by Byrne, Leigh
One night, after waking from the nightmare in a cold sweat, I remembered God, and what Grandma Storm had told me about him always being there for me. As she had taught me, I made sure to thank him for all his bounty first.
“Oh Heavenly Father,” I began, like I had learned in church. “Thank you for school, and for the cafeteria, and a warm place to sleep. God bless Daddy, and Mama, Jimmy D., Nick, and my new baby brother, Ryan. Bless Grandma Storm and Aunt Macy. Please take care of my sister, Audrey, and Ladybug, who are up in heaven with you now. Lord, I know I did something bad when I wished Audrey would die, and when I gave her the flu. But I wasn’t sure I was sick when I let her chew that piece of bubblegum, and I didn’t think she would die. Anyway, I’m sorry about it, Lord. Please forgive me.” Then I got to what I needed. “God, can you please, please make Mama stop hurting me, and make her love me again? Amen.”
I said the prayer every night for a month, but nothing changed. I thought maybe God hadn’t heard me, even though Grandma Storm had assured me no prayer went unheard. So, just in case, I prayed louder and waited, but every day when I got up, my life was still the same.
Grandma Storm had explained to me how God works in ways sometimes we humans don’t understand. She said he had a reason for everything that happened, and not to doubt him, but to be patient, and he would someday show me the reason. I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe God had a purpose for allowing my life to be miserable. But I couldn’t imagine what the purpose could be.
I came to the conclusion that God was angry with me for what I had done to Audrey, and that’s why he didn’t answer my prayer.
25
I was in the car with Daddy, on my way to Grandma Storm’s house for my regular summer visit, when he told me she had been sick the past few months. She had something called polyps of the colon. He had just learned the polyps had turned into cancer, and that she had begun to go down fast. He said I was going to have to help Aunt Macy out around the house more, and I should try not to be too much of a bother.
Our conversation did not prepare me for what awaited me at Grandma’s house. When I arrived, she did not rush to greet me with open arms, like she had every other time before. I found her in the den, slumped over on the sofa, gazing at the television set. She didn’t even look up when I walked into the room. She was wearing a blue floral house robe I’d seen her wear many times before. She had once filled it with her fleshy figure, but now it hung loosely from her sharp spine and protruding shoulder blades. Without color on them, her lips faded into her face, and her sparse hair was pinned into a scraggly bun on top of her head.
Grandma’s vibrant spirit that had once filled her house with music and laughter had all but vanished. She didn’t have the energy to get up early and prepare her colossal breakfasts anymore. She no longer whistled or sang as she puttered about the house, and her piano was gathering dust.
Her flowers had been almost completely taken over by weeds. Some of the small ones had wilted and shriveled under the relentless summer heat, and the taller ones bowed their heads low, as if they no longer had a reason to reach for the sky. Aunt Macy and I took turns watering her garden, but it didn’t do much good.
Even the birds were of no concern to Grandma anymore. They still waited every morning for her to come out and feed them, like she had for so many years. They gathered in the yard, covering the grass like a dark, fluttering sheet, filling the air with their loud, angry chirping. Aunt Macy and I shooed them away, but they only came back as soon as we went inside the house.
While I was there, Grandma spent most of her days sleeping or sitting in silence. When she didn’t have the strength to get up out of bed herself, Aunt Macy and I carried her into the den, where she sat on the sofa and watched her favorite soap operas. When she was too weak to hold herself up, we propped her with pillows. There she would sit for hours, without uttering a word, her eyes set deep in hollow sockets, fixed on the television, and her slack, grayish skin sagging from the bones of her face.
It was a cheerless summer with Grandma Storm sick, but I was still thankful that I was able to stay with her and Aunt Macy. Even at their worst, being with them was much better than being at home. As always the summer passed too quickly, and before I knew it, Daddy was there to take me back to Spring Hill for school.
26
The bad news came early one morning, in May, right before I left for school.
“That was Macy,” Daddy said after he put down the phone. “It’s Mom. She’s gone.” His voice cracked when he added, “She went peacefully in her sleep.”
I should have been crushed when I heard about Grandma, because I loved her more than anyone else. But I wasn’t. To me she had already died the previous summer. The instant I saw her slumped over on the sofa, I knew her spirit had abandoned her broken-down old body, and all that remained was an empty shell. I recognized the look of death from those final days I had spent with Audrey.
Over the course of the summer, the sadness from losing her had gradually oozed out. Now all I felt was anger. I was angry because she had left me, angry because I would never see her again, and because I now had to spend my summers at home in the hallway outside Mama’s bedroom staring at a blank wall.
Since Mama’s accident, Nick and Jimmy D. seldom wandered far from her side. During the cold months, after school, sometimes they joined her in her bed to watch television, nudging each other out of the way like puppies at feeding time, fighting for the space closest to her.
Now that the weather was warm, they played outdoors, but only in spurts, coming in to touch base with her regularly.
One afternoon I was standing in my usual place in the hall when I heard her ask them, “Which one of you loves your mama the most?”
“Me, me, I do,” they both said at once.
“Well, let’s see about that. I’m having a contest,” she announced. “I want each of you to take turns hitting Weasel in the stomach, and I will be the judge of who hits the hardest. Whoever hits the hardest loves me most.”
Nick and Jimmy D. were five years apart in age, but close enough to be rivals. Most of their competitions were over who was the toughest or the most athletically inclined. They traded frog punches until their arm muscles were quivering, and flicked each other’s knuckles until they were blood red. The mention of any test of their skills excited them, and so did the chance to earn Mama’s approval.
“Cool!” they both said.
Mama had me turn around and face my brothers, who were now in the hallway in front of me, ready to play “the game.” They both looked nervous, but I could tell they were trying to hide it from each other.
Nick, around thirteen at the time, volunteered to go first. Without hesitation he balled up his fist and hit me, full strength, in the stomach. I moaned from the pain. He immediately turned to Mama, grinning with pride in the force of his punch. She nodded to show her approval.
Jimmy D., who was much more tenderhearted by nature than Nick, was up next. I could tell from the expression on his face that he didn’t want to do it. But he didn’t want to look like a wimp in front of Nick, and he wanted to please Mama and be the winner of “the game.” He cocked back his arm and fired his punch, letting up right when he made contact with my stomach.
I tried to help him out by faking excruciating pain, but Mama wasn’t fooled for a minute.
She scowled at him. “I’ll give you another chance,” she said. “Best two out of three.”
The second time Nick again hit me as hard as he could. Jimmy D. put only slightly more behind his punch than he had before.
After the third round, Mama became aggravated with Jimmy D.’s weak punches and jumped up from bed. “You can’t hit any harder than that?” she said. “You sissy! Here, let me show you how it is done.” She came at me with a roundhouse that took me down to the floor. Then she declared Nick the winner and sent Jimmy D. to his room for the rest of the day.
Later on that night, I lay awake wondering what my br
others thought of Mama’s treatment of me, or if they even thought of me at all. I never got to talk to them about it to find out, but Mama had once told me they didn’t want to be around me because I was always dirty and reeked of urine.
I did stink. I wet the bed almost every night. But it wasn’t entirely my fault. Mama didn’t allow me to go to the bathroom without her permission, and there were days when she forgot to let me go at all, not even before she sent me to bed, so an accident was inevitable.
The mornings after, Mama made me take my mattress outside to air. Sometimes the backyard was full of the neighborhood boys playing basketball with my brothers. It was then, when I passed by them, wrestling with the cumbersome pee-stained mattress, that I saw the obvious shame on my brothers’ faces.
From holding my urine so much, I developed a problem with chronic kidney infections. At times they were so severe, I ran a high fever. Once my temperature spiked all the way up to 104 degrees, and I slipped into a state of delirium.
Daddy called the family doctor, who said to give me aspirin and put cold washcloths on my forehead and chest. But in spite of his efforts, Daddy couldn’t bring my temperature back down to normal.
He took me to the doctor, who said the infections were caused from not taking in enough liquids. He said I needed to drink at least eight to ten glasses of water a day to flush out my system, and he warned that if I didn’t, there might be permanent damage to my kidneys. He also told Daddy if I ever ran a high fever again, not to let it go on for long, but to put me in a tub full of ice water to get my body temperature down.
When we got back home, Daddy relayed to Mama what the doctor had said, and she in turn promised him she would make sure I drank plenty of water.
That afternoon she filled an empty pickle jar with tap water and gave it to me to drink. When I had finished it, she gave me another. She filled the jar again and again.
In a matter of minutes, I had to pee. But when I asked if I could go to the bathroom, she said no, and gave me more water. “Drink up,” she said, “doctor’s orders.”
As I struggled to hold my pee, sharp pains shot through my stomach and across my back. My clothing was drenched with sweat. I clamped my thighs together in a last desperate effort to keep from wetting on myself. But it was too late. I felt a warm stream running down my legs.
“For God’s sake, go to the bathroom, Weasel, before you piss all over the place!” she shouted.
For about two weeks, she continued to force water down me while making me retain my urine. Then she went back to depriving me of water, until I developed another bad kidney infection. Before long I was running a high fever, and Daddy had me sitting in a tub of ice water.
27
On July 11 I woke up early, hopeful that Mama would be nicer to me since it was my birthday.
She came to my room and got me up like she did every morning. I had wet the bed the night before, so she told me to take my mattress outside to air.
When I came back inside, she ordered me to strip off my clothes and stand in the hall until she called for me. Then she went into the bathroom.
I could hear her filling the tub with water. It had been a while since I’d had a bath, and I was glad I was going to get clean, remembering what she had said about my brothers not wanting to be around me because of my odor.
“Get your filthy ass in here!” she yelled out to me.
As I walked toward the bathroom, I noticed an unusual amount of steam drifting down the hallway. A feeling of dread came over me. Something was not right.
The air in the room was hot and heavy. It was hard to breathe. Mama was sitting on the edge of the tub. Ryan was standing close beside her with his body pressed firmly against hers.
She shut off the water. “Take your eyes off my son and get in the bathtub!”
My skin had become glazed with perspiration, and despite the heat from the water, I was shivering. I looked at the tub. Steam was hovering above the water.
She poked me in the arm with her finger. “I said get in!”
“It’s too hot!” I begged, “Please don’t make me!”
She shoved me toward the tub.
I screamed. Startled, Ryan jumped and ran from the room.
“Don’t make me throw you in!” she warned.
Slowly I lifted one leg over the side of the bathtub and then lowered it into the water, allowing my foot to barely touch the surface. The heat nipped at the tip of my toe, and I jerked my foot out, hobbling backward.
Before I fully regained my balance, she grabbed me by my hair and hurled me into the tub, face first. The scalding water stung my skin like a million angry bees. I could feel her clutch tighten at the back of my neck as she smashed my face into the rubber mat at the bottom of the tub.
All at once the threat of drowning closed in, and I could no longer feel the heat from the water. Summonsing all my strength, I fought back, clawing at the wet porcelain all around me. Finally I slithered free from her grip. Holding on to the side of the tub, I pulled myself up, and sucked in air.
“What is wrong with you,” she asked, trying to make her voice sound kind. “You need a bath, you smell like pee!” she said, and pushed me in again.
I scratched her face and arms and grabbed her blouse, pulling her down with me.
“Why are you fighting me?” she asked. “I’m just trying to wash your hair!”
But I knew better. I knew what she was doing to me wasn’t right. Although my strength was no match for hers, my endurance was. I continued fighting, breaking free of her grip again and again, until she gave up and told me to get out and put my clothes back on.
Later, I was standing in the hallway when, weak from fatigue, I started swaying from side to side. Suddenly I collapsed to the floor.
Mama became enraged when she saw me. “What’s the matter? Are you tired?” she said, in the same sarcastic way she had earlier in the day when she was trying to force my head into scalding water. “I’ll show you what it really feels like to be tired.” She sat up in bed and propped her pillow behind her back so she could better see me. “Get up and start doing deep knee bends,” she said. “Do them until I tell you to stop. And I want you to squat low when you go down. I want to see your butt touch the backs of your heels.”
As I exercised, something Grandma Storm had once told me came to my mind. “You’re an awfully skinny girl, Tuesday,” she had said, “but you have long, strong legs. It’s the sign of a thoroughbred, you know.”
I shut my eyes and tried to recreate her image from memory—her kind face that always glowed under the halo of her silver hair, the softness in her pewter eyes. “Long strong legs, long strong legs, long strong legs,” I chanted under my breath.
After I had done nearly one hundred deep knee bends, my thighs and calves cramped. Another fifty and they went numb. Then, when I was in the butt-to-heel position, my knees locked up, and once again I collapsed to the floor in a beaten heap.
“Please, Mama, please let me stop,” I begged. “I won’t do it anymore, I promise.” Just as soon as the words had escaped my lips, I wanted to eat them back up again. I knew I wasn’t supposed to talk unless I was asked a question, but I couldn’t help it; I was drunk from fatigue.
“How dare you talk to me?” she said, gnarling her face. “I didn’t give you permission to speak.”
There was nothing left to do now but await my punishment. I slumped against the wall, pulled my knees up close to my chest, buried my face in my arms, and cried.
“Just go to bed, Weasel!” she screamed. “Get out of my sight!”
I jumped up and ran to my room. For the first time in my life, I was glad my birthday was over.
28
Mama tossed aside the magazine she’d been reading and sprang from her bed. Standing in my usual place outside her room, I watched out the corner of my eye as she went over to her chest of drawers, and began rummaging through her clothes.
When she had found what she was searching for, she slung it
to me. It slid across the hallway floor and wrapped around my ankles. “Put that on,” she said.
It was a turquoise green two-piece swimsuit, an old one of hers. I picked it up and examined it, puzzled. I had no idea why she wanted me to put it on, but it didn’t make any difference, because I always obeyed her command, without hesitation, without questions, regardless of how outlandish her order seemed.
After I had changed into the suit, she went to the linen closet in the hallway and did some more rummaging. This time she pulled out an old blanket. Now I was even more confused.
“I’m sick of looking at you standing there in the hallway all of the time.” She handed me the blanket. “Take this out into the backyard, spread it on the ground, and lay in the sun.” Then, as an afterthought she added, “Some color on your homely face couldn’t hurt it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and then hurried along before she changed her mind.
I walked outside, and the screen door snapped shut behind me. Suddenly I became frightened; the yard was much bigger than I had remembered.
I stood there on the patio for a minute. I looked over at Nick and Jimmy D., who were in a far corner of the yard, under the mimosa tree where Daddy had built the tree house, talking to some neighborhood boys. They all turned at once when they heard the screen door slam. When they saw it was me who had come out, their faces immediately took on expressions of bewilderment.
