Girlchild (10 page)
I
see my brothers’ shadows in the slumped shoulders on barstools, in the muscles of Marc’s back as he rides his bike down his driveway and onto the Calle. And what all these boys have in common is that they’re gone, moving away, walking away, drinking themselves away. They’re not sticking around. The brothers came to visit once, making the trip through the Sierras together to celebrate Bob’s twenty-first birthday. Mama was so excited she wore curlers to bed the night before and traded shifts with Pigeon only so she and Grandma could take them all to the Truck Stop anyway, to show them off, and then she got so drunk they had to carry her home.
see my brothers’ shadows in the slumped shoulders on barstools, in the muscles of Marc’s back as he rides his bike down his driveway and onto the Calle. And what all these boys have in common is that they’re gone, moving away, walking away, drinking themselves away. They’re not sticking around. The brothers came to visit once, making the trip through the Sierras together to celebrate Bob’s twenty-first birthday. Mama was so excited she wore curlers to bed the night before and traded shifts with Pigeon only so she and Grandma could take them all to the Truck Stop anyway, to show them off, and then she got so drunk they had to carry her home.
They weren’t in much better shape than she was, and as they tucked her in on the couch I listened to their voices from my bed, where I pretended to be asleep, when the hall light came on and one of their heads popped into the doorway, checking on me. He stood a second and then came to the edge of the bed. “Hey, Sister.” I kept my eyes shut but I could tell it was Ronnie because he was the only one who called me that. It was hard to pretend to be asleep with him so close, so I gave up.
“Hey.”
“Mom’s sleeping on the couch tonight.” I didn’t figure he’d want to know that this was not a news flash, so I didn’t say anything, and he went on, “I just don’t want you to worry if she’s still there in the morning.”
He sounded so tired from driving not just to the Calle that day but all his truck-driving life, so I said, “I heard.”
“All right then,” he said, and Bob’s voice came down the hall, asking if he wanted a beer. “Goodnight, Sister.”
Bob asked if I was awake. “Nope, sleeping like a baby,” Ronnie answered, and in between beers cracking open, quiet at first, I heard tales that grew louder of how big I’d gotten, how small I used to be, about Santa Cruz and me riding in a kid’s seat on the back of Winston’s bike long enough for both of us to tumble to the ground and about the time that Ronnie was swinging at golf balls they’d taken from the De Laveaga Golf Course and he’d hit me smack in the eye with one. “My ass was more bruised than Ror’s eye when Mom got done with me.” I didn’t remember any of this and was starting to feel glad, figuring that older brothers are dangerous creatures to have around and I was lucky to be alive. And that part is true. Turns out I was lucky to have been born at all and brothers aren’t the only ones who can be dangerous. As the talk turned to Starvation Ridge and the cabin where my brothers first lived, I heard secondhand from Winston how Mama broke down one night, when he was just fourteen, and told him about her episode.
“Episode, that’s what she called it,” Winston said, and with that one word his voice turns from the good times of bar talk to a man’s voice, the voice of the biggest brother with a story to tell. I listened as he retold it, listened like Gene and Ronnie and Bob did too, all of us hearing it for the first time, together and alone, and Mama sleeping through it all, her deaf ear turned to the room. The story swirled like smoke through the house and as I fell asleep I could see the pictures it made, what my brothers might’ve become if Winston hadn’t decided to move them. If they’d stayed with Mama, settled on the Calle, they’d be just four more boys who didn’t know what to do with their hands, but they made it out, and now they’ve got families and food on the table and their teeth are still in their mouths.
F
rom the inside of the shop-room door, a sign reminds, SAFETY GOGGLES. Woodshop is life’s anteroom for Calle boys, whose next stop will be either the pen or vocational school, the boob tube or Jiffy Lube, where boys like my brothers, but with faces still soft with peach fuzz, will ache their backs for seven bucks an hour and no dental under cars owned by strangers who will sit and read their newspapers in the waiting room, turn their pages, check their watches, and get up to wash the newsprint down the drain. Boys, like Marc, who will never in their lives sit down to table without black under their nails, no matter how red their skin from scrubbing. These boys, who will grow up to work their bones down to nothing for free coffee but no union, are entreated to STAY FOCUSED when working in the shop, and they do. But for all their focus around the lathe and jigsaw, for all their concentration and success with both tongue and groove, they will still go from this class straight back to the working class, will whittle their lives away and wake at night to the memory of the shop teacher’s severed finger, how it dirtied the ice that cradled it as he was rushed to the hospital, and how he held on to the bucket himself with his remaining good hand, his finger pointing a warning from its bed of ice now bled pink as morning sky, PAY ATTENTION.
rom the inside of the shop-room door, a sign reminds, SAFETY GOGGLES. Woodshop is life’s anteroom for Calle boys, whose next stop will be either the pen or vocational school, the boob tube or Jiffy Lube, where boys like my brothers, but with faces still soft with peach fuzz, will ache their backs for seven bucks an hour and no dental under cars owned by strangers who will sit and read their newspapers in the waiting room, turn their pages, check their watches, and get up to wash the newsprint down the drain. Boys, like Marc, who will never in their lives sit down to table without black under their nails, no matter how red their skin from scrubbing. These boys, who will grow up to work their bones down to nothing for free coffee but no union, are entreated to STAY FOCUSED when working in the shop, and they do. But for all their focus around the lathe and jigsaw, for all their concentration and success with both tongue and groove, they will still go from this class straight back to the working class, will whittle their lives away and wake at night to the memory of the shop teacher’s severed finger, how it dirtied the ice that cradled it as he was rushed to the hospital, and how he held on to the bucket himself with his remaining good hand, his finger pointing a warning from its bed of ice now bled pink as morning sky, PAY ATTENTION.
W
hen Mama was fifteen, she started babysitting after school for a lady named Clovie who lived up on Highway 9. Clovie was twenty-two, already with six kids, but this wasn’t too much for Mama because if she stayed home after school she would have to take care of her sisters anyway and no pay. At Clovie’s, Mama did almost the same work, for money, and most important, got to spend her evenings in a cabin built back from Highway 9 on a westward-facing hilltop of the Santa Cruz Mountains. She would rush up the highway after school, hitchhiking rides from families still sandy from the beach, to get to the cabin in time to see Clovie off to work, to get the kids sitting down to dinner before the sun began to set so she could sit too and watch it sink into the trees that climbed up the hill she never stopped calling Starvation Ridge.
hen Mama was fifteen, she started babysitting after school for a lady named Clovie who lived up on Highway 9. Clovie was twenty-two, already with six kids, but this wasn’t too much for Mama because if she stayed home after school she would have to take care of her sisters anyway and no pay. At Clovie’s, Mama did almost the same work, for money, and most important, got to spend her evenings in a cabin built back from Highway 9 on a westward-facing hilltop of the Santa Cruz Mountains. She would rush up the highway after school, hitchhiking rides from families still sandy from the beach, to get to the cabin in time to see Clovie off to work, to get the kids sitting down to dinner before the sun began to set so she could sit too and watch it sink into the trees that climbed up the hill she never stopped calling Starvation Ridge.
Before long, Clovie’s man Gene started coming home early, before Clovie even, and pretty soon Gene was insisting on giving pretty Mama rides home in his rusting Ford truck, rides that curved real slow down the dark side of the mountain and made Mama forget that she was a broken-toothed girl with baby food on her dress, rides that finally ended up in her getting pregnant with my oldest brother, Winston. Sometime after that, Grandma made their wedding happen. (Shotgun-style, I’d always heard, and cliché as it is, I do enjoy the image of Grandma with a shotgun up against one bony shoulder, promising real business with both barrels, a half-smoked Camel hanging out of one side of her mouth, her
voice like gravel in a trailer-park playground. Another Calle stereotype born from the real: sometimes you need the threat of buckshot to get a man’s feet pointed in the right direction long enough for his head to follow.)
voice like gravel in a trailer-park playground. Another Calle stereotype born from the real: sometimes you need the threat of buckshot to get a man’s feet pointed in the right direction long enough for his head to follow.)
Mama moved up to live in the cabin with Gene at the summit of Highway 9 as fast as Clovie and her brood moved down, with all the cursing that accompanies such changes in circumstance. Winston’s little brothers followed hot on his heels, but aside from the moments Gene spent creating his sons, Mama was left with the television for her company and comfort.
By the time Mama was nineteen, she had four children of her own to watch on the mountaintop and it was then that Gene started doing just what he’d done before. His truck crawled up the hill later and later each night, and sometimes when he came home he didn’t smell like the ocean at all. This was when Mama, schooled as she was on the melodrama of soap operas, decided nap time had come to the top of the hill.
My brothers were told to lie down and while they were getting quiet, the windows were latched, and the screen door and front door too. And then the stove. And then the gas, turned as easily as the TV’s knob during a commercial she couldn’t stand. The only thing Mama didn’t shut up tight was the oven door, she left that open while she went to the living room to lay herself down.
Nap time had barely begun when my good brothers’ bad father pulled his pickup into the driveway, on time for once, with a bucket of fresh fish in the back. Gene lugged the fish onto the porch, but when he found that the screen door wouldn’t budge and there was no answer from inside and a strange smell in the air, he pulled the screen door right off the frame, then kicked the door right off its hinges and went right inside. He turned off the oven, opened the windows, and was cleaning the fish before my brothers knew what happened. And that’s the only good thing I can say about Gene Hendrix, Sr. He saved my mama’s life. But he only saved it once.
I
’ve just blown out the candles on my tenth birthday cake and I’m cutting the first lucky slice when Grandma says the place looks like a baby shower and we must be expecting twins. The streamers are leftovers from the Truck Stop’s Easter picnic that Mama brought home and strung up, standing on the chair herself and not letting me help. I recognize the baby blue and pink pastels, but when Mama says, “Don’t even joke,” I get the feeling the party’s over.
’ve just blown out the candles on my tenth birthday cake and I’m cutting the first lucky slice when Grandma says the place looks like a baby shower and we must be expecting twins. The streamers are leftovers from the Truck Stop’s Easter picnic that Mama brought home and strung up, standing on the chair herself and not letting me help. I recognize the baby blue and pink pastels, but when Mama says, “Don’t even joke,” I get the feeling the party’s over.
“Ice cream,” I say, which is what I want to do when I see Mama’s jaw setting like that, scream, and I head for the kitchen. Mint chocolate chip is my favorite, and I’m coming back with a new half gallon of it when I hear Mama’s voice, my name in it, tight, like she’s trying not to cry. I stop, hide myself in the tall grass of the hallway like an Easter egg in our pastel house, and listen.
“She’s going to be fine, Jo,” Grandma says. “She’s going to be a beautiful woman.”
“That’s the problem.”
“You know it’s not. If beauty was the problem, all the Ugly Stepsisters would grow up to be Old Maids. You know what the problem is.”
I hold my breath because I don’t know about Mama, but I for sure do not know what the problem is, and I’m more than ready to hear it. I can’t believe any of us actually knows what the problem is
and that Grandma might actually spill it right now, right where my Easter egg ears can hear.
and that Grandma might actually spill it right now, right where my Easter egg ears can hear.
“The problem is not treating yourself like you deserve and it’s
your
problem, Jo, not R.D.’s. You take every wrong thing on this earth straight to your heart, like it’s a sentence on you, everything’s your fault.” Grandma laughs a little. “Tried to top yourself off over the first man who stepped out on you. Oh darlin’.”
your
problem, Jo, not R.D.’s. You take every wrong thing on this earth straight to your heart, like it’s a sentence on you, everything’s your fault.” Grandma laughs a little. “Tried to top yourself off over the first man who stepped out on you. Oh darlin’.”
“I was a kid, Ma,” Mama says.
“Like you’re so grown now, Johanna Ruth,” and now Grandma really does laugh. “I wouldn’t be your age again for anything in the world.”
“I’m just afraid that she’s going to grow up like me no matter how I try to get out of her way.”
“That’s the opposite of what she needs. Why don’t you chew on that one? Be
in
her way.” My fingers are sticking to the ice-cream box that is glittering with frost from the freezer and I’m about to go in when Grandma adds, “And stop blaming yourself. It wasn’t your fault. Or if it was yours, then it was mine, the whole Calle’s.”
in
her way.” My fingers are sticking to the ice-cream box that is glittering with frost from the freezer and I’m about to go in when Grandma adds, “And stop blaming yourself. It wasn’t your fault. Or if it was yours, then it was mine, the whole Calle’s.”
Everything’s quiet and I wonder what kind of quiet it is. If it’s old hatred for the Hardware Man. If it’s the old fight about the day Grandma couldn’t stop having one more pull on that shiny handle on the Strip and finally won a jackpot for Grandpa Gun when he found me waiting at the school gate alone, regardless of whether our story that day, his and mine, was anything like what Mama remembered of her own. If Mama’s ever let that go, I can’t tell.
The silence is broken by Mama, though, and she doesn’t sound angry, “I can’t change it and neither can you, Ma.”
“There’s the smart kid I raised. Start carrying that bit of wisdom around like you do everything else, would you please?”
Mama laughs, quiet. There’s a pause, and I use it to put it all together, that my brothers’ story that night was true and not the fairy tale I hoped, what it means that Grandma can laugh about it, and that Mama is afraid for me, and guilty, and holding on to it
tight. I’m trying to put it together enough to be cool when I go back in, and that’s when Grandma says, “R.D., you can come in now, before the ice cream melts all over the hallway.”
tight. I’m trying to put it together enough to be cool when I go back in, and that’s when Grandma says, “R.D., you can come in now, before the ice cream melts all over the hallway.”
I turn the corner, too surprised to not give myself away, but Mama smiles. “My double-digit kid,” she says, and pats the seat beside her.
Grandma keeps on, talking now about how we need a new table, “spruce the place up.” She moves her hand across the scarred wood. “You should start saving up, Jo. This old thing reminds me of the Santa Cruz house after the fire.” She winks at me. “And that, Bird-day Girl, is another story.”
I
’m writing a letter to my brothers. I barely know where I’m sending it to, and it almost feels like I don’t even know where I’m sending it from. Part of me wants to write to those kids they were on the Ridge, their heads barely out of Mama’s oven and being put back in it, and say that Mama’s different now and they should come back more often, and say that Mama’s different but she still needs saving. But instead I write to them where they are now and say things that come from where I know they want me to be.
’m writing a letter to my brothers. I barely know where I’m sending it to, and it almost feels like I don’t even know where I’m sending it from. Part of me wants to write to those kids they were on the Ridge, their heads barely out of Mama’s oven and being put back in it, and say that Mama’s different now and they should come back more often, and say that Mama’s different but she still needs saving. But instead I write to them where they are now and say things that come from where I know they want me to be.
Dear Ronnie,
Thank you for the lip gloss you sent for my birthday. I like the chocolate-flavored one the best. I bet Tracy picked it out and I hope you’ll tell her I really like it. Mama wrapped it for you with a silver bow and left it for me this morning to open before school. Later on we had cake and ice cream and Grandma came over and she called it my Bird-day about a thousand times. Did she sing Happy Bird-day to you when you were little?
I just wanted to say that I liked your visit and you should come back more often.
Please tell Win and Gene and Bob I said hi when you talk to them because I think you talk a lot to each other. You can always call here too, and talk to me, and I’ll take a message for Mama.
Maybe when you come back you’ll bring my little cousins. I can babysit while you and Tracy go out. I’ve read the Child Care section of the
Girl Scout Handbook
about forty times, it’s under “Health and Safety.”
Maybe when you come back you’ll bring my little cousins. I can babysit while you and Tracy go out. I’ve read the Child Care section of the
Girl Scout Handbook
about forty times, it’s under “Health and Safety.”
Love,
Your sister, R.D.
Your sister, R.D.
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