Playing With Matches (13 page)

“Did he live with us, with Mama?”

“Not really, baby. He was just passing through.”

“He never married my mama?”

Auntie missed only half a beat. “He did not.”

“Auntie, Mama’s a ho’, ain’t that right?”

“Isn’t,”
Uncle said real soft. He still sat at the table, sipping his coffee. I guess he thought, with this one more time of correcting me, he could put off me hearing the answer—or Auntie’s giving it.

“Isn’t she?” I said.

“Child, do you even know what a whore is?”

“I guess I do.” I ran the dish towel around the rim of a glass that was white and pebbled and saved just for my milk. “I’ve been over there and seen what all they’re up to, those guards from the prison, and others too.”

Auntie looked sad. “You’ve gone and growed up before your time.”

She meant I knew too much. But I didn’t know as much as Finn. He was the expert at everything. Almost.

17

T
he following Sunday, Miss Shookie came to get us in her car. At First and Last Holy Word, the Best Reverend Ollie was in fine form. He didn’t wait for the sermon to move souls, he took the pulpit, reared back with his eyes shut, and laid into the day: “Oh, mighty GOD!” His voice was a trumpet. “Let us SEE the enemy, Lord. Let us KNOW him by his wicked heart. Lift us HIGH, Lord, above the temptation to give in to him, oh, yes!”

A bit stunned, the congregation murmured, “Amen.”

“Make us STRONG, Lord, to serve you better in these
daaaaaaaaays
of tribulation. Make us more as we labor in your service, in your vineyards, in your temple, oh, YES!”

Now we were in tune, and the church went in motion with raised arms and fluttery, floating hands, and the hallelujahs that swept on and on.

“Yes, Jesus, oh, yes, Lord …”

The Reverend bellowed, “Keep us NOT JUST AFLOAT! We’ll step OUT, Lord, as Peter did—”

And here came the choir, all six of them humming and backing the prayer. I wondered how they’d known to do that: “Fishers of men, oh, fishers of men—”

I didn’t think the Reverend was talking about regular fishing.

“—Lift us to WALK on the stormiest seas!”

Miss Shookie cried, “Oh, Jesus …”

“Amen and —”

“Lord, Lord,” said Auntie.

Webster’s definition of
amen
was
So it is
.

On this morning the Reverend was full of something, and I wasn’t just thinking the Holy Spirit. Everybody loved him. He was a good man with a fine and lucky life. But what did he know of stormy seas? Had he ever been afloat and alone, and not seen the shore? Had he ever found a hole in his goddamned boat?

“Amen,” said the Reverend. And with that, we were primed, ready to be preached to, saved and re-saved. Dedicated once more.

The choir sang. The congregation sang. I wondered what would happen if Millicent Poole suddenly led us in
“Clarice the ho’ …”

I drew a stubby pencil and tithing envelope from the rack in front of me and began to scribble. When Auntie saw me and swatted my hands, I went on writing, trying to remember the words.

—And wore her wedding gown
.

That night I told Finn, “I’m gonna do something bad.”

“I’ll help you,” he said.

“How, when you won’t hardly get down from that tree?”

“I would,” he said. “I did for Wheezer.”

“Finn, why don’t you come down from there and live with Auntie? She’s told you you can.”

Among the leaves, he shook his head.

“Your daddy surely didn’t mean for you to stay there forever.”

“Anyway, I see enough of you,” he said. “I couldn’t take any more.”

That hurt my feelings. “What—you watch me through my window, do you? The way you watched Bitsy?”

“I seen you once.” He looked away. “You ain’t got nothing, girl; you only twelve.”

“So—you planning to sit there till I get me some shape and then take a picture?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t have to wait. Bitsy’ll take me down to the river anytime I want.”

“Bitsy?”

“Yeah, and she’s got more goods than you.”

“Finn!”

“What?”

“Listen,” I said, “I’m gonna do something bad.”

“How bad?”

“Enough that they might take me away.”

“Who?” he said, his green eyes widening. “What you gonna do?”

“Well,” I told him, “you hang on to your tree.”

18

I
kept the sash of my window greased with Vaseline.

I found the drainpipe with my toes, and shinnied down till my foot touched the trellis. Auntie’s roses were climbers, gone wild up here and still thorny, although it was near winter now and all the flowers were gone. Silently I stepped down and down, and set my feet upon the cold December ground. There was a cowardly moon this night, with piled-up clouds like the sky was full of shuffling hunchbacks. The wind was up. I heard it rustling the grass and rushing the river along.

I had worn narrow paths in the tall grass between Auntie’s place and Mama’s, and even in the pitch black I found one easy and made my way by whatever magnet leads us home.

The lights were on in Mama’s house, ramping yellow slats from the windows to the weeds. If there were frogs croaking or night birds singing, I could not hear them. The whole world was lost to the racket and thump of tinny music from an old stereo player.

I pulled open the creaking screen door and stepped onto the porch. The narrow cot was stripped bare to the mattress. I turned the knob and went into the kitchen.

The music wobbled, uncertain then plunking made to sound like falling tears or rain, and I thought about Uncle Cunny’s lightning fingers on the strings of his guitar at the picnic, the groaning tables on that Fourth of July, Mama’s bill of sale flying up in the wind when Uncle tore it to shreds. I thought of how Auntie lay down on the floor.

Over the years, the presence of me had given them all hell. The only thing worse was the presence of my mother.

Mama to child, blood into blood.

In the living room, cross-legged, Mama had an audience. Two guards in Farm gray were sprawled on the sofas. They all looked bleary with their drinking, their glasses in hand, sleepy-eyed, with smug smiles on their stubbly faces. Mama sat alone on the floor. The paint stains were still there.

Her filmy pink dress lay at the foot of the stairs, one nylon stocking on the arm of a chair. I felt the same—a piece of me here, a shred of me there.

My mother sat in her panties and bra, showing crotch and cleavage, the feather boa around her neck, the end hanging down on her bare silken back.

“Mama?” I said.

But her chin wagged and sagged to her collarbone.

“Mama?”

I hunkered down and looked at her face. Her eyes were half open, showing a vague light in the window, but the rest of her had gone away. A lit cigarette hung on her bottom lip. A fire waiting to drop down. I wondered how many hundred times in my life I’d be required to see that she was safe when she was drunk. My years—and hers—stretched out long in front of me.

I took the cigarette from her mouth and puffed on it, carried it through to the porch. I lay down on the bare mattress with one
arm under my head, the way Mama’s gents often did, and looked at the ceiling. I held the lipsticked butt in front of my face, flicked the ash away, and watched a thin trail of smoke rise up. There was nothing to think, because I’d thought it all, fretted and angered and grown pain in my belly till there wasn’t room for anything else. I put it away only when I was so tired that I couldn’t carry it. And then, minutes later, here it would come again—the who-am-I, the where-am-I, the work of keeping Mama away from everyone else, the never-ending fear that Auntie would grow tired of me, that Uncle would feel I was more trouble than I was worth.

But if they came to their senses and put Clea Shine down, where would she stand? On what actual ground did my feet belong?

I turned over on my belly and rubbed the glowing end of the cigarette on the floor.

I thought I heard a thousand hands clapping. Around me, the skinny house shuddered and whined. Was I dreaming? No. The dry kitchen wall was a plane of fire, flames rocketing from the knotholes.

Someone was screaming. I tumbled off the cot, trying to clear the fog and recall where I was. I scrambled across the floor toward the kitchen, but a man crashed through the door, his legs burning. I rolled away and twisted. His hair was gone, and his back was raw red and black char.

I felt for the door and believed I was in the kitchen. Black smoke rolled over my head. Sparks were everywhere. In seconds, the fire had eaten the table and was licking at the cabinet doors. Someone was lying spread-eagle on the floor, face gone and fire lapping at his clothes. I tried to squeeze past. Flames raced along
the kitchen ceiling and into the living room. Through the throat-burning smoke, I recognized Mama. She had passed out in her spot on the floor and toppled over. The boa was on fire.

I lunged ahead, feeling for her. But now the front wall and the roof had caught fire, and I rubbed at my eyes while the ceiling groaned. Plaster and brittle beams of wood came down. And then the front door crashed open, and a rush of air ignited all that was left, and I was skidding across the floor, into smoldering weeds. I rose to my feet and was running.
Running
.

I cowered down and hid in the grass by the river and cried and breathed, and didn’t breathe, and retched and hiccuped while wood and tall grass and everything that had been there before crackled and burned and was no more. Firemen roared up in pumper trucks, and I both watched and hid my eyes while firemen, and the man I knew to be the county medical examiner, carried out bodies in bags.

I heard my name called, over and over, in pleadings and screams,
Clea
becoming six syllables, then ten.

Toward morning someone picked me up, coated with ash and snot and filth.

The air was gray, the field burnt; the house was rubble. Through the dark haze of a bad fairy tale, the only light shining was an occasional glimpse of the Farm’s razor wire. There was no
Mama’s house
now, to block the view.

I tried to make out the guard turrets, the big brick house with its torturous dungeons—the place where, in short order, I would be going.

Through the long hours of that day, Auntie rocked me. I was too long in the leg but scared beyond caring. Uncle brought tea and
made me sip, though I wouldn’t raise my head from Auntie’s shoulder, where her dress had grown soggy from my tears. The tea only caused me to choke and cry more. Auntie told him to come with wet washcloths, and they tried to clean my arms and legs, but I clung to her with my fists and my knees. My hair stuck to me, and I wet myself and Auntie too. By the time they got me into a clean nightgown, my tears had made ashy stains on everything.

Instead of her usual lumbering around with a face full of muffin, Bitsy sat in a chair, and Miss Shookie moved about with a strange quietness. Neighbors came, even the younger Mr. Oatys, who acted like they’d never in their lives kept a boy under their house.