Castles (7 page)

He pushed past Mama and ran for the door, his arms up around his head. I saw the bottle fly through the air, end over end, striking him on the back just as he reached for the handle.

"
Don't you dare come back here!
" Mama stared at the screen door, now swinging shut. I could hear Alfie's footsteps across the patio, down the steps and finally across the gravel.

He ran.

I looked at Mama as she stood staring at the door. Her nostrils flared, her fists still clenched in rage. The air was still, but I swear I heard Grandma laughing softly.

"What did I say about the tongue, Maggie?"

"Watch it," I whispered.

"Do you see?"

I looked at the belt Alfie left on the floor by the couch, then back at Mama. My mind raced from meeting Dusty to making love with Michael to seeing the ugliness of man explode in front of me to a mother's love that poured from someone I didn't understand.

No. I didn't see it like Grandma wanted me to.

I can't say I thought things would be different between Mama and me, but they were. In the days that followed Alfie's advance and Mama's protective outburst, we found ourselves clinging to each other more than we ever had before. When I went to school, she was at the table, cleaning up breakfast. When I returned, she put out the dinner plates. When I couldn't sleep, she sat on my bed and told me how sorry she was, and how life was going to be different. Mama seemed different, and for that I was glad.

Life had changed, but it did so on levels I couldn't relate to Mama. I now felt complete as a woman, and although my body wasn't ready, it had accepted the seed of a man. I found, however, that the extra time I spent with Mama was quickly eating into the time I could have with Michael. Since Mama didn't approve of the relationship in the first place, I was forced to find time with him—a few minutes here and there—between school and home or during her time at work. It pained me to know I couldn't have more time with him, but I had to learn to savor those moments when they came.

Michael must have felt different. It wasn't long after the change that he started to avoid me. He wasn't home when I'd call. He wouldn't respond when I tapped on his window at night. I walked Dusty alone on numerous occasions. At school, he was distant. I wondered at first if it was a reaction to the limited time I had with him. I feared, however, he was losing interest and maybe finding affection in someone a little more convenient.

I felt a sickness grow in my stomach when I looked in his eyes in the cafeteria at school one day. He was empty and so much different from the person I fell in love with. He turned from me at that moment and left me crushed, naked and cold.

I didn't know it at the time, but that was the last time I would see him alive.

I cried for most of the evening, curled under the covers in my room. A storm outside buffeted the trailer and shook the windows, but it didn't compare to the tempest in my life at that very moment. Mama asked me what was wrong when I wouldn't come to dinner, but without revealing my secrets to her, I had to keep my mouth shut. She kissed me on the forehead, passed me a weak smile and left for work.

I pictured Grandma on the inside of my eyelids. She rocked back and forth and smiled.

"Listen to the wind, Maggie."

If there was ever a time I wished Grandma was alive, it was right then. I didn't want to hear her disembodied voice pass wisdom down to me from her castle in the sky. I wanted to step out on the patio, pull up a chair next to her and wrap myself in her afghan. At the very least, I wanted to see her one more time and tell her how sorry I was for doubting her.

"Let the wind tell you what to do."

I pulled back the covers and looked around my room. I still had the Barbie nightlight in the corner, not the last vestige of my innocence, but certainly the one that was the most pronounced. The wind outside had died down a little, but I could still feel the trailer shake. I felt an urge—one that swelled inside of me—to step outside.

The rocking chair Grandma used was still on the porch. I watched it rock from the behind the screen door. I know it was an effect of the wind, but so much I wanted to believe that Grandma's ghost was there, waiting for me to come outside and face my fears. I had pulled her afghan from the back of the couch and wrapped it around myself.

I tasted dust the moment I opened the door and stepped onto the porch. Keeping my head down and holding the afghan tightly around me, I moved the chair and sat down. I couldn't open my eyes anymore than they were; the dust that bit into my cheeks was sure to tear into the soft flesh of my eyes. Still, I wanted to look, to know for myself that God's great broom was not aimed at me; there were other messes to clean up that night.

The wind picked up and hit me hard, screaming past my ears and pounding the trailer. I turned my head downward into my chest as the wind howled louder.

"Cut out his tongue."

I didn't think I heard the voice at first. It didn't sound like Grandma, but that might have been the mixture of wind and trailer noises that altered her pitch. It was clear, though, and sounded almost like it was right next to me.

"Cut out his tongue. He's an evil snake."

I turned to face the voice, but couldn't open my eyes. "Grandma?" I cried out.

"Cut out his tongue, Maggie. He left his seed in you. Tie him down, and the castle will grow larger."

"I can't do that, Grandma."

The wind grew stronger as if Grandma was chastising me. The afghan slipped off my shoulders and the sand pelted my skin like a billion tiny needles. I tried to force my head down further, but no matter how far I went, I felt the sand in my face. The trailer violently rocked back and forth. I heard dishes crash onto the floor.

"Cut him!"

They must have been inside the wind all along—black eel-like creatures, swimming in the air. I felt their razor scales before I saw them. I heard their screams overpower the wailing wind and the noise inside the trailer. Slowly I forced my eyes open, curious to know what Grandma knew all along.

They swam in circles, riding the wind like vultures ride thermal drafts. Their long spiked tails whipped back and forth and seemed awkward given their gaping mouths and bulbous heads. I felt I was witness to the birth of a thousand black snakes, the hiss replaced with a thousand screams.

One of them swirled in an eddy and stopped in front of me. I know my heart must have tripped once or twice. My hands probably gripped the afghan a little tighter and sweat surely poured from inside. All I could do was stare at the thing in front of me.

Its tail swished back and forth, forcing its frail body to remain in one place. The mouth gaped at me, set against black skin. Teeth the like I've yet to see again seemed almost translucent but unreasonably large. Above the mouth, two eye sockets—nothing more—blindly held my gaze. It was so much like the thing in the Bus, the thing in Michael's freezer.

"
Cut out his tongue and that of any man who wrongs you.
" It was Grandma's voice, and it came from the dust eel in front of me.

I didn't know what to say. These creatures—thousands of them—swam in such a turbulent and dirty ocean. They knew me and talked to me as they must have talked to Grandma. It was then I saw the castle that waited for me. It was then I saw Grandma on her cedar chair, an afghan wrapped around her frail body. She smiled as the dust eel in front of me smiled back, its gaping mouth and tapered tail such a beautiful sight to see.

Grandma was right.

The wind died down seconds after and the vision of the storm creatures faded just as suddenly. I sat in the rocking chair and cried. They were tears of joy, however, and I felt a change within me.

I was not, however, going to cut out Michael's tongue.

When my period didn't come on time, I knew Michael's seed had found a home. Grandma had known all along, and it took a vision to let me know. Her stern warnings—once in Michael's home, again when I laid with him—passed through me. I ignored the advice of a woman I used to look to for comfort and advice. The price of that ignorance was an unwanted child inside of me.

I had to tell Mama, but didn't know what to say.

I sat on the couch when Mama came home from work. It was late, but there was no school the following day, and she really never cared when I went to sleep. It was almost like her life was returning to normal. She'd rescued her daughter, made amends the best she could and finally turned back to alcohol to ease her own pain. She wasn't as angry as before, and she had made great strides to act more like a mother, but she wasn't my best friend. How could I ever tell her the truth?

She took her coat off and fetched a beer from the kitchen. My leg nervously twitched up and down as I sat up straight. I was sure she was going to beat me, bring out that wooden spoon and make sure there were splinters left in my face.

"What's wrong with you?" Mama took her place on a recliner. The television set was off and the silence in the room felt like an omen.

"Mama?" What was I doing? It's not like I ever confided in her my feelings about love or sex. If I had at that age, I'm sure I would have been dealt a lecture or two early on. "I haven't seen Michael in about a week."

"Why should I care?" She took a long drink from her bottle. I watched her rest it on her knee and prayed she wouldn't throw it. "You know I don't think you should date. You're too young."

"I'm twelve years old, Mama. I'm almost a woman."

"Ha! You're almost a
teenager
. That doesn't make you a woman."

"I have breasts. I bleed. What more is there to being a woman?"

Mama licked her lips, and I watched the bottle return to her mouth. "For one thing, Maggie," she said, "you need to grow up. You don't know what a man is capable of, right now. He wants nothing more than what's between your legs. Michael is no different."

"How do you know? You hardly talked to him."

"He's a man, Maggie. Men are all the same."

"So why do you date? What is it that makes you different from me?"

Mama finished the beer and stood up. I knew her reaction to my argument would be to either ignore the question or yell at me. There would be nothing in between. Whatever I hoped to accomplish that evening wasn't going to happen until I blurted out my secret. Stepping around the issue was bound to make things worse than they already were.

I sat back against the couch and took my eyes off her. I didn't want to see her face anymore.

"I'm pregnant, Mama."

I heard the bottle drop on the carpet first. It reverberated through the trailer like a bomb and I'd lit the fuse. I refused to look up. I knew she stood in the middle of the room shaking. I could hear her breath increase with each second. I'm sure her hands clenched together into fists, her teeth grinded and her eyes widened. I imaged for a moment that same demon I'd seen in the room when I six, her barbed tail poised to strike me down for the last time.

I waited for the end.

"Get out." It was a whisper and nothing more. I turned my face up only slightly. She held her arm out and pointed at the door. On her face, I saw shock painted red with pain.

I slowly stood up and walked to the door, tears streaming down my face. I wanted to run to her, to wrap my arms around my mother and cry until my tear ducts dried and my stomach hurt. She was my protector and the only person I had left. If she kicked me out, I had nowhere to go. I knew, though, that getting near her would invite her wrath into my life.

Maybe I grew up one year or two at that point. I slipped by her without saying a word and headed for the door. Grandma would never have let me leave. I'm sure I would have experienced her wrath, but it was one that was always pulled from the bowels of love, never hate.

Mama, on the other hand, couldn't love me the same.

Certainly not now. Certainly not after what I told her.

I put my hand on the door and turned to look. Her arm was still stretched out, her expression one of emptiness. Her eyes seemed full of tears, but she stared at the far wall, more afraid to look at me, I think, than I was to look at her.

"Mama, please," I whispered.

She stood like a statue, unable to move and probably unable to accept the truths that lay before her gutted life. When I think back, I'm sure there was more pain than I imagined. After Grandma left and she kicked Alfie out of the house, I was the only thing she had left. I was her blood, and even if I wasn't the person she wanted me to be, I was her reason for existence. I took that reason, and with three words, shoved it down her throat like an ungrateful child.

I pushed the door open and slipped outside to a cold night full of stars. When I reached the edge of the patio and stood next to Grandma's cedar chair, I heard the door shut behind me. I cringed as the deadbolt engaged and the chain was applied.

I knew I was alone in the world.

Alone and afraid.

I walked through the trailer park, hoping to find some place to stay. Michael wasn't going to come to the window even if I broke into it with a rock. I didn't really know anyone else well enough to ask for help. I had distanced myself from the other kids in the park—from Cade and Justin, from the girls that sat next to me in class. They didn't matter once I'd become a woman and let Michael inside.

How could I have done such a thing? I was twelve, damn it. I had just learned to use a pad less than a year before. A year before that, I was playing with Barbie dolls and toy horses. Responsibility was a word I couldn't spell and a concept I couldn't grasp. Had I forced myself to grow up, just to be with Michael?

Mama was wrong, though. A woman isn't made by the choices time makes. A woman is made by the choices she herself makes. She moves the clock forward a day or a month at a time.
She
decides when she's ready to accept a love presented to her, and
she
decides when she's ready to put away the dolls. A woman is made by the environment she's in, by the friends she keeps, and by the lessons she allows the world to teach her.