Chapter 13 The Arms of Hanging Men
THE ARMS OF HANGING MEN
“You can meet us at home,” her mom says once they have clustered together in the lobby. She still won’t look Hannah in the eye. “We’ll get Joanie later.”
“You don’t have to go back to work?” Hannah asks.
“No, Hannah,” her dad says with a mournful sigh. “Not today.”
She slips back into her classroom, grabs her book sack without looking at anyone, and exits to the parking lot with the weight of a stone in her stomach.
Her hands shake on the steering wheel as she winds her way through the Garden District, driving slowly over the rain-washed streets and under the tall, lush trees, their branches twisting outward like the arms of hanging men.
Her wrists ache from having gripped the chair in Mrs. Shackleford’s office and her uniform shirt chokes her at the neck.
It’s a relief when she finally parks and takes a deep, gulping breath in the driveway.
She finds her parents standing on opposite sides of the kitchen, both of them silent when she walks into the room. Her dad leans against the stove, wiping his palms with a dish towel. Her mom stands at the kitchen window, staring out over the porch.
Hannah drops her book sack on the floor and waits. Her dad continues to methodically clean his hands while her mom stands so still that Hannah wonders if she even noticed her walk in.
But then her mom speaks.
“You should have talked to us.”
Hannah feels her throat burn. “I didn’t know how.”
“But you knew how to drunkenly email your teacher about it? Where did you even get alcohol?”
Hannah squeezes her hands at her sides. She didn’t think about this part, about how taking the blame for the email would cause a whole host of other worries for her parents.
“I wasn’t thinking,” she answers, her voice shaking. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if you and Dad would be angry with me—”
“Well, it looks like you managed to avoid that, huh?”
“Mama, I’m sorry—”
“Now we’re finding out at the same time as the entire school and church community,” her mom says thickly. She turns around slowly, her mouth trembling. “No time to process—no time to figure out how to defend you—”
“You don’t have to defend me, Mom, I’m fine.”
“Don’t be so na?ve, Hannah. If you think people aren’t going to talk about this—if you think people aren’t going to treat you differently—”
“Let them! I don’t care! I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks of me!”
“WELL, WE DO!” her mom yells, slamming her hand down on the counter.
“We do! You’re our daughter—you’re our daughter and we love you—we’ve loved you since the day we found out we were going to have you—and we don’t want you treated unfairly!
We don’t want you discriminated against and hated and shamed!
We don’t ever want to see you treated the way you were treated in that office today! ”
Her mom starts to cry, her eyes swinging upward as she tries to block the tears in frustration, and Hannah cries, too, her sinuses swelling and her tears falling onto her collared shirt.
Her dad clears his throat. His voice scratches when he speaks. “Joanie texted me. I’m going to pick her up.” He rubs his chin and leaves the house, and her mom puts a hand over her eyes and tries to collect herself.
“I’m making you some soup,” she says decisively. “What do you want?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Tomato or chicken noodle?”
“I don’t want anything.”
Her mom fills a stockpot with water and places it on the stovetop, then steps into the pantry and grabs a can of soup.
“I don’t want it,” Hannah repeats.
Her mom sniffles and reaches for the can opener. “You need to eat something.”
Hannah relents and drops onto a stool at the counter. Her mom stands at the stovetop, stirring unnecessarily, occasionally tapping metal against metal. “Here you go,” she says a few minutes later, placing a ceramic bowl in front of Hannah.
Hannah swirls the soup, watching the thick red liquid curve along her spoon. “Mom?” she asks after a pause. “You haven’t said anything about the actual content of the email.”
Her mom carries the stockpot to the sink and flushes it with water. “We’ll talk about it later. Just eat and put everything out of your mind.”
“But—how do you feel about it? Is it okay?”
Her mom picks up the sponge and starts scrubbing the pot like she wants to shove it down the garbage disposal.
“Mom?”
“Give me some time, Hannah.”
Hannah’s tears drop into the soup. She bites her lip to stop herself from crying again, but her whole body shakes and her breaths come out sharp and edgy, as if someone has taken a knife to her voice.
“Oh, Hannah…,” her mom says, turning around. She gathers Hannah into her body and holds her. Hannah sobs into her mother’s satin shirt but keeps her hands balled at her sides, afraid to give herself over completely.
“Honey,” her mom coos. “It’s okay. I love you. Dad and I love you. Nothing could ever change that.”
Hannah cries until she hears the back door turn. Then she darts out of her seat, leaving her bowl and her mom in the kitchen.
She stays in her room on Saturday. She spends hours clicking around the Emory website, researching classes, memorizing the calendar, reading up on campus traditions.
She hears her family walking around downstairs, hears them talking in the kitchen, hears the jarring music of TV commercials.
She waits for her mom or dad to come check on her, but they send Joanie instead.
“I knew this would happen,” Joanie says, sighing like a tired old man.
“I don’t need that right now,” Hannah snaps without looking up from her laptop.
“Fine. What do you need?”
“Will you get me some hash browns from Zeeland? I’m craving them.”
“Go get them yourself, lazy.”
Hannah can tell Joanie is bantering in an attempt to keep things light and normal, but she can’t do it anymore. She leans closer to her laptop and shakes her head dismissively. “Never mind.”
Joanie pauses. Hannah can feel her eyes on her. “Ugh, fine, I’ll go with you.”
“No, that’s okay.”
“No, seriously, let’s go. I can drive. Come on.”
“Joanie. I don’t want to go.”
“You just said you were craving the hash browns.”
“I—never mind.”
“What?” Joanie walks over and flips her laptop shut.
“What the fuck?!” Hannah shouts, smacking Joanie’s hand harder than she meant to.
Joanie recoils, stung. “Jeez.” She pulls her smarting hand into her belly. “I was just trying to help.”
Hannah sighs. “I know. I’m sorry.” She takes a deep breath, struggling to get the words out. “I don’t want to walk into Zeeland and see one of our classmates. Or one of their parents. Okay?”
Joanie goes quiet. “Oh. I didn’t think about that.”
Hannah doesn’t respond, because what else is there to say?
“You want to watch a movie or something?” Joanie offers.
“No, I’m okay. I’m just gonna take a nap.” She tentatively meets her sister’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ll be fine. Go do your thing.”
Joanie leaves, and Hannah falls into a restless sleep. When she wakes a couple of hours later, she finds a Styrofoam box on her nightstand. She opens it to find a supersized order of Zeeland hash browns.
Her parents call her downstairs for dinner around seven o’clock. Joanie looks up when Hannah walks into the kitchen. Her eyes ask a question, and Hannah gives her a small, grateful smile in response.
The four of them sit subdued around the table, each of them paying too much attention to their chicken.
Joanie makes a valiant effort to stir the conversation, asking about everything from their dad’s friends at Albemarle to their mom’s recent tennis match.
Neither one of their parents says much in response.
“Okay, this is just awkward,” Joanie says, dropping her fork. “Can we please address the rainbow-colored elephant in the room? So Hannah might not have a fairy-tale cathedral wedding. So what?”
“Don’t start, Joanie,” their mom says.
“I think it’s brave what Hannah did.”
Their mom pauses with her fork in midair. “In what way?”
Hannah shoots Joanie a warning look, and Joanie stammers. “In—telling the truth about how she feels.”
Their parents push rice around their plates. Hannah drinks from her water glass for something to do, but the cold water makes the pit in her stomach feel hollower.
She wakes up late the next morning and startles when she realizes her family is supposed to leave for Mass in three minutes.
“Don’t bother,” Joanie says when Hannah rushes into the bathroom. “They already left.”
Hannah freezes with her hand on the toothpaste. “What? They never let us miss church.”
“I don’t know. I heard the back door slam, and then I looked out the window and saw them driving away.”
Hannah’s heart sinks. “They don’t want me there with them.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, of course they do,” Joanie says bracingly. “They probably just—they probably don’t want you to feel uncomfortable, you know?”
The worst part of Sunday is when Aunt Ellie calls after lunch. Hannah lurks outside the study door, listening to her mom whisper into the phone.
“No, never made it there,” her mom is saying. “Couldn’t bring ourselves to face all those stares. We went to lunch on the other side of town instead.”
Hannah crawls back into her bed and stays there for the rest of the day.
Her stomach knots in on itself when she wakes on Monday morning.
Joanie makes her a piece of toast, which Hannah takes only one bite of before she feels sick, and then they get into the car, neither one of them speaking.
By the time they arrive at St. Mary’s, Hannah’s underarms are soaked with sweat.
There aren’t many people in the parking lot when they pull in. Hannah looks automatically at Baker’s car, parked far down the lot next to Clay’s truck.
“Ready?” Joanie asks, her face pale.
“No,” Hannah breathes. “But let’s go.”