by Byrne, Leigh
That was fine with me. It was what I had wanted all along. “I’ll take good care of her, Grandma. I promise, you won’t have to do a thing.”
“Her? How do you know it’s a girl?” she asked.
I looked down at the fragile creature in my hands, its scrawny, wrinkled neck, bulbous, half-closed eyes, and open yellow beak. “I can just tell.”
“What are you going to call her?”
I studied for a minute and then announced, “I’m going to name her Ladybug.”
She laughed. “Why are you naming her that? She’s a bird, not a bug.”
“Just because.”
Grandma found a shoebox to keep Ladybug in, and I lined it with grass to make it feel more like a nest. I fed her tiny bits of bologna and pieces of bread soaked in milk. She was always crying out for food. No matter how much I fed her, she still opened her beak wide whenever I came around her, begging for more.
About a week after I found Ladybug, I went to feed her some leftover toast from breakfast, and she wouldn’t take the food. When I picked her up, her head flopped to one side.
I took her to Grandma. “What’s wrong with her?” I asked.
Grandma examined her closely. “I think she’s dead,” she said. “I’m sorry honey, but baby birds don’t make it long without their mothers.”
I thought Ladybug was just sleeping. I nudged her with my finger again and again, trying to wake her up, but she wouldn’t move. For the rest of the day, I held her and cried.
“Sweetheart,” Grandma said, “it was just a bird. You didn’t even have it long to get attached to it.”
Late afternoon Grandma told me it was time to take Ladybug outside and bury her before she stunk up the house. I got a spoon from the kitchen drawer and dug a hole in the yard near the azalea bush where I first found her. After I had buried her, I made a tiny headstone with rocks and stuck dandelions in her grave. Grandma didn’t understand; Ladybug was more than just a bird to me.
19
Before I knew it, summer was over, and I was in the car with Daddy, heading back home to get ready for school.
When he drove up, I was glad to see him because I had missed him over the summer. But I was sad in a way too, because I didn’t want to leave Grandma’s house. And I was worried that I didn’t have notebooks and pencils and whatever else was required for the fourth grade. Daddy promised me he had checked into it and bought all the necessary supplies, and everything was ready for me at home. He tried to cheer me up by telling me he’d bought me three new dresses and a pair of shoes for school, and it worked. It gave me something to look forward to.
Mama and the boys were already in bed when we got home. It took me hours to fall asleep that night, knowing school was starting the next day. My mind raced with thoughts of what fourth grade would be like.
Mama woke me up in the morning. “Time to get ready for school,” she said in a somewhat kind voice.
The minute I saw her I realized how much I’d missed her. Thinking maybe she had changed over the summer, I said, cheerfully, “Good morning, Mama,” and ran to her. I tried to put my arms around her waist, but she pushed me back. Then she handed me one of the dresses Daddy had bought me, still in the cellophane wrapper, along with a pair of white knee socks. She told me to take off my dirty clothes and to give them to her. Without delay I obeyed her.
As soon as she left the room, I picked up my new dress, tore off the plastic wrapper, and removed the pins, one at a time, putting them in a neat pile on my bed. Then I slid out the piece of cardboard that kept the dress crisp and square. It was a simple plaid, madras shift in pastel colors of pink and orange, with two low pockets in front, below the waist, and a white rounded collar with a tiny, pink satin bow right in the center.
It was an ordinary school dress, but to me it was special, because I knew Daddy was thinking of me when he picked it out. As I slipped it over my head, careful not to wrinkle it, I imagined how all the other kids at school would admire and compliment me, and how proud I would feel.
I sat on my bed to put on my knee socks. As I was folding down the tops of each one, Mama returned, carrying my new brown oxford shoes. They were shiny and stiff and smelled like leather. I loosened the laces and stepped my feet in, and when I bent down to tie them, it occurred to me something was missing.
“I don’t have any panties on!” I blurted out to Mama, without thinking. “You forgot to bring my panties!”
“Oh, my,” she said in her sarcastic voice, a voice that always made me nervous. “Your daddy must have forgotten to buy you any new panties for school.” She put her hand on her cheek—one of her favorite theatrical gestures—and said, “Oh, no! What are we going to do? I threw all your old ones away! They were ratty!”
I glanced across the room to the corner, where I had left the paper bag of clothes I brought back from Grandma Storm’s. It was gone. I looked at Mama, dumbfounded. Suddenly I was no longer excited about my new clothes or the fourth grade.
“I guess you’ll have to go to school without panties today,” Mama said. “Now hurry and get in the car. It’s time to leave.”
Mama took my older brother, Nick, who was now in junior high, to school first. Then she drove Jimmy D. and me to elementary school, and dropped us off at the front door.
As I walked down the hall searching for my classroom, I could feel a draft between my legs. When I found the right room and entered, all the kids’ eyes were on me. Embarrassed, I imagined they could see through my dress. I hurried to find a seat in the last row, and then sat, pressing my thighs together, tucking my dress snugly around them.
At recess I wanted to join my classmates on the playground, but I looked down and saw the sun shining through the thin cotton of my new dress, outlining the curve of my hips, and in my mind, my bare vagina. Afraid someone would discover my secret I sat on a concrete step by the door of the school, and watched the other kids play.
The girls had on crisp new dresses, like mine, and they wore brightly colored ribbons in their hair that trailed behind them as they ran. They screamed out when a random brisk wind whipped and snapped their skirts, sometimes lifting them high enough to expose their panties. Carefree, and happy, they sailed down the slides and climbed on the monkey bars, played tag, and jumped rope; some of them were on the swings, pumping and stretching their legs out in front of them. I could hear them giggling, and see their smiles when they talked to each other, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Like my brothers, they were in a world far away from mine.
It took me a while to adjust back to my dismal life at home. Everything was the same as it had been before I left—face to the wall and everything—but it seemed much worse, because I had gotten a taste of what it was like to be a normal kid again. All I could think about that fall was my summer at Grandma Storm’s.
Being exposed to other kids in school, and listening to them talk about their parents and their lives at home, reminded me of how happy I had been before Audrey died, and before Mama’s accident. It also made me realize how wrong my life had become. But still, I wasn’t sure what I should do about it. I loved Mama, and I kept waiting, hoping, for her to get better and go back to the way she used to be.
Thanks to Grandma and Aunt Macy, by the end of the summer I was able to see a cute little girl whenever I looked in the mirror. But when I got home, Mama was quick to remind me I was ugly. To keep her from seeing my face, I found my mask in my room and started wearing it again. I put in on every day when I got in from school, this time not because she told me to, but because I wanted to.
One afternoon a friend of Nick’s came over to the house for a visit and saw me wearing it. He asked Nick why his sister had a dish towel on her face.
Mama overheard the conversation and bailed him out. “We don’t know why she does it. She put it on one day and has been wearing it ever since. I guess we’re used to it.” Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “She’s always doing strange stuff like that.”
She t
urned to me. “Why are you wearing that thing over your face anyway?” she asked, as if she didn’t have the slightest clue as to why I would do such a thing. “Take it off right now!”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered mechanically. But I didn’t want to take off my mask. I stalled, pretending to fumble with the knot.
“Give it to me,” she said, sticking out one of her hands, palm up. “Now!” she demanded, jutting her hand forward. I wasn’t moving fast enough for her, so she jerked the mask down from my face herself. It dangled around my neck, held on by a double knot. “Now, take it the rest of the way off.”
As soon as I got it untied, she snatched it from me and tossed it into the trash. One ragged edge hung over the side, and clung there for a while before its own weight took it down, out of my sight.
I missed my mask immediately, the closeness, the warmth, the smell of it, and the sense of security it gave me. But most of all, the barrier it put between Mama and me. Without it I felt frightened and vulnerable, like a newborn suddenly stripped of the safe, familiar boundaries of a womb.
20
My fourth grade was spent isolated from the other kids, most of the time with my dress collar pulled up over my face to simulate to the protected feeling my mask had given me.
The day after school was out, Daddy took me back to Grandma’s, and I remained there for the summer. He called on the phone once a week to talk to me, and to make sure I was doing okay. But I didn’t speak to Mama at all during my entire stay. Like before, Daddy didn’t come for me until the night before school started. He told me in the car on the way home that I would be staying with Grandma Storm every summer until Mama got better.
“Why can’t I live with Grandma and go to school in Nashville?” I asked Daddy.
“Grandma Storm hasn’t been feeling well, and she isn’t able to take care of you by herself, and your aunt Macy has to work. Besides, I’m still hoping your mama will get better soon, and everything will get back to normal.”
The previous spring Mama had announced to the family she was going to have another baby, her fifth, counting Audrey. By the time I got back home, she was almost seven months along.
She was depressed for the last few months of her pregnancy and went back to spending most of her days in bed. She had the baby, another son, that winter, and named him Ryan, after one of her favorite actors, Ryan O’Neal.
The house was almost happy after Ryan was born. You could feel the presence of a new life, and hope for change was in the air. When Daddy was at work, Mama had to take care of the baby all by herself, and I was glad because it distracted her for a while. She kept busy fixing his bottles and doing laundry and other chores, but still, wherever she was, she made sure I was within her sight.
Daddy beamed with pride over Ryan, as he did with all his kids. He kept saying he was glad he was born a boy. He said he had always dreamed of having enough sons to make up a basketball team. It made me think I had been a disappointment to him because I was a girl.
In the mornings he became preoccupied with feeding and caring for Ryan, and quit coming to my room to give me a kiss.
Still, I woke up early every day, listening and waiting, hoping it would be the morning he would decide to come see me again. In the evenings he often worked late, and Mama usually sent me to bed before he got home, so it got to where I hardly saw him at all.
Sometimes at night, I cried because I missed Daddy so much, missed being held by him, and hearing the loving words he had once said to me. I cried because I missed Grandma too. I longed for her orderliness, the smell of the flowers in her garden, and the comfort of her food. I cried because I didn’t know what to do to make Mama love me the way she loved Audrey and my brothers, the way she had loved me before.
Like everybody else in the family, I was positively fascinated with my new baby brother, but Mama kept me far away from him, like she did with Nick and Jimmy D. The more she kept me away, the more fixated on being near him I became. All I wanted was to hold him and cuddle him, and kiss his soft head.
While I was sweeping the house one day, I saw my opportunity to find out what it was like to touch him. He was in my parents’ room, asleep on their bed. Mama was in the kitchen, at the other end of the house, talking on the phone. After I made sure she was in deep conversation, I propped the broom against the wall and tiptoed to Ryan.
He was even cuter up close. He had full pink cheeks and a tiny, beak-like mouth. The sight of him sleeping—pillows piled all around him like fluffy clouds—reminded me of a picture I’d seen in Grandma’s Bible of an angel in heaven.
Carefully I put my hand on his back and held it there, soaking up the warmth of his body. Then I bent over and touched my lips to the top of his head, inhaling his sweet, powdery scent. Being near him made me aware of his fragility, his innocence, of how entirely helpless he was, how he was at the mercy of those around him, now at the mercy of me.
All of a sudden, anger rose from my chest, and then a disturbing vision popped into my head. I saw myself picking Ryan up and throwing him across the room. It was so real, this vision, I could feel the weight of him in my hand, see him sliding down the wall. The impulse to follow through with what I had imagined overwhelmed me. Before I knew what was happening, I had clutched his nightgown to lift him from the bed.
Then I stopped. No! I can’t hurt Ryan! I let go of him and ran from the room, taking the erupting anger with me.
Standing in the hall I felt as though I could burst. I needed somewhere to direct all the fury I held inside. So I turned it on myself. I doubled my fists, and hit both sides of my head at once, banging until I could hear ringing in my ears. Next I pulled at my hair, my lips, and my eyelashes. Working my way down my body, I beat myself in the stomach and on the fronts of my thighs. I turned my ankles over, again and again, twisting them till the bones crunched.
Feeling much better, I picked up the broom and resumed sweeping.
I was ashamed of what I had thought, and wondered why something so sick had even entered my mind—why, when I had nothing but adoration for my baby brother, I had suddenly wanted to hurt him. And then it struck me like a sledgehammer: Maybe I am an evil killer, after all.
21
With so much of Mama’s attention going to Ryan, Daddy had to take on more of the responsibility of caring for the rest of the family. In addition to working his regular job, he got my brothers and me off to school in the mornings, and made sure we were fed supper in the evenings. Whenever he had ball practice, or if he had to coach a game, he brought cafeteria food home from the school where he taught.
One afternoon I heard my brothers cheering when Daddy walked in the door from work with cafeteria food. Even though I knew I was going to get something good to eat, I was sad, because I also knew it meant Daddy would be leaving, and would most likely be gone for the rest of the night.
After he had given the boys their meals, he walked over to where I was standing to give me mine. When he peeled away the tin foil covering the food, I was thrilled to see it was piled high with slices of roast beef, and a generous serving of mashed potatoes smothered with brown gravy. As he handed me the steamy plate, along with a small carton of milk, he grinned and winked.
He still showed me signs of his affection, a rub on the head while Mama was asleep. A wink when she looked away. Although I was well aware he was trying to conceal how he felt about me from her, I never got angry with him, or thought about why he didn’t want her to know. I was too desperate for his love to care, and in a way the hiding made his gestures more special, our own shared secret.
I yearned for his attention and welcomed it, but, at the same time, I knew how much it irritated Mama and that if she found out, I would be the one who would end up paying for it later. I looked over at her to see if she had seen him wink at me. She had.
“Don’t give her anything to drink until she has completely cleaned her plate,” she said to Daddy.
A quizzical expression crossed his face, but without hesitati
on he took the carton of milk from me and put it up on the chest of drawers in Mama’s bedroom, then left for his ballgame.
After I had finished eating my food, I remembered the milk he had put aside for me, but I was too afraid to ask Mama if I could have it. As the night went on, I came to realize she had no intention of giving it to me at all.
About two weeks later, I was standing in my usual place in the hallway when Mama approached me from behind. I felt her shove something into my shoulder. “I found this in my room,” she said. “I believe it belongs to you.”
When I turned around, I saw she was holding a carton of milk. “Be sure and drink it all,” she said. “Daddy brought it for you, and you wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings now, would you?”
I took it from her, although I thought she was joking, that she couldn’t possibly be serious.
“Drink up,” she said, waving her hand briskly.
I opened the carton, and a putrid odor sprang from it. I peered down through the spout, and saw the milk had curdled, and begun to separate.
“I can’t drink this,” I said. “It’s spoiled!”
“Drink it!” she shouted.
I took in a deep breath, and held it. Slowly I lifted the carton to my mouth. But the smell of the spoiled milk was awful, and I could not bring myself to drink it. I closed the carton and dropped it to the floor in front of me. “No! I won’t do it!”
She picked it up. “Drink it or I’ll pour it down your throat myself.”
She wasn’t bluffing, and I knew it. Since her accident, it seemed like she had lost the inner voice that prevents most people from committing mean acts. As if she had no rationalization period between thinking she was going to do something horrendous, and actually doing it. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself throwing the carton at her, and her shocked expression, with chunks of clabbered milk clinging to it. But unlike her, I could hear the voice inside my head, loud and clear, telling me not to do it.
