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Authors: Natalie S. Harnett

The Hollow Ground: A Novel (22 page)

BOOK: The Hollow Ground: A Novel
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Dazed, me and Stepma stood in the hallway staring at the opened front door, which framed the snowy street and Ma fleeing down it.

“I only wish I could have checked on her but I didn’t dare,” Stepma said as she walked behind me down the hall to the front door. “It seemed best to leave things as they were. For all of us to forget. God forgive me for it.”

I paused at the threshold, tasting the snowy cold on my tongue. “What is it her daddy done?” I whispered, afraid to really ask, to really know, but I could feel the weight of it already inside me, pulling me down.

“Little girls shouldn’t think of such things,” Stepma said and squeezed my shoulder, nudging me out the door. “You take care of your mother. She needs you. She needs all the help she can get.”

Then Stepma shut the door and left me there with the knowledge of what had happened to Ma and of who my granddaddy was, this man I resembled. My legs felt heavy and tired like I’d run miles on them and it seemed to take a while before I reached Ma at the spot where she leaned up against a tree. I stood a distance from her as if the things her daddy had done were laying right there at our feet, ugly and shameful. Without a doubt I knew that Ma would hate me if I paid them any mind at all.

“Ma,” I said, slipping from my pocket the picture of her as a little girl. “You can stop looking. I got you what you wanted. Here, Ma.” I handed her the photo. “Here you are.”

Ma barely looked at the photo before slipping it into the box of her ma’s photos that she held in the crook of her arm. “Yeah. Ain’t that something,” she said. “There I am.”

 

Nineteen

Ma and Daddy’s anniversary fell on a Saturday that year. Daddy got the day off so he could take me, Brother, and Ma to a Chinese restaurant to celebrate it special. It was late February and the sun was such a pale white with a coating of clouds pasted to it that it was easy to look at. Here and there in the fire zone patches of crocuses came up from the heat and in one spot we even saw a daffodil. But in other places in the zone the ground was blistered and the shrubs and trees were budless and dead. The restaurant though was far away enough, right on the border where the rich people used to live, that the snow kept and there were mounds of it left over from a blizzard the week before.

Ma had walked from the house in a raincoat and rubber boots to protect her pretty dress from the ash and mud and when we crossed the bridge out of the zone and into the east side of the city, she took them off in the empty parking lot where the Sears used to be. She then spit on a hankie and wiped the grime from my and Brother’s face. Daddy, Ma said, wore the dirt well and didn’t need a wipe. And she was right. He looked as handsome as ever as he removed his jacket to enjoy the feel of the sun on him. Brother ran ahead and threw bottle caps at the holes in the asphalt where the brick showed through and we walked the long way so Daddy could, as he said, “Show off his girls.”

At the restaurant we had sweet and sour pork and chop suey and Daddy ordered us fried dumplings and spare ribs, which were things Daddy had eaten in a Chinese restaurant in Allentown and thought we’d like.

Both Ma and Daddy talked about our new house on Furlong Street in Allentown, which was supposed to be ready for us in a month. “We’ll hang our laundry in the backyard, respectable like,” Ma said. “I ain’t going to have no clothesline going across the front porch. Maybe we’ll even get ourselves a dog. We’ll be living proper. With our own house, and with family living practically just down the street.”

Brother had bitten into three dumplings and spit the ball of meat out onto the plate and he sat there looking down at them as if they were three little turds. Ma flicked her eyes from his plate to the window and then she lifted her orange soda in a toast. “To our new home and family. Well, they ain’t new. They’re old family but we’re only getting to know them
now,
I mean.”

Me and Daddy clicked glasses with her and neither of us mentioned that Uncle Jerry lived nearly half a mile away in a neighborhood where the houses had garages and big front yards. Brother picked at an egg roll, eating some of its fried skin, his blue eyes widening in pleasure. Ma was like the weather for us. If her mood was all sunshine and warmth so was ours and for the first time I started to look forward to our move to Allentown, to putting everything that had happened behind us. To not ever having to watch Marisol ignore me again.

The sun hadn’t yet set but that part of the city was in shadow. The overhead lights went on and the waiter served us ice cream and fortune cookies. As soon as the waiter walked away, Daddy stood, put on his jacket and got down on one knee beside Ma.

Ma giggled with nervousness as he took her hand. He kissed it and Ma’s eyes swerved here and there to see who was watching, wanting the moment to be seen, but there was only one other customer, an older man sipping his soup from a bowl and both him and the waiter pretended like they hadn’t noticed a thing.

From his pocket Daddy drew out a small jewelry box. When he flicked it open, me and Ma sucked our breath. There against a black velvety background lay a gold ring glistening with diamond chips. “Oh, Adrian. Oh, my God.” Ma’s hand quivered as she held her fingers spread in anticipation for Daddy to slip the ring on. When he did, she cupped her hand as gently as if some wounded creature trembled on her palm.

“I can’t believe it,” she said, crossing her arms and squeezing her shoulders in a hug. “I got my brother, I got my ma’s things, and now I got an honest-to-god wedding band. I got everything I always wanted.” And then she sobbed uncontrollably and me and Daddy hovered over her, knowing how helpless she felt when she cried.

Out on the street, Ma gained control of herself. She held the ring up to the dying sunlight and said, “Just wait till all them bitches at the mill see this. Just wait till Rowena sees this.” Suspiciously her eyes shifted toward Daddy. “We own it free and clear?”

“Free and clear.”

“How’d you ever get the money? Or don’t I want to know?”

“You don’t want to know. But a little luck isn’t a bad thing.”

Ma, who always lashed out at Daddy when he mentioned luck or anything about gambling, surprised us all by saying, “Well, I guess a
little
luck ain’t so bad.”

“Nah, it’s not so bad,” Daddy said. “It’s only good that’s going to happen from now on, Lores.” He looked from Ma to me with his jaw set to show he meant it. “We’re owed some good luck, after all. And I tell you, I can feel it coming our way. One thing’s for certain, I don’t want either of you worrying anymore, you hear me?” He pointed from me to Ma and we both giggled with pleasure and relief. No matter what Daddy had done in the past we always wanted him to take care of us.

That evening when we got back to the house, Ma stuck her hand in front of Gram’s face. “See this, you old biddy? I don’t need nothing from you no more.”

Gram was standing beside the Hoosier cabinet with the phone pressed to her ear. “’Scuse me, Edna,” Gram said into the receiver before cupping her hand over it. To Daddy she whispered, “How many horse races you win to buy
that
?” She pronounced “that” like it was some hot, burning thing in her mouth, then she turned her back on Ma and tugged at the phone cord, stretching it so that she could walk to the stove. “No, Edna, really. Legally they ain’t got the right to take it away.”

Ma walked to where the phone hung on the wall and calmly pressed the lever to disconnect the call. Gram banged the receiver against the side of the stove. “Like a little kid, I swear.”

That night Ma called me into the bedroom to brush her hair. “Hundred strokes, remember?” she said, hearkening back to a long-ago time when me and Ma brushed each other’s hair every night. Ma sighed and held her hand out, turning the ring this way and that. “Ain’t it pretty?”

“It’s the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen, Ma,” I said, my gut aching with desire for it. Through the shut door we could hear glassware clinking in the kitchen and Gram singing “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.”

Ma scratched at the stones on the ring to test the settings. “That bitch might act like she don’t care I got this, but believe me, it sticks in her craw. It’s what we fought about all those years ago when I said I’d never speak to her again. It all started with her wanting me to bring ambrosia for Easter Sunday, but I had to work a double on Holy Thursday and I was tired and I didn’t get to the store for the marshmallows and pineapple so I brought rice pudding instead. Pudding I made myself. But don’t you know that damn pudding wouldn’t set right and Gram went on and on about how awful it was, how I’d promised to bring stupid ambrosia, and how she could never trust me to make no promises again.

“‘Promises?’ I said. ‘Who in the heck are you to be talking about promises? Wasn’t it you,’ I said, ‘who promised me your grandma’s ring on my wedding day? That was over seven years ago and I still ain’t got that ring so don’t you go talking about promises, old lady.’

“‘Well,’ she said, ‘the only way you’re ever going to see that ring is over my dead body.’ And I said I got no problem getting that arranged and then she said she didn’t know why Adrian ever married me and it was a wonder what a man would do for sex and I told her that Adrian married me because he loved me and he wanted to take care of me and she said that was horsepucky and he only married me because he knew no one but some dumb orphanage trash would be stupid enough to marry him with his arm all broke and I said that dumb orphanage trash was at least smart enough to know where and when she was welcome and that she’d never step foot in that godforsaken house again!”

Breathless, Ma finished her story and said she needed a smoke. Ever since Gramp died, Gram didn’t care if Ma smoked inside so I went out to the side porch to get Ma’s cigarettes, which was when I noticed Uncle Jerry’s car pull into the drive. I rushed back to the bedroom but not before Uncle Jerry was already pounding at the door and Gram was saying, “Who is it?”

“Where’s Adrian?” we heard Uncle Jerry ask in his booming voice.

Ma clenched at her neck. Her eyes darted from wall to wall. Then she cupped her face and patted her cheeks as if to make sure she was really there. “What’s Bropey come for? What do you think he wants?” Wildly, Ma searched my eyes for an answer.

“I don’t know, Ma,” I cried. “I don’t know.”

Ma’s eyes had a crazed glow to them. “I’ll talk to Bropey. But it’s your job to keep that bitch from saying something awful.”

I couldn’t imagine any way to stop Gram from doing anything she wanted. My breathing got shallow and I had to suck for air. “How, Ma?” I said. But she’d already whipped open the door and breezed down the hall, her voice all false and syrupy as she said, “Bropey, what a wonderful surprise.”

I moved out into the hall and stood in the doorway watching Ma kiss Uncle Jerry on the cheek. Gram was in profile, her hump shaping her into a hook aimed right at Ma. “Well, since nobody’s polite enough to make no introduction, I’ll do it myself. I’m Rowena Howley.”

“Pleased to meet.” Uncle Jerry nodded. “Sorry to be trouble, but I’m looking for Adrian.”

“He’s probably at The Shaft,” Gram said bitterly. “Or O’Malley’s. That’s the likely guesses.”

Uncle Jerry looked from left to right as if he were about to cross a street. Then he wiggled his finger at Ma, beckoning her to follow him outside.

Me and Gram stood watching from the side porch window but we couldn’t hear most of what was said. Uncle Jerry lit a cigarette and took one puff, then tossed it to the ground where he scuffed at it with his shoe over and over like a bull getting ready to charge. Ma pressed her hands to her face and seemed to sob.

Gram shook her head. “Told her, didn’t I? You was there. I told her don’t no good come from lookin’ up your brother. Isn’t that what I said, clear as day? You remember that, girl. Blood is just blood and no more and the past is best left where it is—in the past!” Gram trudged out of the porch and into her bedroom all the while wagging her head.

Eventually Uncle Jerry held Ma and patted her back. He stared across the street at the Williamsons’ front porch, which had sunk partway into the ground, and he said loud enough for the Williamsons to hear, “Like hell on earth. You remember what I said, Dolores. You think about it. You’d be welcome any time.”

Hours later when Daddy came home, Ma walked straight up to him and while he stood shaking off his coat in front of Gramp’s empty Barcalounger, Ma pounded at his chest and slapped his face. “My brother! My brother you had to steal from? Why didn’t you steal from any other goddamned person but him?”

Daddy gripped Ma’s wrist to stop her from hauling off and whacking him some more. The lines of his face went limp with confusion. “How’d he find out? He wasn’t supposed to be back in the office till Tuesday. They were driving to Janice’s family in Albany. I was going to put it all back in the safe on Monday. I swear. He never would have known.” Daddy dropped Ma’s wrist and clasped both her shoulders.

Ma’s spine went from rigid to practically collapsing in Daddy’s arms. “You mean you got it? You got the money you took from him?”

Daddy disappeared into the basement and returned with a wad of cash. Slowly Ma counted it, then counted it again. “So it’s all here?” Ma asked, her voice quaking with disbelief.

Daddy was staring at the darkness framed in the window. “I had a sure thing,” he said. “I almost tripled Jerry’s money. I had enough to pay him back and buy you the nicest ring in the shop. I was going to put it all back on Monday. He never would have known.”

“But he does goddamn know,” Ma said, squeezing her ring finger so hard it turned white. “You think Jerry cares that you got all his money? You think he don’t mind that you took it to gamble? What if you’d lost it all? What then?”

“But I didn’t lose it. All I did was borrow it so I could get you a ring. How could he hold that against me? How could he not want his sister to have the ring she’s always wanted? He wanted to find you all these years, Dolores. Of course he wants you to keep the ring.”

With Daddy’s words Ma wept and eventually she let Daddy hug her and stroke her hair. “You think he’ll forgive us then?” she said.

BOOK: The Hollow Ground: A Novel
4.68Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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