Digging Out (14 page)

In the dark early mornings, when I’m not at Evan’s, I crawl into Gram’s bed there in the attic, and she rubs my back while I cry.

I’ve told Auntie Beryl, too.

“Are you sure you want to have this child, Alys? There are other ways to deal with it,” Auntie Beryl reminds me.

I shake my head.

“It will take a lot of strength to raise a child alone, and it’s not something you can change your mind about in the middle of the lake … or whatever that old adage is, you know what I mean, once the baby is here,” Auntie Beryl says.

“I’m having the baby.”

“Then why not stay here and let Evan have a chance at raising the baby alongside you? He’d be a fine father.”

I cannot tell about the wall of darkness I slam up against when I think of staying here. I can’t talk about it. I am leaving Aberfan. Alone.

When I finally tell Mam I’m pregnant, her anger is like steam, quiet and barely visible and in each breath, every word and action toward me from then on. I am on my way. They will let me go. In fact, they’ll be glad I am going.

The night before I leave is another wet, moonless summer night. I walk the high pathway above the village for that last time, remembering how my heart used to lift looking at the way the shadowed hills roll into each other, blindingly green in the spring, and then the dark rich brilliance of the autumn colors. Whenever, whatever season, how I loved the soothing night rainfalls. I owned it all and remember how I’d told Parry I would live here day in and day out, loving this land forever. It seems a long-ago time now.

Tonight my walk around the village —past Marty’s Greengrocery, the chemist, Bethany Chapel, the narrow cobbled streets—I feel it all as an endless path of heartbreak. I come up on the side of Moy Road that looks directly over at the huge vacant area where once Tip Number Seven stood. That slag heap was tall and black as the shadow of any mountain, deadly for all of us, killing some of us all at once and the rest of us little by little.

Each anniversary, when the whole town gathers at the cemetery to lay wreaths in front of the white arches, reviewing our losses, I feel like I am living those losses for the very first time. I will be gone before this year’s anniversary. And I hope to put the memories of this time far away.

Now, as I look at where that tip stood, it’s as if it was never there, the spot as innocuous as any other grassy sloping field. The truth is they might as well have left it just as it was after the disaster —we are all buried by it anyway, and at least we would have been able to see what ruined us.

Rain pelts against me as I start down the hill. I reach home, drenched to the bone.

“Who’s there, then?” Mam calls as I come in.

“It’s me.” I wonder if Da is still out.

She comes from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, her face pinched into a scowl. “Where’ve you been, then, Alys? You’re like some wild wet dog, showing up every once in a while. It’s late, like, and you, in your condition. I thought you were staying at Evan’s tonight?” She comes right up to me, putting her hand on my tummy. “And the rain teeming … You’ve got to look after yourself now, you do. It’s not just you anymore. You must be sensible, Alys.”

For a second I feel she might be softening to me, and to “my condition,” as she calls it. But then she says, “Although I must admit ‘tis better that you take your walks at night, like, so as the neighbors don’t get a good look.”

“Mam, please.”

“It’s not like your da and I haven’t been through enough as ‘tis.”

“Mam, do we have to get into that now?” I turn my back on her and start toward the stairs.

“It wouldn’t hurt you none to give us some thought, like. It never occurs to you that we are still suffering, then? No matter how many years pass, our pain is still raw. There isn’t a day your da doesn’t go out of the house without the blame of the whole village staring him straight in the face, like. Da, ghost of himself, choking on his own grief he is. We are still in a terrible way about your brother. And now we have to live with this …” she says under her breath, pointing at my stomach. Right then another woman might have begun to cry, but not my mam. “It’s too much to bear, just too damn much.”

“Well you won’t have to bear it much longer. I’m off with first light tomorrow.” And now I tell her what I have not admitted before. “And I won’t be back. ’Tisn’t a visit I’ll be making. I’m going for good.” I wait a beat, searching her face for any reaction, but there is none. Either she does not care or she pretends not to, which is even worse.

Anger sucks me up like smoke, but I turn and talk straight to her, speaking my own truth for a change. “And what about me, Mam? What about me? You think any of this has been easy for me? You think I like what I’ve had to live through? You and Da separate from each other since the disaster. Me living here without a loving word ‘tween us for all these years. Cold stares as if I am to blame for all our past. Needing to stay at Evan’s in order not to end up like Parry. None of it’s been easy for me, you know. “

“Don’t raise your voice to me, young lady.”

This is all she will give me.

The next morning, with only a bit of blue in the otherwise gray-black sky, I leave the village, my heart hardened, and board the coach to Cardiff, the coach that will eventually take me to Heathrow Airport, and finally the airplane to America and Beti and Colin’s house in California. As each green field turns into the next, I don’t look back.

S
ANTA
M
ONICA
, C
ALIFORNIA
N
OVEMBER 1979

T
hree afternoons a week I work at the Tudor House, Beti’s tea shop. We dress up in Welsh outfits, heavy, short, tweedy cotton skirts and white blouses with puffy sleeves. Beti pays me six dollars an hour and the other waitresses and I all split the tips. On a good afternoon I can make thirty dollars in tips alone.

Paintings of the Welsh countryside decorate the walls, along with muted tapestries and a collection of wooden love spoons. Two tall antique dressers covered with Welsh plates, cups, saucers, teapots, brass bed warmers and trivets make the shop into what an American might expect to find in a Welsh village home.

I work hard. When my mind wanders to the far corners of my heart, I drag it back to the washing up, the sweeping, serving the customers.

During long walks in the morning and late afternoon, I breathe in everything new around me. I love California, its bright spacious light, warmth, the way the sun rises over the mountains, the glowing explosion as the sun sets into the sea.

There are many moments each day when I know I’ve left a good part of me back in Aberfan and taken with me so much of its darkness and cold. Early mornings, before I pull myself out of bed, it is hard to remember why I left. Evan’s face and smile swim up and threaten to pull me back to my own hilltop. Most of me still wants to be home.

I am now huge with child. I’m getting used to stares from the customers, and the other day one of the busboys asked me how long I’d
been married. My new friend Elodie doesn’t seem to care that I am pregnant. As we work together, every time she passes me, she rubs my tummy, saying, “Maybe I’ll get lucky!” In some rather American way, her yellow hair, the way she teases, and her easy manner remind me of Hallie.

When I’m not at the tea shop, I look after Beti’s children, Anwen and Morgan, a sweet, well-behaved, towheaded set. Anwen, at two, and Morgan, at just eight months, are not yet old enough to appreciate their “Welsh roots, but we do. Tricky as it will be, Beti, Colin and I agree to protect them and my child to come for as long as we can from the darkness of our own desperate past. And yet we are singing the Welsh lullabies and telling them of the land’s beauty, the changing drama of the sky, our strong history, lest we forget the strengths of our own Welsh hearts.

When I first arrived, Beti wanted to concoct a story for her friends about how my husband had died in some horrible car crash. I’d not had a chance to tell her about my pregnancy before I left home. Selfishly, I’d not given a thought to how embarrassed she might be by it.

“Allie. You don’t generally see pregnant fifteen year olds in Santa Monica. This is a pretty conservative little town.” As if it’s commonplace in Aberfan.

Finally we decide to say nothing about my past. No excuses or inventions about my pregnancy. Better not to have my child living with some outrageous lie that might catch up with either of us.

Six months later, I have gone sixteen and Dafydd is just five months old when I start up at the high school. During the school day, Beti baby-sits Dafydd. In the afternoons, I watch all three children. It’s a huge relief to be back writing poetry again, and reading it aloud to more than just my reflection. I like my English teacher, George Marx, a tall, bent, scruffy, gray-haired man who smokes between classes and smells like it. He expects a great deal from us. Occasionally he will tell me that I am using idioms or expressions in my poems that are utterly British. “Revise. This is America!” he says.

Our current assignment: Write about some specific day-to-day challenge in your life and what would happen if that challenge was removed.

I’ve finished the first draft of the poem when the doorbell rings. The mailman delivers a large registered envelope for me from Gram.

She writes at least once a month, but this is a large packet filled with several letters.

There are dozens of letters. The part of me that doesn’t want to read them battles hard with the starving part that grabs a handful, sits down and tears the first open. I trace my finger over Evan’s strong, bold print:

It is as if Evan is sitting right in front of me, his voice, anger. His hurt is so clear in his letters. I can hardly bear up against all I have forced on him because of my own desperate needs.

I cannot respond to him. Instead I write to Gram, reminding her simply as I can:

That September, during a lunch break in the second week of school, Elodie takes me out of the queue and drags me over to the table where Marc Kessler is seated. He is one of her best chums.

“He wants to meet you. He has a crush on you,” she teases.

“This is Alys,” Elodie says, pushing me down on a seat next to him. “Alys Davies from Wales.”

He is handsome, dark, smiling. I am impressed first by his blue collared shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. This seems so American. Under his stare I am suddenly shy. Then he stands up and puts out his hand, a small hand, with a broad palm and strong grip. Holding on to him, I grow calm and quiet inside.

“It’s a pleasure,” he says. “I’ve been watching you. I like your accent. If you’re from that part of the world you must know Shakespeare like the back of your hand.” He takes my hand and turns it palm down. “I’ve been waiting for a girl like you all my life,” he teases.

He is the same age as I am but a year ahead of me in school. Our getting to know each other is a slow process, both of us cautious, reticent.

It takes me six months to bring Marc over to meet Beti and Colin. I am afraid if he visits the house he’ll think I am some kind of scrubber, what with having a baby, me having just turned seventeen. But when I finally do, Marc smiles and says, “A baby. Man, that’s probably a lot more responsibility than a dog, huh?” Adding quickly, “But he’s certainly cuter and he probably doesn’t know how to bark yet?”