Wings of Glass (4 page)

TRENT FELT
his way through the front door, hesitating with each small step—unsure. I tried to lead him by the elbow like I’d seen others do with blind people, but he kept pulling away from me. Staring straight ahead at nothing, he patted the air until his fingers finally touched the armrest of the couch.

He lowered himself, almost sitting on the copy of
Gone with the Wind
I’d checked out of the library a few days before. With a grunt, he knocked the book onto the floor as he sat. “Why bother cleaning up the place just because your blind husband might trip and break his neck?”

Blood rushed to my face as I picked up the book and set it on the table. “It
is
clean.”

He sneered. “Well, I can’t very well verify that, now can I?” He kicked off his boots in the usual fashion, then rubbed his stomach. “How about some dinner?”

I headed toward the kitchen intending to find something for him to snack on.

“Penny!”

I whipped around.

“Just because I can’t see, doesn’t mean I can’t hear you walking away from me.”

I walked back over—no, slinked was probably more like it. “I’m sorry, baby. I was just going to find you something to eat.”

When he stood, I noticed he was wearing mismatched socks—one black and one white.

“The fact I’m blind doesn’t mean I’m less of a man. You hear me?”

“I know,” I whispered.

He furrowed his brow and glared in my general direction. “You getting smart with me?”

Before I could answer, his balled fist thrust through the air. He intended to hit me, but thankfully I hadn’t been standing close enough. He fell backward, looking shocked as his legs went up and butt touched down. To me, his expression was more enlightening than funny.

His rage morphed into embarrassment. “Penny!” he yelled again, but the fight had left him.

At that moment I knew our relationship had changed, Manny. And your father knew I knew it. “I’m going to go fix you something,” I said.

When I brought him a ham sandwich, he surprised me by saying, “Thank you.” After he swallowed a bite, he felt around the plate. “You know I always eat two. I lost my eyesight, not my appetite.”

I sat beside him on the couch, keeping just out of arm’s reach. “I know, but that’s it.”

He turned toward me. “What’s ‘it’?”

“That’s the last of it.”

He licked the mayo from the corner of his mouth. “Round steak would be fine, then.”

“We’re out of bologna, too.” It irritated me to no end he didn’t suspect we were out of food. Why wouldn’t we be? He hadn’t given me grocery money in nearly a month. “I can fix you a bowl of oatmeal or tomato soup, but that’s pretty much all we’ve got.”

The color washed from his face. “What’ve you been doing, feeding the whole town while I was in the hospital?”

I slid a little farther away from him, mashing my hip into the armrest.

His face scrunched up like it always did when he was fixing to lose it. Then, as if remembering the earlier incident, the look melted away again. “That can’t be it.”

“There’s also half a bag of cornmeal,” I offered, “and a can of black olives.”

He slid his plate, with the half sandwich, down the cocktail table toward me. “You take it, then.”

You could have bowled me over with a feather. Trent didn’t do stuff like that—selfless, I mean. The hardness trying to push its way into my heart pushed itself right out again. I slid the plate back to him. “I’m not hungry, but—” I hesitated—“thank you.” I couldn’t remember the last time
I’d thanked him for something out of genuine appreciation instead of fear. It felt nice on my lips.

He leaned back against the couch and turned his face toward the ceiling as if he could see something there. “This is bad.”

“What about the money you’ve been putting away?” Over the past few years, I’d asked him twice where the rest of his paycheck was going. The first time, he told me, “The rainy-day fund.” The second, and last, he kicked me in the tailbone and told me I’d better mind my own business if I knew what was good for me.

When he slowly shook his head, I knew his rainy-day fund had been more like a fifth-a-day fund.

I felt like I was going to be sick. “I could get a job,” I offered.

“No way.” He turned in my direction, looking past me at the door. “Who’s going to hire you? I’ll think of something.”

I hadn’t been interested in eating before I knew we had no money. Now I suddenly felt like my stomach was digesting itself. We’d been hungry before, and I had no desire to go through that kind of misery again. “I could go to the food bank. They help people like us all the time.”

He reached for me. I flinched until I realized he wanted to touch me, not hit me.

“Don’t say it, Penny. The Taylors ain’t no charity case. Never have been, never will. We ain’t got much, but we still got our pride, darlin’.”

And so for the next week, we lived on rations of oatmeal, corn mush, and your father’s pride.

When my monthly didn’t come on time, I figured stress, weight loss, and caffeine withdrawal had caused it, but just to be sure, I used the last of my pregnancy tests. If I could have afforded a dozen more, I would have taken them. I just couldn’t believe I was finally looking at a little blue plus sign after all this time. I wanted to be happy. This was what I had prayed and dreamed of for as long as I’d been married, after all, but the timing couldn’t have been worse. I was going to starve my own baby to death.

It was all I could do not to share the news with your father, but something told me I’d better think it out first. So, alone in the bedroom, I got on my knees as I’d seen my mother do so many times, and asked God why. The answer was immediate. This is what I’d asked for. First I ask God why he won’t give me a baby, then I ask him why he does? I smiled through tears.

I hate to wish bad things on you, Son, but I hope you get the privilege someday of having no one to lean on but God. It changes a person.

It sure changed me.

THE NEXT DAY,
before I even told your father about you, I swallowed my pride into my grumbling stomach and drove to the food bank. Walking in there, I felt defeated and determined all at the same time. When I told Trent I found some money in one of his pants pockets, he told me to pick him up a pack of smokes while I was out.

I hated lying, but when you’re starving, somehow a lie doesn’t seem as wicked as when your belly’s full. I hope you never go hungry enough to understand that, Manny.

A round woman with short, white hair met me at the door. I felt so humiliated at first I could barely look her in the eye, but she had this way about her, this disarming smile and voice that reminded me of my grandmother. By the time she was finished asking me questions, it felt like I was the one doing her the favor by taking the food off her hands.

I was relieved things were going so well, until she ushered
me back into the next room. Stacked nearly to the ceiling were shelves and shelves of food, just like a neighborhood grocery store. I could almost taste the Hamburger Helper piled high before me, when I heard a familiar voice say, “Penny, is that you? Penny Taylor?”

My blood turned to ice even as shame warmed my face. Of all the people in the world to be there, it just had to be that church lady. She wore a black apron over her dress, which told me she was there to work, not collect charity.

I pasted on a smile. “Cora Mae, so good to see you.”

She looked at the basket in my hands, then for some reason, down at my shoes. Maybe she thought I would be barefoot and filth-toed; I’m not quite sure. “It’s Callie Mae, but close enough.”

Before my mind could catch up with my mouth, I asked, “What are you doing here?”

She gave me a funny look, then pointed to the sign that said
Sheckle Baptist
in small letters right above
Food Bank
.

I’d never noticed the name of her church being on the sign out front, but here it was in faded brown and green. I felt like the world’s biggest idiot. “I’m just here for a friend,” I stammered. What was wrong with me? With all the lies flying from my lips lately, I was becoming a regular heathen.

“It’s all right, sweetheart. There’s no shame in asking for help. We all need a hand every now and then.”

The way I figured, the only help those kind of church ladies ever needed was someone to hold their purse while they put on their lipstick. I had a lot of mixed-up ideas about
people back then, Manny. About everything, really. “My husband had an accident.”

Her thin, blonde eyebrows dipped. “Oh no! What happened? Is he all right?”

“Not really,” I said. “He’s blind.”

After she picked her jaw up off the floor, she snatched up my hand like we were old girlfriends. I’d never felt skin so soft. She led me to a room at the back of the makeshift store. Inside it sat a small table, a microwave, and a bulletin board full of pictures of families I gathered the food bank had helped along the way.

The smell of brewed coffee made me practically drool. She pulled out two ceramic cups from the cabinet and asked me how I took mine. Normally, the answer would be black, but that day, as my stomach grumbled in pain, I asked for extra cream and sugar. Her eyes lingered on me, then she squatted and opened a bottom cupboard and pulled out a box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies. “Can’t very well have coffee without pastry.” She stood and set the box on the counter. “Guess these will have to work.”

It was all I could do to keep my eyes off those cakes and on her.

We sat down, and three oatmeal cremes and two cups of coffee later, she knew all about your father’s welding accident, our empty cabinets, and even the fact I hadn’t seen my parents in years. It felt so good to confide in another human being. It made the weight of my burdens feel lighter somehow.

With her dainty hands wrapped around her coffee mug, she shook her head with a look of pity. “My word, Penny Taylor, I feel like I’ve been reading the book of Job.”

As much as your father hated the idea of charity, I think I hated pity more. In their own way, I imagine both of our responses were the sin of pride. “It sounds worse than it is.”

She took a sip from the mug. “Believe it or not, I’ve been there. I married well, but believe you me, I grew up so poor my brother and me had to ride double on our stick horse.”

My gaze moved up her French manicure to the dime-sized rock on her finger. I doubted she’d been within a hundred miles of where I’d walked, but I just smiled.

“You live in that little house covered in tar paper, as I recall.”

I could barely look her in the eye. Was she wondering if we were too ignorant to know we were supposed to put siding over that stuff? Was she remembering the overgrown grass, the broken-down car in the yard, or the tractor tire circling around weeds like some kind of redneck planter?

“That’s right,” I whispered.

She looked off to the side with a hint of a smile playing on her glossy lips. “I’ll bet you don’t know this, but I stood outside your window for quite a while before knocking that first time I came by to bring you the cake and invitation.”

A feeling of panic came over me as I wondered what she might have seen or heard. Trent had been home that day, so there was no telling. “Oh?”

“You were singing my daughter, Sara’s, favorite song.” She
looked at me as if I should remember too, but I didn’t. As awful as it was to learn she’d been listening to me squawking like a crow, it was far better than some other things she might have heard.

I stared at the dried brown drip on the side of my coffee cup, waiting for her to either continue or change the subject.

“You have a pretty voice.” She cleared her throat.

I pushed my empty cup to the side and intertwined my fingers together atop the table just to give them something to do. “I’m guessing your hearing ain’t what it used to be.”

One thin eyebrow shot up. “Penny Taylor, are you suggesting I’m old?”

If my eyes were half as wide as they felt, I must have looked an awful lot like an owl right then. “I didn’t mean that. I just meant I can’t sing, is all. Please don’t think—”

“Honey, you need to relax. Don’t you think I know I’ve got enough wrinkles to hold a week’s worth of rain?”

Other than a few fine lines around her mouth and eyes when she smiled, her skin was as smooth as mine. Realizing she was using the same self-deprecation on herself that I’d just used on me, I decided then I liked her. Despite the fact she had more class in her thumb knuckles than I had in my entire body, maybe she and I weren’t all that different after all.

When I left there, I had three bags stuffed full of groceries, two job offers, and one new friend.

Callie Mae carried one of those bags out to the car for me. The air outside was warmer than it should have been for that time of year, and it brought to mind Trent and the heat
I would be in if I didn’t produce a pack of cigarettes. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to ask for one more thing from Callie Mae. She had already done so much.

“Now, Penny, you best be calling me tomorrow and telling me yes to one of those jobs we talked about. You tell your husband he has got to swallow that pride of his. It’s not about just him anymore. He’s got himself a wife to feed. If I were you—” she paused and looked over her shoulder like someone might be listening— “I would take the cleaning job. You don’t want to work for Mr. Henry. He’s a prickly old cactus. Believe you me, you want the job cleaning houses. I’m a good boss. It’s not glamorous, but the work’s steady, I pay on time, and you’ll love Fatimah. She’s who’d be training you.” She put her hand over her heart, and it looked for a second she might cry. “Oh, and she will love you. She surely will. After all that poor girl’s been through, she needs a friend, and I think maybe you do too.”

I wanted to ask what Fatimah had been through, but if things went the way I hoped they would, I’d have time to find out for myself.

When she opened the passenger door, it creaked so loudly it made her jump. Laughing at herself, she propped the bag of groceries against the back of the seat, pausing to consider the wooden cross dangling from my rearview mirror. When Trent lost his eyesight, one of the first things I did was replace the Playboy bunny air freshener he had hanging there. Thank goodness I had. The embarrassment of Callie Mae seeing that nasty thing would have killed me for sure.

She closed the door and looked over the top of the car at me. “Now, if there is anything else I can do for you—anything at all—you let me know. I mean it, now.”

I put my second bag in the backseat and shut the door. Flecks of rust rained down as it latched. “Callie Mae, you’re an angel.”

She wiped at her brow as she shot the sun a dirty look. “Better hold your judgment on that one. Anything, now. Hear me?”

I wrapped my fingers around the door handle so tightly my knuckles lost their color. “I guess maybe there is one thing.” It was a horrible thing to ask. And of a woman of God, too. “My husband, he smokes. It’s an awful addiction, I know. It’s just . . .” My voice trailed off.

It made me nervous that I couldn’t read her expression. She didn’t look disgusted like I thought she would. Instead, her thin lips disappeared as she tried to read something in my eyes. “It’s against our policy to give money, Penny. I’m sorry.”

I tried to smile, but it just refused to come. “I understand.” Wanting nothing more than to disappear, I opened the driver’s door. “Thank you so much for everything. I’ll call you tomorrow and give you my answer on the job after I discuss it with Trent.”

“Oh, wait!” she exclaimed. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

I sat in the driver’s seat and closed the door. The ignition turned over on the first try, which was unheard of for Old Sally, as Trent liked to call our car. She almost always took
at least three turns before rattling to life. I watched the thermostat creep up as the car idled. The temptation to drive off and never have to face Callie Mae again was overwhelming, but of course, I couldn’t do that. Not after how nice she’d been to me.

After a minute, she came out carrying an oversize canvas purse. She walked over, leaned it on my open window rim, and unzipped it. I hated myself so much right then. I didn’t just feel like a beggar, I felt like one of those bums you hated giving money to because you just knew they would only blow it on drugs or booze.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a green and white soft pack of Salems. Shocked into silence, I just stared at her.

It was she now who couldn’t make eye contact. “Don’t you dare go telling anyone I smoke. The last thing in this world I need is another well-intended lecture on what these things make the inside of my lungs look like. I was planning on quitting again tomorrow, anyway. I’ll just do it today.”

Not knowing what else to do, I took the cigarettes from her hand. This pack was not only missing a few, and not your father’s brand, they were menthol. He hated menthol. But I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, and beggars couldn’t really be choosers. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you, Callie Mae.”

She waved me away. “Don’t mention it. And I mean that literally. You had best not show up to church on Sunday thanking me for those things, neither, understand?”

The look on her face tickled me. “No, ma’am. I wouldn’t think of it.” It felt almost as good to laugh as it had to eat. I guess I’d been starving for both.

As I drove off, leaving an oil stain behind me, I caught a glimpse of my smile in the rearview, and at that moment, I remembered how life was supposed to feel.