I won’t go into every vivid detail. This isn’t to spare you, to be honest: it’s to spare me. I’ve tried it before, describing every little thing that happened exactly as it exists in my head. But forcing myself to review it so closely makes me feel four years old all over again – I get the sights, the sounds, the smells, even the physical feeling. It’s a flashback of my entire being, and those are very, very bad for my anxiety level.
This is how it happened: my father was gone on an out-of-state run. He hauled rock and coal for a trucking company, and for most of my early childhood he was gone for weeks at a time. Before my brother was born, he’d take me with him on the shorter trips to Illinois or Kentucky. I’d pack a huge bag of toys and dump them out in the bunk and play to the sound of old country songs about 18-wheelers. He’d stop at McDonald’s and get me cheeseburgers, then scrape all the mustard and onions and pickles off so I could be persuaded to eat them. When I absolutely, positively, just had to pee, he’d find a filling station and buy me Nutter Butters before we left. I loved to take them apart and lick the peanut butter out of the middle before I crunched the halves. At night, he’d park and crawl back into the bunk with me, where he slept on Barbies and baby dolls and plastic dishes. He taught me how to call for a radio check on the C.B. I even had a handle: Scrunchie, a pet name my Uncle Jeff gave me. Without a doubt, I was my Daddy’s baby. Before his alcoholism bested his ability to love, he was the best father a kid could ask for. But he couldn’t take me with him all the time, so I was very often alone with my mother – and that arrangement was a disaster waiting to happen.
Matthew must have been asleep. It was an overcast day, and my mother was on the couch watching television. Wheel of Fortune: I remember watching Vanna White sashay across the screen and turn over the big, glowing letters in the puzzle. I had grown bored of playing by myself. I pestered my mother to get up and play with me, but she just kept pushing me away and scolding me for blocking her view. I started wandering from one end of the trailer to the other, looking for something to do. Then, folded neatly in the seat of a chair, I saw a shirt that I knew to be my Uncle Jeff’s – my father had perhaps borrowed it. And I had a brilliant idea.
Four year-old children are somehow completely obsessed with the idea of helping. If something looks like it needs doing, a preschooler will try to do it. I was no different, and on top of this natural inclination to assist, I had another motive: somewhere in my head was the blissfully perfect idea that if I did a favor for Mommy, Mommy would be happy and pay attention to me. It was the simplest kind of logic. In all my imagining of praise and accolades and playtime, I never once realized that my brilliant plan could backfire.
I did everything I was supposed to do. I was very careful with the shirt, carrying it flat in both hands so as not to wrinkle it. I presented myself and my plan to my mother and asked very politely for permission to perform my errand. She seemed not to hear me. She reached out and shoved me aside. I tried again, sidling up next to her and plucking at her pants leg.
“Mommy? Can I take Uncle Jeff’s shirt back to him? It’s not very far. Please, Mommy?”
She shoved me aside again, but I knew better than to leave the trailer without permission. I was determined to get her to say something, even if it was no: thus far, she had not uttered a word. So I pressed on, and finally she relented. Without taking her eyes off the television screen, she said “Fine. Just go.”
I was elated, but in the spirit of double-checking I turned once more before opening the front door and stood still for a moment, watching her watch TV. “Mommy? I’m going now, okay?”
“Fine.”
So I left. The first thing I had to do was figure out how to get down the stairs. Our trailer had a set of wooden steps built onto it – the backs were open and the railing was too wide for my small hand. I was afraid. I reached out one foot and squeezed shut my eyes. Then, terrified of falling, I thought better of that idea. I placed the folded shirt down on the porch and lowered myself to a sitting position. Then I picked it up again, placed it carefully in my lap, smoothed out the wrinkles, and scooted down the stairs on my butt. That accomplished, I picked my way cautiously across the driveway. Then I stood facing the field: that universe of difficulty.
Having come that far, I did not want to turn back. Defeat caught in my craw even that early in my life. My biggest concern wasn’t for my own safety: when I was a kid, I sprang back up from the ground every time I fell as if my entire body was spring-loaded. I was most concerned for the shirt I was holding. It was clean, and I wanted it to stay clean. Very precisely, I rolled it up and tucked it beneath my arm so I could use both hands for balance. I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth, and stepped into the high grass.
The entire way across that field, I told myself that if I could only make it through to the other side without falling, I could tell Mommy and she would be so very proud of me. I imagined her picking me up and swinging me in a circle. Her smile would be like sunshine and Heaven. She would tell me what a good job I had done and maybe even take me to the old store across the road to get something from the big glass candy counter, and I could give the shiny quarters to the tall bald man with the round glasses who always smiled at me, and he would lift me up and let me push the drawer to the cash register closed so I could hear it clang, because I liked that sound.
The imaginings did the trick. Once I stumbled, but I caught myself with a quick hand against the ground before I fell outright. I told myself that didn’t count. Then I was out of the grass and at the road.
Now, I knew nothing was going to come out this road to get me. It was actually part of my aunt and uncle’s driveway: it dead-ended in the shed where Uncle Jeff kept his tow truck. I did eye the truck suspiciously for a moment to make sure it would stay put, but I wasn’t afraid. I was, however, very desirous of following the rules to the letter, so I did what I had been taught to do before crossing a road: I looked left and right and left again and then moved, delighting in the decisive slap of my shoes against the asphalt.
I opened the front door of the house and entered a cool sanctuary. The room seemed huge to me back then: the green carpet stretched and stretched all the way across miles and miles to the couch. There sat my aunt, holding my infant cousin Samantha. Sam was just a wild mass of bright red hair peeking out of a swaddle of blankets.
Cindy looked up when I came in. She looked surprised to see me. She put her finger to her nose to signal for quiet and then motioned me toward her. I suddenly felt meek. I shuffled forward as quietly as I could, and stood before her holding out the shirt like an offering.
“What are you doing here?”
“I brought Uncle Jeff his shirt back.”
“Are you supposed to be here all by yourself?”
“I asked Mommy. She said okay.”
Cindy looked dubious, but she didn’t press the issue any farther. Seeing a pile of clean laundry on a nearby chair, I placed the shirt on top and smoothed it carefully one last time. Cindy rose from the couch and signaled for me to follow her. I trailed her into the nursery, where she put Sam down in a shining wooden cradle. She made the sign for quiet again, and the two of us stood there watching the baby work her tiny mouth as she slept.
“Can I touch?”
“Very, very, gently.”
I reached out a finger and touched the back of Samantha’s closed fist.
“She’s so soft.”
“Yes.”
Cindy stood there a moment more, gazing at her baby like she thought she might be dreaming. Then she gave herself a little shake and asked me if I wanted a cookie.
Aunt Cindy had the best cookies. Keeblers, the kind shaped like elves with the chocolate smashed in between. I ate them the same way I ate the Nutter Butters my father got me on our trucking trips: I pried them apart and licked out the filling. Then I stared the smiling little elves in their cookie eyes with sadistic glee and crunched off their heads: NOM.
I was contemplating the feet of a mostly-eaten elf when Cindy looked out the window above the sink.
“Tiffy, I thought you said you were supposed to be here.”
“I am.” I crunched the feet of the cookie.
“Well that’s your Mommy coming this way, and she sure looks mad.”
The only thing I remember feeling at first was good old-fashioned confusion. Why would Mommy be mad? She had said I could come. She had said it two whole times. Then the front door slammed open and banged against the wall. My mother appeared, and she was definitely mad – in both senses of the word. Her face was bright red and her mouth was set in a thin, hard line. Her eyes were wild. Her nostrils were flared. My confusion escalated, and fear grabbed me around the ribcage and squeezed.
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