Authors: Ruth White

Weeping Willow (15 page)

BOOK: Weeping Willow

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We stayed with Aunt Evie for about an hour and let her talk about her own self for a change. She was a pitiful old thing, and didn’t know what to do with the rest of her life. She didn’t know how to do anything but wait for Ward. Then she said she had to go help Mrs. Rife do some sewing. So Phyllis and I went home.

Vern was sitting in the kitchen drinking bourbon.

“Where’s Beau and Luther?” Phyllis said.

“I took ’em up to Dad’s. Where you girls been?”

“Up to Aunt Evie’s.”

“Rosemary called you, Tiny,” he said. “Wants you to call her.”

I went to the hall and dialed Rosemary’s number. Phyllis and Nessie went upstairs.

“Hi, gal,” Rosemary said. “Want to go sledding?”

“Sledding? There’s not enough snow for sledding.”

“Over at the Breaks there is. There’s lots of snow there.”

“Okay. Who all’s going?”

“Me and you and Cecil and Bobby Lynn and Richard.”

“What about Roy?”

“I didn’t ask him.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have to take him with me everywhere I go.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll ride over with Cecil.”

I hurried upstairs. Phyllis was sitting by the window in Willa’s spot, looking at the hills.

“Where ya goin’ to, Tiny?” she said.

“To the Breaks, sledding.”

“Can I go?”

“No. You know you’re too young to hang around with my crowd, Phyllis.”

“Please, Tiny.”

I looked at her as I wiggled into my boots. She was chewing her nails and looking at me with pleading eyes.

“No, Phyllis, you know you can’t go. What’s the matter with you?”

She didn’t answer. I put on my scarf and gloves, then slipped on my heavy jacket. I would have to dig the sled out of Beau and Luther’s closet. I looked at Phyllis again. She sure was acting funny.

“Get your hands out of your mouth,” I said to her.

“I won’t get out of the car.” She made another desperate attempt. “And I won’t say a word.”

This was not like Phyllis a’tall, and as I stood puzzling over it, I saw two big tears bubble up in her eyes.

“Don’t leave me here with Daddy!” she sobbed suddenly.

Oh God, my sister, my sister!

I went to her and took her into my arms. I held her close to my heart and rocked her and crooned to her while she cried and cried. I cried, too, as I remembered those awful days, and how I had yearned for comfort.

Oh, my sister, my sister. Why didn’t I see this coming? I was so wrapped up in my own problems.

“He said he would kill Nessie if I told,” Phyllis choked. “Do you think he will?”

“No! He will not hurt Nessie! I won’t let him. And he won’t ever hurt you again, Phyllis, I promise.”

She slumped in my arms. I would hold her as long as she wanted me to, all day if necessary. And all the while my mind was racing. I would tell. Nothing would stop me now. Nothing. It didn’t matter who knew. He would never hurt me or Phyllis again. I would tell Mama, and if she wouldn’t do anything, then I would tell Mr. Gillespie. He would do something. I knew there was a law against what Vern did. He was scared of the law.

I took off my heavy clothes.

“I have to call Cecil,” I told Phyllis. “But I’ll be right back.”

“Promise?” she said.

“I promise. I am not going anywhere today.”

“Sorry, Cecil,” I said when I had him on the phone. “Y’all go on and have a good time. Something important has come up.”

“What’s wrong, Tiny?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I have to stay here, that’s all,” I said.

“I can tell by your voice,” he went on.

He knew me so well.

“Don’t worry, Cecil. ’Bye now.”

Then I went back upstairs to our room and closed the door. We would stay there until Mama came home. As I talked to Phyllis, I found out to my relief that Vern did not actually rape her, but sooner or later he was bound to try it if somebody didn’t stop him.

Shortly after noon I heard Mama come in.

“You stay here, Phyllis,” I said. “And I’ll be right back.”

“Where ya goin’ to?” she said.

“I’ll be right back. You look after Nessie.”

Mama was in her bedroom standing in her slip and going through her closet for something to put on.

“You here?” she said when I walked in. “The house is so quiet. Where’s the young’uns?”

“Phyllis is in our room and the boys are at Grandpa Mullins’s.”

Mama found a housedress and slipped it on. I sat down on her bed.

“Mama, I got something real important to tell you,” I said. “It’s about Vern”

TWENTY-FIVE

The next evening found me, Phyllis, and Mama sitting quiet and still at the kitchen table, waiting. Mama was drinking coffee. Her eyes were so red and swollen from crying she couldn’t see good. Phyllis’s face was real pale and she felt bad. Nessie lay at my feet, quieter than usual and looking sad. The boys were still at Grandpa Mullins’s house.

We were waiting for the preacher to finish talking to Vern. They were in the living room. Mama had called him late yesterday because she didn’t know what else to do. Reverend Kermit Altizer was from an oldtimey church in Black Gap. He didn’t know us from Adam’s house cat, but we didn’t have a regular church, so Mama picked him out of the telephone book.

My heart was heavier than it ever had been. Never before had there been so much crying and cussing, screaming and blaming in our house. Vern looked like he went back to childhood and thought his mama was going to whup him, and Phyllis wouldn’t lift her eyes from the floor. She wouldn’t let Nessie out of her sight. But it was Mama who worried me most. She seemed more helpless than ever, and I was disappointed in her. All she could do was whimper and cry. I thought she was cracking up. It was a nightmare, and I felt I was the only one who was awake and seeing things for real.

The temperature had plunged way down to freezing, and the weather man was calling for sleet and snow. It was a gray blanket all over my world.

I will take Phyllis and Nessie and run away, I was thinking. If they don’t do something about Vern. If he gets away with this, he’ll try it again. We can’t live with him anymore.

About that time, Vern and the preacher walked in.

“Well, Mrs. Mullins.” Reverend Altizer stood there smiling a crooked little smile at us. He had his dark Sunday suit and white shirt on, but his hair was greasy and he had long nicotine-stained fingernails with dirt under them.

“Let us have a moment of prayer,” he said sweetly.

We bowed our heads and Reverend Altizer told God we were having a family problem and would he bless us. Then he prayed that we would be forgiving to one another and Christian in thought, word, and deed. Amen.

We looked at him, waiting.

“This is a most unfortunate situation,” he said, still smiling.

Vern shuffled around the table and sat down beside Mama without looking at anybody.

“It appears that you and Mr. Mullins have had some problems in your marriage bed,” he said to Mama.

That smile of his was getting on my nerves. Mama just looked at him with a blank face.

“Sometimes when a married man and woman don’t get along, the children suffer,” he went on. “A man in the prime of his life has certain needs, as you must surely know, Mrs. Mullins. And if the wife does not meet those needs, he must turn elsewhere.”

Rage suddenly blinded me. He was taking Vern’s part! But before I could explode, Mama rose up so fast and furiously her chair went crashing against the wall.

“Needs!” she cried, and that one word was like a gun going off. “Needs, you say!”

Never had I heard that tone of voice from Mama.

“And what about the needs of my young girls?”

I’ll declare Mama grew a foot taller as she faced that preacher where he stood.

“They have needs, too! And they don’t need no filthy old man forcing his lust on them!”

She stood there glaring and panting at that sleazy preacher, and that silly smile melted off his face at last.

“I just meant, Mrs. Mullins …”

“Don’t say no more!” Mama yelled at him. “Just get your holy ass out of my kitchen before I get mad!”

The rest of us were rendered speechless. This was a new person we were seeing. Without another word the preacher left, and we were left sitting there with Mama towering over the room like the Statue of Liberty.

“And you!” She turned to Vern, and he seemed to shrivel up. “You have thirty minutes to get your clothes together and get out of this house, or I’ll have you locked up so fast it’ll make your head spin!”

“This is my house,” Vern said lamely, but he was moving as he said it.

“No, it’s
my
house and my children’s house,” Mama said. “Give us any trouble and you’ll find yourself in jail.”

Vern stood there, looking small. I was almost tempted to feel sorry for him, but I resisted.

“I love my girls,” he said sadly. “That’s the only reason I done it. I love them so much I couldn’t help myself.”

“Love!” Mama sputtered. “You make me sick! You hurt my girls worse than anybody ever did and you have the nerve to call it love!”

Suddenly she clutched the handle of a skillet there on the stove like she was aiming to clobber him. Vern backed toward the door, and I laid my hand on Mama’s arm.

“Mama …”

She looked at me, let go of the skillet, and put her arm around me.

“I’m going to sue you for divorce,” she said to Vern, “and get enough out of you to raise my young’uns by myself. Now git out of my sight!”

“What about my boys?” Vern whined. “I’m going to keep my boys.”

“You bring ‘em home to me! You ain’t fit to raise ’em!”

Vern shuffled out of the room. Mama pulled Phyllis against her with her other arm and the three of us stood there together holding each other.

“How will I ever ever make it up to you?” she said with deep feeling.

“Oh, Mama,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Things are going to be different around here,” she went on. “I promise. We’re going to be a real family. I’m going to be a real mother.”

“You’re the best mother in the world,” I said.

“My precious girls …”

Words failed her.

We sat down at the table.

“We have a lot to talk about,” she said. “And I will never again let you down when you need me.”

She was no longer crying, her head was up high, and there was a new air about her. I was very proud of her.

“I could have him locked up,” she said. “But I don’t think you would want everybody to know. You would be shamed before the world. You know how people talk, and you have suffered enough.”

“That’s true, Mama,” I said. “It’s the main reason I didn’t tell anybody for so long.”

We heard Vern leaving. Mama fixed a light supper for us, and we sat in the kitchen talking for hours. We started making plans for the future, and I felt this great flood of relief, exhilaration. My terrible secret was out, and Mama had defended me. I had protected my sister, I didn’t have to live in fear anymore, and Nessie slept peacefully at my feet.

The very next day, Mama got a job as a nurse’s aide at the hospital. She would ride to work with Dixie.

The same day, Mama got legal separation papers. She asked for the house and twenty dollars a week child support. They would have to be separated for a year before she could file for divorce.

I was amazed at the turn of events. Our whole lives had changed in three days, and it had all clicked into place like it was meant to be.

The boys came home, but they were sullen. It’s no telling what Vern said to them. Tuesday I found Luther alone in the kitchen reading a Superman comic. He was almost twelve, but small for his age. He was still a poor reader and a champion checkers player.

“Wanna play checkers, Luther?” I said to him. “Maybe I can beat you now.”

“I don’t want to do nothing with you,” he said.

“What did I do?” I said and sat down with him, hoping we could talk.

“You told a pack of lies on my daddy.”

“I did not lie, Luther.”

“You’re just a lying woman,” he sneered. “Like my daddy said.”

“Luther …”

But he left the room.

Beau was nearly thirteen and short and stumpy like Vern, but a whole lot smarter. He could read Shakespeare without stumbling, and he understood some of it.

But he wasn’t speaking to me or Phyllis. He holed up in his room and came out only when he had to.

“They don’t understand,” Mama said. “Give ’em time. They’ll come around.”

Although Mama was real careful to save me and Phyllis from scorn—and I was proud of her for that—Phyllis was having a hard time handling everything that had happened. She felt like it was her fault that Mama ran Vern off. He was still her daddy, no matter what he did, and she still loved him. She stayed out of school that whole week with a sick headache. So I stayed with her. I read Nancy Drew to her, and fixed her good things to eat. I put an ice pack to her temples when she felt especially bad. When Mama came home in the evenings she sat with us and told us about her day at the hospital.

And we laid plans for the future. After graduation I would get a job at the bank or the insurance company because I had a year of typing. We would combine our strawberry money this year so that Mama could buy her own car, and I would teach her how to drive it.

By Saturday, Phyllis was better, and laughing at Snuffy Smith in the funny papers. And her cheeks were rosy again. Mama and I sat her down in the kitchen and trimmed her curly brown hair.

“You look exactly like Brenda Lee!” I told her because I knew how much she liked Brenda Lee.

“Oh, I don’t!” she said, grinning.

“You do too! Don’t she, Mama?”

“Exactly,” Mama said. “Now, come on, Phyllis, let’s go upstairs and let me worsh your hair for you and roll it.”

They left the kitchen and I fixed myself a bowl of rice pudding, and sat down at the table to eat it.

Cecil walked in.

“Hey, Tiny.”

“Hey, Cecil. Want some pudding?”

“No thanks, Tiny. I got an important question to ask you.”

“Okay, ask.”

“Where’s Vern?”

“That’s not an important question.”

“Well, where is he anyhow? He hasn’t been home since Sunday and you haven’t been in school and suddenly your mama has a job.”

“You’re nosy!” I said, laughing, but I knew he was concerned. Cecil thought about me a lot. “You might as well know Mama and Vern are getting a divorce, and that’s all I have to say.”

“A divorce?”

“Yeah, a divorce.”

“Good!” he said matter-of-factly. “But that really wasn’t my question. My important question is this: Will you go to the prom with me?”

“The prom? Cecil, it’s January. The prom’s not till April.”

“I know. But I wanted to be sure nobody beat me to it.”

“I don’t expect you’ll have a whole heap of competition. How come you to ask me? Why not Judy or Shelby or somebody like that?”

“You and I have been all through school together,” he said. “And we’ve always been neighbors, and I have had this vision of you and me at the prom together.”

I laughed.

“Cecil, you’re funny.”

He blushed then.

“Just for old times’ sake, you know?” he said.

“Sure, Cecil. But remember, you’re free to change your mind if you want to.”

“Sure, and you too! I mean you can change your mind any time you want.”

“Okay, it’s a date.”

Then he grinned real big, and didn’t say anything. I had a feeling he was very pleased and relieved. Cecil had on his royal-blue football sweater, and it brought out the blue in his eyes, which were sparkling at the moment. He was definitely striking, I was thinking. Our eyes met then and suddenly I found myself wondering how it would feel to kiss Cecil. My face started burning, and I looked away.

For the first time in our lives, Cecil and I were uncomfortable together.

“Well, I’m glad that’s settled,” he said.

“Me too.”

There was a great silence.

What was he thinking?

BOOK: Weeping Willow

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