Hell Freezes Over
“Remembering mine affliction, and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.” –Lamentations of Jeremiah 3:19
I commenced sitting on Sam again, because he loved me and kept me warm. He goeth into the mountains and seeketh me out when I went astray. He pulled me out of the pit and carried me gently in his bosom.
I’d sit there on his back in the barn, listening to him and Mrs. Lynde chewing hay and breathing, and the mice running around living their lives in the mow above my head, and I would try to hear the peepers or picture the White Buck in my mind.
At five I’d slide off Sam and go in the house to cook supper, and we’d have another silent family feast, where you’d think the food was going to freeze solid on the plates. Then I’d go do my homework, get in bed and get up and go to school. But really I didn’t know where I went or what I was doing, except in the barn.
One night Mom was at a 4-H meeting and I was getting a late supper. I made Macaroni and Cheese Casserole without cooking the macaroni first. I threw in some spice that might have been oregano or it might have been mint, and scraped some old and maybe moldy Velveeta out of a jar in the back of the fridge. I shoved the whole thing the oven and it was only a little burnt when Mom got home.
Dad slumped in from the shop, heaved himself into his chair and poked his fork into his mouth before we finished saying grace. We said it through anyway. When we looked up after “Amen,” he was squinting at Mom and his face was twisted up in a mean grin.
“Joanie, Joanie, this is just like old times. This dish is a triumph! My Mother’s cooking could never come up to this. I’ve said it before, but I say it now with a whole new meaning; Joanie, you are a great. Great. Cook!” And he snorted and threw down his napkin and stood up. I stood up too.
“Hey, wait a minute. I cooked this,” I said to him.
Dad winced and looked at me, right at me, in the eyes. I looked right back, with my heart thumping because I could see he was thinking about apologizing, and I knew I was thinking about apologizing too.
“I could throw it out, and start over,” I whispered. Dad’s face twitched and changed expression a few times. Nobody breathed. Then the grin came back and stuck there on his face.
“Well, well, well, following in your mother’s footsteps I see,” said Dad with a chuckle. “Let me guess… did you put kindling in this? Or, could it be-yes! Hay! Hay, hay, from the barn where you seem to be living these days? Is that the secret ingredient that makes this inedible slop so memorable?”
“Hey,” I said, “Why don’t you just go back home to your big fat ugly Mommie and get her to cook for you? Or won’t she let you in the door?”
My Dad turned pale as ashes. He was shaking all over. Then he started to screech, like a girl.
“You FILTHY BITCH! You dirty whore, you Goddamn SLUT, don’t you EVER—ever—how dare you, how…”
I crashed over my chair and made the pig noise and threw the food and plate and the fork and spoon at him and then I ran out to the barn and up into the mow and cried and cried.
Because this time Dad was not trying to win a round in our little secret war. He was not trying to Show Me Who was Boss. What he said to me came right up out of his heart before he could stop it. What he said to me was true.
Mom came out and called me down after a while. I suppose she had to clean the food up first. She wanted to take me for a drive, just to get me away somewhere. I sat slouched over against the car window, staring out at nothing. Mom just drove for a long time.
“Ruthie,” she said finally, “are you really living in the barn?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Oh God, I’m so… isn’t it…too cold? Wouldn’t you rather come to the Library or the Grange building with me afternoons and do your homework?”
“I sit on Sam to keep warm. I study out there while it’s light. I like it there.” I said.
“I’m sorry I can’t be home to make things easier for you. I feel terrible that this feud between Dad and you goes on and on like this. I really had no idea…What can I do?”
“WHY DON’T YOU JUST PUNISH ME AND GET IT OVER WITH!” I bawled at her. “You always take Dad’s side! You are always with him and against me!”
“Your Dad says just the opposite, he says I always side with you. And tonight… I know you were trying to stick up for me– in your own way– and I’m grateful to you for doing that. But I don’t want to take sides in this, I’m on both your sides. I just want to help you get over this bad patch. I’m really sorry I haven’t been able to help you. Would you like to go talk to the minister about it?”
“NO!” I screeched at the top of my voice, banging the side of my head on the window.
Mom gave me a little sidelong look and breathed in quick, as if she was going to say something– or else she had just put two and two together and gotten Fire. My heart raced, my head ached and my throat closed up again, but I just sat there saying nothing.
That night in bed I thought of killing Dad. With the shotgun that Mom almost shot Byron with. I could just squeeze both triggers and blow him to Kingdom Come like a woodchuck. Blood splatttering, bones splintering, teeth and eyeballs flying through the air. I would feel good again. I thought of setting fire to the shop and burning him and all his precious wooden things that he loved so much, to a black smoking crisp. And then gnawing on the bones.
I couldn’t stop these thoughts from coming into my mind, and I knew I was far worse than the dirtiest name Dad could called me. Worse than he could possibly imagine. I was dirt and deserved to be treated like dirt.
For a while I went to the Library or the 4-H office in the Grange Hall, pretended to study and drove home with Mom. I was no good in school any more. I couldn’t think straight. I never answered in class. But I could see things I hadn’t seen before. I could see into the hearts of That Element; The Trailer Trash and the Gelders. And I was just like them.
If a teacher tried to force me to answer I would just stare at him. The teacher would flinch and fume and pretend to laugh, but he couldn’t make me talk. Then the teacher would send me to the office. Big Deal.
I told my old pal the principal, hey I was just being real quiet in class, that’s supposed to be good, right? Wasn’t I being good? Wasn’t I good? Wasn’t I? The principal would sigh and look all concerned and gaze out the window again and tap his little pencil and tell me if there was anything he could do to help…. I shrugged and cocked my head over and squinted up my eyes at him too and asked him exactly what was he going to do?
I was going out to the barn to ride, and when I put the tack on Sam he started to shrink, and kept shrinking till he was the size of a cat. Sam was too small and weak to carry me, and I would scream come back come back come back and then I would wake up and it was another horrible morning in my horrible life.
I had this dream almost every night. It was the worst nightmare ever, and I woke up with the cold sweats when I dreamed it, although what was happening in it didn’t seem half as horrible as the stuff I was dreaming up during the day. I got in bed with Evvie one night after having it and told it to her, because I was afraid of going to sleep and having it again, and maybe she could make it stop.
Evvie shut her eyes and thought about it so long I thought she had dozed off. Then she said,
“Sam is Dad. Dad is Sam.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I dunno.”
I started taking the bus home right after school and sitting on Sam again because I was dead scared he was going to shrink up and disappear on me. I sat on him making braids in his mane and un-doing them again, like Evvie and I had done after the horse show. I stopped thinking about murder and arson and just day-dreamed, there in the barn.
Late one cold clear afternoon there was golden-rod colored light pouring through the stall window, and a little hoof-paring of a moon setting over west. That color sky reminded me of something long ago, when I was little, and happy.
As I was trying to remember what that something was, I caught sight of a small person walking up the road and turning into our dooryard. It was Jinnae, knocking on our front door. After a few knocks she headed out to the barn and found me sitting on Sam. Jinnae had dark circles around her eyes but it wasn’t makeup. She looked so pale and tired and even thinner than usual and she was carrying some kind of parcel under her coat.
“How do,” she said.
“How do,” I said.
Silence.
“Thought I’d come up hollow and say g’bye, and show you the kid. Going to live on Paulette’s ranch out west.” Jinnae slipped into the stall and unbuttoned the top of her coat, turning round to show me a flat little gnome face, red like an apple, its eyes squinched shut, almost hidden under a snow white knit cap.
“Evvie around?” said Jinnae, buttoning up again.
“She stays with Mom at the Library ever since…He’s cute, what’s his name?”
“She’s a girl. Name’s Evelyn. Don’t fuss now, BooBoo.” Jinnae joggled herself up and down.
“You and TJ not getting married?”
“He wants to, but I said no. I’m sick of men pestering me.”
“That why’d you let your damn Dad pester Evvie? Why didn’t you tell your Ma?”
“I dunno. I guess I thought that’s just how Dads did. He done Paulette and then Monique and then me the same. Nobody ever said anything about it being bad.”
“So how come your Ma didn’t stop him? How come you and your Ma don’t get Frenchy and John to knock his teeth in and throw HIM out of the house and then YOU could stay there!”
“Ma won’t hear no word against him, she needs his assistance check to get by.”
“I–I think somebody ought to take a gun and shoot him!”
“That’s what T.J. says.”
Silence.
“Jeez, Ruthie, he’s my Dad, he’s the only Dad I got.”
“You telling me you still love him?”
“I guess.”
“You people are all stone CRAZY, Jinnae Willett.”
“Speakin of crazy, you wanna to tell me why you’re sitting on your old horse out in the barn?”
“Because, because...”
“I gotta go, Ruthie. Byron’s takin’ me to the bus. Just tell Evvie g’bye for me, OK, and I’m real sorry about what happened.”
Jinnae adjusted the bundle under her coat. I slid off Sam and walked her over to the barn door.
“See ya.”
“See ya.”
I watched her go; she took the shortest way back, trudging kitty-corner across the frozen cornfield, not climbing onto the road till our land ended and the woods began.
I looked at the golden-rod sky fading to green to blue, and finally I remembered what it reminded me of. It was the time Dad took me night skating on this little woods pond downstate.
It was just him and me, skating under the moon and stars with our feet throbbing with the cold. He showed me how to ice-dance, holding hands with our arms crossed. I sang “The Skaters’ Waltz,” Smooth O’er the Ice, Gli-i-ding Along,” while we whirled around and around. When we got home we had cocoa with marshmallows and Dad lit a fire in the fireplace and he rubbed my frozen feet till they were warm again. His hands had so much heat in them.
I almost yelled out, because I missed my Dad so much, because I wanted to be Daddy’s Little Girl again…
Usually when Jinnae told me things I didn’t figure out what she meant for a week. But that evening I understood her right off. I couldn’t stop hating my Dad, and I couldn’t stop wanting my Dad. So I guess I figured out the minster’s definition of hell, too.