Hot Fudge Sundae Blues

by Bev Marshall

  “I asked you a question, Layla Jay. Did he touch you?” Wallace dropped my arms and ran his hands down the front of my dress over my breasts, my stomach, pausing above my thighs. I was trembling, unable to run, unable to speak. I was so hot I could have been standing in ten-foot flames, and I looked up at the pebbled ceiling expecting it to melt and descend down on me like white lava. “Please God, help me,” I prayed.

  Maybe I prayed a long time. Maybe I spoke aloud. Maybe God heard me and answered my prayer because, when I opened my eyes, Wallace was backing across the room away from me until the back of his legs hit the coffee table.

  I told my legs to run away. Get me to my room behind a locked door. I could still feel his hands on my body though, holding me in place, nailing me to the floor. I watched his naked chest heaving out and in, out and in. He dropped his head. His voice was just above a whisper. “Okay, your stomach’s still flat.You didn’t let him fuck you. Not this time anyway.” He reached behind him, lifted his glass from the table and drained it. He tossed the glass onto the couch. “You’re not to go out with that boy again.You hear? Fourteen is too young to date.”

  I didn’t want to cry in front of him, but I knew I couldn’t keep the tears at bay much longer. I longed for Mama, for Grandma. I pictured Papaw with his shotgun pointed between Wallace’s red-veined eyes. “Can I go now?”

  “Yeah, go.” I turned sideways, but his voice stopped me.“Wait! Layla Jay, you’re not to tell your mother about this. She’ll think you asked for it, that you like the touch of a man. I could see that about you the first day I laid eyes on you.” A sort of half-laugh preceded the shake of his head. “You’re no different from any of them. Even those little girls who came to your party couldn’t take their eyes off me. Frieda knows how it is with me and women.”

  “What ... I ... I ...” Before I could think what to say, his face tightened into a frightening mask, his lips drew into his mouth, his eyes glinted like two hard silver dimes; he clenched his fists. “I won’t tell,” I said.

  He didn’t speak again, but when he waved his arm in dismissal and lurched across the room to the hi-fi set, I ran for the safety of my room. I slammed the door, locked it, and then fell face forward on my bed.That night I slept in the dress, afraid to see my body, afraid that somehow the marks of his hands would be visible on my skin. Just before I drifted off to sleep, I heard Wallace singing the chorus of “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”

  Mama had to press the dress before she returned it on Monday morning. I hated it now, was happy I’d never have to see it again. I wanted no reminders of my first date. When I threw my corsage in the garbage, Mama fished it out. “Don’t you want to save this, maybe pin it on your bulletin board?” She held the brown-edged flowers out to me, her brows knitted together like they did when she was trying to figure our budget for the month.

  I shook my head. “I don’t like Jehu anymore. He’s a dope,” I said.

  Mama knew there was more than I was telling. When she dropped the corsage on the table and crossed her arms over her chest, I saw the long white scar shaped like a lightning bolt on her forearm and knew she would protect me if she could. The scar was proof of that. She had gotten it back when I was in first grade. Santa had left Carolyn underneath our Christmas tree that year. She had a vinyl head, legs, and arms; a light pink cloth body; and her painted face was fixed in a permanently sad expression. Papaw had laughed and said she looked like I did when I was about to cry, and although I knew he was right, I loved the way she seemed to need me and had taken to carrying her with me everywhere, even going so far as to sneak her into my book satchel when I returned to school that January. But on this day, the day I was remembering now, I had left Carolyn lying on the grass beside the front walk while I went inside to get a Popsicle I intended to pretend to share with her. Before I returned I heard a dog’s furious barking and then a growl. I ran to the door and through the screen saw a black-and-brown German shepherd snatching Carolyn up into his wide mouth. As I watched her swinging from the dog’s teeth, I imagined her screams of terror and pain and I began to scream, too. In an instant Mama was beside me, grabbing my shoulders. “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” I pointed to the yard where the shepherd was continually dropping Carolyn and then attacking her again, ripping her soft stomach over and over as he ran back and forth across the grass.

  I was crying now, and Mama looked into my face for only a second before she flew out the door. I followed her and stood watching on the porch as she chased the dog, yelling for it to let go of my baby doll.The dog paid her no mind and kept on shaking Carolyn until Mama lunged for her. Then I heard the growls that sent chills over me. I yelled for Mama to run, but she stood her ground even as the dog sank his teeth into her forearm after she pulled Carolyn from its mouth. Mama jerked sideways with a scream, but she held on to the doll as she kicked the dog until it yelped and finally ran away.

  The German shepherd had bitten Mama more than once during that fight and she’d required nearly as many stitches as Grandma had sewn into Carolyn’s torn body. Since we never found that hateful dog, Mama also had to endure a long series of painful rabies shots. I had overheard Papaw calling her a damn fool for wrestling a big dog like that over a doll. And I never forgot what Mama said then. “Pop, that isn’t a doll. It’s Layla Jay’s baby. She loves it just like I love her, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my baby. Every stitch on my arm is just a mark of my love.”

  Now, as I silently stared at the marks of her love on her arm, she shot me her “I’m going to find out what I want to know” look. She leaned closer to me. “What makes you call Jehu a dope all of a sudden? Did something happen that night that you need to talk about?”

  “That night, that night,” the words echoed inside my head. I could nearly feel Wallace’s hands on me, hear his words, feel the violence that I knew lay inside him, and I longed to tell her the truth. But Wallace wasn’t a German shepherd, and I wasn’t a little girl anymore. It was best to let her think my secret had to do with Jehu. “Nothing happened,” I said. “I just changed my mind about him is all.”

  I SPENT THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS with Grandma and Papaw because Wallace and Mama left for Rockville, Alabama, to attend the Christian Holiday Season Retreat. It was good to be back in my old room even though the single bed Papaw had moved in to replace my old one was narrow and the mattress was lumpy. I ate everything Grandma cooked. We made divinity and fudge and pecan pralines and fruitcake and red velvet cake and pinwheel cookies that melted in my mouth. By the end of the second week of my visit, I had gained eight pounds and budded out into an almost B cup.

  Mama had pitched a hissy fit about spending the party season with what she called a bunch of holly berry nuts, but Wallace had talked her into going by promising her a side trip to the Florida panhandle, where it was rumored that Jan & Dean might do a New Year’s Eve show.They didn’t show up, but Mama came home with a little plastic trophy that she won for Best Costume at the Holiday Inn party in Pensacola. She told me not to tell Grandma that she had gone as Cleopatra. For her costume she had pasted two Skoal can lids on her breasts, put a black rinse in her hair, and fitted a chain around her hips to hold the nylon skirt she’d fashioned from a nightgown. When I asked her what Wallace had worn to the celebration, Mama frowned. “He stayed in the motel room praying for the Lord to save my ass after he chewed it out when he saw my costume.”

  Wallace had been born again at the retreat, repented of his sins, and before the first month of 1964 was over, was preaching at a little church over in Liberty called New Hope. Although I still hated him, the new Wallace didn’t scare me, and as my fears subsided, I eventually stopped locking my door every night. I began to enjoy his daily Bible readings and prayers, figuring they might help me get true salvation and I wouldn’t have to fake it anymore.

  Wallace was back on his game, saving mostly female sinners who breathed in shallow pants when he jerked off his tie, sp
read his legs, and, with palms stretched to the ceiling and sweat dripping down his face, prayed for the devil to get out of New Hope. Grandma was euphoric over Wallace’s return to the pulpit, but Papaw said, “Bullshit. A leopard don’t change his spots.” Mama didn’t voice an opinion on Wallace’s sincerity, but she only attended one service at New Hope before going back to her old habit of sleeping late on Sunday mornings.There was no out for me; every Sunday morning Wallace dragged me out of our warm house into the Volkswagen, sputtering with cold as we chugged the fifteen miles down Highway 51 to Liberty.

  I hadn’t protested about switching from Centenary to New Hope. I no longer had to witness Lyn’s popularity in the Sunday school class and MYF meetings, and I assumed that as the stepdaughter of a preacher, I’d be treated with greater respect at New Hope.Was I ever wrong!

  Besides me, there were only four kids in the teenage Sunday school class, three girls and one boy, all of them shabbily dressed and dumber than dirt.They hated me. Our teacher, Miss Mansfield, who looked like a crane with a steel-wool wig on its head, told the class that, now that the preacher’s daughter had joined them, they’d have to work harder on learning scripture. “We wouldn’t want Layla Jay telling Brother Ebert that we are lazy Christians.” I didn’t blame them for the cold, suspicious looks they tossed at me as we sat sweating in the overheated room on our hard folding chairs arranged in a tight circle.To them, I was untrustworthy, a tattletale. Sunday after Sunday I sat beside Miss Mansfield, smiling sweetly, all the while thinking that the tales I could tattle about their new preacher would scorch the pages of the dog-eared New Testament she held in her lap.

  Wallace wasn’t worrying about me blabbing his secrets. His previous sins had been washed away at that retreat, and he reminded me that God absolutely loves a repentant sinner. “To err is human, to forgive is divine,” he said on the way home from church one Sunday.“Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” I looked away from his smug face and stared out the window at the leafless trees. Their branches twisting out toward the road reminded me of the fleshless bones of skeletons, and I shivered in my thin coat. I was a doomed sinner who wanted to cast boulders at Wallace, and God knew that my heart was hardened against my stepfather. I suspected that Papaw was right about him, and I knew I could never trust Wallace again unless God got busy and answered my prayers for help by sending the Holy Spirit down to soften my heart.

  He didn’t send the Spirit, but He gave me something much better. After church on the last Sunday in January, when Wallace parked the Volkswagen beneath the carport, Mama came out of the house and smiled. She pointed to a stack of boxes beside the door. “You’re packed up, Wallace. Hit the road, Jack.”

  Chapter 7

  WALLACE’S REMOVAL FROM OUR HOUSE TURNED OUT TO BE like eating a peach. After enjoying the sweet pulp of his leaving, Mama and I bit into the bitter center. I knew that Wallace had slept on the couch a couple of times, but I hadn’t guessed that his getting kicked out of the bedroom would eventually land him on the street. I didn’t ask Mama for an explanation for this gift of his departure. I wanted to bury the past and enjoy the present.The delicious beginning of our new life centered around dancing, and I was Mama’s new partner. She taught me the cha-cha, the rhumba, and the Cajun jitterbug, and after practicing nearly every night, I could do the twist as good as she could. We ate chocolate ice cream for dinner, watched the late movie on TV, and walked around the house with red-painted lips, wearing only our underwear. After our three-day celebration, Grandma went to prayer meeting and heard the gossip about New Hope’s preacher moving into the Slumbercrest after his wife had booted him out.

  When I saw Grandma’s car pulling into the driveway, I yelled a warning to Mama who was in her bedroom reading a paperback while her nails dried. We had planned to go out to dinner at Sal’s Restaurant, and I was sitting at the kitchen table taking the rollers out of my hair. When Mama didn’t answer Grandma’s knock, I went to the door, expecting the usual hug and kiss she always bestowed on me no matter how long since she’d last seen me, but something was terribly wrong. There was a yellowish tint to her skin and her usually bright eyes had no light in them. She had lost a lot of weight, too, so that now her favorite gabardine dress looked two sizes too large. Before I could speak, Grandma tottered past me without a glance. “Frieda,” she called out as she fell heavily onto the couch in the den. “Frieda, you’d better come out here and explain yourself.”

  In less than a minute Mama, in black lace bra and panties, sauntered in the room waving her wet nails. I glanced at Grandma’s stormy face and groaned aloud. I knew what was coming and I sank down on the rug beside the door ready to dive into the fracas if needed.

  Mama kept waving her nails up and down like she was batting balloons in the air. If she noticed how awful Grandma looked, she didn’t let on. “Why, Mama, how nice of you to stop by. We’re about to go out to dinner, but we can wait a while. How’s Pop?”

  Grandma glared at her like she was a roach running across her stove. “What happened between you and Wallace?”There wasn’t any energy at all in her voice. It seemed every breath she took caused her effort.

  Mama wiggled her shoulders; quivering white breasts straining against the black lace. “Oh, Wallace! Nothing happened. That was the reason I kicked him out.” She lifted her foot and propped it on the coffee table. Her bright pink toenails tapped on the southeast corner of the state of Mississippi. “After he got saved,Wallace went limp. Soft as bread dough. I couldn’t get him going no matter what I did. When the Lord took away his sins, He took away his tools, too.”

  Grandma had clapped her hands over her ears about halfway through Mama’s explanation, and when Mama’s lips stopped moving, she lowered her hands. She sounded like she was reciting the alphabet when she said, “Frieda-I-don’t-want-to-hear-another-word.”

  Mama flopped back on the chair beside the couch. “You asked me. I told you.”

  Just then Grandma looked across the room and saw me sitting on the floor beside the hi-fi set. I had taken the remaining rollers from my hair and sat surrounded by a crescent of aqua, pink, and yellow plastic cylinders. “Layla Jay, honey, go to your room. This isn’t fit conversation for a young girl’s ears.”

  “But I already heard it, Grandma,” I said, going over to sit beside her. I shook my loopy uncombed curls around my face. “And I’m glad Wallace is gone. I think Mama was right to throw him out. Not for the reason she gave, of course, but my own.”

  Grandma’s eyes narrowed. “What reason did you have?”

  I froze. Grandma knew me better than anybody. She would guess what had happened; I should have kept my mouth shut. I looked down at my knees to avoid her eyes that would detect the mess inside my brain. “Well,” I said and stopped. My fear, disgust, guilt were all about to spew out like vomit, and I pressed my lips together so hard I winced in pain.

  Grandma’s voice was filled with dread. I think she suspected the truth. “Layla Jay! Tell me. Right now, this minute.”

  I could have ratted him out then. Should have done it, but something stopped me. Maybe it was the Lord, maybe it was that I couldn’t bear to repeat those repulsive feelings, maybe I somehow felt that I shared in his guilt. Maybe, and this is the most likely reason, maybe I was worried Grandma couldn’t stand the pain of knowing what Wallace had done to me. I lifted my chin and said,“He wouldn’t let me wear makeup or go out on dates. He treated me like a baby.”

  When I saw the tears in Grandma’s eyes, I felt worse than I had since I’d faked getting saved. I had chosen Mama over her and we both understood that I had broken something precious that might never be restored. My lips trembled; I wanted to fall into her arms, but she struggled to her feet and crossed them over her chest. Her face was as gray as a squirrel’s back. “Well, I’ll pray for you both. You have cast out a good Christian man. You’ve chosen to,” her eyes swept Mama’s sexy underwear, my rouged cheeks, “live as you
please without regard to what’s right. I wish I hadn’t lived to come here this day.”And then she was gone and Mama and I sat staring over each other’s heads in the living room that had never seemed as silent as now.

  We didn’t go out to dinner after all; we split a can of tuna and topped it off with popcorn. After I went to bed, I smelled cigarette smoke in my room, and opening my eyes, I saw Mama standing beside my dresser. “What?” I said.

  She took a drag, the tip of her Lucky Strike a small red glow in the dark. “Layla Jay, I want you to tell me the real reason you’re happy Wallace is gone from here.”

  I was glad she couldn’t see my face. I wanted to spill out all of it, the sneaking in my underwear drawer, the sleezy leers, his hands on my body after my date. I longed to run to her and allow myself the comfort I knew she would offer. But I also sensed that after Mama comforted me, she would go after him just as she had gone after that German shepherd. She might borrow Papaw’s shotgun and shoot him. She’d go to prison and I would be left in this world with no parent at all. I turned on my side. “Just what I told Grandma. That’s the true reason. He told me I couldn’t go out with Jehu anymore. And he never loved me. Just you.”

  The red tip of Mama’s cigarette circled her face. “Layla Jay, he didn’t love me. He just wanted to throw himself into a pit of sin so he could feel righteous about getting out of it and start hollering his head off in the pulpit again. I provided the means to the end.That’s all.”

  I sat up and turned on the lamp beside my bed.“But you loved him, didn’t you? I mean, you married him. You had to have loved him to marry him.”