| WORLD VOICES DANCING FOR MY MOTHER
BY DUFF BRENNA |
Contents World
Voices Home |
Vignettes,
yes:
Carol Marie leading you by the hand to kindergarten. She leaves you and
goes
off to grade school. You have your towel to lie on at naptime. The
teacher
gives everyone a spoonful of cod liver oil every morning. Terrible
stuff.
Fishy. But after you swallow it you are given a sip of grape juice, so
maybe
yuck followed by yum makes the ordeal worthwhile? Reading-time is best,
when
teacher reads stories aloud; naptime is next best; playing outside in
the
sandbox is good. The sides of the sandbox are carved to resemble the
sides of a
Jeep. Kids sit inside and make engine noises, tire screeching noises,
machinegun noises, wounded noises, dying noises. When
the day is over you are put on
the front steps to wait for your sister to pick you up. You probably
won’t have
to wait long, but some days it seems forever. The sun going down. No
one
around. A maniac might grab you. Take you home. Cook you. Carve you
like a
roast. Serve you on a platter like a modest proposal. Waiting for
sister makes
you terribly anxious. The isolation. The sense of abandonment. What to
do? Go
back to the Jeep sandbox and hide? Bury self in sand the way you bury
self in
mudholes? Nose poking out. What do you know? How
George Allison comes into your
lives remains a mystery. Where did your mother find him? When did she
marry
him? DID she marry him? There is a Sunday Missal with an inscription
inside
that says: Carol Marie Allison. So maybe they were married. Your mother
claims
they were married. So let’s call him number two - pun intended. This
Allison had a skunk streak of
white hair running backwards from a pumped up widow’s peak. The rest of
his
hair was black and wavy. You imagine he was handsome (your mother is a
magnet
for handsome men), but all you see now are vague shadows. His anger.
His
spankings. His locking you in the closet in your room with your raggedy
sailor
doll. Punctuated points: He pulls the string. The light comes on. Play
quiet,
he says as he closes the door. You haven’t a clue why he makes the
closet your
playroom, other than perhaps you get in his way when it comes to having
exclusive access to your mother and sister. You don’t cry in the
closet.
Really, you don’t mind it much at all. You nap in the closet. You use
your
sailor doll as a pillow and nap. Nothing wrong with that. Soon
after Allison moves in you start
wetting the bed. Out comes the hairbrush, a wet bottom making it sting
all the
more as you hop around shrieking your head off. Try to cover your
behind with
your hands—you’ll get your knuckles rapped. Your mother generally gives
you
three or four smacks, but when Allison does it you never know when the
spanking
will stop. Once he hits you so hard the handle breaks. He isn’t about
to get
pee on his palm, so he lets you go. The next day there is a new
hairbrush. You
keep wetting the bed. You don’t know until you wake up that you have
done it
again. Some mornings your mother and Allison are in too much of a hurry
to check
you. They rush out the door leaving you to your sister’s care. She
pulls back
the covers, opens the window. Lets the air dry the sheets. She never
asks you
why you do it. It seems like she knows. If so, she knows more than you
do. She
drapes your pajamas over the windowsill and gets you washed and
dressed, feeds
you cereal, takes you to kindergarten, leaves you there for another
round of
cod liver oil, stories, naps, sandbox, etcetera et-sis. |
