Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle

by Reinhardt, Susan

  I had never felt forgiven until I met Bryce Jeter. He could get me there, the conduit to complete reprieve from above. If I married a man of God, then maybe, quite possibly, what happened would disappear and bury itself with the sins of others who’d stepped forward and released inner demons. The tranquilizers in my blood brought everything back so clearly yet impersonally, as if it were happening to another woman.

  A lens in my mind zoomed in and focused on a day sixteen years ago, the red brick clinic in a rundown part of the city, the hard, unpadded metal table, the stirrups, the doctors who seemed as cold as their mysterious jars of specimens and solutions. The nurses who had cigarette breath and fatigue and boredom in their eyes. I might as well have been a woman going in for a root canal. Line us up in the waiting room. Give us old magazines wrinkled from sweaty hands and the passing from one nervous woman to another. Day after day. In they go, filled with life—out they go, empty and dead-eyed.

  Two hundred and seventy-five dollars. A couple of Tylenol, a shot in the cervix that burned like a hot poker, and then the rods, one after the other, opening what needed six, seven or eight more months to rightly yield. Prying and pulling and suctioning and scraping what women were meant to nurture, sucking it all out with hoses and nonchalance while I lay in agony and tears, crying for what was lost and what would never be.

  “You have no choice,” a doctor had told me the week before, when I had learned. “You’ve been taking Accutane plus birth control pills. This child is severely deformed. Why weren’t you using protection?” More guilt. Yes protection, protection. Lots of it. Pills. Did I forget one? A condom for backup. And then almost three entire months of not realizing something was wrong, that my breasts were growing huge and my periods—yes, I had them—were irregular. The news. A baby. A deformed child, 12 weeks’ gestation, a sonogram that showed limbs unformed from the teratogenic effects of Accutane and estrogen. Oh, God. Please, help me God.

  The pain was more excruciating than any I’d ever endured, more so than actually giving birth or the shattered bones from Bryce’s van, the sickening tear of flesh, the striking and chipping collarbone and sternum.

  I stirred from this memory back to the present and the faces above me, the ones asking about family and kin. I couldn’t stop trembling and a nurse left the room and returned with a syringe she pumped into the IV tubing. More Valium. Truth serum. Memories flowing faster and sharper as other edges dulled—the shame at the clinic, the hidden torture of the secret and deciding to tell Bryce on our wedding night, needing desperately to tell him, knowing he would lead me to amnesty. Knowing he would forgive and make me feel better, or so I assumed. I was as attracted by his wires to God Central as I was to his body and his perfect face.

  I held Bryce’s hand as we walked the white sandy beach at sunset on our wedding day, the Kiawah Island wind like warm arms around me, whispering, Go ahead. It’s safe. Tell him. Bryce, of all men, would understand what I needed. We sat on a blanket, my head against his muscled shoulder. He stared at the water as it lapped gently, caressing the shore.

  I told him my story, how I’d sought pardon in every church I could find. How right now, before we went inside and brought the marriage toward a union of flesh and love, I wanted him to know. I told him the entire truth and left nothing out. He made a noise, a low grunting sound and turned the dark furious color of day-old blood. He stood and walked to the edge of the ocean and screamed out toward what seemed like infinity, as loud as he could. The beach was almost deserted, but the few who were there scattered far away from the wailing man calling out into the ocean. He stayed there for at least 10 minutes before diving in, wearing all his clothes, as if he needed the water to cleanse him of what he’d heard. Baptize him in salt and foam and rid him of sin by association.

  When he returned I was crying on the blanket.

  “Let’s go inside,” he said, grabbing my hand a bit too rough and shaking the sand from the blanket. He released my hand and led me by the elbow, squeezing, seething. I could see the color still heating his face. His jaw was set. This was my new husband, my honeymoon. Why had I told him now? Why had I ever told him?

  We went inside and dressed for dinner, he in the bathroom and not allowing me to see his body. I felt such shame, such a dirty guilt that I wanted to run out of there and get on a bus and go home. We drove to dinner in silence. There was no champagne, no toast to a happy future, only a piece of blackened tuna I couldn’t eat and a solemn minister who was showing me the first taste of what my life would be like for the next six years.

  I tried to hug him and even put my arms around him when we got back to the villa. I told him I had no choice—that the child was deformed but he wouldn’t look at me. “There are two bedrooms,” he said. “I’m taking the one closest to the beach.”

  I cried myself to sleep and awakened before dawn to find him gone. He did not return for two days, and I was beside myself with grief and confusion. I called Aunt Weepie who swore never to tell a soul.

  “I’m coming to get you,” she said.

  “All right. Tomorrow. I’ll call and tell you when and where to pick me up. I can’t think straight right now.”

  Bryce had come back on the third night, sparing Aunt Weepie’s rescue mission. He wouldn’t tell me where he’d been or what he’d done as he led me to the bedroom and stripped off all of his clothes and ordered me to undress.

  I froze with a mix of revulsion and fear. I stared at his nakedness, which was no longer an attraction but the form of someone filled with hate and rage in each flexed and quivering muscle.

  “Take off your clothes, whore. You heard me.” I should have left but I didn’t. I slowly removed my jeans, T-shirt and faced him in a bra and panties, lingerie from a shower my friends from the gym and Steak & Ale had thrown. He pushed me onto the queen-size bed. He was heavy and on top, letting all his weight crush me instead of holding himself up. He kissed me, hard and his teeth tore my lip . . . the rusted taste of blood ran down my throat. His hands were on me, hot dry hands, tearing off my bra, twisting and ripping my new underwear, wrangling them down my legs, never taking his lips off mine and the blood continuing to trickle.

  “No, Bryce. Please.”

  “You whore. Shut up. Your sinning soul is mine now, you Jezebel, you cunning Delilah.” He grew hard and didn’t wait. He pushed himself into me and growled like an animal. I stared at the ceiling as it moved back and forth with Bryce’s forceful rhythms. I hated my new husband. Hated him. It only lasted a few minutes.

  Strangely, after he’d had his way, he scooped me into his arms and cuddled me like a child. He cried and told me, “I forgive you, Prudy. God does too. I love you.” And all the evil left him almost as quickly as it had entered. The eyes—trick eyes—had changed, and in an instant he was a different person. I prayed and hoped I’d never again see the man who turned my honeymoon into a nightmare.

  My prayers were answered. But only temporarily. The evil man from my honeymoon would slowly begin to re-form and rebuild himself into something beastly and capable of killing.

  ***

  At some point during the late evening, a swollen, pink sun bled through the window. I opened my eye a crack and immediately felt my head pounding. I stretched and tried to fully awaken and shake the webs of tranquilizers from muscles and mind and come to terms with where I was and how I’d gotten here. Mama curled herself into the vinyl visitors’ chair, the chair that held sweat and worry and tears of death and defeat, the chair that held grandmothers who rocked and purred over brand new grandchildren. She was dozing, the sun like brass in her strawberry blond hair.

  “Mama,” I said, my voice breaking.

  Her eyes flew open and she jumped, sitting straight up in the chair. “Prudy, honey. My heart can’t take any more. This is IT!”

  She didn’t ask or mention the troubles that had landed me once again in
a hospital. “You and Amber are killing me. One incident at a time. I took my fanny to Eckerd’s when I heard about your little fit at the radio station and my blood pressure was 161 over 90. That’s high enough to send me stroking. It won’t be long till my brain blows a tire. Total blowout, Miss Prudy who can’t seem to stay out of trouble.”

  “I’m sorry. The therapist said this would happen.”

  Mama bolted straight up in her chair. “Screw that woman,” she said, the second time I’d ever heard her use that word. She then closed her eyes, letting the last of the sun sweep the lids and her face, a shadow settling in the hollow of a high cheekbone. We were quiet for a few minutes, and then the door opened and in waltzed Aunt Weepie with a big bunch of flowers and a stack of magazines. She surveyed the gloom and focused on my mother who wasn’t speaking or offering even a remote greeting.

  “I’ve been to funerals happier than this,” she said, setting the vase on the windowsill, closing the blinds to block out a sun she found irritating. “Perk up, people. Nobody’s dead. Of course if they were, I’d at least be eatin’ good. Well, let’s hear it. What happened?”

  “Prudy showed her ass at work,” Mama said, tiredly, as if she’d been drugged. “They carted her over here in an ambulance. She goes around talking about men and their violence and look at what she pulls. How in the world am I going to live this down at bridge?”

  Aunt Weepie glanced at me, and I rolled my eyes and shook my aching head.

  “Oh, spit on those uppity-tight asses,” she said. “Half of them have gay husbands and the other half haven’t had sex in years ’cause their men are off screwing younger women. I’m sure they themselves could benefit from time in the hopper. Gracious, Lucinda. Everybody’s got problems.”

  “My children have nothing but.”

  “Phooey. You watch those soap operas. They oughta make your life seem like the sweetest piece of cake in the bakery. Let’s pay some attention to poor Prudy here. What did the doctors say? Prudy, what’s wrong, hon?”

  I couldn’t tell my mother about the letters from Bryce. Her gaskets would fire and I’d have a funeral on my hands, though to hear her talk you’d think she wanted nothing more. She was predicting her death within weeks, “due to the recent events of my sorry children’s pathetic lives.”

  “I’ve got two dresses for my service,” she was fond of reminding us at every opportunity. “I’m going to wear the green rayon with the real pretty collar for the visitation and the white silk with the lace inlay for the service and subsequent meeting with Jesus followed by Elvis.”

  “Prudy,” Aunt Weepie said, ignoring Mama. “What’s wrong?”

  “I got fired from the radio station and it didn’t sit well with me.”

  “Sit well,” my mother yelled. “It didn’t sit well with her. Let me tell you about sitting well. Nothing in life is going to sit well with people. We make our own cushions, feather our own benches. If you want to sit well then you line the bench with decency and goodness. You don’t go crashing and busting up a man’s office just ’cause you can’t help a woman whose 8-year-old son won’t quit wetting the bed.”

  “Jesus, mother.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt you to call out his name more often—and on your humble knees.”

  “Aunt Weepie?” I pleaded.

  “Can’t do a thing. She’s been like this since birth.”

  “Where are the kids?”

  “Oh,” my mother shouted, “So you remember you have obligations and responsibilities. If you really care, they are with your father and Landon Kennedy.”

  Landon Kennedy? Wonder where he came from? “Why are they with them?”

  “Landon drove his BMW convertible over and agreed to go to the park like you promised them kids before you decided to become a rock star and trash someone’s office. Such a nice man. He said you were quite witchy while on y’all’s date and wouldn’t stop talking to your ex. Said his name was Croc and that’s all I needed to hear.”

  “He’s an egotistical ogre.”

  “He’s a Kennedy.”

  “Oh, Lucinda,” Aunt Weepie interrupted. “He ain’t nothing but a hairy has-been. I saw him at your Mama’s, Prudy, and he may look good for a long-haired hippie, but he’s dumber than wood. I wouldn’t let him operate on a stuffed animal much less a real one. He’s got the wit of a gerbil. I tried to tell him my husband was fond of cooking furballs and the dumb ass actually thought I was serious and went into a textbook lecture about feline fur and the dangers of—”

  “Shut up, Weepie,” my mother said, her head in her hands.

  “Don’t you talk to me that way.”

  Mama looked up and jutted that chin way out. “I’ll talk to you any way I please. I’m going to check Prudy out of here before the whole town hears about this latest fiasco involving my oldest. She can go back to her pink rental and we’ll sort this out there.”

  They both talked about me as if I didn’t have a mind, an opinion or a say in the matter. It had been this way since Bryce Jeter burned rubber on my body.

  “You know, Luce, I believe it wouldn’t hurt her to stay a few days. Maybe if you had let them take her last time, she wouldn’t have had this breakdown that damned therapist correctly predicted. ”

  “I am the most wonderful mother,” Mama yelped. “I have lived my entire life for my two girls, and now they’re sucking the remainder of my years right out of me. Look. Look around. They are the walking wounded. Well, one can’t even walk good.”

  “I walk just fine,” I cried. “I even wear high heels a lot of days so you don’t need to—”

  “Hon, they can’t help it,” Aunt Weepie said. “Life gets hard when a woman hits her mid to late 30s. I told you it’s the Uglying Up years. The wrinkles come and the arm fat. The hangy-down thing on most necks. I’m just fortunate to have bypassed that trait, but Prudy, here, she may well have a neck thing if she don’t—”

  “I will not have a neck thing!” I shouted.

  “Weepie, why don’t you go on home,” Mama said.

  My aunt put her hands on her curvy hips and said, “I’ll go when I’m ready. Prudy here, needs me because I don’t force her into things.”

  “And I do?”

  “Yes, you do. You keep telling her to get a man, then refusing her good mental help when it seems advisable. You have been running her life now for the past two years, going to that apartment every day and calling in those proverbs with your ridiculous morals attached.”

  “She has needed me. And my proverbs. That’s what decent mothers do. If you’d been any kind of decent mother—”

  “Please,” I said. “Both of you, please leave.”

  A quiet fell. They stared at each other then me. “I want to be alone. I need to think. The best thing you could do for me is make sure the kids are okay. Tell them I’m all right and don’t give out too much information. Please.”

  By the time the room grew dark, except for a fluorescent light over the sink, Mama and Aunt Weepie had respected my wishes. They promised to take care of the kids, but were first planning on grabbing a bite at the Red Lobster because after their rough day they deserved a Bloody Mary and coconut shrimp.

  Sleep came in cycles, broken by the nurses and aides who rolled squeaking machinery in every four hours for vital signs and medication adjustments.

  Even with the interruptions and little sleep, I awakened the next morning feeling refreshed, cleansed and focused, knowing what I had to do, needed to do to get my life back from Bryce Jeter. To get it back from the sins of the past that had trapped me and kept me from thinking I was decent enough to have a normal happy relationship with a man. Flawed or not flawed. Everyone was flawed and I was no worse off than anyone else.

  For the next four days I stayed in the hospital, resting and listening to the therapists, even t
aking their suggestions and not focusing on their teeth or facial features. I asked one of them, a man with a sweet gentle quality to him, why he thought my husband would want to kill me.

  “It wasn’t you he wanted dead, Dee,” this man said, leaning into me. “It was himself he wanted to kill. This is just how it all manifested. It would be my guess he had an undiagnosed mental illness or even a physical condition of the brain.”

  “I want to go there, the prison, and find out why he’s sending the letters.”

  “Then go.”

  I walked the entire hospital, up four floors, down three, stopping to see the new babies and pushing the elevator buttons to a floor where the sickest old men and women from nursing homes are transferred.

  On the fourth day when I was due to check out after lunch, Theresa Jolly came to visit and with her was Annie Sue, her Posh Spice hair in need of some gel and reworking, her eyes sad and confused. She was wearing old lady clothes and no makeup. Her spark had dimmed.

  “You dying?” she asked, reaching up to feel my dirty hair. “You missed the dance. We didn’t have no dance matter of fact or is it tomorrow?”

  “I am really sorry, Annie Sue. I’ll make it up to you. We’ll have that dance. We’ll have that and more, wait and see.”

  Theresa nodded and walked toward me with cautious steps. She stood at my bedside, her face set with concern.

  “Am I fired?” I asked as she handed me a beautiful flower arrangement stuffed with pink roses and orange Gerber daisies.

  “Never,” Theresa said and hugged me. “You’re actually hired full-time if you want it. Name your hours. You’ve brought new life to everyone in the place. Let me tell you something . . . Kathy, who’s eaten nothing but tuna salad and Ruffles for years, actually ate a turkey sub yesterday with Doritos. I couldn’t believe it. She wanted to come with us but said she didn’t want to cry and upset you. What do you think? About full time?”