Call Me Tuesday (10 page)

20

My fourth grade was spent isolated from the other kids, most of the time with my dress collar pulled up over my face to simulate to the protected feeling my mask had given me.

The day after school was out, Daddy took me back to Grandma’s, and I remained there for the summer. He called on the phone once a week to talk to me, and to make sure I was doing okay. But I didn’t speak to Mama at all during my entire stay. Like before, Daddy didn’t come for me until the night before school started. He told me in the car on the way home that I would be staying with Grandma Storm every summer until Mama got better.

“Why can’t I live with Grandma and go to school in Nashville?” I asked Daddy.

“Grandma Storm hasn’t been feeling well, and she isn’t able to take care of you by herself, and your aunt Macy has to work. Besides, I’m still hoping your mama will get better soon, and everything will get back to normal.”

The previous spring Mama had announced to the family she was going to have another baby, her fifth, counting Audrey. By the time I got back home, she was almost seven months along.

She was depressed for the last few months of her pregnancy and went back to spending most of her days in bed. She had the baby, another son, that winter, and named him Ryan, after one of her favorite actors, Ryan O’Neal.

The house was almost happy after Ryan was born. You could feel the presence of a new life, and hope for change was in the air. When Daddy was at work, Mama had to take care of the baby all by herself, and I was glad because it distracted her for a while. She kept busy fixing his bottles and doing laundry and other chores, but still, wherever she was, she made sure I was within her sight.

Daddy beamed with pride over Ryan, as he did with all his kids. He kept saying he was glad he was born a boy. He said he had always dreamed of having enough sons to make up a basketball team. It made me think I had been a disappointment to him because I was a girl.

In the mornings he became preoccupied with feeding and caring for Ryan, and quit coming to my room to give me a kiss.

Still, I woke up early every day, listening and waiting, hoping it would be the morning he would decide to come see me again. In the evenings he often worked late, and Mama usually sent me to bed before he got home, so it got to where I hardly saw him at all.

Sometimes at night, I cried because I missed Daddy so much, missed being held by him, and hearing the loving words he had once said to me. I cried because I missed Grandma too. I longed for her orderliness, the smell of the flowers in her garden, and the comfort of her food. I cried because I didn’t know what to do to make Mama love me the way she loved Audrey and my brothers, the way she had loved me before.

Like everybody else in the family, I was positively fascinated with my new baby brother, but Mama kept me far away from him, like she did with Nick and Jimmy D. The more she kept me away, the more fixated on being near him I became. All I wanted was to hold him and cuddle him, and kiss his soft head.

While I was sweeping the house one day, I saw my opportunity to find out what it was like to touch him. He was in my parents’ room, asleep on their bed. Mama was in the kitchen, at the other end of the house, talking on the phone. After I made sure she was in deep conversation, I propped the broom against the wall and tiptoed to Ryan.

He was even cuter up close. He had full pink cheeks and a tiny, beak-like mouth. The sight of him sleeping—pillows piled all around him like fluffy clouds—reminded me of a picture I’d seen in Grandma’s Bible of an angel in heaven.

Carefully I put my hand on his back and held it there, soaking up the warmth of his body. Then I bent over and touched my lips to the top of his head, inhaling his sweet, powdery scent. Being near him made me aware of his fragility, his innocence, of how entirely helpless he was, how he was at the mercy of those around him, now at the mercy of me.

All of a sudden, anger rose from my chest, and then a disturbing vision popped into my head. I saw myself picking Ryan up and throwing him across the room. It was so real, this vision, I could feel the weight of him in my hand, see him sliding down the wall. The impulse to follow through with what I had imagined overwhelmed me. Before I knew what was happening, I had clutched his nightgown to lift him from the bed.

Then I stopped.
No! I can’t hurt Ryan!
I let go of him and ran from the room, taking the erupting anger with me.

Standing in the hall I felt as though I could burst. I needed somewhere to direct all the fury I held inside. So I turned it on myself. I doubled my fists, and hit both sides of my head at once, banging until I could hear ringing in my ears. Next I pulled at my hair, my lips, and my eyelashes. Working my way down my body, I beat myself in the stomach and on the fronts of my thighs. I turned my ankles over, again and again, twisting them till the bones crunched.

Feeling much better, I picked up the broom and resumed sweeping.

I was ashamed of what I had thought, and wondered why something so sick had even entered my mind—why, when I had nothing but adoration for my baby brother, I had suddenly wanted to hurt him. And then it struck me like a sledgehammer:
Maybe I am an evil killer, after all.

21

With so much of Mama’s attention going to Ryan, Daddy had to take on more of the responsibility of caring for the rest of the family. In addition to working his regular job, he got my brothers and me off to school in the mornings, and made sure we were fed supper in the evenings. Whenever he had ball practice, or if he had to coach a game, he brought cafeteria food home from the school where he taught.

One afternoon I heard my brothers cheering when Daddy walked in the door from work with cafeteria food. Even though I knew I was going to get something good to eat, I was sad, because I also knew it meant Daddy would be leaving, and would most likely be gone for the rest of the night.

After he had given the boys their meals, he walked over to where I was standing to give me mine. When he peeled away the tin foil covering the food, I was thrilled to see it was piled high with slices of roast beef, and a generous serving of mashed potatoes smothered with brown gravy. As he handed me the steamy plate, along with a small carton of milk, he grinned and winked.

He still showed me signs of his affection, a rub on the head while Mama was asleep. A wink when she looked away. Although I was well aware he was trying to conceal how he felt about me from her, I never got angry with him, or thought about why he didn’t want her to know. I was too desperate for his love to care, and in a way the hiding made his gestures more special, our own shared secret.

I yearned for his attention and welcomed it, but, at the same time, I knew how much it irritated Mama and that if she found out, I would be the one who would end up paying for it later. I looked over at her to see if she had seen him wink at me. She had.

“Don’t give her anything to drink until she has completely cleaned her plate,” she said to Daddy.

A quizzical expression crossed his face, but without hesitation he took the carton of milk from me and put it up on the chest of drawers in Mama’s bedroom, then left for his ballgame.

After I had finished eating my food, I remembered the milk he had put aside for me, but I was too afraid to ask Mama if I could have it. As the night went on, I came to realize she had no intention of giving it to me at all.

About two weeks later, I was standing in my usual place in the hallway when Mama approached me from behind. I felt her shove something into my shoulder. “I found this in my room,” she said. “I believe it belongs to you.”

When I turned around, I saw she was holding a carton of milk. “Be sure and drink it all,” she said. “Daddy brought it for you, and you wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings now, would you?”

I took it from her, although I thought she was joking, that she couldn’t possibly be serious.

“Drink up,” she said, waving her hand briskly.

I opened the carton, and a putrid odor sprang from it. I peered down through the spout, and saw the milk had curdled, and begun to separate.

“I can’t drink this,” I said. “It’s spoiled!”

“Drink it!” she shouted.

I took in a deep breath, and held it. Slowly I lifted the carton to my mouth. But the smell of the spoiled milk was awful, and I could not bring myself to drink it. I closed the carton and dropped it to the floor in front of me. “No! I won’t do it!”

She picked it up. “Drink it or I’ll pour it down your throat myself.”

She wasn’t bluffing, and I knew it. Since her accident, it seemed like she had lost the inner voice that prevents most people from committing mean acts. As if she had no rationalization period between thinking she was going to do something horrendous, and actually doing it. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself throwing the carton at her, and her shocked expression, with chunks of clabbered milk clinging to it. But unlike her, I could hear the voice inside my head, loud and clear, telling me not to do it.

I had learned from similar past experiences, either I was going to have to drink the spoiled milk on my own, or do it her way and get a beating in the process. With tears streaming down my cheeks, I took it from her and forced it down, swallowing as fast as I could, first the bitter liquid, and then the congealed lumps.

When I had finished she took the carton from me, checked to make sure it was empty, and then grabbed one of my arms, and spun me back around facing the wall again.

A few days later, Mama brought me milk again, this time in a glass. When I took it from her, our fingers touched, and for a second our eyes met. The thought crossed my mind that it could be her way of apologizing for forcing me to drink the spoiled milk days earlier. I searched out her empty glare for a trace of kindness, and found none.

The glass felt cold in my hand. I brought it up to my nose and took a sniff. The milk didn’t smell sour. Still I sipped warily. It tasted sweet and mellow, and creamy gliding down my throat. I turned up the glass and guzzled, my heart soaring with joy, because it was the first time since before her accident Mama had done something nice for me.

Then just as I got to the bottom of the glass of milk, I felt a slimy lump slither through my lips and slide across my tongue, where it burst, releasing a rich, salty taste. Gagging, I pulled the milk away from my mouth. A clear string of slime ran down my chin.

“I read that raw eggs are good for you,” she said. “They make your hair shiny.”

22

To better support his growing family, Daddy took an office job as personnel manager for a local aluminum plant. Although he made more money, and his new employment was less demanding of his time, it put an end to the cafeteria food he had been bringing home for the family to eat.

Mama resumed preparing the family’s meals. Now that she was in complete control of what I ate, I rarely got what the rest of the family had. Instead I was given the uneaten scraps from everyone else’s plates—fat, gristle, and half-chewed meat. She also continued to plant strange things in my food and drink. She brought me sweet tea with bacon grease in it, a bowl of soup filled with hot peppers, and mashed potatoes with scoops of lard mixed in.

Then she began withholding food. Soon it was routine for me to be sent to bed without supper. On those nights hunger ripped at my insides, as I lay unable to sleep, and my thoughts were dominated by trying to come up with ways to get more to eat.

When I cleaned the house, I sometimes came across edible morsels on the floor, like soggy pieces of cereal my brothers had dropped from their breakfast bowls. When Mama wasn’t paying attention, I scavenged around in the trash cans for discarded sandwich crusts and apple cores.

My best opportunity to get anything of significant substance was right after everyone else in the family had finished supper, when Mama had me take the leftover scraps outdoors to feed our dog, Rusty. However, under her watchful eyes, swiping the dog’s food was no easy feat. She had calculated how long it took me to walk to the end of the backyard to dump the scraps, and if I didn’t finish within the allotted time, she came out to check.

Sometimes there were no leftovers from supper, no crumbs on the floor, or opportunities to dig through the trash, and I went to bed hungry. One night, after many of listening to my stomach growl, it occurred to me that the kitchen, right beside my room, was full of food. I decided to take the risk and slip in there to find something decent to eat.

Well past midnight, I tiptoed down the hall and peeked into Mama and Daddy’s bedroom to make sure they were sound asleep. On the way back, I passed my brothers in their bunk beds; I could hear their deep and even breathing. Gathering all my courage, I made my way to the kitchen, careful not to bump into anything that might create a sound and awaken someone. Just inside the doorway, I stubbed my toe on Jimmy D.’s schoolbook satchel, slumped in the floor where he’d left it earlier. I froze in fear and listened for the sound of Mama’s bed squeaking. The house remained silent, and so I continued with my mission.

As soon as I came to the refrigerator, I opened it, and using my bare hands, dipped into hamburger goulash and mashed potatoes left over from supper, and crammed them in my mouth as fast as I could. After I had eaten all that my belly could hold, I scrambled back into bed, proud of my accomplishment, and fell to sleep, satisfied.

My secret visits to the kitchen became more frequent, as Mama fed me less and less. Eventually I was slipping out of my bed for food almost every night. Each time I got a little braver, staying in the kitchen longer, eating all the leftovers Mama had planned to heat up for lunch the next day. Soon she noticed the food was missing and became suspicious.

I was standing in front of the open refrigerator with my mouth full of pecan pie when she caught me.

“Spit it out!” she said, shoving a trashcan under my mouth with one hand, and squeezing my jaw until my cheeks collapsed with the other.

I expelled the gooey pie, and it plunked against the bottom of the trashcan.

“You’re like a sneaky weasel, stealing our food while we sleep. You’re even beginning to look like a weasel,” she said. She smacked me on the back of my head with the flat of her hand. “Pop goes the weasel.”