The Wedding Gift (9 page)

Daddy got up off the couch
and walked over to me and Jessie who were just standing there
dripping rainwater onto Mama's clean floors. He had this terrible
look on his face and he was holding something in his hand. He said
in this real funny voice I had never heard him use before
“
Jessie, you need to go on home now. I got
to talk to my daughter about something in
private
.”

I knew it was going to be
bad and right then everything else was so bad that I didn’t think I
could take one more thing and live to tell about it. So I grabbed
Jessie’s hand real tight and begged her not to go. That made Daddy
madder, I could tell, but I figured it didn’t matter much by that
point. I knew that whatever he was going to say would be bad either
way, so I just looked him in the eye and said “
Go ahead and say what you are going to say, Daddy … Jessie
ain’t leaving
.”

He shrugged.
“
All right then, Leeann, sure Jessie can
stay, what the hell … she’s probably in on it
anyway
.”

That was bad hearing him
calling me ;Leeann’. My daddy had called me by my given name maybe
twice in my life, mostly I was just “
Baby
Girl
”. And when I sneaked a look at Jessie
standing next to me, I could tell she flat out would have made a
break for the door if my hand wasn’t clutching her wrist like the
way Godzilla held onto Naomi Watts in the movie.

Daddy didn’t say nothin’
else, he just opened up his hand and dropped my diamond studs on
the linoleum where they rolled a little before stopping in front of
my feet. He looked at me like he didn’t even know who I was, and I
know it would have broken my heart under normal conditions, but
right then I was too numb to feel much of anything; just like them
poor boys in Iraq or Iran or wherever they is, who get hit upside
the head with them nasty I.E.D. things Randy told me
about.

Daddy’s voice was fierce
when he spoke to me. “
You tell me this,
Leeann, how did my seventeen year old daughter, who don’t even have
a job, get diamonds, huh? How, Leeann? You been whoring? My own
daughter been whoring? Oh shit girl, you’d best speak up right now
if you want to live to see Thursday
.”

I was shaking so hard, and
I started to speak. I tried to, but when I opened my mouth, instead
of words all this vomit just came spilling out. I had never seen so
much vomit ... it was like a horror movie. It splashed Daddy and
Jessie, and it just covered those cursed diamonds right up. I
remember thinking, and this is so stupid that I’m embarrassed to
write it down here, but what I thought is ‘
Will the vomit make the diamonds less valuable
now?
’

I know that was some crazy
thinking, but see, while Jessie and I were in the car, we had
decided to pawn the damn things to pay for my surgery, and then
spend the rest of the money on a spring break trip to Tallahassee
to make ourselves feel better. So, right then, that’s all I could
think of.

Daddy looked like he had
been shot, and Jessie, well Jessie she is the girl to be in a fire
or any natural disaster with, ‘cause she just straightened up her
little shoulders (Jessie is real tiny) and said real brave like
“
Charlie, Leeann, well she ain’t feeling
too good. I think she better go upstairs, and you and me we’ll
talk; we’ll talk about everything. I’ll tell you what's been going
on, but you gotta let Leeann go upstairs now, all right,
Charlie?
”

It’s funny because my daddy
is not one to have a female girl child tell him what to do and,
when he’s mad, he doesn’t listen to nobody, not even God, Mama
says. But right then, he just nodded his head. It must have been
the dim light in the room because it was early dark and raining to
boot, but my daddy's face looked so old right then.

I started to head to the
kitchen for a towel to clean up my mess, but Jessie stopped me. She
said, talking real quick before daddy could lose it again,
“
It's all right, Leeann, you go on up, I
got this. I’ll just get a rag from the kitchen and clean this up.
Hey, I think I’ll pull a beer for Charlie while I’m doing it too,
and maybe one for me too, if that’s okay,
Charlie
.”

My daddy just nodded like a
dumb bull at the end of a cattle prod, and I reached out my hand to
him and, God help me, he backed away from me, my own daddy who had
loved me “
more than he loved the
sun
” every day of my life.

He backed away from
me.

Jessie just shook her head
at me and pointed her little chin to the stairway.

I went upstairs because I
didn’t know what else to do and, truth to tell, I was feeling sick
- sick and tired, more tired than I had ever felt. I climbed those
stairs like an old, old lady, and I must have been sicker than I
knew because, as I got to the landing where it was real dark, I
swear on the bible I heard someone laughing … laughing at me. It
was a woman’s laugh, but not a happy one; it sounded like how you
laugh when you are kind of hysterical, like when you are on a real
scary ride and want to laugh to make yourself feel
better.

I jumped like a scalded cat
when I heard it, and looked around me real fast, but there was no
one there. Of course there wasn’t, and then I looked down and I saw
Muffin; damn was I glad to see that cat. I scooped her up and
carried her into my room.

“
Geez, Muffin, you gave me
the fright of my life, you stupid cat. That sound you just made
sounded like a crazy woman laughing. I don’t know how you did that,
but don’t ever do it again, you hear me.”

I turned on the lamp in my
pretty lavender bedroom, and curled up in a ball. I didn’t even
take off my coat or go take a shower, even though I stunk of vomit
and felt dirty deep down. I just wanted to lay there until my mama
came home and took me in her arms and told me that it would be
okay. She always said that whenever anything went wrong for me, and
she was always right. But to be strictly honest now, I thought
maybe this time Mama wouldn’t want to put her arms around me
anymore, that maybe she would back away from me too, like Daddy
did.

I wondered what Jessie was
saying to Daddy downstairs, and what he was saying in return, and
then I wondered about how Muffin had sounded like a grown-up woman
laughing in the dark at the top of the stairs, and why she had
waited eight years of her cat life to make such a horrible sound.
And then I had to go and wonder what Donny Readle would think of me
if he could see me right then, and then I fell asleep still
crying.

Chapter
14

It was full dark when I
woke up. Someone had been in my room and turned off my lamp and
covered me up with my favorite purple patchwork quilt that my
Grandma Belle had made for my thirteenth birthday.

My mouth tasted horrible,
and I pushed back the quilt and went down the hall to the bathroom.
I just meant to brush my teeth, but once I was in there I needed to
get all the way clean. I shampooed my hair twice and scrubbed down
my skin with shower scrub till I was pink. I brushed my teeth in
the shower and then tilted my head back and filled my mouth with
hot shower water about ten times, spitting and swallowing until I
got that bad taste out.

When I got out of the
shower, I realized I had forgotten my robe and nightgown and I had
to run real fast down the hall to my room naked and it happened
again … that horrible laughing, just as I was getting to my room. I
slammed the door real loud, and damn it if Muffin wasn’t still
right where I had left her laying on my bed.

I had to figure then that
now, on top of everything else that had gone wrong, I was probably
crazy as a rabid coon to boot. I had just gotten into my favorite
flowered p.j.s when Mama opened the door and came into my bedroom.
I was so glad to see her that I started to jump up and run to her
to be hugged. But she just waved me back down and sat on the side
of my bed real heavy. Her eyes were bright red, and she had funny
little splotches all over her face.

Somehow I knew it would be
best if she never started talking. I guess I knew before she did
that whatever she was going to say, that it would make it all be
over - my girlhood, the life I had now - and that what was waiting
for me in return …well it wouldn’t be as good as what I already
had.

I wanted to stop her
speaking by telling her then that I was so sorry and about how I
felt sick to death thinking about the things I had done with
George, the clothes and the money, and the cocaine. I wanted to
tell her everything bad right then so that she could make it all go
away … especially the baby in my stomach that I hated right then so
bad that I wanted to scrub it out, like I had just scrubbed the
dried vomit out of my hair in the shower.

But Mama stopped me from my
telling, and took me onto her lap like she had when I was tiny. She
started rocking me back and forth saying “
Shh, baby, it’s all right, it’ll all be fine soon. This was a
real shock to your daddy and me, and he’s taken it awful hard. You
know though, Honey, he’ll be better in time. He just needs to get
used to everything. He’s got to get to thinking about his little
girl being a woman now and that ain’t easy, not for any man, and
you know your daddy, he takes to changes worst than most. But he’ll
come round, he always does, and when you’re married and you put his
grandbaby into his arms, why he’ll be just as proud as he was the
day the doctor put you in his arms. I think the day you were born
was the best day your daddy ever had
.”

I pulled back and started
talking real fast.

“
No, Mama, what are you
saying? I am not gonna get married; I’m not having this baby! I
know I did a real bad thing, and I know you think abortions a sin,
but it’s not, Mama. It’s not even a real baby yet. We saw a film in
health sciences about this. It’s not even the size of a fingernail
yet. Mama, don’t you make me ruin my life for a goddamned
fingernail, no Mama, I am not marrying George and having this baby.
I hate George and I hate his baby too
.”

And then my own mama, who
had never even tapped me on the bottom in my life, hauled off and
slapped me so hard across my face that I felt my teeth rattle. I
fell back against my headboard. After a second I sat up and started
to scream, but she just said in this real hard voice that I had
never heard before “
Don’t, Leeann, just
don’t. I’m sorry I hit you, but to hear my own child, who was
raised a Christian girl, calling a baby a fingernail, and hearing
you saying that you hate your own baby, well I couldn’t bear it.
And I’ll tell you true, Leeann, that after the night I have had,
that your daddy and I have had fixing your mess up, and us having
to listen to the things Bethany Willets called our family, well
that was just too much you saying those things to
me
.”

I got real quiet then. I
said “
Sorry, Ma’am
” and I waited to hear what I had to be told.

Here are all the things
that happened while I was asleep. First Jessie told Daddy the whole
story (except about George giving me cocaine, but that was all she
left out). She told him about Dallas and the clothes and the
hunting cabin; he already knew about the damn earrings, which I had
hid up top of the refrigerator where no one ever cleaned, knowing
that if I left them in my room, Mama would find them. Of course, as
luck would have it, Daddy had been stashing his chewing tobacco up
there too so Mama wouldn’t find it, and that’s how he found those
cursed earrings.

After Jessie gave him all
the sad facts, I guess Daddy went crazier than a wounded bear and
he drove straight down to the Willets Building and went right on
into the penthouse without asking for no appointment. He about tore
the place apart in front of George and his daddy, and when he was
done screaming and flailing, then he made them both get into his
pickup and, all squashed together, they drove to Doc Miller’s
office. Once they were there he made Doc Miller examine George
right then.

While all this was going
on, George’s daddy, Mr. Willets, had been calling Miz Willets who
high tailed it down to Doc Miler’s like a cat on fire. I’ll tell
you true, that if all this hadn’t been about me, it would have been
funny as all get out. I can only imagine what Mama’s best friend
Nancy, Doc Miller’s nurse, must have been thinking as well as poor
Doc Miller.

Anyhow, since the test on
George took about an hour, Daddy, and Mr. and Miz Willets was all
stuck together in the waiting room, and God knows what insults must
have been exchanged.

Then finally poor Doc
Miller called in the whole motley crew, George included, telling
‘em all to head on into his office because they needed to hear some
facts. Doc Miller explained real sternly to them that George was
most certainly not sterile, and wondered why in the hell anyone
thought he was. George and good ol’ Miz Willets herself started
talking at the same time about mumps and how it makes you sterile.
They was trying to make Doc Miller take back the news, I guess.
Daddy told me later that Doc Miller looked at them two like they
were the biggest set of fools to ever darken his door, and he told
them that mumps only sometimes makes you sterile if you get it as a
man not and not at six as George did. And then, because he is a
real funny guy, Doc Miller, he reached into his desk and handed
George a cigar, and said “
Congratulations,
Daddy.”