Liar's Bench (8 page)

I looked out the window at the persimmon tree and dredged up the yarn that had damned my name. Oh, how Daddy loved to regale anyone who hadn't already heard or, as a matter of fact, anyone who was too polite to deny Adam Summers one more telling of his braggart's tale: the story of how he'd met and courted Ella Mudas Tilley, my mama. The same ol' story that went like this:

 

In 1953, Daddy and his friend George were walking across the grounds of the courthouse when he spied a petite woman with gorgeous chestnut hair and green eyes sitting across the road on Liar's Bench. She was “sitting there all propered-up, daisy-like, with legs gracefully long and leading to Heaven,” Daddy said.

He immediately stopped and was about to cross over to introduce himself when George held up his hand, and warned, “She's that Casanova Tommy Whitlock's gal. Name's Ella. She was raised in Nashville and Kentucky, same as him, and just moved back here after her parents passed. Easy pickings for Whitlock. So you best mosey on, Adam, before it costs you a whole lotta money and misery. And misery being 'bout the only thing you'd get on ol' Frannie Crow's bench.”

Daddy just grinned wide, gave George a friendly whack on the back, and said, “You can't catch a rabbit if you don't muddy up your boots, boy.”

And that he did, the following week at the Peckinpaw County Fair, by buying up all the chances for the Cow Plop Bingo, our town's favorite game of chance and an annual tradition. Every year, a particularly unfortunate field was made to look like a bingo card, divided into three-foot squares, each numbered with lime, and the good people of Peckinpaw would place their bets on whether or not a cow would plop on their number. The prize: a dance with the Fair Queen at the Midsummer Dance, the highlight of the Peckinpaw Fair. That year's queen: Ella Mudas Tilley.

Wasn't a year later that Daddy proposed to Mama on Liar's Bench. I came along in '55, the very next year. In keeping with the Tilley family tradition, they named me Mudas. But Daddy gave me his own special nickname, “Muddy,” in homage to his ingenious way of courting Mama and the philosophy that made it special. “Can't catch a rabbit if you don't muddy up your boots, gal,” was the refrain of my childhood. My nickname was Daddy's way of reminding me that I needed to strive to be the best and always work extra hard to catch this rabbit of life. To his way of thinking, this was the only path to success.

 

An all right story. Except for the fact that my daddy didn't know when to end it. He'd puffed up his chest and told the famous Cow Plop Bingo story so many times that, in Peckinpaw, my name would be forever linked to those stupid cows. What a joke and an even bigger joke with the kids at school. Even my best friend, ThommaLyn, couldn't shake off using the name, though I didn't mind much, since she was made fun of for her own tomboy name, same as me. Sharing the misery sort of made it bearable. Still, being named after a boy is one thing, but living down a cow-patty legacy is entirely another. I'd come home from school crying no telling how many times, begging Daddy to let me change my name and to
please
stop telling that stupid story.

Then, one day, he did. It was years ago; three months shy of my ninth birthday. The year he let his rabbit get away. The year Mama decided that Daddy had used up all his chances. She'd had enough of his cheating ways. That's when she resolved to lace up her own shoes to do some stomping. It was in 1964, but it seemed like just yesterday, when Mama had dressed me in my finest cotton dress and driven us down to Liar's Bench to meet Daddy.

 

Daddy had hurried across the street from his office with a big smile stretched across his face that slowly slid downward with each step closer, until he finally sank down onto the bench next to us, with me in the middle. They wouldn't look at each other. I tapped my thumbs against my fingertips.

Mama crossed her arms and raised her chin. “Adam Summers,” she said, “I'm leaving you. Say good-bye to Mudas.”

Looking back and forth in confusion, I cried, “I don't wanna go, Mama. I don't want to leave Daddy.” Mama wasted no time in marking my cheek with a smart whap. Sighing, Daddy dropped his unlit cigar in the geranium pot and got to work on a stack of lies meant to convince Mama to stay. But I guess that wasn't his day to be the better liar. Mama looked straight ahead as Daddy waded into the thick of his own murky waters and sank lower, and lower still. When he'd just about worn himself out, Mama calmly announced that she'd sold our spacious Bedford ranch and all of its belongings, and was moving us up to the big city of Nashville.

“Ella,” he said, “if you'd just stop drinking, too, we could work—”

“Adam!” She looked hard at him.

I tugged on her arm. “Mama?”

“Ella,” Daddy whispered, “please, we can both get counseling with the pastor and we can—”

Mama lifted a shaky hand.

Daddy unleashed a fresh pack of lies, promises, protests, and heated declarations that Mama was going to city-me-up and I'd lose all my respectable rural, but Mama wouldn't budge.

“School's out soon. It wouldn't hurt this apron-leashed child to get some citification and learn new cultures. Living her entire life in Peckinpaw will only make her weak and dependent. I need to polish off the edges of this rural.” She pinched my arm and I felt shame rising in my cheeks. Confusion riddled my young brain; Mama had pinched me after I told her about Daddy's secretary, too. I wasn't sure what was happening, but I knew I'd done something terribly wrong.

Mama rented us a room over Nettie's Nest until school let out for the summer. Then she loaded us into the car. I cried all the way to Nashville.

Our new home was a tall building full of tiny homes called apartments. We lived on the ninth floor. Mama found a job at a nearby bank and hired Mrs. Barnes, a nice neighbor lady in our building, to babysit me. Sometimes after work, Mama would go out on the avenues with her bank friends and have what she'd always liked to call “refreshments.” She'd started smoking, and bought herself a fancy filter like her new friend, Collette. During these times I missed ThommaLyn the most. I even missed school a little.

I began counting the days left in June and those to September. To help me through the “Lonely Lucys,” Mrs. Barnes let me open the window and drop breadcrumbs on the ledge. Within two days, I had three feathered friends. I named the pigeons after ThommaLyn, Grammy Essie, and Daddy. But one day Mama came home from work early and saw me talking to all of my new friends. She acted real nervous and led Mrs. Barnes to the door, whispering about “normal.” Next thing I knew, Mama had nailed the window shut and put up an ugly green drape. I bawled like a two-year-old and hollered that she was locking my family out, same as she did Daddy. But she'd mixed herself a refreshment, swatted my tail, and sent me into the bedroom we shared.

It was June 8 when Mama crossed paths again with Tommy Whitlock at the West End juke joint where he worked.

A few days later, we'd all gone out for a Saturday supper to “get to know each other.” Tommy flashed a pearly grin to the waitress, and the waitress smiled back, blushing. Tommy and Mama had “refreshments.” He'd ordered for us from the menu, making sure to add a big slice of pie for me.

Tommy downed his brown drink like a thirsty man. I soon figured out it was bourbon and water. “More water over that bourbon,” the waitress had teased. Mama kept up with him with her refreshment called vodka and tonic. He finished his second one after the first bite of his steak. His voice grew high, loud. Once, he pinched the waitress's rear and Mama'd playfully chastised him, bent over to me, and said, “He's just funnin', ain't he so funny, Mudas?” Like a clown, I'd reckoned, but glued my mouth shut and turned my red face away. Mama gulped down her second refreshment.

I thought about Daddy a lot. At least he drank in private. I looked over at Tommy. Him, with his mouth full, waving a biscuit, grease on his chin, smacking his lips. Daddy made sure my elbows were always off the table....

Tommy talked and kept waving his bread. Then I saw it, his hands. “Like the eyes connect to the soul, the hands talk, too,” Grammy Essie had once told me. My daddy's hands were warm, strong, and smooth, but not too soft, like the hands of men too prissy to turn the dirt of a garden, brick a well, or cradle a fussy baby. Tommy's were different. His pinkie fingernail was long, like it was made for scooping sand. His nails looked shiny, like maybe they'd been polished, and his hands hung limp, like they'd never shook with another. I didn't trust those hands.

But still, it wasn't long after that supper when Mama settled into the hands of her former lover. Tommy, acting all sweet and clownish, courting her with flowers he'd lifted from the park across the street. And always making sure to give me one of those daisies, too. His day clothes were always spiffy, like he was stepping out for a night on the avenues.

He took care of her, too. She'd caught a cold and got a smoking cough. Tommy went out and bought her the codeine cough syrup, and when she finished that, he bought more bottles. “A new refreshment,” she'd winked.

He made Mama laugh, and they went out dancing a lot. I reckon that's why she married him right away. But I never did like clowns. And, after a while, it seemed like this one made both me and Mama cry more than he made us laugh. Still, he'd always apologize with a pretty gift and blaze those sharp pearlies. After he'd gotten over his hangover, that is. Then they'd go dancing again. I guess that's why she loved him better than my daddy.

Maybe even better than me. Because it was less than two months later when Mama delivered me back to Liar's Bench.

Daddy was waiting, with arms spread wide. “You didn't let all that ‘fancy' corrupt you, did you, baby?”

I looked up at Mama questioningly and she nodded her approval from behind her sunglasses. I fell happily into Daddy's hug, sneaking a peek at Mama over his shoulder. And that was when I saw her heartbreak for the first time—her face seeming to slowly craze like a porcelain bowl picking up the hairline cracks after it hits the floor. I'd never realized just how big her losses were. Her sisters. Her parents. A husband. Now, me, her only child. But in that one glimpse, I saw everything. I was almost nine years old, and I didn't know how to help her. But I knew that she couldn't help me. I buried my face in Daddy's chest, grabbing hold of my immediate little happiness before it could be snatched away.

Wearily, Mama sat down on Liar's Bench and looked across the street toward the old courthouse, lost in thought. When she cleared her throat, the words sounded strange—sad. “Mudas is too puny for the city,” she told Daddy. “She mewls like a sick kitten at every loud noise. Tommy and I feel it'd be best if she lived here with you. We're moving north soon, to Chicago. Tommy's been offered a better job. And I don't think she's strong enough for a bigger city.”

Confused, I shot her a look. Instead of answering, she adjusted her sunglasses to hide the recent eye whap that Tommy had given her. Instinctively, I felt for the small of my back. It still hurt. Four days ago, I had gotten separated from her and Tommy in the city department store and started crying. Tommy'd called me a big baby—a chicken for making a fuss—and smacked my tail all the way back to the car. When we got back to the apartment, he'd taken off his thick belt and beaten me. But this beating was different.

There'd been a big argument about it afterward. The biggest ruckus ever. Even when I'd clamped my hands over my ears, I could still hear the slaps on skin, the shouts, and the slamming doors. Tommy had finally stormed out of the house, yelling about how he needed some air. His “air” always smelled “a whole lot like whiskey,” Mama had screamed back, reaching for a refreshment.

I was so afraid, I ran to hide, pressing my small body way back inside the closet, hiding under a pile of coats until Mama came for me and coaxed me out with a sugar cookie.

Then she'd gone and emptied a bread bag and filled it with ice to help with the swelling on my back. When Mama had finished, she'd hurried to the medicine chest to get salve to spread across the welts. I heard her gulping down the bottle of codeine cough syrup that she kept in there, as she tended to her own swelling. After she was through nursing our wounds, she'd lit herself a cigarette and studied me for the longest time. The smoke settled into our silence, and for a minute I saw wounds bigger than mine. I'd reached up, hugged her neck, and patted her back. “It'll be okay, Mama, it'll be okay.” I kept petting.

Then, for the first time ever, Mama cried on me. Scared, I patted harder. She finally stood and went into the bathroom. I heard her open up the cabinet again. Another sip of refreshment, and a few seconds later, she came out. Her breath smelled a lot stronger, orangier, like fruit and Tommy's bourbon. She'd knelt down. “Keep your back covered at all times or else it won't heal,” she'd said. “You can't show anyone. Do you understand?” I'd nodded and sealed the promise with a kiss and two fingers, just like she'd taught me.

But sitting on that old bench with her now, I couldn't understand anything other than she was leaving me. I hooked my arm under hers and tightened, scooting closer to her. “No, don't leave! Please stay, Mama.” I grabbed her hand, pulled it on top of Daddy's and mine, and buried my wet face in the clasp.

Mama stroked my hair. “Hush, sugar,” she quieted. “I'll be back to take you shopping in the big city once we settle in. Now I've got to get back to Nashville and pack.” She untangled our hands, stood, then smoothed down the creases on her linen skirt and gave me a tight smile.

Daddy jumped up, clasped her arms, his eyes sorrowful—pleading. “Don't leave, Ella. Muddy is too young to have her mama so far away. She's only nine, for God's sake. Whitlock will just drag you through the gutters with him, and you know it. We can work this out if you'll just give me another chance.”