by Byrne, Leigh
She permitted me to empty the bucket once a week, on Saturday, if she remembered. After sitting for several days, the odor of the urine was beyond foul—almost unbearable in such a cramped space. When I breathed through my mouth to keep from smelling it, I could taste it. Sometimes I pressed my nose to the crack at the bottom of the door in an effort to suck in some of the clean air outside my room.
45
Before I knew it, summer was upon me. I was worried about how I would get enough to eat when I no longer had access to the cafeteria food at school. Thankfully Mama had plenty of work lined up to keep me busy, and that meant more time out of my room, which meant more opportunities to steal food.
At the top of Mama’s list of jobs was to move a huge coal pile from out of the basement. She wanted me to carry the coal, scuttle by scuttle, up the stairs, outside to the far end of the yard, and then dump it behind a shed. This was good news to me because a shower and toilet was down in the basement. Not only could I go to the bathroom and clean myself up every now and then, I would also have access to plenty of drinking water.
The first day of summer break, early in the morning, Mama issued the uniform she wanted me to wear to haul the coal: a pair of her bright pink knee-length pants—she called them pedal pushers—and a long-sleeved red and yellow plaid shirt that had once belonged to Jimmy D.
The clothes were another one of her attempts at humiliating me. She thought I would be embarrassed to wear them outside in front of my brothers and their friends. But she was spitting in the wind with that one, because I had long ago moved beyond the point of embarrassment, to a place where such things didn’t even faze me.
Every day, all day, I hauled the coal up from the basement, unless it rained. I didn’t haul it when it rained, not because Mama didn’t want me to get wet, but because when it rained a fair amount, the basement flooded, and this created a whole new job for me. She then gave me a Mason jar to dip the water from the basement floor and pour into a bucket. Once the bucket was full, I took it up the stairs and emptied it outside. As soon as the basement was dry again, I went back to the coal pile.
After a while hauling the coal began to take its toll on my body. The muscles in my arms and shoulders ached deeply, and I had a nasty bruise on the side of the thigh I used to support the bucket of coal as I carried it up the stairs. I was often weak because I never ate breakfast and rarely got supper. Usually Mama fed me once, around lunchtime. But it was not uncommon for me to go an entire day without anything to eat at all.
At first I lived off the fat I had gained from working in the cafeteria during the school year, but with all the exercise I was getting, and limited food, it didn’t take long for my ribs to start protruding and my face to go gaunt again. Soon I had to fold the pedal pushers over twice at the waist to keep them from falling off. Even then they slid down my hips as I walked, and I had to stop every once in a while, put down the bucket of coal, and pull them back up again.
I thought of nothing but food all day. At night I pressed my cheek to the floor to smell the evening’s supper as it seeped from the crack under my door. Every time Mama passed my room, I got anxious, thinking she might be coming to feed me. After so many of these nights lying awake hungry, consumed by thoughts of food, desperation took hold, and I decided to break out of my room and steal something to eat from the kitchen.
The only way to get out was to conquer the buzzer lock on the outside of my door. Every chance I got, I took a quick look at it, each time observing a different part, engraving every detail in my mind. First I studied the slotted groove that held the chain, permitting it to slide back and forth, then the length of the chain, and placement of the notch that released it. I also took into consideration how high it was mounted on the door.
I monitored the family’s nightly habits, trying to pinpoint the best time to slip out. Because my room was right under the stairs, I knew from their creaking when everyone went up for the night. I noticed once they were upstairs, they rarely came back down again. They would lie in their beds and watch television until they fell asleep; every so often I heard footsteps across the floor when one of them got up to go to the bathroom.
When there were only a couple of buckets of coal left in the basement, Mama came down and made an announcement. “Nick and I have discussed it, and we’ve decided to burn coal in the fireplaces this winter. So that means we’re going to need all the coal moved back down here to the basement.”
I could tell from the smirk on her face it pleased her to pass this information on to me. She thought the news would be upsetting, and that I would be hurt to hear she and Daddy were still united against me. But I didn’t care. I had long ago given up on Daddy. Actually, I was glad I would be hauling the coal a while longer. The mindless work afforded me more time to think, more chances to study the lock and perfect my plan to break out of my room for food.
For almost two weeks, I traced over my mental image of the lock on my bedroom door before I felt confident enough to make an attempt to disengage it. With a determination driven by my hunger, I watched the family’s shadows flit across the floor, waiting for them to disappear. Once they had all gone upstairs, I listened for their movements to end. When the house was silent, and I was positive everyone was asleep, I proceeded with my plan.
In order for the chain of the lock to be released, it had to be slid across a four-inch groove, and then pulled out through a notch. I figured I could do this with a wire clothes hanger, and had already put one aside that I had found in the back of the closet in my room.
I straightened the hanger out enough to reach the lock, but not so much that it would lose its stability, and then I shaped it into a slight arc so it would fit around the edge of the door. I left the hooked part of the hanger bent, adjusting it slightly, so I could use it to grab the chain.
If I opened the door even a hair too much, the buzzer would go off, and I would be caught. Carefully I cracked it open about three inches. According to my calculations, it was as far as the chain on the lock would stretch without setting off the alarm. I stuck the hook end of the wire hanger through the crack, extending it around the edge of the door. Then directing the wire up toward the lock, I sought out the chain with the hook.
As I tried to slip the chain onto the end of the hanger, I breathed in the air outside my room. It was not stale like my air, and did not stink of urine. It was warmer and smelled like food from supper, and the soap from my brother’s showers.
Suddenly these scents from their world sent the reality of what I was doing sweeping through me. Fear started at my toes, and then shot up my body to the tip of my fingers, like an electrical current. Visions of Mama coming down the stairs flashed through my head.
I could not get the chain to go onto the end of the hanger. After a while, I couldn’t maintain the awkward position any longer and had to retract my arm to rest it. Once I had regained my strength, I tried again, pressing my jaw firmly against the door facing, straining to see out as far as I could through the opening.
Hours passed of failing to hook the chain, resting, and then failing again. Finally I gave up and went to bed hungry and nail-spitting mad.
46
By the time I had moved the coal pile from behind the shed, back to the basement, where it was in the first place, Mama had another job waiting for me. She wanted me to paint the two wooden storage sheds behind our house. But first I had to scrape off all the old paint that was chipping away. With only a couple of weeks before school started back up, I figured it would be my last project of the summer.
The morning I started to work on the sheds, everyone in the family was outside, except Mama. Nick, now seventeen, was backing out of the driveway in his car. Jimmy D. and Ryan were pitching a baseball back and forth. Daddy, who had decided to trim some of the tree branches that had grown too close to the house, was rounding up the tools he needed for the job. When he had to walk by me on his way to one of the sheds, he acted as if he didn’t see me. I watched him drag th
e ladder across the yard, and then prop it against a towering maple tree, extending it as far up the trunk as it would reach.
With the chain saw in one hand, he slowly pulled his large frame up each rung of the ladder with the other. Once he had made it to the top, he wrestled with the cumbersome saw to bring it in front of him, and then situated himself on one of the limbs.
He cranked the chainsaw, but the motor wouldn’t turn over. He cranked it again. Still no luck. After he had pulled at the cord several times, it belched a puff of gray smoke and sputtered to a reluctant start. The raspy noise the saw made annoyed Jimmy D. and Ryan, and they stopped pitching ball and headed for the house.
While I scraped the sheds, I rethought my plan to sneak out of my room for food. I focused on the lock on my door, and the clear mental picture I still had of it. I knew it would be difficult to muster up the gumption to try again, to risk the chance of getting caught. But I’d made a promise to myself to not give up next time, no matter how tired I got, no matter how scared I became.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of something falling, and looked over to see that it was a huge tree limb Daddy had just cut. It hit the ground solid, reaching across the yard. The thickness of the wood caused the chainsaw to stall, so Daddy cranked it up again, and this time it started without a fight.
Smaller tree limbs continued to fall one right after another as he cut them, each one meeting the ground with a crunch. After the first few, I became accustomed to the motion and the sound, and they no longer distracted me from my work.
After several minutes the chainsaw stopped again. I assumed Daddy had cut another thick limb, but nothing dropped to the ground. So I thought maybe he had finished trimming, and I expected to see him climbing down the ladder. When he didn’t come down, out of curiosity, I looked to see what he was doing. Halfway up the trunk of the tree, I saw red streaks. I traced the color to Daddy’s leg, where blood gushed forth in a steady stream from a deep laceration on the front of his thigh.
Looking up at his face, I saw it had lost color. In his eyes I saw his fear, his desperation. No one was outside but the two of us. I stood staring at him. If I didn’t do something to help him soon, he would die up there at the rate he was losing blood. I was his only hope. Now he was the one who was helpless, and I was the one who was standing by watching him suffer, doing nothing.
I ran up to the back storm door and banged on it with both fists. Mama appeared. “Daddy cut himself!” I screamed out, pointing up at the tree.
Just then he dropped the chain saw. His blood splashed from it when it hit the ground. Mama stared at the bloody saw, blankly. It took a few seconds before it registered in her mind what had happened. She stepped one foot outside and looked up the tree to where Daddy was, and then ran back into the house, screaming.
By this time Daddy was struggling to make his way down the ladder using one hand to put pressure to his wounded leg. Mama came back out with a stack of towels and the car keys. Jimmy D. and Ryan were on her heels. “We’ve got to get your daddy to the emergency room,” she said, locking the house behind her.
She helped Daddy hobble to the car. “I’m too nervous to drive,” she said, her voice trembling. “Where’s Nick Jr.?”
“He’s gone,” I said. “I saw him leave in his car about thirty minutes ago.”
Jimmy D., who was eleven at the time, in a wild act of bravado got behind the wheel of the station wagon. “I’ll drive, Mama,” he said.
“You don’t know how to drive!” She pulled Jimmy D. from the car. “Get in the back with your brother. I’ll have to do it.” She looked over at me. “You stay here, Weasel. If Nick Jr. comes home before I do, tell him what happened, and that we’ve gone to the emergency room.”
The wheels of the car churned gravel in the driveway as she backed out and sped away in a cloud of chalky dust. Beside me, at my feet, the chain saw lay in a puddle of blood. Fragments of Daddy’s skin clung to its teeth. A trail of blood ran from the tree to the driveway, stopping where he’d got into the car.
I headed around the house to check and see if the front door was locked too. It was, and so were all the windows. I couldn’t get inside to get anything to eat, but I took advantage of the opportunity to drink from the water hose.
About three hours later, Mama returned. Nick Jr. pulled in the driveway right behind her. They stayed home long enough for Mama to lock me in my room, and to gather some of Daddy’s things together. I heard her tell Nick Jr. that Daddy needed several stitches in his leg, and had to be admitted into the hospital because of blood loss.
With no one home but me, it was the perfect time to try once again to unlock my door and get something to eat from the kitchen. I readied the wire hanger, double checking to make sure it was curved enough to make contact with the lock, and then I opened the door and slid it through.
The hook of the hanger slipped easily into one of the links of the chain after only a few tries. Gingerly I moved the hanger forward, guiding the chain along the groove, while simultaneously closing the door as the tension increased. A couple of times I dropped the hanger, and had to start all over again. But I worked with more tenacity than before, pressing on. Finally I heard the chain drop.
I eased open the door and walked out of my room, my heart pounding against my chest so hard it hurt. It felt strange being free to roam about the house without Mama’s supervision, and even though I knew no one was home but me, I was still scared. For so long I had wanted nothing more than to unlock my door so I could get out and steal some food, but now that it was happening, all I wanted was to get it over with so I could get back to the safety of my room.
When I got to the kitchen, my attention shot in all different directions. I looked in the pantry. There was so much to choose from—peanut butter, cookies, and potato chips—I didn’t know where to start.
I opened the refrigerator, and using my bare hands, stuffed my mouth with whatever I could grab—leftover fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and chocolate pie. I decided to eat as much as I could, and then stash some food in my room for later. After I had filled my stomach, I grabbed a package of graham crackers, a jar of peanut butter, and a loaf of bread, and headed back to my room.
Just as I got there, something dawned on me, and I stopped in my tracks. I couldn’t take an entire loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter without Mama getting suspicious. I went back to the kitchen and searched the cabinet drawers until I found some plastic Baggies. I stuffed one full of peanut butter, spoon and all, and in another I crammed several slices of bread. I thought it would be alright to take the whole package of crackers because there were still two more left.
Before I left the kitchen, as a special tribute to Mama, I got out the orange juice from the refrigerator and raised it high in the air. “A toast to you, Mama,” I said, drinking right from the carton. She was always afraid I would somehow “contaminate” her family with my germs. Then I gathered up the food and took it back to my room.
Once the door was shut behind me, I felt safe once again, and proud of what I had pulled off. It was when I was hiding the spoils of my effort under a loose floor plank in the closet that it hit me: I have to lock the door back! I had been so concerned with getting it unlocked, I hadn’t studied on a way to lock it back again.
My hands shaking, I got the wire hanger, hooked the chain onto the end of it, and then shut the door as much as I could. The problem was, as I tried to move the chain toward the notch, it kept sliding down the length of the wire, or falling off before I could connect.
Hours passed. My arm cramped and quivered. Sweat from my hand trickled down the back of my forearm and dripped off the tip of my elbow.
I stopped, took a break, and then started to work again, propelled by the thought that Mama would be home soon. I guided the chain up to the lock, and heard it miraculously drop back into the notch. The sound of it was almost as sweet as the orange juice.
47
After a lot of practice, I became adept
at unlocking and then locking back the door to my bedroom. Soon it was routine for me to slip into the kitchen for food at night after everyone else in the family was asleep. It was a good thing too, because school had started back up, and this year there were no cafeteria jobs available.
One night, after I had finished my homework, I was hungry for a snack, and decided to get something to eat from my stash of food. I went into the short closet, and lifted the loose plank, and then stuck my hand inside the hole, and felt around. It was empty. Panic crawled up my spine. It’s gone! My food is all gone! She knows!
The next morning Mama brought my school clothes to me. “Missing something last night, were you?” She laughed, bending at the waist and slapping her hands on the front of her thighs. “I caught you, again, didn’t I, Weasel?” Although she was laughing on the outside, I knew deep down she was pissed off because I had managed to get one over on her.
She found the bent coat hanger in my room, and fumed for days trying to figure out how I had used it to unlock the door. In the meantime, she had to come up with other sleeping arrangements for me. I was relocated upstairs to an unfinished attic room, right down the hall from her bedroom. Daddy moved my bed up, and I brought the bucket I used to pee in.
My new room had exposed rafters with nails poking through and a rough plywood floor. I didn’t like it as much as my room under the stairs because of all the itchy, gray insulation everywhere. But at least it had a window for me to look out.
Mama could watch me more closely up in the attic room; however, she still couldn’t sleep easy until she had found a way to keep me from sneaking out and getting into her kitchen again. She didn’t want to scar up any more of the wooden doors with another lock. She fretted over what to do for a few days. Finally Daddy came with the idea of wedging a two-by-four under my doorknob.
