The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir

by Ruth Wariner

  A lightning bolt lit up the room and I shrieked. Driving rain began to pelt our tar and gravel roof, and I heard the usual dripping sound in the kitchen. A puddle had already developed on the kitchen floor by the time I put the milk bucket under the hole in the ceiling. I felt cold drops land on my arm, then felt my own tears on my cheeks. I stood there a moment, listening to myself whimper, and then I heard something else—the sound of bare feet in the hall. Micah’s face appeared in the doorway. He stared at me wordlessly, shivering.

  “What are you doing out of bed?” I asked.

  “I-I-I-I…”

  “What is it?”

  “I-I-I’m scared of the dark,” said the little-boy voice, and not for the first time. Nights like this in the past, stormy nights, had sent Micah running into Mom’s room and climbing into her bed. She always swiftly sent him back to his room. Letting a child sleep with you, she said, would spoil him. Still, whenever Mom said no and Micah appealed to me, I defied her. I couldn’t stand to see him scared, couldn’t bear to see the part of me that was in him seeking comfort.

  Thunder roared through the sky again that night and rain dripped from the kitchen ceiling. Micah ran to me, threw his arms around my legs, and almost knocked me down. “P-P-please.”

  “Come on.” I scooped Micah up and carried him into Mom’s bed with me. “I’m scared too.”

  As I pulled the covers up and let Micah settle in next to me, I heard Mom’s voice in my ears: Children need to get used to being in the dark. She’d repeated that countless times throughout my childhood.

  No, I thought, they don’t.

  33

  By the end of the summer, Mom was spending more time with us. I wondered if she and Lane had been fighting or, better yet, contemplating a breakup. Susan, Sally and Cynthia’s mom, had decided to divorce him—despite having given birth to three of his children—although he did not let go of the marriage easily. Mom noted that Lane spent more time fixing up Susan’s house and working on her car in the days after their separation than before, as though he was trying to prove his worth.

  But Susan had had enough. Not only had he abused her daughters, she said he couldn’t support her family, just as he hadn’t been able to support us. I hoped that Mom might follow Susan’s lead. But in early July, Mom announced she was pregnant again—and I realized she was never going to leave Lane.

  Midsummer signaled the return of LeBaron’s social season, which included bridal showers, weddings, and baby showers. It was customary for mothers and daughters to attend these events together, and in spite of our differences Mom and I enjoyed going to celebrate with our friends and family. This festive time was full of family reunions, campouts, and rodeos at ranches on the outskirts of the colony. To my astonishment, Mom made good on her promise to keep Lane at a distance from me, and for a brief period I felt a cloud of darkness clear from my life. I began to relish some of my family duties, such as baking cakes for all the birthdays in our house. I also spent a lot more time with my friends, traveling to dance halls and discothèques in larger towns farther away. We never came home until the first signs of morning light appeared in the sky. Mom was either oblivious to my nocturnal activities or chose not to ask; she and I didn’t ask each other about much of anything anymore.

  July 9 was my father’s birthday, and the church held its annual conferences in commemoration. Firstborners made pilgrimages to the colony from all over the United States. For one weekend, the potholed gravel roads of LeBaron would swarm with new-model American trucks and healthy and happy young men who’d driven down to Chihuahua to court girlfriends and visit their families.

  As our family grew, so did the others in the colony, and by that summer the colony was crawling with teenagers, which meant more weddings and parties. I found myself more excited than I had been in years past, if only because I was finally old enough to be invited to all of the celebratory events. The weekend of the annual church conference, Mom and I walked to the morning church service together, then attended a barbecue lunch at a home nearby. That night, a dance was held back at the church. The black benches had been pushed against the walls, and a norteño band—a drummer, two guitarists, a keyboardist, and an accordionist—set up under the large photo of my father on the wall. As soon as they started playing ranchera music, the whole room began to dance.

  On the periphery, I noticed a young man in a brand-new black cowboy hat and tight Wrangler jeans, his leather cowboy boots freshly shined, his shoulders square, and his back straight. He spun around, almost as if he’d realized he was being watched, and motioned for me to come over. It was my brother Matt; he’d come straight to the dance from San Diego without even calling Maudy’s ahead of time. I couldn’t believe the transformation in him. Though he was only seventeen years old, he had established himself as a hardworking kid at construction sites all over Southern California. By all accounts, he seemed poised to become an American success story. I hurried toward him, but then I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. Matt was standing next to a young woman—and the two of them were holding hands. She wore a tight-fitting red dress and black high heels, a banana comb elegantly sweeping up her hair, and long, thick strands of loose curls fell around her bare shoulders. It was Maria.

  I couldn’t help but stare. Why was she holding Matt’s hand? Was my brother courting my stepsister? Was the world passing me by?

  Before I could go over and ask Matt what was going on, someone grabbed me by the arm. Anthony, one of my half brothers, who was three months younger than me, was my regular dance partner at these types of events. Anthony had been born just a few days before our dad died. His mother was in the hospital when she heard the news that her husband had been murdered. I wanted to talk to Matt and thought about shrugging Anthony off, but I knew that would be rude. Besides, he was a fun, aggressive dancer who loved being on the floor as much as I did.

  Before I could blink, Anthony’s arm was behind my back, my hand was behind his neck, and our free arms were raised straight over our heads. The fast waltz sent us swirling and spinning, knocking into a few annoyed couples and stepping on a multitude of toes. It was like being in your own Tilt-A-Whirl, and just as much fun. When the song ended, I was out of breath and ready for a break. I also needed to adjust my too-tight acid-washed jean skirt.

  I stood there a moment, noticing that Mom was sitting alone, watching something intently. I followed her gaze reluctantly, sure she would be peering at Lane, who was present, but mercifully off-limits to her, as it wasn’t Mom’s night. But she was eyeing Matt and Maria. My jaw dropped open. My brother and stepsister were dancing together. And not just dancing, dancing. I wanted to believe this was something innocent, just a boy having some fun with a girl who sold pine nuts, but the body language said otherwise.

  I was annoyed and jealous. We had all grown up together; why was Maria getting the sort of attention I craved from boys? And why was the boy who was giving her that attention Matt? Could it be that Matt and Maria were attracted to each other? Maria was our stepsister. Why hadn’t I known anything about this before tonight?

  Anthony asked me to dance again, but this time I said no thank you, turned, and slowly made my way toward Mom’s bench.

  “Matt and Maria sure are dancin’ close to each other,” Mom said, leaning in so I could hear her over the music. “I get the feelin’ they like each other.”

  “What do you mean by like?” I asked, not wanting to acknowledge what I myself had seen.

  “I mean, I think he wants to go out with her, like on a date.”

  I shrugged. “Maria hasn’t said anything to me about liking Matt.”

  “Well, he better be careful. Maria has a jealous streak just like her mother. He can’t marry her, Ruthie.” I shook my head as I wondered how Mom had already made such a mental leap. “Can you imagine what she’ll do when he tries to take another wife? Good luck trying to pull the reins in on Maria.”

  I looked at Mom blankly. She put her lips to my ear and cupped h
er hand over them, leaning in close to say, “Lane’s told me that she’s a hellion at home and won’t do anything her parents tell her to. Never, not even after he whips her.”

  Meanwhile, Matt and Maria were oblivious to everyone, including me and Mom. They were still dancing with their arms locked, their heads resting on each other’s shoulder. I just stared in disbelief.

  “Hey, Ruthie. Wanna dance?” Anthony asked again.

  “No thanks, Anthony. I’m not feeling very good.” I got up and made my way through the crowded church, feeling as if I were in a movie of someone else’s life. Maybe it was Matt and Maria’s movie, I thought, as the song ended and they slowly, lazily awoke from their dream, walking hand in hand off the floor.

  Matt nodded at Mom, who was motioning to him from across the room. He had the good sense to leave Maria behind as he strode across the dance floor, the white tile now heavily scuffed with black boot marks.

  I could tell from Mom’s expression that she was ready to leave, but before she spoke, the band struck up a Mexican two-step. Matt grabbed Mom’s hand and pulled her to the dance floor. She turned giddy, placing her hand delicately on her grown son’s shoulder while he put his arm around her midback. Her loose-fitting, fuchsia polyester dress swung back and forth just below her knees as Matt guided her across the floor smoothly, expertly. Mom looked delighted. She missed a step from time to time, not having been raised on Mexican music like her children, but in no time Matt had her on track again.

  My brother’s skill as a dance partner impressed me—obviously, he’d spent many nights on California dance floors. The entire room seemed to be sighing collectively in appreciation. Mom, feeling the attention, became almost ecstatic. The song grew faster, and so did their twirling. The two of them were soaked in sweat, and Matt, his face now the color of Mom’s dress, looked as if he might collapse. But he didn’t stop. He seemed to know what the moment meant to her, that she was for once getting a taste, however brief, of the attention and adoration she’d always longed for. I hadn’t seen that sort of happy expression on her face in years, and it only added to my melancholy. Would I end up like her, I wondered, shackled to a man who appreciated me so little that the only thing that made me feel loved was attention from my adult son?

  The song ended and Mom mopped the sweat from her forehead and said something to Matt, who nodded, pulled his truck keys from his pocket, and handed them to her. He wanted to stay and dance some more with Maria, Mom told me during the drive home. Otherwise, it was a silent trip, which was fine with me. I didn’t want to talk about Matt and Maria’s love affair. How could they have fallen for each other without my knowing? And how come no one seemed interested in me?

  My only prospect so far had been one of the church elders, twenty years my senior, who’d asked Mom’s permission to court me. Mom refused, though not because I didn’t like him or because she wanted to protect me from a relationship with an older polygamist, but because he was my first cousin and she thought that such a marriage wouldn’t be advisable in our family, given our history of producing developmentally disabled children. I felt as if I’d dodged a bullet. I thought about the many LeBaron wives I knew, with their blank, expressionless faces, mindlessly watching after crowds of children. People talked about happiness and love, but I witnessed precious little evidence of it.

  I knew that my life would never be happy if all it amounted to was having several children by a shared husband. I couldn’t understand how love or adoration could be possible in that kind of arrangement, and I desperately wanted those things. But I also knew that it wasn’t enough to want them. You had to know how to get them. Mom couldn’t teach me that because she didn’t know herself. She couldn’t show me how to be happy, only how to barely survive.

  34

  I didn’t think it would be Christmas before I saw Matt again, much less a white Christmas. For the first time in my childhood, the colony’s dormant fields were blanketed in a thin layer of snow—as far as the eye could see—and the peaks of the Blue Mountains were capped in white. Mom put up a fake tree that she’d bought at a yard sale the previous summer, one missing so many limbs it looked like something Charlie Brown might have chosen. Still, we dressed up the dilapidated thing as best we could, with Popsicle sticks and yarn, long ropes of popcorn I strung together with needle and thread, and a few strands of tiny lights that blinked in the living-room window. And of course Mom had picked up a few secondhand re-gifts in El Paso the week before.

  Though it was another lean Christmas, something was different about it, something besides the snow. The anger I’d harbored toward Mom began to decline with the temperature. I still couldn’t understand how she could remain married to a man such as Lane, but I also began to appreciate and admire her ability to create something out of nothing.

  And I worried about her. Just weeks away from delivering her tenth child, the toll of all her previous pregnancies seemed written on her face. She suffered agonizing migraine headaches that would keep her up all night. Some days she stayed in bed until lunchtime and took naps in a feeble attempt to restore her energy. She bore the burden alone, with Lane gone for weeks or even months at a time.

  That fall, I had enrolled in secretarial classes offered by a local school, but as the holidays approached, Mom asked me to withdraw. “All Ruthie really needs to know about life she can learn at home and in church,” she told the schoolmaster. “A young girl doesn’t need more than that to find a good man and raise a family.” If that was the case, the schoolmaster replied, then why did you enroll her in the first place? Mom’s face and reaction looked as if she’d just bit into a lemon. “I can’t take care of my family by myself. I need her help at home,” she said as she picked up her purse and left.

  I didn’t resent Mom’s decision. I was far behind in my schoolwork, having already missed several days because of Mom’s health, and the shorthand and typing classes were all taught in Spanish by an old lady with a cane who perpetually sneered at me. Even before she realized how little I knew of the language, she would shriek at me, “Chapucera!”—cheater—every time I leaned over to ask a classmate what the woman was talking about.

  So I returned home to learn more about the domestic arts. Each morning, after telling Aaron to fire up the barrel heater, I prepared the milk for everyone’s breakfast by skimming the cream off the top and adding it to a container until I’d collected enough for butter, which I made in the blender. Our home was well run, it seemed to me, and no homework was required.

  “Hey, Ruthie, can we go outside and play in the snow?” Micah asked the day before Christmas in his raspy, early-morning voice.

  “You guys need to eat breakfast and get ready for the day first.” I smiled as I cut thick, round slices of bread on an old wooden cutting board. Spreading raw honey over the top, I plopped a slice into each of five plastic bowls and covered them with milk. Micah scraped a chair against the cold cement floor and took a seat, and the others swiftly followed. I turned a ten-quart saucepan over and placed it on one of the chairs for Leah, who was eighteen months old and proving to indeed be just as stubborn as her namesake, Grandpa Leo. She refused to sit in a high chair or do most anything else I asked of her.

  The kids ate quickly and dressed themselves for snow play, all except Leah, of course, whose clothes were in Mom’s bedroom. Mom was still asleep, her belly swollen under a wine-red comforter and her head propped crookedly on pillows up against the stucco wall. We tiptoed in.

  “Morning,” Mom rasped. She had deep, dark circles under her eyes that made her skin look even paler than usual. “Did the kids all get something to eat?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They’re getting dressed for the snow now.” I laid Leah down on the bed, changed her diaper, and wrestled her into a pair of red corduroy pants, a long-sleeved, pink blouse, lace-trimmed socks, and tiny yellow rain boots covered in rubber ducks. As I carried Leah out of the room, I saw a hint of a smile on Mom’s face. Maybe she’s feeling better, I thought.

&n
bsp; Back in the kitchen, Micah and Elena were raring to go, having dressed themselves in gloves, jackets, and scarves. “Oh, gosh. Let me wipe your faces,” I said to the pair, who both had honey from ear to ear and sleep still firmly crusted in their eyes. I ran a rag under water and mopped their freckled faces.

  “Would you … Please, that’s too hard,” Micah said, pulling my hand away.

  In addition to a stutter, Micah had an old soul’s way of speaking. He was formal and articulate without trying to be, and I couldn’t help but laugh when he asked me questions.

  “Could we go outside now, please?”

  I nodded at them both. A smile spread across their half-clean faces, revealing mouthfuls of corn-kernel-shaped teeth. I ran my fingers through their tangled hair in lieu of combing it, and then they darted past me and out the kitchen door, smiling the whole way. I picked up Leah and followed them outside into the fresh, cold air. The sky was a mass of thick, gray clouds.

  The two kids giggled as they crunched happily in the paper-thin layer of snow. With Leah in my arms I watched for a few minutes as Micah explained to Elena how to make a snowball, his voice professorial and authoritative. He then demonstrated by rolling a ball of pebbles and dirt and dried twigs and a few flakes of snow together. Elena seemed impressed, wanted it for herself, and began chasing Micah all over the yard to get it.

  In his search for what little snow remained, Micah made his way to the thick piles that rested near one of the fences on the edge of the yard. “Micah, please stay away from the fence,” I warned. Those fences had always been a mystery to me. Originally just a way to keep animals in or out, Lane had had the idea to use them to ferry electricity from one part of his farm to another. So, for several years, miles of black rubber tubes encasing electrical wiring ran along the fences. It was typical Lane: ugly but functional. Recently, Lane had decided to bury the tubes beneath the fences, but he hadn’t done it for appearance’ sake.