The Hollow Ground: A Novel (2 page)

I waited. He had a morbid fear of the boogeyman. Being a little kid, Brother believed the family curse made him more susceptible to monsters and ghosts coming into his room at night. I was five years older and knew the curse usually came from somewhere you’d never expect.

“Breakfast, Auntie,” I called as I pounded down the stairs. I set the oatmeal to boil and by the time Auntie came down, I had her apple sliced and her hot water with lemon ready.

Auntie squeezed my shoulder. “What a good girl,” she said, bending near enough so that her wiry hair brushed my cheek, the closest she ever came to a hug or cuddle. As much as I craved to be near her, Auntie’s love didn’t come by way of touch.

I poured Brother and me two glasses of milk and as we settled down to eat, Auntie told stories, real ones about gruesome farming accidents, starving winters, rivers that made towns into lakes. Stories from before she came to this country and after. Long ago, before World War I, Auntie married Gramp’s brother. She married
into
the curse, yet you wouldn’t know it to hear her tales of woe. Still, her stories usually ended with the town paying some cripple’s doctor’s bills or repairing some widow’s house. “It was a time,” she’d say, always with a whistle of regret, “when everyone helped everyone. When things were getting better, not worse.”

After finishing her stories, Auntie left to deliver a remedy to the Clarks—our neighbors who’d nearly died from carbon monoxide poisoning while watching TV with the windows shut—and minutes later, Ma and Daddy made their way downstairs. Barely awake, Ma didn’t even nod at me as she passed through the kitchen to step out onto the sun porch for her first smoke of the day. Through the glass door I watched her, the pom-pom on top of her striped knit hat bobbing, her long stringy light brown hair snagging the watery February sunlight and shimmering golden. Golden was the color Ma said her hair used to be when she was little, the color I always wished mine was. Mine was a color neither blond, red, or brown. Mouse color, Ma said. But I would have done anything to have hair the rich brown of the field mice who darted through our cupboards.

Daddy sat on one of the wooden kitchen chairs with his bad arm resting on the table. When Daddy was young his arm got smashed in the Devil Jaw mining disaster and it ached him ever since. When I pictured Daddy in that disaster I thought of the tunnel as a gaping mouth and the chunks of coal jutting like teeth closing down on him. Daddy’s brother was killed that day and Ma said a part of Daddy died with him. I used to like to think about that dead part of Daddy and what Daddy would be like if all of him was whole and alive the way he must have been before the disaster. Daddy rarely talked about dead Uncle Frank or the disaster but when he did his eyes darkened over like dusk fell inside them.

That morning Daddy complained about the cold, wondering when the government would give us the gauge meters they’d promised so we could monitor the gas levels in the house and not need to leave the windows open. Then he nodded toward the porch and said, “Time to get moving, princess.” It was in everyone’s best interest for me to get Ma’s breakfast ready fast. Ma was a heavy smoker and could barely function till she had her first smoke, but she was already coming out of her haze, sharpening her tongue on the icy air.

“Don’t go giving her no swelled head, Adrian!” Ma shouted. “She ain’t no princess and the world won’t treat her like one. You just make things harder on her thinking it will.”

“Ah, what a bite on that Irish tongue,” Daddy said, kidding because that tongue was nothing like it usually was, dulled by the nicotine coating her mouth and the exhaustion she always felt by the week’s end.

Ma swung open the door and tramped to the table. Dutifully I heated up the pan, thinking how the way people liked their eggs matched their personalities. Ma all folded with the center golden part cooked and flattened. Daddy, raw and drippy, running all over with just a flick of a fork’s tine.

“Goddamn it, Brigid,” Ma shouted, pointing at where I’d glopped egg onto the stove. “That’s what happens when you don’t pay attention. When I was your age, they wouldn’t give me nothing to eat for the whole day if I’d wasted good food like that. Accident or not!”

“Lores,” Daddy said as if he’d swallowed the “Do” of Ma’s name. Dolores means sorrow and Daddy always tried to take some of that sorrow from her and hold it inside him. As he sat across from her at the table, you could see it in him—the sadness with Ma’s name on it. Brother probably saw the sadness too because he came over from where he was playing with his cars on the kitchen floor and nestled his head to Ma’s chest, her breasts just as pointy as all the features of her face, and it struck me that this was all Brother probably remembered—Ma and Daddy joking and eating together. He was only six years old so he probably didn’t remember the trailer over by Mercher’s Dump or home being anything but Auntie’s house.

I flipped two eggs and served Ma. Then I did Daddy’s breakfast. The two yolks on the plate looked up at him like gleaming eyes in a ghost’s face. Daddy slopped with his toast at the yolks, letting the yellow ick drip down his chin—a family joke. We always pointed and gagged, watching him perform this disgusting feat like he was a circus performer. This time he played it up special and my stomach clenched like so many fists. He was supposed to take Brother to Katz’s Department Store for their end-of-winter coat sale, but afterwards he must have been planning to go to Pete’s Pub. Ma must have been able to tell too because she said, “Take your time today, Adrian. I’m thinking of having some of the girls over to play cards.”

I knew Ma didn’t want Daddy around when her girlfriends came over because she was ashamed that he had no job, which was crazy because most of the daddies around had no job. I guess Daddy knew too because he said, “I’ll take all the time I want.” And then he looked her dead in the eye so she knew not to start with him. For me, I didn’t mind if Ma had some of her friends over, even though it meant I’d have to clean up and serve coffee and cake. I didn’t mind because while she was at work and while Daddy and Brother were shopping, me and Auntie would have the house all to ourselves. And whenever me and Auntie were alone together we’d sit on the couch, sucking on candies, Auntie reading her mysteries and me reading whatever historical romance I was into at the time.

When Brother and Daddy were finally ready to go, Brother swung open the front door and rushed out into a choke of cloud caused by the fire heating the wet ground. Daddy shrugged into his peacoat, grimacing with pain. When he got back home, I told him, Auntie would make him a remedy to get the damp out of his bones. “Okay, Daddy?” I said.

But Daddy said nothing. His eyes were that icy blue they got when they were looking off to that other place, the place that turned him empty inside. The place he thought he could fill with dice and whisky.

When he stepped out onto the porch, he turned first one direction, then another, squinting into the gathering fog like something was out there to get him. Brother beckoned from where he stood near one of the boreholes in the street, the long pipe smoking as it vented out of the ground. Brother waved his little knit hat that he’d crushed in his hand, but Daddy jogged down the steps, hands thrust deep into his coat pockets, and walked away from him.

Ma thrust her head over my shoulder and yelled, “And pick up some milk for god’s sake,” but her words sunk in the heavy air. Sighing the way she always did before heading off to the mill, she tilted her head. Gleaming in her eyes was something as timid as a baby deer. Every now and then the shy, tender part of her surfaced. “I know you want to go reading with Auntie,” Ma said to me. “But don’t forget your chores. Don’t go having no fun first.”

“Yes, Ma,” I said, but as soon as the door closed behind her, I headed to the kitchen and brewed a pot of tea. When me and Auntie were alone together, before we settled down to reading, we always sipped a cup of tea and Auntie told me things she’d never told anyone else.

That morning me and Auntie sat on the sofa and sipped a peppermint tea that we’d picked and dried ourselves. “Listen now,” Auntie said. “Remember our family picnics at Culver Lake? And the afternoons we all spent ice-skating on Adam’s pond? Weren’t they fun?”

I nodded. Auntie knew I loved it when Ma and Brother and me hunted crayfish along the lakeshore or when Daddy and I skated backwards across the pond with Ma doing figure eights around us.

Auntie put a finger to her chin and looked off toward the window. From the way she opened and shut her mouth several times I could tell she was searching for the right words. “And then there were all the times when something good happened out of the blue. Like when your ma found fifty dollars just lying on the ground or when your poem was chosen best in class. You know what I mean? If you only think about what’s bad, well then, life’s bad. You see what I’m saying?”

I smiled and stirred my tea, tapping the spoon dry on the edge of the cup. I had no idea what Auntie was getting at, but I always wished to please her. I lifted the cup to my mouth.

Auntie continued, “I guess what I’m trying to say is that even though both my boys were killed, one on Okinawa, the other in the mines, I don’t believe in the family curse.”

Shocked by her words, I gulped the tea, burning my tongue. The curse was as real and basic as sunlight or water. I couldn’t imagine our lives without it. Scalded, my tongue felt puffy as I said, “How can you say that, Auntie?”

“There isn’t a family curse,” Auntie explained. “Or that’s not exactly what I mean. There is one. But it’s not out there,” she said, pointing out the window. “It’s in here.” She aimed a thick, slightly crooked finger at me and prodded my chest.

“Inside
me
?” I said, pulling at the cable knit of my sweater as if the curse was hiding somewhere underneath my clothes.

Auntie sighed. “Not just you. Inside each one of us. You see we make—” But Auntie was cut off by an explosion deep in the ground and she completed her thought by saying something in Ukrainian that I knew was a bad word because she’d said it before and would never tell me what it meant. The explosions were something we’d gotten used to because they happened sometimes in winter when the outlets the fire used for air froze over, but Auntie was clearly thinking about the damage the explosion might have caused. She stood and said she’d check on the shed that, with each explosion since Christmas, had started tilting farther toward the left, slowly sinking like an absurd shed-ship into the ground. I didn’t see what the bother was. It was an ugly shed and we didn’t even store anything worthwhile in it, but I’d learned not to stop Auntie from checking on it. That crumpling old shack meant something to her.

Not bothering with a coat, Auntie tramped through the kitchen and banged open the porch door. Through the little window over the sink I watched her walk the gravel path. Flakes of snow so small they resembled ash wafted down around her. I spread some of Auntie’s elderberry jam on a heel of bread and stood at the counter working my jaw hard to chew it. When I next glanced out the window, the snow had so thickened the fog that I couldn’t see a thing. Absently I began peeling the potatoes Auntie and I had planned to boil for supper. I’d been reading a book about Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, who was said to have had an extra finger. I wondered if she’d used that extra finger for a special purpose, like playing the harp or picking locks, and I tried to picture the various ways it might have grown out of her hand—directly out the side or stuck like a twin to her pinky. I reasoned that if I were a king an extra finger would interest me since I’d probably be bored by everything ordinary. It wasn’t until I’d nearly finished peeling the potatoes that I realized Auntie hadn’t returned.

“Auntie?” I shouted through the sliver of screen visible where the window was open. There was no answer. The flecks of snow had thickened to flakes that had a tinge of yellow to them. The color was odd and pretty all at once and I couldn’t decide if it reminded me of something sick or of something lit up just barely by sun. Dying light, I decided, remembering a poem Auntie had read to me. And then I got afraid.

Slowly I made my way onto the sunporch. With just a push on the back door, it opened wide and I gagged on the sulfur smell the fire sometimes caused. I stared toward the corner of the yard where the shed stood, but the air was so steamy I could only see a few feet in front of me. Fear cracked my voice as I called, “Auntie? I can’t see you. Auntie?”

Cautiously I took first one step, then another, the fog growing hotter. “Auntie?” I called again, my voice now a squeak. I took a few more steps and then just stood there gawking at the gaping hole where the corner of the yard used to be. For what seemed like forever I stood there silent, when I could have been shouting for help, when I could have been saving Auntie.

It wasn’t until flames burst up from the pit that the first scream escaped my throat. I screamed to Auntie, I screamed to the fire. I screamed so that God would have to hear, would have to listen.

I don’t know for how long I stood there, but by the time a fireman picked me up, my mouth was as dry as dust and hardly any sound came out. “She’s gone,” he said. “The ground gave way.” He carried me out the alley to the front yard, my skin singed from the smoke, my eyes stinging.

“My fault,” I whimpered.

“No,” he said. “There was nothing you could do. Hush now.”

But I knew it was my fault. Already I knew. It was my fault because Auntie had told me the curse’s secret—that it lived inside each one of us—and for that the curse had taken her away.

Two

Our lives were empty with Auntie gone. We felt the loss of her in everything and the whole world seemed more fragile and tender because of it. We rarely spoke of her though, which Daddy said was the Irish way. “If you talk about what’s sad, all you do is make yourself sadder,” he explained and so we didn’t talk. We took what we could carry out of the house when the firemen let us inside to get what we needed (they wouldn’t let us live there anymore because the ground was too unstable), and I think in a way it was worse having the house still standing there, filled with the memories and familiar musty smells that had made it our home. I guess we felt that we were as boarded up and condemned as it was.