The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir

by Ruth Wariner

  “Do you want to spend the night at my house tonight, Ruthie?” she asked after we exchanged greetings.

  “Don’t you have school in the morning?”

  “My mom said you might be able to spend the day with me at school, if the teacher says you can. We could go to school together in the morning and ask her.”

  “But what if she says no?”

  Sally went to Primaria Miguel Hidalgo, the same school across the highway where I had started the first grade a few years earlier. Going back there for a day sounded like fun, but if the teacher said no, I would have to walk back home by myself.

  “Sometimes my teacher lets us bring our friends even if they don’t go to our school—but just for one day,” Sally reassured me.

  “Well, sure. But I have to finish my chores and ask my mom when she comes home from church.”

  “Do you want me to help you?”

  I thought about the smelly diapers, and the idea of washing them in front of her embarrassed me. I said no thank you and that I would walk to her house if Mom said yes.

  As soon as Sally walked off our property, I finished washing out the diapers as quickly as I could and hung them out to dry with wooden clothespins on the clothesline beside our house. I knew I’d never be able to go if my chores weren’t done. I held the empty diaper bucket with both hands when I heard Mom’s Microbus sputtering up the road and ran toward the driveway as the bus came into view, turned the corner, and splashed through the wide, shallow section of the ditch. I ran along Mom’s side of the van and pleaded my request before it sputtered to a complete stop just outside the kitchen door. She didn’t hesitate to say yes. Mom had returned alone, as that night would be another wife’s turn to host Lane. For a moment, I froze, worrying that Lane would be at Susan’s. Luckily he wasn’t.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT I shared a bed with Sally and Cynthia, one of Sally’s sisters. Their house was close to the highway, and the next morning we all walked the short distance to school together. Before class started, Brenda and Natalia greeted us in the schoolyard. I felt as comfortable and familiar with them as I had back in first grade, and the happy feeling of being at home lasted all day long. I was elated to find that recess still meant hopscotch, and our playing continued where we’d left off years before.

  I didn’t want the fun to end, so Sally and I decided to play at her house after school. We chatted happily about Barbies on the way there, but then discovered that no one was home. Not thinking anything of it, we went on to my house. When we were about halfway there, I heard the screen door swing open at Sally’s grandmother’s house. Grandma Rhoda, as she was known, waved and asked us to stop by. Her disposition was always as sweet as the homemade baked goods and candy she offered whenever she saw us, as warm and inviting as the fresh-baked bread in her kitchen.

  But that day, she had a serious, sad, weary look on her face, and it stopped me in my tracks. She was carrying a large mason jar of homemade vegetable soup, which she handed to me. “Ruthie, give this to your mother and tell her to let me know if there’s anything else I can do for her.”

  The jar felt warm against my hands, and I eyed the soup hungrily, wishing Grandma Rhoda had included some of her homemade cinnamon rolls.

  “How’s your mom doing?”

  “She’s fine.”

  Grandma Rhoda’s eyes dimmed and her mouth fell open.

  “Is my mom sick?” I asked, not understanding the melancholy mood.

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?”.

  “I’m so sorry to be the one to have to tell you this.” Grandma Rhoda embraced me suddenly, stroking my hair. Reluctantly I rested my head against her belly.

  “Meri died this morning.”

  My body grew stiff. I didn’t believe it and thought that maybe someone had made a mistake, that Meri might just be acting like her usual unresponsive self. I had worried my whole life that Mom would be taken away from me, but I never for a second suspected that Meri would be—in spite of her disabilities. Meri was too young. I thought that she would continue to grow and grow, and that we’d all respond accordingly, pushing her around in bigger and bigger strollers and feeding her through bigger and bigger tubes.

  When we arrived at my front door, I stood there for a moment, paralyzed by the knot of guilt that had formed in my stomach. Sally looked at me with a worried expression. I had complained too many times about how hard it was to help take care of her and how much I hated washing out her diapers and feeding her through a tube. Please, God, let Meri somehow not be dead and let this all be a big mistake, I prayed silently. I promise I won’t ever complain about taking care of her again.

  The doorknob whined in my hands as I turned it. I saw Matt sitting in the rocking chair in the living room, his head down, his body shaking as he cried. He looked up at me, his swollen, red eyes turning their attention to the other side of the room. There, on the couch, lay Meri’s body, her head propped up on a pillow just as it always was during feeding time.

  She wore a white cotton dress with ruffles around her neck, shoulders, and knees, white tights, and white Mary Janes with silver buckles. I’d never seen those clothes before and couldn’t imagine where Mom had gotten them. I took one step toward the couch, then heard footsteps entering from the kitchen. Mom’s hair was matted on one side, as if she’d just woken up. I looked in her eyes and felt them bore into mine. Then, without a word, she lunged for me and wrapped her arms around me so tightly it hurt. My face rested in her trembling bosom.

  “We lost our little girl,” she said quietly. Mom’s body felt weak, and as she held me tighter, I realized that Mom was no longer holding me to console me, but that she needed me to comfort her.

  When I finally got close enough to see Meri’s face, I noticed that her skin had turned purple and her lips a shade of light blue. Still not sure she was dead, I leaned in close to see if she was breathing, and I noticed that her right eye was slightly open, a heartbreaking sight. But I didn’t cry. Instead, I calmly lifted my index finger to her face, brushed her eyelashes with it, and gently pulled the eyelid closed. I let go, and the lid popped open again.

  I heard the sound of Lane’s pickup, and then its door slamming shut. “Matt, come help me,” he called out, and after another minute the two of them carried a tiny, white coffin inside, Lane’s face heavy and expressionless. He and Matt placed the small box on the living-room carpet and opened it, revealing a white satin interior with ruffles. I stepped away from my sister’s body so they could lift her from the couch and place her inside. Meri’s head rested in death as it had in life, on a pillow, and they folded her arms across her chest.

  Mom broke out in heaving sobs as Matt and Lane closed the casket and tamped down its wooden lid. Meri’s coffin was placed in the back of Lane’s pickup, so it could be transported to the graveyard in a neighboring town. We couldn’t afford to have Meri embalmed, so we needed to bury her that night.

  A line of cars followed our Microbus, their headlights helping light our path down the dark, dusty roads to the graveyard. The moon was full, and its light shone on white tombstones of every size, many covered in bundles of faded plastic and fabric flowers. Wreaths hung from wooden and stone crosses with small, faded ceramic statues of Jesus wearing his thorny crown, the blood dripping down his face. Tumbleweeds blew across the gravel in the light, cool breeze.

  When we arrived, Meri’s coffin had already been set next to the grave that Matt and two of my stepbrothers had dug, its lid now removed so that mourners could see Meri in her white satin bed, her eye still open. Doors slammed as more and more cars pulled up, and soon dozens of people—some from Lane’s family whom I hardly knew—had created a circle around Meri. No one from Mom’s extended family could come; there wasn’t time for them to travel from the States.

  Someone said a blessing, and then mourners were invited to speak on Meri’s and the family’s behalf while we all stood in a circle around my sister. Linda, one of my Mom’s friend
s, stepped forward to give a long eulogy. She told the crowd that God had sent Meri to our family as a gift to teach us unconditional love and generosity, even as we struggled to take care of the little girl who, in her few short years on earth, never learned to take care of herself.

  Much more followed, but I heard nothing further. That one word—love—opened up something in me. Suddenly, and for the first time that day, I began to cry, and then I began to sob. The circle of faces turned to watch me; I buried my face in Mom’s pant leg, continued wailing, and felt her hand gently pat the top of my head. I had loved my sister, I told myself. Even though I had resented the heavy burden of taking care of her, I’d loved her. The secret anger I’d bore about it all suddenly had nothing to attach itself to. Meri was gone.

  The graveside service didn’t last long, and when it was over, a long line of well-meaning people formed beside me. They hugged me and told me how sorry they were. Over their shoulders I saw Matt and my stepbrothers shoveling dirt, heard the sound of it hitting Meri’s coffin as they slowly covered it. Clouds of dust rose out of the hole and floated away in the moonlight.

  25

  Just two days after Meri’s funeral, we returned to El Paso. The trip was quiet and uneventful. Wispy, pewter rain clouds hung heavily above us and magnified my sense of loss. I rolled around in the back of the van, uncomfortable with having so much of the space there to myself. I fought the urge to reach into the diaper bag for Meri’s plastic feeding tube even though I knew she wasn’t there. Taking care of her wouldn’t be my job anymore. Being unoccupied left me feeling disoriented and uncertain, as if my place and purpose in the family had shifted. I didn’t know how I belonged anymore. Only after her death did I realize how strong the bond between my sister and me had been.

  Although I continued to grieve for Meri for a long time after we got back to El Paso, my brothers seemed to settle back into life as it had always been. Throughout the spring, Matt teased and wrestled with Luke as much as he always had. Luke continued to wander off farther and farther from the trailer park when no one was watching him, and on a few occasions the police found him and brought him home. Meanwhile, Aaron became even pickier about what he would and wouldn’t wear and argued with Mom over his outfits almost every morning before school. Lane rarely came to visit us in El Paso anymore. Mom said that he was having a yearlong honeymoon with his new wife, Marjory. She didn’t have a bunch of little kids crying at home, Mom said, and she offered him a break from his family responsibilities. I was happiest when Lane wasn’t around. He still visited my bedside when he had the chance, and I still hadn’t told Mom. She seemed so tired and unhappy and spent a lot of time in bed with migraines. Then, at the beginning of the summer, Mom brought home a new baby.

  She’d chosen to have another natural childbirth, so Mom and Lane went back to LeBaron the last week of June, returning with a little girl in the first week of July. They chose a Spanish name, Elena. I found the name kind of funny for a little platinum-blond doll of a child with big, almond-shaped eyes and a pointy chin. She was instantly adored by all of us, in part because, like Micah, she was a normal baby. Elena and I had little bonding time in the beginning. When a new baby entered our home, protocol dictated that the baby who no longer needed to be nursed and burped was handed off to me. So, Micah became my new responsibility, and thus began my love affair with my youngest brother.

  Micah was a happy, curious toddler with a perpetual smile and a habit of using short words and phrases incorrectly, which made everyone laugh. He followed Aaron all over the single-wide with the rubber nipple from his blue bottle latched between his teeth, wanting to do everything his big brother did.

  The woman from Social Services who had paid that first surprise visit was still checking in on us. She always wore slacks or a skirt and a nicely matching blouse, with perfectly placed makeup and clean-smelling perfume. She would ask my brothers and me how we were doing, but always with kind eyes and a gentle manner. I no longer saw her as the Wicked Witch. Instead, she came to seem personable and comforting—to all of us, except Mom, who grew more nervous and cagey with each visit. I was surprised to see Mom suddenly struggle with her performance, knowing she used to be able to lie with a perfectly straight face. I didn’t know what to think of the change in her. She answered the caseworker’s questions like a guilty defendant at a trial, constantly adjusting her glasses and chewing her fingernails.

  The first time the caseworker appeared after Meri’s death, I was afraid Mom might have a nervous breakdown. She talked louder and faster than ever before and tripped over her words while attempting to explain that she’d buried Meri in Mexico, that we couldn’t afford a funeral in the States or the autopsy that would have been required. I had a hard time understanding why Mom stumbled as she told the woman these things, all of which were true. With a shaky hand, Mom produced the death certificate, all of it in Spanish, and explained that she didn’t know why Meri died, just as the doctors had never known the cause of Meri’s illness.

  The caseworker showed up again not long after Elena was born, on a weekday late in the afternoon when the sun burned through the windows and made the trailer feel like a sauna. The fans blowing in every room hardly made a difference. The woman admired the new baby for a few moments and then asked who and where the father was. Mom appeared genuinely shocked, as if she’d never expected that question. Then she looked down and stared angrily at the carpet as if she’d just noticed a stain and couldn’t wait to discover which of her children had spilled something.

  “I’m not sure,” Mom said quietly after a moment. “I’ve been seeing a few men.”

  My body became rigid with discomfort at the awkward line of questioning, not to mention the thought that the pristine caseworker now had even less respect for Mom than the little she’d had before. Suddenly I feared that the woman would turn her attention to me, demand to know who the fathers of Mom’s babies were, and discover I was an even worse liar than Mom. But the woman surprised me, surprised all of us.

  “Well, Kathy, I don’t think we have any reason to keep up with our visits. Your children seem safe in your care,” she said, sounding not entirely convinced, “and you haven’t given me any reason to believe otherwise.”

  Without another word, she pulled a stapled packet of paperwork from her briefcase, clicked her pen open, and scratched a few things on the first page.

  When she looked up again, the caseworker considered Mom’s expression for a moment. Mom’s mouth had dropped open, and she’d been left speechless by the new development. The woman offered Mom a few things to sign, then rose and began making her way to the door.

  “Good luck,” the caseworker said. She scanned Mom’s face one more time, then looked at me and smiled sadly. In a moment she was gone.

  “Ruthie, I’ll never let myself get into that kind of trouble again.” Mom jumped from her seat as soon as the woman pulled out of the driveway. The worry vanished from her face, immediately replaced by a gaiety that seemed to promise nothing but better days ahead. Soon, she opened the freezer and pulled out a carton of pecan-praline ice cream, one of her favorite treats, scooping it out with a tablespoon into pastel-colored cones.

  That same week, Mom neatly tore a check from a checkbook, placed it in an envelope, licked the envelope shut, closed her eyes, and sighed deeply. She’d finally paid back her parents for loaning her and Lane the money to buy the trailer. Mom beamed for days, and we all basked in the light of her warm glow.

  Being off probation emboldened Mom. She demonstrated a new confidence, which had its downsides, as I learned a few weeks later. “We’re moving back to LeBaron, this time for good!” she announced. “We don’t need doctors for Meri anymore, do we?” She said this as if it were a wholly positive development. “The government’s not gonna control me. I don’t want to be livin’ in Babylon when it collapses.” She shook her head. “And it’ll be good for you kids to be near your dad. Lane can make us some money renting out this trailer”—she clearly loved
her plan—“and I can still get Social Security for Luke.”

  Mom’s enthusiasm was powerful. It swiftly carried us back to our adobe house in Mexico, where her merriment continued.

  Right after we moved back, Lane showed up unexpectedly. “Well, hello there,” Mom said, her eyes shining when she heard the scrape of the kitchen door that always announced Lane’s arrival, the same scrape that sent me fleeing the kitchen.

  From down the hall I heard him say, “I need some help takin’ Mexican workmen into the States.” The tone of his deep voice didn’t match Mom’s lighthearted greeting. “Some people I know need some workers to help on construction sites in New Mexico.”

  “We just moved back here,” Mom said, her merriment gone.

  “Well, I know, but you and the kids can stay with me in Albuquerque, and the kids can work too. Susan and Alejandra are already there with their kids. Ever’body’s workin’ to help the family.”

  We’d been in LeBaron for less than a week and would be back in Babylon before the month was out.

  26

  For Lane, taking Mexicans to the States meant ripping out the built-in seating areas in the camper and placing boards over the hole, creating a small cavity underneath. Mom’s assignment was to somehow construct a comfortable bed for her children to lie over the boards. We would cross the border at night, when my siblings and I were asleep, and with three Mexicans hidden beneath us.

  We planned to pick up our stowaways in Casas, and my first thought when I saw them was that they’d never fit in Lane’s hidden compartment. Two were tall and lanky, but a third was stout with a large belly. They were standing against an adobe wall when our headlights first illuminated them. They squinted in our direction, waved, and took last drags from their cigarettes. Lane told them they could sit in the back till we reached the border. He and Mom were squished together in the front cab with Elena and Micah. Matt, Luke, Aaron, and I lay in the top bed over the cab.