The Girl from Charnelle

Gone

L
aura watched the thunderstorm from the living room window. The clouds bloated and darkened, common in the Panhandle during late afternoons, and then it poured—a gusty, whipsaw wind driving the rain sideways against the house. The rain hardened into thick white hail, which soon sheeted the yard. Her younger brothers, Gene and Rich, joined her at the window, and their mother stopped cooking in the kitchen and stood behind them, drying her hands on a dish towel.

The boys soon tired of the show, but Laura and her mother continued to stare at the white pellets pouring down—dumped, it seemed, from a huge bucket in the clouds. Lightning crinkled the gray sky, and to gauge the distance, Laura counted slowly until she heard the thunder. One, two, three, four, BOOM! The time between the light and the sound shortened, and then in an instant the hail stopped, the sky opened up, and a bright beam of sunshine shone on the street. They squinted.

A moment later, simultaneous thunder and a flash of silver heat cracked in
their yard. The house shook as if bulldozed. Rich screamed. Laura was blinded for a few seconds. Her body vibrated, jangled, and her teeth kept clicking, as if she were sending a signal in code.

Her mother stood in front of the window, frozen, her face cut by the sudden shadows after the light. Gene led Laura to the couch.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“The…the tree,” Laura stuttered, “the tree.”

Her mother opened the door and went outside. The old oak was split in half, a bright black burn down the center, the heavy-leaved top branches strewn across the white-pelleted lawn and porch. The ends touched the door.

“My God,” Mrs. Tate said, shuffling through the melting hail. She placed her hands on the dark center of the trunk. “It's hot,” she said. “It's still hot.”

Laura moved to the door, the muscles in her thighs and calves quivering, the joints of her knees still vibrating. Her teeth wouldn't stop clicking. Small lines of blinking silver crosshatched her vision. The sky darkened again. She and her brothers stood on the porch, afraid to move into the yard.

Their mother touched the trunk, the branches, the leaves, as if searching for a heartbeat. “So hot,” she muttered, “so hot.”

 

The next morning, the destroyed oak lay about the yard like a huge, stricken animal. Mr. Tate and Laura's older brother, Manny, had cleared away some of the debris that night, but the large job of cutting the heavy branches and uprooting the burned base of the trunk would take longer and would require special equipment. Leaving for school, they had to maneuver carefully around the fallen branches and the blackened husk of the split trunk. It was a mess.

Coming home on her bicycle later, Laura rounded the curve, saw the tree, and felt again the lightning in her body. Faint silver lines again blurred her vision. Her teeth involuntarily clicked. All this triggered, miraculously, by the presence of the tree.

She got off her bike in the front yard and wheeled it around to the side of the house. The front door was slightly ajar, and she pushed it open.

“I'm home.” No one answered. “Momma? Rich?”

Still no answer, which made her nervous. She went through the kitchen and opened the kitchen door, expecting them to be in the backyard. But all she saw was Fay, scratching around the fences.

“Where's everybody?” she called.

Fay trotted over. Laura patted the old dog's coat and head, careful around the wounds that their younger dog, Greta, had gouged in her face. Fay licked Laura's wrists and cheek with her bad breath. Inside, on the kitchen table, Laura found the note, quickly scrawled, in her mother's crooked handwriting: “Rich is at Mrs. Ambling's.”

 

“Where did my mother go?” Laura asked old Mrs. Ambling.

“I was wondering the same thing. She just asked me if I would watch Rich until all of you kids got home. She seemed in a hurry. She headed down the road with a suitcase.”

“A suitcase?”

“Yes, a brown one. Not that big.”

Laura inhaled sharply. She knew the suitcase, could picture it clearly in the back of her mother's closet, rarely used. It had a hole in the bottom, patched with duct tape, and one of the grips was frayed and threatening to come loose. Laura thanked Mrs. Ambling and grabbed Rich's hand.

“Ouch!” he whined as they walked across the yard to their house. “You're squeezing too hard.”

“Sorry.”

She went into her parents' room, not something she usually did without invitation, and opened her mother's dresser drawers, found them half empty. From the closet, six of her mother's ten dresses were gone, the brown suitcase gone, the wedding picture on the end table (the only picture in their house) gone, the postcard of a cathedral in Rome that her older sister, Gloria, had sent just last month, gone.
Maybe something's happened to Aunt Velma,
Laura thought.
Maybe she went to Amarillo.
She sat on her parents' bed and closed her eyes for a few moments. She could smell her mother's presence in the room—a faint whiff of sweat and talcum powder.

The front door opened. It was Manny. He came to the bedroom, an apple from Mrs. Ambling's front yard in hand, a greased black curl falling over his forehead.

“You ain't supposed to be in here.” He smirked, leaning against the doorjamb.

He doesn't know either,
she thought.

“Where's Momma?” he said, chomping the apple.

“I don't know.”

Rich appeared beside Manny's legs, watched his brother's mouth working slowly over the fruit. “I'm hungry,” he said.

 

“Where's your mother?” Mr. Tate asked when he and Gene got home.

“We thought
you
were going to tell
us,”
Manny said.

“Huh?”

“She left Rich with Mrs. Ambling and told her we would pick him up when we got home. Laura found the note. Give it to him, Laura.”

“Where did she go?” Mr. Tate asked, glancing at the paper, turning it over as if there had to be more to it.

“We don't know,” Manny said.

“She took a suitcase,” Laura offered. She hesitated before adding nervously, “The brown one.”

“A suitcase? She walked to town with the brown suitcase?” he asked.

“That's what Mrs. Ambling said.”

Mr. Tate went into his room, searched her dresser and nightstand. He opened the closet and grabbed the empty hangers and dropped them to the floor. The hangers bounced. He pulled the covers from the bed, looked under the pillows, threw them on the floor. The kids watched him warily from the doorway. His lips twitched. His forehead broke into a wrinkled frown. He eyed them as if he were going to say something but then didn't. Suddenly he slammed his hand down on the top of the dresser, and they all jumped. Rich grabbed Laura's leg. Her father whipped the drawers out of the dresser, overturned the contents onto the bed and floor. Laura and her brothers continued to stare from the hallway, not crossing the threshold.

“Damn it!” their father shouted, and then struck the lamp by his bed. It crashed against the headboard.

He looked at them as if they were to blame. Then he shook his head, sighed heavily, and brushed past them into the living room. “Stay here!” he ordered, then opened the front door and slammed it behind him. They ran to the window and watched him walk to Mrs. Ambling's house, kicking aside the dead branches from the oak. They did not follow him.

Mrs. Ambling answered her door. With his arms folded across his chest and his forehead still furrowed, he asked her questions they couldn't hear. Mrs. Ambling did not open the screen door, though Laura could see her frail and weathered face and white hair through the screen. Laura couldn't blame her for
wanting to keep a barrier between herself and his anger. Mrs. Ambling nodded and shook her head. After a few moments, Mr. Tate looked up and saw Laura and her brothers at the window. Laura felt suddenly embarrassed for him, but also for herself and her brothers shamelessly watching him. Mrs. Ambling turned to them, too, and then she opened the screen door, and he went inside her house, his arms still crossed.

 

“What did she say?” Manny asked when their father returned.

Mr. Tate didn't answer, just hurriedly grabbed his keys. “I'll be back later.”

“Where are you going?”

“To look for your mother.”

“Where is she?”

“That's what I aim to find out.”

They ran to the porch as he started the truck and backed out, shooting gravel. They all jumped down and skirted the tree and stood at the edge of the road as he drove away, tires squealing. The truck shimmied down the road and turned the corner, but they remained there, looking at the tree and the darkening sky.

“Can we eat?” Gene asked nervously, unsure if hunger was appropriate.

“Yeah,” Laura said, putting her hand on the back of his thin neck. “I'll make some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

 

By midnight he hadn't returned. Laura made Rich go to bed. The child was cranky, unsettled, and had been crying off and on in jags, “Where's Momma? Where did Momma go?”

Laura said, “She'll be back soon. Don't worry.” She helped him into his pajamas. He needed a bath. His thick blond hair was dirty and his neck ringed with dust. She lay down with him on her bed and rubbed his back and sang songs quietly until he nodded off, and then she went into the living room.

“Gene, you should go to bed, too,” she said. Skinny Gene, the most frail of them all, just stood at the window, looking out. “We have school tomorrow.”

“No,” he said.

“It's after midnight. You'll be exhausted.”

“I'm not going to school tomorrow.”

“Yes, you are.”

Manny said, “Give it a break, Laura. None of us are going to school tomorrow.”

“We don't have a choice.”

“We goddamn sure do!”

“Momma won't stand for it,” she protested.

“She's not here, you idiot! And she ain't coming back either. Just like Gloria. Can't you see that?”

Gloria had eloped to Mexico with an air force pilot less than a year ago, and according to the last postcard, she would be in Europe indefinitely.

“Dad's going to find her.”

“Fat chance! Are you blind? She's gone. Long gone.”

“You're wrong,” Laura said.

Gene sat down on their father's chair, covered his ears, and began to cry.

“Quit yelling,” she said to Manny. “See what you've done?” She bent to comfort Gene.

“Who gives a shit?” Manny shouted.

“Shh. You'll wake Rich.”

“He might as well be up,” Manny said.

“It's okay, Gene,” Laura said, stroking his head.

“No, it's not!” Manny shouted again. “It's
not
okay.”

“Will you just shut up?” she said.

“You fucking shut up!” Manny lurched toward her, his face red and knotted. She put her arm up as if to ward off his blow, but he stopped himself. Still, he hovered over the chair.

Gene yelled, through his tears, “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” The intensity of his voice startled both of them.

Rich screamed shrilly, an animal cry, then called, “Momma!”

Laura shook her head and grimaced at Manny. “What is the matter with you? It's not
our
fault.”

“Laura!” Rich called again.

“Rich, I'm right here,” she said. She went into the bedroom and made him lie back down. “I'll check on you in a minute.”

“Don't leave!” he cried.

“I'm just in the living room.”

“Stay with me,” he whimpered.

She lay down on the bed next to him and rubbed his back again. She
thought he was asleep several times, but whenever she moved, he woke, clutching her.

“I'm right here,” she said.

She remained as still as possible and closed her eyes and tried not to think. Gene and Manny spoke in hushed whispers in the living room, and then they opened the front door and went outside. Their father wasn't home, though. She hadn't heard his truck. She relaxed for a second, nodded off, and then woke, startled, afraid that she'd slept too long. She looked at the clock. Only twenty minutes had passed, but she felt groggy, disoriented. Rich was deeply asleep now.

She grabbed her sweater and slipped on her shoes and went outside, where Gene and Manny sat on the ground in the debris of the halved oak. She turned on the porch light, left the front door open in case Rich woke again, and then sat down with them.

“I'm sorry,” Manny said.

“It's okay. Let's go on to bed. He'll be back soon, and we'll wake up then.”

“You two go on,” Manny stated. “I'll wait here.”