The Hollow Ground: A Novel (26 page)

Uncle Jerry stopped in mid-chew but didn’t look up from his plate. Then he swallowed a wad of biscuit and had to guzzle his whole cup of coffee to get it down.

Back at the house Ma led me to what had become her room, the little room that had once been Daddy’s. Ma sat on the window ledge and brushed her hair with short, snappy strokes. As she brushed she talked about the possible jobs she could get once her money ran out from pawning the ring Daddy had bought for her. The most likely job seemed to be the one Aunt Janice was trying to get her at the accountant’s office where Aunt Janice used to work before she got married.

“But we have to go on a trip, Ma,” I said bending up my legs and resting my chin on my knees. “You promised we would. Just the two of us.” Ever since Ma had moved into Uncle Jerry’s me and Ma had been planning a vacation. “Just you and me,” she’d told me on the phone several times. “A chance for just us girls to be together, no boys allowed.”

“Well, I ain’t got enough money for no vacation,” she said, “but I made some calls to see about Auntie’s house. The money should be coming through on that soon and then we can go anywheres in the world we want.” Ma laughed and we both came up with more and more outrageous places we could go, Hawaii, the Arctic. “Anywhere where they ain’t got no dang fire,” Ma said. Then she talked about the nice apartment we’d be able to get and Ma whispered, “Nicer than the one Bropey had planned for us.” And the mere mention of that apartment seemed to color the very air with its dinginess and our mood changed as we both thought about the reason why we weren’t living there.

Daddy never talked with me about my going into Star’s apartment or breaking her necklace. All he did was drop the rhinestone clips on my bed with the warning, “Don’t go thinking you understand things you don’t.” And I thought, what’s there to understand about a daddy cheating on his wife? Only it didn’t feel so much like he’d cheated on Ma, it felt like he’d cheated on me. I didn’t say that to Daddy though, partly out of pride. If he didn’t care enough about us not to do what he’d done, then I wasn’t going to let him know I cared about him. But mostly I didn’t say anything because of what I saw in his eyes. It was the dark part of Daddy, the hateful part, and it put a hardness to his gaze and a sallowness to his skin that put me in mind of the werewolf poster that used to hang beside his bed. It felt like ever since we’d moved to Barrendale he’d become something else. Someone he couldn’t control.

Cagily I asked Ma, “Don’t you want to know anything about Daddy?”

“What’s there to know?” Ma said. She put the brush down on the nightstand where she’d laid out some of her ma’s things: tortoiseshell combs, hankies, a pretty glass perfume bottle. From the top drawer she pulled out a pack of cigarettes and shook one free from it. “Do I need to know he lost your bus money on some dang horse bet and now that old biddy thinks I owe her the fare? Why don’t she ask her own son for the money? Why she got to tell
you
to tell
me
I owe
her
?” Ma puffed furiously at her cigarette as if it were a source of revenge against Gram.

From downstairs came the sound of a knock on the door, followed by the doorbell buzzer. Ma put her finger to her lips. We heard Aunt Janice say, “Hi, Mom, how was the trip?” and then we heard, “Fine, sweetheart, just fine.”

I stiffened, recognizing Stepma’s voice. Ma must have recognized it too because her finger remained glued to her lips, her eyes swerving back and forth like the gong of a clock.

Uncle Jerry’s voice boomed out from the downstairs hall, asking Stepma about traffic and the potholes on Route 80. “Didn’t expect to see you, Mom,” Jerry said. “But always glad to have you here. Why don’t you follow me out to the kitchen? There’s something I’ve been meaning to show you.” And you could tell in his voice that he was about to take her deeper into the house to talk about Ma.

“
Mom!
” Ma said and her eyes stopped in their swing, fixing on the opened doorway to the upstairs hall. “
Mom?
” She cupped her fingers around her mouth, her hands curved like question marks, her brow creased with thought. In that position she remained as if she was about to shout out to someone but the only sound that came from her mouth was the quick rhythmic sound of her breathing. Eventually she stood and walked out into the hallway toward the stairs.

“Ma?” I whispered. “Wait.” But she didn’t so I followed her and together we arrived at the bottom of the stairs where we found Stepma in a white dress that had such a wide collar it made her head look like it was on a platter. Stepma was flanked by Uncle Jerry and Aunt Janice and the tight bun perched on Aunt Janice’s head was tilted toward Stepma seemingly in protection.

“I cannot stay in the same house,” Ma announced and turned her face to the wall.

“Well, it’s not your house to stay or not stay in,” Aunt Janice said.

Uncle Jerry coughed. “Plenty of room for everyone. Right, Elsie?”

Stepma’s voice came out small as a mouse. “Of course, Jerome. Whatever you say.”

“Right, Dolores?” Uncle Jerry said, not bothering to hide the plea caged up in his words.

“’Course, Bropey,” Ma said. “For you I’ll agree to anything. Speaking of room, I’m going to mine now.” Ma turned abruptly and headed back up the stairs.

“Sure, Dolores, sure,” Uncle Jerry called up to her. “You rest as long as you want.”

For what felt like hours me and Ma sat on Ma’s bed playing gin rummy. Through the window we could see Brother playing with his toy cars in the tree house Uncle Jerry had built. The tree house was two floors and wedged cockeyed into the branches of the mulberry tree. The boards of the house were streaked with purple and white bird poo and resembled one of those modern dot paintings Gram said wasn’t worth the board it was painted on. We played cards until the sun became a golden ball between the mulberry branches and Aunt Janice called, “Supper’s ready.”

Ma sent me down alone and we picked at the platter of hamburgers and franks in silence for so long that I found my foot tapping the rhythm of the ticking clock.

Eventually Stepma carefully placed her fork and knife at the top of her plate and her eyes combed over me. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come.”

“Bullcrap,” Uncle Jerry said with a smile frightening in its scope. “Janice should have mentioned it is all.”

Aunt Janice slowly chewed her last bit of frank like a cow working on its cud. “I thought I—”

But when she got a look at Uncle Jerry’s face she didn’t finish the sentence.

“Hate for there to be any problems,” Stepma said.

“No problem,” Uncle Jerry said and then he went on to complain about the president. “Those Kennedys and their civil rights,” he said. “I’d like to see those freedom fighters get in a real fight. It’s gotten to the point where you can’t turn on the television without hearing somebody boo-hoo over colored’s rights.”

Aunt Janice’s face went as smooth and white as the porcelain cups she served the coffee in. She shook her head in amazement. “And only a hundred years ago they were slaves.”

Uncle Jerry nodded, “That’s right, Janice. That’s right. And believe me we’re looking at a time in our future when the white man won’t be top dog anymore. And it’s not as far away as you’d like to think. It’ll be in our lifetime. You wait and see.”

Uncle Jerry looked at Stepma for agreement but all she did was sigh and move her eyes up toward the ceiling. It was right then I guessed she was thinking about Ma and I felt a little bad for her.

After dessert I played with Brother in the yard. Dusk was still a ways off but the sun had turned orangey and within its long summer rays Brother was trying to set ants and leaves on fire with his magnifying glass. Little Jerry was playing in his mud pit, eager, I figured, to keep out of Brother’s way.

Suddenly Brother looked up from his magnifying glass and his pointy little Ma face went soft and sulky. “Want home,” he said, reminding me that he’d said those same words when we’d moved from Centrereach to Barrendale, and I had the awful feeling that for the rest of our lives home was something we’d always be wanting.

“So do I,” I said, remembering how gloomy Auntie would get when she’d talk about never being able to go back to her home in the Ukraine. For the first time I understood a little of what she must have felt and oddly enough that warmed me. To share even this sad thing with my long gone auntie brought her, for a little while at least, close.

*   *   *

Once it was fully dark Stepma announced that she was going to leave that night, not stay over, and she wouldn’t listen to anything Uncle Jerry or Aunt Janice had to say about it. She also wouldn’t listen to them about
not
saying good-bye to Ma. She gripped the wooden railing of the stairway to the second floor and walked so slowly up it I got the feeling she was hoping somebody would stop her. I shot past her up the steps, afraid of what she’d say to Ma, and I suppose I nearly knocked her down because she whimpered and took twice as long climbing the rest of the way.

Ma sat on the cot, looking out the window, and I wedged myself between her and the pillow so that I’d be nearer to the doorway where I hoped to somehow protect Ma from Stepma’s words.

“You ought to know he was mighty sorry for what he did to you,” Stepma said. “The awful things he did, to you, his own daughter. If he’d lived, he might have found you to tell you that. He was saved in the end. He accepted Jesus in his heart.”

Ma flinched as if struck, but she didn’t turn her head. “He coulda accepted shit in his heart for all I care. Don’t you go talking about what he’d done. You’re the one who done something to me. Sending off a little girl. Because you was jealous of her. Jealous that she had her daddy’s heart.”

Ma stood and looked Stepma dead in the face. “That’s what you couldn’t stand, Elsie. Tell it true. You couldn’t stand that he loved me more. So you sent me off. Separating me from my daddy.” And when she said
daddy
her voice splintered and she gazed down at the nightstand and all the trinkets it displayed.

“You’re the lucky one, Dolores,” Stepma said, taking a step forward and crossing the threshold into the room. “Can’t you see that? I’m the one who had to live with him knowing what he’d done to you.”

From the nightstand Ma lifted a porcelain bride that spun on top of a music box. It had been one of her ma’s things and Ma had told me she guessed it must have been a wedding gift from her ma’s parents.

Ma’s eyes slid from the figurine to look at Stepma sideways. “Yeah? If living with him was so bad, why didn’t you leave him then?”

“He wouldn’t have let me leave with you two kids. I did all I could think of to do. But tell me, Dolores. I can see it in your face. You remember now, don’t you? You do, don’t you?” Stepma took another step forward and rested her hand on the doorknob.

“What I remember is that he let you do it. He let you get rid of me.”

Stepma lifted her foot as if to take another step but instead she stood there with her heel lifted, rocking on the ball of her foot. “The shed, Dolores. The car seat behind it that faced the rabbit cages. Remember how I found you there on his lap with his hand—” Stepma dropped her heel and turned aside, glancing behind her into the darkness of the hallway.

Ma fingered the delicate veil on the figurine. It was made of lace dipped in a hardener that made it all sugary looking. Softly she said, “He killed my rabbits because you asked him to.”

“Remember you were holding one of the rabbits and squeezing it so bad it squealed and I screamed and—”

Ma bent back her arm as if to hurl the figurine like a dagger at Stepma’s head. For a full minute it seemed she stood there poised, quavering in that position, until she suddenly brought the statue down onto the edge of the nightstand where it broke and fell. Then Ma stared at her cut bleeding hand as if it belonged to someone else.

I cried out and rushed toward Ma, but she pushed me away.

“It wasn’t you, Dolores,” Stepma said. “Don’t you understand. You didn’t do anything wrong. You couldn’t have stopped him. Forgive him. Forgive yourself.” Stepma lowered her head and took a step back. “Someday I hope you’ll forgive me.”

Ma yanked open the nightstand drawer and grabbed a white sock that she pressed to her cut hand. “I ain’t never going to forgive you for nothing. I hate you with all my heart. I hate you with everything I got.” Ma tossed the bloodied sock at Stepma’s feet and then pushed her out of the way to run down the hall into the bathroom.

Stepma and I stared at each other as we listened to the sounds of Ma heaving up her church breakfast. Once Ma got quiet, Stepma tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom door. She leaned her head toward the doorknob and said, “I want you to know it’s still your home, Dolores. He’s gone now and it’s still your home. I’m going to leave it half and half between you and Jerome. And if you ever need it, there’s always a room for you. For you and for your children, Dolores. I hope that makes it up to you somewhat. It’s all I know to do.”

Then Stepma lunged toward the stairs as if afraid Ma was about to come out and beat her to mush. There was no sound from inside the bathroom though, so Stepma paused, gripping the rail, and looked over to where I’d poked my head out through the doorway. “Pray for her forgiveness, girl. For her to forgive.” Then she slowly trod down the stairs.

It was a while before Ma left the bathroom. She didn’t even ask if Stepma had left but she must have heard the commotion from the downstairs hall of Aunt Janice pleading with her to wait to leave till morning.

Ma handed me a tin of Band-Aids she’d taken from the medicine cabinet and then silently held her hand out for me to stick the things all over the various cuts on her hand. When I was done Ma’s hand looked like Brother’s baseball glove that was marked all over with tape from where it had gotten busted. Ma then directed me to sweep up the pieces of the porcelain bride and to throw them in the outside garbage can because she didn’t want to have to look at them in her own wastepaper basket. Then she asked me to set warm wet washcloths on her forehead and wipe the toilet down with disinfectant because she didn’t want to hear nothing about no mess from Aunt Janice.