Cruel Harvest (6 page)

When Daddy showed up with that rattletrap car, we had to pack in like a bunch of sardines and go to our next destination. It tore at my five-year-old heart to have to leave. I wanted more than anything to stay and share the life of my lost brother.

As soon as our car pulled out of my uncle's driveway and out of sight, Daddy's hand shot out, slamming into the side of my mother's face without warning.

“You tramp!” my Dad screamed.

We all sat in the backseat afraid to move, knowing what was coming. Drops of deep red blood ran down Mama's chin. She reached up to dab at her face and he slapped her again.

“Don't even move, you witch!” He ordered. “I ought to kill you for flirting with my brother like some floozy!” Mama was crying, trying to choke back the sobs. “As soon as I find a place to pull this car over I'm gonna teach you to show me proper respect.”

Mama said not a word. Her hair hung in her eyes, but she did not make a move to brush it away. It was as if she was trying to wish away the words and the anger—and what she knew was coming next.

“I should have never taken you from your slack-jawed parents. Nobody else would have you. Now look what I got.”

I could see his leathery neck and his cheek full of stubble. His skin turned redder and redder as his voice rose.

“You're no woman. I seen how you strutted around in front of my brother. Crossing your legs so he could see up your dress. You wanted to make a fool out of me, didn't you?”

Mama tried one time to deflect the words Daddy was using against her. As usual, he was working himself up into a lather that would soon turn into a rage. Her efforts to change the subject only made him worse.

“Broadus,” she said. “Look at that mountain. I ain't seen nothing so pretty, have you?”

“Shut your mouth, you pig! I'll tell you when you can speak! I'm gonna
show
you, and this time you're gonna learn to keep your snaggletooth mouth shut!”

“Honey.” She tried again to get his attention off of her. “Did you see those deer over by that oak we just passed? They weren't near as big as the one you and Mose shot and skinned. You sure do know how to fix deer meat.”

Daddy ignored her attempt, instead cursing her until he was sweating and his hands were shaking from anger. He drove faster and faster. I prayed,
Dear God, please let a policeman come by and save Mama
.

He cursed and threatened and howled the most awful words at her, but she did not flinch. Daddy pounded the steering wheel with his fist, accusing Mama with obscene lies he made up in his head. Suddenly and without warning, the car came to a screeching halt on the side of the road. Daddy burst out of his door and stormed around the front of the hood.

Mama mewed down deep in her throat, a sound like nothing I had ever heard. She softly cried, “No, Broadus, please don't hit me.” Then her door was ripped open. Daddy's large hand reached into the car and his fingers latched into Mama's hair. He dragged her out onto the grassy bank by the road. All the while, he was screaming those awful words and spitting out cusses at her.

At first, I just sat there, terrified to move, as Daddy literally dragged Mama up the bank and toward a line of trees a few hundred feet from the road. Mama tried to walk, but he yanked her along so fast that she could not stay on her feet. She lost her shoes, but he kept dragging her and hitting her in the head with his fist. She was a small, frail woman, beautiful with long dark hair and a dimple in her chin like mine. She pleaded with him, but you could see that Daddy could not wait to get her in those woods.

Once they were out of sight, the bloodcurdling screaming started. It sounded as though Mama was going to die. I slid off the backseat onto the floorboard. I lay facedown, pressing my hands to my ears as hard as I could. No matter how hard I squeezed, I could not block out the sounds of Mama's pleading. I wished it could be me. In my heart, I would gladly have taken the beating for her.

Mama was a ray of light. When Daddy wasn't around, she was lots of fun, and she told me fairy tales every night except the times when he had beat her up so bad that she couldn't talk. She taught me to say my nighttime prayers when I first began to speak. I don't ever remember Mama being anything but kind to me, and I loved her dearly.

When Daddy hurt her, it felt as though a part of me would die. Sometimes she would have to go to the hospital to get her ribs set or stitches in a cut that would not stop bleeding on its own. He would buy her candy as an offering to keep her from telling the doctors how she got hurt. It was always chocolate-covered cherries—her favorite. He would force her to eat his guilt offering before allowing her to get medical treatment. It made me physically sick to see how bad she hurt, her mouth swollen and bleeding, and yet knowing she couldn't get medical treatment until she ate his candy.

I made a vow, lying on the floorboard in the car that day, that I would take my mama far away, and we would live in a beautiful house like in one of her fairy tales. I would not let anybody
ever
hurt her again.

Time stretched out. The beating went on longer than such a thing seemed possible. Then, finally, the woods went silent. The car was quiet. I remember being thankful the screaming stopped, but as the seconds went by, my relief was replaced by fear. It was one of the first times I thought that Mama might be dead. It was too quiet.

Daddy walked out of the woods first. His pace had slowed and his face was no longer red. He looked like a man who had just come back from working hard out in the fields. There was blood on the back of his hands. Mama eventually struggled out of the trees. One of her eyes was swollen closed and blood dripped onto the front of her dress from a slashing cut that ran across her chin. I learned later that he had taken out his knife and cut where her dimple had been.

By the next morning I knew something was different about that beating Mama endured. When I saw Daddy, I noticed right away that it must have been worse than most. He was doting on her, touching her hair and laughing like they were newly in love. He piled us into the car. I was afraid at first to get in, but he put his hand on my back and pushed me toward the door. I was confused, and his kindness to Mama did nothing to soften the fear. In fact, it made the feeling more ominous.

We drove for miles that morning and all through the night. We rode in silence, every one of us afraid to speak. Mama slept with her head against the passenger-side window, and we only stopped for gas. I assumed we were on the run again, but early the next morning he pulled onto a tree-lined road. I saw a sign but did not recognize it for what it was—the entrance to a park. I leaned forward, gripping Susie's hand as I pressed my nose against the window.

What I saw that day was beauty that only God could create. I had prayed for peace and to escape ugliness and horrors of this migrant life, and God showed me beauty beyond my imagination! I had no idea we were in California, so I didn't know the giant trees surrounding our car were redwoods. At the park's entrance, my heart nearly stopped. We were approaching the biggest tree I had ever seen with a hole through its base, and I could hardly breathe as we drove right through the middle of it! The sight was astonishing to me—trees so wide and tall that I thought they might swallow the car. Lush green ferns covered the ground between the trunks like the rolling surf of a green ocean. A light fog hung just above the leaves like the whitecaps of breaking waves.

Daddy pulled off at one of the open picnic areas.

“Wilma.” He nudged Mama. “You feel like going for a walk?”

Her eyes wide, Mama got out of the car in awe of her surroundings. He had bought her another box of chocolate-covered cherries, and she clutched it to her chest like a security blanket. The scarlet of the box matched the angry wound on her chin. I think he was afraid Mama might actually die from the beating he'd given her, and that he would end up in prison for it.

“You kids go play in the park for a while,” he ordered. “I'll blow the horn when it's time for you to come back.”

We all looked at each other, not knowing what to do. Wide-mouthed, we watched as he led her into the woods. Mama shuffled along behind him as if she were half asleep.

For a few moments I sat in the car, watching the spot where my parents had disappeared around the bend of a path. I think we all knew what was happening. Daddy did it all the time. He would beat Mama so bad, and then buy her a cheap box of chocolates. He knew he had gone too far the night before and he was trying to make sure she did not turn him in. It worked too.

Eventually, my sisters got out of the car. One by one, they wandered off as if lost in the fog. My little brother glanced at me, but then hurried to join them. I was left alone among those mammoth trees. For some reason, I could not move at first. Instead, I watched the path, hoping to see Mama reappear. I was afraid that maybe Daddy would beat her up again in those woods and I'd never see her again.

Time passed and I realized all of my family was out of sight. I could only think of Mama, so I climbed into the front seat where she had been sitting. I took a deep breath, breathing in the scent of her. Her Bible was on the floor at my feet. I picked it up, clutching it to my chest, and continued to stare out into the dazzling green of the surrounding forest. It felt as if that wave of fog might come and crash over me, washing me away forever.

Nothing happened. The moment passed, and I reached out to open the car door, still holding Mama's Bible close to my heart. Once outside, I walked the opposite direction from where my siblings had gone, looking for a moment of peace and quiet and rare time alone.

As I followed a path deeper into the forest, sunlight cut through the fog in amazing bands of white. They dappled the ground and lit my way into what seemed to me like a land from one of the beautiful fairy-tale stories Mama told me when Daddy was out at night.

I followed a wooden walk lined with yellow, purple, and bloodred wildflowers. The path led to a rock bridge spanning a lazy creek that wound between the giant trees. I imagined I lived there in a small cabin that had window boxes filled with flowers. All the animals would come to visit me and the world would be peaceful. The dream gave me comfort. I lost track of how long I wandered in that majestic park.

Once across the creek, I stepped from the trail. I sat down under one of the redwoods and placed Mama's Bible on my lap. The green canopy above seemed to be miles over my head; I felt tiny. Sunlight cut through the branches and leaves like the spokes of a wheel rolling across the heavens. My hands wrapped around the Bible, and I felt a presence with me, close, like a soft blanket wrapped around my shoulders.

I could not read, but I opened the Bible and followed the words with my eyes. Mama knew how badly I wanted to learn, and she soothed my longing with the promise that God heard my prayer. She said the words in the Bible are all good and she promised me that God would understand if I was not able to read them. She assured me that one day I would learn to read. Until then, I could make up words that were good and pretend I was talking to God. So I
read
what I thought the page would say.

“God is with me every day,” I read. “I am not alone. God knows who I am and He cares when I am hungry or afraid. God looks down from heaven and He sees all the children who need Him.”

In that moment I felt light as a feather, floating on the breeze as it wrapped around those giant tree trunks. I could hear the words I pretended to read on the pages, words that the Lord put in my heart. They were words used by God to reassure a frightened child. As I sat on the grass under the giant trees holding Mama's Bible, I knew I had been touched in some way.

My freedom among
the redwoods ended far too soon. I had to return to the life my daddy gave us. Mama recovered, or at least physically recovered, from the beating that almost killed her. When Daddy finally took her to a hospital in California days later, he told the doctors that she had not shut the car door all the way and had fallen out while they were driving at forty miles per hour. No charges were issued. The doctor wrapped up Mama's ribs and sewed the wound on her chin. Her dimple was gone, replaced by an angry, jagged scar. The deeper scars, however, were hidden inside.

Mama changed after that beating. She tried to please Daddy with an urgency that bordered on desperation, and she stopped touching me and the other children. I felt hurt and confused as she distanced herself from us, and my mind returned to that night she and Brenda had talked of killing him. If I had let them, the beating never would have happened. I could have saved her all the pain and misery. The guilt was so heavy that I felt I was choking from it.

When we left the redwoods, Mama left a part of her behind. She was not mean to us, but she did not dance or sing or read any longer. Her wonderful fairy tales ceased, and she did not tuck me in at night. Along with my guilt, a new feeling burned inside me—hate. I hated my daddy for what he'd done to her. At the same time, I felt even more guilt for that fact.
How can I hate my own daddy? There must be
something wrong with me
. It started a vicious circle that haunted me for a good part of my life.

We traveled on
in the old jalopy, the five of us packed in the backseat, too afraid to talk or play. We were on our way to another hot farm back in Oklahoma, returning to the dusty, dreary work that we despised. After spending a week with Uncle Mose and two days at the redwood forest, it made the Oklahoma cotton fields seem drearier. Once we were settled in yet another migrant camp and Daddy was sure that Mama would not turn him in, the evil inside came out again. One evening, after we'd all returned to the shack at the close of a backbreaking day of work with no food at all, he handed Mama some money.