Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
Verity
Eleven Years Old
“Bernadette!”
My mother’s name bellows throughout the house, slamming against my bedroom wall.
I jerk awake in bed, my night-light offering the only break in the room’s darkness.
“Will,” Mama says, her voice quiet, but not so quiet that I don’t hear. “Verity’s asleep. Calm your ass down before you wake her up.”
“Fuck that! Ain’t no calming down when you cheating on me!” Daddy’s voice lifts and breaks. “I knew it. I been asking you and you been lying.”
“I haven’t,” Mama says in that way I think is supposed to soothe my father, but when he gets like this, especially if he’s been drinking, there is no soothing. Mama says he’s not a mean man, but he gets mean ways at the bottom of a bottle. He’s a storm you just have to ride out.
“Gimme that phone!” Daddy shouts, his words sharp, but a little sloppy like they’re sloshing in his mouth with tonight’s liquor.
“Now I told you there’s no text from nobody, Will!” Mama yells back.
I huddle under the covers with a pillow wrapped around my head, praying for Daddy to pass out or for the sun to rise, whichever comes first. Sometimes it seems like there’s two of him.
The one who walks me to the bus stop at the end of our long gravel driveway and takes me to the library and helps braid my hair on days when Mama’s running behind, and the man in the front room now—accusing Mama of things that aren’t true and throwing stuff.
When he’s not like this, they’re all cuddled up at the sink, Daddy’s hand on Mama’s butt.
Mama whispering in his ear and giggling.
Daddy kissing her neck, grossing me out.
When they fight, it’s Bernadette. When he’s himself, she’s back to being his Bernie. Not many Bernie days lately.
Glass shatters, the sound piercing my cocoon of fluff and cotton.
“Motherfucker!” Mama screams, her voice loud and shrill. “That was Granny’s china.”
“Fuck Granny.” Daddy’s harsh words are followed by the sound of more glass shattering.
“I’m calling Roz. You’re paranoid and you drunk, and I ain’t taking it tonight.”
“You ain’t calling nobody. Gimme that phone.”
Tonight’s a bad one. Maybe the worst they ever had. If I had a cell phone, I’d call Aunt Roz myself, but Mama says I’m still too young. There’s an awful sound, like something ripping from the wall, and then a faint ding.
“Son of a bitch!” Mama screams. “Now who gon’ pay for a new phone? You feel big and bad? Ripping my phone out the wall?”
“You weren’t calling Roz,” Daddy says, his words strung tight and high. “You been calling him on that phone. And on this one, too.”
Another crash and thump.
Cautiously, I poke my head out from under the pillow and stare at my closed door.
Worry and nosiness compel me to fling back the comforter, swing my feet over the side of the bed, and slide out.
Barefoot, I tiptoe to my bedroom door and crack it open to step into the narrow hallway.
It’s illuminated only by the spill of light from the living room.
Inch by inch, I sneak up the hall. The smell of the vanilla candles Mama lights every night when she gets home from work grows stronger the closer I get.
Sliding along the wall like I’ve seen cops do in movies, I slink toward my parents and glance around the corner.
Even though we’ve been through dinner, homework, and bath time, Mama hasn’t changed from the slacks and button-down shirt she wore to her job at a small clothing store in town.
The heart-shaped pendant they gave her as employee of the month is still pinned to her chest. My parents stand close enough to kiss, but they spit and snap at each other, practically nose to nose.
“You buying me a new cell,” Mama screeches, pointing to the floor where her flip phone lies crushed and scattered into pieces. “Worked all day and gotta come home to this shit.”
“Worked all day.” Daddy pitches his voice higher in an imitation of hers, clutching the phone he ripped from the wall in one hand. “This ’bout me not working, ain’t it?”
“You stay outta that bottle, maybe you could keep a job.”
“I know what you get up to there,” he snarls, shaking the phone in the air for emphasis. “Giving it to anybody who wants it.”
“Boy, I ain’t giving nothing to nobody, and I for damn sure ain’t giving it to you acting like this.”
“You s’posed to be the one. You promised it’d be me and you, and then you…” Daddy’s words trail away into a pool of sudden tears. “You go and step out on me.”
“Will,” Mama says, her voice going a little soft, melting the way it does right before she forgives him. “It is you and me. Why you think I’m still here? But… something ain’t right. You need to talk to somebody, see somebody. I can’t keep doing this.”
“See somebody?” Daddy stiffens, scoffs, sniffs. “What I’m gon’ see somebody about?”
No answer, but the silence seems to be the answer; some conversation they’ve had before that plays back in the quiet hush of the room. Maybe one of those exchanges they have right in front of me at the table sometimes only with their eyes.
“What I’m gonna see somebody about?” Daddy demands again.
“You know, Will,” Mama says, tears trickling down her cheeks. “You know something ain’t right and—”
“I told you I’m fine!”
Daddy paces back and forth, hands gripping his head and tugging at his hair, long and rough because he hasn’t brushed it and he needs it cut.
“Shut up!” he screams, but he’s not looking at Mama. His eyes dart wildly around the room.
“Who you talking to, Will?” Mama asks, concern and caution on her face.
“It’s in the walls.” Daddy stops pacing and stands perfectly still, as if whatever is bothering him will leave him alone if he just doesn’t draw its notice.
“I don’t hear nothing in the walls,” Mama says, shaking her head. “And this is why I say you need to see somebody, baby. If you just—”
“There’s nothing wrong with me, Bernadette. I told you I’m fine. You trying to distract me from what you did by accusing me of shit you know I didn’t do. And don’t mention no doctors, no medicine. I know you trying to trick me. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.”
He knocks a fist against his temple with every word.
“It’s a trick. Trick. Trick. Trick. Trick. Trick.”
“Will,” Mama hisses, her eyes wide and her hands balled at her sides. “You scaring me.”
“Now you scared of me?” His voice booms, and it’s terrifying, but not because he sounds angry, but because he sounds lost. So scared under it all.
Mama walks over to him, lays her hand on his arm. “Will, let me call—”
“Don’t touch me!” Startling like a spooked horse, he shoves her away, as if her touch were hot coals, and hurls the phone across the room. “Not after what you did.”
It feels like Mama falls back in slow motion. I want to run into the room, but I’m too slow. I’m too late. There’s lead in my feet as Mama falls and her head slams into the edge of the coffee table with a dull thump.
Her yelp of pain sets my feet in motion. I charge into the room, stopping short at the sight of Mama crumpled on the floor, a line of blood streaming from her hairline. Daddy stands over her, blinking rapidly and still pounding his fist into his temple.
“No, no, no, no,” he whimpers, sinking to the floor, eyes squeezed shut and his back pressed to the couch. “Bernie, baby. Bernie. Bernie.”
“Mama.” Tears run into the corners of my mouth as I caress her hair, my fingers coming away smeared with blood.
I take in the shattered cell and the kitchen phone useless on the floor.
“Daddy!” I scream, turning to him. “Where’s your phone?”
He shakes his head, covers his ears, and wails. I scramble across the floor to him at the couch and search his pockets. Nothing, except his old beat-up wallet.
“Your phone!” I sob, panic and tears choking the words. “I gotta call for help.”
I shake his shoulder, but it’s like he doesn’t hear me, like I’m not here.
“It’s in the walls,” he mutters, eyes squeezed shut and hands flattened to cover his ears.
I jump up and rush out the front door. The gravel pathway to Aunt Roz’s has never felt so long.
The sharp rocks cut into my bare feet, and I veer into the grass so I can run faster.
The gravel gives way to a worn path of Georgia mud.
I’ve run so hard that my leg starts cramping by the time Aunt Rosalyn’s neat little house comes into view.
I trip up the steps and bang on the door.
The screen door swings open, and Aunt Roz, already dressed for bed in one of her floor-length nightgowns and a scarf tied around her rollers, looks out at the porch suspiciously until she turns on the light.
“Oh, it’s you.” A smile illuminates her plump face. “What you doin’ here this late, Vee Tee? Y’all outta milk again?”
“Help” is all I manage to get out, my voice choked with tears. “Mama fell and Daddy…” I can’t sort out my thoughts long enough to explain any more. “Call 911!”
“Nine-one-one?” Aunt Roz straightens and walks out to the porch. “You say Bernadette fell?”
“Your phone,” I gasp, bent over with my hands on my knees. “He broke the phones. Call 911.”
“Okay. Just hold on.” She disappears for a few seconds, but is back and on her way past me and down the steps with a cell phone pressed to her ear. “Hello, yes. It’s an emergency.”
We take off running down the long path back to my house. She gives the operator our address, barely able to push the words out we’re running so fast.
“What’s the emergency?” I hear the operator saying.
We round the corner and screech to a halt in my front yard. Flames lick along the roof of the house, consuming the weathered wood. The windows are lit red like demon’s eyes and the front door gapes open, the mouth to hell.
Daddy’s sitting on the grass, bent over with Mama cradled in his arms. His sobs sound like a wounded animal and tears twist down his tortured face.
“Bernie,” he whispers, rocking her. “Bernie, baby, wake up.”
But Mama doesn’t wake up. She’s still as an opossum playing dead.
“What’s your emergency?” I hear the operator ask again through the phone.
“F-fire,” Aunt Roz stutters, her eyes fixed on the flames. “It’s a fire and my sister. She fell and hit her head, I think. There’s blood and she…”
Aunt Roz’s voice breaks. She squeezes her eyes shut and covers her mouth. “She ain’t moving.”
“It was in the walls,” Daddy mutters, his forehead pressed to Mama’s. “It was in the walls. I fixed it, Bernie. I fixed it for you, baby.”
The ambulance arrives first. Every time the EMTs try to get near Daddy, he growls and snarls and covers Mama with his body, not letting them close.
“Will, now you need to let them look at her,” Aunt Roz snaps, but there’s so much sympathy in her eyes when she sees him on the grass holding Mama like she’s the last thing tying him to the world.
He carefully lays Mama’s head on the grass and steps away, watching as the EMT workers swoop in to check her.
“No pulse,” one of the guys says, casting a worried glance at his partner.
They continue working on Mama, but the minutes go by, and she still won’t breathe.
And the house keeps burning. There’s only one fire truck for our small town, and tonight it seems to be taking its sweet time.
The fire truck finally speeds into our driveway, but by now, our tiny house is fully engulfed in flames.
The firefighters pull out their hoses, but just as they start to spray, Daddy stands and looks down at Mama.
“Bernie, baby,” he cries. “I’m sorry.”
He looks at me, and for a moment, there he is. My father, the gentlest, sweetest man. His eyes are clear and, as angry and confused as I am, even with this all being his fault, I want to run into his arms.
“Daddy?” I ask in a choked whisper.
It’s a question I think I know the answer to, even though I never get to ask. Before anyone can stop him, Daddy takes off toward the house.
“Daddy, no!”
I run after him, but Aunt Roz grabs me around the waist and snatches me up.
He doesn’t turn at the sound of my voice. Doesn’t hesitate at the threshold of a raging inferno.
He runs straight inside like the flames are open arms.