The Angry Woman Suite (4 page)

She didn’t bend down to me. “Now, now,” she said from very faraway. I drew back, questioning. She didn’t look me in the face. “Now, now,” she repeated, fiddling with things on the kitchen table. “Daddy doesn’t like you being so shrill, Elyse. That screaming every night has got to stop.”

I stepped back, understanding the incredible; understanding what Mother was showing me, teaching me. If I quit crying and paid attention, I’d see how we were to handle things when we got scared. We were to pretend nothing was wrong, and that we didn’t fear horrible deaths (which meant, of course, not only did no one ever know how scared we were, but after awhile we pretty much didn’t know, either).

I straightened my shoulders and stood tall, vowing to be just as brave as Mother, vowing to never wet the bed again. Even if I had to stay awake all night holding it, I could do it, I was just that brave. Besides, I never wanted to see Daddy’s
thing
so angry again. I was sure that next time out it would try killing me, too.

Daddy was in a good mood. He’d heard from an old friend named Buster. Daddy had grown up with Buster in Pennsylvania, and Buster had played trombone for Daddy’s famous orchestra back in the 1940s. Buster was coming to town to talk with Daddy about starting a new band.

“We’d be playing nights, of course,” I heard Daddy tell Mother in the kitchen. “On base. We could use the money.” Bean in hand, I peeked into the kitchen.

Mother and Daddy were hugging. “Francis Grayson, you phenomenal man, you,” Mother said. Daddy smiled. He had a nice smile. Mother
was
right about Daddy being the handsomest man in the world, like a movie star: tall and lots of dark hair, and a moustache, and beautiful white teeth. And you could only tell his one ear wasn’t quite right if you looked real close. Mother was right about that too; Daddy’s shorter ear wasn’t a big deal.

“You wouldn’t mind? There are still people out there who want to hear
real
music.” Daddy sounded excited. He noticed me standing on the threshold. My uncertainty must’ve showed. “Come here, baby.” Daddy got down on one knee. His eyes crinkled at the corners. Bean, looking terrified, went to Mother, but I hesitated, still mindful Daddy had a killer between his legs. I took baby steps. Daddy pulled me down onto the shelf of his thigh. “There’s a good girl,” he crooned, putting his lips to my ear and nibbling it, tickling me. Despite myself, I giggled.

“That’s better,” Daddy sighed. “I love you so much. I just love you all to death.”

Remembering those words, I feel a chill every time—but back then, I leaned into Daddy, talking myself into forgetting about him wanting to kill us, loving him back instead, for making us such a nice family.

The fantasy had no staying power. Although Daddy would try telling you otherwise, the fact of the matter is I tried, but I just couldn’t seem to pull it together. There was always something I didn’t do right, if I did it at all; some rule I missed, something he had to punish me for, because family
loved
one another. And children
behaved.
I began living in a state of perpetual dread, hiding behind Bean’s crib when I heard Daddy’s footsteps, trembling hearing Mother tell Daddy how bad I’d been while he’d been at work, how tired she was, how sick her head felt for having to deal with me all day. Mother was becoming increasingly difficult to figure out. She cried for reasons that eluded me, but my forgetting to make my bed, to get dressed properly, to hang my towel up, all those things that made Mother cranky made Daddy solicitous of Mother, which made Mother feel better, and me more anxious.

But no matter how well I hid myself in closets or under beds, Daddy always found me. “I love you,” he’d start off, fingering his belt. “But you worry your mother when you don’t mind the rules. You worry her sick. You know that, don’t you? Now I don’t want to do this …”

So why did he?

I wouldn’t cry when he held me upside down until the blood rushed to my head and I thought I’d explode. I didn’t even cry when Daddy used the two by four, leaving welts on my legs that the long pants Mother made me wear in the Mississippi heat covered up. I didn’t cry for so many reasons. Because I was afraid of making Daddy’s hands shake more, of making him sadder, of letting Mother hear me and making her head sicker. I was afraid of poor Bean cowering more than she did already. If I stayed quiet, Bean didn’t get as scared. I was afraid of the killer in Daddy’s trousers. I was afraid of a horrible death.

But he always cried. Daddy always cried after slapping or punching me, or hitting me with whatever was closest. Especially if there was blood. Blood
really
upset Daddy.

So if there was blood, I’d comfort
him
afterward, my trembling fingers massaging Daddy’s wet, scratchy cheeks.

Anything for peace, for not having to die that day.

Every night. We did this every night. Until Mother smiled, signaling Daddy could stop his shaking.

Bean wasn’t much of a talker, but she was a good listener, and her solemn brown eyes widened when I told her stories of the little people who came awake at night, breathing heavy under our beds, waiting for just one false move so they could grab a foot or a hand. These were Papa’s “safe scaries,” albeit embellished for Bean’s benefit.

“What happens if the little people get you?” she whispered. It was a Sunday, nap time. We were supposed to be sleeping.

“They eat you,” I replied, rewarded by two fat tears sliding down Bean’s plump cheeks. I couldn’t resist: “And blood dribbles out their mouths.”

Bean’s lower lip trembled. “I don’t want to get eaten.”

“Of course not,” I said imperiously. “Who does? So, if you don’t want to get eaten, if you want to win, you have to outfox the little people. That’s what Papa says: you’ve got to
outfox
. Hush. Daddy and Mother will hear you.”

“But how?” Bean persisted. “How do you outfox the little people, Elyse?”

I told her what Papa had told me, that everything is a game. And that the best game players lay low until the name of the game is revealed. They pretend to go to sleep until the little people (the not so hot players) get lazy and fall asleep themselves. And that’s when the good game players made their moves, pulling the checkmates out of their pockets. “Daylight in the swamps!” Papa would bellow each morning, the edict bouncing off the walls, corroboration that the coast was clear and we’d won the morning by default.

Bean was only almost three and had a short attention span, so I had to be brief. “Watch me,” I instructed her. “Stay right beside me. I won’t let the little people get you, not ever. I promise I’ll always take care of you, Bean.”

Bean became my shadow. Even our new uncle, Buster, commented on how close we were.

“Unusual for sisters, Francis,” he laughed, sitting his big bulk down on our little couch. “They always get along so well?” Uncle Buster was jovial and always brought me and Bean suckers, but he didn’t stop by often enough, what with Daddy leaving so early for work every morning, and playing the trumpet at the NCO club after work, into the wee hours.

Sometimes Mother went to the NCO club to listen to Daddy play, leaving the neighbor lady to watch over me and Bean. But more often it was just me and Mother and Bean home alone at night, and those were my favorite times, when Bean and I’d climb into bed with Mother and I’d spoon against Bean’s backside, pretending Daddy didn’t live with us anymore and that Mother loved me like before, and so of course I loved Mother like before, while Bean curled into Mother’s tummy.

“Too well,” Daddy answered Uncle Buster. “I don’t think it’s natural for sisters to be so close. I grew up in a houseful of women, so I know. Horrible women. And the oldest has a streak to her, did you notice? Look how she picks on Bean. Like a baboon with her young. Pick, pick, pick. Stop picking at your sister, Elyse.” Daddy laughed, like he’d said something funny, but I’d heard the edge and I watched Daddy closely, watching him watch Uncle Buster watch Mother, worried I’d done something more than pick at Bean; worried I’d get hit after Uncle Buster left, and that Mother would dance her sparkle dance all the way off into the sunset, leaving me to fend for myself. I worried until my ears rang from clenching my jaw, and my face felt pulverized. When Uncle Buster left, Mother immediately tucked me and Bean into bed, and right after that I heard her tell Daddy he was being ridiculous. Their voices got loud, and Mother let out a yelp—and I closed my ears to the headboard knocking against the wall between us, to Mother’s moans and Daddy’s grunts. I got out of bed and climbed into Bean’s crib and snuggled up next to her.

It was Daddy’s night off and it started well enough. But sitting down to dinner, Mother, for some reason, started in on how rough it had been “living like white trash in a railroad house, growing up about as close to the tracks as you could get, not even far enough away to be on the
wrong
side of them.” But Daddy said, “Ha, that’s nothing,” and then talked of women who murdered, “scattering remains left and right.”

Mother tried interrupting him—she was always interrupting and just when Daddy was getting to the part about the murders. Daddy, though, wasn’t the least bit fazed; he kept right on talking and Mother got to looking more exasperated the more Daddy talked, until it looked like she was starting to hate him. Suddenly she picked up a knife and threw it across the table in Daddy’s direction—it missed him by a hair. Nobody moved. I scarcely breathed. My mother was a lady,
not
a knife-thrower.

Daddy, who’d been carving the roast beef when Mother threw the knife, drew his face in like a prune and said
that
was it. That was finally IT. Mother stormed from the table, into the bedroom, and slammed the door, then opened it and slammed it again, and that’s when Daddy yelled that if she slammed that door one more time he’d take it right off its hinges.

Things started coming apart. Mother didn’t holler, but she opened the door and gave Daddy a look.

That’s
when Mother slammed the door with all she had—and that’s when I took it upon myself to scream
for
Mother, plopping down on the floor and pounding at it with my fists and hollering for all I was worth. I glimpsed Daddy’s prune mouth go tighter, but he didn’t say anything. He went and got a screwdriver and unscrewed the bedroom door from its hinges, then laid it on the floor beside the coffee table. I screamed the entire time. Then Daddy scooped me up and carried me into the bathroom,
slammed
that door behind us, dumped me into the bathtub and turned the water on. I choked on a scream and struggled to my feet. He switched the water over to the hand hose and pointed the nozzle at me.

“Stop screaming!”
he suddenly screamed. The water was a hot piston in my throat, gagging me, and I slipped and fell, clawing at the sides of the tub. Daddy kicked my hands off the edge, shouting,
“Piss!”
and then turned the cold water on too, full force, so that the hand hose snaked away from him, spewing water everywhere, like blood. Daddy somehow got that hose pinioned and aimed it at me, pummeling me so viciously with knife-like water that I couldn’t have screamed if I’d tried, so desperately was I gasping for air and trying to stay upright.

Prone and silent by the time Daddy lifted me from the tub, Daddy took my soggy dress off over my head and toweled me dry, all the while crooning satin words, telling me how much he loved me, and how much he’d hated what he’d had to do, putting all that water in me.

“To snap you out of it,” he wept. “You were having one of your fits, Elyse, and I was so
scared.
Scared you’d swallow your tongue. Please forgive me for what I had to do, Elyse—I love you.”

I floated free on his love words, into perfect silence, somehow grateful to Daddy for rescuing me. He picked me up in the towel and unlocked the door and handed me over to Mother, who was standing just outside with Bean, slack-jawed. I made myself go rigid; there was protocol to observe. Soft as my head had gone in the Mississippi heat, I’d identified the name of our game,
and
with spectacular clarity. It was called “Whose Life Was Crappiest”—and
I’d
committed the cardinal sin, butting in before Mother and Daddy had finished playing. Now I had to wait for the winner to claim the last word.

They were, “She won’t be trying that trick again,” Daddy snapped at Mother, stomping off. Checkmate, temporarily.

Mother buried her face in my neck. “It’s your bad streak. It’s always your bad streak, Elyse.” She said it the way she’d tell me to wash up for dinner, but suddenly, even though Mother was giving me some long overdue attention, I wanted her to disappear
with
Daddy.

Later, Daddy took the bathroom door off its hinges too, opening move, new game, and it
and
the bedroom door lay on the living room floor for two whole weeks before Daddy hung them back up. If Papa had ever done such a thing it would’ve been hysterical. I could almost hear Grandma and Aunt Rose laughing their fool heads off.

But that was the difference. Daddy’s nerves and Mother’s plays for attention were serious game-playing tactics, and with high stakes. Challengers’ moves were limited to staying silent and keeping watch.

And binding up the heart.

***

Aunt Rose and Aidan Madsen arrived in Mississippi on the same day purely by chance. Aunt Rose, Mother said, because she had more time on her hands than she knew what to do with now that she was unemployed, and “Because I’ve missed my little darlings so much,” and Aidan Madsen from Pennsylvania, “Because your mother wants to know how you’re faring,” to which Daddy had asked, “Why didn’t she come herself?” and Mr. Madsen had replied, “Earl,” as if that explained something.

I followed Aunt Rose everywhere, making her tell me again and again how desolate she and Papa and Grandma were without me. I paid Mr. Madsen no mind; I’d no idea who he
really
was and no burning need to find out, so busy was I with tucking Aunt Rose’s words in around my sore spots. Like cushiony spun-dried cotton they absorbed my anxiety, calming me.

When sleeping arrangements were settled—Aunt Rose on the living room couch and Mr. Madsen on the sleeping porch chaise—and we’d all heard for the umpteenth time the story about the nightclub boss who’d made one too many moves on Aunt Rose and how she’d rebuffed him and gotten fired, I studied Mr. Madsen from the corner of my eye, taking stock. He was on the tall side, not too fat or too thin, just right, and had a thick shock of light hair that swept his forehead and touched the back of his collar. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, and his wrists looked as if they belonged on someone younger; hands square, the fingers long and tapered. He wore gold wire-rimmed glasses, and his face was nice-looking in a craggy way, lit by blue eyes so piercing I’d have sworn he could see right through people’s skins, like Papa could. Daddy said he’d known Aidan Madsen, “a non-everyday combination of historian
and
musician,” from Day One. Mr. Madsen was also a “very special friend” of a new grandmother I’d somehow gotten when Mother had married Daddy. I was instructed to call him Uncle Aidan, but Mr. Madsen said he preferred being called plain old Aidan, and would I please do so.