My knees felt glued to the floor and my body ached from the beating it had taken. I held out my arms and turned them back and forth looking for bruises. My legs were unmarked, they just didn’t want to support me as I rose painfully to my feet.
“Totsy, honey.” I slammed the suitcase lid shut with a bang, and shook my head to clear it of sweat, tears, and fear. What had I been looking for? “Where are you?” It was Sister’s voice calling. And yep, that’s what the whole family calls me. Totsy. Not Topsy. She was a girl. And she just growed. I am a boy and I haven’t growed as much as I’d like in almost fifteen years. I wondered how old I’d have to get before I outgrew that nickname. Frankly, it was still difficult even for me to think of myself as Carlton. That’s my real name, Carlton Woods. The memory of my first day in school still makes me redden with shame. The teacher held up cards with all the first-graders’ names printed on them for each to identify and I kept looking at “Carlton” blankly, waiting for a card with Totsy on it. I could spell that.
“Up here,” I called. “Be right down.” I tugged at the ring. It stuck on the knuckle that it had slipped over so easily before. The knuckle hurt. I started sucking on it as I went down the stairs. I’d learned nothing useful from the room.
“Becky’s beginning to stir,” Sister said as I went into the darkened cool room. “She was kinda whimperin’ a minute ago.” Sister propped herself up on one elbow, her dark hair damp and sticking to her wet forehead.
“Uhnumm.” I still had my finger in my mouth.
“You still suckin’ your thumb?” She grinned. “Come on over here. I thought I broke you of that a hundred years ago.”
I leaned in against her and she put an arm around my shoulders lightly. It was too hot for a real embrace but she touched me and caressed me at every opportunity as she always had. It made me melt with joy. Joy mingled with guilt and fear now. Why had everything gone wrong? She felt deliciously moist and warm next to me and smelled of soap and sleep. “I got your ring stuck. It won’t come off.”
“Well, you’ll either have to cut your finger off or just keep it, won’t you?”
“Do you mean it? Can I have it?”
“Course you can, honey. It’s just an old broken thing. I found it next to a wilted corsage on a table after a party of young kids had left. At The Ship. Remember The Ship? I chased after them, but they’d gone.” Her face clouded. “You keep it. It makes me sad.”
Becky rolled over fretfully and made little noises of irritation. I ran to her and dropped to my knees beside her on the floor. “Gee, thanks, Sis. I love it. I’ll never take it off.” I picked up Becky and rocked her in my arms. She was soaking. In every sense of the word. Her little plump body was glazed with perspiration and her diaper sodden. I put her back on the pallet and started to change her. “Hey, Sis, I tried your method of putting her to sleep this afternoon. Didn’t work worth a darn. You said it was sure-fire for me.”
“All I did with you when you were that size was just blow gently on your eyelids. You’d be asleep in minutes. Not even your mother could figure out how I did it so quickly.”
“This little rascal just squinches up her face and starts to howl.”
“It all depends on your technique. I’d start so softly that I’d hardly be letting any air out at all. You’d start to blink and then I’d increase the pressure.” She chuckled. “Of course, those damned eyelashes of yours helped. Just look at ’em now. As thick as caterpillars. Once I got some air on them, they were too heavy to lift. You’d be out like a light. Ooohhh, what I wouldn’t give to have them. Boy, are you going to drive the girls crazy—if you aren’t already. Crazy with jealousy for them bits of fur you wear around your eyes.”
I could feel myself almost arching my back and purring with pleasure like a cat being stroked. Her words oozed over me like honey, soothing my jangled nerves. No wonder I adored her. She’d managed to make me forget—for a moment—my slip of the tongue this morning. Why couldn’t I learn to keep my mouth shut? Junior had pointed out to me several times—kindly and with strained patience—that one of my worst faults was blurting out things without thinking of the consequences. When I thought of the consequences I faced now, my body began to tremble. How in God’s name was I going to face this alone? If Junior were here, we’d work it out together somehow. This was one hell of a time for him to get sick. He’d never been sick before. He’d always been right there—right here beside me, as close and familiar as a second skin. That second skin protected me from getting cut or scratched or scraped. Now he was in a hospital and I was a walking contusion. A contusion that wouldn’t be walking much longer if I didn’t straighten out some serious misunderstandings.
I went on absent-mindedly dusting powder on Becky’s bare bottom until there was a white crust filling the pink cleft that seemed to continue unbroken in a semicircle from front to back. Like a scar made by a single blow with a sickle.
“Honey, you’re going to clog her up,” Sister said. “Thank God that’s powder and not cement.”
We laughed as I pinned Becky into the fresh diaper, deft experienced fingers inside the cloth protecting the delicate skin from the pin’s sharp point. The ring flashed.
“It is a sort of girlie ring.” Sister’s voice had changed. I glanced up over my shoulder and noted a frown between her brows. “Hope nobody’ll call you a sissy.”
“Don’t care if they do,” I said a bit too prissily and turned my attention back to Becky. Could Sister be making further reference to my slip of the tongue this morning about Roy. Uncle Roy, I reminded myself. After all, he was Aunt Dell’s husband. But for only a couple of years. He was only a relative by marriage. New to the family. We didn’t know him very well. Dad thinks he’s the greatest thing since the V-8 engine just because he’s a cowboy and can do sixty-five push-ups. Talk about your hero-worship. I think I know him better than anybody. Any of us, that is. Except maybe Aunt Dell. But I doubt if she knows he’s dangerous. I mean deadly dangerous in the way that I know. I could actually see my heart pounding against my ribs. Had Sister noticed? I looked back up at her and went on quickly, “I’ve been called that before. And lots of other things besides.” My laugh stuck in my throat. “Why, at some of the schools I’ve been to … ”
“Oh, honey. School.” She made school sound like a leper colony. “Oh lordy, the things kids say. They’as always the crudest things. Why, back home … oh me, oh my … I used to wonder where they heard the things they’d call us. And each other.”
“I sure never heard some of the things they called me out in California,” I boasted to Sister, anxious to rid the air of the sissy references. “I’ll bet you haven’t either. I couldn’t even repeat them to you. Boy. I’ve had more fights about …”
“Oh, you’re a tough one,” she laughed, ruffling my hair. “I’ll bet you knocked all them guys naked and then hid their clothes.” I was stunned and must have looked it. “Don’t you know that old expression, honey? It’s like knockin’ … no, that’s not it. It’s turning somebody every way but loose.” She laughed and I joined in. “Your daddy’s always sayin’ things like that.” She tugged at my hair and lifted my face up and peered at me. “And what’s that? There. Your lip looks swollen. Somebody turnin’ you ever which way but loose?”
I jerked my head away. “Oh, that’s nothing.” I grinned up at her. “I cut it shaving.”
“Whoeee,” she threw her head back and laughed as she headed for the hall. “Honey, you need a shave about as much as I do.” She paused and turned back to me, a small frown between her brows. “It’d be pretty darn queer if I did have to,” she said evenly.
There it was. The subject. The word. QUEER. The trouble. The whole trouble just dangling in the air between us. It filled the room. There was no way of avoiding it as we had this morning. I glanced quickly at Becky. Go on, I begged, do something. Throw up all over me or scream bloody murder, for God’s sake. You managed to get this conversation stopped this morning by somehow covering yourself
in dog shit. Create another diversion, please, please, please, and save me from this. I shook her slightly and squeezed her hopelessly. I resisted a temptation to pinch her painfully to make her yell. She giggled and gurgled happily. I placed her on the pallet with her favorite toy—an empty cigarette package of Dad’s—and prepared to meet my fate.
I lifted my eyes slowly to Sister’s hard and questioning ones. Our eyes held so deeply and for so long for my eyeballs felt dry and hot. I pulled my back up straight, took a deep breath and started talking. I talked a blue streak. I explained, denied, cajoled, swore on stacks of bibles, professed to only rudimentary knowledge of sexual facts and acts, made jokes, danced, did imitations while launching into an ancient cowboy story whose stale punchline had some relevance to the point I was trying to make. I kept my eyes on her, holding her gaze as much as possible. It was as though I were trying to hypnotize her or convert her to some weird religion with my own wild fervor, like an hysterical evangelist with a new recruit to convince, to baptize, to have born again a new mind clear and clean and unmarked by what I’d blurted out this morning that had turned our world upside-down. Mostly I wanted her to laugh. If I could just make her laugh, I’d be halfway there. And then, there it was. A twinkle in the dark eyes, a twitch at the corners of the voluptuous mouth and with one last wild antic on my part, a guffaw, a great cascade of laughter bubbled up and spilled over me like a soothing shower. We both laughed until she waved a limp dismissive hand at me and started up the stairs. I’d won. At least this first round. I dropped my head—it weighed a ton as my chin hit my chest—and let my entire body go slack with relief as I offered up a silent thankful prayer and a hurriedly slurred apology for the contortions the truth had been forced through.
Sister’s voice came to me from what seemed a long way off. “Where’s Moma and Roy?”
“Went shopping,” I called back, instigating a howl from Becky. She wanted her bottle.
“Your mom and dad still at the hospital?”
“Yeah. They stay later today. Saturday. Visiting hours last till six.” I was talking to her from the foot of the stairs now, on the way to the kitchen to feed Becky.
“Then I’d better hurry.” I could hear her head for the bathroom just as a car came up the drive. “Oops, there’s Momma now. I’ll help ’em unload.” She clattered down the stairs and brushed past us and was out the door before I’d started preparing the baby’s bottle.
The car doors slammed when I was testing the temperature of the milk by squirting a drop on my inner arm and looked out to see Sister and Roy talking and laughing on the far side of the car. The sight of the two of them together, in cahoots, froze me with terror. It was up to her. She held my very life in her hands and probably didn’t know it. She couldn’t possibly know, but she could make it all right if she’d understood the point of my clownish cowboy performance. One word would do the trick. She had no idea how far this “slip of the tongue,” this little “misunderstanding,” this schoolboy “revelation” had gone. If I’d told her where I’d really got my swollen lip, my life would be worth even less than it was now.
Aunt Dell was yelling at them to unload and get the shopping into the house. Thank God Aunt Dell wasn’t being brought into it. At least not yet. If that happened, I was a real goner. Aunt Dell burst into the kitchen first, panting and laughing. Sister and Roy still had their heads together outside, nodding and glancing back toward the kitchen windows, surely—I hoped and prayed—turning it into a harmless joke just between us three.
“Whoooeeee!” Aunt Dell cried with a wide smile. Sister’s smile.
No question about their being mother and daughter—they shared the same square high-cheekboned face and the flashing teeth and eyes. “The heat!” She turned and screamed out the back door. “Roy! For God’s sake get in here and get us a beer.” They were already like an old married couple and I fervently hoped they’d stay that way for the next hundred years. Please God, don’t let anything I’ve done come between them.
Roy came in, followed by Sister, both laughing and smiling at each other knowingly. He put an overflowing cardboard box down on the floor and headed for the icebox with a broad wink at me which I refused to acknowledge except with an inner sigh of relief so great I almost dropped Becky. Sister put a bulging paper bag on the table. “OK. Done my chores for the day.” She winked at me too. “Off to soak.” She shot a last conspiratorial smile at Roy and went out into the hall.
“You’d think we’as feedin’ an army. Look at all this stuff.” Aunt Dell sank into a straight-backed chair and wiped her forehead with a limp hand. “Well, we’ll be needin’ every mouthful once that big brother of yours gets out of that damned hospital. That boy eats like a horse. Not like you, you puny little thing. Go lay that chile down, Totsy. It’s too hot to touch anybody. Even that sweet thing. Look at her suckin’ away. Lucky thing.” She swung around in the chair. “Roy! For Christ’s sake! Beeeeeerrrrrr! Before I die.” She let her mouth drop open and her tongue hang out and panted comically like an exhausted dog. Roy plunked an open bottle down in front of her and she lifted it and drank thirstily. “Couldn’t even wait for a glass. Aahhh! That’s better. I may even live.”
“And how’s old Ah-ho-ho treatin’ you, son?” How could he go on making that silly joke and move around perfectly normally after what happened? How could I go on staying under the same roof with him, let alone talk to him or look at him? This was grown-up stuff and I was growing up forcibly. If he didn’t know how old Ah-ho-ho was treating me, nobody knew. “Hot enough for you?” Another brilliant bit of grown-up repartee. There was plenty of reasons for me to doubt the joys of the mysterious inner grown-up circle.
“Plenty.” I could speak if I didn’t have to look directly at him. “With the fiesta on, the town was really pretty last night when I walked around after supper. They had lights strung up to that central fountain all the way around the square. There were four or five Mexican bands—singers and dancers—moving around in the crowds.” I was talking to Aunt Dell as though there was nobody else in the room. “One group even asked me to join in the dancing…”
“Oh, they always do that,” Aunt Dell said. “That’s all part of the fun of the fiesta. They sure can sing and dance, them wetbacks.”
“One boy was showing me steps. Very difficult ones, too. You have to beat your heels and clap your hands at the same time but the rhythm is so sync … synco … well, complicated. I couldn’t get the hang of it.”
“Aw, you’re just like your daddy. A little practice and he can do any kind a dancin’,” Aunt Dell declared with a wave of her hand.
“Well,” I said, daring to boast a bit, “they did say I was pretty good. Maybe I can go back tonight. It was fun.” Out of the corner of my eye I felt more than saw Uncle Roy regarding me with a funny expression. Suspicion? “But I still haven’t seen much of the town.” I rolled my eyes at Becky who kept me housebound. “Only the bit we came through when we arrived and the central square.”
“Poor kid’s only been here three days, for lord’s sake,” Aunt Dell said as if defending me from some accusation. “And that’s been spent baby-sittin’. Soon’s Junior gets better, we’ll show you around. Not that there’s all that much to see. I don’t know much about it neither. And hope I don’t have to. The damned Arizona State Meat Department’s plumb lost its mind. They transfer Roy down here—him a inspector of meat on the hoof, for Christ’s sake—to a copper minin’ town where they ain’t a herd of cattle within a hundred miles. Ah-ho-ho-ho, indeed. More like ha-ha-ha.” Jokes on the pronunciation of Ajo were apparently irresistible. “All these Mexican names just about got me running backwards. Caliente ain’t so bad. I’m just about to git Quijotoa but; wouldn’t you know we’d rent a house on Xochimilco?”
“You should have seen Dad asking directions for this street. Funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I can just see that no-account brother of mine. OOooeee, gets purple and chokes when he gets mad, don’t he?” She roared wi
th laughter and slapped her thigh.
“I better get rid of this sweaty load,” I said heading with Becky to the sitting room.
“Your folks not back yet?” Aunt Dell called after me. “It’s after six.”
“Not yet,” I called. Then I caught sight of our Model-A Ford pulling up in front of the house as I passed the hall door. “Oh, yes, here they are now.” I walked down the hall and opened the front door. I could hear Aunt Dell and Uncle Roy moving in behind me and Sister almost bumped into them descending the stairs that gave onto the hall. I stepped out onto the porch. Sister stepped out behind me while Aunt Dell held the screen door open with Roy peering over her shoulder. The cement paving slanted from the porch steps down to the sidewalk along the street so we were looking down at Mom and Dad as they got out of the car. At the top of their heads, really, their faces hidden. Becky jerked her head away from her bottle, bounced in my arms and reached toward the approaching figures. “Momma!” she called.
Mom stopped, head still down. Dad took two quick paces and took her by the arm. They didn’t look at each other, they looked up at us. It was written on their faces as clearly as if they’d shouted. “Oh my God,” Aunt Dell gasped, almost inaudibly.
Junior was dead. Their set faces and the stiff extra-straight way they walked declared the news.
Mom’s eyes didn’t look like she’d been crying as she walked toward us, floating up the steps as though they didn’t exist, and took Becky from me. Mom’s eyes didn’t register that we existed either. They didn’t seem to register anything. Becky glued herself to Mom like a breast-plate, a shield against the world. It was on Becky’s bare back that Aunt Dell’s tears fell when she flung her arms around Mom.
My face was buried in Sister’s soft bosom where I could feel her heart pounding so loud that I scarcely heard Dad when he said, “You’re all we’ve got now, son,” and ran his hand roughly over my head and squeezed my shoulder until it hurt.
In Tall Cotton Page 2
