Mama (14 page)

These days Mildred always wore a scarf around her head because her hair had started coming out in fluffy red balls on her pillow at night and she didn't want the kids to see it. When she stood in front of the mirror, she felt like a cactus whose growth had been stunted. Mildred felt dull and bent, and she was afraid. To avoid thinking about it, she took two pills. When she felt herself quivering and freezing in a room that was almost seventy-five degrees, she just thought she needed more rest and pulled the covers up over her.

Deadman had started coming back over again, and though Freda was severe with him, it appeared as though he had pushed that day completely out of his mind. Freda hadn't. She was still too afraid to tell anyone.

On this particular Saturday, Freda was babysitting for the Wigginses. At Mildred's request, Deadman brought over a fifth of VO. She had told him she hadn't had anything to drink in so long she couldn't even remember. It had actually been yesterday, but Mildred had forgotten.

When the bottle was almost empty, she sent Deadman to the store to get another one. They were both pretty near drunk, but Deadman went anyway. When he returned, Mildred put on Dave Brubeck. The needle slid across the whole record but she just laughed.

"Take it easy, Milly, you ain't never gon' be able to play it again if you don't be careful," Deadman said.

"Ah, shut up, you ugly varmint. What you know about scratching old records?"

Deadman held the bottle up to his mouth and took a long swallow. "I know a lot about scratching. Didn't Freda ever tell you about it?"

"Tell me about what?"

"About the time when you was in Niagara Falls or wherever the hell it was you went with that white man, and she pulled her panties down and let me scratch her!" Deadman started laughing hysterically and couldn't stop.

Mildred picked the needle up off the record. "What did you say?" She was drunk, but she wasn't that drunk.

"You heard me, woman, your little hot-ass daughter gave me the first shot at some sweet young stuff and it was good good good good good. I'm not bullshitting you." Deadman didn't even know what he was saying. Not only had he drunk almost an entire fifth of VO but he had smoked one of those marijuana sticks everybody had started smoking lately.

Mildred walked to the telephone and dialed Mary Wiggins's number. It felt like her insides were grinding.

"Freda, this is your mama. I'm gon' ask you a simple question and I want a simple answer. And don't lie to your mama, and don't be scared. What did Deadman do to you when I was in Niagara Falls?"

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

"Answer me, goddammit!"

"He tried to choke me and he threw me down on the couch because he was drunk and he tried to rape me but I didn't let him do it, Mama, I swear. I was too scared to—"

Mildred slammed the phone down, walked back to her bedroom off the kitchen, and reached under her mattress for the .38. She made sure it was still loaded, marched back to the kitchen, pointed it at Deadman, and said, "Here, motherfucker, scratch this!" And fired four shots at him. With each shot Mildred recoiled another foot, until she bashed into the window in the dining room. Deadman fell on top of the record player, scratching Dave Brubeck forever.

When Money walked through the side door five minutes later and saw Deadman lying in his own blood in the middle of the living room, still breathing but moaning with pain, and Mildred sitting in a chair as if she were in a daze, her elbow gashed open, he called the police and an ambulance. Money tried to get Mildred to tell him what had happened, but she just sat there—did not move, did not blink an eyelid—and simply said, "Get him out of here before I kill him."

When it was learned that Deadman would be okay, that only two of the bullets had actually hit him, one in his groin and one in his side, they released Mildred from jail. She had told them that Deadman had tried to rape her and she'd shot him in self-defense. They believed her, but Deadman denied it, so they let him go free too. As soon as Mildred got home, she called up Minnie, his mama, and told her that if she ever saw Deadman walking the streets of Point Haven as long as she lived there, so help her God, she would put another .38 bullet so deep in his ass that it would be the last step he'd ever take. The next day, Minnie put Deadman on a bus to Alabama.

Crook got sick again and was back in the hospital. This time it wasn't more tuberculosis. It was diabetes. His brother, Zeke, had stopped by to tell Mildred and the kids. "He just got a touch of sugar, ain't nothing to worry about. All he gotta do is change his diet and take it easy. They got him taking sugar pills instead of them shots, but he should be all right in about a month. Send the kids over to see him. Make him feel better, 'cause he don't see 'em much, you know."

The kids didn't want to go near the house because of Ernestine, but Mildred made them go the same day he got home. Crook was asleep, wound up in a pile of blankets, like he was being prepared for a burial, and his face was a pale peach color.

Money walked over and shook him. "Hi, Daddy," he said.

Crook opened his eyes. They looked like old scratched marbles. He tried to crack a smile when he saw all five of them standing around his bed like surgeons. They had brought him a carton of Pall Malls, some juice, and a new white shirt.

"How's Daddy's little Indians?" Crook asked, trying to sit up.

"We fine, but what's wrong with you this time, Daddy?" Doll asked. "You got some more TB in you?"

"No, your daddy just got a little sugar in his blood. I gotta start eating like the doctor tell me, but I'll be okay." They stared at him, and the look on their faces told him they knew he was lying. To Crook it felt like they were closing in on him, standing around his bed like this, and he had to ask them to step back. Said he couldn't breathe too good.

The kids told him how well they were doing in school. All of them except Money were on the honor roll and Freda was going into the eleventh grade now, and taking driver's education.

"How's your mama?" Crook asked.

"She fine. She say she hope you gon' get better and stop acting like a fool and leave that liquor alone," Bootsey said. Even though Bootsey was thirteen, she still didn't know what the word tact meant.

After a long silence it was obvious that everybody had run out of things to say. They kissed their daddy on his cheeks and forehead and said goodbye, moving past Ernestine as she stumbled through the front door like she was diseased herself.

By the time they got home, it was thundering and lightning. As usual, the house was leaking. Money collected every bucket, every boiler, roaster, jar, and pitcher, and scattered them around the house to catch the splattering drops of water.

"Turn off those lights," Mildred said, "and be quiet till this pass." It was always like this when she was home and there was a storm. Even though Mildred wasn't a religious person, she took what her daddy had said about God doing his work to heart. The kids couldn't figure out why everything electrical had to be unplugged before he could finish his work. Didn't he like a little light too? Besides, they didn't know of anybody who had ever been struck by lightning except Deadman, which was how he had gotten his name. He had told everybody in town that he'd been struck, died, and come back to life. The silence in the house only made everything that much spookier, and, as usual, Mildred sat there sipping a beer.

"How's your daddy?"

"He's all right," Bootsey said. "He say he ain't dranking no more."

"He lying. He still dranking. That sugar'll eat him up if he don't stop. And I want y'all to go see him more often, you understand me? All he got is old sorry-ass Ernestine over there, and Lord knows she ain't no real help to him. Every single time I've seen him, he look lost, and I thank he needs to see y'all more often. I don't care about your cheerleading practice, Freda, or any of y'all little after-school activities. He's you daddy, gon' always be your daddy, no matter what he's done or ain't done and I want you to go see him before something happen to him. You understand me?" Mildred's voice had gotten loud in spite of herself.

"Yes, Mama," they said, and sat silently in the dark until the storm passed.

Freda had made up her mind by now that if something terrible ever happened to her daddy or mama before it happened to her, she wasn't going to the funeral. When she tried to explain her reasoning to Mildred, she didn't seem at all interested. Mildred had just heard it through the grapevine that they were hiring again down at Ford's, and she was trying to figure out which day she could get a ride to Utica to fill out an application. The Mercury had conked out and was sitting on stilts in the driveway. She was not in the mood to be be thinking about dying and funerals, especially her own. Mildred was thinking about work and money.

"I mean it, Mama. I ain't going to your funerals," Freda persisted, "'cause I don't think I could take it, and I just want you to know it now."

"If you don't get out of my face talking crazy, girl, I'ma smack you clear across the other side of this room. I got a million thangs on my mind."

But Freda had given it quite a bit of thought. When Mildred had shot Deadman, Freda was afraid her mama was going to prison or something awful like that. The thought of her mama's absence had caused Freda to think about death, something she had never really thought about before. It sent chills up and down her whole body. What would she do without her mama? And all winter long, when Freda couldn't sleep because it was so cold upstairs in that attic bedroom, where she and Bootsey had to put the small electric heater on a chair not more than six inches away from the bed and it still didn't do much good, Freda would stare at the crystal formations on the inside of the window and listen to her own thoughts. She had made some decisions and come to several conclusions. She was not going to her mama's or daddy's funeral. She hated this raggedy house, hated this boring-ass town, and when she graduated from high school in two years, she was getting the hell out of here.

Mildred got put on the waiting list at Ford's, and she was so excited that she spent her entire welfare check in anticipation of starting any day now. After a week of waiting by the telephone, she lost her patience and called them. They told her it might be as long as three months before she would get called. Then Mildred started acting even funnier than she had been right before she shot Deadman.

Freda had gotten her first real job, shelving books at the public library for $1.25 an hour. Mildred seemed very excited and proud about it when Freda had told her. That was two weeks ago. This evening, Freda walked in the kitchen door about six-thirty and Mildred was furious.

"Where the hell have you been, Miss Fast Ass?"

Freda looked at Mildred, stunned. She had posted her hours right over the sink last week like Mildred had told her to.

"I was at work, Mama, you know that."

"And since when did you start working? You thank you grown or something?"

"I work at the library, Mama. You don't remember?" Mildred looked at the wall, like she was searching for something, and then it came to her. "Oh, oh oh, I'm sorry, baby. Now I remember. You put up books or something, don't you?"

"Yes, Mama. I put up books."

As the weeks passed Mildred got worse. She wouldn't let the girls wash dishes any more and insisted on doing them herself. Mildred hadn't washed dishes since Freda was nine years old, and that was seven years ago. She would stand, sometimes for minutes, rubbing a single plate and instead of reaching to put it in the dishrack, would throw it on the floor. The kids were scared, but then Mildred would apologize for doing it and start crying. "I can't do nothing right, can I?"

She kept trying to cook, too. Things that none of the kids could even think about eating. She would pour five and six tablespoons of salt and black pepper into a pot of beans, sometimes in addition to a cup of sugar, then taste it, approving of its flavor, and make the kids eat it. They became frightened for her. But the next day Mildred would wake up acting like her normal spunky self again.

It got to the point that she would get excited about something and the next thing you knew she had shut herself in her bedroom and would scream if you so much as called her name. She had even started selling some of her nerve pills to her hairdresser for fifty cents apiece.

When the last welfare check had come, Mildred had taken thirty dollars of the grocery money and bought two horses—a small pony and its colt—that someone who had a small barn had to get rid of. She had come walking down the paved street with these two miniature animals on a leash like they were dogs. The kids couldn't believe it.

"Mama, where you get these horses from?" Money asked.

"Don't worry about it. I got a good deal on these suckers, and besides, it'll give y'all something to do so you can stay out of my hair."

None of them knew anything about taking care of horses, let alone figuring out where the hell to put them, so Mildred kept them in the garage, where a week later they both froze to death and had to be hauled away on a crane. This cost another forty dollars. But Mildred hadn't remembered buying any horses when Freda told her what happened. She looked at Freda like she was crazy.

This morning Mildred woke up cranky and ordered Freda to bring her a cup of coffee. "And get me two of my pills—no, three—they in the windowsill."

"Mama, you been taking too many of these pills lately, don't you think? And why you still taking 'em anyway?"

"You sure do ask a hell of a lot of questions for somebody who ain't even started her damn period yet—or have you? They for my nerves. N-e-r-v-e-s. How many times am I gon' have to tell you that, every fifteen minutes?" Mildred's voice was high and with each word the tone got higher and louder.

"Are you okay, Mama? You want me to call Granddaddy Buster?"

"Naw. Don't go calling my daddy over here," she said. Now her voice sounded like a tired scream. The anger in it had vanished and so had the hostility. "Get out of here, would you, and leave me alone."