Castles (14 page)

"Get up, bitch!" Mr. Pulman screamed. His voice was so loud, so full of fury I knew it carried past the walls to the other trailers, to the cowards holed up in their own worlds trying to watch Wheel of Fortune or Julia Childs. I don't know what scared me more at that moment: Mr. Pulman's rage, the dust eel on the carpet in front of me, or the knowledge that the cowards out there would simply turn up the television and tune out life.

I heard Mama say something. It wasn't clear what, but the sound of her voice was weak and wavered through the hallway and under my door.

"I don't care about your headache!" Mr. Pulman had moved into the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator open with a clank of salad dressing bottles and jars of pickles then slam shut again. Something small fell from the door. "I told you to have me dinner when I got home, and what do I get? I get a bitch with a headache and an empty stomach."

Mama said something else, still too weak to make out.

"Where's that slut of a daughter of yours? If she wants to live in my house, she needs to learn to cook a damn meal when you're out of it."

He stomped through the kitchen and into the living room. The pictures on the wall in my room shook with each step. I quickly turned back to the window and slammed the latch open. With a heave, I pushed the window open and pushed out the screen. It fell to the gravel outside with a light crunch just as the eel said "
Wait
" one more time.

I had my hands on the window sill ready to push myself outside, but my legs refused to move.

It was then I heard Mama scream. A loud crash of body against the table shook the trailer like a bomb had gone off. Mr. Pulman screamed as well, but this time it wasn't anger but agony.

Had Mama listened to the eels?

I turned and leapt off my bed. Below my feet, the eel writhed and twisted and moved about in a frenzy I want to say was borne of pleasure and success. It was disgusting but hypnotic at the same time. It looked up at me, its teeth barred, its eyes wide. Something slimy dripped on the carpet.

"I've had enough!" It was Mama and I could hear the hatred in her voice. It was no longer weak, no longer shy and submissive. Something must have exploded inside her.

A noise like a chair tipping over onto the kitchen linoleum rushed through the house. There was a stumble of a man, another crash of a bottle and something hit a cabinet with a crack.

"Get out of my house!" Mama screamed.

I don't often feel the rush of adrenaline for someone else. I don't often feel anything that might be considered empathetic in any way, but I like to think there are silver strands that bind family. Even if that family is estranged or in some way parted by a thousand miles, that strand is still there and energies still flow through it.

I felt fire. I felt the fire of Mama, the rage inside her as it built inside me. I felt hot, not just heated, like a raging inferno had exploded in blue flame through my stomach, my chest, my head.

I burst from my room with that rage inside me. Mr. Pulman was on his feet and staggered. Blood poured from a gash in his head, down his face and into his eyes. He straightened himself up as Mama stood her ground. In her hand, she held a bottle, no doubt one that had previously flown through the room.

I think God bowed His head, because I stopped at the end of the hall.

There were no words.

The silence draped over the trailer. Thinking back, it may have draped over the park, over the Bus, over the desert, over the world. Dust motes hung in the air, frozen in time.

Mr. Pulman's eyes flickered toward me.

In his hand, he held a carving knife soaked with blood. I looked at the knife, looked up into his eyes and knew the reason Mama suddenly dropped the bottle in her hand and slumped to the floor on her knees.

Behind me, the dust eel screamed.

The hours after Mr. Pulman stabbed Mama then ran out the door and into the night were bathed with red and blue flashes of light on the wall of the living room and kitchen. Khaki figures roamed through the trailer. At times they leaned over Mama's body, at times they talked to me, at times they scribbled things in black or green notebooks. They huddled in corners and discussed things in low tones, every once in a while letting their eyes wander from Mama to me.

I remember a coppery smell in the trailer that night, so pervasive it overwhelmed the cigarette smoke that stained the walls and the rancid beer odor in the cushions of the couch I sat on. My legs were pulled back into my chest, my arms wrapped around them. In my world at that moment there was only color and smell.

I often wonder what the police said to me, what they asked me, and I wonder what I said in response to those questions. Did they ask me about Mr. Pulman, what he looked like and where he might have gone? Did they ask me what the fight was about that resulted in Mama's death? Did they ask me if I saw the knife actually penetrate Mama's right side or if I just saw her crumple to the floor?

I often wonder, but to me the night was only color and smell.

Steve entered the trailer sometime around three in the morning. He was drunk, but not so drunk he didn't straighten up and act sober in the presence of all the khaki men and their notebooks. He rushed to my side in a flurry of green and tan, nuzzled up against me on the couch and put his arms around me. The musk of his body overpowered the beer smell. It couldn't mask the blood.

I think he said something to me, but I don't know what.

A coroner removed Mama's body at 4:17 in the morning.

The next week was nothing but color and smell. There was the smell of dirt, the color of grass, flowers that scented the air around the gravesite. I wish I could relate the days to you in greater detail, tell you what Steve said to me or how I ended up back in the trailer. I wish I could tell you what the funeral was like or how I talked to Grandma and she comforted me in the glow of my Barbie nightlight.

I wish I could tell you. I'm sure one day I will remember more.

Maybe not.

Steve moved in about three weeks after Mama's funeral. I can't say I had come around through the stages of grief, but I was better off than before. Tears still flowed freely at night and I still woke up at 4:17 every morning, if only to look at the clock and fall back to sleep. He slid up against me when the moment was right. He kissed my neck when I least expected it, and he never once said anything crass.

I lived with Steve for almost a year, doing what I could to make him happy. The idea of cutting out his tongue became foreign to me, like the silly notions of a teenage girl who wasn't ready to accept the emotions she'd been burdened with. That's not to say the ember of fire was no longer hot in my body; it was there, and I could feed it kindling whenever I wanted. The storms didn't come after Mama's death, but that didn't stop me from sitting outside with Grandma's afghan around my body staring at the Bus in the distance.

Steve understood, I think, and he rarely mentioned my behavior or cringe at the way I so easily slipped behind the walls I built around me. He had changed after that moment of death, and it was that change which kept me stable despite the ember inside. I couldn't live in the trailer and not remember Mr. Pulman, remember the fear and terror I felt for Mama or the way his eyes glinted when he looked at me the night he killed her. When I saw those eyes in my sleep or I smelled anything remotely related to Mama's death, the ember flared.

On the anniversary of Steve moving in, he took me out to dinner at one of those restaurants where you have to order everything piece by piece. I had borrowed a dress from the box of Mama's things—a simple black affair with plastic rhinestones around the hem of the skirt. It didn't fit me very well, but I managed to bunch and push my breasts until they looked just appealing enough to Steve he wouldn't care what I wore. Despite Steve's change, he was still a man.

The restaurant was located on the top of a hill overlooking the big city, all of its lights shining up at me. Rivers of cars streamed by on a freeway that led out of town, toward the trailer park and the Bus and the desert beyond. I hadn't been downtown at night before and I was certainly not used to looking at things from high places. I remarked to Steve that I felt we were looking down on the stars of Hell.

"The stars of Hell are in the sky, Maggie," he said. "Those are people."

I didn't argue with him. I knew the only thing in the sky was my castle, Grandma's castle and Mama's castle. It occurred to me just then that I never considered Mama's castle or how big it might have become. If she wasn't as strong as she said she was, did she even have a castle she could go to? Grandma helped her so much and after she passed away, Mama became wayward, despondent, lost to men like Alfie and Mr. Pulman. Castles in the sky are built for girls by girls, as Grandma would say. If you didn't lay out the bricks yourself, what did you have? Was Mama living in Grandma's castle, or was she relegated to the fields and the fief around it?

I cried at the dinner table, and Steve was visibly upset at me. He didn't say a word, but I knew he had to be tired of my emotional distance and the tears that so easily fell from my face at the most inopportune times. He had done something nice for me, and I know he had to save up the money to take me to that restaurant. You don't make much money working in a garage, especially when you're not the boss, just a wrench monkey without a high school diploma.

When I think of how much money he spent on dinner that night, I know I shouldn't have cried. The drive back to the trailer was silent, and while I could feel the ember inside of me still, it was Steve's own ember that flared and set fire to the rest of the night.

At the door to the trailer, Steve stopped and looked over at the rocking chair with Grandma's afghan thrown over it. "Maybe you should sleep out here tonight," he said. "You have that dirty old rag to bundle up with." It was a solemn voice, defeated in a way. Had I really hurt his feelings so deeply he wanted to kick me out of my own trailer?

I was stunned, as if Steve had suddenly slapped me in the face without warning. Never before had I felt so ashamed.

"I'm sorry," I said. There really was nothing else I could say.

Steve didn't respond. He stepped inside and walked to the bedroom. The door clicked shut and I heard the lock engage.

I was alone and I was cold.

For a week after that night, Steve kept to himself. He worked and he came home and drank beer. He flipped the channels on the television set exactly like Mama did, two to three seconds per show, on to the next without thought. On some nights, he would sleep on the couch. On other nights, he would sleep in the bedroom, but as far from me as possible. If I thought I could tease him out from behind his wall by spreading my legs, I quickly learned there are some walls that can't be breached until the person is ready.

Steve finally opened up on the eighth night, when I had about enough. If he was going to live in my trailer, he was going to talk to me. He was also going to learn to appreciate every macaroni and cheese or ramen dinner I made for him.

"What the hell is your problem?" I asked, turning from the kitchen sink. I surprised myself at my words and wondered where that aggression had come from. I don't think I'd talked like that to another man since Cade when I was nine.

Steve registered the outburst with as much surprise as anger. His eyes flicked toward me then returned to the television. "Don't talk to me like that, bitch," he mumbled.

"I don't appreciate that," I said, although I couldn't really be sure what I didn't appreciate: his freeloading of my hospitality or his distance.

Steve didn't say anything for a few seconds, long enough for him to turn the channel five more times. Finally, he clicked it off and stood up. "I'm going to bed."

"No, you're not." The ember inside me flared and I felt a heat in my stomach I hadn't felt in a long time. "You're going to tell me what the problem is and then you're going to stop being an asshole."

Steve stared at me with his brown eyes. He ran his tongue across his lips then wrinkled his nose in disgust. "You make me sick," he said quietly but with such menace that I recoiled slightly. "You think just because your whore mother was killed you're entitled to special treatment. Well, you're not. You aren't any better than she was, and I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't get what she deserved."

I stood in the kitchen with a wet sponge in one hand. I heard the drip of the soapy water, and I felt the splash against my bare feet. It took a moment for me to really comprehend what Steve had just said and another moment for the sponge to drop from my quaking hand. I had to say something, to argue, to stand up and slam another brick in my castle . . . but I couldn't say anything at all.

Maybe Steve was right. Maybe Mama was a whore and maybe she did get what she deserved. Maybe Grandma was so tired of cleaning up her messes that she decided to go home to her castle that one night and leave Mama to fend for herself.

Maybe I was turning out no different.

I still shook as Steve walked to the bedroom door and slammed it shut. A picture of Mama that hung on a wall in the hallway fell off its small nail. There was no glass in the frame to shatter, but had there been, I'm sure the sound would have pulled out memories and feelings that were so firmly buried in my mind I'd forgotten about them.

"You little shit!" I heard Mama say from cracks in my mind. "All I ask is for you to clean up your messes."

It took another week for Steve to apologize and bring me flowers. I don't know why he apologized since it was my distance and grief that set him on edge. I deserved to be yelled at and I deserved to be relegated to loneliness. Steve deserved so much more than I was willing to give him during that first year of our time together in the trailer. He worked and brought home money. He was there when I needed him to be there. He never once hit me.