The Warmest December (11 page)

I stepped backward. “H-hello,” I answered and my eyes moved around the cabin in search of Delia.

“What about a hug for your dad,” he said and stepped closer.

I swallowed hard. I had never hugged Hy-Lo; the only physical contact we ever made with each other was when he hit me. He moved in and embraced me. I stiffened and all the blood in my body ran cold and drained down to my feet, numbing them. I held my breath and waited for it to be over.

I felt his heart thumping against my chest and then he let go.

“Get your stuff together, we’re going home.” He moved away and cleared his throat, embarrassed at his effort and my resistance, and turned to walk out. I saw the imprint of the pint of Smirnoff in his back pocket as he moved through the door. “Don’t keep me waiting, Kenzie,” he said as he skipped down the steps and tried to duck the rain that fell in buckets around him.

I jammed my belongings into my duffel bag and tried hard to fight the tears back. I heard the horn blow between the cracks of thunder and the announcement that was being made over the PA system:
“Field day has been canceled due to
the weather. All campers should report to the recreation hall for fun and
games.”

My life had been canceled due to Hy-Lo and I was reporting to a green Oldsmobile for a trip home. What a fucking life!

I looked out the window and saw Mousy leaning against the wooden post of the recreation hall. He was talking to a counselor, but his eyes were on my cabin. I watched him for a long time before I shoved my remaining items into my bag. He would be a sweet memory; that’s all Hy-Lo had allowed.

The horn blared again and I grabbed my bag and hurried out into the rain and toward the car. Hy-Lo was tilting the bottle up to his mouth when I swung the car door open; Malcolm was huddled in the backseat, his eyes wide and confused. Delia sat up front beside Hy-Lo, her face like stone, her eyes staring straight ahead.

“Hi,” I said. It came out small and lifeless.

“Hi,” she said and turned her head a bit to look at me. Her eye was swollen and the skin was cut at the bridge of her noise. I looked at her and shook my head in disgust, then leaned back into the hard leather of the seat and turned my face away from her eyes.

“You always sorry,” I muttered to myself as Hy-Lo took one last swig from his bottle before shoving it between his legs. He turned the radio up and backed the car slowly out of the parking space.

“Say goodbye to the country, kids,” he laughed as we did ninety toward home.

I rolled my eyes and shot him the finger behind his back, Malcolm giggled in his hands, and then we settled back and watched the trees fly by until they were gone and we were home.

Chapter Eight

H
y-Lo stirred and groaned as if reading my thoughts. He did that on and off for some time, his groans coinciding with the howl of the wind outside the windows.

Death was close now. I could feel it in the room. Waiting. Just like me. Waiting.

I had been waiting for Hy-Lo to die my whole life, not knowing that my whole life I had been watching him die. Every drop of liquor he ever drank had put him a step closer to where he was today. And somehow he’d managed to take me along with him.

What the hell was I doing there, so close to him after spending a lifetime trying to avoid him?

I looked at him, his open gaping mouth and swollen purple tongue, and willed him to speak, to offer a few words of solace and a lifetime of apologies that would finally, maybe, make my life normal.

He just lay there, taking. Still taking.

“You are so selfish,” I muttered angrily and slammed my leather-gloved fist down onto my thigh. “You won’t die and you won’t let me live. Why?”

I left without getting an answer, not that I expected one, but I desperately needed one. I roamed the streets for two hours, maybe more. The winter night was dark except for the snow flurries that shattered the darkness and littered the sidewalks by the time I arrived at the school.

The muscles in my legs thumped against the forced exercise I had imposed on them and my sweatshirt was soaked through under the arms. I didn’t care; no one in that room cared whether I was sweaty or not. What they cared about was getting better.

I stood behind ten people who’d lined up for coffee. I was beginning to recognize the faces, able to place their stories with their eyes. I was still an enigma to them, I could tell by their greetings. “Welcome,” someone would say and then squint their eyes and search their memory to find me. But they couldn’t and so I was always a new face to them.

But that would change tonight.

I filled my cup with the hot, bitter black liquid and moved to the front of the room. The chairperson was a young Korean girl; her hair was dyed green at the ends and her face was covered with angry red pimples.

“Hi,” she greeted me and stuck her hand out. I took her tiny hand in mine and she shook it and pulled me toward her. “You ready now?”

My eyes went wide with surprise. She knew me. “Yes,” I replied and turned to face the crowd. She smiled and patted me on the back.

“Welcome,” she said, and for the first time I finally actually felt welcomed.

“Hello, my name is Kenzie and I’m an alcoholic.”

I said it and my heart went light—a weight had been lifted with those few simple words. I took a breath and began at a place in my life where the hurt was personal and the reality all too genuine for a child just becoming familiar with her teenage years.

When I turned fourteen years old I got a cat for my birthday. She was a black-and-white pure-bred Persian, with large round eyes the color of ebony under moonlight. We were immediately taken with each other and she, like me, avoided my father as much as possible.

I named her Pricilla, because at the time I thought that was the most beautiful name in the world and she was the most beautiful thing in my life.

She loved to lie on the windowsill of my bedroom and bask in the warm sunlight, and at night she slept at the foot of my bed, her head resting contently on the sole of my foot.

Pricilla was smarter than any cat I’d known and her strength was equal to that of a small dog.

Hy-Lo was as cruel to her as he was to us. When she did happen to stumble across his path he would grab hold of her and drag her across the carpet by her tail, or sometimes hold her by her neck and singe her whiskers with his cigarette.

She would get him back though, but for a long time Malcolm and I took the blame.

“Wasn’t there two chicken wings left on this plate?”

“Who was in the refrigerator? There’s milk everywhere!”

“Damnit! Who ate the last pork chop!”

Malcolm and I were constantly accused of leaving the refrigerator door half-open, knocking over containers of milk, and taking meat out of frying pans and not placing those pans to soak in the sink.

We would stand at attention in front of Hy-Lo or slouch before Delia and accuse each other of the crime or just swear on our young souls that we knew nothing of the offense that had been committed.

Hy-Lo called us liars and sent us for the belt. Delia would shrug her shoulders and shake her head in disgust and send us to our room, where we would sit and scratch our heads and wonder if there were a ghost living among us. All along it was Pricilla.

Her hiding place was in the hollowed-out underside of my father’s record player. It was a beautiful piece of furniture— long and sleek, running nearly the length of the wall it rested against. A deep mahogany with four claw feet, my father kept it gleaming with wood oil and Pledge.

The left side was a case that held his old 78s and newer 33s, while the right side held the turntable. None of us were allowed to touch it and we’d better not even look at it too hard.

I’d spotted Pricilla on a number of occasions slipping beneath its belly and disappearing from sight. I’d lay my body across the floor and move as close to the player as I dared, expecting to see her glowing eyes staring back at me, but they were never there.

It was a long time before I got up the nerve to slip my hand beneath the player. I patted the air for her soft fur and moved it slowly across the carpet in hopes of colliding with her. Nothing.

I pulled my hand out and sat up and scratched my head in bewilderment.

“Oooooooh!” Malcolm’s voice rang out like a human siren. “I’matell Daddy you messing with his record player. Ooooooooooh!”

The bond that held Malcolm and me together was rapidly losing its adhesive. With every birthday we celebrated we moved further and further apart. After all, I was nearly a woman and he was still a child.

“Shut up!” I hissed at him. “Stop sneaking around like a little snake.”

Malcolm had become a sidler, often entering a room without making a sound.

“Hy-Lo gonna beat you good!” He taunted and teased me until I couldn’t take it anymore.

I flew at him and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. “Shut up!” I shouted in his face, and spittle covered his forehead. I shook him until his head resembled the plastic dolls that bounced their grinning heads in car windows.

Malcolm tried to pry my hands loose but I had a death grip on him. I saw the quick fear that passed across his face and it made me feel superior. I flung him against the wall. He stood there for some time whimpering and examining his torn shirt. “I’matell Mommy!” he screamed and stomped off to the bedroom.

I laughed out loud at his dramatics. “Make sure you do!” I yelled and shot up my middle finger at his retreating back. My adrenaline was still pumping and tiny beads of sweat covered the space above my nose. I considered jumping up and following him, grabbing him again and slamming him around some more. I smiled at the thought and the power of my strength over him.

I turned my attention back to the record player. I lay on my back and slid my head beneath it. It was dark and dusty. I opened my eyes and almost screamed. There was Pricilla looking down at me.

The record player was old. Made in the ’40s—they didn’t make them that like that anymore. The whole underside was hollowed out and made for a great hiding place.

Pricilla blinked at me and then hissed. I pulled myself out and waited until my heartbeat slowed. I moved in again, easing my hand under and up until I felt her fur. I moved my hand across her stomach and stroked her there until she purred contentedly.

I laid my palm flat against the warm wood and slid my fingers along the unfinished edges. My mind wandered and I closed my eyes against the dusky light of the living room. Pricilla shifted and moved away from my hand. I reached for the warm comfort of her fur but instead my hand found the cold steel of a gun.

I believed he was planning to kill us. Murder us as we slept. One bullet to the head, just like in the movies.

Their arguments and fights became more than just violent confrontations. They were now the opening acts to a scene I was sure would end with Delia clutching at her heart while blood, dark red and hot, spread across the bodice of her dress. She would look at me for one last long moment, mouthing the words
I love you,
and then her eyes would roll up into her head and she would be gone, leaving me and Malcolm to be raised by my father.

I couldn’t tell anyone about what I’d found. It was Pricilla’s secret and mine, and who would she tell? The alley cats that watched her as she rested on my windowsill?

My secret ate at me. My stomach knots got knots and I had trouble keeping my food down. I lay awake at night afraid to close my eyes and surrender to my dreams because they were filled with gunshots, blood, and caskets. I was afraid to go to sleep because mothers got killed deep in the night when a lonely cloud blocked the moonlight and children slept curled up in their beds.

“You feeling okay, Kenzie?” Delia held my chin and tilted my head left and then right. Her face was etched with concern. “Uh-huh,” I answered quickly and even forced a smile. It took a lot of energy and the act of bending my lips made me tired.

“I dunno,” she said and she eyed me suspiciously.

My clothes began to hang off of my body and deep dark circles formed under my eyes. I was as worried as I was weak. I did not have the strength to jump double-dutch or sit on the park wall with Glenna and hiss at the neighborhood boys. And even if I did, I would still have chosen to remain confined to my bedroom, door slightly ajar, watching and waiting for Hy-Lo to make his move.

Weeks passed and their arguments were contained to short blasts of loud angry words, the yelling and screaming never escalating beyond furious words and slamming doors. It was as if Hy-Lo knew I knew and kept the wild thing within him at bay.

It was the bottle of rum that did it, a gift from a coworker who had taken a trip to Jamaica. White rum, overproof. I remember reading the label over and over again.
Overproof,
what did that mean? I would find out as the bottle went from full to half empty in a matter of two hours.

I knew from then on that it wasn’t going to be a good night. Saturdays hardly ever were. Hy-Lo had no place to go on Sunday. Work would be another day away and church was someplace he passed on the street on the way to the liquor store.

The dawn broke behind large black clouds that kept the day gray and the ground wet. It rained so hard and for so long that we could hear the water rushing into the drainage ditch and the consistent cough and gurgle as the sewers backed up and spewed the water back into the street.

There was no place for us to escape to that day. Saturdays usually found us biking in Prospect Park or teasing the monkeys at the Bronx Zoo. Our only activity today would be to avoid Hy-Lo.

“Kenzie!” The sound of his voice traveled through the small apartment quickly. But the sound of the bottle’s lip clinking against the glass was even louder and more threatening than Hy-Lo’s voice.

My response was just as swift. “Yes! Coming!” I yelled back and hurriedly shoved my bare feet into my slippers. I moved past my parents’ bedroom and shot a worried look at my mother’s back. She was stretched out across the bed and had been that way for most of the day.