Before reading this, please go to chapter one: here.
Two
“Does each
of you have your offering?” Mom demands, as we three boys sit, ties tightened,
sport coats buttoned, in the back of the speeding Plymouth––late for church.
Howard and I nod. Cliff whose eyes never turn from the passing scenery, pulls
an offertory envelope from his pocket and waves it in her general direction.
“Will you for once, please, look me in the face,” she begins, but her voice
trails off. “Never mind.” She
turns back, straightens her collar, picks a speck off her suit. “Wayne,” she
instructs Dad, “you’re
driving too fast.”
“Don’t get on me,” he warns. He says the
words slowly, lips thin and tight. I open my mouth to intervene but Howard
gives me a threatening look, leave them alone, and I
hiss-whisper back, “You’re
not my boss.”
Arriving at
church, I rush to the Dressing Room. Pulling a gown over my head, I pin on the
red bow even boys are forced to wear. The choir’s already formed in twos for the processional and I move into place
alongside Judy Forneau. She sees me, grimaces, then nudges her way between
the two girls in front of us and gestures for them to huddle close. She
whispers something and the girls turn to look at me. What’s wrong? Then the doors
to the sanctuary open and the choir begins its long march down the aisle, in
twos, except for Judy and the girls (a threesome) and me, alone, at the end. I
gesture for Judy to return to my side but she ignores me, nose in the air. The
choir slide-steps down the center aisle and as each two-some arrives at the
front, one singer turns left, the other right, climbing the stairs on each side
of the loft. But it doesn’t
work for Judy and me because we’re
no longer the two-some we’re
supposed to be.
I whisper
for her to return to my side but she ignores me. I insist by yanking at her
robe. She jerks it back. I hear a rip but Judy ignores that, too, sashaying
down the aisle like a queen with her now two very best friends (three days ago
they weren’t talking). Mom
and Dad look on, horrified. I want to yell it’s not my fault; then, looking down, I discover Judy’s robe is torn, the back of her blouse
showing though the tear.
Arriving at
the front, Judy and one of the girls turn left, the other right, all skill and
ease: no big deal for them! But I’m
no girl, things like this confuse me, and I stop in the middle of the aisle,
feet frozen to the floor. Before I can make up my mind, the minister’s wife rises from the front pew,
takes my arm and ushers me with exaggerated motions to the right. She’s smirking and acting up for the
congregation, finally, giving me a smack on the butt. When I arrive in the
loft, Mom is glaring at me, furious, mouth twisted out of shape. The man behind
her taps her shoulder and grins. She turns and shakes her head as if only
mildly embarrassed, but when she turns back, her eyes fill again with rage. And
Father refuses to look up from his hymnal.
I'm going
to pay for this stain on the family name.
* *
*
But
returning home in the car, no one scolds me. Something’s going on between Mom and Dad, which is
not unusual, so I ignore it. I’m
busy plotting Judy’s demise.
Suddenly my mother blurts out: “Let me off at the corner, I can walk from
here.” And because we’re
traveling through Colored Town I get worried for her safety. “What’s wrong with you two?” I demand. I
reach for the front seat but Howard pulls me back and elbows me in the side.
“It’s none of your business,”
he hisses.
“Stay out
of this, Michael,” Dad yells. “You’ve
done enough for today.” He turns and scowls angrily over his shoulder, causing
Mom to scream, “Wayne, watch where you’re going!” as she grabs for the steering wheel. Dad swerves wildly
to scare us into thinking he’s
gonna hit something. I don’t
see anything anywhere close, still I’m thinking what Mom yells next: “You’d crash the car just to prove a point!” Even Howard joins in: “Dad, you’re going to get us
killed!” So Dad yells at Mom, “You’ve
turned these boys against me.” And she counters, “You’ve done it yourself. You’re a mean, cruel man." And it goes on
like this all the way home: parents shouting and slapping at each other, car
swerving crazily, Howard glaring at me to keep quiet; while I imagine opening
the door and throwing myself into the traffic: that’d stop ‘em! The whole time my weird brother Cliff hangs his head out
the window like a dog, wind blowing the hair from his face.
* *
*
My parents’ fight behind the closed bedroom
door is followed by a long, sour meal. Mom whimpers, Father seethes, I try to
ignore them both. With each stab at my peas, Judy lets out a scream, but she
deserves all I give her.
“Mom, make
him stop,” Howard complains.
“Michael,
you’re talking to yourself
again. Stop it,” Mom says, not looking
up.
Toward the
end of the meal and without waiting for dessert, Cliff goes to the sewing room
for an old pillowcase, then disappears into the basement to pick out his
favorite snakes.
“And what
are you doing this afternoon,” Mom asks, faking innocence, and Howard, who’s been eating with his head down,
looks up, worried.
“Cliff and
I are going to practice. You know that.”
“Are you doing fire-hoops, today?”
Mom continues, picking up a dish.
“First we
do snake-dancing,” Howard begins, eyes darting towards Dad for help. “Then,” he
continues nervously, “fire-hoops. Depends on what the Tribal Elders say.”
“Well, that
worries me,” Mother sighs. “I’m
afraid you’ll get hurt.”
Dad steps
in but only because he and Mom are fighting: “Leave him be, Helen.” They glare
at each other and that makes me afraid the fighting’s about to start up again.
“All I’m asking is you be careful,” Mom sniffs,
carrying the potatoes into the kitchen. “Is that so much to ask?”
The table’s been cleared but no dessert’s been served; I guess we’re supposed to make do, even
though it’s Sunday. I feel
cheated but today’s no day to
complain so I get up from the table. My dad grabs hold of my wrist: “And where
are you going?”
I look down
at my wrist. “Thought I’d
play Scrabble but looks like I'll be alone.”
“Don’t worry,” my mother calls from the kitchen, “I’ll play with you.” I hear the water
filling the sink. “After we get home from the Memorial Service.”
“Great,” I
say, without meaning it. No one’s
going to play Scrabble on Sunday night; there’s obligatory Junior Fellowship and by time we get home, it’ll be too late.
My dad’s still holding my arm and I’m still glaring at his hand. “Why
don’t you ever go to anyone’s house to play?” he asks,
suspiciously. “Or invite anyone over here?”
I jerk my arm
out of his hand but he grabs it back. “Don’t pull away from me, young man,” he snaps.
“I don’t know," I answer.
"I will. Someday." But I won’t. Our house lies outside the school district and no one wants to walk this far. Once I did get a kid to
come all the way over here but when we arrived he asked, “Now what are we going
to do?” and I didn’t know how
to answer so he left. Me, I went down the hill to our cave and spent the rest
of the afternoon scratching pictures into the wall. Fine with me.
I stand
there, silently, a moment more, and finally Dad lets go. Then I grab a book
from our library and take it to my room. Later, I hear Dad go to the car and as
my mother starts out the door, I yell, “Can I have mulberries for
dessert?”
* *
*
The Cold
Room. At the back of our kitchen, from floor to ceiling, four to five jars
deep, are goods Mom put-up from our garden: green beans, stewed tomatoes,
applesauce, pickled cauliflower, onions in vinegar. We grow all the fruits and
vegetables we eat so we fill two freezers as well. It surprised us kids when
they bought them; for once we were the first on the block to have something
new, and not just one, but two! Still, it makes sense: it’s economical.
I open
freezer number two, grab a jar and lug it to the counter: a gallon of frozen
berries, icy cold. Grabbing a fork, I start hacking away. This is the best way
to eat them; if grown-ups were here I’d have to use a bowl. I remember the day we picked them: Mom called
us kids together, she was carrying a bunch of old sheets and she marched us
down the hill to the huge mulberry at the far end of the garden. Then she sent
us up into the highest branches and we shook them like crazy. Berries rained
down, turning the sheets purple. We folded the sheets into funnels and poured
them into baskets. Later Mom froze them so we could enjoy them all through the
winter.
Funny, but
the only time our family gets along is while working in the garden. Maybe it’s a kind of a Peace Zone, like in
Korea. Or could it have something to do with my parents growing up in the
country? I hated Grandma’s
farm but it seems it’s
different for them. Dad’s
usually not nice to anyone except Clarence but when we’re gardening he treats everyone fine.
Like in
summer, when we work in our field at night.
Dad gets
home from work about five-thirty, changes his clothes, and we pile into the car
to drive to the bottom of the cliff. We’ve each got jobs to do. Mom tells me to water and I have to fill
buckets at our well (keeping an eye out for snakes) or maybe I have to weed.
Early in the year there’s
planting and I like that most. I like the smell of the dirt and dropping seeds
into the soil, spacing them like Mom tells me. She knows all about that
stuff.
As we work,
we shout from one side of the garden to the other, through the corn, past the
beans, over the rhubarb. Dusk falls and the moon rises but we continue to work.
Lightning bugs flicker, crickets chirp, frogs croak from hiding places near the
well. It gets darker, harder to see, and when it’s almost black Dad goes to the car, opens the doors and turns on
the radio. Above us stars twinkle as we gather our tools by the light of the
headlamps, moving quietly so everyone can hear. Eventually, we meet at the car.
Howard lies across the back seat, legs dangling out the open door; Clarence is
propped up against a fender, too exhausted to lie down; and Cliff stretches
out, head flat to the ground, one ear up in tune with the plot. Everyone’s quiet, no one’s fighting, we're all listening closely to find out what happens
this week on Gang Busters.
Just
thinking about it makes me grab my jacket and hurry out the back door.
* *
*
In winter
from the top of our hill I can see the entire river valley below, past our
garden, across the Missouri River to the bluffs on the other side in Iowa. In a
book Uncle Charlie gave us, Breugel’s Famous Masterpieces,
there are landscapes like this: plowed earth, bare black trees, patches of
snow, birds building nests. Trotting along the walkway, I turn left at the
compost, past the rope swing Cliff almost killed himself on last year, and
start down the path. Mulberry bushes line the trail and I think what the berries will be like before they’re ripe: hard, dry, white and bitter. Come
spring they’ll be covered
with caterpillars like Chinese people use to make silk; Cliff’s dared me to eat one of them––he says Chinese
eat insects––but I’m not that dumb.
I arrive at
the bottom. The wind’s
slight, cool, and because it’s
winter everything smells fresh. First I check the tool shed. Mom said bums
might be sleeping there and I want to make sure I’m alone and safe. Inside it’s dark and dusty, there are cobwebs and
sacks of fertilizer, but also a couple of empty bottles we’d never have used: wine bottles.
Once I came
in here, it was a summer’s
day, hot and sultry, I’d been
playing alone and had to go to the bathroom but didn’t want to climb clear up to the house. I
could’ve gone anywhere but
for some reason I stripped inside the shed and right in the middle, defecated.
(Our family doesn’t use
profanity.) Flies buzzed, it was smelly, and I felt guilty; but instead of
cleaning it up I felt directed to go to the doorway and stand in the hot sun,
heat so bad you could faint. I stood there naked (anyone could’ve seen me!), listening to the flies, the
grasshoppers in the weeds, the birds in the trees––but I could hear something
else, too: the planets moving around the sun and the earth turning beneath me.
And somewhere deep inside the earth, the things that make it turn: metal gears,
giant flywheels, huge watch-works. It didn’t frighten me; I just wondered if I were the only one who could
hear such a noise or if there were others, maybe everyone, only no one ever
talked about it. Certainly, I didn’t
clean up my mess, but someone did and no one ever mentioned that so I know
things take place that are not discussed.
But today
there’s no sound of machinery
and no one’s here. I check
the faucet on the artesian well and take a drink. Tastes good. Then I go to our
cave.
Some houses
on our Boulevard have tunnels leading from their basements on the top of the
cliff, one-hundred-fifty feet down to the fields on the floodplain at the
bottom. People use the tunnels for storing canned foods, seeds, tools, that
kind of stuff. Our house doesn’t
have a tunnel, only a cave, but my brothers and I have used it for everything:
initiations, drawing pictures on the walls, escaping chores. Me, I’ve used it more than anyone else.
My brothers have grown too old for it but I never will.
Making my
way through the brush, I find the cave too muddy to enter. Dad says it’s not safe, too much seepage, but
he’s never tried to keep us
out. I sit on a rock and stare out at our garden. Past the tangle and thorns of
raspberries, corn stalks stand dry and ochre against the dark earth. It looks
prehistoric, like it’s been
this way forever. Indians used to live here; at the end of our property I’ve found circular indentations
left by their teepees. Cliff says I’m
wrong about that, that when the river floods (which it does every few years) any
marks would have been destroyed. But we’ve also found wagon-wheels from Mormon carts; if floods were so
strong, wouldn’t they have
been carried away, too?
A hundred
years ago Mormons spent a winter here. They froze and starved though right
across the river in Council Bluffs there was food and warmth and safety. Iowans
hated everyone different, especially Mormons, so they ran them off. They even
forced them to pay to be ferried across the river to come to these cold fields
and die. I feel sorry for the Mormons, I understand how they must have felt and
hope that had I lived then I would have fed and given them a warm place to
survive the winter.
“But no one
will help us,” they beseech me. “We’ve
got no food, our babies and women are starving.”
“I’ll
help you,” I answer. “I’m not like the others. Here, take
my mulberries and corn. Even if I don’t have enough, I’ll
share what I do have, though it costs me my life.”
I like
that: though it costs me my life.
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