They had cut her hair at the hospital, and it was growing back with specks of gray amidst reddish-brown—a motley mane. Her skin was ashen, her eyes were dull, and her face had the lifeless expression Tarabelle had once worn. She could walk—thank God—but when she opened her mouth to speak, it was not to us, but to herself.
She would sit in the kitchen staring into space for hours, then fall asleep on the chair. Not once had she slept on the bed that Harvey had bought for her.We spoke to her in high and low tones, but we never knew exactly what to say.We bathed, clothed, and fed her, because she would do nothing for herself.Almost immediately upon her arrival, Angus Betts appeared at our door to question her about the death of Chad Lowe, but he could get no information from her.
Often Mushy would pull a chair up beside Mama and pour them both a drink of corn whiskey or whatever else she happened to have in the house. But Mama would not hold a glass and Mushy would have to pour the drink into her mouth.
Once I heard Mushy say, “You done spent yo’whole hateful life calling Martha Jean dumb.Who the dumb one now? You can’t even wash yo’ own ol’ nasty behind. I don’t know why they didn’t keep you in that hospital.”
Mushy tried to pour more of the whiskey down Mama’s throat, but Mama gagged and coughed until finally I said, “Stop, Mushy. Don’t make her drink that stuff.”
“Shut up!” Mushy yelled at me. “I told you before you came here not to turn yo’ nose up at nothing I do. If I get her drunk enough, maybe she’ll go to bed. How we suppose to rest at night when she sitting up here like something dead.Who knows what the hell she might do.Tan, you able to go in there and sleep like it ain’t nothing, but I ain’t had no sleep in days, and I’m tired.”
Mushy didn’t think Mama could hear her, but I thought she did. I watched Mama, and noticed that sometimes her hands twitched, or her clouded eyes would clear long enough to watch Laura’s movements in a room. She fixed on Laura with the demeanor of a cat ready to swoop up its prey, but never for long, and Laura never seemed to notice.
On Saturdays and some days after school, I would take my mother’s hand and walk her out to Penyon Road, trying to spark some remembrance, trying to restore some life into her dull eyes.
One day when I had walked her through the woods beyond the old house and through the house itself, she raised a hand to my chin and tilted my head skyward. “Sam,” she said, and her face broke into an open, loving smile.“Sam.”
“Hey, Mama,” I said in that fleeting moment before she was lost to me again.
When I told the others about it, Tarabelle asked, “You think she ever gon’ be right again?”
“It’s possible,” I answered.“She remembered Sam.”
“I wanna take her out there the next time, Tan, ”Tarabelle said. “Maybe she’ll remember me. She’s my mama, too. I’m gon’ fix us a picnic lunch and take her out there one day next week.”
My life continued, not much altered by Mama’s return. I went to school and church, then came home and tried to give Mushy a rest. Mushy’s life had changed drastically. Her friends no longer crowded the living room for impromptu parties. She was angry with the world and mean to everybody in it. Sometimes poor Richard would be forced to go and spend a couple of nights with his wife until it was safe for him to return home. Under the influence of booze, Mushy was managing to get a few hours sleep each night, but it was never enough.
She woke up one morning and yanked me out of sleep and out of bed in the same motion.“Mama’s gone!” she shouted.“She ain’t nowhere in this damn house.We gotta go find her.”
We went door to door, and woke up nearly everybody in the flats, but nobody had seen our mother. Mushy finally decided to take the car and search all over town, starting with the house on Penyon Road. I was to stay in the flats with Laura in the unlikely event Mama returned there.
We gave the house, the front and back yards, a final search before Mushy hurried out to the car. She had just turned the key in the ignition when a black-and-white police car turned onto Echo Road and stopped behind her. The policeman who got out and opened the rear door for Mama, told us that he had spotted her pacing the ground below the platform of the train depot.
“At first I thought it was somebody waiting for the next train,” he said, “but the next train is not due for another two hours.When I saw who it was, I brought her on home.”
“I don’t live here,” Mama protested.
The policeman ignored her. “Y’all need to keep a better watch on her,” he scolded. “Another time of day, and she could’ve been run over by a train.”
Mama was barefoot and still wearing the nightgown I had dressed her in before going to bed myself. She struggled as we tried to help her inside the house, and Mushy roughly shoved her forward.
“I don’t live here!” Mama shouted.“I wanna go home.”
When we had her inside, Mushy collared her, wrenching her gown around her with such force that they nearly bumped heads. “Look here, Mama,” she hissed, “I ain’t gon’ be hunting all over town for you, and you ain’t gon’ be embarrassing me by leaving outta here half naked.This is where you live.You don’t like it, and I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is. So sit yo’ ass down somewhere and stay put!”
“Mushy, don’t . . .” I started.
Mushy released Mama and turned on me.“Tan, you gon’ graduate next week, and I’m happy for you.You’ll be the first one of us to get that piece of paper, and when you get it in yo’ hands, I want you to get the hell out my house. I don’t want you back here turning up yo’ nose up at nothing I do.” She fanned one hand as though shooing me away. “I just want you outta here.You can take Mama, take Laura, take Richard, too.All y’all just get the hell away from me.”
In the silence following Mushy’s outburst, we heard the trickle of urine dripping to the floor as Mama wet herself and everything within a six-inch radius. “Oh-oh,” she said in a child-like singsong.“ Oh-oh.”
Mushy threw herself on the couch, turned her rear end toward the ceiling, and covered her head with her hands. I sent Laura off to school, then took Mama into the bathroom and gave her a bath. When I had her dressed, I went back to the front room to check on Mushy.
She was sitting up on the couch with a Mason jar of corn whiskey in her hand.“Tan, I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t want you to leave. I wouldn’t never put you out.”
“You’re tired, Mushy,” I said.“I know you wouldn’t put me out, but I think you meant it about me turning up my nose at things. If my nose turns up, I’m not aware of it.”
She tried to smile.“It’s a look you get all over yo’ face whenever I do something you don’t like,” she said. “It makes me feel small, like you think you so much better than me. I got a right to get angry. Everybody got a right to get angry, even you. If you don’t let it out, it’ll eat yo’ insides up.”
“So will corn whiskey,” I said, and regretted my words even before they were out of my mouth.
“You see?” she asked.“You see what I mean?”
I did see, didn’t like it, and didn’t have time to apologize for it. Maybe after school, after I got my diploma, I could work on the tilt of my nose, the expression on my face, and my use of words that made Mushy feel small. My priority at present was to finish my last few days of school. I left Mushy with her feelings, and took mine with me as I walked to Plymouth.
Mama was gone again the following morning, and this time Mushy went straight to the train depot and brought her home. Mama had already soiled her gown, but she seemed not to notice. As I watched her sitting at the kitchen table, I thought I saw the stoic expression on her face change to a devious one, and twice I was sure I saw her stick out a leg and try to trip Laura.
The next time Mama slipped out of the house, we did not go out to find her, and eventually she came back to the house on her own.Another morning it was Tarabelle who brought her home.
“Y’all better do something ’bout Mama,” Tara said. “Do y’all know she had done walked all the way ’round to Miss Shirley’s, and was standing out in the street yelling ‘Tarabelle, Tarabelle, you’s a bull dyke, Tarabelle.’ How come she can call me names, but act like she don’t know I’m her daughter? I think Mama pulling y’all’s leg.”
Mushy, who was so sleepy she could barely keep her eyes open, waggled her fingers at Tarabelle. “Take her on back around there wit’ you, Tara,” she mumbled. “I need some sleep.”
“You know I gotta go to work, Mushy. I ain’t gon’ lose my job fooling ’round wit’ Mama, ”Tara said.“I’m trying to help out. I told you I’ll watch her while you go see Tan get her diploma, and I’m taking her on a picnic.That oughta be enough.”
My mother would not watch me graduate from high school. It wasn’t such a bad thing because she had never thought much of education, but all of my life I had pictured her being there. She stood beside me in Mushy’s living room, seemingly staring at nothing though I felt she was observing everything. I took her hand, led her to the kitchen, and fixed her a cup of coffee.
“Mama,” I said, “if you’re gonna keep going out in the mornings, you need to put on some clothes.”
There was no response from her, and I picked up her cup to allow her to sip her coffee when I was almost certain she could have held the cup herself.
Mushy was asleep on the couch when Laura and I left for school.We walked in silence through the flats and up the hills toward Plymouth.As we neared the school, I asked Laura how she felt about Mama being home.
“I don’t know,” Laura answered.“How come she pee on herself like a baby?”
I changed the subject. “Laura, Miss Hollis has told me that you’re not going to be promoted to the fourth grade.”
“I know,” she said. “I’ll be with Edna next year.”
“How would you feel about going to a different school in another town?”
“Wit’ Edna?”
“Just you.”
“No,” she said.“I wanna be wit’ Edna.”
“Even if it means moving back to Penyon Road and living in our old house with Mama?”
“Will you be there wit’ me?” she asked.
“No, Laura, I’d like to leave here. I don’t ever want to live in that house again.”
We reached the school before she could ask me the whys and wherefores of my plans, which had not been completely thought out. I had one hundred dollars and an address, both provided by Crow. I had common sense, and I would have a high school diploma. Those things would have to be enough for whatever I decided to do.
At home that night, I had a most serious conversation with God. I did not try to bargain, nor did I send up a request for anything ridiculous, although I was reminded of the time when I had asked Him to dry up my tear ducts and those of my sisters. He hadn’t done it, and tears slid from my eyes as I prayed. My prayer was a jumble of messages that I felt He understood. I thanked Him for every breath I had ever taken in my lifetime, even the ones He had forced into my lungs when I had thought I wanted to die.
“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” I prayed, and stilled my lust for Velman Cooper, though I had sinned already. “Forgive me.”
I asked questions, expecting no answers because God did not have to answer to me, but I wanted to know if I could honor my mother from a distance.Would that be all right? Would guilt consume me if I abandoned my family? Was I mature enough to raise Laura the way He would have me do? Was there someone else better suited?
“Snip the tip of my nose so that it remains unchanging in the presence of my sister. Soften the words that spill from my tongue, and make me less judgmental. I cannot cast a stone; I can only ask forgiveness. I want to leave Pakersfield so bad, Lord, that I’m blind to nearly everything else. Help me to see. If it is Your will that I stay here, then You will have to give me a sign.Amen.”
I dried my eyes, shifted my body closer to Laura’s, and allowed her soft breathing to lull me toward sleep.
“I have lightened your burden, removed stumbling blocks from your path,” I thought I heard a voice whisper. I listened for more, but heard only my sister’s breathing. An early dream? An active imagination? And if my path was clear and my burden lighter, did that mean I should stay or leave?