the middle of the baseball diamond. The surrounding neighborhood was reduced to an airline accident. Every foundation was vacant, and a mangle of cars lifted from the school remained covered with shredded pink insulation.

  Sun sliced the sky in front of Shannon, making the ground twinkle where hundreds of knives and forks were drilled into the sod. There was a Skil saw from shop and a single chair among the utensils. Cold rain pelted her. Shannon sat in the chair and began a frenzied trembling. Her stomach churned at the stench of everything in the world mixed together. She rocked back and forth, praying that her parents were alive, that Kerry was alive. Where was Pam? She hadn’t seen her. Who was dead? How many could be dead? How many?

  Vehicles slowly picked their way through shattered furniture and a metal tangle that used to be bleachers at the football field. More cars and trucks arrived, and frightened parents left car doors open as they rushed toward the shell of the school. Kerry’s truck bounced across the lawn. Barely in park, he was out with his arms around her. She was so panic-stricken she couldn’t form words. She clutched his jacket.