Girlchild (6 page)
I
t always seems Grandma is fooling in this letter, one-too-many gin beers leading her to trite talk about the dead, about the type of mother Mama might have been if she’d become a mother on purpose, maybe, or gotten a later start at it, or liked living well enough in the first place that introducing the option to a little face not unlike her own would be a fine idea. Grandma’s thinking is that when and if my time to be a mother ever comes, I will step into the role that terrifies me more than any and with some confidence that I know what it means. Mother. That’s what all Grandma’s underlines and exclamation points are for, to try to make me believe a thing I know she lost faith in a long time ago, as if extra ink can make up for using the wrong words in the first place, can turn a lie into the truth or blot out all the mistakes a Hendrix ever made in caring for her children and letting them go. Grandma couldn’t hold on to Mama and her sisters, Grandpa’s pathologies hid so much more obediently than did hers, hiding and biding their time. The State awarded Grandpa all four of his daughters, in gingham dresses and throats collared with lace, and he grabbed on to them with both hands, tore them apart, and put them back together so confused that by the time Grandma had pushed the custody papers through every in- and out-box of the State of California to get them back, her girls thought she was the enemy. Their mother’s return shined a light on their pain, and like little girls always do, they thought this meant she was the one
to be feared while the man with the big hands, who had used them in ways they would spend their lives struggling to overcome, was thought of with longing as dirty and chewed as his fingernails.
t always seems Grandma is fooling in this letter, one-too-many gin beers leading her to trite talk about the dead, about the type of mother Mama might have been if she’d become a mother on purpose, maybe, or gotten a later start at it, or liked living well enough in the first place that introducing the option to a little face not unlike her own would be a fine idea. Grandma’s thinking is that when and if my time to be a mother ever comes, I will step into the role that terrifies me more than any and with some confidence that I know what it means. Mother. That’s what all Grandma’s underlines and exclamation points are for, to try to make me believe a thing I know she lost faith in a long time ago, as if extra ink can make up for using the wrong words in the first place, can turn a lie into the truth or blot out all the mistakes a Hendrix ever made in caring for her children and letting them go. Grandma couldn’t hold on to Mama and her sisters, Grandpa’s pathologies hid so much more obediently than did hers, hiding and biding their time. The State awarded Grandpa all four of his daughters, in gingham dresses and throats collared with lace, and he grabbed on to them with both hands, tore them apart, and put them back together so confused that by the time Grandma had pushed the custody papers through every in- and out-box of the State of California to get them back, her girls thought she was the enemy. Their mother’s return shined a light on their pain, and like little girls always do, they thought this meant she was the one
to be feared while the man with the big hands, who had used them in ways they would spend their lives struggling to overcome, was thought of with longing as dirty and chewed as his fingernails.
Grandma couldn’t save them so she’s trying to save me. Mama couldn’t do it. She might have thought she was ready after raising four boys, but the reality of having her own little girl and all I reminded her of deafened her to the real dangers that surrounded us, so Grandma tries to make up for that, but too late and at too great a distance. Mothering is not this family’s strong suit. The missing places at the table prove it. Mama’s got four sisters she wouldn’t talk to, a brother she wouldn’t talk about, and I’ve got four grown brothers of my own who show up here only when driven by crisis or guilt, their eyes red from staring down the lines of the highway. My brothers are like all the men in Mama’s life, mostly memory to her, blurred as the postmarks on the random Christmas and Mother’s Day cards sent from Sacramento and Frisco and any city that held them far away and safe from what happened to them under Mama’s roof. I know the stories about Grandma’s failures in the mothering department, and when it comes to Mama I could tell plenty of my own, but my brothers’ story tops them all.
Still, as much as I have thought about this, used these failures to dismiss the very idea of bringing any more Hendrixes into this world, Grandma succeeds in reminding me of one thing, a small thing that lets me know that she is telling a truth in there somewhere. That there is a tenderness that runs quiet but sure in our blood and reveals itself as dependable as bedtime. It is the memory of Mama tucking me in at night, a name she had for me in the darkness. In the mornings when she woke me for school, I was always
Sunshine
, but at night I was always always
girlchild
.
Sunshine
, but at night I was always always
girlchild
.
I could include a letter here from Mama to prove it. I’ve got stacks of them, ones she wrote me on late nights by cigarette light, after the words we tried to use out loud gave out. Torn apologies on the backs of envelopes, her hand as shaky as her spelling, stubbornly
stacking up words to put out the fire of the night before. They were letter writers, correspondents, these women, besides being high school dropouts, unwed mothers, welfare moms, alcoholics, gamblers, smokers, ragers. When Grandma finally moved off the Calle, in part to escape these definitions, obvious as stained sheets on a line, her letters to me started to arrive. But no matter when or where they put pen to paper, Mama’s and Grandma’s handwriting echo each other. I see the same strokes in my own hand, the same tilt, but unlike Grandma Shirley’s proper capital
I
’s, Mama’s are all lowercase, and unlike both of theirs, mine are long, slashes on the page. And while Grandma called me “
Dearest R.D.
” and “
Sweet Ror
” and “
Rory Dawn Rising Bright
,” Mama’s letters to me bore no greeting, but began with just that word, her word,
girlchild
.
stacking up words to put out the fire of the night before. They were letter writers, correspondents, these women, besides being high school dropouts, unwed mothers, welfare moms, alcoholics, gamblers, smokers, ragers. When Grandma finally moved off the Calle, in part to escape these definitions, obvious as stained sheets on a line, her letters to me started to arrive. But no matter when or where they put pen to paper, Mama’s and Grandma’s handwriting echo each other. I see the same strokes in my own hand, the same tilt, but unlike Grandma Shirley’s proper capital
I
’s, Mama’s are all lowercase, and unlike both of theirs, mine are long, slashes on the page. And while Grandma called me “
Dearest R.D.
” and “
Sweet Ror
” and “
Rory Dawn Rising Bright
,” Mama’s letters to me bore no greeting, but began with just that word, her word,
girlchild
.
The letters are sitting right here, bound in dirty string so they can’t come open too easily, so they can’t steal my nights as I look for secrets in their creases. Mama developed Grandma’s preference for onionskin paper too, and felt-tip, I wait for this to happen to me, I’m certain it will. The only way to tell the difference between Mama’s letters and Grandma’s at first glance is that Mama’s stay bundled up so tight the string rips into their pages and Grandma’s are loose and open, all over this table. I keep Mama’s letters closed, keep their edges close together like a cut that needs force to heal. I’m all wrapped up in there, jumbled with her, small
i
’s and slashes, her story in my story at every turn.
i
’s and slashes, her story in my story at every turn.
“Look at me,” Mama says, it’s early morning and her eyes are clear, on level with mine, but all I feel is the tightness of her hands around my wrists and the pull of the skin on my forehead. We’ve just finished fixing my hair. She brushed it back into two tight ponytails with pink yarn in bows, and my tummy hurts from the cussing and pulling and yelling to “sit still” and “do you want to do this or
not.” Mama is no good at fixing hair but today is picture day and pictures mean I get my hair yanked and pictures mean I have a dress on and dresses mean we have the talk.
not.” Mama is no good at fixing hair but today is picture day and pictures mean I get my hair yanked and pictures mean I have a dress on and dresses mean we have the talk.
She shakes my wrists. “What is the rule?”
I want to cry from the stupid words I have to say and the pull of the stupid rubber bands on my hair and how stupid she is for not knowing how to make a stupid ponytail without stinking up Christmas with cusswords and cigarette smoke, but instead I say it, I make myself say it, “Never let anyone touch me where my bathing suit goes.”
One of my arms is released as Mama reaches for her cigarette. “I’ll kill anyone,” she says, through her fingers as she brings it to her mouth, “who tries,” and I believe her, because of the way her eyes squint as she takes a drag, take the measure of a thing I have never been able to see but that she can never seem to get away from. That dark thing that loves bare legs and bathing suits and makes us say these words to each other to fight it off. The words don’t work, they haven’t worked yet, but Mama seems to think they do, seems to think they will, so I keep saying them even though they make my skin prickle up, I say them, and I feel air coming at me as if I didn’t have a dress on at all, as if I was actually standing there in my bathing suit, skin cold from the water dripping off of it.
It’s all triangles, top and bottom. Two triangles meet on my chest and make me nervous. They slip easy and I don’t notice sometimes because I’m underwater and underwater I can move fast or slow and I can have the longest legs but no one can see me and say, “Look at those long legs,” or talk about when I get older and how far up my legs will go. Underwater they are just my legs and my bathing suit can go all around and in and out and it doesn’t matter. The Hardware Man doesn’t matter. When he comes to the lake I
run to the water and take cover and even as he’s backing his boat up onto the sand I float on the waves he makes and even when he’s parking his truck and taking Carol out for their first run I lie back, safe, in the warm trail left by his exhaust. Mama watches from the shore and I know that she is busy with sandy cans of Coors and trying not to worry about the water, trying to remember that she wants me to do things she never could. As the gas and oil mix with the water of the lake I feel her worries brush across me, leave a trail of chicken skin.
run to the water and take cover and even as he’s backing his boat up onto the sand I float on the waves he makes and even when he’s parking his truck and taking Carol out for their first run I lie back, safe, in the warm trail left by his exhaust. Mama watches from the shore and I know that she is busy with sandy cans of Coors and trying not to worry about the water, trying to remember that she wants me to do things she never could. As the gas and oil mix with the water of the lake I feel her worries brush across me, leave a trail of chicken skin.
Mama never learned how to swim. She can’t hear out of one ear and gets turned around underwater. She’ll kick all the way to the bottom, thinking she’s on top. She won’t even sit in an inner tube, even if I tie it to a tree and the water only comes up to my tummy, even if I hold her cigarettes and beer so she can get in. And she won’t set foot on a boat, anyone’s boat. I’m allowed though because she says one difference between her and me will be, when my time comes, I won’t have any fucking idea how to drown.
Grandpa had a gun and it ruined Mama’s hearing. He was an angry man and he liked to celebrate it. He liked best to have Mama and her sisters dress up, line them all up, and make them stand close while he’d fire his shotgun off, the blast cracking through the air above their heads as sure and painful as if he’d emptied the barrel right into their bones. She still has dreams about it, gingham and butterfly-collar nightmares that scream through the house. She dreams about it sometimes when she’s awake too. She talks to the thing I can’t see, mistakes the Christmas tree for it, or the coat rack, and tears it down. I can’t get in there with her where she’s fighting, kicking out at whatever’s pulling her away. I wait for her to come up for air, I put her to bed, put the Christmas tree back up, pick up the coats, double-lock all the doors, and tuck myself in.
“
W
hat’s your house like?” I ask Viv, and push my arms and legs to make deeper marks in the field where we are lying together and making dirt angels.
W
hat’s your house like?” I ask Viv, and push my arms and legs to make deeper marks in the field where we are lying together and making dirt angels.
Viv already said she’s not allowed any company and told me, “You wouldn’t like it, Rory Dawn, because Uncle gets meaner the longer the days goes on. He says I’m so stupid the only scout troop I could ever belong to is one that troops off a cliff, says I’m feebleminded like all the women in our family, like all the women in the world!”
I’d tried to imagine anyone calling Viv stupid. “I got an uncle like that,” I’d said, and she’d nodded.
She said she knew that I did, and when I asked her how, because I never talked about the Hardware Man, she’d said, “I could just tell, that’s probably why we’re in the same troop!”
Ms. Hyatt has just taught us about exclamation marks and how they do the same work as a period but in a bigger way, to show emotion. Every time Viv talks, I feel an exclamation mark, POP!, in my head, like her sentences all end this way. It’s a way that makes me feel like we’re really true friends, best friends, like Stephanie and Jena-with-one-n who get to sit together, and how if we were in the same class we’d sit together and write BEST FRIENDS 4-EVER with a hundred exclamation points like the ones Viv uses to answer my question now.
“My house is like yours but sunk in the ground so it can’t go
anyplace. Not like your …” she pauses before she says it, she’s still getting used to not calling it a trailer, “house!” She swings her arms and legs fast, pushing like me but harder. “Your house could go places!”
anyplace. Not like your …” she pauses before she says it, she’s still getting used to not calling it a trailer, “house!” She swings her arms and legs fast, pushing like me but harder. “Your house could go places!”
“Nope,” I say, finishing my wings and getting up, careful not to mess my angel’s skirt. I help Viv up, and we brush twigs off each other and check our work, two angels flattening the sage. “It just looks that way.”
S
ingle-wide, double-wide, a house with a hitch. Single mom, gravel drive. Propane by the gallon, generic cigs by the carton, and solitaire round the clock. Cousins and animals multiply like cars in the front yard. Nothing around here gets fixed.
ingle-wide, double-wide, a house with a hitch. Single mom, gravel drive. Propane by the gallon, generic cigs by the carton, and solitaire round the clock. Cousins and animals multiply like cars in the front yard. Nothing around here gets fixed.
The Calle is not a through street. The road is paved with uncles. Smokey, Barney, Johnny Law, Pig, uncles with their badges, with their belt buckles, say, “Hey Sugar, Toots, Sweet Thing, is your mama home?” hand already through the already ripped screen door, finger on the latch.
“When you play solitaire you’re playing against the Devil,” the Calle Grandmas say through false teeth, yella teeth, broken teeth, through pink gums hidden behind hands paused from stringing garlands of silver beer tabs. Hands that threaten to shuffle the spots off the cards, threaten to “smack you so hard your no-good daddy’ll fall outta bed” if you don’t stop interrupting the idiot box with your idiot mouth and see to that mess in the kitchen.
Fifty-two pick-up. Suicide kings and one-eyed jacks face off on orange shag. Calle girls cry uncle through clenched teeth and past his shoulder the sirens flash redneck blues across the white-stucco, nicotine-yellow ceiling.
H
ere’s how the Hardware Man makes the lights go out. I say I have to potty and he says that he will help me, and takes my hand, and we go to the back of the store through aisles of fan blades and boxes of electrical tape to the bathroom that is supposed to be for girls and boys, but I think really only for boys, because there are boot prints all over the tile and the soap is dirty. I can’t reach to turn on the light. The light is at the top of the ceiling and turns on with a chain that you pull once for on and twice for off, but it’s high above the sink and I can’t reach it even if I stand on the seat.
ere’s how the Hardware Man makes the lights go out. I say I have to potty and he says that he will help me, and takes my hand, and we go to the back of the store through aisles of fan blades and boxes of electrical tape to the bathroom that is supposed to be for girls and boys, but I think really only for boys, because there are boot prints all over the tile and the soap is dirty. I can’t reach to turn on the light. The light is at the top of the ceiling and turns on with a chain that you pull once for on and twice for off, but it’s high above the sink and I can’t reach it even if I stand on the seat.
The Hardware Man can reach it, though, and he pulls the chain once and closes the door. And he locks the door and undoes my pants, he says because I am little and I need help going to the bathroom. He always says that, just like he always says that good little girls like me should wear dresses. But I always wear pants. Mama doesn’t like dresses and he knows that but he also knows that I can go to the bathroom by myself so I don’t tell him anything. And then I forget all about having to pee because he is telling me to lie down on the floor and I think how the boot prints are going to get all over the back of my new favorite shirt with the rainbow on it but then he is telling me to be good, which means not to make noise, and I stare up at the lightbulb and the chain that is still swinging until the patch on his pocket that says Ace Hardware blocks it and then it doesn’t matter if he pulled the chain once or
twice or how much noise I make because everything is dark and quiet, except for the word
good
.
Good
is in my ears over and over again, and sometimes it is cut up in pieces of a whisper and sometimes it has more
o
’s than it needs, and always it is so heavy I can’t breathe and my shirt is all ruined.
twice or how much noise I make because everything is dark and quiet, except for the word
good
.
Good
is in my ears over and over again, and sometimes it is cut up in pieces of a whisper and sometimes it has more
o
’s than it needs, and always it is so heavy I can’t breathe and my shirt is all ruined.
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