Calling Home

by Janna McMahan

  “Buildings can be built back.”

  In the morning, Virginia had a couple of skillets going, one with country ham and the other with sliced apples she took from the deep freeze. She opened the oven door and the moist, yeasty smell of biscuits washed over her face. She was listening to the radio Jim had given her last summer, but the list of cancellations and closings went on so long that Virginia snapped it off.

  “I can’t listen to any more,” she said to herself. She poured greasy red-eye gravy into a bowl and yelled downstairs, “Y’all come on and eat.”

  After they said thanks, Virginia watched the men dive into the food. Kerry seemed to forget his usual good manners and ate like he hadn’t been fed in a week. Virginia had nearly forgotten about a teenage boy’s appetite.

  “That’s some good eatin’,” Kerry said.

  “Kid’s right,” Roger said. “I sure have missed your cooking, Virginia.”

  “Well,” she said.

  Shannon sat quietly picking at her food.

  “What’s up, baby girl?” Roger asked. “Not hungry?”

  “Not really.”

  “I’m going to go ride around and see what there is to see,” Kerry said. “There’s got to be lots of folks need help. I’m going back home and get a chain saw and a log chain.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Roger said. “Let me grab my ax and shovel out of the shed.”

  “I wonder if the marina’s still there,” Shannon said. “They say tornadoes follow water.”

  “We’ll go ride around later if you want,” Kerry said. “Right now, you’d better stay here.”

  “Radio said they found underwear as far away as Pulaski County,” Virginia said. “Some folks lost everything. I heard Liz’s house was hit, but both their neighbors’ houses were left.”

  “Makes you think there’s no rhyme or reason to anything,” Roger said. “Why would one person’s house get smashed to bits and one right next door get skipped over?”

  Virginia started scraping scraps into the trash and sliding dishes into the soapy water, where they clinked to the bottom of the sink.

  Kerry leaned in and shyly kissed Shannon on the lips. “We’ll be back this afternoon.” To Roger he said, “I’ll run over to the farm and meet you at the high school in thirty minutes.”

  Shannon got up and peered through the curtains after them. She had a strange vacant look about her, and Virginia wondered if she was suffering shock.

  “Why don’t you go rest?” Virginia asked.

  Her big blue eyes bored into Virginia. It seemed her soul was exposed, innocent and broken.

  “Honey, what is it?”

  “I got to tell you something.”

  “Okay. Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “You don’t know how to tell me?”

  “No. It’s really bad.”

  “Honey, considering what all has happened in the last day, I don’t think anything you could say would bother me.”

  “Would you love me no matter what?”

  “Baby, come here. What is it? What’s the matter?” She gathered Shannon to her and the girl spoke down into Virginia’s chest, her voice so barely audible against Virginia’s sweater that she was uncertain for a moment what her daughter had said. Then her words registered. “It’s not Kerry’s baby.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not Kerry’s. The baby’s not Kerry’s. I can’t marry him. It’s not right to do him like that.”

  “Whose baby is it?” She tilted her daughter’s head up. “Shannon, who’s the daddy?”

  “Not anybody you know.”

  “I know almost everybody in this town. I bet I know him.”

  “He’s not from here and I don’t want to talk about him. He’s not important.”

  “How did this happen? When were you with this somebody?”

  “I went to Lexington with him…to a concert.”

  Virginia wanted to jump in, to start firing questions at her daughter, but she didn’t. Instead she held her breath and waited.

  “He forced me,” Shannon finally said.

  “He raped you.”

  She nodded and words tumbled. “One minute I was having a good time and the next I was in this hotel room and he was on top of me. He said everybody saw us together and nobody would believe me if I said he raped me. I didn’t know what to do. I told him no, but I sort of felt like I didn’t have a right to.”

  “Whoa. Slow down. You did wrong by getting in that situation, but a girl should always be able to say no.”

  “I didn’t want you to find out.”

  “Shannon, I’m your mother. My job is to help you when things get tough. You should have told me.”

  “I couldn’t. We don’t talk about stuff. I mean…and then after Will died…I just didn’t want to bother you with anything. I was afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Afraid you’d hate me.”

  “Oh, Shannon.” She hugged her again. “I don’t hate you. I’m disappointed, yes. This is a bad situation; but I don’t and I never will hate you.” Virginia pulled back and focused on Shannon. “That man or boy that did this, you need to tell me who he is so we can have him arrested.”

  “No. I hate him and I never want to see him again. It’s over now.”

  “Oh, no, honey. This is just beginning.” She paused then and thought about things. “You’re probably right though. If you told this person, he might want to take the baby.”

  “He can have it.”

  “You don’t mean that. You wouldn’t want a man like that to have a baby. If you’d told me I would have taken you to get an abortion. Do you want me to take you now?”

  “No place will do one when I’m this far gone. I’ve checked.”

  “We could look.”

  “No.” She put her hand on her stomach. “It moves now.”

  Virginia sighed. “I’m sorry things got this far. We have too many secrets in this family. Come sit down at the table and let me tell you something.” She opened the junk drawer and got a cigarette. “No more secrets,” she said and lit up.

  “I knew you smoked,” Shannon said.

  “Hmm, well,” Virginia said. “That’s not the secret. I don’t know how you’ll react, but you need to know this. I never could find the right time to tell you.”

  “What?”

  She stared and Virginia smoked.

  “When I was just a little bit younger than you are now, your uncle Wayne and some of his friends came to our house one night. Momma was still over to Danville and Daddy was out God knows where. The kids were upstairs asleep when that bunch of guys pulled up in Tommy Wayne’s truck. They were drinking and Patsy said they had to leave before they woke up the kids. So they all decided to go down to the creek and shoot beer bottles and they asked me to come along. Patsy stayed behind. So off I went, just as happy as a lark with this truckload of guys. When we got there all but one of the guys goes off down the creek, but Emmett Hord stays behind, and he had a bottle of bourbon and I drank some. Next thing I know we’re kissing. That was fine, but when he tried to put his hand down my pants, I told him that was it. Well, he didn’t like that and he pushed me back and started yanking down my pants and I didn’t want the other boys to come running and see me with my pants down around my ankles, so I kept trying to yank them back up and push him away at the same time. I look back now and know I should have screamed. I should have screamed bloody murder, but like I said, I didn’t want the others to see what was going on and my bare ass hanging out. Every time I hear a gun it makes me think about that night and him on top of me and pistol shots echoing down the creek.” Virginia took a long drag on her cigarette and leaned back against the kitchen cabinet and stared at the smoke as she blew it into the beam of light above the kitchen table. She was remembering the feel of dirt grinding under her, his sour liquor breath.

  “Then I heard them all coming back and when they walked up and saw what wa
s happening they didn’t do a thing about it. They just stood there while he held me down and when he finished another one got on me.”

  “Oh, Momma, no.”

  “Bunch of animals. Three of them raped me and two watched. One was your uncle Wayne. The other one was your daddy. I could hear Roger saying stop, but I think the others held him back. He ended up shooting his pistol over their heads and they finally let me up.”

  “So Daddy didn’t?”

  “No. No. Your daddy was trying to help.”

  “Your own brother didn’t help you?”

  “No. Just watched.” When they had finished, the boys stomped back through the brush along the creek, laughing and smashing bottles on rocks. Roger stayed behind and tried to help her pull her clothes on, but she screamed at him to get away. Virginia walked the half mile back to the house. She knew every inch of that farm, every dip in the gnawed gravel road, so she never stumbled once. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, only of hearing that truck coming her way. She finally reached her house. Patsy cried while she bathed her sister. She brushed pebbles from Virginia’s raw skin. But Virginia didn’t cry. She never shed a tear. One tiny rock stayed embedded in her hip for years and she used to run her fingers over it, rolling it under her skin. She wondered if it would move to her heart and lodge there and kill her instantly. Sometimes she prayed it would. One day a doctor offered to cut it out and Virginia had been so relieved that she nearly cried in his office. She had wished the doctor could cut out that achy, panicky stone in her stomach that never went away.

  “When I turned up pregnant, you would have thought I was…well…I could have told what happened, but people would have just said that I shouldn’t have gone down to the creek with those boys. And they’d be right to a certain extent, but I’m not responsible for what happened to me. A bad judgment call when you’re just a kid shouldn’t ruin the rest of your life. It was easier to let people think that I was with one boy instead of how people would have looked at me as a girl who got raped like that. Roger got the short straw because he asked me to marry him to keep the others out of jail. Now you see why I’ve always warned you about boys. They’re dangerous. You can’t be too careful, but why am I telling you that now? You know, don’t you?”

  Shannon nodded. “I’m so sorry that happened to you, Momma. I had no idea.”

  “Honey,” Virginia sat at the table and lightly rubbed her daughter’s back. How had this happened? She had been so careful to watch Shannon, to warn her about men and now this. But you couldn’t watch a kid every second of every day. You had to try to give them good sense, because at some point they’re on their own.

  “Was it Will?” Shannon asked.

  Virginia nodded. “But you’re one hundred percent us.”

  Shannon put her hand over her mouth and said, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe this.”

  “He never knew,” Virginia said. “There was never a reason to tell him.”

  “I figured when you found out about me that you’d be mad enough to spit nails.” Shannon sobbed. “How did things get so messed up?”

  “We’re going to work things out. When it happened to me nobody offered to help, but I’ll help you. I know I’ve been mean, said that you and Kerry couldn’t live with me and that I wouldn’t help with the baby, but things have changed. I don’t know why I’ve been so hard on you. You’re right when you said we don’t talk about things. I guess I just preach and never listen.”

  “Can I tell you something else?”

  “You can tell me anything.”

  “I hate it. I hate this baby.”

  “I thought the same thing when it happened to me, but you know what? Will was the one man I never regretted having in my life. It took awhile after he was born for me to get attached, but once it took, I loved him with all my heart. I’m not saying that you’ll feel that way about the baby. You may not. But none of this is the baby’s fault. That baby is just as much a victim as you are. Hating it won’t make things better for either of you.”

  “What will make it better? Nothing. Nothing will make it better.”

  Virginia sat back in the chair and sighed. “I’m not sure. I guess I just know what won’t make it better, and that’s marrying somebody you don’t love just because there’s a baby on the way. That’s why your daddy and I’ve had such a hard time. He didn’t really want to marry me, but somebody had to or else the truth would’ve come out.”

  “That’s a damn lie,” Roger stepped up the basement stairs into the kitchen. He held a small saw and a claw foot hammer. “A damn lie. Who told you that, Virginia?”

  “Nobody had to tell me. None of them wanted to be sent to the pen on account of what they did to me.”

  “Nobody made me marry you. What made you think that? Did somebody tell you that?”

  “No. But it’s the truth.”

  “Damn. You just don’t get it do you?” He turned to Shannon. “Your mother there was one of the most beautiful women in this entire county. But she wouldn’t give me the time of day. I knew she’d never go with me.”

  “I didn’t date. I didn’t have time. I was too busy taking care of kids.”

  “When I found out she was pregnant I saw my chance. I knew she’d never have me otherwise and I wanted her, even if she didn’t want me.” He stepped up to her. “And you didn’t, did you, Virginia? You’re the one that has always felt like life was ruined the day we got married.”

  “Who wants a pity marriage?”

  “I admit I felt sorry for you when you turned up pregnant,” he said. “But I didn’t do anything out of pity.”

  “What do you want me to say?” Virginia stuttered a little. “You should have told me that a long time ago.”

  “Good God, woman, I would have thought after all these years you would have known how much I love you. I may not be the most affectionate man, but I’ve always loved you.”

  “You just settled.”

  “Settled? Not me. You’re the one that settled and we both know it. That’s what’s been wrong with us all these years. You felt cheated.”

  Virginia folded her arms against her chest defensively. “Cheated is a good way to put it.”

  “I promise I was never pushed to marry you. Not by anybody. Don’t you know how I feel about you?” He reached for her.

  She gently pushed him away. “You’re crazy.”

  “Crazy about you. Look, Virginia. What happened to you was awful. Nobody can ever fix that for you. I guess I was stupid to try.”

  Virginia thought it a kind thing to say. “We’ll talk about this later. Right now we need to talk about Shannon. She just dropped a bomb.”

  Roger faced his daughter. “What’s up, baby girl?”

  Shannon fiddled with the table cloth. “I’m ashamed,” she said.

  “What have you got to be ashamed about? None of us is perfect, you know that.”

  Shannon looked from her father to her mother and back. “Kerry’s not this baby’s daddy.”

  “Okay. Who is?”

  “Some guy I went with.”

  “He forced her,” Virginia said.

  Roger sighed and ran a hand over his face. “No wonder you told her about us.” He sat down next to Shannon and brushed a few strands of hair from her eyes. His hand lingered on her shoulder. “This has been one hell of a year for you. What can I do?”

  Shannon crawled in her father’s lap like a child. She put her face against his shoulder and cried, her body jerking with long, silent spasms. Virginia handed Roger a clean dishcloth, and when Shannon had cried herself out, he used it to wipe her face.

  “Does Kerry know about this?” Roger asked.

  “No.” Her breath hitched. “No.”

  “You want me to tell him for you?”

  Shannon shook her head. “No. It’s mine to do. But he’s going to hate me.”

  “Naw, now. You don’t know that.”

  “How could he not?”

  “I know that boy,” Virginia said. “He’s
got a lot of good in him. He’ll get over this.”

  “Daddy, how did you feel raising Will knowing he wasn’t yours?”

  “I always considered him my boy. I’m Will’s daddy in every way that counts.” Roger met Virginia’s eyes over their daughter’s trembling shoulders and Virginia looked out the kitchen window at a fine, new spring day. A couple of chirpy wrens flew back and forth from the ground to a tree limb, twigs in their tiny beaks, slowly making a fragile home. In that instant, Virginia knew what she had to do.

  34

  Light glowed through the stained glass windows of Central Christian Church, reminding Shannon of a kaleidoscope she had as a child. Their colors melded in her watery vision, calm and soothing. Shannon closed her eyes and bowed her head. Tears plopped into the lap of her new Sunday maternity dress. Kerry reached for her hand and squeezed.

  The church was packed, as all the standing churches probably were this beautiful Easter morning. People had come today to ask why God had left their town for dead. They were a shattered community of confused yet hopeful souls. No one stared at the people who cried openly. The minister spoke of the resurrection as a new beginning, a promise of the future. He warned folks about questioning God and encouraged people to find acceptance and offer surrender.

  Shannon felt in her heart that nothing would ever be the same, and she took comfort in that. People no longer sneered as if she were ruined, as if she were a soiled piece of clothing that needed to be scrubbed clean. The hurt and resentment that had been boiling inside her for months was released and floated up and out the colorful windows behind the purple-draped cross.

  It took a long time for the congregation to file out. Everyone wanted to shake the minister’s hand and congratulate him on an insightful sermon. On the front lawn, people hugged freely.

  “Want to ride around and take a look?” Kerry asked.

  “Momma?” Shannon said. “We’re going now.”

  Her mother reached out to give her a hug and whispered into her ear. “You can do it.”

  Kerry helped Shannon into his truck. He drove to the lake, the sun emerging from clouds at intervals. They stopped where twisted stumps littered the bottom of an open corridor sliced through state forest land. It was easy to follow the twister’s path of destruction over a hill, across the road, and all the way to the water. Trees that edged the cut were shaved clean, as if a giant Bush Hog had torn through the woods. Water sparkled at the far end of the clearing.