Chapter 9 #3
Leaving the slide, I crossed over the playground and entered the covered open-air shelter.
It was a large concrete slab with a couple of rows of green wooden picnic tables.
I sat at one of the tables and ran my hands over the chipped paint and the names and hearts from the past twenty years carved into the surface of the wooden planks.
Most Sundays after church, I would come here with Donnie’s family.
His mother, my aunt Sue, would bring a feast, and we would eat and play for hours until we would have to go home and clean up all the dirt and sweat before returning to church for the evening service.
It seemed like I could hear our voices as I sat there.
Donnie and his sisters and I screaming as his dad spun us faster and faster on the red-and-green merry-go-round until it felt like we would fly off if we dared to unlace our legs from the metal railings.
Sue and Grandma Luella laughing with a couple of other families from church as they continued to pick at the remaining food.
Sometimes Maudra attended, always with her buffalo stew in tow.
I think her brother may have even come with her occasionally, but I’m not sure.
I had never thought much about him until he died.
Even Pastor Thomas and his family would come sometimes.
We never liked it when he did. His kids were always brats, demanding to be first at everything and tattling on us over every little thing.
Mom never came. She didn’t want to. She didn’t come to church with us very often.
Even when she did, she would leave me at Aunt Sue’s until late, after the evening service and dinner had ended.
Most of those times blended together, their individual memories combining to form one mesh of wonderful times in the park. All but one.
I’d been eleven or twelve. Maybe even thirteen.
I don’t guess it matters. I remember it was sometime after Grandpa Joseph had died, and that was when I was ten.
Grandma was there, though, as was Maudra.
I also remember it was one of those Sundays when Pastor Thomas’s family had been there, as their middle daughter, April, had tripped me after I reached the bottom of the slide.
I’d fallen into the dirt and got it all over my orange T-shirt.
I also remember Sue had made strawberries and pie crust. It’s funny how certain details stay with you and others are lost forever.
We’d been there for several hours already.
Most of the food had been eaten; some of the adults had left.
Even we kids were starting to tire and slow down.
I remember it was one of those especially hot days.
Not that there were many Missouri summer days that weren’t sweltering, but this was one that made the slide burn your legs and hands as you went down, and you could see waves of heat coming off the blacktop of the tennis courts.
Donnie’s twin sister, Della, and I had started a water fight at the spigot, spraying the other kids who came near us.
The dirt that had been all over my arms and shirt became mud and ran down the entire front of my shirt and onto my pants.
It wasn’t a big deal. I had several changes of clothes at Sue and Chuck’s house.
I could change before we needed to head back to church.
Mom’s voice reached me before I saw her.
She was screaming my name at the top of her lungs.
I knew from the pitch of her voice what she’d been doing.
I was on the swings, swinging as high as I could so Donnie and Della could take turns running underneath me.
As I heard her bellows, I tried to slow down the swing enough to allow me to get off before she showed up.
I didn’t make it. I could see her on the other side of the picnic area, stumbling up the steep embankment that came up from the back of the park, on the side that bordered the city pool.
She wasn’t on the winding sidewalk, but making her way over the grass, getting tangled as she tried to make her way through bushes and flower patches.
I noticed Sue, who was typically the epitome of calmness and serenity, stiffen as she realized my mother was on her way. She leaned over to whisper to Maudra and motioned Chuck over to them.
“Brooklyn!” I always hated hearing my name. Even when people were just talking to me or a teacher was taking roll, every time I heard my name, it sounded like it did in this instant—shrill, piercing, guttural.
“Brooooklyn!” My mother reached the top of the hill.
She hadn’t yet spotted me, but she did see Sue.
Her eyes managed to focus on her. I was finally able to bring the swing to a stop.
“Where is he, Sue? Where is he?” Her voice hadn’t calmed and impossibly seemed to be growing in volume.
She stumbled as her foot caught the edge of the concrete pad.
She reached out and steadied herself on the edge of a picnic table to stop herself from falling.
Her sapphire-blue eyes hardened on Sue, accusing her of making her trip.
I hadn’t seen her in this much of a rage in ages, and her fury was still building.
She let go of the table and continued on her way to Sue.
Pastor Thomas reached out a hand to her, seemingly to help steady her, although I didn’t know what he was hoping to do.
She flung his hand away from her, never taking her eyes off Sue.
“Where is he, bitch? Where is my son?” Her voice was suddenly quiet.
This always frightened me more than all her screaming.
She stopped a couple of feet in front of Sue, trembling.
Maudra had drawn herself to Sue’s side, and while not looking threatening, she managed to give off an aura of strength, her full-length brown gingham dress waving peacefully in the muggy breeze.
Chuck took a minute step in front of Sue. Mom’s eyes flashed toward him. She smirked and then dismissed him, again returning to Sue. “Sue?” Her growl was barely audible.
Sue’s voice was firm but cautious. “Rose, it’s okay, just calm down.”
Mom’s volume rose again. “Don’t you ever fucking tell me what to do, you arrogant bitch!” Mom never slurred, ever. If anything she became more creatively eloquent in these times, but she did get louder and cursed more.
Chuck took another step forward. His voice maintained his typical soft and slow cadence. “Rose, please. Why don’t we—”
Another of my mother’s murderous looks cut him off. “Don’t even start, Chuck. If I ever need the opinion of a pathetic faggot, I’ll be sure to ask you.”
Chuck’s face hardened. Sue reached out and put a hand on her husband’s arm. “It’s okay, dear.” She turned back to my mom. “Rose, Brooke is right here. He has just been eating and having fun. Everything is okay.”
Mom’s teeth clinched together. “How many fucking times do I have to tell you, his name is Brooklyn! Did you give birth to him? Did you carry him from the hospital?” Mom always threw this in Sue’s face, as if by saying it enough, it would somehow rewrite history.
“Did you raise him? Who the fuck do you think you are, trying to rename my son? No, it’s not some highfalutin name like Dionysus, Delphina, or Zephyra.
” My mother glanced behind Sue at Donnie’s little sister Zephyra and sneered.
“It’s a good thing your brother Xanthus died.
He didn’t have to live with such a stuck-up, prickish name. Maybe you should follow his example!”
This time it was Sue who stepped forward. Her voice was still calm but commanding. “Enough, Rose.”
Mom glared at her in hate for what seemed like an hour, apparently weighing her options.
Not able to back down entirely, she glanced over at Maudra and let her gaze slowly travel up and down Maudra’s body, wrinkling her nose as her eyes passed over Scamper, alertly perched on Maudra’s shoulder.
“I see highfalutin names aren’t the only pretentious thing here.
Where’s your brother, Maudra?” Her sneering lips curved into a snarl. “Oh, that’s right… he died, didn’t he?”
Maudra’s face didn’t alter, not in the slightest. Not even her eyes.
I had left the swings and made my way inside the covering, and I was now able to see everyone clearly.
None of them had noticed me yet. Donnie had tried to pull me away from the playground, whispering that we could go down to the bandstand and hide.
Maybe find the tunnel. I had wanted to. If I could have, I would have stayed in the tunnel for the rest of my life.
I knew my mother, though. I knew the only thing that would calm her down was getting what she wanted.
Even though Donnie and his family had seen my mother in this condition before, it never stopped being humiliating.
I just wanted to get her home, away from the sight of others.
I took another step forward. This time, in the quiet of Mom and Maudra’s stare, they saw me.
Mom’s eyes found mine. They grew darker.
Her lips thinned. Even in this situation—the fear of what she would do next, the embarrassment that filled my body, the humidity and sweat that made her long blond hair wet and tangled, the inebriation that reliably made the left side of her face go a little slack, the small bit of drool that pooled at the side of her mouth—even here, as always, I was momentarily captured by her beauty.
She was stunning. She always reminded me of a mermaid.
In some ways, even more so at these times: twisted and matted hair plastered to her face and breasts, eyes wild and crazed.
She was the fabled mermaid lounging alertly on a pile of rock and coral in the midst of a raging storm, the waves pounding in fury all around her, her eyes locked on a shipwrecked sailor reaching out to her in supplication, not knowing that any second she would dive off her perch, glide through the torrent, and grab him, taking him to the depths of the ocean to revel in his death.
Mom’s gaze left my eyes and traveled to my shirt and followed the path of hardened mud as it flowed over my pants and shoes.
“You filthy shit.” She glared at me again.
Not in hate, not like she looked at Sue.
I had never been able to determine what she felt when she looked at me like that.
“You are worthless, you dumb little fuck.”
“Rose.” Sue’s voice once again broke through, quiet and forceful. “Rose, don’t.”
Mom’s eyes never left mine. “Shut up, Sue. Don’t you dare try to tell me how to talk to my kid. Just because your brother fucked me and left me with this pile of trash don’t mean you got any say in how I raise him.” She again looked down at my clothes. “You can’t even keep him clean.”
Mom lurched forward and grabbed my right arm, her nails instantly digging into the softer flesh on the inside.
She yanked me to her side and began to take me down the back side of the park, the way she had come.
I didn’t fight or try to pull away. As she began to rant about how she had looked all over for me, even at the pool, and how she was gonna teach me some manners and how to not be a dirty pig when we got home, I glanced shamefully over my shoulder.
I saw Maudra take a step forward, like she was going to come to my rescue. Sue put out her hand and shook her head sadly. Another jerk on my arm, and I turned my eyes back to the sidewalk that led out of the park.