My Brother Michael

by Janis Owens

  Obedient to the core, she went kicking through the sand under the live oak, and I was yelling further instructions when suddenly, without warning, I was hanging in midair from my wrist, my toes a good inch off the ground.

  “What’sat arm doing in my yard?” A soft voice whispered in my ear, and I could smell the whiskey before I could see him, my eyes still on Myra, who was kneeling in the dirt, shouting, “Here, Gabriel! A nice flat—” But she never got it out, for when she turned and saw her father standing there, her face blanked, suddenly, like a blown bulb, the nice flat rock still clutched in her hand.

  There was a soft grating in my wrist that I could hear rather than actually feel, and I was feebly trying to shake myself loose when our back door opened with a pop, and my mother came down the back steps, her machete of a voice coming before her.

  “Put my boy down, let him loose. I’ll call the Law, you drunk sorry piece of trash,” she said, emphasizing the words in a venomous singsong that sounded like: put my boy DOWN, let him LOOSE, I’ll call the LAW, you drunk sorry PIECE of TRASH, and such was her ferocity that even Mr. Sims wilted before her, letting me crumple to the dirt.

  He tried to offer a sullen explanation: “—in my yard, not given permission to come in my yard—”

  But Mama was mad, mad, mad; her baby Gabe had been touched, and if it cost poor Ira all the rice in China, she couldn’t be stopped, poking her little face over the fence and letting six months of forced silence break like a dam: “SEE if I doan call the Law! SEE if I doan tell my husband, he’ll kill you, he’ll shoot you like the dog you are, putting your HAND on my CHILE—”

  Then she picked me up, all one hundred thirty or so pounds of me, while she probably tipped the scales herself at ninety-eight, and carried me inside, her voice as loud and grieved as a prophet, telling the world, “Tired of putting up with trash, TIRED, won’t stand for it no more.”

  She laid me on the couch while she called the doctor, and as the numbed nerves in my wrist came back to life with a sear that set my teeth on edge and sent involuntary tears streaming down my face, I could hear Mr. Sims outside, not yelling at Mama, but shouting in a shaking fury, “Git in this house this minute, young lady. I have to tell you agin—”

  At the moment, I was too overcome by the shock of pain in my wrist to understand the significance of these words, but later, years later, the memory of them would sicken me when I realized that Myra had been disobeying her father on my behalf, indulging in a protest in a small helpless way that she’d live to pay for, pay dearly. By then, of course, everyone on Magnolia Hill had come to understand a bit more of the mystery of Ira and Myra’s relentless passivity, of the idiotic grin in one and the glazed blindness in the other, and none of us could believe it, still can’t, to this day.

  For we were a poor but good-natured lot there with our hymns and our paper soles and our virginity, and none of us had ever looked into the face of evil before, so it’s really no wonder we didn’t recognize it, not at first. Not till it raised its head and laughed in our faces, and by then, I don’t know, even now, sometimes survival doesn’t seem like enough.

  Chapter

  4

  Mama was not mouthing idle threats when she promised to call the law on Mr. Sims, for all the good it did. Later that evening a deputy came by and filed a complaint, and Mr. Sims was questioned, but the general consensus was that a man had a right to protect his property, and while breaking a thirteen-year-old’s wrist was extreme, it was by far not the worse thing that had ever happened on Magnolia Hill and nothing to worry the legal system with. So he was let off with a warning to straighten up and lay off the liquor, and Mama’s second threat, that Daddy would shoot him, was sidetracked by the combined efforts of Brother Sloan and Uncle Case and Mama herself. Once she’d gotten hold of her temper, she began to see that this small run-in had the capacity to explode into a serious, life-threatening confrontation, for shootings and knifings and near-fatal fistfights were not unheard of occurrences on the Hill. And though she still hated Mr. Sims and told everyone who came by just how sorry he truly was and always would be, she wasn’t mad enough to risk her husband’s life and had the far-sightedness to have the preacher and her brother there when she gave him the news about my wrist.

  Some of what came before and much of what came later has faded to me, but that night stands out so clearly in my mind: the smell of the oil-burning furnace in the living room, the murmur of voices on the porch, the stark white cast on my hand and forearm which in my drugged semi-sleep I kept banging on the mattress and headboard. I remember how they stood around my bed in the chill half-light when Daddy finally came home from work that night, his shirt sprinkled with paint from the good job he’d recently landed with a contractor, and how he’d kept his voice very calm, waking me to ask one quiet question: “Son, didju sass him?”

  I gave as truthful an account as I could remember, while Uncle Case rested his hands on Daddy’s shoulders and Brother Sloan kept his eyes on Daddy’s face—nervous, darting eyes that searched for any flicker of that fatal stab of anger, but it never came. His expression never changed at all; he only stood when I finished and kissed my forehead and told me to get some sleep, then allowed himself to be led into the living room, Uncle Case still resting his hand on his shoulder, Brother Sloan quoting Jesus, saying something about going the second mile.

  What Daddy’s reply was, I never knew. Dr. Winston’s pills kept me in a narcotic haze that lasted the better part of a week, and when I was finally on my feet, everything was back to normal, except my forearm was still immobilized in the cast and Myra was out of my reach, seemingly forever.

  She wasn’t in the yard, she wasn’t on the porch, I could never even catch her en route to the outhouse, but no one seemed overly concerned with her absence, for Ira had gone unaccountably unpunished this time and continued to visit our table as regularly as clockwork, his jaws working hell for leather, his chatter never stopping. At first, I asked after her constantly, but he was vague and happy, saying she was busy at home helping with the chores, then requesting another biscuit, please ma’am, and I was too profoundly terrified of the Old Man to press the issue. Late at night, while the rest of the neighborhood slept easy on the crest of a mild, frostless autumn, I tossed and turned in restless dread, afraid to cross the border to sleep, when I’d again feel the sour, nasty breath on my neck and the merciless voice in my ear, not speaking in threat, but in friendly confidence, whispering hideous secrets I could never face in the clear, red-leaved light of day.

  So in a way, you could say I abandoned her; we all did since Ira’s face was filling out nicely, and I still had Scarlett and Rhett to amuse me, and at church, my cast had somehow given me the romantic air of the wounded soldier, changing Cassie’s mind about liking fat boys. Early in November she began making sly advances toward me, pressing against me in the hall, grinning at me in choir, and when the youth group took an overnight trip to Mobile, she smiled coquettishly, and in the full hearing of seven of my nine best friends, said, “I’m riding with Ga-habe.”

  I guess she thought I’d weep at the chance, for there was a regular folk-history brewing over the joys of sitting in a dark car with Cassie Lea Scales, but my heart belonged to poor absent Myra, and I only shook my head. “I’m riding with Brother Sloan.”

  This was the only car Cassie knew better than to practice her craft in and, all in all, a shocking pronouncement to say the least. My seven best friends, who knew intimately how sweet the rewards of Cassie’s favor could be, were stunned speechless, and something in their wide, incredulous eyes must have signaled to Cassie that her control was slipping, for with all the boundless viciousness of an insecure thirteen year old, she hissed, “Well, that’s just fine with me, Gabe Catts. I know all about boys like you. I know what y’all are called. My Daddy told me.”

  My seven good friends were looking at me with even more interest then, as if calculating how something like that might complicate how fast they got dressed around me
in gym, but my love for Myra had given me the upper hand on old Cass, and with titanic control, I crossed my cast to my chest and lifted my face to the stars. “Yeah, well, that’s OK with me, Cassie Lea Scales. That’s just fine, ‘cause my mama told me the name for girls like you.”

  Everyone, even Cassie, was looking at me now, and as I started for Brother Sloan’s car, I went in for the kill. ‘And if you keep on doing it like you been doing it, you may get good enough to make some money with it when you git grown.”

  Well, poor Cassie. In that day and time I could have thrown gasoline on her and set a match to her hair and caused less damage, and on the way to Mobile that night, I remember being a little shocked at my cruelty, for I’d seen a glimpse of something like it next door, and though it frightened me, I still had no name for it. Only a feeling, a rumor of gigantic unease, that had no basis in reality at all, but could sometimes be seen in the abstract, as when I sat on the back porch the day after Thanksgiving and watched a violent winter rainstorm pulverize Myra’s carefully numbered eighteen-square hopscotch board, leaving nothing but a dirty, reflectionless puddle that froze, then dried to blank, unmarked dirt.

  But that’s all, nothing material, nothing that could lure the sheriff back to Magnolia Hill, and it wasn’t until Ira let the cat out of the bag quite accidentally that the law was finally forced to step in and do its duty.

  It was January by then, the flat, snowless days of bitter Gulf-blown winds, the oaks shedding, the pecan trees long harvested of their crop, leaving Magnolia Hill in a state of rare ugliness, loose panes rattling in their windows, small victory gardens blank rectangles of faceless, fruitless dirt. Ira was eating supper with us that night, an event that was becoming somewhat less common since Christmas when he’d found a job stocking shelves at a corner grocery store and would take as many hours as they’d give him. But for all his labor, he never seemed one penny richer, still wearing not one stitch more than what came out of the bags of hand-me-downs Mama handed over the fence every few months, and I knew his continuing poverty had not escaped Mama’s eagle eye, when, halfway through the meal, she asked him what he was doing with all the money he was making down at the store.

  “Give it to my daddy, Sister Catts,” he said solemnly. “Every penny I give to him.”

  Daddy looked a little sour at this, but I guess he could find nothing technically wrong with a son helping support his family, but it must have rankled him, for he asked in a very mild voice, “He ain’t give you namore them whippings, has he?”

  Now, as I have said, Ira was nobody’s fool and must have remembered the last interest we had taken in his welfare had almost led to his virtual starvation, for he was pathetically eager to reassure us everything was fine, shaking his head emphatically, saying, “No sir, no, not atall—”

  Daddy just watched him, and Ira, in a desperate attempt to be reconciliatory, added, “Never lays a hand on neither a us, Brother Catts, me nor Myra one. Not no more. Shurff won’t let him.”

  The fact that the law was finally stepping in and doing its duty seemed to satisfy Daddy, for he turned his attention back to the food and Ira, pleased with his success, asked for seconds, please ma’am, and expanded grandly as Mama filled his plate. “Course, he never did whip Myra. Nurse couldn’t find a mark on her, not a mark. He never has touched ole Myra—” he paused as he took his plate, then, “‘cept to ponk her.”

  He grinned at me when he said it, for this little contribution to our vocabulary had come to be known as his most famous creative achievement, and while the rest of us stared at him in stunned, blank silence, he rolled along without turning a hair. “Daddy gits mad, he locks her in the closet. But never a mark,” he said sagely, “is laid on her back.”

  We were still in total shock, Daddy’s fork stalled in actual midair, but Ira hadn’t taken a breath as he inhaled the corn and tried to put an anecdotal twist on his story. “One time,”—he grinned—“one time, he clean forgot her. She stayed there a solid week.” He laughed, for this was nothing to him. He was the human ashtray, remember, and molestation and closets and beatings with electrical cord were the furniture of his twelve-year-old world. “Mama let her out to pee, but right back in she went. Would a stayed till she died, I reckon, Daddy hadn’t sobered up—”

  That’s when my father stood—all in one smooth, joined motion, his chair scraping the wood floor, his napkin falling to the floor untouched, ignoring Mama, who had stood too, and was saying, “Simon. Simon.”

  She gripped his arm as if to stop him, but he only looked at her, his paint-flecked face blank and set, and I knew that Mama could cry and we could cry and Brother Sloan could talk about the second mile till hell froze over, and it wouldn’t stop Daddy from walking out that door.

  Mama must have seen it too, for she spoke no further word of protest, only dropping her hand and not even watching as he left, keeping her eyes on the half-eaten food on the table while she waited for the slam of the screen door, closing her eyes a moment when it hit with a flimsy crack that bounced back once, then twice, then was finally still. Then, being the rock-solid, born-again pragmatist she is, Mama gave Ira his plate and sent him out the back door, then went to the phone and called, not the sheriff nor the preacher, but the ambulance.

  By the time we made the porch, he already needed one, for Old Man Sims outweighed him by a good eighty pounds, and whatever Daddy had said in that thirty-second interval had so enraged him that he had not been content to merely knock him off the porch but had followed him down to the yard, where he was kicking the life out of him, one tremendous blow at a time, laughing, I swear to God, laughing while he did it. Michael shook off Mama and took the fence in one bound, and Candace and I screamed like the terrified children we were as Mr. Sims turned and took him down with one blow, one vicious hammer of a backhand to the face. He may have started in on Michael then, kicking him, if Brother McQuaig (Benny’s father) had not heard our screams and crossed Lafayette with a shotgun in his hands, describing in a calm, light voice just how much he’d love to blow Mr. Sims’ head off if he made one more move, just one.

  Then the ambulance was there and the sheriff, who tried to get a statement from Mama, but found her teeth-chattering hysterical as she tried to nurse Daddy back to consciousness, only able to point at Mr. Sims and scream, “Him! Him!”

  So the sheriff couldn’t arrest anyone till Daddy made a statement, and after the ambulance roared away, all was particularly quiet on Lafayette Street. Mama was in the bedroom, changing into her good dress to go to the hospital; Candace was on the front porch, holding ice on Michael’s eye; and I was in the dining room, looking at the remains of supper, finally realizing the name of the evil that lived next door, but still not very sure what to do about it, when there was a soft knock on the back door.

  I answered it, cautiously opening the door with my good hand and seeing it was Mrs. Sims, standing there with a pale, sagging Myra pressed to her side, half-buried in the skirt of her old housedress. To this day, I cannot properly remember Mrs. Sims as a young woman, what she looked like or how she spoke, for her husband’s personality dominated the household so completely that she was rendered a mere afterthought. But that evening, I do remember two things about her very distinctly: a neat row of fresh red circles on her chin and neck, as if she’d been slammed against a wall with an open hand, and the way her hands shook with a small motion as she spoke in a low, hoarse whisper. “He’s leaving. Leaving tonight, gone take my baby. Tell your Mama, ast her if she could—if she might—”

  I understood in one horrified gasp and ran to the bedroom and pulled Mama, still in her slip, to the kitchen, where Mrs. Sims, her face expressionless, repeated her low, urgent request. “Leldon’s going. Going to Texas. Says he’s a-taking her. Please, ma’am, please—”

  Without waiting for another word of explanation, Mama took Myra and pushed Mrs. Sims out the door, her voice a fierce whisper. “Go. Go. Not back there—the church—no, the tracks—no, I’ll keep her, go—”


  Mrs. Sims turned and started off the porch in the clumsy, mincing stride of a grown woman, while Mama shut the door with her knee and began going room to room, looking for a hiding place, her eyes white and frantic as a voice next door began yelling, “Myra? Myra Louise Sims! Eloise? Eloise!”

  Then, in one of those grotesque ironies that seem to haunt our household, she chose the best hiding place she could manage in such a pinch: the rattling old chifforobe she and Daddy used for a closet. So poor Myra was out of the frying pan and into the fire, in a manner of speaking, but showed no sign of worry, only watching in a pale, wordless silence as Mama dug out the shoes and hats and Sunday suits and pushed her in—then, seeing me at the door, told me to get in and be quiet, or she’d kill me. Then she shut the door and locked the catch, and all was quiet.

  I guess I was to be Myra’s guard or company or prayer partner; there was no time to explain with Mr. Sims just beyond the flimsy wall, so close we could hear the shake of anger in his voice as he stood on the porch and yelled, “Myra! I’m gone beat you till blood runs down your laigs, you don’t git to this house this MINUTE!”

  I later learned that Mama, being the brilliant tactician she is, threw on a dress and sought to divert the attack by crossing Lafayette and standing on Sister McQuaig’s porch, crying into her handkerchief, telling the handful of women who’d gathered there that she’d called her daddy and her brother and they were on their way, but I knew nothing of this at the time, for my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I was watching Myra.

  Sitting in a closet must have indeed been routine to her, for she didn’t look affected at all, only leaning a little bit forward, her shoulders slumped, her face blank and white. As her father’s rampage gained momentum outside, she would occasionally close her eyes a moment, but was in no way the crying, peeing-in-the-pants baby I was, even having the ability to communicate, reaching out her hand to touch my cast, whispering, “Gabriel? Didju hurt yourself?”