“Your father wasn’t perfect, but he never claimed to be. Is Rowan? Men aren’t angels, Mary. Strawberry or vanilla?” Edna set two half-gallons of ice cream on the table. “I don’t have chocolate. I can’t stand it. You ought to try talking to Claire in the morning. Be subtle, I think. She’s better-spirited in the morning.”
“Why didn’t you stop Dad?”
Edna put her hands on her hips and faced Mary. “I didn’t know you were coming home for this. Your father’s buried. You can’t blame him for your life. You’d think with all that schooling you’d know that.”
“Dad was a bastard. That’s what’s wrong with Claire.”
“How long has your father been dead? I haven’t seen you in four years!”
“Six!”
Edna put the vanilla and strawberry back in the freezer. “See that Becca gets some ice cream. I’m going to bed.” She was tired, and there wasn’t time for regret. Since her husband passed, her story had changed. She prayed every morning and played the organ at church. She believed that a kitchen should be the center of things, and kept busy canning and cooking for church dinners and invalids. She’d long ago left the bigger upstairs kitchen to the cobwebs. It’s not functional. She slept in a room adjoining the basement kitchen. There was hardly reason to go upstairs these days. Too many rooms to clean.
On his deathbed, fearing God, her husband, Clayton Wickle, had said, “I was tough on the girls because I wanted them to be tough. The world’s not an easy place.” He’d had good intentions. Still, he’d been wrong—the way he treated them was wrong. Flinging that stupid belt around. Bullying Mary. Neither of his daughters was tough. If anything, they were weak. Always desperate and pleading, the two of them. Poor Mary couldn’t let the past go. If only she understood how short life is.
Edna left Mary and Mary’s resentment in the kitchen. She shouldn’t have asked her to come home. Still, she’d wanted to know her only grandchild, and she was short on time. Tomorrow she’d talk to Mary. She’d try again to tell her daughter, I love you. Please stop blaming me for what your father did. We did the best we could. Edna wanted resolution. She wanted peace. It was the Lord’s way. It was her way.
She went to bed to dream. Nearly every night now for weeks, she dreamed of her own mother, young and beautiful, and in the dream Edna was a girl, and she could smell lavender. Her mother had always kept satchels of dried lavender in the folded laundry. When Edna woke, she caught whiffs of lavender. She was sleeping more and more.
Mary didn’t want Becca fat. She didn’t offer her strawberry or vanilla. Instead she went to bed on a cot in the basement den. Attached to the kitchen, the room smelled like fried chicken. There was a low ceiling with exposed wood beams, and a brick floor. Except for Claire’s bedroom, the upstairs rooms were shut up. After her father’s death, her mother moved into the basement where the farmhands and Willis, her mother’s domestic helper, had slept. Willis used to say, “I’m nobody’s maid. I’m a cook and a dishwasher.” She’d worked for them three days a week, eight a.m. to six p.m., before going to bed in the same room where Edna now slept. Mary felt sick being here. She wished she’d never brought Becca to Prospect, Virginia. The sooner the days passed, the sooner she’d be driving home to Chapel Hill. She closed her eyes, desperate for sleep, picturing her old brown work boots worn thin at the ankles, heels touching, just inside the main door upstairs. She remembered stuffing her socks inside and tiptoeing to her bedroom. Always trying to be invisible.
She remembered the feel of her bare toes on the cold floor; hanging her winter coat with the soiled black sleeves on the pine rack her father made. Sometimes the coat dropped to the floor in a foul-smelling heap and she wanted to leave it right there, but she’d bend down to pick it up. She remembered being afraid. He would yell, “Girl, what are you up to?”
Don’t think about it, Mary, she thought. There’s no one yelling anything anymore. There’s only the whisper of Claire’s TV. But her mind wouldn’t listen: If there’s a hell, I hope he’s rotting there. I hope he’s suffering. Mary’s rage kept her up most of the night.
At nearly nine o’clock, the sun was only now setting. Becca kissed her grandma’s dog, Bo, on the nose. “Good night.”
The house was quiet; everyone in bed. Becca went to her grandma’s room and undressed quickly. She hadn’t expected to like her mother’s mother, having heard from her father that Edna was “a simpleton,” and “a real pain in the rear,” but Grandma Edna was hard not to like. Becca pulled the covers back and climbed into the twin bed across from her grandma’s. According to her mother, a long time ago slaves had slept in this room. The room had a dank smell. The plaster walls were lumpy and the exposed bricks were faded and nicked. Grandma Edna was talking in her sleep! She was so different from Becca’s other grandmother. Neither woman, she knew, had attended her mom and dad’s wedding. People are stupid. Becca felt sorry for Aunt Claire, who was sad and fat, reminding Becca of the ladies she saw at the Piggly Wiggly, their hair in pink curlers, their carts full of Twinkies and potato chips. It was hard to believe her mother and Aunt Claire were related. Aunt Claire was the kind of woman who disgusted Becca’s dad. He said that fat people had no excuse. “Stop eating cheeseburgers.”
Upstairs, Claire watched an episode of The Love Boat. She tried calling her ex-boyfriend Tom twenty-six times (using a rotary phone). His line was busy.
Excerpt from
THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS
Carlos Lemon, ten years old, was struck while riding his bike. CPR was administered by paramedics, but there was no heartbeat. A shot of epinephrine was administered. After twenty minutes, his heart resumed beating and he breathed on his own.
Carlos does not remember his time in the hospital, riding his bike, or being struck. For eight days, he did not speak. After one month, he resumed his life before the strike. The local newspaper called Carlos’s survival “a miracle.” I tend to agree.
[6]
My mother’s father, 1967
Buckley
“I had this key lime skirt I had to be careful not to get dirty, which was hard.”
Buckley said, “Was Winter nicer back then?”
“No. Mama was never a warm person. I told you: I was Daddy’s girl.”
“Did Winter yell and scream when you were a kid?”
“Yep. She’s always been a screamer. When Daddy was alive, he’d ignore her when she got uppity like that. He’d tell a joke to make me laugh, which would only infuriate Mama. She’d keep screaming about what ever had upset her. It could be anything: if you left a sock on the floor or if you forgot to ask to be excused from the table. She yelled about everything, and this one time Daddy and I were ignoring her, and Daddy was telling silly knock-knock jokes he memorized out of this children’s book, and Mama got so hot, she exploded. She cried. Mama never cried. That’s why we called it an explosion. She cried and cried, carrying on that no one loved her—not her husband, not her one and only daughter, who she’d brought into the world. If it’d been up to me, I would’ve let her cry. I would’ve kept ignoring her. I thought it was good to see her boo-hoo. Daddy stopped telling jokes and went to her then, calling her Winnie, a nickname he had for her. I was Abby, the apple of his eye.” Tears welled in Abigail’s eyes. “I don’t know why he married Mama. She was never kind to him, and he was kind to everyone. He’d give the shirt off his back. Every person in Mont Blanc owed him for some favor, but he never wanted payback for anything. He wanted people to be happy. I remember when the old train tunnel at Beckett collapsed; Daddy worked alongside the volunteer firefighters digging for two days just in case there was someone trapped inside. They found someone: a little boy. There was a picture of Daddy holding his dead body. The boy’s parents brought a peach pie to our house. Being too sad to eat, they wanted us to have it. It’s funny how when people die everyone brings food, and no one can stomach eating. Daddy didn’t eat for four days.”
“You ought to tell Winter to move out and get her
own place.”
“She’s my mother, Buckley. You don’t tell your mother to get out. Would you throw me out?”
“Of course not.” He rested his head on her lap. “But you’re not like her.”
“Well, that’s true.”
“Tell me about my dad.” He never stopped trying.
“I can’t.”
He sat up. “Why not? You knew your father. Why can’t I know mine?”
“He’s not worth knowing.”
“I can be the judge.”
“No, Buckley, you can’t.” Her voice faltered. Buckley couldn’t mention his father without her falling apart. “Listen,” she said, “I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again: when you’re older, I’ll explain and tell you who he is, but not now, because you can’t be the judge. Not yet. You’re too young.” She pulled his head back to her lap, twirling her fingers in his thick hair. Her black hair, slick and plentiful, fell, tickling his cheek.
“Tell me more stories about your dad.”
“I’m sleepy.” She ran her fingers through Buckley’s locks, knowing that he too was tired. It’d been a long day. Mont Blanc was too hot and too dusty, and they’d spent the morning scrubbing the dust off the cinder blocks and porch. What kind of person asks you to scrub cinder blocks? Winter Pitank.
Even though she was just twenty-five, Abigail knew that Buckley would be her only child. (No man wanted her, and she didn’t want any man.) She wanted Buckley to be good, something he was born to.
When she remembered her own childhood—at least when she thought of her father—that’s what she remembered: goodness. Her father said, “Who’s the best little girl in the world?”
“Who?” she’d play.
“Well, I do believe it’s Miss Abigail Pitank.”
She’d coyly ask, “Do you really think so?” If she was within his reach, he’d hold her by the wrists, kissing both cheeks until she giggled hysterically.
Another reason that she would not have more children was her mother. There was too great a chance that her next child could be born with a disposition similar to Winter’s. As it was now, Abigail detected her father and herself in Buckley, but more and more she saw Buckley separate from them, from every Pitank, becoming his own person.
Closing her eyes, she remembered the key lime skirt she’d worn to Ida’s Luncheonette on Saturdays. She’d seen that skirt in a storefront on Main Street. She’d admired it. She didn’t need it, but her dad told Winter to buy it.
“With what money?” Winter had complained.
“The laundry money.”
“That’s my money.”
“It’s ours. Buy Abby that skirt.”
“I’m not buying it.”
“Use my check.” It was her father’s money from the army.
Winter said, “And groceries will magically appear how?”
Winter did not buy the skirt, but Abigail’s father acquired it through an exchange. Mrs. Madison, the store’s owner, needed a fence built, and Mr. Pitank needed an expensive key lime skirt for his daughter. Mrs. Madison, knowing a fence required post digging, which is hard work, threw in a pair of key lime shoes and a polka-dot blouse. Abigail was in heaven, and her dad never told her how he got the skirt. Only after his death did Winter throw the story in her face. “Your father spoiled you. He let you take advantage of him. The man worked like a dog so you could have some stupid skirt. He was in no shape to build a fence.”
Abigail knew what her father would say: Don’t listen to her. And she didn’t. She couldn’t. It’s funny how there are times when a girl gets knocked down and she thinks she’ll never get up again, but she gets up quicker and stronger, and she survives things she couldn’t have imagined surviving.
Abigail, grinning, wore her hair in pigtails. Holding the door to Ida’s Luncheonette open, her dad grinned too, even letting the gap between his front teeth show.
Taking a seat at one of Ida’s booths, Joe Pitank told Ida, “It seems only fitting that we have two slices of key lime pie and—”
Abigail interrupted him. “Two limeades.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth.”
Ida said, “Very nice. What’s the occasion?” She brushed her hand against the lapel of Joe Pitank’s suit.
“We’re sharp, ain’t we?” he said.
“I’ll say.”
“Abigail got new threads.” In her white gloves, Abigail twirled for Ida to admire her outfit.
“You look very pretty.”
She blushed. “Thank you!”
“Two limeades and two slices of pie coming right up.”
Winter was home doing other people’s laundry.
Winter was always doing laundry, and she was always nagging Joe: “You need to get a job. You need to get off your behind and put a decent meal on the table. You need to stop babying that girl. You need to teach her to respect her elders.”
Abigail didn’t know that there was anything wrong with her father until after he died, when Winter confessed to the town of Mont Blanc that Joe had been a shell and not a man. “Why do you think there’s just Abigail? The man lived with demons. He got up with them and he went to bed with them. He couldn’t hold a job, and he wasn’t a proper husband to me.”
Until her father died, when his burial was paid for by the county and there was no proper funeral, just a gathering on the scarce brown lawn outside their cinder-block house, Abigail didn’t know that a man could go to war for his country and come home but still have the war with him. She heard her neighbors say that he was addicted to painkillers. She heard them say that he was depressed. He’d never recovered from his demons. Abigail imagined monsters walking the earth. The neighbors said, “Joe Pitank mistreated his family.”
This awful man was not the man Abigail knew.
No one seemed to notice her that hot June day, watching her mother tug at the breast of her black sleeveless shirt. She was sweating. They were all sweating. Despite the occasion, only a few women wore stockings. It was just too hot. Abigail was thirteen. She sat in the dirt, waiting for the day to end. When it was dark it’d be cooler, and maybe her dad would come see her. Maybe she’d wake up tomorrow and he’d be home, and her mother would be dead in his place. Don’t ever think such things. Her father would be disappointed.
Normally someone would’ve told her to get out of the dirt. Not today. Except for when her mom’s friend Violet offered her a piece of cake, Abigail was invisible. They all said his death was unbearable for poor Winter—left practically penniless with a child. If it weren’t for the army check, the Pitanks would be on welfare like the Negroes. Other mourners, including Abigail’s mother, whispered that as awful as it was, it might be for the best. Joe Pitank was a sick man. Now he could rest.
Abigail needed reassurance from her dad. Days and weeks passed slowly, miserably, and then years. Abigail’s father sent no word from his grave. She often thought that if it weren’t for Buckley, she’d get herself addicted to some kind of painkiller. She remembered her father as happy and soft-spoken. She remembered his kisses. She was lucky to have known him.
Buckley slept, his head on his mother’s lap. Abigail, hearing the Reverend Whitehouse at the front door speaking to Winter, set down her hairbrush and shifted to rise from the bed. There was something unsettling about that man. He was certainly no Joe Pitank. And what did he want with her family?
Excerpt from
THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS
Victims may suffer symptoms similar to shell-shock, recently named post-traumatic stress disorder, turning to narcotics and other drugs to cope with their fears.
This disorder is most likely due to the trauma of being struck, but there is also a suggestion that the brain has been altered by exposure to high volts of electricity, rewiring the body to reexperience the event through flashbacks and irrational fears.
[7]
Ashes to ashes, 1978
Grandma Edna told bizarre stories with punch lines only Gr
andma Edna understood. Becca thought she might be senile, but Becca’s mom said, “She’s always been that way. I’ve never understood half of what she says.”
“It’s funny,” Becca said.
This morning, Grandma Edna climbed into Becca’s bed. She said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“About what?”
“My doctor. The medical profession is some kind of racket.” Grandma Edna told Becca that she was thinking of leaving her local Prospect doctor because she had to wait too long. “It’s me and the coloreds sitting there. I think the young people are treating old people like coloreds now. Like I’ve got nothing better to do. It’d be easy enough driving to Farmville to see a doctor there, but no one will let me.”
“Why not?”
“Good question. I guess they think I’m too old. They’re all full of it.” Grandma Edna’s dog, Bo, a half-blind Labrador mix, slunk into the room. Grandma Edna shooed him. “Get out of here!”
Becca looked at her grandmother’s wrinkled face. There was something pretty about it. “Can I draw you?”
“Draw my picture?”
Becca nodded.
“No one told me you were an artist.”
“I am.”
“Smart and creative. I should’ve known.”
Becca retrieved her sketchbook.
“I should change into something nice.”
“I like your nightgown. Just stay there.”
As Becca sketched her grandma, Edna told a long, nonsensical story with an eccentric cast of characters, speaking as if Becca had a history with each person, including Aubrey, “a sailor and fisherman, bird-watcher, dog lover, with eyes like pennies, big and round, who says ‘Jesus’ every other word, like he doesn’t know what it means to take the Lord’s name in vain, and he died of lung cancer, breaking Marianne’s heart, who’s a fine baker, but a terrible cook. I doubt she can boil water. She married Dr. Carl. He’s not a real doctor. He’s the kind of fellow who says ‘How did that make you feel?,’ wanting to know what you dreamed and if you got along with your mother. Dr. Carl is good enough for Marianne. Hell, it’s hard to find a man alive over sixty anymore. He would’ve been good enough for me.” As Becca finished her drawing, Grandma Edna finished her story. Taking the sketchbook from Becca’s hands, she said, “Can I keep it? Could I?”
The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors Page 4
