The Warmest December

by Bernice L. McFadden

  He touched my shoulder with one hand and pointed toward my bedroom with the other.

  “Everybody okay?” he asked once we were inside, away from the million questions the other officers reeled at Hy-Lo and Delia. We nodded our heads yes. “Who called 911?” he asked and his watery blue eyes moved between Malcolm and me.

  “I did,” Malcolm said, unsure if he should have replied at all.

  “Very good, son,” the officer said and winked at him. He removed a rectangular leather booklet from his back pocket and began to write. “What’s your name, son?”

  “Malcolm.” My brother moved closer to me.

  “Malcolm what?”

  “Lowe.”

  “That your dad in there?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “That your mom?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Your dad ever do anything like this before?”

  Malcolm didn’t respond right away. Everything was moving too fast for his nine-year-old mind. He hadn’t considered the repercussions of his actions, hadn’t thought about what Hy-Lo would do to him if he ever found out who made the call. Malcolm began to shake as the thoughts swirled through his mind. He took a step away from the officer.

  The officer looked at Malcolm and then me. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “Kenzie Lowe. I’m his sister. Those are my parents and they fight all the time. My dad is a drunk and he beats on her all the time.” The words fell out of my mouth and then the tears followed. “Take him to jail, please take him to jail.”

  “Hey, Waters, the damn gun was empty.” Another officer was in the room now. He was tall and sported the same type of haircut except his hair was black and gleamed beneath the bedroom light. His badge said Hernandez.

  “What?” Waters stood up from where he’d knelt down beside the bed to comfort me. “Shit,” he mumbled beneath his breath and walked over to Hernandez. “She can still press charges for aggravated assault. She is going to press charges, isn’t she?”

  Hernandez shrugged his shoulders and made a face that told me he didn’t think that was going to happen. “Shit,” Waters mumbled again and stormed out of the room.

  Two officers were speaking to Delia. Her head moved back and forth between them as they tried to convince her why she should press charges. They kept asking her if she understood and when she would nod her head yes, they’d begin again.

  They had seen a hundred women like Delia, living, breathing women who were battered physically and emotionally on a daily basis, but who still refused to leave their oppressors. The policemen came to their lavish homes or tiny apartments once a month, sometimes more, sometimes less, and told them over and over again that anyplace was better than where they were.

  They left literature behind and business cards for social workers and shelters, and still the women made up excuses why they couldn’t leave, why he had behaved that way, why it was probably their fault and not his.

  “I walk too loud.”

  “Dinner wasn’t ready.”

  “I didn’t clean up behind the kids.”

  “The meat was too tough. The rice too soft. The bread too stale.”

  “If not for you, for the kids,” the policemen would urge. “It’s because of the kids that I stay and take it,” the wives, girlfriends, and Delia responded.

  The officers shrugged their shoulders in surrender. They were all talked out and removed the silver bracelets from my father’s wrists.

  The gun was a souvenir from Vietnam. They left him with his memories of war and blood and us with the same.

  Mable came in just as the officers were leaving. A small crowd had gathered in the hallway. “Oh my God, what happened?” Mable pushed through the men and went straight to my mother, who was huddled in the corner of the sofa.

  “Delia, Delia.” Mable stroked her daughter’s hair and wrapped her arms around her shoulders, rocking her as if she were three years old again. Malcolm and I stood by watching as our mother moaned softly into her mother’s heavy breasts.

  In the end we left Hy-Lo alone, sitting on the edge of the bed, his head resting hopelessly in his hands.

  For the next ten days we lived with Mable and Sam. I’d hoped it was for good, even though we were cramped. The space I had viewed as a massive castle when I was young was now a paltry dwelling.

  Arms and shoulders brushed in passing, and sounds, like inconsistent music notes, traveled through the paperthin walls interrupting my studies and breaking my sleep.

  Malcolm and I were no longer used to sharing the same sleeping space. I slept as if I were naked in a room full of strangers, blankets pulled up to my chin, one eye open and ears peeled, listening for any variation in Malcolm’s breathing as he lay sleeping on the floor beside my bed.

  He was a man-child and I was losing trust in him as he got closer to manhood.

  Sam spent hours trying to pull me into conversation, card games, or just a seat beside him on the couch. I had a handbag full of excuses and a pocket full of lies that I denied his invitations with. He was a man too, and Hy-Lo’s actions had blemished his record and the record of most of the men I would come into contact with for many years following that incident.

  On the fifth day, when the March wind had become a stiff wall of cold that stopped pedestrians at corners and sent them reeling backward on their heels, Delia did not ring the bell at six-fifteen p.m. and rush in bringing the cold with her. No, on the fifth day she arrived just before mid-night, when the March gale was feeble and the sky cloudless and black.

  On that night I heard a car door close and the roll of wheels as it crushed the dirt, grit, and garbage the wind had left behind; then there was the chime of the doorbell.

  Mable knew. I saw it in her face when Delia walked into the house. No wind pushing her forward or cold ushering her in, just the dead night behind her and the fading glint of brake lights.

  Mable’s face curled and her eyes slanted with anger. She bit her lip and slammed the door. Delia ignored her and came to sit beside me on the couch, bending over to pull off her shoes. “Hey, you, how was your day?” she said, her voice sounding farther away than the hem of the couch.

  “Okay,” I said quickly, glancing over at Mable to check her reaction.

  “Where you been?” All three of us looked up to see who had spoken so abruptly. Yes, we had heard that same question, that same threatening tone, a million times in the past. And now here it was coming down the stairs in Mable’s home when we thought we’d left it on Rogers Avenue.

  “What did you say, Malcolm?” Delia’s voice shook just a bit, enough for me to notice, but then if I had asked him the question, mine would have been trembling too.

  It wasn’t that she needed clarification as to what Malcolm had said, it was just that she needed to be sure she heard right in how he had said it. Whose voice had been used?

  Malcolm became aware of our hesitation and his tone changed.

  “I—I—” he stammered before Delia cut him off.

  “Out. I was out, Malcolm.” Her voice was stern.

  She did not want to hear Hy-Lo’s voice from the mouth of her young son again. It was bad enough his features were carved into Malcolm’s face. What was worse, what she couldn’t seem to see, was that the wild thing was living behind his eyes too, watching and waiting. I saw it there.

  Malcolm was confused and made a face before turning and walking back up the stairs. Delia watched until his shadow disappeared from the wall and then she leaned back into the sofa, shaking her head.

  After some time she began to hum, a tune that was unfamiliar to me. One that carried a strange type of joy, as if someone had written a wrong note, slipping it into the scale even though it sounded out of place.

  I listened and moved closer to Delia, helping her slide her arm out of her coat and even removing a bit of lint that had become entangled in her hair. Delia turned and smiled at me; her eyes were soft, almost dewy.

  I leaned into her, snuggling my nose against
her neck, hoping that look of love belonged to Jonathan “Bookie” Hall.

  I inhaled, and instead of the smell of the warm, sexy scent of Jonathan “Bookie” Hall, my nose was filled with the stale smell of Camel cigarettes, Magic Shave, and Ivory soap. I almost gagged.

  I withdrew quickly, slamming myself back against the sofa, folding my hands across my chest. I heard Mable suck her teeth.

  “What is wrong with you, Kenzie?” Delia asked in exasperation. “Nothing.” I mumbled goodnight and stormed up the stairs.

  Mable and Delia’s conversation began as it always did:

  “But Mama, he said he was going to stop drinking.”

  “Hasn’t he said that before?”

  “Yes, but this—”

  “But this time it’s different? How? But this time he means it?” The sarcasm in Mable’s voice dripped out like poison. I spat into my hand against the nasty taste that formed in my mouth listening to those words.

  “Mama, everyone deserves a chance—”

  “How many, Delia? How many—one, two, three hundred, one thousand? He was going to kill you, Delia; do you understand that, baby? He was going to blow your head off and leave your children without a mother.”

  I shuddered when she said that.

  There was silence for a while. Maybe Delia was considering Mable’s words or maybe she was just staring at her in shock.

  “There weren’t any bullets in the gun, Mama—”

  “This time,” Mable spat.

  “He’s going to get help—”

  “He’s going to kill you.”

  “He’s going to—”

  “He’s going to kill you!” Mable’s fist came down on the table and the whole house shook. “How many times can you take his lies and twist them into truths? How many damn times?”

  Delia didn’t respond. Maybe she was thinking about the silk blouse Hy-Lo brought her after he’d knocked her down in the kitchen and emptied the garbage can over her head. It was red with a pointed collar and heart-shaped pearl buttons. It was a size too small but Delia kept it anyway, choosing to hang it in the closet next to the burgundy wool jacket and red and white striped cardigan he’d bought her after similar incidents.

  The jacket and the cardigan were also too small, just like his promises, just like his love for her.

  What would he get her now? A hat, a scarf, or maybe a pair of lambskin gloves? What do you get someone you’ve tried to kill?

  “Think about your children, Delia.” Mable finally said it. The lone sentence, five small words that carried the force of five hundred. I’m sure Delia had to grit her teeth to keep them from chattering. She would not respond. How many different ways could she say that this was the exact reason why she stayed?

  The next day Delia came home at six-fifteen; her mood was solemn and she had little to say. The house creaked against the push of the March wind and the noise filled the uncomfortable silence that surrounded us.

  He came sometime around three in the morning. Their whispers floated up to me and tickled my ears with their phantom fingers. I knew he was coming, something inside of me kept telling me so, pulling me from my sleep and forcing my eyes to remain open, staring into the misty blue darkness of the room. I had only just lost the battle and surrendered myself to slumber when their muffled words pulled me back.

  I climbed from my bed, careful not to step on Malcolm, and walked over to the wall that stood between Mable’s room and myself. I could hear Mable’s even breathing and Sam’s heavy snoring. They were in perfect harmony with one another; even in sleep they kept a comfortable rhythm.

  I eased the door open and stepped out into the small hallway. I hugged myself against the cold air that surrounded me and listened.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Delia said breathlessly. Her voice was thick and she spoke as though struggling for air.

  I recognized that sound, that struggle to breathe between words and kisses.

  I shuddered at the thought of him touching her, pressing his lips to hers, pulling himself into her, reclaiming his control of her and of us.

  “Delia, Delia.” He said her name over and over until her name became wet and thick in his mouth. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  I heard the heavy metal teeth of his zipper separate.

  The night turned scalding hot. I felt my head spin in the heat of the darkness that threatened to burn my skin, its flaming fingers grabbing hold of my lungs and heart, gripping them until they exploded and I was nothing.

  I swooned and stepped back to lean against the wall when they moved from the vestibule, walking as one instead of two to the couch and falling down onto its cushions. I did not want to listen but was unable to move. I heard Delia’s voice call out his name and Hy-Lo responded with a heavy shuddered breath.

  My stomach turned and allowed the bile to rise and clog my throat, my hands went to my mouth, and then darkness overtook me.

  They found me sitting on the floor, slumped against the wall, my chin resting in the puke on my chest. “Kenzie, Kenzie.” Someone’s fingers ran across my cheeks and brushed against my forehead. “Kenzie?”

  My eyes fluttered open and stared into those of my mother.

  “C’mon,” she said, her voice a calm wave. The stench of vomit hit my nose and burned the insides of my nostrils like ammonia and I lifted my head and gulped for air. “Get up, c’mon,” she urged again.

  With Delia’s help I pulled myself to my feet and let her take me to the bathroom.

  “Oh,” she muttered in surprise. I looked up at her and then followed her eyes. She was staring at the back of my gown. A blotchy red stain covered the thin green nylon. “Well, welcome to womanhood,” Delia said with a nervous smile.

  Later that day, Malcolm and I sat in the living room; our small overnight bags, busting at the seams, rested against our feet. We pretended to watch television, but our ears were tuned to the conversation that took place a few feet away.

  Hy-Lo had come for us. It was almost three when he got there. His eyes were bloodshot and his face unshaven. He’d lost some weight and his clothes clung desperately to his withering frame. He was a pitiful sight.

  He smiled at us and patted Malcolm on his back. “Hello, son,” he said in a voice that belonged to someone else’s father. Son was not a term I’d ever heard him use. Meathead, stupid, idiot, those were his pet names for Malcolm.

  My brother nodded his head and shook Hy-Lo’s outstretched hand.

  “Kenzie?” It was not a greeting but a question for me to grant his permission to greet me. I rolled my eyes and turned my head away.

  Delia laid her sad eyes on me; they asked me to try, to please just try. I ignored them.

  They did not sit, Delia and Hy-Lo, but stood like young children being scolded as Mable slammed her fist on the table in between the threats she flung at them.

  She waved my acceptance letter in their faces. “She will attend this school, Hyman. If you don’t allow it, I swear to God I will go straight to Child Welfare Services!”

  I saw Hy-Lo’s head bob up and down in agreement. His eyes met Mable’s for one brief moment and then settled back on his shoes. Delia stood in the background, quiet as a mouse.

  It was done and over. Mable squeezed us tight before we loaded ourselves into the car. “Kids, call me if you need me,”

  she yelled as we pulled away from the house.

  I clutched the letter tightly as Hy-Lo barreled down the highway. It was my ticket to freedom.

  Chapter Thirteen

  We walked into the apartment; it was dark and dreary and smelled like cigarettes and fried chicken TV dinners. Hy-Lo had made a makeshift clothesline by stretching a rope from the curtain rod of the living room window to the floor lamp directly across. His shorts and T-shirts hung there drying.

  The refrigerator was stacked with TV dinners and bottles of apple juice. A carton of Camels sat on the table next to the ceramic ashtray overflowing with butts and gray matchsticks.

  Del
ia started cleaning even before she removed her coat. “Help me untie this,” she said to Malcolm after she removed the wet clothes from the line. I walked straight to my room and closed the door.

  My stomach cramped as my anger began to well up inside of me. I threw myself across my bed and cried into my pillow. I hated being back in that place, under that roof where so much hate and pain lived.

  I wanted to stay with Mable. “Can I stay here?” I’d boldly asked when Hy-Lo picked up my satchel and started toward the door.

  “Of course—” Mable had started to answer but was cut off by Delia.

  “No, Kenzie, you cannot. You come home where you belong.” I saw the fear that passed across her face. She needed me there; I was her strength and without me she would crumble and he would win. “You come home, Kenzie, you’re my responsibility not your grandmother’s.”

  “She’s old enough to decide where she wants to live,” Mable responded.

  Hy-Lo said nothing; his eyes traveled between Delia, Mable, and me. For a moment he resembled a trapped animal, but then Delia rescued him.

  “No, she’s not.” Delia’s voice came from deep within her. She would not let Mable win this one. Mable almost smiled in spite of herself. Perhaps Delia’s tone gave Mable hope that she still had some backbone left in her.

  “You only got to hang in there for a few more months, Kenzie. September will be here before you know it.” Mable spoke to me but her eyes never left Delia’s, and the smile, although just a shadow, grew and spread across her face. “Just a few more months.”

  Delia rolled her eyes. “Goodbye, Mama,” she said and took a step back so I could pass.

  Back home nothing had changed and everything had changed. I had my Get Out of Jail Free Card hidden in an old sock and stuffed behind my dresser. I prayed that the next six months would pass quickly and without incident. That would be a big order for God to fill, but I hoped against hope.