Marguerite (part nine)
"Hongh, whee-ha,! Hongh whee-ha!" Mamma clasps her hands so that the thumbs come together to make a mouthpiece. She blows at the narrow opening, raising and lowering the fingers on top to trumpet her call. Dinner's ready! In a little while, depending on where he is in the row and on getting the mules set for shade, water, and grass, in he'll come, pitching his hat onto a hook in the boot room and undoing the rawhide laces om his long leather boots with a slightly rueful look, In his parents' house and before he was married himself, men's boots took precedence over kitchen floor wax. The first time he strode in fresh from the field, hungry, happy, ready to eat, laughing as he put his hands around Mamma's round, firm bottom, he got a shock. He was like a new little kitten when its mamma first smacks it, looking up more puzzled than hurt. "What was that??" Hands on hips, she glowered at him and his trail of muddy footprints,
He took off his boots nowadays and shook out the chaff from his cuffs and washed up his face and hands at the kitchen sink where she, in return, had learned to keep a good bar of soap and a big linen roller towel. He had to admit that the place looked good, felt nice, not at all like the bare sort of dormitory his mother kept. It was warm inside and a hot dinner ready. She's so pretty and tiny with her face all flushed from pulling the pie out of the oven. He loves pie. She loves being loved. She told me once how it was: he was a good provider, good looking and he was faithful.
Mornings were good. The idea of it woke them just as the outline of the hill behind the house was wakened against the Eastern sky. Energy and plans. Anything was possible. Daddy got down the mules first thing to do the rock garden, geeing and hawing the field boulders into place, sweating and swearing, levering the best face up. They had to lie just so, their planes interacting. She fiercely planted the vegetable garden that would feed us all winter. He attacked the open fields, coaxing them, forcing them to give up wheat and corn to feed the animals, hay and potatoes that could be sold. They loved the work and the accomplishment. They could get somewhere. Together they hacked away at the cold face of something to make a place for themselves and be acknowledged. But things happened: the traces broke, rain washed out the seed, a whole day spent picking, peeling, and chopping a tub of soup vegetables for canning was lost when she fell asleep in the kitchen chair and the bottom scorched. By suppertime, the day was over.
The trouble was money. She wanted some and he didn't have any. She said the trouble was beer.
I'm not hungry. My stomach lumps itself up so nothing will go down there. My dad says sit until your plate is clean and I sit very long only I don't have a clock to look at and I have to give up and gulp it down anyhow one at a time only one time I climbed off and turned around and picked up the heavy wood stool and crashed down on top of the table and the sink and everywhere but it didn't make any difference and the hotness was all gone out of my arms and my legs and my throat was dry and sore. It was like you could see right through me. A silvery hollow.
One night Johnny came while there were still beans on my plate and he sat down in the chair beside me. "Beans!" he said. "That's what we'll call you, Beans!" Johnny is Dad's friend. He and Andrea come to the parties and he always makes funny jokes but when he said my name was Beans, I got really mad and tried to kill him with my hands around his throat and he only laughed and whenever he came over after that , he called me Beans and made me mad and made me laugh at the same time and he tickled me under the arms until I really did almost want him to quit and that was better. I am light as a feather.
She'd been complaining again about not having any money and having so much work to do and the child to look after. "What did you expect," he said, "when you got married?"
"I didn't expect that I was marrying a man who intended to be a farmer all his life and get his money from his Daddy's pocket!" Dad flinched. Like when he came home from college, going to be a doctor, but the money he'd got from his grandpa was gone and it was only Christmas. Gonna need some more. The old man stared.
"Well, I guess now you'll have to put your pretty suit away." He meant the university cadets' bright red jacket with the gold buttons. "Let's see if you can at least work the farm. It may be you can do that! We don't want any more heroes." That was his brother, Cuyler, and his grandpa was right; he didn't want to be dead. College kids and farmers; that's who didn't go to war. He took a couple of bottles in his suitcase for company.
Dad was seated on the thick-legged wooden chair, his back to the kitchen table. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, head down. It was summer. Sweat stood on his forehead and made little rivers down his cheeks. He had on clean work clothes, not overalls. The voices had been going on for a long time, getting louder. No neighbors to worry about out here on the top of a hill. The one yellow light bulb hangs perfectly still.
"I'm not putting up with any more of it," she says, alternately circling and propping in front of him, hands on hips, the cotton dress hanging limply around her legs. He looks down and down.
"Oh, no! No money for soap to wash the clothes with or for shoes to go to church but you've got money to go to town! What do you think I am? A cow to tie up and milk at your pleasure? Just feed it and give it a place to sleep?" Her anger grows as she listens to herself. Her voice becomes louder and more insistent as she prowls around the motionless man. He mumbles something.
"That's right," she snaps. "You can't even talk so's anybody could understand you!" She grabs up the keys to the truck from the table where they'd been dropped. She's on the way to the door, but hesitates, looking back just as he raises his head, responding to a movement she cannot have seen.
"All right," he says, looking steadily at her though his head is at a slight angle. He tightens his lips deliberately and raises an eyebrow in my direction. She pauses; she has forgot about me! The game is over. But still she plays with ideas.Take the child? She has no money. Who could she go to? No worthwhile, respectable man would take up with a woman who has left her husband. No man would take on another man's child. Help from her parents was not even a faint possibility. Help from friends would be temporary and humiliating.
Perhaps she could leave us both! A flush of sudden relief surges across her chest and shoulders. She could get a job. She could pay for a room in town. Tommy Barnes and Richard Cope were always saying it was a pity she was taken. There would be presents again and courting and she would say, no, no, maybe.
Her mother's face blooms out of nowhere. Cold blue eyes, thin straight mouth, high clear forehead. No words, only the look that continually affirms the lack of some essential ingredient in her eldest daughter. A teacher's dispassionate certainty: "Pass...Fail."
She flings herself out of the room, slamming the hall door behind her. I stay still on the linoleum floor. It's cool underneath my legs. I have to be here. Somebody has to be with Daddy, still bent over on the hard kitchen chair with the turned spindles and green paint worn through in places. He's holding his head with fingers spread apart as if to keep it from flying to pieces.
Suddenly she's back. She smiles a funny sort of a smile that really insn't a smile at all. I stand up to go a little closer to my Dad. I'm starting to be worried, watching her.
"So," she says, turning her face to me but with her eyes still sticking on him. With one shoulder she gestures in his direction. "Do you think that thing can wash your clothes and get your dinner?" Her voice has screeches in it like when you stop the truck too fast or when you're sharpening the butcher knives on the whetstone and even if you can't hear it, you can feel the shivers in them.
The air stands still.
Daddy lifts his head, wary now, looking for the danger. He mouths something...what?...trying to pull himself up. I pull on him, too, from inside me. He can't get up! Mamma lifts my chin to make me see. Oh no! I don't want to look. One day I will be four and I won't need looking after. My Dad is my best thing; I should pick him even if it makes me dead...She bumps me with her side. I have to answer. I turn my head slowly sideways.
"See!" she cries in triumph. "Even a child can see you're useless!" His eyes give up and all the air goes out of him like an old balloon. He slumps, head falling forward, his arms dangling to the floor.
Help! Help! My Dad has been hurt and it was me who did it! I couldn't figure out how not to. Bright screaming shines in my head. "Please, Daddy, don't remember!"
I am very small and skinny. You can see right through me as if I am writtern on air. There's a stone in my chest that makes it hard to swallow. When you look at me, all you can see is the stone.
Comments