by MC Webb
“What ya up to today, kiddo?” he asked.
He returned to his sweeping, as I got a coke from the fridge.
“Nothing. Nana’s visiting Mrs. Morris. Need me to do anything?” I asked, hopping up on the counter.
Before he could answer, a man came in, followed by a younger version of himself. Taking his hat off, the older man nodded in my direction. I hopped off the counter and went to stand behind it. Strangers made me immediately wary. I felt I was always anticipating someone tying me up at any moment.
“Mr. Mitchell. It’s been a long time,” the man said, in an accent I couldn’t place.
He stuck out a big hand to shake in welcome. He was a dark man, maybe Spanish or Italian. He had jet-black hair, and big, broad shoulders. His eyes were so dark they looked black. I was struck by his resemblance to Brutus from Popeye.
“Maurice Duchete! How ya been?” Papaw said, pumping the man’s hand in return. “What’s it been? Ten years?”
The man smiled, creasing his brows together. “Yes, sir. I guess it has,” said Maurice.
The younger version of Maurice was standing in the big man’s shadow. He eyed me slyly, and I felt heat rise to my face. I looked at him and then quickly looked away, aware I was blushing.
“This is my boy, Jean-Paul,” Maurice said proudly.
Jean-Paul shook Papaw’s hand politely. “How do you do, sir?”
Just as politely, Papaw said, “Nice to meet you, son.”
Maurice then inquired about my dad. My heart clenched at this question. Papaw only brought up my dad when he was in certain moods, and this was not one of those moods. He was unreadable, but I know the toll my dad’s death had taken on him—his only child, dead and buried in our family cemetery, up in the hills.
Papaw had a sad smile for the man. “Nate passed not long ago.” He paused. “Car wreck,” he finished, in explanation.
The man, Maurice, looked sad.
“Nathaniel, I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said sincerely.
If we had a dollar for every time I’d heard that said, we’d never have to work again. But I believed this man was sincere. Maurice turned his gaze to me, and Papaw followed it. For a moment, I thought he had forgotten I was there.
“Oh, yes!” he said proudly. “This beautiful young lady is my granddaughter. This was Nate’s greatest gift to me during his too-short life.”
I felt proud for a second. Papaw loved me. Me? But I’m dirty and diseased, I reminded myself. Now I had the nasty cuts to prove it. Unseen by the world, I made sure I kept the fresh cuts open, to remind me that bleeding meant being alive, because the other feelings would certainly kill me.
The men talked about reservations and tree stands for the coming hunting season. I was bored with the conversation, so I said my nice-to-meet-yous and good-byes. The younger man, Jean-Paul, never took his eyes from me. I figured he could see I was dirty. I left before his dad noticed it too.
On my walk back home, a car pulled up beside me. It was a miserably hot August day, and school would be starting back up in no time. Lana rolled the window down and smiled her best Hollywood smile.
“Hop in,” she said, with her wicked grin.
“Where we going?”
“Who cares? Get you country ass in the car before I melt.” She waved long fingers back and forth to fan herself.
I ran to the other side, and we set off to I-didn’t-care-where.
We ended up at the river, a spot we would swim and rope jump into deep water. Handing me a swimsuit, Lana got out of the car. Unashamed, she immediately began to undress. Her body was perfect, and there were no ugly scars or cut-marks. She was not dirty as I was. I got out of the car feeling panicky and ashamed.
“I’ll just swim in this.”
I had on a shirt with three-quarter sleeves, and jean shorts I had cut off myself. My cuts were on the insides of my upper arms, and a few on my stomach.
“Oh, no, you won’t! You need some sun. You’re as pale as a vampire, missy.” Lana reached for the button on my shorts.
Nothing was weird or uncomfortable to Lana. She would often curl up against me like a cat, when we sat on the couch to watch TV. Although I had problems with physical contact, I was trying to overcome them. I had no choice with Lana, and I felt oddly safe with her. Nothing Lana did ever made me uncomfortable.
Except for this particular time. I jerked away from her. She was my best friend, and we had been spending a lot of time together since the baby was born, but I had never shared anything with her that I was ashamed of. Nothing about my mother, nothing about Daniel.
I thought about it daily. I’d had a mother who could have given me to Nana, who continuously told me I was loved and wanted. No, my mother sold me. For what I don’t know, but it destroyed who I was supposed to be.
“Stop!” I said, mad now, as Lana kept trying to get my clothes from me.
After noticing I was not playing, she stopped. Taking off the oversized sunglasses she sported, like the movie star she was going to be, she searched my face. I refused to meet her eyes.
“What is it, Piper?” Concern etched her gorgeous almond dark eyes. “Tell me,” she demanded.
I opened the car door. “Just take me home.”
Lana put her arm out, blocking me from getting in. “Livia Piper, I will hog-tie you until you tell me what is wrong.” I could hear in her voice that she meant it.
I began to cry for no reason. I was not hurt, but ashamed. I would give anything to be like Lana, and let Matthew kiss me without freaking out. I was a mess. I had cuts all over me, because I was a freak. I’d never get the smell of stale tobacco and Daniel’s sweat out of my nose. I would never get clean, no matter how hard I scrubbed my skin. I couldn’t bleach the images out of my mind, out of my heart.
Lana hugged me and rubbed my back. After I got control of myself a little, she pulled away from me and got something from under the front seat of her grandma’s beat-up old K-car. Without speaking, she led me to the cliff, where we sat Indian-style. I watched quietly as she placed something in paper and rolled it tight, licking it with her tongue and then putting the whole thing in her mouth to wet it. Pulling it from her lips, she grinned at me.
“This will make you feel much better, and then we’re going to talk.”
I didn’t protest. I watched as she lit up the joint. It made my mouth water, in spite of the smell of skunk. Then I smoked my first joint with Lana. There was no denying it, I felt much better. The weightless sensation carried me away almost instantly. My mind unraveled and my shoulders relaxed for the first time since being home.
We talked and talked. I told her little bits, and finally broke down and told her about my cutting myself. I felt freer with each word that left my lips. She looked at me, wanting to see what I had done to myself. I took my shirt off, and showed her the mutilation of my arms. Lana never judged. Never seemed disgusted. She bent her head and kissed my self-inflicted wounds.
Lana’s jet-black hair shone like glass in the sunlight. I was floating on a cloud. I allowed Lana to kiss me and to hold me. I understood we were both kindred spirits, broken in many different ways yet all were relatable. Lana explained to me how she believed we did what we needed to survive. If cutting made me feel better, then she understood.
“My gran feeds herself all day and all night. The only time she’s not eating is when she’s sleeping. She does this instead of this,” she said, indicating the joint between her two perfectly manicured fingers. “For some unknown reason she believes hers isn’t a sin, but mine is. We both do what we do,” she said with a shrug.
I’d never thought of things that way, but Lana was absolutely right. We talked about heavy things, then funny things. Being high was the first time I had unraveled my inner wrappings, and allowed myself to be in the present. I laughed till my jaws hurt.
We skinny-dipped and lay on the rocks, unashamed by our nakedness. We finally dressed, and began making our way back as the sun set. I giggled all the way hom
e. I hung my head out of the window, letting my long, wild hair fly through the wind.
I was still smiling stupidly when she dropped me off at home. Nana was waiting on me at the door hands firmly placed on her hips. She chewed me up and down. Then, when Lana had enough time to get home, she called her and chewed her out as well. I knew she was just nervous, and worried all the time. I wished there was something I could do to take the worry from her.
As I went to the kitchen to get dinner, I wondered if I could get Nana to smoke some weed with me. Then she wouldn’t worry so much. I laughed out loud at my thought, and Nana shot me a disgusted look.
Nana thought we’d been drinking.
“All the girls to run around with, and you run with that one,” Nana said to me.
I think the irritation at me was gone, and now she was going to coach me. Forever coaching me. I acted as normal as possible, but later over dinner, I told her we swam and giggled by ourselves. No drinking, which wasn’t a lie.
“Nothing bad,” I said, and honestly believed it.
After I’d gone to bed, I heard Papaw saying, “Gracie, you got to let the girl live a little. We both know she’s lucky to be alive.”
Nana never brought it up again, but she sternly told me the next day I was to always leave a note to say where I was going and who I was with, and that I shouldn’t go drinking. Then she proceeded to cover my sunburned nose with aloe from the plants she grew in her window boxes. She swore the herbs she grew cured everything. Oh, how I wished that were true. I’d bathe in them, if they would cure me.
The funny thing was, the more I was with Lana, the safer I felt. Mostly, I felt safer with myself. I was getting comfortable with Matthew now, and as we waited for Josh to finish football practice the following October, I let him hold me and kiss me. I was now a sophomore, and Matthew was a senior, making plans for college. I was so excited for him, but when he talked to me about Duke, I wept inside.
I didn’t want him to leave me. I wanted him to stay with me forever. I never said this out loud, but it’s how I felt. We were unofficially attached to each other. He walked me to classes, picked me up, and drove me home each day.
We went to the movies on weekends with Lana and Josh, who shamelessly made out, to the point that Matthew and I would not sit with them any longer. The more I prayed time would go slower, the faster it went by. It was December before we knew it.
chapter eleven
Rifle season was about to begin. I saw Maurice and his son, Jean-Paul, several times. I saw them when they came from the south to camp for the week in one of the hunting cabins. Jean-Paul would stare holes through me. I didn’t know what to make of him. I was guessing he was around twenty years old. His skin was not as dark as his father’s, but his eyes were the same shade of near black.
He was a very attractive man, and from the little he said, he seemed very intelligent. He was kind to me, a gentleman from another place and time. When father and son would join us for dinner, he would bow slightly when I entered the room, or stood until Nana and I had taken our seats at the table. I began to be suspicious of the increasing visits, after I overheard Maurice and Papaw talking one night on the porch, their cigar smoke so thick you could cut it with a knife.
“Forgive my curious nature, Nathaniel, but your granddaughter? How old is she?”
Papaw chuckled, “Too young, Maurice.”
They sipped brandy and rocked in their rocking chairs.
“Sixteen? Seventeen?” Maurice asked.
Papaw chuckled again.
“Piper is not yet sixteen and she might as well be twelve.”
A heavy silence took my Papaw, and I knew he was thinking of me being twelve. I would do anything to relieve him of the burden of that knowledge.
“I only ask, because my Jean-Paul seems mighty taken with her.”
Papaw snorted.
“No offense to you or Jean-Paul, but I’m hoping Piper stays with me till my dying day. She is more joy than anything I’ve ever known.”
I placed a hand over my mouth to silence my cry. He was the joy in my life, and I, a dirty, spoiled girl, didn’t deserve the love he and Nana gave me so freely.
A poke to my ribs made me jump.
“What are you doing?” Nathan whispered.
He was dressed in his too-short pajamas, and his brown hair messy, the worse for wear. I put my finger to my lips, grabbed his arm, and led him out of the room.
“Nosy,” he teased me, when we got to the living room.
I stuck my tongue out at him.
“Takes one to know one.”
We crawled under the Christmas tree, and lay looking up into the lit branches. That had been something we did with my dad. He would have us lie on our backs, and tell us Santa stories. I missed him every day.
Nathan and I lay in silence, watching the lights, lost in their dance. My brother’s visits were further apart than they used to be. Nathan had been looking tired and worn out the last few ties he came home. I worried about him constantly. The late nights and partying were catching up to him.
My big brother would be twenty-two in two weeks, but had already begun to show signs of aging. I knew he drank heavy at times. Though I was aware of the signs, he didn’t share with me the extent of his drug use. I smoked weed with Lana, but that was our secret. Nathan would probably throw a fit if he knew, so I chose not to share this with him.
The grandfather clock ticked hypnotically.
“Piper?” Nathan said, breaking the trance.
He said my name in a voice laced with sadness.
“Hmmm?” I said, still dazed by the lights.
Nathan hesitated, and I begin to dread whatever he was cooking up.
“You ever think of her? Think of her out in a cornfield alone?”
I had to think about what he was saying before I replied. The truth was, Nathan had never known just how cruel our mother could be. She saved the worst for me. Nathan had the Mitchell name, but it was a little known fact that he would never know his real father.
The mother we shared was cruel to me even before my father died. I know that now. I didn’t see it before, but she found pleasure in my discomfort. She was jealous of me. I was neglected and starved for the affection I never got from her, but Nathan never knew this, because he received her love, in the warped and twisted way she could love.
“No,” I finally said flatly, “I try not to ever think of her.”
I felt him shift, probably trying to find the right words to say.
“She held me down while a man raped me, Nathan. She hated me from the day I was born. No. She’s exactly where she should be, and I’m lucky to not be with her.” I said this in my dead voice, because admitting these things was channeling the dead inside me.
Nathan took a deep breath and didn’t say anything else. He held my hand a while, then went back to bed.
It was hard to imagine such evil in our lives, but it had been there all along. My dad married my mom even though he knew she was pregnant by someone else. He thought she just hadn’t been loved enough, and he could show her what love really was. He could fix what was broken in her.
He couldn’t though, and I think at times my mother knew that if she didn’t act right, he would cut her off, and she’d be just another trashy Akins girl. Daddy gave Nathan his name simply because no matter what, Nathan was his son, and Nana and Papaw accepted this with open hearts and minds. Nathan has never been treated any different.
…
Over the Christmas break from school, Jean-Paul came around often. Nana teased me about him, but as nice and beautiful as he was, I was deeply in love with Matthew. Nathan left right after his birthday, gone again to chase his dream of being a musician, playing in what Nana called “honky-tonks.” She said this word like it tasted bad.
My sixteenth birthday was coming up fast. Nana wanted to celebrate with a sweet sixteen party, decorating the house in, of course, Valentine pink and red. I thought I would die of embarrassment, but stay
ed quiet. Nobody could throw a party like Nana. The food alone drew people from all over.
“I am going to say that monetary gifts will go towards your college education, or whatever you choose,” she said about the invitations. I knew deep down, she wanted me to be a midwife.
“Whatever you think, Nana,” I said with my back to her.
I was at this point smoking pot nightly, sometimes more than that. I kept my eyes averted, for fear Nana would catch on.
When I smoked, I had way fewer nightmares, so Lana kept me in stock. My allowance kept her in stock. We were two peas in a pod. My bedroom window was directly over the porch roof, so I would sit out there and smoke Lana’s finest weed. I didn’t cut myself as often when I was high either. I stayed calm, and had worked my way up to kissing Matthew for more than a few seconds.
We worked our way up to make-out sessions that left me breathing heavy, and Matthew red in the face. Now waiting on Josh after school consisted of petting and long kissing sessions. Our body heat kept the truck windows fogged up. If Nana or Papaw knew of either the weed or Matthew, they never brought it up.
I think Nana was happy while I was happy, and learned to only intervene if I showed signs of trouble. My grades were good. I was delivering babies and helped with the land and the shop. I even visited shut-ins with Nana. I also made house calls with Papaw when I could. I worked hard and practiced good manners. That was really all that was expected of me.
I got sixteen pink roses from Nathan. Nana placed them in the center of the “Grand room,” as she called it. The Grand room was huge, and was big enough so guests could have room to dance to the grand piano. Half the room was now home to a huge U-shaped sofa, centered in front of the giant fireplace, which was big enough to stand up in. It really was the perfect gathering place.
“Now all the party guests can see what a wonderful brother you have,” Nana told me, as she fiddled with the roses.
