A Home in the Country Page 11

  Uncle Larry grabbed my ankle, ‘Stay put!’ he ordered, looking at me in a sad kind of way and shaking his head as though I’d done something really, really bad.

  ‘You was supposed to kiss me and make me feel good,’ he sighed. ‘Damn me, but I shoulda listened to Wally back there and gone after that Cathy. She knows what to do! Or even that one,’ he looked at Sally. ‘Wally says she does it real good even if she ain’t but a baby.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I’ve a mind to tell Agnes on you, that’s what.’

  Getting to his feet he pulled me up beside him and leaned down till his face was close to mine. ‘You gonna do like I say next time or am I gonna have to have me a talk with Agnes?’ he asked.

  I didn’t know what he meant or what he was going to tell Agnes or what it was Cathy and Sally did that I should have done.

  Uncle Larry leaned in closer yet so his breath was hot against my face and I reeled from the stink of it. ‘I’m gonna go back now,’ he said. ‘Gonna say I never did find neither one of you. But come next week,’ he wagged his finger, ‘and you carry on like you just done, I’m tellin’!’

  Backing away he disappeared in the branches and I sat down abruptly. Not because I wanted to but because my shaking legs couldn’t hold me up any longer.

  ‘Get up right now,’ Sally said in an unusually firm voice for her. ‘We got to go back else we won’t get no supper like we din’t get no lunch.’

  I told her I wasn’t going back because he’d be there and I didn’t want to see him again. Not ever. I said, ‘He’s not nice like we thought. He’s ugly and he stinks and he does things he’s not supposed to do and he touched me where he’s not supposed to touch me. I hate him!’

  ‘So what?’ Sally said. ‘I got to eat. You’d have done like he said we’d both be eatin’ candy bars right now.’

  ‘I bet you wouldn’t have kissed that ugly, disgusting thing,’ I moaned.

  ‘I would, too! Nights you go knittin’ it’s what me and Cathy does to the Old Man else he won’t give us our Milky Way bars.’

  I didn’t understand any of it. Couldn’t think why the Old Man and Uncle Larry would want them to do that or why Sally didn’t seem to care.

  ‘How come they do that?’ I began, ‘Why…?’

  ‘Me’n Cathy can’t figure it neither,’ Sally shrugged. ‘Just … they like it, I guess. Come on.’

  My legs still didn’t want to hold me up. Sally said, ‘You don’t get a move on right now Agnes might could send Uncle Larry out lookin’ for you!’

  Gasping, I scrambled to my knees and Sally pulled me up the rest of the way.

  There were empty chairs at the supper table when we crept in – the boys’ chairs – and not a word was being spoken by anyone. There was only the sound of knives and forks scraping across plates to break the silence until Agnes spoke, saying, ‘If them boys can’t move their backsides for supper they ain’t getting none. Dump ’em in the hog slops, Cathy.’

  I cringed inwardly knowing how much the boys needed those suppers while wondering if the men had even gone looking for them. Were they still hiding? Or had they been given candy bars and told to stay away?

  Sitting in my place at the table, I couldn’t get my eyes up off my plate to look at anyone except Cathy. But Cathy wouldn’t look back. She wasn’t even watching Agnes’ face as she usually did. Instead her head was low over her plate and I saw that when she tried to put food in her mouth it took her a while because the hand holding her fork was shaking.

  I knew then it didn’t matter what Sally or Uncle Larry said about Cathy being good at whatever it was she did to the Old Man, because right then Cathy was very, very upset. So upset she was fighting herself not to cry.

  And there was something else I knew, too. I knew it wasn’t worth a candy bar. No, not even ten candy bars. Maybe not even a hundred….

  NINE

  In the days following Uncle Larry’s visit it seemed to me he was still there, so filled – crammed – was my head with images of him: slouched across the table, eating like a pig, on the cabin porch, digging in the hole and, most particularly, in the hiding place by the well. My ears, too, still rang with his coarse, jeering laughter and his taunting remarks. In the odd times he was absent from my thoughts, my mind occupied itself with what I had learned about the Old Man and I lived in mortal fear that Agnes would carry out her threat of not taking me to the next Knitting Bee so that I, too, would be called upon to go downstairs and kiss him.

  ‘The way you been actin’ these last days, girl,’ Agnes repeatedly warned, ‘fallin’ over stuff and breakin’ stuff and forgettin’ what-all you’re supposed to be doin’, ain’t no tellin’ what you might could do to disgrace me I take you knittin’ this next time.’

  She was right. In spite of my good intentions, I no sooner began a chore than my head filled up with what to do if I didn’t go to Knitting and the Old Man called me down.

  From there my mind raced ahead to Uncle Larry coming back and what he was going to make me do or what he’d tell Agnes I didn’t do and next thing I knew, Agnes would be coming at me, madder than a bull, fists flailing, wanting to know what in hell had gotten into me.

  I almost did tell her the first time she asked. I almost said, ‘Uncle Larry’s what’s gotten into me, ma’am. He’s a bad, disgusting man and can I please stay in the house with you next time he comes?’

  I didn’t, though, because I’d already learned through my own experience, and from listening to Cathy, one of the most unfair and frightening lessons of childhood: it didn’t matter how badly adults behaved or what they said or did to you, other adults always took their side. ‘It’s your own fault,’ they’d say, all tight-lipped. ‘You only have yourself to blame. You must have deserved it or it wouldn’t have happened.’

  The one person I most wanted to talk to was Cathy. But Cathy wouldn’t let me. One night when we were saying the rosary I tried yet again, whispering under the drone of Hail Marys, but she only hissed at me to shut up and prayed extra loud.

  Anyway, Cathy’s bed-wetting, once a rare event, had worsened to the point she was wetting every night and she was getting into plenty of trouble on account of it.

  ‘I didn’t know better,’ Agnes fumed, watching with disgust as Cathy pulled the sheets off her bed and hung them over the window ledge to dry, ‘I’d take you for a spoiled Limey brat like Sarah ’stead of the good American kid you’re s’posed to be.’

  Agnes stood by her threat not to take me with her to the Knitting Bee up to the moment she herself was almost ready to leave the house before she relented. ‘I don’t,’ she complained, ‘I’ll have all them old biddies traipsin’ up to my front door wastin’ my time wantin’ to know if the poor darlin’ refugee kid is doin’ all right and bringin’ you stuff. Go get changed.’

  If it hadn’t been for knowing what the Old Man was doing to Cathy and Sally back at the house, I might have wished Agnes had left me behind because the whole way there she raged about what dumb, ugly, lazy, spoiled Limey brats James and I were. On the way home, the Royal Family, Winston Churchill and all the British armed services were added to her grievances and, knowing there was no longer any danger of anyone seeing telltale bruises and lumps on my face and body, accompanied her remarks with vicious slaps, pinches, and thumps.

  In spite of my many fervent prayers and feverish plans to run away if he came back, Friday night brought Uncle Larry once again to the supper table. I could not get my eyes up off my plate to look at him. Not even when he asked Agnes, ‘How about the Limey? She been doin’ what-all you told her this week?’

  ‘She’s been drivin’ me crazy all week, is what she’s been doin’,’ Agnes glowered. ‘Haven’t got a lick of work out of her the whole entire time. Kid’s done everythin’ I told her ass-backwards.’

  Uncle Larry turned to me, ‘What about it, girl? You gonna start doin’ what-all you’re told right from here on in?’

  Before I could get my voice around the ever-present
lump in my throat, Agnes answered for me. ‘She don’t straighten out right quick,’ she snarled, ‘she’s going back where she come from, never mind the bombs and what-all.’

  My heart leapt. Oh, if only she would! Send me back to the bombs and what-all! After her, and then Uncle Larry, Adolf Hitler himself seemed like a dear, kindly old friend. What could I do to make her?

  ‘You oughta do that, Agnes,’ Uncle Larry agreed. ‘I’m serious. Get rid of her, get you a nice American orphan kid like Cathy in her place.’ He chewed thoughtfully a moment before adding, ‘You could get yourself in a heap of trouble taking in kids that’s got folks of their own, see. Even if’n they’re thousand of miles away and a war goin’ on.’

  ‘Mind your business, Larry!’ Agnes snapped. And to us girls, ‘Get this kitchen cleaned up and get on up to bed. These men has better things to do than talk to a bunch of no-count brats while I’m still waitin’ on my water.’

  An odd thing happened once the men and the boys were back outside digging with the light shining up on the ceiling again. I felt better than I had the whole week worrying about Uncle Larry coming back because I knew he couldn’t come up and get me. Not with Agnes sitting on the side of the bed looking down on him, he couldn’t.

  Reasoning further, I realized – figured – he’d be down in that hole the next day, too, and maybe … maybe they’d finish up sooner than they thought – the pipe they’d ordered had been delivered during the week – and they’d go off raising hell like he also said last week.

  The irony of this situation didn’t strike me until years later when James and I began looking back: that inasmuch as Uncle Larry and Agnes were the two people I feared and hated most in the world, I nonetheless looked to each as a protector, one against the other, when necessary.

  It was Uncle Larry’s raucous voice we heard calling us from our various chores late the following Sunday morning.

  When we got to the kitchen he was standing with his back to the sink, his arms stretched wide like a magician who’d just performed an amazing trick. He bowed us forward, then stepped aside pointing dramatically to the water pouring out of the tap into the sink. With another grand flourish he directed our attention to the little pump on the floor, its fan belt whirring so fast all we could see was a blur.

  Our eyes went wide. ‘No more haulin’,’ Danny breathed.

  ‘That’s right, boy, no more haulin’!’ Uncle Larry crowed. ‘Step up here, Agnes, show ’em all how it works. Turn it off.’

  Letting go of her bottom lip and shaking her head as if she couldn’t believe the wonder of running water, Agnes stepped forward, reached out and turned the tap. The water flow stopped instantly and the little pump on the floor went silent, its fan belt still. ‘It’s like a miracle,’ she gloated. ‘I got me water!’

  ‘Give me a kiss for it then, Agnes,’ Uncle Larry demanded. ‘You owe me a kiss!’

  Ugh! Those men and their kisses!

  Agnes turned a dark and indignant red but she leaned forward and pecked Uncle Larry’s ruddy cheek so quickly it was as if she thought her lips might catch fire on his face.

  ‘That ain’t no kiss,’ Uncle Larry howled and before Agnes could step back he’d pulled her close with his hands on her backside and his mouth on hers. What was he doing? Why was he bending her over backwards like that? And why would he want to kiss her anyway? Did he have his tongue in her mouth like he did with us? Oh, they were so disgusting!

  Abruptly, Uncle Larry let go of Agnes and she nearly went down backwards in her efforts to keep her balance. ‘Don’t know how you ever got it on with her, Wally,’ he complained, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, ‘You can have her and welcome.’

  In the silence that followed, we felt both shame and disgust for the three adults standing before us. Kids though we may have been, we knew that Uncle Larry did not have the right to kiss his brother’s wife the way he had. And yet, the Old Man seemed unconcerned, merely turning away to look out the window as though nothing unusual had happened, while Uncle Larry, grinning, hitching up his pants, looked at us as if he’d done something really smart and expected our approval. Only Agnes, head bowed, fists clenched, face so red and angry it looked as if it might disintegrate at any moment, showed her feelings.

  The silence lengthened, the adults remaining as they were, motionless, as though all three were actors in a play and had forgotten what came next. At the same time, we all became aware of a new sound, a sound none of us recognized at first – the sound of water dripping from a tap.

  At any other time we kids might have wondered about it, or at least been curious, but right then we had other things to think about. Scarcely breathing we were waiting to see if Agnes or the Old Man were going to do anything about the way Uncle Larry had just behaved. Would either one hit him? Cuss him out? Tell him to git?

  They did nothing! Turning, pointing, Agnes vented on the boys instead. ‘Git!’ she ordered, ‘You seen water before, ain’t you? And you girls! Get some food going! Jesus Christ, do I have to think of everythin’?’

  Our contempt and loathing for her went up another notch. She was a coward and now we wished Uncle Larry would grab her backside and bend her over backwards again. Serve the bitch right.

  Uncle Larry agreed with Agnes. ‘Yeah, kids,’ he urged. ‘Hurry it up. We got stuff to do this afternoon. Important stuff!’

  Agnes didn’t eat lunch that day. Didn’t even sit at the table, but stood, on guard, as it were, beside the sink, one hand on the tap, as if protecting it from unseen enemies.

  Uncle Larry took a long swallow from the whisky bottle he and the Old Man were passing back and forth between them, and said, ‘It ain’t gonna go away, Agnes. I do somethin’, I do it right!’

  He got to his feet, ‘Gonna take these kids offa your hands for a while now, Agnes, have us some fun,’ he winked at me. ‘Got some new games lined up reckon even the Limey’ll want to play along.’

  ‘Ain’t no games gettin’ played around here till these girls has cleaned up and washed these dishes,’ Agnes said. ‘Get to ’em, girls. And mind yourselves around my pump. Anybody busts it, their head gets busted.’

  As soon as we had the kitchen to ourselves, I whispered to Cathy, ‘Let’s just keep doin’ these dishes over and over till supper time. They might could forget their dumb games.’

  ‘They ain’t gonna forget their games,’ Cathy moaned.

  ‘Then I ain’t goin’ out there!’ I said. ‘I’ll do something so bad Agnes’ll have to tie me up. I know! I’ll hit her. Right in the face!’

  ‘Won’t do you no good,’ Cathy said. ‘You seen for yourself she’s scared to death of him—’

  She broke off as a shower of water hit her full in the face. She whirled on Sally, ‘Quit that!’ she hissed. ‘Quit messin’ with her water!’

  Sally giggled and kept right on doing what she was doing: pressing her finger tight up against the tap so that the running water sprayed in all directions.

  Cathy grabbed her hand, twisted it away from the tap, slapped it and said, ‘I told you quit it! Now clean up this floor ’fore Agnes sees what you done!’

  ‘Look!’ I gasped. ‘She even got water on the pump!’ and I flicked at the drops with the dish towel I had in my hand. Without warning, the towel was whipped out of my hand by the speed of the fan belt and I was toppling forward onto the pump. The fan belt stopped whirring, the water stopped running, and in the silence that followed all three of us stared, dumbfounded, at the dish towel caught up in the fan belt, and at the great drops of blood splashing and spreading in the water on the floor.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ Cathy moaned. ‘You done busted her pump. And look at the mess you’re makin’. Quick! Get rags! We got to clean up!’

  I was out the door while she was still talking and racing towards the grapevines where the mop and floor rags were hung to dry. Dimly I was aware that the men on the cabin porch could see me but I didn’t care. I’d busted Agnes’ pump and we had to fix it before Agnes fixed m
e. Maybe forever.

  Heart racing, I grabbed up the mop with one hand and a handful of rags with the other. Instantly the rags were soaked with blood and I remember wondering if all that blood could be coming from me? But if it was, so what? I just wrapped the rags around my hand and raced back to the kitchen where Cathy was holding the screen door open with her foot, both hands held out to take the mop and the rags. I was almost there when I heard running feet and saw the Old Man and Uncle Larry approaching from the cabin.

  ‘Gimme the rags,’ Cathy gasped, grabbing for them. The rags came off my hand just as the Old Man came alongside.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ he groaned, ‘Take a look at that, will you. She done took the top offa her finger.’

  I had? Sure enough, through the spurting blood the top of one of my fingers could be seen dangling by a slender thread of skin.

  ‘Must’ve got it caught in the fan belt along with that dish towel,’ Uncle Larry conjectured.

  Agnes crashed in from her office, took in the wet, bloody floor, the dish towel caught in the belt of the silent pump, the blood running down my arm and dripping off my elbow, and started screaming, ‘She busted my pump! Years I waited on it and that goddam Limey bitch has gone and busted it!’

  Grabbing the mop from my other hand she started flailing. Her blows were meant for me but everyone was getting hit, even the men, all of us ducking and trying to get out of her way. Uncle Larry grabbed Agnes’ arm and wrestled the mop away from her. ‘Get a-hold of yourself, woman,’ he roared. ‘Kid’s hurt bad enough as it is.’

  ‘The kid?’ Agnes screamed. ‘The kid? What about my pump?’

  ‘There a doctor hereabouts?’ Uncle Larry asked.

  ‘Down by the store a-ways,’ the Old Man said, grabbing up a dish towel, wrapping it around my bleeding hand and steering me towards the door.