Unto These Hills (23 page)

“I always loved Vince’s wife, Dorcas. He was good to her. I admired that in ’im. When she died, he took it hard, and I tried to help him. Well, after a time, we fell in love. I’d’ve never believed it.” She chuckled and blushed becomingly. “And now, he treats me like a queen.” She sighed, as though it was still hard for her to believe her good fortune. “I’ve asked myself over and over, how can two brothers be so different? But then, look at you and your sisters. Different as gold and asphalt.”

I nodded, understanding. Coming from Gladys, it was not offensive, this reference to my sisters’ less-than-wholesome reputations. Not knowing the secret I carried, she stacked them up alongside me and came up with staggering genetic contradictions.

Feeling suddenly restless, I changed the subject. “You still going to the Pentecostal Church?”

She updated me on church and offspring status, then fixed us a glass of iced tea in her minute kitchen. It all reminded me of a dollhouse but on Gladys, it looked right. She sat across from me when this huge grin broke over her face, in which I still glimpsed Ali MacGraw, and she said, “I’m sorry I don’t have a banana pudding, Sunny. Remember when you used to come every Friday for your dish?”

“How could I ever forget?” I laughed. “And I remember, too, the time you taught me a lesson in manners by not offering me any one day.”

Her brow drew together in puzzlement. “What? I don’t remember that.”

Still laughing, I went on to relate the incident to her and, when she still did not remember, I said, “That’s okay. Even if you weren’t offended with me, I realized I’d taken advantage of your generosity by being a pig. I needed that lesson.”

She reached across and took my hand, extremely solemn. “I’m sure that wudn’ why I was unfriendly. It would’ve been connected to Harly, no doubt, honey. I’d never have denied you your helping of banana pudding.”

With her absolution, warmth spilled over me, like cane syrup oozing over a warm pancake. I was still wallowing in it when the front door of her cottage opened and in walked what could have been the physical reincarnation of Harly Kale.

“Hey, honey,” Gladys greeted him with an affection she’d never been able to heap on her late husband. She went to him and gave him a full hug and turned her face up for a quick kiss on the lips. Then she took his hand and said proudly, “Vince, I want you to meet a special person in my life, like my own daughter, actually. This is Sunny, who used to live up the street from me in Tucapau years ago.”

I shook his hand and realized that, though his eyes were the same clear blue as Harly’s had been, they didn’t burn with that startling wildness. Still, the physical likeness gave me palpitations. So many nights when Walter slept beside me, I’d lain awake, convinced the black silhouette had been Harly, who had, after all, raped Ruth Bond and fathered Sally. I wondered at those times,
does Muffin’s surliness echo Harly’s? Is her mean-spiritedness genetic?

I looked at my watch, exclaimed I was late for an appointment, quickly hugged Gladys, and made a quick getaway before she noticed my paleness and trembling hands. She knew me too well.

“Don’t you wait so long to come back, now, y’hear?” she called from her tiny porch, waving till I was out of sight. My hands were icy and sweaty as I clutched the steering wheel, breathing deep, slow breaths to steady my racing pulse.

The years had not, after all, diluted the memory.

Chapter Twelve

“Stop it, Muffin!” I threw myself between her and Gracie, whose terrified shrieks of pain had drawn me from the kitchen to her mama’s room. I seized Muffin’s hand before it contacted with Gracie’s cheek again.

“Don’t hit her in the face,” I warned her. “You were never,
ever
treated this way and you’re not going to do this to Gracie.”

She shoved her finger in my face, hissing and spitting like a she-tiger hoarding her kill. “Gracie is
my child
. It’s nobody’s business how —”

“You will
not
hit her in the face,” I insisted, not backing away. “You can’t hit a child like this, Muffin. It’s abuse.”

She huffed at that. “I didn’t hit her
that
hard, Mama,” she said as though talking to a moron.

“Uh huh,” I eyed her grimly. “You hit her hard enough to make her nose bleed.”

“Aw, she’s not hurt, are you, Gracie?” When Gracie buried her face in my apron, Muffin suddenly shrugged and turned away. “Gracie, you are so-o dramatic over the least little thing. You really get off on attention, don’t you? Okay,” she flicked her fingers hatefully at me over her retreating shoulder. “
You
raise her. See how much better you can do than me, huh?”

I drew Gracie to me and wiped tears from her pale cheeks. I blotted her bleeding nostril. Again, I sensed more behind my daughter’s rages than mere temperament. What, I wasn’t certain. Maybe drugs. She did love painkillers and had no problem getting them from doctors for a range of ailments from menstrual cramps to earaches to muscle strains. Whatever. Muffin lived on life’s sharp edge, barely balancing her sanity at times.

Muffin knew no moderation. From food, cuisine only, to clothes, designer fashions a must. Her expensive tastes soaked up what little she earned with her sporadic real estate sales. After that, she came at me with her hand out.

Every time I decided to seek another job, I wrestled with the certainty that the children needed me. Walter was not dependable in a crisis. He was too emotionally fragile to deal with Muffin’s erratic escapades and methods of discipline. Her life catapulted from one crisis to another, never quite leveling out in between.

Seemed little Gracie, now eight, drew Muffin’s ire more than anything or anyone else, except me, of course. I could just look at Muffin and she was like “What?
What’
s
wrong
? If you’re ticked because I was late coming in last night, you can just
get over it!
I’ve got a right to a life besides sittin’ here staring at these walls night after night.”

I’d shake my head. “Muffin, Muffin — you’re the only person in the world who starts a fight with your own self, then dances around the boxing ring alone. I have no quarrel with you.” When possible, I walked away from her thunder. Fighting with no victories in sight was senseless and wore me out.

Gracie was different. She was helpless in the face of Muffin’s rages. Once, during a grievance, Muffin pushed Gracie into her room and quickly latched the door behind them, locking me out so that I wouldn’t interfere with the discipline.

Gracie’s shrieks, “Mama, please don’t…Oh, god!
Mama
,” had me banging and kicking the door screaming, “Don’t you
dare hurt her! Open this door!”
Muffin ignored me.

I ended up sitting hunched over on the stairs, weeping. All had gone quiet in the locked room. Presently, Muffin appeared and loped down the steps, brushing past me nonchalantly. I rushed to Gracie, who lay sprawled on her back on the big bed, quiet, still. Only her eyes moved.

“What did she do to you?” I whispered, brushing a silky flaxen strand from her porcelain forehead.

Eyes wide, she demonstrated, speaking in a stage whisper, “She clamped her hand over my mouth when I yelled and pinched my nose at the same time. I couldn’t breathe.”

“You couldn’t
scream,
either,” Muffin drawled from the doorway, gazing smugly at me. “It worked, didn’t it?” She sauntered away, unmoved by my concern for Gracie.

After that, I didn’t trust her to deal fairly with the children.

Especially not with Gracie.

~~~~~

I don’t know exactly when my metabolism did a somersault and ended up rolling in the opposite direction. The weight crept up on me so slowly, so gradually I was blindsided. Too, I’d been such a caricature
Bony Marony
in my younger years, that self-image stuck in my brain, even after my mirror began reflecting something else entirely.

I
do know,
however, when food became my source of comfort. It was right after Walter’s accident and Muffin’s emotional estrangement from me. I’d never had to watch what I ate so when I slid over that murky line, I hadn’t a clue. That food equaled calories and calories, not burnt, tallied up fat had not, at that point in time, computed in my cranium.

So, blissfully unaware, I spent my time primarily in the kitchen, concocting tasty, rich desserts to reward, first, Walter’s physical progress during his healing, then his great attitude in the face of literally starting life over, then for his being such a good person and loving Muffin through everything.

When I ran out of things to reward him for, I simply used food as a way of lovin’, taking goodies to sick people, sharing delectables with Aunt Tina and Nana and neighbors — anybody as long as I kept some for myself.

At night, I rewarded
me
for getting through another day with hunks of chocolate cake or fudge brownies. Veiling my metamorphosis into unsightly obesity was my deepening affair with ‘comfort’ clothing; loose, smock-like blouses, elastic-waisted pants and skirts, and anything remotely resembling a mu-mu.

Denial raged, warring with everything in reality’s path, especially the pea-brained fashion industry whose twelves were shrinking smaller and smaller and wearable clothes feeling more and more uncomfortable.

Too, my considerable height helped camouflage the bulk.

Early on, I’d steered Gracie and Jared into the kitchen, put aprons on them and taught them to cook. How they loved it! How I loved it. The sheer fun of it gave me endless opportunity to indulge in my obsession.

For a long, long time, no one commented on my thickening frame. When, finally, Francine did, she said, “Not many women can get away with carrying extra weight like you do, Sunny. Your face is still pretty as ever.”

I was shocked. Yeh. I’d quit weighing years ago. Funny thing, it’s like having a big old black mole right on the end of your nose and people act like they don’t see it. Same way with fat. Its such a shameful thing, folks don’t talk about it. They become enablers. They enabled me to deny its existence on and on.

After all, Walter adored me as was. Of course, Walter adored
everybody.
The man could make a party out of going to the grocery store. His sense of fun burgeoned after the accident. It was generous, never self-serving and I have to say, it went a long way in making life more tolerable and pleasant for me.

Almost as much as food.

~~~~~

“Muffin, have you thought any more about applying for welfare assistance for the children?” I asked. She stood at my bathroom mirror blowing her amazing tumble of wheat tresses into a chic straightened style. Amid divorce proceedings from Russ, she and the children had moved in with us.

She’d managed to max my credit card in short shrift, shrieking when I took it back. In the meantime, I owed money that I did not have. I’d had to quit my part time convenience store job. I could not, in good conscience, leave the children alone with Muffin.

We barely subsisted on Walter’s disability checks. Nights found me sleepless, worrying incessantly while Walter slept as peacefully as an infant. But I couldn’t turn Muffin out because she would, for spite, take the children from me. God only knew what would happen to them behind closed doors.

Too, deep, deep down I occasionally brushed souls with that little toddler who’d adored me above all others. Muffin was still my daughter and I would be there for her if it killed me. While analyzing this, I concluded that I did not have a martyr complex because martyrs love misery. I loathed it then and still do.

I stood in the doorway, admiring her careless beauty, one given freely from the Almighty with no strings attached. A beauty she took for granted, just as she did everything else good in her life.

Her perfect features settled into boredom. “You never talk to me unless it’s about money. I wish you’d just shut the f__ up about it. I
know
I owe you thousands of dollars. I’m just sick of hearing about it.”

Shock poured over me in waves, nearly drowning me. Don’t know why her venom remained so hurtful but it did. “Muffin,” I said quietly as my hands began to tremble, “I only want to help you. Jared’s cold is worse and his ear hurts. He needs to see a doctor. You and the kids aren’t covered with insurance any more since Russ lost his job. And Daddy and I can’t afford—”

She shot me a look that stopped me mid-sentence. “Don’t I know it, Mama. You tell me every chance you get. Don’t you
get it? I don’ have any money.
” The bored look returned and she went about primping as though I weren’t there.
Classic Muffin
, swatting me away as succinctly as a pesky fly.

Hurt curled into a tight knot in my bosom, heavy and sick and horrible.

“Why, Muffin?” My voice rose, notch by notch, a thing I detested but could not seem to control. Perhaps it was genetic, a ‘
takes one to know one’
thing with her, the projection thing I studied in college psychology. Only thing, she read me completely off the chart, attributing to me cunning and brilliance I could never touch. “Why do you hate me?” I trembled violently from the hurt. I still could not, after all these years, believe the daughter I’d borne and loved so dearly loathed me so completely.

She didn’t deny it. I didn’t expect her to. Then, hurt turned to anger. The scenario always turned out this way, like the same movie reel, played over and over. Muffin’s capacity to find my buttons was stunning.

“You’re the only person in the world who treats me so despicably,” I snarled, voice rising higher, like a tape reel sped up. I was horrified to hear myself.

“Yeh,” she paused her toilette to smirk at me. “Everybody else just talks about you behind your back. About how you’ve let yourself go and how fat you are. What a control-freak you are.”

She knew that would wound. Knew how I sought to help others feel good about themselves and how desperately I sought respect. “Why do you —”

“Would you just shut the f___ up? You go on and on
and on
about anything and everything, whining and —”

“Whining?” My tears stymied. “Talking to you is
bitching?”
I narrowed my watery gaze, suddenly furious. “How dare you?
”

She rounded on me, eyes an icy blue blaze. “Just listen to you. Your voice
squeaks.”
She huffed, a reviling little dismissive sound.

I felt it solidifying inside me, the hopelessness, the sense of failure that always capped these scenes. Muffin checked her cool appearance one last time and, satisfied, turned on her heel to leave. I caught her by the arm.

“Muffin, does the fact that I gave you life not count at all?” I knew it did not but couldn’t seem to stop from setting myself up. In the midst, in the heat of it all, I knew the whole thing with Muffin and me was sick. I just didn’t know how to change it.

She pried her arm loose and coolly assessed me for a long moment. “Unfortunately, yeh. But don’t forget Daddy; he had a big hand in it, too.”

In that moment, not for the first time, I had to bite my tongue against the truth. “Yes, he did. He’s a good man and —”

“Don’t pretend you love him. Don’t you
dare,
Mom,” she hissed, “because I know better.”

My mouth clamped shut. I refused to touch
that.
Didn’t matter, however; Muffin still sniffed a little remaining flesh to scrape from my bones. “He’d still be
Daddy
if it wasn’t for you.”

“You’ll never forgive me, will you, Muffin?” I whispered, feeling the last of the blood drain from my face.

“Probably not,” she replied in as flippant a manner as she could manage. Her departure was swift and left me reeling amid a swirl of her expensive
Chanel No. 5
fragrance.
She always has money for her cigarettes and perfume.
I stood there for long moments, too stunned to cry.

“Mema!” bawled Jared, just waking from his nap. I rushed to him, finding him warm to the touch but not as hot as before I’d spooned over-the-counter allergy-cold medications to him. He cried, holding his ear. “It
hurts
.” He gazed at me through tears, beseeching me to do something.

“Walter?” I called. He came sloughing from the den, where he’d pretended not to hear my tiff with Muffin. Even with his altered intellect, he adored her completely. Jealousy, hot and thick, stirred in me. I managed to toss it aside. “We’ve got to do something about Jared. He’s not eaten a thing today. I’m worried about him.”

“Take ‘im to see Dr. Jones, in Lyman,” he said. “He’ll give us time to pay ‘im when we get the money.” Like most other village services, our own doctor’s office had, years ago, shut down.

Walter surprised me at times. In some ways, he was wiser now than before his accident. Life reduced itself to simplistic terms for him. His childlike observances shot right to the heart of matters. The cynical Walter of the past was gone. This Walter saw things through placid, trusting glasses. This Walter was peaceful and giving. This Walter even went to church with me and believed with a child’s simplicity.

This Walter required no intimacy from me. God forgive me but I rejoiced that Walter’s sex drive virtually vanished with his memory. I quickly pushed the
off
button on that line of thought.

Actually, this Walter was my best friend. In my world, at that particular time, its importance was right up there with oxygen. He watched Gracie while I drove Jared to the doctor.