by Lois Chapin
At railroad tracks when the roof lights came on
the driver said, “Quiet all,”
opened the door to check, we stopped talking
and continued our jokes in sign language.
I wasn’t allowed to play with kids on my street
so I didn’t know.
Bebe seemed to know.
She was the youngest of seven.
Maybe she knew, knew my mornings were hell.
Knew getting me off to school interrupted my mom
drawing cartoons of the secret messages from
the General Conference in Washington DC,
appointed to decipher their underground messages,
the ones they snuck into worldly novels,
forbidden movies
and TV shows like Bewitched.
“Kids couldn’t understand,” she’d say.
It was an important job.
Making me lumpy Cream of Wheat
interrupted her secret work.
If the whack of the wooden spoon
at the table didn’t make her point,
her bone-crushing hand squeeze
to tell me to pray by the front door, did.
I cried all the way to the bus stop.
Bebe knew.
I sat down on the cracked naugahyde
and she spider-whispered her fingers
in the hairs on the back of my neck.
My heart stopped racing.
My eyes focused.
The crane stopped our bus in slow motion,
smooshing the metal corner of the ceiling toward me.
The slow steel screech caught up on a delayed soundtrack.
Her face hit the beige bar.
Blood splattered across the B’s and L’s
of our Dots and Boxes game.
I don’t know when the ambulance siren stopped.
Her doctor dad drove back to the wounded bus
and picked her teeth up off the floor
and dropped them into a carton of milk.
The brace encouraging her front teeth to take root
looked like a shiny chrysalis.
She chewed little bites of my 10th birthday
cake with her back teeth.
I knew.
I reached over,
and light as butterfly wings,
tickled the hairs on the back of her neck.
Black and White and Read All Over
I’ve been trained to pretend
not to see,
but my shocked eyes disobey
and stare.
There’s crushed newsprint
on the green shag carpet,
the newsprint that delivers
her secret topsy-turvy
messages.
The newsprint we are forbidden
to read.
Yesterday’s
newsprint is covered
in blood.
Boy’s white briefs lay under the tapestry chair
made in my great-grandfather’s factory
before the public offering.
I’m deaf to the morning hymns
playing from the Grundig Majestic Console.
Last night’s screams
blast my ears.
“The wages of sin
is death!” she screamed.
Maybe this time
she really
did it.
A sin was bearing false witness
or any white lie, not honoring
our father and mother, which meant
immediate obedience to any long string
of commands
at any time.
Once I was beaten for breaking
the “thou shalt not kill” one
for examining the next-door neighbor kid’s squirt gun.
His pajama bottoms are wadded up
against the sliding glass door.
Of the four sets of eyes framed in the family picture,
my brother’s
are vacant.
A crushed tiny fistful of newspaper
peeks from under the sofa, evidence
of a futile attempt
at escape.
“Whatsoever thy hand findeth
to do,
do it
with all thy might.”
Maybe this time
her hand had obeyed that scripture
to the letter.
I startle
when my mother shouts,
“Get your brother up for breakfast.”
The escalating voices
and inevitable pleas for mercy
followed by
the sounds of a scrawny boy being beaten
by an obese woman
happened just about
every night.
But last night
she made him bleed
all over the paper, or maybe
she incited our father to participate.
She could do that by demanding he perform
his duties as head of the household
as commanded by the Bible,
if that didn’t move him to action,
screaming that he was going to give her cervical cancer
with his uncircumcised “peus”
usually did the trick.
Even a father’s natural protective nature
can be eroded
by enough
insults about his dick.
But whether one or both of them beat him
last night
the blood was evidence
his frail flesh was the target
of her rage.
“Lois!” her voice rings from the kitchen.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, Mother Dear,” I mutter.
My 12-year-old mind races
for answers. The blood clots
she made us look at in her toilet
every month
to show why we all needed
to wait on her for a few days,
was her own
blood.
This was my brother’s,
I was sure of it.
I remember a call from the school. Two boys
were teasing Sally Gray
from my brother’s class.
They were on the way to the playground
where the handrails were made of two-inch pipe.
Was my brother one of them?
Maybe he had just got caught
reading her Mad magazines
with the secret
religious words
just for her.
I walk into his room, doors aren’t allowed
to be closed.
“You awake?” I whisper.
He pulls the covers over his head
and turns his back to me.
“What happened?” I tug
at his bedspread.
“Nothin’
leave me alone.”
“You gotta get up, breakfast is ready.”
The clanging sounds in the kitchen
verify this.
His shoes and socks lay on the floor. Every now
and then
a large truck made the floor tremble
a little
as it rolled by on the freeway.
“Not hungry,” he says.
He barely ate anyway. She fed us different
food than she made
for herself.
We were given small portions
of barely edible food
the kind she determined was
“healthy.”
Daddy was allowed a couple bowls of cereal
after our rationed dinners
or a ceramic bowl of peanut butter and honey
swirled together.
But the church’s prophetess
wrote, inspired like the men
who wrote the Bible, that children
were not allowed anything
between meals,
we could only watch our father
eat his
envied treats.
Our stomachs growled lullabies
many nights.
“Come on you gotta get up,” I beg.
“Got a stomach ache,” he says.
This might work.
She might not want him to go to school
with open wounds for teachers to see.
He might be able to stay
in bed
with a stomach ache.
“What happened?” I ask again.
“Gary lifted up Sally’s skirt.
Mother thinks I did it.”
“Oh,” is all I say.
I go back to the kitchen and sit
at the table. In front of me
is one half of a broiled grapefruit.
My stomach roils. I feel
my knee-high socks slipping
down.
I say grace. “Our loving heavenly father…” I continue
saying words, but my thoughts
are jarred by the question
of what kind of god would make these rules?
I wasn’t grateful for broiled grapefruit.
Our home wasn’t kept safe last night.
Her screams of, “Wages of sin is death,”
punctuated by sharp blows
drown out my thoughts
and make me say,
“amen,”
unaware of where I am
in my prayer.
I feel guilty for being glad
it wasn’t me.
The woman who was molested
by the same uncle
that molested and raped her own mother
from the time she was nine,
set a glass of milk
in front of me.
“Drink this,”
she said.
I knew the thick white liquid
was five days past
its expiration date.
I prayed she would go look in
on my brother
so I could pour it down the sink
and run a little water after it,
but she watched me
from behind
while making a peanut butter
and margarine sandwich
with a soft apple
for my lunch.
I hoped my friends would have something
good to share.
She wouldn’t feed us any sugar, but we knew
that in the second drawer of the china cabinet
she kept a stash of candy.
Maybe he would have a chance to get a piece
of it today.
At last she left
and I heard the crumple of newspaper
in the living room.
The sour milk
and acid of cooked grapefruit
made my own stomach hurt.
But the thought of leaving him home
with her
today
made it hurt more.
Friday Evening Vespers
“You little imp!”
That was Seventh-Day Adventist
for “You fucking little cunt!”
Her nails flailed at my face.
I reached out and grabbed each of her thin
wrists with my hands.
The walls of my childhood kitchen
shrunk in around us.
This was the biggest family taboo.
I was defending myself
against her.
My mother
with starched black hair
piled on top
of her head,
her wild green eyes furious
and glaring I hadn’t met the deadline
of reorganizing the drawers
she had dumped on the floor
before Sabbath.
The smell of frying veggie burgers
with melting American cheese
filled the air.
The Review and Herald on the floor
was open to the page showing Friday night
sundown was exactly
five minutes ago.
Her huge breasts jostled
under the Hawaiian print muumuu.
A red plastic record adaptor for 45’s
of children’s Bible stories,
sat under the console
as it piped out Sabbath hymns.
Her sharp nails were inches
from my face,
but now I was taller than her
and my grip was more
than physical.
Her body relaxed
as her screech assaulted my ears.
I let go.
My cheeks burned from inside
my arms from the outside.
“No more.” I said it
this time.
I was no longer mute.
A few moments later I was confronted
by our house guest
for “man-handling”
my mother.
I held up
my scratched and bleeding
arms.
“This would have been
my face.”
The silence
was the best
vesper hymn
ever.
Currency Exchange Rate
I rake the hairnet off my head.
His purple Hot Wheels dragster
rolls under the sofa.
Again.
We kneel after crushed hands every night to pray.
Whack. Red welts. Doors are never to be shut.
Hysterical cackles forbid children’s laughter.
I stay silent.
Punishment for vacuum still on at 7:38.
Sundown.
Collect three tokens towards freedom.
“You have everything!”
Subtract two coupons.
Wear pants with flies in front.
Abomination.
Another token gone.
Give a child nothing she cries for.
“I’ll give you something to cry for.”
4.0 GPA. Add four trading cards.
Class president. Two points.
Baptism by immersion. Twenty-five coupons.
Bite my tongue that she dropped
out of high school at 16.
Choke down dinners with mold scraped off.
Six more merits.
Return the cross on a chain
to the bad boy in Canada.
Play hymns on the piano.
Stumble barefoot down the hall,
staggering, yanked by my hair.
Nine more coins in the bank. One for tithe.
“Yes Mother Dear,” purchased seven more credits
for the privilege of sweating in this echoing
sudsy room.
98 pounds cling to rubber grips. Clench my teeth.
113 degrees.
Clutch vibrating handles to
keep
the roaring machine from whirling me in circles.
Tongue-wagging sneakers grip at the slippery linoleum.
Over the floor stripper’s thunder I strain
to catch approaching footsteps.
Concentrate. Remember it’s safe here.
Focus on checker board squares.
Two round brushes spin towards each other, never colliding,
ripping last year’s wax from the speckled tiles.
I grip wood over my head,
the shaggy mop strands plunge into grey soapy water,
baptized in tears, sweat and Pine Sol.
Thirty percent of minimum wage,
no check, applies to tuition ledger
at the self-supporting academy.
14 year-old virtual pay.
Electricity off at 10.
Up and dressed before it’s back on.
Wind up the yellow smiley face alarm clock.
Sleep all night.
No arguing down the hall. There’s a hall monitor.
Locked alarmed doors keep the desert valley
and pool
safe,
from us.
The lists of rules don’t change.
Don’t change.
Don’t change.
Tater Tots, fries and mashed.
Three squares.
Don’t change.
Upper bunk roommate attacks
with butcher knife stolen from cafeteria.
Towel racks rip from plaster. Still less violent than home.
I turned in every last voucher,
for the opportunity to survive this attack.
Odd days girls hike. Even, boys.
Daily chapel with segregated seats and cafeteria entrances.
But always the same doors. Same doors. Same doors.
No beatings. No belts. No threats.
Shovel cow shit for a forbidden electric skillet.
Bag twenty sacks of chicken turd for the contraband radio.
Scrub a crusty cooking pot, so big I can climb inside.
Stainless Steel womb of predictability.
Homesickness, an illness other kids get.
Steel Wool scrubs away memories
caked-on hopes of freedom.
A dish machine spews plastic racks of scratched glasses,
in a haze of screaming steam.
The vertical shelved conveyer,
with glowing hot coils for veins,
spits back its squared pungent
boarding school toast.
Overhead sprayer scalds. I aim and squeeze again.
Black floor mats squeak to keep me grounded.
Ravenous garbage disposal growls,
gulps my fear and grinds my guilt.
I wad my hairnet into a ball and punch
fuzzy blue time onto a card.
If I run I can make it to the factory line on time,
to box Schlage doorknobs for families
who believe in closed doors.
I can study by flashlight.
