Waiting for Sunrise (17 page)

He furrowed his brow, raised himself in bed on his elbows, and waited. Minutes later, after a low conversation he couldn’t make out but recognized as being between Harold and Mr. Stone, footsteps increased in heaviness as Harold walked down the hallway.

His bedroom door opened. Billy was still balancing himself on his elbows. He turned his head to see his brother’s silhouette shadowed there. “Sorry, Bill.”

Bill. He’d never been called that before. He chose not to answer.

“You mad at me?”

“Shouldn’t I be?” He sat up fully. “I can still smell the beer on you.”

“Yeah, well . . . I already got lectured from the old man and now from Mr. Stone. I don’t need it from you.”

“Go to bed then.”

Harold snickered. “Think I will.”

19

Billy woke the next morning to a blinding headache. He went into the Jack and Jill bathroom he shared with his brother to dig around in the medicine cabinet with his hand covering his eyes, hoping to find a bottle of Bayer.

Instead, he knocked everything into the sink and onto the countertop.

“Billy?” It was Mama’s voice.

“Mama,” he whispered.

She placed a hand on his shoulder. He wore pajama bottoms and a top, but the top was unbuttoned and it hung open. Sick as he felt, it was an odd moment between mother and son. He’d been modest with her since they’d moved to Gainesville.

Harold never had been. Harold didn’t care how he looked in front of anyone.

“What’s wrong, son?”

Billy fiddled with the buttons on his pajama top, but it was difficult with his eyes closed. “I have a bad headache. I’ve never had one like this before.”

She rubbed his shoulder, back and forth, back and forth. “Sounds like a migraine.” She kept her voice whisper soft. “And it’s no wonder. Go on back to bed. I’ll bring you something for it.”

Minutes later his mother entered his room. She gave him a pill that she said was stronger than a Bayer. He took it along with a sip of water. He returned his head to the coolness of his pillow, keeping his eyes closed.

“I’m applying this ice pack to your forehead, Billy.” He felt both the cold and the weight of the pack. The feeling it gave him was remarkable; it hurt so good. “All this stress has been too much for you, I’m sure.” Mama sat on the edge of the bed. Within seconds he felt the soft stroking of her fingertips along his brow. He groaned. She hadn’t done this since he’d been a boy. But he remembered it well.

“Feeling a little better?”

“That pill must work fast,” he whispered.

“It’s the one the doctor gives me when I have my headaches sometimes.”

Billy breathed in and out of his nostrils. “I didn’t know you had bad headaches, Mama.”

“That’s not the kind of thing a son should worry about his mama.”

God love her, he thought. Somehow her devotion to him had been skewed all these years. Enough to keep a headache from him but not enough to keep them all safe from his father. He turned his jaw a little to the side. More reflex than movement. And in that moment he went from not knowing to knowing. Instinct. Bloodline instinct.

“That was it, wasn’t it?”

“What?”

“That’s why Patsy went away. You were protecting her from Daddy.”

“Shhh, now. If you get yourself all riled up, your headache will return.”

“But that’s it, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

He blinked to open his eyes, but her fingertips slipped over his lids and he closed them again.

“Don’t open your eyes quite yet, son. Trust me. Let this pill work to ease you back to sleep. When you wake, you’ll feel much better and I’ll make you some soup to eat.”

“Why would you send her away but not us? Not you, me, and Harold? Or just you and me?”

“You’re too young to understand all this, Billy.”

He continued to breathe in and out through his nostrils. Finally, he said, “I remember him whipping her.”

The stroking stopped, then resumed. “He has always believed that spanking was the best discipline.”

“I didn’t say spanking.”

She didn’t answer.

“And I don’t remember him ever spanking me.” He kept his voice at a whisper. “Maybe once.”

“No, he never spanked you. He never had to. Harold broke the rules enough for both of you.”

“And you? Did you break the rules?”

“Sometimes.”

Billy felt himself floating backward, as though his head had grown heavier and was falling into the abyss of his pillow. With the feeling came a memory, the sound of his father demanding to know, “Where’s the girl?”

“Where’s the girl.” The words slipped off his tongue so slowly he wasn’t even sure he’d said them.

“What?”

“That’s what he said. Daddy. ‘Where’s the girl.’ Never called her by her name, did he?”

“Only sometimes. Rarely.”

No more . . . looks!
The words echoed. They were his mother’s words. His mother’s voice, spoken to his father. “Loooooks . . .”

“Shhh . . .”

He was drifting. Falling. Slipping away. He wouldn’t fight it. Okay, Mama. I’ll go back to sleep and I’ll wake up feeling better. But I’ll also wake up knowing. It wasn’t Daddy whipping Patsy that sent her away. It was something else. Something sinister.

And Mama had loved
her
enough to keep her safe.

———

The headaches came frequently at first, then subsided. About once every six weeks, he’d wake with a migraine, his mother would give him one of her pills, and he’d return to bed. A few hours later, he’d wake, feeling a little “hung over” as Daddy called it, but no worse for the wear.

Mama had taken him to see the doctor, who’d run a series of tests. But they came up with nothing. “He’s not dying,” Dr. Ciuba said matter-of-factly. “I suspect it’s just growing pains.”

Daddy had put it another way. “As long as you can do your work, you’ll live,” he said.

Daddy. A man who was managing to spend less and less time with his family. By the fall of 1958, he was practically a shadow passing along the walls of the house. Sometime Saturday afternoon—usually just before supper—his car rolled into the driveway. Then, on Sunday afternoon, after church and Sunday dinner, he took the newly packed suitcase from his wife’s hand, kissed her on the cheek, and meandered out the door.

Billy had never seen his mother look so relaxed. Or perplexed.

Only once had he overheard them speaking of the way of things. It was late one October Saturday night. Billy had just returned from a date with Ronni; they’d gone to a church social, one of the few things they were allowed to do. Billy was reading
Of Mice and Men
—the report that was due on Monday—when the voices of his parents interrupted the flow of Steinbeck’s words.

Why was she nagging him, Daddy wanted to know. “The bills are paid. You have the nicest roof over your head you’ve had in your entire adult life. I doubt Sweeny could have done this well for you.”

“Don’t you dare say his name,” Mama said. Billy could tell her teeth were clenched. And he wondered where she had gotten her bravado. “You are not worthy to say his name.”

There was a pause. Billy waited for the smack. But it didn’t come.

“What?” his mother countered. “You aren’t going to hit me?”

“Not. Yet.”

Billy placed his book, splayed and facedown, on top of the blue chenille spread of his bed before sliding off and standing. He took only one step.

“So, I’m supposed to be happy with you here only one night a week, Ira? I thought it would get better when we moved to Gainesville. I thought you said that being so close to the home office would change things.”

Another pause from his father. Another step from Billy.

He thought he heard his father chuckle.

“Are you telling me, Bernie, that you actually miss me?”

“Yes, Ira.” His mother’s voice was soft. Sweet. “I do miss you. I miss you very much.”

But . . . how could she?

His father chuckled again. He’d had more than one drink tonight; perhaps that accounted for his good mood. Maybe.

By now Billy stood at the door, cracked it just a little so as to hear better. He felt rather than saw that he wasn’t alone. He opened the door a little wider, craned his neck around the frame, and saw his brother leaning in the open doorway to his own room. Harold raised a hand as if to say hello. Billy returned the gesture. They both turned to look at the closed door across the hallway.

Had their mother just giggled?

Billy looked at Harold again. Using his thumb, Harold indicated they should both return to their rooms. Billy took two steps backward before easing the door shut.

He returned to his bed. And his book.

———

Work for Mr. Sikes was going well, which was good in the fall and winter of the year when cutting lawns shifted from once a week to about once every three and then once every five or six. He worked at Sikes’s Seafood two nights a week—Tuesdays and Thursdays—and on Saturday afternoons. But, during softball season, if there was a game, he was given the time off. Ronni, on the other hand, worked twice a week, Monday afternoon after school and Friday nights.

Mr. Sikes was as shrewd a businessman as he was a father. Billy had, at least, figured that much out. He was also officially
not
dating Veronica Sikes.

Though Mr. Sikes had given Billy and Ronni permission to “see each other,” he’d not okayed dating. “Seeing each other” meant sitting together at church on Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings. And, they were allowed to sit together or hang out together at Wednesday night youth group. Fortunately for them, Brother Ralph had a social planned for Saturday evenings, usually wrapped around sports and other such events. They were allowed that too.

They were also allowed to hold hands. They were
not
allowed to kiss.

“Holding hands,” Mr. Sikes had told him, “is fine. A chaste kiss on the cheek to say good night—as long as it lasts no more than two seconds, and in my fatherly opinion, that is stretching it—is fine. Your lips on my daughter’s lips is not fine. Your hand on any other part of her body other than her hand is also not fine. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

“And if I hear differently, Billy, I won’t allow the relationship to continue. Not to mention I’ll fire you from your job at the restaurant.”

“No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. I mean, I understand.” Billy swallowed. “Sir.”

“And don’t go imagining yourself like Romeo and Juliet, do you hear me?”

Billy nodded once. “Yes, sir.”

“Any questions?”

Billy had thought before braving, “Exactly when
can
I kiss her, sir?”

John Sikes’s eyes met his head-on. “The day she becomes your wife, if God so allows.”

Billy didn’t like the answer so much, but he wasn’t going to argue it either. “Yes, sir.”

By spring of ’59, Billy was as busy as any junior in high school had ever been. Cutting the neighborhood lawns was back in, spring season was gearing up, he was working steadily at Sikes, socking away a nice little nest egg for the day he finally got to kiss Ronni, whom he was officially
not
dating, and doing well in school. Mostly A’s with the occasional B.

Daddy had been consistently sticking to his Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon pattern but had also managed to squeeze in a Wednesday night most weeks as well. He’d mellowed somehow, Billy thought. And, as long as Harold stayed out of trouble, living at 1711 Clinton Street had become tolerable.

In fact, life as a whole wasn’t so bad. Mama was happier than he’d ever seen her since he couldn’t think when. Daddy hadn’t hit or cursed at anyone in months. And it looked like Harold just might graduate come May.

But then Harold got arrested and sentenced to five years for breaking and entering.

And that wasn’t the worst of it.

Trinity, South Carolina

Patsy stared at herself in the full-length mirror hanging behind her bedroom door. She stood before it, dressed in a white slip. Lace embraced the sweetheart bodice, the straps were spaghetti slim. The hem brushed across the bottoms of her knees.

Her hair swept past her shoulders. She scooped it up, the weight of it heavy in her hands. She then brought it over one shoulder, twisted it into a fishtail braid, and tied it off with a ribbon that had been lying on the nearby dresser.

She pressed her palms flat against her belly, turned for a side view, inhaled deeply, and jutted out her chest. After four children, her stomach was still flat. From a physical standpoint, she looked pretty much as she had the day she married Gilbert.

No wonder he couldn’t keep his hands off her.

Her own dropped to her sides. Her shoulders slumped.

From somewhere in the recesses of their home, she heard one of the children call her name. No, not her name.
Mommy.

“Coming,” she whispered, knowing they wouldn’t hear her. She turned back to face the mirror.

Patsy brought her hands to her face and pulled at her cheeks until the bottoms of her eyes drooped downward. She looked like something . . . scary. “Dear God, what is wrong with me,” she said aloud, releasing her skin. “Why can’t I make a full connect with my children?”

“Mommy?”

Six-and-a-half-year-old Pam stood on the other side of the door. The other side of the looking glass. Patsy stepped back, opened the bedroom door, and looked into the freckled face and upturned nose of her second born. “Yes, sweetheart?”

“When is Daddy coming home?”

Patsy looked at the narrow Timex at her wrist. It was nearing seven o’clock on a Friday night. “In about an hour. He promised no later than eight-fifteen.”

“Will he have time to play with us?”

Patsy tapped the tip of her daughter’s nose with her finger. “Doesn’t he always?”

Long dark ringlets bounced around the girl’s cherub face. “Not always.”

Patsy placed her hands on her hips. “You’re awful cute when you’re honest.”